Dear redditors,
I am hoping to get some advice, some perspective, and honestly some kindness. I’m having the worst week of my life.
This story begins in December when my boyfriend and I decided to start trying for a baby. We live together and had been together for two years. At this point I would have described our relationship as happy, healthy and loving. It felt romantic trying for a baby and we conceived straight away. Xmas came around and it felt extra special. We told our parents and close friends the news. They were over the moon. Every morning we would wake up and my partner would kiss my tummy and tell me how excited he was. Sadly, in January, I had a miscarriage. Anyone who has had one will know that is physically and emotionally a horrible thing to go through. But we were mentally prepared (several of my friends had recently had miscarriage and I understood how common it was). I struggled more than my partner, partly because of hormones and partly because I had already connected with my baby and had imagined our year ahead.
We started trying again a couple of months later. I guess you could say we have been trying now for four or five months. I know that’s not long but this journey has been a surprise to me in terms of how anxious I have felt throughout. I have tried to share with this partner but he has really lacked understanding. Some months it’s been fine and the process felt fun and relaxed. One month I became very obsessed with my ovulation sticks and would tell my partner when we needed to have sex. I think it’s fair to say that I was anxious about becoming pregnant again, anxious about my age, anxious that all my friends have babies or are announcing pregnancies etc. I shared this with my partner and his response was “I assumed you would be more relaxed about this, this isn’t you” (I’ve traditionally been a very relaxed easy going person) and “I am confident it will happen for us, just relax”. I took these comments as well intentioned but they also didn’t really help me. I asked him to support me. I had given up drinking alcohol and coffee (two things I love), but he didn’t give up alcohol or smoking. When I asked him about this and also commented that I found it hard when the sun was out not to reach for an aperol spritz he commented “I don’t understand, you really want a baby, when you want something badly it shouldn’t be hard”. I started to feel uneasy about his lack of empathy (I should have stopped trying).
Last month I said to him “this weekend I’m ovulating so we need to have lots of sex!”. I know this isn’t the sexiest thing but also…. We could have made it fun?! He responded to me “you know how much effort you’ve been putting into taking vitamins and getting acupuncture etc, I think you should put the same effort into seducing me”. On one hand I get his point of course. On the other hand I feel like this is the one part he could have shared with me and he could have been seducing me????! I had been sharing with him my anxiety and I just think he could have supported me a little better.
We ended up having a horrible argument that weekend. The worst argument we have ever had. It began with me sharing that I don’t feel very at home yet in his house. He is very precious about his decor and when we had my friends over it made me realise that it didn’t seem very “me” and that we hadn’t put any of my stuff up (he doesn’t like my taste). I admit I didn’t share in a mature way, I shared from a place from frustration and made a passive aggressive comment. It triggered him and I then realised my fault and explained everything in a grown up way (it’s not that I don’t like his decor - it’s that it doesn’t feel like home to me yet). He feels I am ungrateful because he let me move into his house (he didn’t say this part but for context his house is huge and glamorous by anyone’s standards and everyone who visits is like wow). But this isn’t the point. It’s about creating a home together. I don’t really like his house tbh, I wouldn’t choose a shiny house, it’s a bit awkward (I didn’t say this to him btw). But either way, he didn’t listen or understand and I’m like Wtf?!!!
He then uses this as an opportunity to tell me everything I’m doing wrong in the house. I’m untidy. I don’t recycle properly. I haven’t fully unpacked my boxes. I don’t listen to him when he gives me feedback. Although he is saying this in completely the wrong way and being super mean and immature…. I do think he is fair to say these things. I can be untidy and I do leave him to do the recycling. I acknowledge him. But i do say it’s not fair to say I don’t listen to him as he has never had this conversation with me before. He then says he has also been trying to tell me he isn’t happy with our sex life. He wants us to be more passionate and for me to initiate more. I’m quite taken aback but I agree with him that I haven’t been myself and I haven’t been as passionate as before. I commit to trying harder. But also need him to try harder - he does initiate but it’s not like he seduces me or romances me, he just kisses me and then sticks it in. Sorry if TMI!!
The content of this argument doesn’t worry me. I think it’s fair for him to raise these things. And I agree with all of them. It’s the way he argued that made me worry. He was mean. He used it as a way to criticise everything about me. He showed no empathy for my perspective.
The next day he was over the argument but I was not. I didn’t keep talking about it but I also wasn’t as chatty or affectionate as normal. I don’t find it easy to get over arguments. It’s something I need to work on. Either way, I was off with him and it just made it all so much worse. That night he said he still really wanted to make a baby with me and we should have sex even though we weren’t really in the mood. We did. I wish I could have been the passionate person he asked for but I just couldn’t make myself!!
The next two weeks were so weird. So many red flags and odd moments: - we went out for dinner with my parents and he went to show my parents something on his phone and when he opened it instagram was open. He has always told me he doesn’t have instagram. - I asked him about it the next day and he said I must have imagined it. - He is very distant with me, distracted on his phone, we don’t have sex at all for the two weeks (very unusual for us). - It’s his birthday during this period. I make a special effort. I’ve bought him really thoughtful gifts and written him a poem (I had written this back when things were romantic between us). - I go to leave another little poem in his work bag too (something we often do for each other in the past). I find a card from his colleague. In my opinion the card is very inappropriate. It is made to be personalised with his name and calls him “one of a kind”. She has gifted him a dreamcatcher and she writes about what a dreamcatcher is for and says “I wish you only sweet dreams, love M”. - I ask him about the card and ask him why he put all his cards out except this one. He says he just forgot about it and they are just friends. - I have a very good gut instinct. I always have. I always know when something I wrong. I tell him I think he is hiding something from me. He says he isn’t and he thinks the hormones are making me paranoid!!! I genuinely believe him and I book a private blood test to help me understand if I have a hormonal imbalance. LOL… I’m an idiot. - We go away for the weekend. We are having a nice time and sort of back for normal on the surface but not really. - We are out for lunch and I go to order at the bar but then forgot something and come back. He angles his phone away and looks guilty. I ask him what’s going on. He says I’m being paranoid and it’s that I never got over the argument and I’m making stuff up now. - I am starting to realise I am probably pregnant (Sod’s Law!!!). I am late. I have some symptoms. I take a test and show him the faint line - he says “oh it’s very faint, you could be pregnant, let’s see”. no words of kindness. I tell him I actually feel scared to be pregnant because we have had such a shit time recently and also because of the miscarriage and I’m scared of having one again. He says “well if you think like that, you’ll make it happen”. I understand how law of attraction works but I find this really invalidating. - That evening we are still on holiday and we had booked a dinner. We still go. Over dinner he says he is sorry he hasn’t been himself. He is grieving his old life. He has had to come to terms with the fact that we probably won’t ever have the passionate kinky sex he hoped for (wtf?!!! This is just phase). He says he does want a child but he also thinks it ruins your life. And how he is feels right now is angry, frustrated and not excited by the news. I cry. He rolls his eyes and says im too emotional. I say I think these are cruel things to say to me when im sat in front of him and pregnant. He says he should be able to express how he feels. - At this point im beginning to think he is psycho?!! I have to tell you that these things are very out of character (in my experience). - We finally go home. He apologises and says he is being a dick and isn’t being the best version of himself. I apologise for my part. We hug. - The next day we are back at work. I’m still feeling very uneasy. I text him and say again that this feels so weird. To suddenly be so disconnected from each other and I feel he is hiding something. - He calls me. He says he has been hiding something. He was so upset after the argument that he has been taking cocaine. Every day. (He took cocaine before we met but not since as far as I know). - He also told me he does have an Instagram account and he felt embarrassed to tell me as he has always been so judgemental about social media. - At this point I’m not angry about the things, I’m angry he has been gaslighting me. he looked me in the eye and said I’m being paranoid.
Guys, I know he is coming across in this story as an arsehole. I can only say he never showed these behaviours before. Did I do something wrong here too? Am I being paranoid? Is this something we can overcome? I’m not sure I want to be in with him anymore but it feels so hard now I know im pregnant. What a mess I’ve got myself in!! I’m not sure he is a nice person. I think he might be cheating (that card just seems so inappropriate?!). I think he is a drug addict. I know he a liar. He has been gaslighting me. I just need someone to hug me and be kind to me and tell me what to do…. (I do have wonderful friends and family but I’m not ready to share).
Am I overreacting???
TLDR: partner has started to show red flag behaviours but I’ve also found out I’m pregnant. Should I stay and try to work it out or should I leave?

To be clear, the injuries on JO do feel like a bit of a reach when considering the prosecutions belief they were caused by a car. I also have reasonable doubt in pretty much all theories to explain what happened to JO (from both sides) and I don’t believe we will get to the bottom of it by end of trial. The entire scope of police work was done so poorly, that I personally feel KR deserves a Not Guilty verdict on just that alone.
However. There are a few things that don’t sit well with me when considering the circumstances of the night:

1. Clearly drinking and driving were not a new behaviour for KR. There were no witness statements stating KR said anything like “I really shouldn’t be driving” or “maybe we should take a cab”. All witness statements from waterfall state that KR walked out of the bar and to her car without any hesitation. So if drinking and driving weren’t rare for her, how often does she break a tail light that she does not remember happening on the very same night her boyfriend is found dead outside of the house she dropped him off at? It does seem a bit suspicious that these two things just happened to occur on the same night and be completely unrelated to each other.
   
2. If JO did go inside, why would the drink from the bar be at the crime scene? The glass does strongly align with the witnesses statements that he never entered the house. In fact, even if he did go inside with the glass, I doubt the Alberts were sober enough to locate the glass and then know to place it outside during a blizzard without any footprints leading to and from the house. If they decided to go to that effort, they would have to know Karen broke her tail light to even have a plausible explanation for why a dead body was on their front yard. Otherwise, all signs would immediately point to them as the key suspects. If you plan to do a cover up, thats taking a huuuge risk in hoping someone else could be framed by leaving him on your own lawn.
   
3. Karen’s story of the night has changed several times, and with major details changing between statements. First she doesn’t remember anything that happened the night before, and doesn’t remember seeing JO after waterfall bar. Then she remembers dropping him off and driving away. Then it’s that she saw him walk up to the house and describes the entrance he went through. She also was able to locate his body immediately even though the first responders had to use a spotlight to locate KR giving JO CPR because the visibility was so poor. Her statements and recollection of events have changed more times than any of the witnesses.
   

I’m so torn. I don’t believe she should be charged with 2nd degree murder, but I just can’t see any other plausible cause of his death that doesn’t connect her to the crime. There is also zero motive from anyone else to randomly fight him after inviting him back to the house to continue the party. No arguments or heightened disagreements occurred between JO and the other party goers. The only fighting they did occur was between JO and KR at the time she dropped him off and then proceeded to call and text him in anger throughout the night. Also, stating her fear was that he was hit by a snow plow when she met up with the 2 female friends the next morning seems a touch suspicious when there is a snow storm and you happen to have a mysterious broken tail light of your own. Most people’s first thought would be freezing to death. Not a snow plow.
Reddit! Help it make sense. I want to believe she is innocent but I’m just not convinced.
Source: https://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/2023/09/27/canton-karen-read/

I am NOT OOP, OOP is u/AdventurousClock6275
Originally posted to AITAH
AITA for divorcing my wife over getting a massage
Thanks to u/queenlegolas and u/Direct-Caterpillar77 for suggesting this BoRU
Trigger Warnings: fertility issues, accusations of infidelity, manipulation
Original Post: April 16, 2024
My soon to be ex-wife and I are both in our late 30s. We've been together 12 years married for 10. We are in a dead bedroom. It was totally dead for 6 months before I filed for divorce. It was on life support/ICU for 5-6 years before that.
We both wanted to be younger parents, and both wanted 2 kids. We conceived our daughter almost immediately after getting married. When she was 6 months old we started trying to have the 2nd child. It never happened. After 3 years we started seeing fertility specialists and found out we both have pretty serious reproductive issues. The doctor told us our daughter was nothing short of a miracle, and said it was against all odds that we not only conceived but carried to term. It was after this that the sex life began to seriously decline.
Initially I thought it was just the pain of finding out, and knowing we wouldn't be able to afford the fertility options, and figured it would get better over time. It never did, it only got worse. 5 years ago I would say we had sex 15 to 20 times that year, in 2023 we had sex 3 times. I have tried everything to improve this, spicing things up, talking, suggested counseling. I more than pull my weight around the house. We both work and work basically the same hours. I'm telling this because the usual stuff I read on Reddit about how "The wife does it all" is not even close to true.
Over time I have grown more and more resentful. The thing that makes me the most resentful is she knows I have a high libido, and just doesn't care. I on the other hand know she loves to be rubbed on/massaged, and never took that from her. I probably rub on her 325 times a year. Almost every night I will rub her claves, shins, ankles and feet. 4 to 5 nights a month I will go big and do neck, shoulder, back, butt, hamstring, quads, shins, calves, ankles, and feet. I noticed that doing the big massages was the best way to get sex, as she was more likely to allow me to do the foreplay things I know work on her if I had already done this prep. I did them more often a few years ago but now not as much. The success rate was never that great, maybe 20% of the time, but in the last 2 years we are definitely in the single digits.
When we hit the 4 months of absolutely no sex, I decided I wasn't rubbing on her ever again. It only took 3 days for her to notice and she asked me to. I told her no, and I got angry. I said "Why should I, when you don't give a fuck about what I want.". Obviously not my finest moment and huge argument followed. Things got ice cold at home but I wasn't giving in, I was tired of all of it.
A few weeks ago she told me fine, I will just start seeing a professional masseuse. I said, "Then I will start seeing sex workers." She said that was cheating. I said "Fine, I won't but you will not get a massage from anyone else, that is also cheating.". She said I was being ridiculous and I said, "No, it's being touched in an intimate way by another, if I can't have that, neither can you, and I swear to fucking God if you do I will file for divorce that day."
The following weekend, she went to get her nails done, I know how long it takes for her to get her nails done. She came back almost an hour and half later than I expected. She didn't say anything just acted normal. I got on her credit card app on my phone and sure enough there was a $95 charge to the goddamn massage person in the same strip mall as the nail place.
I lost it, and when I did so did she. I think we both let out years of frustration on each other. True to my word though I called a divorce lawyer on Monday. The only part that upset me was my lawyer said based on these circumstances I couldn't list "Infidelity" as the reason for divorce and had to go with "irreconcilable differences."
Anyway she has been telling people we are divorcing because she got a massage. Since then I have had a number of family members/friends call me and say I'm an asshole. Some of them even when I tell them my real reasons, still think I'm an asshole and that my reasons aren't good enough. Personally, I think getting massage when told not to, is plenty of reasoning. So am I the asshole here?
Personal note: I reread this and I know it comes off angry. But I am angry, angry at myself for wasting so many years. But I'm also angry because this was just the ultimate fuck you, she just went and did it anyway and didn't even try to hide it. Literally went to the same place next to the nail salon and used her CC which I pay, like I wasn't going to see the charge.
Additional Information from OOP:
Large Scale Response to many commenters:
This thing has gotten like 2k plus comments in 12 hours, I can't even begin to address that.
Most of you are correct, this isn't about a massage, I could honestly care less about the massage. That was simply what I fixated on after I finally broke.
Now to those that like to ride the assumption train or, for some reason, just create your own narrative based on who knows what.
I did not just massage my wife to get sex. I did this for her 300 times a year nearly our entire relationship. I did it back when we used to have sex 10-15 times a month, back when foreplay was something I still got to experience, back when lingerie was common and not just a distant memory. The full massages just became the only way to get the chance of sex above ZERO. The small leg ones were never escalated by me and far more common.
Since most people bashing me decided to skim over or ignore the short vague list of all i tried over the years here's a more comprehensive account: Date nights, weekend vacations, love letters, long conversations where I laid out all my feelings (I'll give her credit, she never did promise to do better, just told me she understands where I'm coming from, guess I should have understood then that meant she didn't care), I suggested counseling 5 times. I even booked us once and ended up going to the first 2 sessions by myself, when she said she was too busy to go the 3rd I just cancelled and never went back.
Yes, the day to day routine stuff is pretty balanced, as far as housework, career, and I think we are both great parents. But our relationship was one sided, it took me a long time to see it so boldly and to stop accepting it. If she wants a snack, she doesn't get it, she asks me to, drink, same thing. If she wanted to go out with friends, sure babe no prob go ahead, I got the girl just worry about you. If I do, it's 2 hour prep for me to make sure nothing's gonna go wrong while I'm out. A couple years ago I saw a clip of a comedian talking about being out golfing when his wife wanted to watch a DVD, and everyone's laughing as he's describing the whole conversation. I just wanted to ball my eyes out, because that was my life. I just stopped trying to even go out, it wasn't worth the effort anymore.
Yeah we had other forms of Intimacy, we cuddled at bedtime to fall asleep. She never really liked kissing or hand holding so I wrote those off back when times were good. So I had cuddling and on the very rare occasion sex to look forward to. Now let's flip this over, besides the near daily rub downs, also pretty common for me to brush her hair, she likes that she'll ask for that. Painted toe nails a few times, back scratching pretty common. Oh usually draw her a bath after she works out, does that count as intimacy, or is that just more of only doing things to fuck her?
I guess I am the asshole, I'm the asshole to myself for putting up with this for so long. And I get it, you're all right, we both have unprocessed trauma from having our dreams dashed, but I didn't quit. I honestly didn't berate her emotionally because of this, I knew she was having a hard time, yeah I let my frustrations or disappointment show sometimes, but I didn't get angry. Not until now, not until I had that bad day, and she said "well, tomorrow will be better, can you rub on me." And the sick thing is I felt totally dismissed and still did it anyway. After, I was so angry I just decided I'm never rubbing on her again. And ive been angry ever since, even now typing this has put me in a full rage. No I really don't give a shit about the massage, it was just the final Fuck You of our marriage.
AITAH has no consensus bot, OOP received mixed reactions of NTAs and YTAs.
Relevant Comments
Taylor5: Question: What's your wife's reaction to you filing for divorce?

OOP: She has been rather pissed off too. Thinks I am being ridiculous and childish. Which the massage thing was I admit. But she has said my desire for sex is juvenile, that I'm not some teenager, and we have a life that I AM throwing away over nothing. That was all the initial reaction.
Now she's full go for divorce, but makes it sound like a competition, so I'm expecting plenty of bullshit.
My lawyer says outside of a 50/50 split she doesn't have much to fight for. We make almost the exact same amount in terms of annual salary. 50/50 is the default for custody and since I've found an apartment about 10 minutes BIKE RIDE away and still in the same school that's not going to be an issue.
I'm contemplating some concessions just to move the process, although she hasn't done anything or said anything yet. I'm just getting prepared if she does.

 
Update #1: April 29, 2024
Little update.
original post
While this is not official by any means at this point, I'll take it as a positive. STBX asked me to meet yesterday to hash out some details of the divorce, and it was actually pretty productive.
We agreed on a 50/50 custody arrangement. Basically week there week here. Becomes 2 weeks during summer break. We each keep our own retirements, splitting the savings 60-40 her favor. Each keep our primary vehicle.
I made a huge concession on the house, it was my idea. I want our child to grow up in that house. Ours was a 3 bedroom, with a finished basement and nice yard. I don't want her to live in a pair of 2 bedroom apartments. This is important to me. I'll be paying a "housing alimony" each month to offset some costs, since my rent and projected utilities etc are much lower than the mortgage/utilities/upkeep. We did agree on some stipulations that would end that.

1. If another adult should moves in (i.e. a boyfriend/new husband) my obligation ends immediately.
   
2. My obligation ends when our daughter moves out or turns 22, whichever comes first.
   
3. There's a bunch of different scenarios we talked about in terms of splitting the house if she wishes to sell it. I won't bore with all of that, but basically as long as I continue to make the alimony payment I'll get 40% at time of sale or a buyout.
   

I'm turning all this over to my lawyer this week, and he will write it up and send it to her lawyer. While she definitely had a "you are beneath me vibe", during our meeting, I'm happy this doesn't look like it will be an ugly divorce as I was very worried it would be. I assume our daughter is the motivating factor for her sudden amicable attitude.
Relevant Comments
OOP on if his daughter is actually his since he and his wife were not able to have any more children

OOP: We literally conceived within a few weeks of being married, we were going at it like rabbits back then, literally newlyweds spending every second together. I don't want to pick on you but this is the most annoying part of Reddit. I know I acted like an asshole about the massage, and I know it's not actually cheating, but there is no actual infidelity anywhere in any post or comment I've made. I don't understand why would you jump to that, and it's not just you several others have to, but I truly have no fears that she was ever unfaithful.

 
Update #2: May 1, 2024
Well that didn't last long.
Lawyer called first thing this morning. Wife changed mind, rejecting all the house stuff we talked about. Says she wants to sell and move into something smaller. She is only rejecting the house agreements, custody agreement is not being rejected
I told my lawyer fine, I'm done. Told him here's the offer from my side then.
50/50 custody, 50/50 split of house sale, I'll still go 60/40 on savings (I know some you say this is dumb/unfair, but I have my reasons and they all revolve around our daughter.)
I'm actually fine with this, not even upset that she wasted 4 hours of our time on Saturday. Just ready to be done, after my initial tirade I have really come into a good place, it's like I spent years carrying around a backpack of stones and I finally decided to put it down.
Personal Response to OnlyFans "models": Stop sending me invites and messages. I can jack off on my own just fine for free, I'm not going to pay you. Leave people the fuck alone.
Relevant Comments
Old_Hamster_4218: I don’t understand the 60/40 savings. If it revolves around your daughter, and you’re 50/50 on custody, you having the money is the same as your wife having it, unless she has more responsible spending practices or something.

OOP: Okay, I have paid all the bills our whole marriage. I don't mean my money, we both work, I mean I have been the person in charge of making sure things get paid. I also don't really spend a lot on myself month to month, sure I do some, but she is definitely more of a spender. Id rather give her some more buffer while she learns how to manage finances, because , yeah I think she's going to fuck up. Maybe I'm wrong but this woman hasn't thought about bills or budgets in years. And I don't mean to say she is irresponsible, she's not, she wasn't a crazy spender or anything, maybe I'm being irrationally accommodating.
Also really need to stress we aren't rich people, this isn't some gigantic amount of money we're debating here. In all honesty if she feels like she's winning and we divorce faster, I'll consider it money well spent.

 

DO NOT COMMENT IN LINKED POSTS OR MESSAGE OOPs – BoRU Rule #7

THIS IS A REPOST SUB - I AM NOT OOP

1. What drives you in life? What do you look for?

Living my life to the fullest extent motivates me. I can honestly say that I just love being alive. Not necessarily what I am doing specifically, but just the feeling of being alive. I am motivated to experience everything I want and to do anything I want. I look for opportunities to do just that. Sometimes I can be withdrawn, chill and very laid back, other times I can just be a busy body and do many things. I just look for opportunities I will enjoy, actively seeking life’s most enjoyable moments. Loud music is fun, creepy stories are fun, I think when it comes down to it that’s what motivates me the most in life, enjoyment. If I'm not enjoying what I'm doing, why do it? I wish I could see it deeper than that, but the reality is that’s just it. Classic case of philosophical hedonism I guess, happiness and enjoyment is the ultimate goal and an end in and of itself. I’m also pretty motivated to make money, not to hoard it really but to do fun things with it and also to give back to the parts of the world who need it the most. In my perfect world, I could do anything I want, share those experiences with the people closest to me, and give back to the parts of the world that need support. I will take care of my family, take care of myself, then the world hopefully. Everyone should have the freedom to live the life they truly want and your environment should not hold you back from that. I want to make sure no one is held back from their full potential, self included of course so that's a big motivator as well. Other people are also a big motivator for me, I want to be there for others and continue to be compassionate towards others. Ever since I was a kid, the older I got, the more and more responsible for other people’s emotions I got. I can be pretty forceful about advocating for people to trust themselves and go for the life they truly want. Making my own way in life and being independent is a huge motivator to me. As a kid, I was very free-wheeling and expressive. I pushed for the things I wanted and I’d go to great lengths to get what I wanted. I really didn’t like being pushed into things I didn’t want to do. I was really particular about my autonomy and I’ve always wanted more and more independence from my family and just everything ever since I was young. I believed my life was mine to control and mold to what I want so I didn’t want anyone trying to do that for me. As I got older, these feelings began to extend to others in the same way my feeling of responsibility for others emotions grew as well.

1. What do you hope to accomplish in your life?

I basically implied this in question 1, but I want to make an impact in my life. I want to be remembered for what I will do in my life and who I am. I want to influence people emotionally, positively. I want to motivate people to feel something greater, to become something greater. I want to conquer life and through my actions, change and move the world. I want to make people feel something powerfully that moves them to wake up and go towards their true desires in life. I want to have a lot of fun obviously, but I want to be the best at whatever I do. I could go many different directions in life, but to me they will all lead to the same thing; being the greatest. If I continue with athletics and keep playing basketball (been playing since I was 8) then everyday will be spent moving towards becoming the greatest hooper I possibly can. If my path ends up being a paramedic or even a baker, then by every ounce of power in me I will be the best damn baker you’ve ever laid your eyes on. I guess in this way, I want to be captivating, mesmerizing for what I am able to do- and even further than that, who I know I am. To me, this pursuit of greatness is not just some compensation for some type of inferiority complex. Very much the opposite. Ever since I was a child I just felt it in my blood that I was destined for great things. I knew I was amazing, or at least I truly felt I could be and that feeling as always excited me. Fulfilling that potential is arguably one of my biggest motivators (adding to question 1) in my life. I just want to be the greatest at whatever I decide to do with my life. There’s something about the significance and impact that being the greatest carries. The implications of it. You’re the strongest, the best, the most capable, you climb the mountaintop and get to look out over the edge. You saw the challenge and rose above it. That’s what I want to be remembered for, I want to beat life. Do something many people see as too difficult or intimidating or insurmountable and shatter the idea of what’s possible. I want to ascend to something greater I guess in that way.

1. What do you hope to avoid doing or being? What values are important to you?

When I say the best at anything, I really do mean everything. Best lover, best athlete, best at anything I put my mind to. I value my own competency/drive and I gotta be great in my life at everything I set myself to. I avoid wasting my life. I want my life to have meaning and purpose. I want my life to stand for something far greater than myself. I value being considerate to others, not bending to everyone’s whims because I am highly against that, but always taking others emotions and needs into account. Understanding others is a big thing for me. I avoid being selfish and I will do a lot for others (especially those closest to me) to make sure they are taken care of and have what they need. I will decrease my own needs as much as I can if it means everyone else will have what they need. I know I will always be okay and I can take care of myself, I’m not so sure about that when it comes to others sometimes. I avoid being very intrusive on others, I try to give others the space they need to operate comfortably and I guess that changes depending on who exactly I am interacting with. Reading that back, that really just goes back to understanding what people need and me being aware enough to give that to them. Unnecessary conflict or people acting an ass pisses me off. I don’t have much tolerance for that sort of thing. I don’t see any point in bottling up emotions or not making an important issue known when it needs to be made known. I see a lot of usefulness in conversation because I’d rather have everything laid out on the table than otherwise. If this pursuit causes conflict then fine, but I feel very limited in my communication if I can’t go back and forth without someone getting mad or overwhelmed. I avoid being a bad boyfriend or a bad son or a bad teammate or even a bad leader. I have always felt like a natural born leader. I always felt comfortable being the leader and I even looked for that a lot of the time. I felt comfortable with that responsibility to lead others, in reality I was just being myself. I always felt I was understanding enough to hear everyone out and strong enough to handle anything. I just don't want to fail the people around me and I especially don't want to fail myself.

1. What are your biggest fears (not including phobias)? Why?

I have doubts about myself. Doubts in my ability to live my life the way I want, doubts of possibly failing at what I want to achieve, and honestly the doubt itself is what scares me. I have very ambitious goals, that I know for sure, and to have goals like that you can't possibly be afraid to fail and really I just look at doubt as another natural response you just have to push through to live how you want to live. I know that I want to do everything I said earlier in my life. I know that I can do it. But doubt itself is scary to me. Will I myself be the reason I don’t do what I want to do? Will I hold myself back? Limits are scary to me because I’ve always felt like I had limitless ability and potential. And yet, my own possible doubt of not being able to use it to move the world is what scares me the most. Nothing else scares me more than the limitations I unknowingly or even knowingly place on myself. Am I not trying enough to do this? Am I not trying enough to be there for this person? While I’ve always known I felt born to do great things and born with this sense of innate confidence, I’ve also always known that the only thing that would ever have the power to separate me from my potential is myself, and that is the single most powerful thing I’ve ever understood to this day. There is so much power in truly wrapping your head around your own autonomy, and I love it. I just don't want to be held back or worse hold myself back from doing anything or being anything. Being rejected by the people closest to me also messes me up pretty bad. I go 0 or 100% in my life. I’m either all in on something or someone, or I’m not even trying at all. Not having that feeling reciprocated can definitely mess with my head, though I have gotten better.

1. How do you want others to see you? How do you see yourself?

I think throughout this post I’ve already touched on how I see myself, but let's go further. I’ve always seen myself as smart and curious. I love learning things and understanding how they work, it's just fun for me and I enjoy deepening my understanding of the world around me whether it be through experience or reading or observation. I’ve just always been curious about life. I can have issues with theory strictly for theory's sake, but otherwise I enjoy learning and I’m fairly inquisitive and open to new thoughts and experiences. I’ve been intellectually curious my whole life, but I’ve always pursued these interests with some kind of point or outcome in mind and never purely for its own sake. Hell, pure enjoyment and because its fun is a more important reason than theory for theory's sake. I learn many things to get ahead, to feel more capable and competent and to just know better. Once I get bored though, I just drop it. I’ve always had a very high stress tolerance and a “can-do” attitude. It's hard for me to see setbacks as some kind of personal failure or inadequacy. Shit takes time and it takes work, nothing wrong with that. I enjoy knowing I’m attractive and improving my appearance because I like pulling people’s attention to me and attracting people. I just find it fun and better than not doing it, I like the eyes on me and I enjoy taking care of myself. I’ve always felt magnetic in that way, people always find their way to me and I enjoy knowing that. I want to feel desired by people, needed. It makes me feel good to know I’m wanted, craved even lol. I want to control people’s attention in that way. Maybe that's another part of the reason why I want to be the best because I know it draws people to me. I know I am strong, and I want others to know they can trust me to be their rock. To trust me with their emotions and their best interest. I think a part of me really enjoys being needed, almost irreplaceable. In both my looks, and in my intentions and just in myself as a person. I want to be undeniable.

1. What makes you feel your best? What makes you feel your worst?

If I’m being honest, I always feel pretty good about myself. I was a very outgoing kid and always felt confident in myself even when I had no business thinking so. Only when I think too hard was when I messed up or felt my confidence slip and to be fair it’s probably for one ADHD related reason or another (awaiting evaluation on that lmao). My favorite word as a kid was awesome because that’s just how I saw myself. My confidence comes from my understanding that I believe I can take on any challenge. Whether it be intellectual, intrapersonal, interpersonal, logical, etc. I always believed I had no limits in my ability and I am only held back by my willingness to do what I need to do to rise above. I think letting people down makes me feel awful. Being bored sucks, that happens pretty often. I feel my best working out and using my body. I feel best listening to music and singing in the shower lmaoooo. I think I just feel the best expressing myself through my body, sports, sex, tattoos, etc. But definitely letting people down, not meeting someone’s needs, not being enough. Stuff like that can definitely get to me.

1. Describe how you experience each of: a) anger; b) shame; c) anxiety.

Anger is pretty natural for me. I’ve always had easy access to it, as a kid that was actually a bit of a problem. Of course, if no one demonized my anger, I probably would not have come around to being more in control of it until later on in my life. I never saw it as a bad thing, just an honest expression. I;ve never wanted to cause harm, anger is just easy for me to reach for. Anger motivates me, gets me moving to do things, makes me feel awake in some kind of way. Shame comes from when I let others down or fail to make them as happy as they could be and when I feel I let myself down. Letting people down makes me mad at myself, and there’s a bit of shame there because I feel I should be better and I expect more from myself. Anxiety is kind of annoying. It's the one I don't like the most because most of the time I see that feeling it is so unnecessary. It's like a bug that just won't stop flying around your ear, that's what anxiety feels like. Shame and anger are actually pretty motivating because they push me to be greater, anxiety just gets in the way and I hate that. I do look at overcoming situations that bring me anxiety as a form of overcoming a challenge and strengthening myself, so I always just look at it as another opportunity to grow.

1. Describe how you respond to each of: a) stress; b) unexpected change; c) conflict.

I deal with any stress by taking care of whatever is stressing me out. That just seems like the simplest way to remedy that. After that, I’ll handle the lingering feelings of stress and I'll listen to music, and do all the other fun shit I want to do. But in my brain, I can’t really just let myself get stressed out. I need to do something about it and get rid of that feeling. Otherwise I can’t even enjoy what I’m doing.

1. Describe your orientation to: a) authority; b) power. How do you respond to these?

I’ve always been critical of poor authority figures. I can’t work at a place where I feel the current leadership is lacking or not in the best interest of everyone. At that point I will either step in and just take the necessary control to right the ship, or I will leave the situation. Like I said, I have always felt comfortable with leadership, so naturally I’m pretty attuned to what good and bad leadership looks like. It's a pet peeve for me and I don't like following others so if I must do so, you better know what you’re doing or I need to take over. I don’t have to be in charge if current authority is great, no need to upset that balance, but if the situation calls for me to step up that's exactly what I’m going to do because I will be damned if I let some idiots drive me or us as a whole into the ground. Power is interesting because I feel we all have personal, innate power. There is no need to seek it if it exists in you already. That's how I have always felt about myself. The trick is learning how to harness power and use it to lift the world up. Personal power and influence over the world would be for its own sake for me, simply because I know and feel I can. But my orientation removed from that will always be to use power to empower others. Empower others and protect others who feel they don’t have that power. I don't really see any issue with someone trying to use power against me because I just see life as a battle of wills. You have your own power, and I have mine, let's see how that goes.

1. What is your overall outlook on life and humanity?

We could stand to be more open to understanding each other. We could also stand to not coddle each other and be real. I’m all for understanding, but not enabling. I believe we enable each other to do a lot of things we probably should not. I want people to be stronger, able to handle more. I also think people could definitely be a bit more balanced in their reasoning on things and try to see multiple angles. At the same time, I think people should be more decisive. I generally have a pretty positive, optimistic/realist view on life and people. I take people as what they are, but I also see what people could be and their potential. I think humanity needs a lot of work, but there’s always hope for people, all people. In general I’m a pretty glass half full or simply “it’s just a glass of water” kind of person. I’m either optimistic, or I just call it how it is. I believe I can get through any challenge. The hardest thing I’ll ever have to deal with is losing my family. My mom told me one day in HS that at some point I’ll be without her and I have to be strong enough to deal with that and keep moving forward. I took that to heart, and now every emotional hardship and challenge in my life is an opportunity to become stronger for myself and stronger for those around me. I need to be.

1. Discuss an event that has impacted your life significantly; more importantly, how you responded to it.

I lost all my friends by staying in a toxic relationship. The person I was with just tried her hardest to make me out to be the scum of the earth and I got so tired of defending myself against my friends and her that I just embraced the villain role. I did not have the awareness to just end the relationship, I could not see that until I got pushed to the limit. But I embraced being the villain she made me out to be. I pushed them all away in an effort to preserve the friendship my old friends and her had created over the course of that relationship. I still did not want to be selfish and end it because I wasn't happy, so I instead decided to just burn bridges and bring them closer together so that my exit from that situation was less… I dont even know, selfish? Eventually I did come clean to my friends, but it didn't matter because she did something so foul it pushed me to my limit and I ended things altogether. Other things happened afterwards that made me revert back to being public enemy number 1, and by this point the damage was done. Later on, I was cordial with my old friends, but they kept their distance and honestly, I felt better as time went on that they did that. They should have. Having no closure, and not really getting to say my full side of the story sucked, but this was years ago and I got over that. We haven't talked since really but I still don't feel comfortable not speaking to my old best friend on his birthday. Just feels wrong not to do so. That situation and my ex specifically took a toll on them from what I learned towards the end and that was part of why I tried to be as honest with them as possible in the end. It didn’t matter. The whole situation taught me a few things. For one it taught me to draw stronger boundaries between others and myself. And two, it taught me to prioritize my own needs so that I can comfortably take care of others' needs without being so blinded by the fear of being selfish or punished. It gave me a lot of perspective on myself. My mom always told me that you can’t always be the hero and sometimes you just have to let things be what they will. That situation gave me perspective on what it feels like to be the “villain”. A part of me wished it was under different circumstances of course, but a part of me liked it. It took a bit of time at that moment in my life, but I embraced it. It allowed me to see myself in many different colors. Now I just have a lot more perspective on being in that role, hero or villain. I have a lot more perspective on the “shadow” side of life I guess. A lot of me is completely fine with either side so long as I stand on what I believe is right and good and what’s best for both myself and everyone around me. I think the part that sunk in the most was taking care of my own needs. Another thing my mom would tell me is that you can’t take care of anyone unless you take care of yourself. I take that very seriously now. I can never go against how I feel because if I do, I may be putting myself and everyone I care about in a bad situation. So I always trust my gut, and always strike a balance between listening to my heart, and listening to my head. That situation is hard to explain and hard to kind of talk about, so i'm not sure if yall will understand what i'm saying here lol.

1. Comment on your relationship with trust.

I’m attentive to people. I read people constantly so I’m always getting an impression on someone based on how they speak, how they move, how they say what they’re saying, what they’re saying, etc. My openness and trust with a person is heavily dependent on my observation and reading of them. I normally get my reads right and don’t remember the last time I was wrong about someone. I’m just attentive to these things and otherwise I’m pretty open. Once I put my trust in someone though, I really expect it to be reciprocated and I can get mad when it’s not. I don’t like wishy washy shit or flip floppy people. Pick a side to be on. Mine or everyone else’s. It’s not that hard. The people that are with me are my people and I give them 1000% of me. Those who are not with me get nothing and if I’m betrayed the most minimal thing I will do is cut you off cold turkey and you’ll never speak to me again. Though, I am petty asf so it just depends on the context.

1. List some of the traits you: a) like; b) dislike most about yourself.

As a kid I was the witty, class clown type. I loved the feeling of making the class laugh and I kinda enjoyed being a thorn in my teacher's side. Maliciously if I didn’t like them, playfully if I did. My understanding and use of humor and adaptiveness definitely characterize me pretty well still. I’ve kinda always been a bit more concerned with making sure other people were good before I was, like I said I have that whole problem of feeling selfish about things I probably shouldn't feel that way for. I’ve always liked that trait and not liked it at the same time. I really do limit my own needs for the sake of others. There are quite a few times where I would much rather do something for myself or my own thing but I just cannot help but feel responsible for how others feel and try to satisfy that. Of course, if someone asks me to do something I just flat out do not agree with that's one thing, but it's hard for me to stand on just saying “no i don't wanna i wanna do my shit” just because that's how I feel. I feel selfish for that, and so I make sure other people are good so I can then do whatever I want after. Idk, it's weird. I think with strangers it's one thing, I have a much easier time saying no to strangers. But the people closest to me? Or even someone I want to be closer to? It just feels like I am securing my place in their heart and in their mind. I want to stay there. I give them what they need, what they want, and in return, they give me all of them. I’m ambivalent on that aspect of myself mostly because I don’t fully understand it.

1. What do you see or notice in others that most people don't?

I would say their potential and what they could become. I can see who people are, as they are, and I can also see what they can be pretty well. This would require me to get to know them more of course, but I can always see what a person gives to the world pretty well. I wouldn't say this is something specific to me, I just like to pay attention to who people are and why they do the things they do. What motivates them, and what moves them.

1. If a stranger insults you, how do you respond/feel? What if they compliment you?

If it's an insult I’ll probably just laugh or walk away without really giving that too much thought. Compliments are always welcome of course, those can stick with me depending on who it's from and why.

1. What's something you are: a) thankful you have; b) wish you could have? Why?

I don’t wish I could have anything. I’m alive, I’m young, I have ample opportunity to live the life I truly want. I’m grateful for all of that and so much more in my life. My family, my girlfriend, everyone and everything, I appreciate every moment and I don’t take it for granted. I just live in the moment and enjoy life If I am being really honest. I have plenty of ambition and desires to accomplish, but those aren't wishes, those are things I know I am going to do. Goals. Outcomes. I know I’ll do those things.
That's it for the post. Let me know what you guys think and thanks for reading ;)

1. What drives you in life? What do you look for?

Living my life to the fullest extent motivates me. I can honestly say that I just love being alive. Not necessarily what I am doing specifically, but just the feeling of being alive. I am motivated to experience everything I want and to do anything I want. I look for opportunities to do just that. Sometimes I can be withdrawn, chill and very laid back, other times I can just be a busy body and do many things. I just look for opportunities I will enjoy, actively seeking life’s most enjoyable moments. Loud music is fun, creepy stories are fun, I think when it comes down to it that’s what motivates me the most in life, enjoyment. If I'm not enjoying what I'm doing, why do it? I wish I could see it deeper than that, but the reality is that’s just it. Classic case of philosophical hedonism I guess, happiness and enjoyment is the ultimate goal and an end in and of itself. I’m also pretty motivated to make money, not to hoard it really but to do fun things with it and also to give back to the parts of the world who need it the most. In my perfect world, I could do anything I want, share those experiences with the people closest to me, and give back to the parts of the world that need support. I will take care of my family, take care of myself, then the world hopefully. Everyone should have the freedom to live the life they truly want and your environment should not hold you back from that. I want to make sure no one is held back from their full potential, self included of course so that's a big motivator as well. Other people are also a big motivator for me, I want to be there for others and continue to be compassionate towards others. Ever since I was a kid, the older I got, the more and more responsible for other people’s emotions I got. I can be pretty forceful about advocating for people to trust themselves and go for the life they truly want. Making my own way in life and being independent is a huge motivator to me. As a kid, I was very free-wheeling and expressive. I pushed for the things I wanted and I’d go to great lengths to get what I wanted. I really didn’t like being pushed into things I didn’t want to do. I was really particular about my autonomy and I’ve always wanted more and more independence from my family and just everything ever since I was young. I believed my life was mine to control and mold to what I want so I didn’t want anyone trying to do that for me. As I got older, these feelings began to extend to others in the same way my feeling of responsibility for others emotions grew as well.

1. What do you hope to accomplish in your life?

I basically implied this in question 1, but I want to make an impact in my life. I want to be remembered for what I will do in my life and who I am. I want to influence people emotionally, positively. I want to motivate people to feel something greater, to become something greater. I want to conquer life and through my actions, change and move the world. I want to make people feel something powerfully that moves them to wake up and go towards their true desires in life. I want to have a lot of fun obviously, but I want to be the best at whatever I do. I could go many different directions in life, but to me they will all lead to the same thing; being the greatest. If I continue with athletics and keep playing basketball (been playing since I was 8) then everyday will be spent moving towards becoming the greatest hooper I possibly can. If my path ends up being a paramedic or even a baker, then by every ounce of power in me I will be the best damn baker you’ve ever laid your eyes on. I guess in this way, I want to be captivating, mesmerizing for what I am able to do- and even further than that, who I know I am. To me, this pursuit of greatness is not just some compensation for some type of inferiority complex. Very much the opposite. Ever since I was a child I just felt it in my blood that I was destined for great things. I knew I was amazing, or at least I truly felt I could be and that feeling as always excited me. Fulfilling that potential is arguably one of my biggest motivators (adding to question 1) in my life. I just want to be the greatest at whatever I decide to do with my life. There’s something about the significance and impact that being the greatest carries. The implications of it. You’re the strongest, the best, the most capable, you climb the mountaintop and get to look out over the edge. You saw the challenge and rose above it. That’s what I want to be remembered for, I want to beat life. Do something many people see as too difficult or intimidating or insurmountable and shatter the idea of what’s possible. I want to ascend to something greater I guess in that way.

1. What do you hope to avoid doing or being? What values are important to you?

When I say the best at anything, I really do mean everything. Best lover, best athlete, best at anything I put my mind to. I value my own competency/drive and I gotta be great in my life at everything I set myself to. I avoid wasting my life. I want my life to have meaning and purpose. I want my life to stand for something far greater than myself. I value being considerate to others, not bending to everyone’s whims because I am highly against that, but always taking others emotions and needs into account. Understanding others is a big thing for me. I avoid being selfish and I will do a lot for others (especially those closest to me) to make sure they are taken care of and have what they need. I will decrease my own needs as much as I can if it means everyone else will have what they need. I know I will always be okay and I can take care of myself, I’m not so sure about that when it comes to others sometimes. I avoid being very intrusive on others, I try to give others the space they need to operate comfortably and I guess that changes depending on who exactly I am interacting with. Reading that back, that really just goes back to understanding what people need and me being aware enough to give that to them. Unnecessary conflict or people acting an ass pisses me off. I don’t have much tolerance for that sort of thing. I don’t see any point in bottling up emotions or not making an important issue known when it needs to be made known. I see a lot of usefulness in conversation because I’d rather have everything laid out on the table than otherwise. If this pursuit causes conflict then fine, but I feel very limited in my communication if I can’t go back and forth without someone getting mad or overwhelmed. I avoid being a bad boyfriend or a bad son or a bad teammate or even a bad leader. I have always felt like a natural born leader. I always felt comfortable being the leader and I even looked for that a lot of the time. I felt comfortable with that responsibility to lead others, in reality I was just being myself. I always felt I was understanding enough to hear everyone out and strong enough to handle anything. I just don't want to fail the people around me and I especially don't want to fail myself.

1. What are your biggest fears (not including phobias)? Why?

I have doubts about myself. Doubts in my ability to live my life the way I want, doubts of possibly failing at what I want to achieve, and honestly the doubt itself is what scares me. I have very ambitious goals, that I know for sure, and to have goals like that you can't possibly be afraid to fail and really I just look at doubt as another natural response you just have to push through to live how you want to live. I know that I want to do everything I said earlier in my life. I know that I can do it. But doubt itself is scary to me. Will I myself be the reason I don’t do what I want to do? Will I hold myself back? Limits are scary to me because I’ve always felt like I had limitless ability and potential. And yet, my own possible doubt of not being able to use it to move the world is what scares me the most. Nothing else scares me more than the limitations I unknowingly or even knowingly place on myself. Am I not trying enough to do this? Am I not trying enough to be there for this person? While I’ve always known I felt born to do great things and born with this sense of innate confidence, I’ve also always known that the only thing that would ever have the power to separate me from my potential is myself, and that is the single most powerful thing I’ve ever understood to this day. There is so much power in truly wrapping your head around your own autonomy, and I love it. I just don't want to be held back or worse hold myself back from doing anything or being anything. Being rejected by the people closest to me also messes me up pretty bad. I go 0 or 100% in my life. I’m either all in on something or someone, or I’m not even trying at all. Not having that feeling reciprocated can definitely mess with my head, though I have gotten better.

1. How do you want others to see you? How do you see yourself?

I think throughout this post I’ve already touched on how I see myself, but let's go further. I’ve always seen myself as smart and curious. I love learning things and understanding how they work, it's just fun for me and I enjoy deepening my understanding of the world around me whether it be through experience or reading or observation. I’ve just always been curious about life. I can have issues with theory strictly for theory's sake, but otherwise I enjoy learning and I’m fairly inquisitive and open to new thoughts and experiences. I’ve been intellectually curious my whole life, but I’ve always pursued these interests with some kind of point or outcome in mind and never purely for its own sake. Hell, pure enjoyment and because its fun is a more important reason than theory for theory's sake. I learn many things to get ahead, to feel more capable and competent and to just know better. Once I get bored though, I just drop it. I’ve always had a very high stress tolerance and a “can-do” attitude. It's hard for me to see setbacks as some kind of personal failure or inadequacy. Shit takes time and it takes work, nothing wrong with that. I enjoy knowing I’m attractive and improving my appearance because I like pulling people’s attention to me and attracting people. I just find it fun and better than not doing it, I like the eyes on me and I enjoy taking care of myself. I’ve always felt magnetic in that way, people always find their way to me and I enjoy knowing that. I want to feel desired by people, needed. It makes me feel good to know I’m wanted, craved even lol. I want to control people’s attention in that way. Maybe that's another part of the reason why I want to be the best because I know it draws people to me. I know I am strong, and I want others to know they can trust me to be their rock. To trust me with their emotions and their best interest. I think a part of me really enjoys being needed, almost irreplaceable. In both my looks, and in my intentions and just in myself as a person. I want to be undeniable.

1. What makes you feel your best? What makes you feel your worst?

If I’m being honest, I always feel pretty good about myself. I was a very outgoing kid and always felt confident in myself even when I had no business thinking so. Only when I think too hard was when I messed up or felt my confidence slip and to be fair it’s probably for one ADHD related reason or another (awaiting evaluation on that lmao). My favorite word as a kid was awesome because that’s just how I saw myself. My confidence comes from my understanding that I believe I can take on any challenge. Whether it be intellectual, intrapersonal, interpersonal, logical, etc. I always believed I had no limits in my ability and I am only held back by my willingness to do what I need to do to rise above. I think letting people down makes me feel awful. Being bored sucks, that happens pretty often. I feel my best working out and using my body. I feel best listening to music and singing in the shower lmaoooo. I think I just feel the best expressing myself through my body, sports, sex, tattoos, etc. But definitely letting people down, not meeting someone’s needs, not being enough. Stuff like that can definitely get to me.

1. Describe how you experience each of: a) anger; b) shame; c) anxiety.

Anger is pretty natural for me. I’ve always had easy access to it, as a kid that was actually a bit of a problem. Of course, if no one demonized my anger, I probably would not have come around to being more in control of it until later on in my life. I never saw it as a bad thing, just an honest expression. I;ve never wanted to cause harm, anger is just easy for me to reach for. Anger motivates me, gets me moving to do things, makes me feel awake in some kind of way. Shame comes from when I let others down or fail to make them as happy as they could be and when I feel I let myself down. Letting people down makes me mad at myself, and there’s a bit of shame there because I feel I should be better and I expect more from myself. Anxiety is kind of annoying. It's the one I don't like the most because most of the time I see that feeling it is so unnecessary. It's like a bug that just won't stop flying around your ear, that's what anxiety feels like. Shame and anger are actually pretty motivating because they push me to be greater, anxiety just gets in the way and I hate that. I do look at overcoming situations that bring me anxiety as a form of overcoming a challenge and strengthening myself, so I always just look at it as another opportunity to grow.

1. Describe how you respond to each of: a) stress; b) unexpected change; c) conflict.

I deal with any stress by taking care of whatever is stressing me out. That just seems like the simplest way to remedy that. After that, I’ll handle the lingering feelings of stress and I'll listen to music, and do all the other fun shit I want to do. But in my brain, I can’t really just let myself get stressed out. I need to do something about it and get rid of that feeling. Otherwise I can’t even enjoy what I’m doing.

1. Describe your orientation to: a) authority; b) power. How do you respond to these?

I’ve always been critical of poor authority figures. I can’t work at a place where I feel the current leadership is lacking or not in the best interest of everyone. At that point I will either step in and just take the necessary control to right the ship, or I will leave the situation. Like I said, I have always felt comfortable with leadership, so naturally I’m pretty attuned to what good and bad leadership looks like. It's a pet peeve for me and I don't like following others so if I must do so, you better know what you’re doing or I need to take over. I don’t have to be in charge if current authority is great, no need to upset that balance, but if the situation calls for me to step up that's exactly what I’m going to do because I will be damned if I let some idiots drive me or us as a whole into the ground. Power is interesting because I feel we all have personal, innate power. There is no need to seek it if it exists in you already. That's how I have always felt about myself. The trick is learning how to harness power and use it to lift the world up. Personal power and influence over the world would be for its own sake for me, simply because I know and feel I can. But my orientation removed from that will always be to use power to empower others. Empower others and protect others who feel they don’t have that power. I don't really see any issue with someone trying to use power against me because I just see life as a battle of wills. You have your own power, and I have mine, let's see how that goes.

1. What is your overall outlook on life and humanity?

We could stand to be more open to understanding each other. We could also stand to not coddle each other and be real. I’m all for understanding, but not enabling. I believe we enable each other to do a lot of things we probably should not. I want people to be stronger, able to handle more. I also think people could definitely be a bit more balanced in their reasoning on things and try to see multiple angles. At the same time, I think people should be more decisive. I generally have a pretty positive, optimistic/realist view on life and people. I take people as what they are, but I also see what people could be and their potential. I think humanity needs a lot of work, but there’s always hope for people, all people. In general I’m a pretty glass half full or simply “it’s just a glass of water” kind of person. I’m either optimistic, or I just call it how it is. I believe I can get through any challenge. The hardest thing I’ll ever have to deal with is losing my family. My mom told me one day in HS that at some point I’ll be without her and I have to be strong enough to deal with that and keep moving forward. I took that to heart, and now every emotional hardship and challenge in my life is an opportunity to become stronger for myself and stronger for those around me. I need to be.

1. Discuss an event that has impacted your life significantly; more importantly, how you responded to it.

I lost all my friends by staying in a toxic relationship. The person I was with just tried her hardest to make me out to be the scum of the earth and I got so tired of defending myself against my friends and her that I just embraced the villain role. I did not have the awareness to just end the relationship, I could not see that until I got pushed to the limit. But I embraced being the villain she made me out to be. I pushed them all away in an effort to preserve the friendship my old friends and her had created over the course of that relationship. I still did not want to be selfish and end it because I wasn't happy, so I instead decided to just burn bridges and bring them closer together so that my exit from that situation was less… I dont even know, selfish? Eventually I did come clean to my friends, but it didn't matter because she did something so foul it pushed me to my limit and I ended things altogether. Other things happened afterwards that made me revert back to being public enemy number 1, and by this point the damage was done. Later on, I was cordial with my old friends, but they kept their distance and honestly, I felt better as time went on that they did that. They should have. Having no closure, and not really getting to say my full side of the story sucked, but this was years ago and I got over that. We haven't talked since really but I still don't feel comfortable not speaking to my old best friend on his birthday. Just feels wrong not to do so. That situation and my ex specifically took a toll on them from what I learned towards the end and that was part of why I tried to be as honest with them as possible in the end. It didn’t matter. The whole situation taught me a few things. For one it taught me to draw stronger boundaries between others and myself. And two, it taught me to prioritize my own needs so that I can comfortably take care of others' needs without being so blinded by the fear of being selfish or punished. It gave me a lot of perspective on myself. My mom always told me that you can’t always be the hero and sometimes you just have to let things be what they will. That situation gave me perspective on what it feels like to be the “villain”. A part of me wished it was under different circumstances of course, but a part of me liked it. It took a bit of time at that moment in my life, but I embraced it. It allowed me to see myself in many different colors. Now I just have a lot more perspective on being in that role, hero or villain. I have a lot more perspective on the “shadow” side of life I guess. A lot of me is completely fine with either side so long as I stand on what I believe is right and good and what’s best for both myself and everyone around me. I think the part that sunk in the most was taking care of my own needs. Another thing my mom would tell me is that you can’t take care of anyone unless you take care of yourself. I take that very seriously now. I can never go against how I feel because if I do, I may be putting myself and everyone I care about in a bad situation. So I always trust my gut, and always strike a balance between listening to my heart, and listening to my head. That situation is hard to explain and hard to kind of talk about, so i'm not sure if yall will understand what i'm saying here lol.

1. Comment on your relationship with trust.

I’m attentive to people. I read people constantly so I’m always getting an impression on someone based on how they speak, how they move, how they say what they’re saying, what they’re saying, etc. My openness and trust with a person is heavily dependent on my observation and reading of them. I normally get my reads right and don’t remember the last time I was wrong about someone. I’m just attentive to these things and otherwise I’m pretty open. Once I put my trust in someone though, I really expect it to be reciprocated and I can get mad when it’s not. I don’t like wishy washy shit or flip floppy people. Pick a side to be on. Mine or everyone else’s. It’s not that hard. The people that are with me are my people and I give them 1000% of me. Those who are not with me get nothing and if I’m betrayed the most minimal thing I will do is cut you off cold turkey and you’ll never speak to me again. Though, I am petty asf so it just depends on the context.

1. List some of the traits you: a) like; b) dislike most about yourself.

As a kid I was the witty, class clown type. I loved the feeling of making the class laugh and I kinda enjoyed being a thorn in my teacher's side. Maliciously if I didn’t like them, playfully if I did. My understanding and use of humor and adaptiveness definitely characterize me pretty well still. I’ve kinda always been a bit more concerned with making sure other people were good before I was, like I said I have that whole problem of feeling selfish about things I probably shouldn't feel that way for. I’ve always liked that trait and not liked it at the same time. I really do limit my own needs for the sake of others. There are quite a few times where I would much rather do something for myself or my own thing but I just cannot help but feel responsible for how others feel and try to satisfy that. Of course, if someone asks me to do something I just flat out do not agree with that's one thing, but it's hard for me to stand on just saying “no i don't wanna i wanna do my shit” just because that's how I feel. I feel selfish for that, and so I make sure other people are good so I can then do whatever I want after. Idk, it's weird. I think with strangers it's one thing, I have a much easier time saying no to strangers. But the people closest to me? Or even someone I want to be closer to? It just feels like I am securing my place in their heart and in their mind. I want to stay there. I give them what they need, what they want, and in return, they give me all of them. I’m ambivalent on that aspect of myself mostly because I don’t fully understand it.

1. What do you see or notice in others that most people don't?

I would say their potential and what they could become. I can see who people are, as they are, and I can also see what they can be pretty well. This would require me to get to know them more of course, but I can always see what a person gives to the world pretty well. I wouldn't say this is something specific to me, I just like to pay attention to who people are and why they do the things they do. What motivates them, and what moves them.

1. If a stranger insults you, how do you respond/feel? What if they compliment you?

If it's an insult I’ll probably just laugh or walk away without really giving that too much thought. Compliments are always welcome of course, those can stick with me depending on who it's from and why.

1. What's something you are: a) thankful you have; b) wish you could have? Why?

I don’t wish I could have anything. I’m alive, I’m young, I have ample opportunity to live the life I truly want. I’m grateful for all of that and so much more in my life. My family, my girlfriend, everyone and everything, I appreciate every moment and I don’t take it for granted. I just live in the moment and enjoy life If I am being really honest. I have plenty of ambition and desires to accomplish, but those aren't wishes, those are things I know I am going to do. Goals. Outcomes. I know I’ll do those things.
That's it for the post. Let me know what you guys think and thanks for reading ;)

Today we celebrate a certain revolution, and I of course remember that my 4th-great-grandfather, familiarly inclined to distrusting small existentialisms of the elite of a certain city, led the counter-revolution in his small place. Waking up as I am fated to do until I am no longer more, and under the weight of such tradition, I go to the library to meet a friend, who, having read too much Adorno, has been driven to insanity, or rather, that very common mix of elitism and small existentialisms of the middle class.
We sit, and he complains about the middle class; dressing like a technocrat, have you ever faced the fact, the duty, that we are the next intellectuals? Well, many people know to read, very well, yes, I know, ah, the middle class… yes, being an intellectual is very important, certainly, and no, don't say that about the Kazakh girl's boyfriend, I answer him, dressing my normal clothes from a very normal day, and then, thinking about the legacy of my 4th-great-grandfather, and knowing that as his family I am also familiarly inclined to distrusting small existentialisms of the elite, here I am so I can prove myself not worthy of such existentialisms and therefore of being called an intellectual.
I do have names, and surnames (5 of them, in total!), and I was born in a big city in Brazil. My sister used to describe our childhood address as “a building with cars and trees and buildings”, which is a rather good description of much of the city. For a while I wanted to join the seminary but after having to face the fact that this was an inadequate career choice considering I didn’t believe in God and had always found masses to be awfully boring (though fascinating at times – the priest at my childhood church used to go on long rants about things, of which there are many) often turning my back to see the watch, and so I chose the next best thing: I am studying sociology, which involves, in many ways, taking a vow of poverty. I also work at a small online newspaper so I am well informed on sub celebrities and local occurrences such as babies heroically rescued by policemen after choking on the thing babies eat. And yes, I write poetry sometimes.
I am fascinated fairly often by everything, or many things, at least so you won’t be bored. These last days I ended up reading a lot of things about Egypt after reading about Ottoman chief eunuchs being exiled to Cairo after their tenure. In general, I really enjoy the humanities. I follow politics keenly – in fact, there is some chance I might have some thoughts on your country’s politics – and I’d say I am on the centre-left – pro-choice, in favour of a robust welfare state, LGBTQ+ rights, affirmative action. If you know about Brazilian politics, I voted for Marina and Haddad in 2018 (the voting age here is 16), and Lula last year.
As you can imagine, I also really enjoy reading and writing. Besides poetry, I have often thought about writing a novel, but this seems like too much work – and it seems that it would be arrogant of me to write a novel having lived this little, though it wouldn't be uncommon. I really enjoy learning about other languages and cultures and I know a bit of French, German, Spanish, and Russian, besides English and Portuguese. I’d really like to learn Arabic and/or Mandarin. I am really into genealogy, and I know quite a bit about it. I often cry while watching dumb movies (I cried during Minions!) or listening to beautiful music; my music taste has been described as “fairly gay” and in movies as “slightly gay”.
I guess I am pretty introverted, polite, and timid (well, I am on here after all). I am affectionate and I can be really passionate as well. And I am fairly funny, or rather, I have made a few people laugh over the years. I asked a close friend to describe myself, and that is what he said:

I think you’re very communicative. Shrewd, funny, a good companion. Kind of withdrawn but not necessarily shy. You avoid conflict and unnecessary arguments, but love to participate in good conversations. I think you’re very kind too, besides being polite.

I never know how to end any piece of writing; the author I am studying usually ends it in a brusque manner. So please, shoot me a message.

Hello everyone, I am trying to write my statement of purpose for SCAD but I am having some trouble making it personal and not sounding bad. Any help would be appreciated! I’ve attached it below,

Although I have not experienced much of what life has to offer, my years since my high school graduation have come with many challenges. I graduated from Bonny Eagle High School in Standish, Maine with high honors in 2019. Coming from a town with a population of just 8,000, I knew my goals for an impressive creative career would need to be achieved elsewhere. I had always dreamed of moving to a bigger city and making a name for myself amongst other creatives. My interests were broad, and I spent much of high school in the theater, art studio, and choir room. When I wasn’t focusing on my studies, my time was spent volunteering for my local church band, in dance class, and working part-time. Pursuing a college degree was always a given in my eyes. The Savannah College of Art and Design was my first choice university. The school’s commitment to preparing students for creative careers as well as job placement after graduation appealed to me greatly. One of my regrets after high school was not applying to SCAD; to be perfectly candid, assistance from my family to fund my degree was never an option, and I was afraid that I would not be able to afford my dream school without assistance. I instead opted to attend Bridgewater State University in Massachusetts. After achieving straight A’s in my first semester at Bridgewater, I became pregnant unexpectedly. I felt very disappointed in myself; I felt as if I had thrown out everything I had been working so hard for. However, to create a better life for myself and my future child I decided to move in with my dad in a new state. I transferred to Southern Maine Community College online and worked two jobs for the first five months of my pregnancy. I wanted to complete my degree no matter how long it may have taken. In March 2020, I was working in the travel and restaurant industries before getting laid off due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In late April 2020, my son was born three months premature via emergency c-section and was admitted to the NICU at Maine Medical Center weighing only a pound. I had been admitted into the emergency room three days prior diagnosed with severe preeclampsia and at great risk of stroke. My baby was not healthy, his heart and lungs were underdeveloped and overworked. Due to the seriousness of the pandemic and the fragility of the NICU, I was not allowed visitors aside from my boyfriend after our baby was born. We were young and felt very isolated at such an important moment in our lives. On the afternoon of my 19th birthday, our son was scheduled for open heart surgery. The moment that sticks out to me the most from that day is not the one where the doctors told me he would not survive, nor is it the feeling of my entire world crashing down around me as I held him for the first and last time. Instead, it is my conversation with the surgeon that strikes a particular chord in me. The tears in his eyes and the genuine sorrow and passion he had for his work touched me in a way I cannot describe. I do not tell this story because I am looking for pity. This time in my life shaped who I am today, and my grief is no longer something that weighs me down. Instead, I have learned how to carry it with me and use my life experience to better myself. In the four years since then, I have worked in several different industries while completing my associate's degree. Full-time work while in school is a challenge, and unfortunately my performance in some semesters reflects the difficulties I faced as I found a healthy balance for myself. Currently, I work as the sole manager for an award-winning nail salon in Portland, Maine. I find joy in working with all kinds of people and providing quality services. When I am not running between our two locations, I spend my time competing in music competitions, participating in film festivals, and working on my portfolio. SCAD is a place where I see a bright future for myself. I am drawn to the creative programs and new opportunities. I have and will work diligently to achieve my goal of a fulfilling career in the arts. I hope to learn much more and create lasting connections during my education. Thank you very much for your time and your consideration. I look forward to your response. 

TW, just to be safe, I'll be describing it pretty graphically.)
Hi, so this all happened when I was 16, he was 19, and we'd been dating for about 3 months. (Note: I'm from Germany, and the age of consent there is 14, so it was legal.) We'd both been virgins when we met, to the point where we hadn't even kissed other people. By the time the incident happened, we'd slept together a few times, but hadn't done oral or other stuff yet. He only got his sexual education from porn, or at least that's what I think happened after all the stuff he's told me. He always said that my pleasure is what got him off, but everything he did to me was always so uncomfortable and sometimes even painful because he was really rough at times. I was very unsure about myself at the time, and he was kind of a crybaby and would get upset randomly, so I always faked liking it. I think the fact that I was 16 at the time also played a role in that, obviously, since I had no experience with intimacy, and had only self-educated about consent. I never had any good example of a healthy male-female relationship, so I was pretty helpless, and didn't really have clear boundaries that I could enforce in the moment.
The incident went the following way: We were on my bed, and nobody else was home. He was supposed to leave and take the bus home in about 45 mins. He was kind of holding me and rubbing up against me (?) and telling me he was really horny and wanted to have sex. I told him I didn't want to have sex with him right now. After I said that, he told me: "Then give me head." And like I said, I had never done anything like that before, ever. I didn't know what to say, and felt so uncomfortable. I don't know why I didn't just say no. I don't think he would've forced me to do it had I said "no" directly. But I feel like my mind just went on autopilot. I got up from the bed, and went to close the curtains on my bedroom window. I was awkwardly laughing, and calling him names like 'jerk', and 'cunt' (I don't know why, but I just did. I usually never cuss, but I was kind of 'jokingly' calling him those names because I was so uncomfortable), while he just laid on the bed and smiled at me and waited. Then, because I didn't know how to do it, he told me to sit on my knees in front of the bed, and he sat on the edge. I don't really remember how it all even went down, because the next memory I have of the incident is having his cock in my mouth, and him kind of pushing my head up and down, not super hard, but I definitely gagged. The taste of the precum was also digusting, and made me gag. Then, he told me to take off my shirt. I said no, and he just said "Ok" and then, when he close to cumming, he said "I wanna cum in your mouth", and then just did. I didn't know how it would taste, and I didn't think it would be so, so bad. I literally almost threw up after he did it. I had to spit it all out, and then drank 1l of water, and had to eat an apple, and the taste still stuck to my tongue until after he was gone. I had tears in my eyes the whole time after, I couldn't control it. I was so close to crying the whole time, even when I was walking him to the bus stop. He told me that I 'wouldn't have to do it again, if the taste was so bad', and then, because I was so close to crying, he said he would cry too, because it was so hard for him to see me cry, so I tried not to cry.
Now, it's been about 2 months since I broke up with him. I'm still trying to process the whole relationship, and other stuff he did, like (I was sexually assualted at a party when I was 14 and told me) when he questioned if my SA even happened because I was unconcious during it, or when he made a rape joke about me (I jokingly said something like 'no, you'll never touch me again', and he said 'well, then I have to rape you' and laughed. That was also when we'd been dating for about 3 months.). Now that I'm older, and around the age he was when he met me, I'm starting to reconsider the whole thing, and feel taken advantage of by him, and like my first times were stolen. I would like some advice on the incident I described, because I feel like it's in the grey areas of consent, but somehow I still can't stop thinking about it. It's on my mind all the time, and is really weighing on me. Thank you in advance for your takes on the whole thing :)
TLDR; My ex boyfriend had me give him head, after I said no to intimacy and was acting really awkwardly because I was so uncomfortable when he was 19, and I was 16, when we'd been dating for about three months.

My BF and i have been dating for 4 years. He usually gets me really cute gifts and I am always grateful when he gets me things. When he gets me clothes he always makes me feel bad if I don't choose to wear whatever he got me all the time. I honestly think it's because of my ADHD but in all honesty, sometimes I just forget I have certain items of clothes. He got me a dress over the summer, it was cute, I really liked it. It was more of a casual dress it was looser and flowy. I wore it a few different times and said I liked it, because I did. But if I'm being completely honest, I saw it more as a leisure dress, not really a dress to go to like an event or for an occasion.
We were having dinner with my parents for my birthday and I was going to put on a different dress. He made a comment about how he wished I wore the dress he got me. It wasn't a big deal, I thought it was cute that he wanted me to wear what he got me so I changed dresses. He got weird and started saying things like "oh you don't have to wear it if you don't like it.", "Its fine if you don't want to wear it, I just thought it was cute but its fine." after I had already put it on. I assured him that I did like it and reminded him about all the other times I wore the dress. It was one of those times where someone says "oh its fine." but they are still upset about it. I wore the dress he got me and a purse he got me and just tried to move on, because it wasn't a big deal.
I would not say I am a fashionista by any means... But I like what I like. Some people may see my style as lazy or boring. I don't go out a whole bunch so when I'm just living my day to day life... I like leggings or jeans and a t-shirt. In the summer I just like a tank and shorts. I would rather be comfy if I'm just in the house or running errands. But when I do go out, I am particular. I like form fitting clothes, I like pink, I like animal print, its what I like and what I'm comfortable in. I don't really care too much about how others feel about the way I dress but I do wish I had more of a style and maybe put a little more thought into my outfits.
My boyfriend has told me he feels like I could dress a little cuter. He wasn't like shitting on what I wear or anything but I told him that I felt like I didn't really have much of a style. He definitely has a style, I don't really know how to describe it. He wears a lot of retro-looking T's, he likes going to the thrift store or vintage places. Its definitely not like clean cut, suites or blazers at all (just to give an idea). Hes a guy and it looks cool for him to wear what he wears.
Anyways, we were going on a trip. He suggested we go to the thrift store and pick out some outfits. I agreed. Clothes shopping at stores is something I hate. I get over stimulated, I buy things I maybe don't love just because I'm stressed and not thinking correctly.... its a whole thing.. hence why I don't have much of a style. I have always hated clothes shopping. But we went and he was picking out a bunch of stuff for me to try on. I was getting overwhelmed and was feeling pressured.
So I got the things that I guess I liked the most out of what he picked out for me... but after I we got home I realized that all of the stuff was basically just clothes he would wear if he was a girl. not really stuff id wear or ever pick out for myself. But I thought maybe dressing out of my comfort zone would be a good thing since I did say I wanted to have more of a style. I gave the clothes a try but I didn't feel pretty, I felt like I was dressing like a boy. I do still wear some of the stuff we got because I did genuinely like a few things. But after he noticed I was wearing my regular clothes he made the comment about me not wearing any of the stuff we had got. I just said that I felt like some of the stuff was a little too casual and didn't make me feel very confident. He got weird again and seemed offended that I didn't love everything we had picked out together.
For Christmas he got me a very cute skirt. I really did love it. I wore it for Christmas eve, I wore it when we went out one night, and I wore it to a family event. I was going to put on a jean skirt for this family event, I didn't totally like the jean skirt look. Since I had wore the skirt he got me a few different times close together I was just trying to switch up my look, and like I said--- sometimes when I'm getting ready and feeling overwhelmed or unhappy with how I look in the current outfit, I sometimes I forget I have certain items of clothing. He suggested I wear the skirt he got me. I said "oh you're right! this looks much cuter." plus it matched more of what he was wearing.
He had gotten me a hair clip, it was absolutely beautiful and I truly loved it. we were going to a friends party, we woke up late and I was rushing like hell to get ready. I was thinking about a million different things, trying to get myself together and my hair was looking insane. my mind was just on looking presentable. He said, "why don't you wear the clip I got you." I went and grabbed the clip and put it in my hair. He said "I feel like I always have to remind you to wear the things I get you." I apologized, I didn't want him to think I didn't like the things he gets me. I was getting dressed and put on a pair of pants I recently got that I really loved. He said, why don't you wear that skirt I got you. I didn't want to wear the skirt, I wore the skirt many times and its more of a wintefall skirt not a spring skirt. Its a thick material. I wanted to wear the pants. I could tell he got salty about it. But I reminded him about all the other times I wore it and that he knows I like it.
Yesterday he got me a shirt. He texted me saying he wanted to give me something. I went over and unwrapped the shirt. It was from a vintage clothing store. It looked like it was from the 70's. But... it was something I would never wear... i think that maybe it was a child shirt because the arm holes were tiny and the hood on it was so small. I'm a smaller person but it was a little tight on me. It was colors that I have never worn... it was bright green, with burnt orange sleeves and white accents with a white tie at the neck and was a thick scratchy polyester material... it gave me like retro school sports team vibes? idk if that makes sense. Like a cheerleader in the 70's would wear it.. idk. It looked like something he would wear and more his style.
But I was extremely nice. I put it on, said it was cute. Talked about what bottoms i thought would look cute with it. I did mention it was a little tight. Said it reminded me of a vintage jersey he has. said I liked it, gave him a kiss and said thank you more than once. I was raised to be polite and never say you don't like a gift someone got you because its rude. I also know that this whole him buying me clothes thing and feeling like I don't like them is an on going thing with us it seems. I wanted him to know I was grateful. I made a big effort to make him feel good about the gift he got me, even though I didn't love it.
All of the sudden he gets weird like out of nowhere and lets out a big sigh, I ask him whats wrong and he says "I thought you would be more stoked about it but it's fine." I said "Why do you say that? I do like it." he said, "I thought it was cute but it's fine." I truly have no idea what I did for him to say that. Mind you, I was still wearing the shirt. It seemed strange and out of nowhere. It was like he was creating the narrative of me hating the gift and even after I adamantly said how I liked it and what I was going to wear with it, he still said that. It made me feel bad honestly but also made me think about it.. he mentioned again how I don't wear the stuff he gets me (which is not true.) and just kept moping around saying how excited he was to give me the shirt. I didn't say one negative thing about the shirt except that the sleeves were a little tight. But it made me feel like he purposely got me a shirt that he knew was not my style whatsoever and was expecting me to say something. and when i didn't, he just kept going and randomly saying that it seemed like I didn't like it...
I don't get it but i feel semi manipulated. Idk if that's the right word but after writing all this stuff out it all just seems like strange and sort of controlling behavior idk... am i being ungrateful and reading too far into this or is it a little weird that he has this idea that i hate and don't wear the stuff he gets me. am I wrong to think he purposely got me a shirt I would have never picked out just for him to mope around and feel sorry for himself despite me saying I liked the shirt?
TLDR: my BF often buys me clothes. If I don’t wear them often enough he makes it seem like I don’t like his gifts. Yesterday he gifted me a shirt that is not my style. I said thank you but he still moped around saying I didn’t like it. (I’m bad at TLDRs idk lol)

Hello everybody. This is going to be a very long post. I just need somewhere to write my feelings and if anyone reads all of this, let me know if its me or my feelings are valid. I wanted to know if someone else felt a similar way that I do.
I'll first start off by this, I am the first born son and have 2 siblings (1 of each). This is important because most first children are the test dummy. Growing up, my parents were always super strict with me; couldn't ever have sleep overs, never able to go on field trips, never able to do anything basically besides school. We were also very poor, as most first-gen Americans are. I'm sure a lot of first-gen Americans feel this way, so I know a lot of people can relate to that. Me and my parents were never close; they really don't know anything about me. It's very obvious when a child wasn't planned or wanted because even when I was little I could tell by the actions and demeanor of my parents, especially my dad. I was for sure the sole cause of everything failing simply by being born. I feel like this caused something inside my parents (more so my dad) to have super high expectations of me. They've always been so biter about my success and never celebrate with me. Maybe its just me but I find it odd. I started making six figures when I was 21 via various investments, side hustles, and work. They always pushed me away or told me I was lying whenever I would talk about it, even though I tried helping them so they could have a steady monthly income without having to do anything, I would be doing everything for them. A few years later, I graduated with my bachelors in engineering and even then it wasn't really a big deal. It was more of an "ok thats cool" and then went on about the day. I'm about to graduate with my masters and landed a six figure job where, with everything combined, I'll be making well over 200k per year. Neither of my parents are college graduates so this is was a pretty big deal for me, to make the family proud as the first engineer and still no reaction, nothing. Everything is just so bitter towards me and I never have any support and I find it so strange. It's always seems like a competition between me versus them. I always feel so belittled when I have success or its never enough. I always seemed to get used as a bragging right. "Oh yeah my kid is an engineer", "yeah he's multilingual", etc but they couldn't even tell anyone my favorite color, favorite food, anything about me. I'm simply an output machine to make them look better for their reputation. The only time I'm brought up in a conversation is when I need to make them look good, besides that, I am nothing to them. Simply a trophy son.
My parents finally started making decent money, and with the 2016 election, its like something sparked in them. Politics is now basically all they talk about. I always avoided bringing friends over when I became an adult because its totally embarrassing to bring people over and hear how Trump is God. It doesn't make sense, how can you defend a total stranger, criminal, and terrible person yet can't even defend your own son? My dad and I were never close growing up, having basically 0 memories with him, but this just made us even further apart. If someone mentions they dont like Trump, he'll hate them forever and won't speak to them. If someone bashes Trump, he'll sit there and defend till death. Its mind blowing to me. Regardless of what your views are on the former president, this is not normal behavior and is absolutely not acceptable. I haven't brought friends over in years because last time I did, the first question he asked everyone is if they're republican or democrat and them would scold them if they said democrat. For reference, my dad does not have a job and lives on unemployment, so to scold someone because of political views is insane to me, on top of refusing why to listen to what we believe in and why. That was it for me. I couldn't take it anymore so I stopped inviting people the few times I saw my parents a year, if I saw them. My cousin who is around the same age as me got this boyfriend who is super country and my dad loves him. He will never stop talking about him, never stop bragging about him, and always wants him over. It always hurts to see this because I never got any sort of affection like that growing up and even now yet this stranger means everything to my dad because of his political views and his way of life.
My parents got more and more infected with some of the negative aspects of living in the south. Racism is truly alive here. I always knew it was because I myself am brown however, when I started openly dating a black woman, that's when my entire view point changed. She was shunned just for being black, not even given a chance for her character or personality. It doesn't make sense to me because coming countries where the majority are brown people, why is this happening? I love this girl with everything and she's made me the happiest I've ever been. Everything about her is stunning, her mentality, her personality , her way of life, her way of thinking, her aurora, just everything is so beautiful. My sister notices these things as well, we're around 7 years apart and she's at the age where she can put pieces together and think for herself. My sister and I are close, we side with each other on almost everything. She's going through a similar experience herself. Its really hard bringing my girlfriend around when I know deep down my parents do not approve of her. I already have to deal with the stress of never being enough and being neglected all throughout my life, on top of bills, school, work, social life, its just too much. I want and will do what makes me happy, I'm not harming anybody nor do I do any sort of drugs, so I don't see what the problem is. At the end of the day, I'm going to do what makes me happy and it can either be accepted or rejected but the decision will always be mine.
My girlfriend did get pregnant but unfortunately we lost the baby. Even though she was never here in my arms, you just never feel the same again. Its something that can't be described with words, only a feeling. It hurts everyday knowing I should be playing with my daughter right now. It was a really hard time for me and my girlfriend but we were there for each other. My parents on the other hand, did not know of anything. I keep everything personal away from my friends and family, I only write on a notebook that has all my life secrets and feelings that will probably get read when I die and nobody knows I have this. My parents called me randomly, scolding me, "you need to be a fucking man", "we're not stupid" , "why are you hiding the baby from us?" we know whats going on"when they don't know whats going on. I had to sit there and take blame after blame for keeping secrets. My parents never knew she was pregnant, I never told them, I never told anybody actually. It was something only her and I knew. I had to sit on this phone and get yelled at over and over for "keeping secrets". It was really hard keeping together because the whole time, my baby girl is in the sky and I miss her beyond imagination. If I was getting scolded this bad at something they are just making assumptions about, then imagine how bad it would be if it was actually true. I still didn't tell them because that is none of their business, I dont even know how they found out she was pregnant, that is still a mystery to me but I do know that this fueled my feelings more for keeping everything a secret.
I never talked about my feelings growing up and I know that plays a huge part of who I am today. Its a curse. I wasn't allowed to cry, I wasn't allowed to express emotions, I just had to "be a man". I know a lot of other first-gens also know this pain. Now that we're adults, we're confused on what to do with these emotions. I know I'm emotionally gone. I'm not stupid. Everything is so bottles help and I just can't force myself to talk to anybody because I'm afraid it will be a similar story to talking to a family member where you tell one person and magically everybody knows. This plays a huge part in my relationship and friendships because if I talk about anything personal, I just get flashbacks to being a kid and that will never leave me head so I just keep everything to myself.
I tried killing myself a few years ago but it failed. I had the perfect plan or so I thought it was. I took about 50 pills, drove to a river and just waited till right before I fell asleep and jump in the water as the other pills did its thing. I did wake up half in the water, but my stomach was ruthless. It hurt so bad I'll never forget the pain. As a kid (around 12 or 13) I also had another failed attempt. I have basically a book for a suicide letter with everything inside but for some reason, I just keep surviving. Like I said before, my dad and I were never close. I always felt like the punching bag for my siblings growing up. When I finally got a car, I was basically never home and then the punching bag shifted to my sister and now she is feeling the effects. My dad is always negative about everything, and I mean everything. It's hard consistently hearing that my relationship will fail, my wife will leave me one day, if you won't die for Trump, you're a terrible person, if you're brown, you're a terrible person, you're never enough, the list goes on and on and on. I really don't like going over because I consider myself a very happy person, I have a great friend group, great roommate, great job, and overall I'm just very thankful for what I've grown into since I moved out. I just wanted to know if anybody else felt this way or had similar stories. This was a long post and I'm sorry, but thank you for everything. Stay strong everybody

I am not The OOP, OOP is u/greedprincess
My parents won’t attend my wedding
Originally posted to raisedbynarcissists
TRIGGER WARNING: emotional abuse and manipulation, controlling behavior, classism, verbal abuse, xenophobia
BoRU 1
BoRU 2
Original Post Jan 16, 2024
My parents won't attend my wedding, and here's why:
SHORT STORY: At 24(f), I find myself in a heartbreaking situation – my parents won't be at my wedding. The reason? I refused to invite their friends, (I’ll call them the Scotts,) who made my life a living hell during the year I lived in their guest house. From false accusations to disrespecting my fiancé, things reached a breaking point. Fast forward to wedding planning, and the Scotts became a point of contention. When I stood firm on not inviting them, it led to a family fallout. Despite my attempts to mend things, my parents are boycotting the wedding.
LONG STORY: In 2021, fresh out of college, I moved to a new state for a job. Facing high rent, the Scotts, family friends of my parents, offered me their guest house for a mere $300 a month. Little did I know, this seemingly sweet deal would lead to a year of turmoil.
The Scotts, long-time friends and business partners of my parents, had three kids. As soon as I settled in, the Scott’s became excessively involved in my personal life, particularly my relationship. The situation took a dark turn as they fabricated scenarios to my parents, accusing me of promiscuity, rarely being home, and even planning to secretly move in with my boyfriend. Their disdain for my boyfriend was palpable – treating him with passive-aggression, condescension, and even making derogatory comments about him being adopted.
The interference escalated with "family meetings" where they labeled me as a poor influence on their teenage daughter, criticizing my boyfriend (whom they had met only three times). And I have to add, my bf and I don’t drink or smoke and both have careers - my bf is a perfectly good man and was always respectful to them despite their poor treatment. The "dad" of the Scott family went to the extent of sharing his marriage problems and lack of a sex life, blurring the boundaries of landlord-tenant/inappropriate relationships.
The breaking point came when the fridge in the guest house broke, and they insisted I foot the bill for a $900 replacement. Their influence over my parents was significant, as my parents rarely had my back and sided with the Scotts, constantly belittling my boyfriend without reason. By the end of 2022, I decided to move out with some girlfriends of mine, leaving without saying goodbye to avoid further confrontation.
Fast forward to the summer of 2023, my boyfriend and I were living together in a new state, and he proposed. To my surprise, when he asked my parents for their blessings, they were supportive and enthusiastic. My parents were even flown out to witness our engagement.
As we delved into wedding planning in the fall of 2023, my fiancé's parents generously offered to finance the wedding. Strangely, my mother declined involvement in the planning, claiming she hated it. Despite repeated invitations from myself and my future mother-in-law, she insisted we handle everything on our own, a departure from the typical involvement of the mother of the bride. My MIL did fly my mom out to NY for wedding dress shopping which was fun, but my mother insisted on the trip that this was all she wanted to do.
Winter 2023 brought a text from my dad, urging me to invite the Scotts. I respectfully declined, citing the distress it would cause me on our special day. This refusal triggered a nuclear war within the family. My parents, adamant about the Scotts' inclusion, declared they wouldn't attend the wedding. My dad accused me of starting my happy life by destroying his, and my mother uninvited me to Christmas.
In attempts to salvage the situation, I apologized and tried to explain my decision. However, my parents were unreceptive, hurling insults and baseless accusations claiming my side of the family has been “cancelled”. My mother then flipped the scripted and threatened to expose details on social media of my disrespect to the family if I didn’t show up for Christmas.
Despite exchanging Christmas and birthday greetings via text I’ve not spoken to them about the situation, the pain of their absence and the harsh words lingers as I approach my wedding day. I’m confused, I’m guilty, I’m in pain. The fallout, all because I refused to invite the Scotts.
OOP Added an edit to the original post
Thank you u/FrenchKissyToast for letting me know about it
EDIT: we are having a destination wedding and the festivities will begin 3 days prior to the wedding. So if caved in and invited the Scotts, I would have to endure up to 4 days of them. I don’t want to walk around the resort and turn around and have to see them and instantly get into a bad mood. Also, I am afraid if my parents decide to show up without the Scott’s that they will cause drama. ;(
RELEVANT COMMENTS
Useful-Commission-76

“Making derogatory comments about him being adopted” “criticizing my boyfriend” “belittling my boyfriend” It seems like a perfectly reasonable decision for the boyfriend and his parents (who are the ones financing the wedding) to decline to invite these Scott people. I don’t think the bride or her parents have a choice in this matter.

OOP

My future in laws don’t want the Scott’s there. But they would be willing to bite the bullet for me because they feel terrible about my parents not attending. They’re such good people, but there’s no way in hell I’m going to let that happen, especially since they are doing so much for me out of the kindest of their hearts.
However, this actually came up in the argument with my parents and my dad literally said “I don’t have to ask your fiance or his mother for permission to invite who I want to the wedding of my daughter.” My parents say the Scott’s did everything out of protection. It makes me so angry.

~
OOP on what her fiance thinks of the situation

My fiancé has been incredibly supportive. Most of all he just feels terrible for me and feels that I have been put in a lose-lose situation by my parents. Either I invite the Scott’s and be absolutely miserable on our wedding, OR I don’t invite them and my own parents opt to not attend. He also doesn’t want the Scott’s to attend, but he would be willing to bite the bullet if I was desperate for my parents to come. However like many comments below, I don’t want to start my life with an ultimatum from my parents. If I cave in now, who knows what they will do in the future. I am blessed to be marrying someone who is patient, caring, and supportive.

~
On why OOP thinks the parents want the Scotts there

The Scotts invest money into my dad’s small business and they split ownership 50/50. In the initial text from my parents, My dad said that he has been losing sleep for months thinking about how he was going to tell the Scott’s they’re not invited to my wedding. I think my dad is afraid that if he doesn’t invite them, the Scotts will get pissed and pull out. This is speculation, but if this is the case, then some people are right and this is like a blackmail thing. But I don’t want to feel guilty! Why do I have to invite people who give me a visceral reaction of anxiety and stress just because my dad is afraid to tell them no?

Update Jan 27, 2024
Context from my original post: At 24(f), I find myself in a heartbreaking situation – my parents won't be at my wedding. The reason? I refused to invite their friends.
Update: I woke up this morning to a bunch of texts from my mother. She demanded that i end my engagement, cancel the wedding, quit my job, and move back to their home.
She started saying things like “I know you’re unhappy. It’s okay, you tried. Now it’s time to come home. You have some maturing you need to do.” This irks me so much.
My parents literally gave their blessings for my marriage 6 months ago. Now they want me to change my entire life because they’re mad they didn’t get their way.
I responded and said this is my life and if they don’t want to respect my decisions, that’s on them. But I am in utter shock. I am financially independent of my family…I have a great job, loving partner. How do Nparents come up with this shit?
Update 2 March 16, 2024
UPDATE PART 2: My parents won't attend my wedding
Please read my(24F) first two posts for context, I'm linking them in the comments.
Long story: Three months have passed since my parents declined attending my wedding. Initially, I found peace in acceptance, looking forward to celebrating with those who would be present and knowing my parents wouldn't be there to ruin it. However, a text from my younger brother(19M) shattered that peace, revealing that our parents threatened to kick him out of the house and abandon him financially if he attends my wedding. This utterly crushed me, I am so close with my brothers and I love them DEARLY.
I have three brothers aged, 19, 22, and 27. While my older brother lives independently, my two younger siblings still live with our parents. Despite my parents decision to not come to the wedding, I told my brothers how badly I want them to attend, assuring them of my support. After their shared support, I booked their travel, optimistic about their participation.
I was naive to believe our parents would accept this decision. Their subsequent outburst targeted my brothers, leveraging financial threats to dissuade them from attending, claiming they are betraying the family by supporting me. I offered to financially assist my brothers if they still want to attend knowing they’d get kicked out, but I realize the difficulty of abandoning familiarity.
In response to this outburst, my brothers called me & proposed an intervention, aiming to address broader familial issues, aka the bigger picture of my parents being abusive.
I tried my best to explain this was a BAD idea…I pleaded. Despite my reservations, I supported them via phone call, I felt I was bound by sibling loyalty.
Yesterday's call confirmed my fears. Amidst vile accusations, I endured personal attacks, ranging from insults against my fiancé to baseless critiques of our life choices. My father's tirade, marked by verbal abuse, culminated in a cruel dismissal of my feelings.
Here are a few notes I took during the 2 hour “intervention:

1. My fiancé is not an intellectual because he likes to snowboard and doesn’t know how to have intellectual conversations.

​

1. My fiancé doesn’t have royal or noble blood and therefore cannot have intelligent children.

​

1. It was rude for my fiancé to not bring flowers or wine when he flew from another state for the day to ask for my hand in marriage.

​

1. My decision to change my job and move to a new state with my fiancé is a manipulation tactic.

​

1. My dad said calling people names and insults is the right thing to do when you’re mad.

​

1. My dad said by my decision to change my career path is stupid and I am cutting him out of his life.

​

1. Thinks my fiancé’s job as a salesman makes him a loser.

​

1. My parents are mad I never offered to invite my uncle that I haven’t seen in 13 years who lives in russia. (literal WTF moment for me).

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1. My dad says my relationship is wrong, and he’s not happy about it. Says it would be smart to break up.

​

1. My dad says he regrets not punching my fiancé in the face when he asked for his blessings and says it will haunt him for the rest of his life that he didn’t punch him. Says the only reason he gave his blessings was to not hurt my feelings.

​

1. Says my fiancé’s parents are mean for not responding to their texts.

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1. Called my fiancé’s mom a bitch.

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1. Said everyone at my engagement party is unintellectual and a redneck, and that they were shocked at the crowd I’ve decided to live around.

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1. The last minute of the call consisted of my dad screaming at the top of his lungs that I am stupid, an idiot, dumb, and a bitch. (I started hysterically crying at this point, I felt like a little girl again).

​

1. He called me a liar when I explained all the horrible things his friends did to me and why I didn't want to invite them to the wedding. He even called me a liar when I explained that his friend(70m) would try to talk about his sex life with me. :(

​

1. Crying I explained to my dad: “I just wish you cared about my feelings too because I am also really hurt and just want you to understand my perspective.” He said…”Why the fuck should I care about your feelings? You don’t respect me, my friends, or my values. Fuck your feelings you stupid bitch.” I ended the call right there.

After the call my brothers said they will still be attending my wedding because this has become an issue of standing up to my fathers unacceptable behavior.
Despite my brothers' attempts at defense, we were OUTMATCHED by our father's narcissism.
Enduring the call was agonizing, yet crucial for my siblings to witness his true nature.
Gaslit and invalidated, I felt FEEL so dehumanized. I never thought I would someday block my parents.
Today marks day 1 of going no contact.
TLDR: My parents threatened to kick my youngest brother(19M) out of the house if he attends my wedding. My brothers (19,22,&27) decided to host an intervention that blew up in all of our faces as we were no match for my father's narcissism. Now I've blocked my parents and the fate of my brothers attending my wedding is unknown.

NEW UPDATE

FINAL UPDATE: My parents won’t attend my wedding (I GOT MARRIED!) Apr 30, 2024
I got married on Friday, a day filled with joy, yet marked by the absence of my parents and two of my brothers. I made the decision to cut off contact with my parents last month, a choice that has since been affirmed, as you'll soon understand...
Despite the absence of my two younger brothers, my older brother stood by me, walking me down the aisle. This unexpected turn of events brought us closer than ever, a silver lining among all the drama and heartbreak.
My wedding day was pure magic—absolutely no drama or stress. It was truly the best day of my life and I have never felt so much love for my husband!!! My husband literally makes all my anxiety disappear! Of course, there were fleeting moments of vulnerability, tears shed in private to my husband as emotions overwhelmed me. Yet, despite the ache of my brothers' absence and lapses of guilt over my parents, the week was nothing short of perfection. I am truly blessed!!!
The day after the ceremony, over breakfast with my husband and older brother, I learned that my parents had been incessantly trying to reach out to my brother. My bro and husband shielded this information from me to not upset me during the week. However, my curiosity got the better of me, and I insisted on asking my brother to see what my parents said to him.
What I read shook me to the core.
My brother texted, “She will never forgive you for this and our entire family will never be the same.”
Her response: “Forgive us? She betrayed the family! She has gone completely insane. This sinister family has completely changed her values and they have been grooming her for 3 years. She is making a huge mistake by marrying. Glad you guys are so close again.” (*sinister family being my in laws)
My mother's venomous words confirmed what I had been grappling with: their belief in their distorted reality. The guilt I had been carrying evaporated in an instant. I realized that my overwhelming happiness with my husband would never be enough for them. I refuse to be held hostage by their misery any longer. You cannot change someone who just wants to be fucking miserable for the rest of their lives.
Here’s where things become laughable…I blocked The Scott’s wife on Instagram so she wouldn’t see my wedding photos. Mr. Scott in response sent a giant text accusing me of being abusive to his wife and children, despite not having seen or spoken to them in over a year. He then said that he will no longer support me and if I get a divorce, he won’t be there for me. I promptly blocked him, refusing to entertain such a stupid message. (PS I thought he was blocked already)
I am excited to start this new chapter in my life and I am thankful for the support and courage this Reddit community has given me. Here's to a future free from the toxic grip of my past!!!
RELEVANT COMMENTS
bwq6666

Is there some cultural element to this that we're unaware of? Because this situation you're describing with this 3rd family is weird.

OOP

I’m American, my parents are Russian immigrants, and the wife of the Scott’s is also Russian.

THIS IS A REPOST SUB - I AM NOT THE OOP
DO NOT CONTACT THE OOP's OR COMMENT ON LINKED POSTS, REMEMBER - RULE 7

This is a long read. TL;DR is that Drake is a creep with a clear pattern of behavior towards minors, and I brought receipts if you want to know more.
Please share this with anyone you want. You can repost this, make a TikTok, YouTube video, news article, whatever you want with it. I do not need credit, I do not care. This post will serve as an archive that people can refer back to.
This thread is partly based on this thread from 2022
Let me just start off by saying that I'm a certified Drake hater. I've thought the guy was a creep ever since the Millie Bobby Brown video and I'll proudly say with my chest FUCK DRAKE - but I'll still try to remain as objective as possible here, you know my bias now though.
THE 17 YEAR OLD AT SHOW
Drake is performing at a show in Ogden, Denver where he calls a girl up on stage. I really encourage you to watch this yourself, but since I know the majority of you won't watch it, I've described it for you below.
Video starts with her on stage, he asks her name, where she is from, asks the crowd to welcome her to the stage and tells her she looks great. He then asks her to give him two seconds because "I gotta be ready for you". He wipes off his sweat with a towel and proceeds to take her hand, put it on his shoulder, his hand on her hip/back and they slowdance for a few seconds. He spins her around and stop her with her back facing him. This is when it starts to get.. really weird.
Drake says "I told you I like your hair, right, what is it, like herbal essence or something?" while he's caressing her shoulder and smelling her hair. He says something I can't hear properly, puts the mic down and exposes her upper back and neck by pulling her shirt collar down. The crowd goes wild. He then starts kissing her shoulder and neck, putting her arms around her and fondle her breast. The girl on stage looks.. uncomfortable. A few seconds later he picks up the mic again and says "you can't have me carried away again before I get in trouble - how old are you?" She responds "17". The crowd has a mixed reaction - Drake says something that is hard to make out, because of the crowd but when it's clear he says "I can't go to jail yet, man - 17? Why do you look like that? You thick - look at all this!"
It's hard to make out exactly what he says afterwards because of the poor quality (2011 zoomed video at a concert, it's bad..), but he says something about it bringing them (the 17 year old and Drake) to a close and follows it up with "I got one question for you (...) I just want to know if (something about women in Colorado), I should just take one opportunity to take one home?" The girl nods "As a Colorado woman you'd enjoy that?" "Well, listen 17, I had fun - I don't know if I should feel guilty or not, but I had fun. I liked the way your breasts felt against my chest. I just want to thank you." He then puts the mic down again, grabs her hand and kisses it. You might think that was a little over the top, but he then immediately follows it up by putting his hand on her chin and kissing both of her cheeks, her forehead and then on HER FUCKING LIPS. I think he asks her to walk off stage, it's hard to make out, but then he says "It's okay. I'm only 23, I can do shit like that. It's all good, you know what I'm saying" and the video ends.
Addition: I know this girl has said she was not offended, violated, whatever you want to call it, but that's not the point. And I do not mean to sound like a complete dick, but it's not about her - it's about Drake and proving his pattern of behavior over many instances. If you stopped here because she denied it, you completely missed the point.
MILLIE BOBBY BROWN
Now this video was what really made me do a double take on Drake. Now, there's one very important fact to establish here and that is that Millie Bobby Brown at the time of this interview (18. September 2018) is 14 (Born 19. February 2004). I'll quickly transcribe the interview here:
Interviewer: What about your relationship with Drake, tell me about your friendship, how did this all come about?
Millie Bobby Brown: I love him. I met him in Australia and he's honestly so fantastic and a great friend and a great role model. You know we text - we just texted each other the other day and he was like "I miss you so much" and I was like "I miss you more". He's coming to Atlanta, so I'm definitely gonna go and see him and I'm so excited.
Interviewer 2: You and Drake? That's awesome. That's awesome..
Interviewer: What advice does he give you? What does he say?
MMB: About boys he helps me, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah he's great. He's wonderful, I love him.
Interviewer: What's his advice with boys?
MMB: Ehm, you know.. That stays in the text messages.
I'm sure it's obvious what is wrong here and I don't need to spell it out for any of you, but I do have one thing to add. If Drake is giving advice about boys and telling her "I miss you so much" they must have talked for a while. It's not something you say after knowing a person for a week. We are talking months at least. There's 7 months between her birthday and the interview - did Drake already start talking to her when she was 13? It would make sense that Drake was in Australia during their summer (Dec-Feb) for festivals/concerts/vacation. It's probably possible to figure out through social media posts, but I'm not digging that deep.
Millie has only commented on this once which was a few days later in a story on Instagram: https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2018/09/210592/millie-bobby-brown-defends-friendship-with-drake
I don't want or mean to infantilize her, but she was 14. She would have no chance of knowing if Drake actually was grooming her. There's not a chance that she could understand the dynamic at play and why it's wrong at that age.
Drake also defended their friendship on the song Another Late Night when he raps:

Weirdos in my comments talkin' 'bout some Millie Bobby, look
Bring them jokes up to the gang, we get to really flockin'

Ironically enough that very same song is also connected to the next person
BILLIE EILISH
The year after the Millie Bobby Brown controversy Drake gets caught texting a minor again and this time it's Billie Eilish. She does a yearly interview with Vanity Fair, and in the 2019 version she's asked who's her most famous contact in her phone. That's when she reveals she's been texting with Drake and that he's so very nice to her. Billie is at the time of the interview (released 25. November 2019) 17 (born 18. December 2001).
Billie did defend Drake and their texting in an interview with Vogue ~3 months later:

“The internet is such a stupid-ass mess right now,” says Eilish, who quit Twitter in 2018. “Everybody’s so sensitive. A grown man can’t be a fan of an artist? There are so many people that the internet should be more worried about. Like, you’re really going to say that Drake is creepy because he’s a fan of mine, and then you’re going to go vote for Trump? What the fuck is that shit?”

On the song Another Late Night where Drake mentions Millie Bobby Brown, Lil Yachty is featured (one of Drake's gho.. co-writers) and he raps the line:

I let her go, she fine as hell but baby wasn't stylish (Yeah)
She had big tits like Billie Eilish but she couldn't sing (Drip)

Now - I know this is not Drake, I just thought it was a 'funny' coincidence that these two women are connected through their shared experiences with Drake and this song. On another note some might say that Drake should have asked Yachty to omit this line if he really was a friend of Billie Eilish since she has been quite vocal about sexualization of herself and women in general.
BELLA HARRIS
This one is pretty fucking bad in my opinion. Bella Harris is the daughter of Jimmy Jam who's a record producer, songwriter etc. and has been very successful. Through him she's been in and around the entertainment/music business her whole life and met Drake that way.
There's an archive of photos posted here that contains the old IG posts she had with Drake. The first one was on May 5th, 2016 - Bella Harris is born 20. April, 2000. She had just turned 16 at the time. Objectively I think they are defendable since they are all music related - Rihanna concert, Summer Sixteen Tour (ironic name..) and the American Music Awards, but then two years later they reportedly start dating and that makes it really difficult to believe, especially with the last archived photo of them in 2018. Also the same photo that is referenced in this article talking about Drake renting an entire restaurant for an intimate dinner between them. Note that E! have confirmed it and are not backing down on their claim despite Harris denying it on Instagram.
Her father liked this post on Instagram about the whole situation. It's not particular to the restaurant or previous potential dating it's more so a general declaration of support for Drake, but that includes the PDF-file allegations.
Him supporting Drake made me search for more information, because I wanted to find whether or not he had spoken about it at the time. That led me to this article where her mother, Lisa, is being asked a few questions regarding Bella.

I was surprised Jimmy Jam hasn't introduced Bella to Drake, Rihanna or anybody else in the music world she is interested in meeting.
"No," said Lisa. "She loves Rihanna, she loves Beyoncé. [Bella has met Bey; her brother Max has met Ri-Ri.] She hasn't met Drake. Too old."

Lisa Harris about a photo of Bella (included in the article) - Bella is 14, almost 15 at the time.

I think Drake would behave himself around a child, even one dressed like this, to wit: Mom doesn't think this photo is too sexy, in all its legginess?
"SHE'S WEARING A BATHING SUIT and a coat!" said Lisa. "Sexy? What? My point is it's a body business, so I don't look at it [that way]. It's a posed picture. She has a one-piece bathing suit on. It's artistic."

KYLIE JENNER
Ever since the Kanye (also fuck Kanye for the record) vs. Drake beef we (or I at least) became aware of the fact that Drake has had a long relationship with the Kardashians/Jenners and known them for many, many years. In fact Drake performed at Kylie's sweet 16 back in 2013. You know what that Sweet 16 was specifically remembered for as well? Drake kissing Kylie on the cheek in front of everyone, including her then boyfriend Jaden Smith.
That's not out of the ordinary and would be very normal, if it wasn't for the clear pattern that is going on here, because guess what - 6 years later Drake and Kylie reportedly start dating, well.. dating/fucking/whatever you wanna call it. Admittedly this article is easily dismissed as paparazzi journalism and clickbait, but what if I told you that Drake has rapped this:

Yeah, I’m a hater to society/Real shit, Kylie Jenner that’s a side piece/Yeah, I got 20 muthafuckas in’ Kylies.

You probably wouldn't have heard it, since it was on an unreleased track played on an Instagram Live back in 2020, but it does make it seem pretty likely that he did actually hook up with her, especially considering the response Drake posted

“A song that mark ran last night on night owl sound live set shouldn’t have been played,” he wrote, “It’s a song that leaked 3 years ago and got scrapped shortly after. He was just going too deep in the drake/future catalogue. Last thing I’d want to do is wake up having any friends of mine feeling disrespected so I just had to say that to start off the day.”

Kylie was 22 at the time they reportedly hooked up.
HAILEY BALDWIN (NOW BIEBER)
In 2016 there were reports that Hailey and Drake were dating. Apparently they hooked up at a party that Drake hosted, where another attendee is also mentioned that seems oddly relevant:

Drake and Hailey weren't the only ones getting close, with Kylie Jenner and rumoured new boyfriend PartyNextDoor were seen "making out" at the party.
"It was almost like she was trying to make a statement," an insider added.

Now again - there's nothing illegal in a 11 year age difference and dating a 19-year old as 30. It's weird, yes. But again we come back to the pattern. Why do Drake know Hailey? Through their similar friends and friend group (Kardashians/Jenners). How long has Drake known Hailey? Well, when Hailey was 19, she said they had known each other for a long time.
We can actually get even closer with certainty since we know that Hailey attended Kylie's Sweet 16 in August, 2013. Hailey is born 22. November 1996, so she was also 16 at the time. So it's another girl that Drake has known since she was a minor and started dating when he got the opportunity. This is not normal.
Another pattern that Drake also seem to follow is that likes to hook up with his friends girl. We know for a fact that he hooked up with Lil Wayne's girlfriend while he was in prison. He not only rap about it, but also admit it in an interview. It's not really hard to believe that he did the same with Bieber.
CYDNEY CHRISTINE (LIL CC)
Cydney Christine is a beatmaker and model - she produced the Drake song Money In The Grave and in a Complex interview/roundtable she talks about it and Drake.

Really the only artist I reached out to is Drake. I'd never met him, never spoke to him, I don't know why, but he has been following me for the past like 6 years. I don't know why..

This interview was uploaded 17. December 2019, Cydney Christine's is born 21. July, 1997, meaning she was 22 at the time of the interview and 15-16 when Drake started following her. This is somewhat innocent but strange since Drake is 27 at the time. That's not what is really weird though.
In March 2023, Lil CC is on the No Jumper podcast and here she speaks about Drake and having her debut beat being a Drake single.
Lil CC: I played basketball, right, so he really was a fan or not a fan, sorry, supported one of my teammates at the time um..
Adam 22: And this is when you are in high school?
Lil CC: Yeah, in high school. So he was a fan of women's basketball - high school basketball - I was her teammate so he followed me because of her, and I was like "oh shit, bitch, you got Drake to follow me, like what the hell? Like that's so crazy". So he followed me and I lost it - I have to meet Drake, I love Drake, I've always loved Drake, still love Drake.
There's more to the conversation, but the relevant part is here is that it's just very, very strange for Drake to be a women's high school basketball fan. They are 16 at the time. He's a supporter of a 16 year old female high school basketball player as a 27 year old grown adult man. He has not hooked up with her, dated or anything of the sorts that we know of or that she has told - for the record.
AALIYAH
It's not like I have whole section for this, but his obsession with Aaliyah is strange considering everything else. I don't have a lot to contribute here, but if you don't know Aaliyah's story I'd recommend reading her Wikipedia and specifically the section about her personal life. If you think that 'obsession' is too strong a word for how much Drake admires her, I think you should take a look at this Complex article from 2018 and reconsider.
UNCONFIRMED STORIES
(I will continuously update it whenever I find or get sent new information to add here.)

• Back in 2021 Drake was being exposed on TikTok for his 'private Tinder' where one of his guys would go out and the hottest girls in town, interview them and find the one that Drake would like the best.

“He finds the girls and then he interviews them, and out of all the girls he interviews, he picks the one that he thinks is the best,” she continued. “Then, he drives her to Drake’s place, Drake has sex with her, and then he drives her home. So, basically, Drake has his own private Tinder.”

• This girl explaining how her friend was invited by Drake's crew and she was brought along as a +1. No ID check, very young girls. Worth a watch: https://www.tiktok.com/@simonestrauss/video/7365696116085591304
  
• This reddit post - yes I know this is 'so easy to just say', but I think the poster was very right by pointing this out:
  

I'm sure you guys won't believe me, but this is the type of situation where someone vanishing and telling you is the best you'll get.

• This YouTube comment about a girl claiming to be a victim of trafficking in Toronto in 2015 and that Drake had ties in all these circles.
  
• This article from 2016, where Drake and his buddy get aggressive with an amateur photographer for taking pictures of Drake and two women. This isn't strange in and of itself, but then there's this post from 2018
  

From the article:

The mystery women were dressed identically in matching white parkas, skinny tan pants, tan boots and ponytail hairstyles.

From the post:

Maybe this foreign born one named A+ list singerapper should have told the whole story about his split with a fellow foreign born A+ lister. How she caught him more than once with another woman and his fascination for watching porn involving women wearing pigtails.

• This post

This foreign born A+ list singerapper asked for all kinds of photos from not only the 18 year old he is dating but at least two other 18 year old females and he didn't make sure they were 18 before he started asking.

• This post

That teen, who was topless in the dressing room of this foreign born A+ list singerapper last night was nowhere in the ballpark of being legal.

• This one is fucking WEIRD - some guy was jerking off and noticed something. Now there's plenty of reasons as to why they would do this, it's porn and they need a story. But then there's this post from 2017:

This one named foreign born A list rapper is going around telling porn stars he is starting his own porn company. It is just his excuse to have sex with them all and not pay.
Drake

• This Twitter post/video of UK rapper Potter Payper calling out Drake for messaging 'bare young girls in England'.
  
• This entire thread is weird to say the least. More CDAN rumors as well. Read the thread, it's too much to paste and explain here.
  
• Drake paid out $530K to sexual assault accuser
  

The former stripper and Instagram model wrote: "Drake forced me to perform oral on him. It wasn't your ordinary oral it was more so a fetish." She then describes how he told her to spit into a cup "until he had measured it."

• This comment about a model claiming Drake 'made girls puke in dog bowls for him'. Now that's a typical thing you can dismiss as a rumor, but the same guy commented 16 days ago and said this:

If Kendrick mentions anything about dog bowls or birthday parties in Toronto, then shit is more serious than we thought

• This interview of Aya (Born 24. April 2007) (a 'dancer' in Ice Spice - Deli and probably known for other things I just don't know her) where she's asked about having sex with Drake. She said she can't speak on it because of 'court'.
  
• This Tweet of a guy talking about his experiences in high school and the hottest girls posting from Drake's mansion and being followed by him "every single time".
  

LYRICS, REFERENCES, TWEETS, PICTURES
(Again - Feel free to share with me and I'll add it.)

• On the song Nice For What Drake raps:

You got a baby Benz, you got some bad friends
High school pics, you was even bad then

• This Tweet

"If amazing was a young bitch I'd be going to jail...cause I'm fucking amazing" - Me

• This image of Drake and Malone from Drake's Instagram that's been deleted now. Malone is infamous for impregnating a 13 year old when he was 20.
  
• On the song The Heart Part 6 Drake raps:
  

Just for clarity, I feel disgusted, I'm too respected
If I was fucking young girls, I promise I'd have been arrested
I'm way too famous for this shit you just suggested

• Also on the song The Heart Part 6 Drake raps:

Only fuckin' with Whitneys, not Millie Bobby Browns, I'd never look twice at no teenager

(DIS)HONORABLE MENTION
I know people say Jorja Smith, and I do agree that dating a 19-year old as a 30-year old man is weird and rather pathetic, but every other girl mentioned is related to minors. Their relationship if you can call it that was for sure toxic, and it seems like Drake was a piece of shit abusing the power dynamic between them. This is taken from the Drizzy subreddit, but I can't provide the source since that gets the post blacklisted as it's temporarily banned because of brigading.

In “Summer Games” Drake also says ”I kept it decent, even the secrets, kept it between you and I”. What secrets exactly? Well in Jaded, Drake says this woman “told him all her insecurities”.
It’s also interesting that the song “Summer Games” is about a woman who broke up with Drake right at the beginning of the summer. Drake and Jorja were dating in April of 2017 which is right before the summer starts and only lasted a couple weeks.

But that's all there is to it. I can't dig up anything else, so unless someone have something credible with sources, I don't think there's good enough reason to add her to the list further up.
FINAL NOTE
If you have anything to add, please post it in the comments and if credible/sourced I'll put it in the post. If I got anything wrong please correct me and I'll edit it. I could not be bothered to add more stuff to the last 2 sections, because this has taken considerable time to get done, so I was hoping to crowdsource a lot of that through you guys.
Please share this anywhere you want. I don't care about credit. If any media outlets wants to use it for their article or whatever, please do - feel free. You do not need to ask permission.

So, I'm fourteen and my parents have been abusing me since I was six. Also quick trigger warnings for physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, force feeding and manipulation because this one's a doozy.
There's no words to really describe my parents. Both born and bred in Nigeria, then came to the UK and had me, their first daughter.
My early years... I can't really remember but it wasn't that bad. I mean, my dad didn't start beating me until Year 3 in primary school. My dad's a grown ass man at a good six foot five, literally corded with muscle and he used all his strength into beating me. He'd leave my body sore and achy, and my mum? Most mums would step in, use their body as a shield, call the police- literally anything.
She did nothing.
Sometimes, little me would cry to her about what he did but she would do literally nothing. She'd just rub our sore bodies and say that she was sorry and she'd talk to him. Never did.
And I say our because by then I had a little sister, who he also beat mercilessly. Two years later we had another sister, but he never actually beat her, he only yelled at her but this left her a really jittery mess of a kid, and she's eight now. She cries super easily because she was so used to getting absolutely screamed at.
He beat my mum too infront of us bit she'd never leave him, she just argued infront of him. My mum, at least to me was the lesser evil because she hit us too but she yelled at us more than anything so we liked her so much more then Dad. My dad was also a very loud and confrontational person when incidents occurred at school, and it got so bad that my headteacher sent a letter of notice to our doorstep saying how my dad made his staff uncomfortable. My school tried, I mean they really tried to get me to open up because they could sense what was going on but they just couldn't weed enough out of me to get social services involved.
The one time when I did open up, only about how mum and dad shouted at us a lot but I didn't include the hitting, they called them in for a parent teacher meeting and sent me home with them afterwards. Instead of hitting me, they shouted at me for hours and my mum acted distraught, like there was something wrong with me. She said I needed to go to a pych ward, a mental hospital and stay in a padded room all wrapped up and little nine year old me was like "Mental hospital! I don't wanna go there! Mummy, I'll never speak out again!"
This continued until we moved houses and I started secondary school. And you know how African parents really start to get on their kids asses the moment they start growing up? That was it for me. Like, if I put vaseline on my mum would shout at me and be like "So you like you're grown now, huh?"
I was in Year 7. I was 11 years old.
Genuinely so much more happened but if I wrote it all down here this would take even longer to read but I got taken away from my parents when I was 12. When I told my friends about what was going on at home they were terrified for me but I was too scared to leave. It was only after my dad beat me for walking to the literal field right next to my secondary school, a DOG walking site where a lot of other students chilled at before school started and he FOLLOWED me to school. Literally went on the next bus behind me, recorded me walking with my friends, CHASED me on that field. He dragged me out of there, threatened me that I was finished when I got home and then left.
I told my teachers everything and begged them to not send me home, but they did anyway. That night was probably the most traumatic day of my life, its imprinted in my brain constantly replaying like some 1920's movie. He accused me of being a lesbian, accused me of having a secret boyfriend and interrogated me with my mum. That night I got beat so bad my whole body went numb, then my Dad SA'D me on the living room floor, ejaculated inside of me and threatened to kill me if I told anyone.
So after that I made a plan with my best friend, told her everything (minus the rape) and I went to school the next day and told the teachers everything. Then they finally took action and called social services. The police and social workers showed up in all their special equipment, I gave a recorded statement and they arrested my parents and took me and my sisters away into police care.
So we went into care, have been for two years and it's been a wild, emotional roller coaster. My parents have learned nothing, my dad is 100% adamant that he never abused his kids, along with my mum until now. She's all like "I'm sorry IF I offended you," and "I'm sorry if I MAY have caused you harm"
Like what the hell?
My sisters buy it (literally) because my Dad bought my younger sister an iPhone 14 and Apple Watch, which she loves of course. It's so goddamn blatant it sickens me, and they took her old phone and shipped it off to Nigeria so our grandma (mum's mum) can use it. Legal wise, the sexual assault case got closed due to insufficient evidence but it did go down on his DBS so he won't be able to work with children, vulnerable adults etc. But he still found a decently paying job, whilst my mum can't get one at all. I don't care at all, as my sympathy is limited for my abusers.
My extended family in Nigeria who do know about my family's fiasco, side with my parents which is utter bullshit. I haven't spoken to my aunties in almost a year because of this. It feels SO normalised in our culture to abuse your kids. It's not discipline, get some help.
Anyway, the final hearing is coming up about where me and my sisters will live and it's pretty obvious we're staying in care. But I like it. A lot. In foster care I feel really safe and assured ten times more then I did at home. Plus, I've been on no contact with my dad in a whole year as I plan to never see him again and my mum is complicated. Relationship's very strained but I haven't seen her in almost nine months, and to be honest I probably won't see her at all. Thank you for listening to my story!

I want to preface this story by saying that while I am pretty much agnostic on a good day and an atheist on a bad day, I am a fan of horror and grew up in a fairly religious environment via a very evangelical Christian high school, so my point of view may be skewed by those influences. However, I do think whatever my fiance and I witnessed was at the very least, an extremely dangerous person.
For context, I started college in fall 2018, going to a university in a somewhat rural area. The college itself sits on a large plot of land surrounded by farmland and vineyards, with sections that are forested and have little trails running through them, and a creek that runs the length of school property. The college has even had a murder victim dumped in one of the wooded areas on campus, but that’s a story for another day.
Freshmen were required to live on campus their first year and one of the benefits of that was that we had unlimited access to the school cafeteria, aka the caf. The caf was pretty nice, boasting a salad bar, sandwich station, mini bakery, hot food with different menu’s daily, and pretty much every fountain drink you can think of. I would get lunch and dinner there with my only friend at the time (and who is now my fiancé), and we began to notice this boy who was always at the caf alone. It wasn’t uncommon to see students eating there alone, my school had pretty poor community outreach/ school spirit, but something was really off about this kid.
First off he had a very distinct look (this is important because we recognized him multiple times over 3 years), his skin was extremely pale and had this heavy, fleshy look to it that I struggle to describe, like he was made of wax, he had red curly hair (insert ginger joke here), a mouth a little too large for his face, but what was the strangest thing about him was his eyes. They were the same color as his hair, that bright red auburn, his iris was almost too big for his eye, and his pupils were always extremely dilated. His eyes had a bulging look, very similar to Mark Zuckerburg, like they were trying to escape his face. It’s hard to describe here but he just had a very unsettling look to him, it just felt that there was something very wrong, like there was nothing inside him.
But his appearance wasn’t what caught our attention at first, what caught our attention was the amount of food this kid could eat. Of course, having unlimited access to food some kids went overboard, but this kid was another level. He always had 5 or 6 cups of juice, soda, coffee, and 3-4 plates piled with food. Mind you, he was not large or overweight, but he would clear every plate and then just sit in his booth alone, staring into space with his headphones in. That was another thing, he always had this blank, vacant expression, always staring into nothing. Whenever you walked past his booth you could hear that the music from his headphones was on full blast.
We began to notice that no matter what time we went to the caf, whether it be for a late-night snack, breakfast, a random afternoon craving, he was always there, sitting alone in the ruins of his empty plates. And we weren’t the only people who noticed his strange behavior. By second semester, people began approaching him, at first just some girls jokingly saying something to the effect of “we strive to be on your level,” referencing his eating habits, and he just stared at them blankly. People began to ask if he was ok, if he would like to join them, but he always just stared, sometimes with a knowing smile on his face, but would never reply, leaving the students to depart awkwardly. Once I even witnessed one of the caf attendants telling him he needed to stop spending all his time there.
My friend that I always ate with became my boyfriend, and we began to theorize what exactly this kid’s deal was. We said maybe mental illness, or maybe he was a competitive eater, or he was trying to bulk up, but his behavior seemed too empty, too neurotic to be explained away by any of these. Our main theory, the one I subscribe to now, did not come till much later.
My sophomore year I opted to live on campus again, and in the middle of my second semester, COVID hit. My school allowed us to remain on campus until the school year was up, and due to some personal reasons of not wanting to go home, I remained in my dorm, and my boyfriend joined me and we quarantined together. That time was so strange because our campus became an incredibly liminal space without all the other students. Some others remained with us, but on any given day you could walk the entire campus and not run into another soul. My boyfriend and I started running the wooded trails on campus to get exercise.
One day we stopped on one of the trails to do some burpees. As we did so, the kid from the caf, emerged from some trees, not on any trail, just walked out of the woods and started running toward us. This really caught us off guard because we rarely saw anyone, and he just maid a beeline toward us. RIght as he ran up on us he stopped. Just smiled at us knowingly, as if we shared some joke, but it was not a nice smile, it was incredibly nasty, sinister even. I don’t know if I felt that way because he had scared us, but something was off. We had never spoken to him those times at the caf but he seemed to recognize us. The other thing that was weird was that he was jacked, way taller and just larger than he ever had been freshman year. It wasn’t just that he gained muscle mass, he just seemed like scaled up, like he hit a massive growth spurt, which I suppose is plausible, but it just seemed really off.
We were both shaken by the experience and began to joke that he had been eating so much to store up energy so he could level up or something. Then one of us, I forget which, suggested he looked so strange because it was a demon wearing a human’s skin and was eating so much to build strength for his demonic powers, and that’s how he grew so quickly. Like I said it began as a joke, but the more we discussed it, the more it just seemed to explain not only his odd appearance but his odd behavior toward other students, the empty look in his eyes.
Here’s where things went from weird to fucking terrifying:
My boyfriend and I forgot about him, and we moved out of my dorm into an apartment a few blocks from school as we were still finishing, and while school was mostly online now, I liked the area. The same creek that ran the length of our school campus ran behind our complex, and as it was still COVID lockdown and we had nothing to do, we would go on long walks up and down the creek.
One evening we went for a walk at dusk and by the time we got to the main road our apartment was on it was completely dark. It was extremely quiet, and as we walked along the road we saw we were coming up on a man walking very slow and deliberate. My hackles were up immediately as our apartment is in a seedy area and there were a lot of homeless and unstable people who sometimes hung out around the creek. And there was just something about his walk, it was so deliberate, and predatory. As we crossed paths with the man he walked even slower, and in the dim light of streetlamps I realized I recognized him as that same kid, that same waxy face, and bulging eyes. I also realized that in one hand he held a paper bag with something big and round in it, while in the other he held a crowbar. A fucking crow bar. He slowed down even more as he passed us and turned his whole head and smiled at us. This time there was no mistake when I tell you it was the most threatening, sinister smile I have ever seen, and it had that same knowing in it, like he knew us and we shared some joke. He didn’t say anything, just stared at us with his horrible eyes. I don’t know if I’ve just read too many creepypastas or if I’m overthinking things, but I knew on an animalistic level he wanted to hurt us and wanted us to know he could.
After we passed him, we took off running, and when we returned to the apartment, we were both in a full-blown panic, even my boyfriend who tends to be pretty levelheaded and skeptical wanted to call the police. We did and as soon as we began to explain the situation, we felt pretty foolish. They asked if he threatened us, and we said not verbally but we felt threatened. Despite the absurdity of our call they said they would look into it because obviously there’s not a lot of non-nefarious reasons to be walking around at night with a crowbar. But we never heard anything, and we never saw him again.
To close this, I just think the whole thing is strange, how this kid kept showing up in our lives over 3 years, and always seemed to recognize us, always seemed to want to let us know he knew us. I think as people we know when there’s just something off about a person, when there’s nothing going on inside. People have said as much about sociopaths they’ve had run-ins with. But I want to know what you guys think, did I encounter the Antichrist leveling up? A demon? Or a really troubled kid who became a dangerous man? Maybe he was just a depressed kid, but I will hold firm that we were, at the very least, threatened by this guy, that we wanted to hurt us, and that we encountered something or someone evil. What do you think?
P.S. I did some rudimentary google searches for police reports in the area for assault with a crowbar, and some other things that might had related but could not find anything.

I want to preface this story by saying that while I am pretty much agnostic on a good day and an atheist on a bad day, I am a fan of horror and grew up in a fairly religious environment via a very evangelical christian highschool, so my point of view may be skewed by those influences. However, I do think whatever my fiance and I witnessed was at the very least, an extremely dangerous person.
For context, I started college in fall 2018, going to a university in a somewhat rural area. The college itself sits on a large plot of land surrounded by farmland and vineyards, with sections that are forested and have little trails running through them, and a creek that runs the length of school property. The college has even had a murder victim dumped in one of the wooded areas on campus, but that’s a story for another day.
Freshmen were required to live on campus their first year and one of the benefits of that was that we had unlimited access to the school cafeteria, aka the caf. The caf was pretty nice, boasting a salad bar, sandwich station, mini bakery, hot food with different menu’s daily, and pretty much every fountain drink you can think of. I would get lunch and dinner there with my only friend at the time (and who is now my fiance), and we began to notice this boy who was always at the caf alone. It wasn’t uncommon to see students eating there alone, my school had pretty poor community outreach/ school spirit, but something was really off about this kid.
First off he had a very distinct look (this is important because we recognized him multiple times over 3 years), his skin was extremely pale and had this waxy fleshy look to it that I struggle to describe, like he was made of wax, he had red curly hair (insert ginger joke here), a mouth a little too large for his face, but what was the strangest thing about him was his eyes. They were the same color as his hair, that bright red auburn, his iris was almost too big for his eye, and his pupils were always extremely dilated. His eyes had a bulging look, very similar to Mark Zuckerburg, like they were trying to escape his face. It’s hard to describe here but he just had a very unsettling look to him, it just felt that there was something very wrong, like there was nothing inside him.
But his appearance wasn’t what caught our attention at first, what caught our attention was the amount of food this kid could eat. Of course, having unlimited access to food some kids went overboard, but this kid was another level. He always had 5 or 6 cups of juice, soda, coffee, and 3-4 plates piled with food. Mind you, he was not large or overweight, but he would clear every plate and then just sit in his booth alone, staring into space with his headphones in. That was another thing, he always had this blank, vacant expression, always staring into nothing. Whenever you walked past his booth you could hear that the music from his headphones was on full blast.
We began to notice that no matter what time we went to the caf, whether it be for a late-night snack, breakfast, a random afternoon craving, he was always there, sitting alone in the ruins of his empty plates. And we weren’t the only people who noticed his strange behavior. By second semester, people began approaching him, at first just some girls jokingly saying something to the effect of “we strive to be on your level,” referencing his eating habits, and he just stared at them blankly. People began to ask if he was ok, if he would like to join them, but he always just stared, sometimes with a knowing smile on his face, but would never reply, leaving the students to depart awkwardly. Once I even witnessed one of the caf attendants telling him he needed to stop spending all his time there.
My friend that I always ate with became my boyfriend, and we began to theorize what exactly this kid’s deal was. We said maybe mental illness, or maybe he was a competitive eater, or he was trying to bulk up, but his behavior seemed too empty, too neurotic to be explained away by any of these. Our main theory, the one I subscribe to now, did not come till much later.
My sophomore year I opted to live on campus again, and in the middle of my second semester, COVID hit. My school allowed us to remain on campus until the school year was up, and due to some personal reasons of not wanting to go home, I remained in my dorm, and my boyfriend joined me and we quarantined together. That time was so strange because our campus became an incredibly liminal space without all the other students. Some others remained with us, but on any given day you could walk the entire campus and not run into another soul. My boyfriend and I started running the wooded trails on campus to get exercise.
One day we stopped on one of the trails to do some burpees. As we did so, the kid from the caf, emerged from some trees, not on any trail, just walked out of the woods and started running toward us. This really caught us off guard because we rarely saw anyone, and he just maid a beeline toward us. RIght as he ran up on us he stopped. Just smiled at us knowingly, as if we shared some joke, but it was not a nice smile, it was incredibly nasty, sinister even. I don’t know if I felt that way because he had scared us, but something was off. We had never spoken to him those times at the caf but he seemed to recognize us. The other thing that was weird was that he was jacked, way taller and just larger than he ever had been freshman year. It wasn’t just that he gained muscle mass, he just seemed like scaled up, like he hit a massive growth spurt, which I suppose is plausible, but it just seemed really off.
We were both shaken by the experience and began to joke that he had been eating so much to store up energy so he could level up or something. Then one of us, I forget which, suggested he looked so strange because it was a demon wearing a human’s skin and was eating so much to build strength for his demonic powers, and that’s how he grew so quickly. Like I said it began as a joke, but the more we discussed it, the more it just seemed to explain not only his odd appearance but his odd behavior toward other students, the empty look in his eyes.
Here’s where things went from weird to fucking terrifying:
My boyfriend and I forgot about him, and moved out of my dorm into an apartment a few blocks from school as we were still finishing, and while school was mostly online now, I liked the area. The same creek that ran the length of our school campus ran behind our complex, and as it was still COVID lockdown and we had nothing to do, we would go on long walks up and down the creek.
One evening we went for a walk at dusk and by the time we got to the main road our apartment was on it was completely dark. It was extremely quiet, and as we walked along the road we saw we were coming up on a man walking very slow and deliberate. My hackles were up immediately as our apartment is in a seedy area and there were a lot of homeless and unstable people who sometimes hung out around the creek. And there was just something about his walk, it was so deliberate, and predatory. As we crossed paths with the man he walked even slower, and in the dim light of streetlamps I realized I recognized him as that same kid, that same waxy face, and bulging eyes. I also realized that in one hand he held a paper bag with something big and round in it, while in the other he held a crowbar. A fucking crow bar. He slowed down even more as he passed us and turned his whole head, and smiled at us. This time there was no mistake when I tell you it was the most threatening, sinister smile I have ever seen, and it had that same knowing in it, like he knew us and we shared some joke. He didn’t say anything, just stared at us with his horrible eyes. I don’t know if I’ve just read too many creepypastas or if I’m overthinking things, but I knew on an animalistic level he wanted to hurt us and wanted us to know he could.
After we passed him, we took off running, and when we returned to the apartment, we were both in a full-blown panic, even my boyfriend who tends to be pretty levelheaded and skeptical wanted to call the police. We did and as soon as we began to explain the situation we felt pretty foolish. They asked if he threatened us and we said not verbally but we felt threatened. Despite the absurdity of our call they said they would look into it because obviously there’s not a lot of non-nefarious reasons to be walking around at night with a crowbar. But we never heard anything, and we never saw him again.
To close this, I just think the whole thing is strange, how this kid kept showing up in our lives over 3 years, and always seemed to recognize us, always seemed to want to let us know he knew us. I think as people we know when there’s just something off about a person, when there’s nothing going on inside. People have said as much about sociopaths they’ve had run-ins with. But I want to know what you guys think, did I encounter the Antichrist leveling up? A demon? Or a really troubled kid who became a dangerous man? Maybe he was just a depressed kid, but I will hold firm that we were, at the very least, threatened by this guy, that we wanted to hurt us, and that we encountered something or someone evil. What do you think?
P.S. I did some rudimentary google searches for police reports in the area for assault with a crowbar, and some other things that might had related but could not find anything.

So this is quite a long story but stick with it if you feel so inclined because it’s pretty insane. I don’t talk about this at all in my personal life, but I shared it in the comments of another post and someone said I should post it in full. First, a little context on our friend Irene, what happened when we moved in and how we found out about her. Then after that the story of the big night. Skip to that if you don’t want the context.
Context:
My boyfriend and I had just signed a new lease, and we were doing the walk-through with our landlord. He owns two houses right next to one another. The house was empty, there was nothing in it. So we’re in one of the bedrooms and we hear a loud bang, like something heavy falling. All of us including my landlord, look at each other, terrified looks on our faces. My landlord looks particularly scared and says he heard it too. We look in every room and we find nothing responsible for the sound. So we finish our tour and are standing outside next to my boyfriend’s truck talking. When all of a sudden his truck starts going crazy, every light is flickering, and the alarm is sounding at strange intervals, not at all the usual alarm pattern. My landlord looked visibly scared and gave us our paperwork and sped off. I cried in his truck convinced that we just signed a lease to a haunted house. I was freaking the hell out and was researching how we could get out of this lease. But a few weeks went by and as one does I explained it away and we moved in. The day of our move in I open the door, and a tiny black cat comes sprinting out in between our legs. I had two friends there to help us move and all of us saw and heard this cat. It’s possible a stray cat got stuck inside and that’s what made the bang, but we searched the whole property and didn’t find it. Ok, weird, but we moved on.
Soon after moving in the activity started, lights would turn on and off, the smoke alarms would go off, the tv would change the channel or turn the volume all the way up, doors would open. I talked to my friend who has experience with ghosts and she said that what I described didn’t seem hostile, she said that neutral presences are more likely to do things to get your attention whereas hostile presences will do things that slowly escalate and insinuate violence. Such as things being thrown, furniture being moved, leaving marks on your body, etc. She also said that the initial experiences from the walk through sounded to her almost like excitement, the house had been vacant for so long and she thought the presence was just happy the house was going to be filled with life again. I didn’t believe it so much at the time but looking back now I can totally see this.
Eventually I get to know our neighbour, who lives in the house next door owned by the same landlord. She starts asking about our time in the house and seems to be holding back so I flat out ask her what’s wrong. My landlord is a lawyer at a firm at the end of this street, and she works there as the receptionist. So she sees the landlord on a daily basis. The day when they were preparing for us to move in they were walking around the property checking off things. She went back to her house next door and said she had a strange feeling. She was settling in her bed when all of a sudden, on her blanket, she saw paw prints and movement. As if a cat was making circles and deciding where to sit. Then it sits down and leaves an indent on the bed and she jumps up immediately and turns the light on. She also said that her dog started barking at the bed. She says she can’t shake the feeling that something from the house next door followed her home. That night she had a dream, about an old lady named Irene. In her dream Irene had a black cat on her lap, and my neighbour and her were sitting for tea on our back porch. When she woke up she remembered the cat incident from the night before. She was terrified and started saging her house and yelling at Irene to leave. She goes into work and speaks to her landlord, deciding not to say anything. But her landlord brings it up first and says he had a weird dream last night. He said he was having tea with an old lady named Irene who had a black cat on her lap. My neighbour explains what happened the night before and they conclude that it’s too strange of a coincidence. They start digging into history on the property because it was vacant for a few years. They found that it was purchased for very cheap because it had been foreclosed. No information about the previous owner but they assume that she must have passed and had no relatives therefore the bank foreclosed her house. This is speculation of course, there’s no way to prove a lady named Irene ever lived there. But based on their dreams they were satisfied with this conclusion.
Then the saga continues from my end. We never felt a negative or bad energy from it. We were of course scared but it didn’t feel life threatening, if that makes sense. It felt like a motherly presence at times. My electric kettle also often turned on which to me validated what my neighbour said about them having tea. Obviously she likes tea. After I found out about the dreams, I spoke to my friend who deals with spirits told us that sometimes they just want you to know they are there. She recalled l her own experience where she started speaking out loud and the activity died down. So I started casually speaking out loud to her. To me it was in mostly a joking manner, it helped me feel less scared. A light would flick on and id say “hey Irene” or something funny would happen and I’d say “you better not be laughing at me Irene” just little stuff like that. I didn’t believe it would work, but I noticed the activity in the house started to die down. It seemed like she did just wanted to be acknowledged, and I thought ok cool if you’re going to be chill we’ll be chill too. I remember telling it that if you have no ill intent and you not scare us, you can stay and we can cohabitate peacefully. Life was calm after that but still small things would happen. I remember walking through one of the hallways, and feeling like something was nipping at my ankles. I swatted my foot because I thought an insect was there, but nothing. When you’d walk through that hallway it felt like a cat was running underneath you trying to catch your feet or something.
THE INCIDENT:
So one night me and my boyfriend went to bed, our bedroom is upstairs. In the middle of the night I was woken by a strange noise but when I woke I had complete sleep paralysis. I couldn’t talk or move my body in any way. I had sleep paralysis as a kid so I knew what was happening but I hadn’t had it in my adulthood. Then out of the corner of my eye I see a dark figure come in the bedroom door, I can’t turn my head but I can see in my peripheral a dark shadowy figure standing in the door frame. I know that sleep paralysis comes with hallucinations and I’ve seen some before, but it had been almost a decade. My heart is beating fast and I’m sweating and I remember thinking I’m about to die and I can’t even scream. This lasted for several minutes and then a light flicked on from the hallway, and then this feeling of warmth washed over my body. Like a tingly warm sensation all over. I remember hearing the words “you’re safe” and just drifting back to sleep even though every bone in my body is fighting to stay awake. This was VERY strange, because I’ve had sleep paralysis in my youth and never has it ended like that. Once you realize you can’t move this panic sets in and you start freaking out, and slowly your body begins to wake up and you can start to move your fingers, toes, face and then your extremities last. And by the time you can move you are a blubbering panic attack mess. Never have I just fallen back asleep in the midst of a sleep paralysis episode. I can’t even put into words how impossible that feels. Imagine you’re in fight or flight ready to fight for your life and/or die, adrenaline pumping through your body and all of a sudden you, just fall asleep? It’s like I passed out involuntarily, like I fainted. I woke up again and this time I could move, so I shake my boyfriend awake crying and panicked and I explain that I just had sleep paralysis and saw a figure in the doorframe and his face goes white as a sheet. This is where it gets even weirder.
He tells me about the dream he just had (my boyfriend doesn’t usually dream or remember his dreams so this was unusual) He says we were sleeping in our beds, and a dark shadowy figure walked in through our back door, left it open, walked through our house, up the stairs and into our bedroom. He said it was like he was floating above the house and watching this whole thing, like an out of body experience. The figure stopped at our door frame and watched us sleep. He could see our house in vivid detail and see his body and mine sleeping soundly, he tried to scream to get us to wake up but couldn’t. Similar to how I was trying to scream but couldn’t. The next thing he knows I am shaking him awake. So we get up to find that our stairway light is in fact on and our back door is WIDE OPEN. We always lock our doors, we are extremely diligent about it to the point where we check 2 or 3 times. Our door was metal so even if it wasn’t locked it wouldn’t just blow open. So this was very alarming. Of course we looked all around our house for an intruder, but we found nothing. What was even more confusing is that nothing was taken, we even have a bowl right next to the door with our keys and wallets and everything was still there untouched.
To this day we’re not sure what happened, but somehow it felt like Irene was involved. The light that was on in the hallway was one that she liked to mess with, and it was like a running joke in our house that when Irene was feeling spunky she would mess with that light specifically. I don’t know if it was a real person, or a dark demonic energy that entered our household but we swear something did. We both saw a dark shadowy figure with no face or clothes, we didn’t see distinct human features. Just a human shape with black inside. It felt like it was there for us specifically, my boyfriend described it knowing exactly where to go and that it came straight up to our bedroom with no hesitation. Irene’s light flicked on at the same exact time I had the warm tingly feeling wash over me, leading me to fall peacefully back asleep. It was a feeling like it’s okay you are protected go back to sleep. I believe that whether it was a person or an energy, Irene took control of the situation that night. Something unwelcome entered our home and she saw fit to deal with it. I am inclined to think it was an energy, because she could deal with that on her own. But then how was our door unlocked and opened? I believe she turned on her light and sent me back to sleep so that she could deal with it herself. Maybe she even kept my boyfriend asleep too as in his dream he described being unable to wake up and unable to wake us up. It was like he was stuck in the dream and I was stuck halfway between asleep and waking, in sleep paralysis. Or maybe it was an omen of death that was about to take us in our sleep and that’s why we couldn’t wake up and saw the visuals we did. We will never know for sure but it left us shaken up for a long time.
We still have never been able to explain the door. We got a doorbell camera after that. And Irene was quiet for a long time, I expected her to be active the next day but the house was eerily quiet and I wondered if she was gone. But eventually she started showing her signs again. Maybe she used all her energy on the unwelcome guest and needed time to recover. All in all it we’ve never been able to shake the feeling that we were in danger that night, what the danger was we still don’t know, but there is no doubt in my mind that we were divinely protected. Shortly after this our neighbour moved out and we moved into the house next door. When we moved it was a crazy shift in energy. We went from living in a very chaotic movement filled household to a very calm still environment. Nothing strange ever happened there. But I would still light a candle in honour of Irene every now and then. It’s been about 4 years and I still think about this very often. Let me know if have any thoughts and opinions to share on what you think may have happened that night. I’d love to hear! Hope you enjoyed the story of what was and is still the scariest night of our lives!

Ok so hi guys I'm rlly new to this but I really don't know what to do in my situation right now and I could really use some advice. So to give some background back in 2022, I met a guy online who we'll call C. We met November of 2022 but we only talked online. We ended up sorta falling for each other and ended up in kind of a situationship thingy. Only thing is that he lives directly across the country. Like I'm not even joking we are diagonal. Anyways with C and I it was like something just clicked. We would call all the time even though we had a four hour time difference, and even drew and posted drawings of each other. We felt like a soulmates typa thing but the distance made it impossible. So December 28th of 2022 we ended things off amicably. Although we did have a little bit of texting things deteriorated after we stopped our kind of relationship. After a few months I learned he a had a girlfriend and I honestly wasn't too bothered because we had literally stated how we should move on or it would end up hurting us both. And in March of 2023 I started dating my current boyfriend who we'll call P. And I guess C was always somewhere in the back of my mind but I was super focused on P because I do love him. The first time I can recall that C started popping back into my mind was in May when I saw a TikTok that said "it's May of 2023 but you're still stuck on that boy from November of 2022" and even though I knew I shouldn't, I saved that TikTok. Over the summer I didn't think about C that much except for the occasional time but almost immeadietly forgot. As far as I was concerned I was over him and happy in my relationship with P, or at least that was what I thought. Of course deep down I knew that I still missed C at least a bit but I could never act upon it because it genuinely is just impossible. January 2024 it happened. I don't know why or what spurred it but I started to think about C. Then late one night I took out my phone unblocked C and started looking through his profile. Now I mentioned that I had known he had a girlfriend but I actually never knew when they started dating. What I found out is that had recently celebrated their anniversary on Janurary 3rd. That's when it hit me. At first I thought it was a funny coincidence that both C and his girlfriend and P and I got together on 3rds but then I did the math. If C and I ended things off December 28th and he and his girl started dating January 3rd, it took about a week for them to start dating. This brought up all my surpressed feelings, emotions, and memories and I was what could only be described as distraught. I felt like I wasn't enough and I wondered if we even meant anything to him or did he just turn around to date the next girl. What made it worse is that I realized the girl he was now with was the same one he had told me had asked him to draw her while we were a thing and I had even offerend to draw her for him. To think that in the future she would be with him and also the fact that she probably had a crush on him back then. I dont actually know how much C told to his friends about me but from what I observed I figured we were both kinda each other's secrets with the exception of a few friends and family knowing. I also wondered if his current girlfriend knows that just a week before they got together C was with me. Now I know what everyone is probably wondering and I wonder it too. Why should I care? Why does it matter to me? The thing is that it really shouldn't. I love P so much I would give the world for him but now I realized I've never fully gotten over C. I know I do tend to hang on to a person for a long time as my first crush lasted 3 years. Anyways I told P about my whole unblocking thing in January in the following days and rightfully he wasn't too pleased. I had and still have so much regret for what I did that night yet I can't seem to stop thinking about C. The amount of times I thought about C really ramped up after even though I promised P I would try my hardest not to think about C. In I think early April it happened again where I unblocked C and looked through his profile. I felt like an awful girlfriend for doing that and I confessed this to P. What was sad was that he told me he figured something like January was going to happen again but he just didn't expect it to be so soon. I really tried and wanted so badly to keep his trust but now it's happened again. Two days ago, C appeared in my dreams and I tried to brush it off but even in the dreams I was consciously aware of how much I wanted to as C the question of if what we had was never real and why he turned around and dated someone else so quick. Then yesterday night I unblocked texted C which was a horrible thing to have done but I was doing it to try and move on. To summarize my text was asking him to reject me or say he hated me or something else so I could finally be done and move on. I did give him the option to decline though because I respect him and his relationship. Well I ended up falling asleep before he answered but I did see that my message was seen before I went to sleep. I just assumed he chose the option of not replying as a way of declining. Then this morning I went back on my phone to check. He was suprisingly still active because it would've been 3am for him. He still hadn't answered so I decided to just scroll on my phone but then got a notif from a message from C that said "I'm sorry I can't". When I opened the chat he had already deleted the message but I assume he wanted me to see it then deleted it intentionally as to not cause problems with his girlfriend. I answered "That's alr thanks anyways" and he hearted the message to show he had read it. I then once again blocked him. But I started to wonder if he had waited and done the send and delete method multiple times throughout the night hoping I'd see and if he'd waited for me like that. Keep in mind my original text was sent at 11:00pm and the response happened at 7:00am for me. I also wondered if he couldn't do it because he shouldn't be texting me or if he couldn't because it wouldn't be true and the time he spent with me did matter. I know all of these thoughts are wrong and I do feel immense guilt. That is why I did end up confessing all that I had done the night before to P. He told me I was terrible for doing what I did and I do agree. C has been such a soft spot for P since the January incident and it hurts that he is stuck fighting for me against an opponent he knows virtually nothing about and isn't even there. He's asked me what C has that he doesn't and while there are things I reassure him the he is even more than C will ever be but I can't tell if I'm only saying that but don't mean it. P ended up staying for the whole day at my house and we did make up but I'm still sorry. It's unfair to P that he loves me with all his heart yet I can't seem to let go of C. What happened in the past with C shouldn't matter anymore because I do love P. I feel so guilty for still being attached to C and I don't want to be, but I can't figure out how. I genuinely want to be with P but this whole thing with C is hindering my ability to be a good girlfriend. There's nothing that I don't love about P I just can't get over C even though I want me and P to last forever. And most guiltily at all a small part of still fantisizes about maybe one day meeting C in person and being together when we are no longer right person wrong time/wrong place. I wonder about how me a C could've been and I do miss him. I want to be with P but I can't fully say for certain that I wouldn't leave him for C in a heartbeat if it were possible. This makes me feel awful because honestly I am. I was thinking these thoughts just earlier and I just needed someplace to vent or rant out into the void. I'll appreciate any advice because I hate the situation I'm in right now. So reddit, how to I move on from C and solely focus on P or is it even possible. I want to stay with P because we both love each other so much and have literally grown and invested so much into each other, but C just always has to be in my mind for some reason What do I do? (Also sorry this is extremely long and if you took the time to read this thank you so much)

Well, this story is going to be long anyway, so I might as well say a few words out of topic. Firstly, English is not my first language, so please don’t judge too harsh. Secondly, I downloaded Reddit today only to join this sub. I’ve been wanting to post this story ever since I’ve started to listen to the podcast, which was a while ago and I’m pretty sure I’ve watched all of it. If this ever gets seen by the hosts - thank you guys for keeping me sane and for restoring my faith in humanity. If I did anything wrong with posting - please, correct me.
Trigger warning will be provided later in the story for not ruining the plot.
PART 1. THE GIRL, THE BOYFRIEND AND THE BATHROOM
The story takes place in one of the capital cities in Europe. I (F, 24 at the moment) was living with my bf (M, 23, who’s now an ex) in our university dorm. One beautiful day of November 2022 we woke up as usual, had a coffee and started to get ready for uni. As soon as I was ready to leave I felt something weird in my stomach with light notes of pain. I ignored it, but still decided to stay at home a for couple more minutes just in case. That was probably the best decision I’ve ever made, because just in couple of minutes I had to rush to the bathroom. So I’m there, I sweat from not feeling well, I’m in so much pain that I’m thinking of possibility of cutting off my butthole and donating it to someone who needs an anus transplant, I feel like I’m ready to explode, but nothing happens at all, no matter how hard I try. I consider this is a false alarm and go back to the room to lay down. This situation repeats a couple of times: I feel like I’m gonna become a shit fountain, I run to the bathroom half-bent, I almost cry from pain on the toilet, while listening to my bf cheering me up behind the bathroom door and then I go back to the room not relieved even for a bit. Thankfully I didn’t have to cover much distance each time, because of nice planning of the building. The dorm was apartment-like style, so there were two rooms (one was ours and the other one was taken by a foreign student), a kitchen and a bathroom inside of the living area.
After like an hour of these torture races I feel completely new wave of pain both in my stomach and my butthole with a high and intensive pressure from inside the body. This time it feels like something alive size of the raccoon is inside of me and it is desperately trying to get out. So I rush to the toilet again. This time it’s gonna be done, I’ll complete my shitty mission and set myself free from this butt slavery. So I’m in the toilet, boyfriend is hyping me up behind the door once again, I take my pants off feeling blessed by the shit gods, but as soon as I touch the toilet with my cheeks the fucking air raid alarm starts.
So here’s the plot twist: this happens in Kyiv, Ukraine on the ninth month of the full scale invasion. I’m giving a TW for war here, so it’s your chance to leave if you don’t feel comfortable. For those who stay - feel free to laugh if you find something funny in this story, because humour is the way to cope. But back to the story.
PART 2. MAMA RAISED NO SHITTER
November 2022 was the period of one of the most intensive shellings of Kyiv. A lot of critical infrastructures were damaged, sometimes we did’t have light or water, but thanks to quick reaction of truly heroic emergency services everything was repaired as fast as possible. That was a period when there were couple of shellings a day (and also at night) and though most of the missiles and drones were destroyed on their way, some still reached the city.
Imagine: You‘re grunting on a toilet, shit comes out of you like from a fire hydrant, you discover that there’s apparently much more space inside of you, than you thought, because how in the hell all that could fit in? And all that while: a) the air raid alarm goes off both in the app on our phones and the siren outside; b) bf stops cheering me up and starts to read to me out loud which kinds of ballistic missiles and drones head which way, calculating and constantly updating me on how much time I have left before they reach the capital so we can go to the shelter in time. As a cherry on a top my mother and grandmother are calling me multiple times. (Apparently to tell me there’s an air strike, like I don’t know yet, yeah) At this time I’m starting to talk to my butthole and practically begging it to stay strong so I can do the right thing and increase my survival chances. And…. It worked. In couple of minutes me and bf were going down the stairs from the twelfth floor (it’s unsafe to use an elevator during the air raid, so they’re turned off). Even though I have trust in my butt I feel like every step can be fatal and I literally feel the liquid moving inside my guts when I go down. Seems like that raccoon sized thing left my body, but its babies are still inside.
We successfully go outside and head to the shelter. The closest one to us was a subway station 15 minutes away. My bf looks at me with fear and till this day I don’t know if he was scared FOR me or scared OF me. Well, both are understandable, cause you never know what to expect from a half-bent girl with emotions of anger and exhaustion on her face, who’s constantly grunting and swearing after giving birth to a shit monster but still having his twin inside. I held his hand so tight it turned white.
Half-way to the shelter I realise that there’s no bathroom in the subway. For some reason my drained from all of it brain immediately goes “Well, better dead than humiliated” so I just stop and say „I‘m not going anywhere“. My bf‘s shocked, last two rational brain cells in my head are stunned and refuse to work anymore for such an ungrateful owner. But still, they manage to give me a last piece of advice: we need to go to get medication at pharmacy. Surprisingly for me my bf agrees and we split to check if there’s at least one opened. In couple of minutes he calls me with no good news, but I manage to find a closed one but with a pharmacy worker smoking outside.
“Are you… open?” I say putting all my hope and strength in those words
“No, I’ve just closed up and will be heading to the shelter”
My heart drops. I start crying and sobbing, I’m pretty sure the shit twin monster inside me is crying as well. Even more, I’m pretty sure it got hysterical, because it started to punch my guts from the inside, causing me to look forward to inevitably shitting myself on the street. But mama didn’t raise a public shitter, so I‘m refusing to give up.
„Can you help me please?“ I say sobbing. „I really need some medication right now“.
The pharmacist gets serious. „What do you need?“ he asks. I see him imagining worst case scenarios, like what if the girl has a deadly allergy, or needs an insulin shot immediately, what if some of her relatives got a heart attack from an air raid alert? I can see he‘s ready to be a hero and save someone’s life so I feel ashamed and scared to disappoint him with the real reason.
„I… I have explosive diarrhoea… C…Can you help?»
He immediately changes in the face an giggles. I think that‘s the end. I’m already imagining myself found dead under the rubbles in couple of days and feeling pity for the unfortunate firefighter who could have forgotten to wear his respirator and would find my covered in shit body.
“I can’t sell during the air raid, but…” - the pharmacist interrupts my sick imagination. - But if you got cash, I can give it to you and I’ll put it in the system later.”
The deal was done and I took the medication. I’ve never felt so happy in my life, not even when I graduated my master’s year and a half later or when I went to the seaside for the first time. I can’t imagine any other life event that would be comparable in joy with that tiny little anti-shitted-dead-girl pill.
PART 3. THE SHITMONSTER STRIKES BACK
Of course, after taking the pill me and bf decided to try and make it to the shelter again. If there was no missile danger I would even describe this walk as pleasant. I was much calmer as was my bf and we were sure that this time we’ll get there. We couldn’t have been more wrong.
By this time we have already read some news and found out that something was hit in the other part of city. We decided to try to run and that was a mistake close to fatal. As soon as my guts shook a bit it all came back: all the feelings of pain, all the inside gut punches, all the pressure returned back to my poor tired anus. My bf left all his hopes for safety an we went home to try to finish this battle.
We walk in the dorm, I’m half bent again, almost crying. The desperation hits me, when I understand that elevator is still not working because of the air raid alert. I start sobbing because walking to the twelfth floor is the last thing I want to do and I’m definitely not capable of doing it in time with that raccoon sized liquid something wanting to get out of my body and to live free and happily somewhere in the sewer system.
Here is the moment when my bf becomes my hero. He talks to kind of “security-receptionist” old lady who works here if I can use her private bathroom. She agrees and I waste no time. I get to the toilet an do my thing. I shit and I cry both from pain and relief, and I sob, and I grunt and I cry again. The shitmoster’s twin finally leaves my body. I feel alive. I feel powerful. I also feel sorry for teenage mutant ninja turtles because I’ve definitely caused an environmental disaster in their inhabited area.
I walk out the bathroom and this poor old lady looks terrified as well as the couple other student, who, apparently needed to use the bathroom but also lived too high to walk home. But I’m not ashamed. I’m proud. My work there was finished. Just like the air raid alert just a couple of minutes after.
If you got to this point - thank you for reading. Sorry for the long post
TL;DR: A girl gets explosive diarrhoea while baslistic missiles and drones strike the city. Saved by the pharmacist, bf and air defence.

I am not the OOP. The OOP is u/AdventurousClock6275 posting in AITAH
Ongoing as per OOP
Thanks to u/colorsofautomn for finding this BORU
1 update - Medium
Original - 17th April 2024
Update - 29th April 2024
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1 New Update + comment from OOP on the original BORU
Update 2 - 1st May 2024
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AITA for divorcing my wife over getting a massage
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My soon to be ex-wife and I are both in our late 30s. We've been together 12 years married for 10. We are in a dead bedroom. It was totally dead for 6 months before I filed for divorce. It was on life support/ICU for 5-6 years before that.
We both wanted to be younger parents, and both wanted 2 kids. We conceived our daughter almost immediately after getting married. When she was 6 months old we started trying to have the 2nd child. It never happened. After 3 years we started seeing fertility specialists and found out we both have pretty serious reproductive issues. The doctor told us our daughter was nothing short of a miracle, and said it was against all odds that we not only conceived but carried to term. It was after this that the sex life began to seriously decline.
Initially I thought it was just the pain of finding out, and knowing we wouldn't be able to afford the fertility options, and figured it would get better over time. It never did, it only got worse. 5 years ago I would say we had sex 15 to 20 times that year, in 2023 we had sex 3 times. I have tried everything to improve this, spicing things up, talking, suggested counseling. I more than pull my weight around the house. We both work and work basically the same hours. I'm telling this because the usual stuff I read on Reddit about how "The wife does it all" is not even close to true.
Over time I have grown more and more resentful. The thing that makes me the most resentful is she knows I have a high libido, and just doesn't care. I on the other hand know she loves to be rubbed on/massaged, and never took that from her. I probably rub on her 325 times a year. Almost every night I will rub her claves, shins, ankles and feet. 4 to 5 nights a month I will go big and do neck, shoulder, back, butt, hamstring, quads, shins, calves, ankles, and feet. I noticed that doing the big massages was the best way to get sex, as she was more likely to allow me to do the foreplay things I know work on her if I had already done this prep. I did them more often a few years ago but now not as much. The success rate was never that great, maybe 20% of the time, but in the last 2 years we are definitely in the single digits.
When we hit the 4 months of absolutely no sex, I decided I wasn't rubbing on her ever again. It only took 3 days for her to notice and she asked me to. I told her no, and I got angry. I said "Why should I, when you don't give a fuck about what I want.". Obviously not my finest moment and huge argument followed. Things got ice cold at home but I wasn't giving in, I was tired of all of it.
A few weeks ago she told me fine, I will just start seeing a professional masseuse. I said, "Then I will start seeing sex workers." She said that was cheating. I said "Fine, I won't but you will not get a massage from anyone else, that is also cheating.". She said I was being ridiculous and I said, "No, it's being touched in an intimate way by another, if I can't have that, neither can you, and I swear to fucking God if you do I will file for divorce that day."
The following weekend, she went to get her nails done, I know how long it takes for her to get her nails done. She came back almost an hour and half later than I expected. She didn't say anything just acted normal. I got on her credit card app on my phone and sure enough there was a $95 charge to the goddamn massage person in the same strip mall as the nail place.
I lost it, and when I did so did she. I think we both let out years of frustration on each other. True to my word though I called a divorce lawyer on Monday. The only part that upset me was my lawyer said based on these circumstances I couldn't list "Infidelity" as the reason for divorce and had to go with "irreconcilable differences."
Anyway she has been telling people we are divorcing because she got a massage. Since then I have had a number of family members/friends call me and say I'm an asshole. Some of them even when I tell them my real reasons, still think I'm an asshole and that my reasons aren't good enough. Personally, I think getting massage when told not to, is plenty of reasoning. So am I the asshole here?
Personal note: I reread this and I know it comes off angry. But I am angry, angry at myself for wasting so many years. But I'm also angry because this was just the ultimate fuck you, she just went and did it anyway and didn't even try to hide it. Literally went to the same place next to the nail salon and used her CC which I pay, like I wasn't going to see the charge.
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Comments
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Laughing_Dragon_77
The last straw is almost always something small and stupid. But it's just the latest in a long line of hurts.
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Hi_Limee
I know thats a kinda obvious thing but this was very well said.
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CheapChallenge
The massage was just the last final blow to this already dead marriage. Just divorce and let it die already.
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sqwiggy72
Definitely, the massage was just the final nail in the coffin. You didn't get a divorce over a massage but a dead marriage.
MysteryMan845
A sexless marriage = roommates with shared accomodations.

OOP: In the process

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Update - 12 days later
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While this is not official by any means at this point, I'll take it as a positive. STBX asked me to meet yesterday to hash out some details of the divorce, and it was actually pretty productive.
We agreed on a 50/50 custody arrangement. Basically week there week here. Becomes 2 weeks during summer break. We each keep our own retirements, splitting the savings 60-40 her favor. Each keep our primary vehicle.
I made a huge concession on the house, it was my idea. I want our child to grow up in that house. Ours was a 3 bedroom, with a finished basement and nice yard. I don't want her to live in a pair of 2 bedroom apartments. This is important to me. I'll be paying a "housing alimony" each month to offset some costs, since my rent and projected utilities etc are much lower than the mortgage/utilities/upkeep. We did agree on some stipulations that would end that.
If another adult should moves in (i.e. a boyfriend/new husband) my obligation ends immediately.
My obligation ends when our daughter moves out or turns 22, whichever comes first.
There's a bunch of different scenarios we talked about in terms of splitting the house if she wishes to sell it. I won't bore with all of that, but basically as long as I continue to make the alimony payment I'll get 40% at time of sale or a buyout.
I'm turning all this over to my lawyer this week, and he will write it up and send it to her lawyer. While she definitely had a "you are beneath me vibe", during our meeting, I'm happy this doesn't look like it will be an ugly divorce as I was very worried it would be. I assume our daughter is the motivating factor for her sudden amicable attitude.
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Comments
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Windermere15
Just want to say I’m a lawyer who has been through a divorce and this sounds kind of stupid. Clean break with assets and then a separate parenting plan. Do not mix them.
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FlyoverHangover
Thank you Same exact boat, I don’t practice family law but I’ve been in family court a few times and this sounds dumb as shit.
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MrJigglyBrown
If you read ops original post he is kind of stupid so yea
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New Updates start here
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OOP comments on the original BORU
Came across my posts here, this is fun, then started reading comments, found it less fun. Since the compiler didn't bother including this comment from the day I posted, I'll just post it under the top comment.
This reads angry, because I was angry when I wrote it, I was angry for weeks after that massage, and no I don't actually give a shit about the massage, I was basically hysterical at the time. I'm evened out now, and feel better than I have in years. So many people in this Update sub want to judge, so here. Here's a few more details,
"Most of you are correct, this isn't about a massage, I could honestly care less about the massage. That was simply what I fixated on after I finally broke.
Now to those that like to ride the assumption train or, for some reason, just create your own narrative based on who knows what.
I did not just massage my wife to get sex. I did this for her 300 times a year nearly our entire relationship. I did it back when we used to have sex 10-15 times a month, back when foreplay was something I still got to experience, back when lingerie was common and not just a distant memory. The full massages just became the only way to get the chance of sex above ZERO. The small leg ones were never escalated by me and far more common.
Since most people bashing me decided to skim over or ignore the short vague list of all i tried over the years here's a more comprehensive account: Date nights, weekend vacations, love letters, long conversations where I laid out all my feelings (I'll give her credit, she never did promise to do better, just told me she understands where I'm coming from, guess I should have understood then that meant she didn't care), I suggested counseling 5 times. I even booked us once and ended up going to the first 2 sessions by myself, when she said she was too busy to go the 3rd I just cancelled and never went back.
Yes, the day to day routine stuff is pretty balanced, as far as housework, career, and I think we are both great parents. But our relationship was one sided, it took me a long time to see it so boldly and to stop accepting it. If she wants a snack, she doesn't get it, she asks me to, drink, same thing. If she wanted to go out with friends, sure babe no prob go ahead, I got the girl just worry about you. If I do, it's 2 hour prep for me to make sure nothing's gonna go wrong while I'm out. A couple years ago I saw a clip of a comedian talking about being out golfing when his wife wanted to watch a DVD, and everyone's laughing as he's describing the whole conversation. I just wanted to ball my eyes out, because that was my life. I just stopped trying to even go out, it wasn't worth the effort anymore.
Yeah we had other forms of Intimacy, we cuddled at bedtime to fall asleep. She never really liked kissing or hand holding so I wrote those off back when times were good. So I had cuddling and on the very rare occasion sex to look forward to. Now let's flip this over, besides the near daily rub downs, also pretty common for me to brush her hair, she likes that she'll ask for that. Painted toe nails a few times, back scratching pretty common. Oh usually draw her a bath after she works out, does that count as intimacy, or is that just more of only doing things to fuck her?
I guess I am the asshole, I'm the asshole to myself for putting up with this for so long. And I get it, you're all right, we both have unprocessed trauma from having our dreams dashed, but I didn't quit. I honestly didn't berate her emotionally because of this, I knew she was having a hard time, yeah I let my frustrations or disappointment show sometimes, but I didn't get angry. Not until now, not until I had that bad day, and she said "well, tomorrow will be better, can you rub on me." And the sick thing is I felt totally dismissed and still did it anyway. After, I was so angry I just decided I'm never rubbing on her again. And ive been angry ever since, even now typing this has put me in a full rage. No I really don't give a shit about the massage, it was just the final Fuck You of our marriage."
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Update 2: AITA for divorcing my wife over a massage? - 2 days later
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Well that didn't last long.
Lawyer called first thing this morning. Wife changed mind, rejecting all the house stuff we talked about. Says she wants to sell and move into something smaller. She is only rejecting the house agreements, custody agreement is not being rejected
I told my lawyer fine, I'm done. Told him here's the offer from my side then.
50/50 custody, 50/50 split of house sale, I'll still go 60/40 on savings (I know some you say this is dumb/unfair, but I have my reasons and they all revolve around our daughter.)
I'm actually fine with this, not even upset that she wasted 4 hours of our time on Saturday. Just ready to be done, after my initial tirade I have really come into a good place, it's like I spent years carrying around a backpack of stones and I finally decided to put it down.
Personal Response to OnlyFans "models": Stop sending me invites and messages. I can jack off on my own just fine for free, I'm not going to pay you. Leave people the fuck alone.
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Comments
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First_Alfalfa2805
I cackled at the onlyfans comments.
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underrated_tipsy
I laughed sooo hard outloud. Wasn't expecting that. I read his OG post and was just here for the update.
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dr_lucia

50/50 custody, 50/50 split of house sale, I'll still go 60/40 on savings

Sounds like a cleaner break.
I understand your motive for the previous house deal, but it was likely to result in disagreements later. You monitoring whether another adult has "moved in"? Of did he just spend a couple of nights? What if her mom needs a place to stay? She's an adult. You daughter moves out for a month... two? When do you pull the trigger? What if you got hit by a bus, cancer or were briefly unemployed and missed three payments? Do you still get 40% of the buy out?
Four hours of wasted time is really nothing.
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I am not the OOP. Please do not harass the OOP.
Please remember the No Brigading Rule and to be civil in the comments

...I knew you when Our common goal was waiting for the world to end.
Yeah, couldn't resist the reference to "Black Sheep" by Metric. Or to Scott Pilgrim, maybe.
Anyway! This is another longish one, and a bit of a culmination of David's miniature paranoia arc. We'll be back to cozy food after this. I ran a little guessing game on my Discord thread over who was behind the break-in. Congratulations to longtime Sifal Superfan u/Killsode-slugcat for successfully guessing "One of the UN soldiers". Honorable mention to u/JulianSkies for guessing "Rosi the Yotul", which is also kind of correct, just not for this specific break-in.
I forgot to mention this last week, but I'm starting to make a point of not chaining myself to established NoP lore quite so much, particularly when that lore doesn't actually exist. So you're gonna catch me talking about aspects of the 2136 geopolitical landscape and the historical aftermath of the Satellite Wars, and most of that is just me making stuff up, e.g. referencing an otherwise unheard of event called the Buryatian Counter-Pogroms last week.
[First] - [Prev]
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Memory Transcription Subject: Chiri, Gojid Refugee
Date [standardized human time]: November 1, 2136
The sun was setting over the urban sprawl off to the west as David brought the boat full of supplies back to the rubble-specked island we were living on. I had my new holopad in my coat pocket, but aside from that, we’d left our purchases on the boat until we had a better idea of what was going on back at the restaurant. Strong-looking humans in blue uniforms, a darker shade of blue than the Peacekeepers, were filtering out of the building just as we strolled up.
“Hi, I’m the owner, I called it in,” said David, waving the law enforcement agents down. “What happened?”
One officer glanced back into the restaurant, and shook his head. “Nothing to report,” he said, an annoyed twist to his mouth. “There were no looters. You’re safe to head back in.” He wasn’t making eye contact with David when he spoke. I thought humans normally did that.
“The door wasn’t unlocked, was it?” asked David. He’d made a big show of locking it as we left. He’d said I was already the second alien to barge in while the place was closed.
“Have a nice evening, sir,” said the police officer, conspicuously neither answering the question nor setting us at ease.
David and I watched the officers filter out and drive off, not sure whether or not it was a wise idea to quietly dread whatever, if anything, we’d find inside. He took a deep breath, and led the way.
What we found was a human woman in a formal suit--wasn’t that normally menswear?--seated at a table, glaring at the door, her polished black shoes propped up on another chair for comfort. There was a glass of some brown liquor on the table in front of her, along with a couple lime wedges, some already used, and the rest of the fancy-looking bottle. Behind her, I noticed that the only gap in the bar’s lineup was on the top shelf. Beyond that, my deductive reasoning had nothing. I had no idea who this woman was.
Jilted former lover, here to steal him back from you, the critical voice offered immediately. She was always happy to put that kind of evil into words.
“Good evening, Charmaine,” David said coldly. “We’re not currently open. Shall I close out your tab for the añejo?” Aged tequila, then, if my memory served.
“Fuck you,” she said, pointing her glass at David aggressively. “You called the fucking cops on me?!”
“You broke into my restaurant,” David scoffed, incredulous.
“How did you even know I was here?” Charmaine asked pointedly.
“I’m sorry, you want hints on how to break into my building?” David said, eyebrows raised.
“If I wanted to go around intimidating civilians, I would have joined the CIA in the first place,” Charmaine said. “I didn’t. I joined the Peacekeepers. It’s a big, scary galaxy out there. Somebody with experience had to look after all those green fucking volunteers.” She glared bitterly at David. “You and your Plucky Space Girlfriend are the reason I’m stuck in this shit job on the home front instead now. So yes, the least you could do is help me get good at it.”
Plucky Space Girlfriend? I pointed to myself in baffled confusion.
“What? No, not you,” said Charmaine, incredulous. “Who the fuck even are you? Hell, how did you even get here? Aren’t all the Gojids supposed to be back at the--”
David cut her off, and redirected her back to her initial question. Away from asking questions about me. “Security system went off,” he said, patting the pocket containing his holopad.
“I disabled the security system,” Charmaine shot back.
“Backup security system,” said David, pointing at the ceiling. The two humans stared at each other in baffling silence for a few moments. Faintly, from several stories up, at the very edge of hearing, I could just barely make out the sound of a dog barking.
Charmaine’s jaw dropped. “Oh come on! You had a fucking nanny cam going for the dog?!”
“Yup! Poor little guy was freaking out, so I checked the main security system. Couldn’t see the feed for some reason.” David shrugged, smirking. “Don’t be so hard on yourself, you’re new at this.”
“Again, go fuck yourself,” said Charmaine. “You know goddamn well why I’m new at this.”
“Where’s your Plucky Earth Boyfriend, by the way?” asked David, taking the seat across from her. I followed David, but I wasn’t following this conversation.
“Do I look like I fuck dudes?” Charmaine scoffed, running her hand through a head of hair trimmed shorter than David’s.
“You look like a cop,” offered David helpfully.
“Fuck. You.” Charmaine clearly hadn’t found his observation helpful. “If you’re asking about William, College Boy’s at a plum desk job down in Arlington. Old jarheads like me get stuck with fieldwork.”
“Oh, you never mentioned your service history,” said David. “I’m surprised the Peacekeepers didn’t just transfer you back to the Marines.”
“The Powers That Be wanted me on a shorter leash than that,” said Charmaine, icily. “The leash feels great, actually! You should put one on, too.”
David rolled his eyes. “Is that why you’re here? You and I both know I’m entirely too stubborn and opinionated to follow orders at all, let alone to do proper intelligence work. This is just about loose ends, and making sure I don’t talk about what happened. They can’t properly call it Top Secret if it happened in plain sight of a civilian with no clearance, and they’re mad they can’t arrest me if I run my mouth about it.”
I blinked, as the puzzle suddenly started to click into place. “Oh! Okay, wait, is this about that Arxur you met?”
I didn’t think Charmaine’s jaw could drop any further, but there it went. Even David froze in shock, his eyes impossibly wide.
“You told a fucking HERBIVORE?!” Charmaine screeched. “How stupid are you?!”
I was on my feet in an instant, claws brandished with rage. “Call me an herbivore again and I'll rip your fucking skin off!” I roared.
Chairmaine’s eyes went wide and whipped over to David. Her head shook incredulously. “You son of a bitch,” she said hollowly. “You fucking did it again, didn’t you. Didn’t you!”
David smirked, and tried to regain momentum. “Did you know that the Kolshian meat allergy, at least in Gojids, isn’t triggered by cheese?” He leaned forward, conspiratorially. “Ask me how I know,” he whispered.
“How the fuck…” the human woman breathed. “You realize this isn’t making your case easier, right? Like, what, I’m supposed to head back home and tell my handlers that the goddamn Alien Whisperer doesn’t want to work with us?”
David shrugged. “It was a fluke.”
“Convincing an alien to betray its culture and defect to Earth once is a fluke! Twice, it’s becoming a fucking pattern!” Charmaine shouted.
“I barely did anything! It’s selection bias!” David insisted. “Only the open-minded ones are willing to come to Earth at all. Seriously, have we even had a single visiting foreign head of state yet? Even our staunchest allies are still too terrified to come see the Savage Predator Homeworld.”
“Don’t change the subject,” Charmaine muttered. “The CIA needs you.” She rolled her eyes. “Probably.”
David shook his head. “There's only one intelligence job I'll accept, and I'm already applying for it.”
Charmaine raised her eyebrows. “And that is?”
“Gang of Eight.”
David was a somewhat reserved person most of the time. So were most of the on-duty Peacekeepers I’d run into. It reasonably followed from that, then, that the sound that came out of Charmaine was, without hyperbole, the loudest I had ever heard a human laugh, ever.
“You’re running for Congress!?” she managed to eventually squeeze out between full-body comedy convulsions.
David shrugged. “City council first, maybe work my way up, but yeah. Gonna try my hand at politics.”
“Sorry, what’s the Gang of Eight?” I asked.
“America’s main legislative body has hundreds of delegates,” David said. “On paper, they’re supposed to oversee all intelligence work, but it’s just too impractical to brief all of them on matters of utmost secrecy, so in reality, only eight of them get briefed on the full picture. It used to be eight specific members back under the old pre-SatWar two-party system, but it’s a little more free-form nowadays.”
Charmaine rolled her eyes. “It’s still never a first-term congressman with no previous intelligence work.”
“It can be if the CIA says he’s got a talent for it,” David said, smirking. “In fact, I hear they’re so optimistic about my abilities, they dispatched an agent to ask me in person to work with them.”
Charmaine snorted dismissively, but there was a hint of a smile as she took another sip of her tequila. “Smartass.”
David smirked. “Now, now, there’s no need for obscenity! Why, I’m just a down-to-Earth small business owner with some strong opinions about how our mismanaged foreign policy’s starting to hurt our economy,” he said. “Who’s going to speak for the hardworking average American? Not those fat cats up on Capitol Hill, I’ll tell you what!”
“Stahp,” Charmaine groaned, as she slumped over her glass. “I’m not fuckin’ drunk enough to hear your shitty talking head impersonation.”
“And you won’t be,” said David. “Again, we’re closed, and I have some ingredients to unload, so unless you plan to help carry groceries, would you mind calling yourself a cab?”
The agent looked at the door, her brow furrowed, deciding her next course of action. The conversation sounded like it was concluding, at last, but it didn’t feel like the matter was resolved at all. If they wanted David’s silence, then it didn’t sound like Charmaine’s employers would consider a long-term career in public service to be a serious compromise. She looked like a woman who’d reached a dead-end, not a destination, and so she was already plotting a new course.
She’s a threat to the life we’re trying to build here, said the critical voice, far more emotional than usual. We’re leaving ourselves vulnerable. She’ll keep coming back until she gets what she wants.
She could interfere with our visa application, said the odd voice, far more methodical than usual. Force David to choose between silence and us.
Did I have the voices on backwards?
The two greatest threats to our safety are your weakness and your foolishness, the critical voice explained. I have to say unkind things to keep you alive. We are NOT getting hurt again!
You were raised an herbivore, but your blood remembers the hunt, the odd voice explained. You live astride two worlds. Your instincts know how to hurt people. Your imagination knows how others can hurt you.
What’s the Council’s recommendation, then?
Strike now, they said.
“So I’m sorry, but could I ask the obvious question?” I said, doing my best impersonation of a Fissan businesswoman in the midst of a particularly icy negotiation. “Why does it matter if David talks? The world’s been turned upside-down around once per month since the United Nations made first contact. What’s one more terrible revelation on the pile going to do?”
Charmaine shook her head in frustration. “I don’t fucking know. The ‘why’ is above my pay grade. I just have my orders.”
I tilted my head. “You don’t even know why talking about it is bad, but you somehow know that telling a former member of the Federation is worse?”
“I…” Charmaine began, baffled. She leaned back in her chair, away from me. “I mean, we don’t want state secrets leaking to the wider world.”
“I said ‘former’, though?” I said quizzically. “I'm on Team Earth now.”
“If I might interject?” David brushed his hair back, and seemed to mimic my stance at the table instinctively. He fell into formation as naturally as he breathed, covering me like a gunship off my wing. Was this the power of a social predator? “Look, if I had to speculate,” he said, “I’d say it’s a policy concern. I have more fingers on one hand than there have been conventional attacks on U.S. soil, and every single one ended in escalation. People are already calling for blood. Pull up social media from the last few weeks, and the only topic that was trending harder than ‘Glass Nishtal’ was ‘Humanity First’, and that particular movement has already drawn blood.”
Charmaine looked like she was searching for a good spot to hook into that argument. It had the cadence of supporting keeping the Arxur incident secret, but David had omitted that connection when making his case. He was technically just describing the regional zeitgeist without actually making a point. It was a good distraction, and I trusted that he had a deeper point he was thrusting towards.
The human woman is strong, said the odd voice, but we can outwit her. It’s two against one.
She’s probably beginning to regret drinking before this conversation, yes, said the critical voice.
“How does that tie back to the Arxur?” I asked, trying to set David up for the kill.
“Because my little incident makes the Arxur look sympathetic,” he said. “When the Federation had us dead to rights, it was the Arxur who bailed us out. That knowledge is already fucking with the narrative. Add in this idea that they were victims as much as victimizers, and suddenly policy shifts. The UN is gearing up for total war against the Federation. If this gets out, there’s going to be a massive popular push for us to detour into Arxur regime change.”
“Right!” said Charmaine, taking the bait. “So that’s why this can’t get out!”
David tilted his head forward. “You want us to go to war without letting the public make an informed decision on who we’re attacking?”
Charmaine flinched like she’d been struck. “That’s not what I--”
“No no, it’s fine, we’ve got a wonderful track record on undeclared wars with no civilian oversight,” said David. “We should just let the nice powerful men in suits do whatever they think is best for America and the economy. Aafa could use a few pineapple plantations.”
Charmaine leapt to her feet in a fury. I did likewise, and she froze up. The ex-Peacekeeper wasn’t wearing her shiny blue body armor anymore, just a set of clothing that humans called a “suit”. See, I’d been learning a lot today. I’d learned the names of a number of different kinds of human clothing, for example. I’d also learned that my quills alone could pretty trivially shred through most of them.
The human woman glared at me, and sat back down. “Keep Hawaii out of your fuckin’ mouth,” she muttered at David. “But yeah, I see your point.”
I sat down as well. “That covers the issues with telling humanity,” I said, “but what about people like me?”
This time, David’s attention swiveled, and it was me that he looked at with concern. His mouth opened, but he said nothing for a few moments, choosing his words carefully. “There’s too much hatred for the Arxur among the people of the Federation,” he said softly. “Opening doors with the Arxur might close them with the Feds. Even seeing us openly considering working with the Arxur might send what few allies we have running to the hills.”
Charmaine nodded. She hadn’t made the point, but it supported her position nevertheless. “Yeah, I mean, that’s a pretty big geopolitical concern. Good enough excuse to keep this under wraps, right?”
I didn’t need the chorus inside my head for this one. Deep down, I already knew what to say.
“I don’t feel like my life has been better for having the truth hidden from me,” I said softly. “If the Arxur were always willing to talk with meat-eaters, we Gojids might have been greeted as allies, like you were, if our culture hadn’t been stolen from us.”
Charmaine looked afflicted. Was that just empathy, or had her culture been stolen from her as well?
“So, wait, are you still Catholic, or did you finally stop living in fear of centuries-old missionaries?” asked David, showing an aggressive lack of tact.
Charmaine leapt to her feet again in a rage. “What did I fucking say?” Charmaine said threateningly.
“You said to keep Hawaii out of my mouth,” David said calmly. “I’m talking about the Philippines.”
“I’m from both archipelagos,” Charmaine growled.
“Then you can appreciate the damage that colonialism can do to a culture twice over,” said David, “and how important it is to reverse it. Do you even recognize the name of Kulalaying, the Moon’s Shadow, or do you simply accept the gods the Spaniards inflicted on you?”
Charmaine shook her head, hollowly. “So… what, that’s a pre-contact mythological name? Why the fuck do you even know that?”
David snorted. “Because I can cook a better pancit palabok than your grandmother.”
“Okay. Why don’t you reel it the fuck back in, buddy,” Charmaine said coldly.
David held his palms up in a gesture of peace. That was an out of line thing for him to say. I didn’t know what “pancit palabok” was, but it sounded like an old family recipe. Trash talking someone’s generational home cooking was considered “a dick move” in most cultures.
“Savory-sweet noodles flavored with sea creatures,” David explained. “Classic celebratory dish from Filipino culture.” He shook his head. “And… yeah, I was mentored by an outspoken expat for a while. He had some very strong opinions on the importance of reclaiming his precolonial heritage.”
“And ‘Catholic’?” I asked.
“Subtype of Christian,” said David. He turned back to Charmaine. “‘And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.’ Gospel of John, Chapter 8, Verse 32.”
She squinted at David incredulously. “Wait, I thought you were Jewish.”
David shrugged. “Think what you like, but it’s a poor Atheist who can’t quote scripture.”
“And the Bible quote is in reference to, what, your cooking?”
David shook his head. “No, that was back to the meat of the matter. Whether or not we should hide what I know from the Federation. We shouldn’t. It might be rough in the short term, but they’re better off in the long run for not living a lie. There’s a Krakotl Admiral in international prison right now who’s going to lose his shit if he ever fully grasps that humans are people. We shouldn’t hide from the Federation that the Arxur are people, too.”
I didn’t want to admit it, not about the Arxur, but I knew the score. “Don’t treat us like lessers,” I said. “We’re sapient. If the evidence is there, we’ll come around to it.”
Charmaine slumped back down into her chair, and just shook her head. “You two are exhausting, you know that?” She perked up for a moment, as a thought occurred to her. “I don’t think I caught your name, actually,” she said, looking towards me.
I stiffened, and repeated the words to the magic spell I’d learned. “I’d like to speak to an attorney before answering any further questions, sir.”
Charmaine snorted. “It’s ‘ma’am’. And see? Exhausting.” She sighed, and sat up. “Look, I hope you appreciate that I can’t actually make policy decisions. That happens way the fuck up the chain. Best I can realistically do is run interference. Drag this out long enough that somebody else’s cat gets out of a different bag, and keeping your secret becomes moot. So I suppose, to that end, I’ll be stopping by from time to time.” She smirked. “It sounds to me like I’ve almost convinced you to join up! I’ll let my boss know that it’ll just take another visit or two, and you’ll come around.”
“Might even take three, who knows?” David said, playing along. “I’m sure you’ll convince me eventually. Just keep trying!”
“Put the tequila on my tab, then,” said Charmaine, rising to her feet for a third time, but calmly at last. “And for the love of God, please stop casually deprogramming aliens.”
“No,” said David, smiling.
Charmaine groaned. “Fuck you, then. And I’m coming back for that better-than-my-Grandmother’s palabok, you hear me?”
“Only if you start respecting locked doors,” David shot back.
“No,” she said, smiling, and left.
For a moment, everything was quiet, and just the two of us were alone in an empty restaurant. David reached over and held my paw in his hand in a show of support and sympathy. “What an exhausting day,” he said, and I couldn’t disagree.

My (f18) friend, (m18) Joe, is girl crazy! We've been friends/acquaintances for about three years and he's slowly spiraled into girl insanity. For the past few months all he could talk about is girls! GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS!! All he wants is a girlfriend, it doesn't matter who, he just needs one. Which understandable ig, idk I'm not a teen boy, but it's now it's his personality.
Anyways, this whole ordeal started with a phone call. I was doing homework very late at night when I started receiving concerning texts from Joe like "I made a huge mistake", "please help me!" and "I really need your advice" so thinking that he was getting raped or something I texted him back and we ended up on a phone call. Over the phone he tells me that he's been online chatting with a girl, Marcy (f16, almost 17) a junior who goes to a different high school, and he was unsure if he should continue persuing her? idk he just wanted to waste my time talking about girls again
Anyways he describes her red flags to me. He didn't like that fact she had past relationships, and wasn't a virgin. And he was unsure if he wanted to date someone with a high body count and felt uncomfortable when she talked about sexual stuff. He also thought that she mentioned her mental illness too much, (ADHD and anxiety). Throughout this whole phone call he mentions that she's super weird for these things especially after talking to her over the phone.
He sends me screenshots of their text messages (I didn't not ask for them) and they seem super normal, although Joe was being super dry, he was lucky the conversation lasted for as long as it did. And she mentioned her mental illness twice at most. So I give him my opinion based off of what little information I got, that if she makes uncomfortable he should ghost her, and since she's had many relationships in a short period of time, then is very likely that she wouldn't treat him well and use her mental illness as an excuse for her bad behavior.
He then got super huffy about the ghosting bit, because "it hurts too much to ghost someone", and I was like "nuh-uh, that's literally like saying your a cyber bully victim, just put the phone away". Then he got mad at me, "because it was so easy for me because I ghosted him".
Context: Last year we were each other's homecoming dates, we went as friends, and I communicated that to him multiple times, I saw it as a way to get to know him better because we were more of mutual friends at the time. After homecoming, we exchange photos, and the conversation dies, he would send an occasional game pigeon and I would sometimes reply and that was it. He stopped talking to irl during this time frame too. A year afterwards he confronts me about "the ghosting" and he regretted asking me to be his date. Apparently he thought that we were boyfriend and girlfriend, even though we barely knew each other, he never asked, and I told him we were going just as friends many times!!
Fast foreword to senior breakfast, I run into Joe, he tells me that he is now dating Marcy because he's super desperate and that he basically had to settle for her. And they are going to prom together, in the same group that I'm going with. I try to be supportive, but it's hard after hearing so much bad stuff about her.
On the bus ride back to the school, Joe is sitting right in front of my prom date (m18) and I, they start chatting, and Joe gets all up in my date's personal space, so I make a joke like "hey quit flirting with my prom date! he's mine!" and for the rest of the bus ride back Joe makes it his mission to flirt my date, and how he's so much better with me. Which I'm fine with, my date is a handsome gentleman, Dobby probably couldn't help himself. Until he says that I'm just a hole because I'm female. Joe has demoted himself from friend to acquaintance.
It's now prom night, our group takes our photos and goes out for dinner. I finally meet Marcy and she's super sweet, and may I say, absolutely stunning. We talk throughout dinner and she is nothing like Joe described her as.
After dinner we head towards the prom venue, my date and I got there before our group so we explore and eventually run into Marcy and Joe. We then dance for a while and Marcy's become undone because we're dancing so hard. So I escort her to the bathroom to try to salvage it.
Marcy then starts talking about how Joe and her, and how most of our group has mixed opinions about him (mind you, she doesn't know anyone in our group because she doesn't go to our school), and she asked me what I thought of him. So I told her the truth, how he presented her to other people at the beginning of their relationship was messed up, the fact that he degraded her to friends about her flaws how yapped about he was desperate and how he had to settle for her, all the dirt including homecoming and the girl craze. But hey! I tried being positive, I said that he likes her and that they look good together.
After sharing my opinion, she says that she's gonna confront him on these things later, and asked if she could name drop me, and I was like go right ahead, I don't care, I'll own it. But I think she confronted him right after. They left prom early and Joe couldn't look either of us in the face.
I definitely ruined their relationship after sharing that information, but it felt right after hearing him talk about her, and my past experiences with his poor communication skills and general comments about the female gender and relationships. Man, I cant wait to go to college so I never see him again. Was I wrong?