Might post more of these another time but ill post a few now btw sorry for bad grammar and spelling im not really trying and im tired. when i was growing up my dad always told me stories about when he was growing up in the philippines my whole family is filipino. he also told me these stories about this candle. apparently this candle had writing on it that said "when this candle is lit the devil is dancing around it" and from what he told me when it was lit instead of it getting shorter from the wax melting it would instead grow. he never told me any of the story behind this candle just that much and i didnt learn more till a long while later. he would tell about these back when i was like 5-8 years old and i didnt find out the origins about it untill i asked my grandpas sister about it earlier this year at the age of 15. she told me more details about the candle and some more cursed items that our family owned. apparently the real story behind the candle is that one day my great grandpa his brother and his other brother were cleaning out a church and the candle fell down and rolled to them they stood it up on a table and it fell off and rolled to them again and they kept puting it back and it kept rolling back. they decided to just take the candle and cut it into thirds and give it to each of them. they would use the candle whenever there was a black out but one day it was burried by my uncle no one knows where it was burried.
i grew up hearing about other cursed items apparently my great grandpa owned this round table where they would sit sometimes and have chats with spirits. my grandpas sister always told us about how they would sometimes sit around the table and our great grandpa would say if theres a spirit here raise the table and the table would go up he also apparently had this cloth/blanket thing and necklace that apparently would make you invisible if you wore them. my grandpas sister told me this story about how in ww2 when the japanese invaded the philippines they all hid under a table and covered it with the blanket thing and the soilders didnt see them at all. she told me another story about how he covered him self with the blanket along with some other family and walked into a american base and the soilders there asked him how he got through the mine field and they decided to send a man out there who got blown up. my grandpas sister apparently burried the blanket and necklace near a river in the philippines from what i was told and apparently my 2 uncles burnt the table and when they burned it they claimed they could see the devil in the fire.
theres alot more stories i grew up with but i might post thouse another time. im coming here with these stories to see if anyone has heard anything simular before if anyone has answers about these i want to know more about my family history and according to my grandpas sister these items and spirits have cursed our family for generations. i want to find more on these things answers if these a real how to break this curse on my family. if anyone has answers please tell me ive been searching for years. sorry for the long post thank you for reading

Welp turns out I’m part black 🤷‍♀️ my moms been sick and hasn’t been able to get a diagnosis for awhile because what the doctors thought she had she couldn’t have because it’s a “black disease” and we AREN’T black…until my mom got some genetic testing done. Turns out she does have the “black disease” because she’s part black. She confronted my grandmother about it and she confessed that she’s 1/2 black and has been hiding it her entire life. My great grandparents cheated on each other a lot my great grandpa with women over seas while in the military and my grandma with every black “handyman” she hired while he was away. My grandma was light skinned and could pass for white as long as she kept her hair cut short in a pixie cut so that’s what great grandma did and my grandma has kept that hairstyle her entire life. I don’t know if great grandpa ever knew or when grandma found out but she still continue the charade even though great grandparents have been dead since the 80s. It’s very weird because it’s not like we were fully white before my grandmas grandmother was Native American and my grandma was always very proud of that. Decorated her house in tribal decor, passed down the skill of tribal medicine and healing, taught all of us about our tribe and its history etc so why hide this? She isn’t racist either her 2 best friends to the point of me referring to them as aunties are both black women I’ve been to their houses celebrated holidays with their families grew up with their grandchildren my cousin even married one of them and now has 2 mixed kids herself. Like it’s just so weird that she’d hide this and is still wanting to pretend that she isn’t black and asked us to never talk about it again or bring it up to anyone she knows. This is weird right? I don’t even know how to feel about it. Like how did I not see it?? My grandma has always had dark tan skin but I just thought it was our native heritage and my mother has lightly tan skin with freckles and curly short ginger hair and full lips and thick hips butt and thighs but also very muscular kind of like Simone biles? I never saw it before but now I look at her and she looks like a black person with white skin and red hair. I myself am looking in the mirror and starting to question things,old remarks from high school about having “black booty” or “black girl lips”, my hairdresser calling my hair texture unusual (its wavy in some places straight in others when dry but curls when wet or humid) having a black boss at a fast food chain hire me because she could tell I was “mixed with something” why I also have a disease that is mostly common with POC. I know I’m probably being ridiculous but I feel like I just found the missing small puzzle piece and that something was always a little “off” and now that I have the answer it’ll get better.

This is going to be a long post, and I don't know if anyone will have the answer for me so I plan to do my own research as well, but I figured it would be a waste not to ask others online just in case someone is able to help.
Context: (not necessary to read but I thought I'd tell my story in case someone is interested)
I am 19 years old in the U.S. , and have just finished my first year of college. Currently I am pursuing a Bachelors in Electrical Engineering, because that was the highest paying job that sounded interesting to me in high school. Growing up, my dream has always been to be a teacher. I would love nothing more than to turn around and share the knowledge I've studied up to this point with as many other people as I possibly can, and to have an effect on their life for a long time after I say goodbye to them. Around my freshman year of high school, my mother went back to college and got her degree in education and began teaching 6th grade math/science. Through her, I have found out about the painfully small salaries and the awful mistreatment of teachers here in the states. Even today when I ask her about how work was any particular day, she never has anything good to say about it. She tells me that her job has become a glorified daycare, as many parents of her students try to report her and make her lose her license when their children come home with F's on report cards (these children do not do any of the work my mother gives them, that's why they have F's). Because of these reasons, I chose to give up my dream of being a teacher and pursue something that would be able to provide more for myself and eventually the family I hope to start. I am the third generation of my family here in the U.S., and my family is originally from Scotland and Poland. With this, my mother recently brought it to my attention that it may be possible for me to pursue my dreams of teaching and still provide a good life for a family, but in another country.
The Problems:
As much as I would love to pursue the dream of teaching once again, there are a lot of questions that pop up when I consider the idea. For starters, what country would I attempt to go to? I have family in Scotland, and my mother tells me they are very open to the idea of meeting me and supporting me, and still consider me family even if we have never truly met. Is Scotland a good country for trying to teach and start a family? Or perhaps another country might be a better suit for me to look at?
How would I market myself to a school overseas? My whole life my test scores have always been 98th/99th percentile in the country, but does that matter to someone in a different country? Should I switch degrees to education? Maybe there is some kind of program I am unaware of looking for people to come teach?
I suppose this falls under the question of where, but am I going to be despised if I emigrate to another country? I have seen some people voice their opinions that they absolutely hate the idea of an American couple purchasing land in their country and living there, as it may push out someone who is native to the country but perhaps not as well off.
I don't expect anyone to have an answer for me, as to me this seems like a pretty niche problem. I plan to do my own research but if anyone knows anything they think may help me, please don't be afraid to tell me. If I haven't given enough details, I'm more than willing to give more if it will help you help me. I don't use reddit too often, so I may not even be putting this in the correct place, and if so I'll gladly move the post to where it should be if someone tells me.
If you've read this far, thank you for taking the time to see my story, and even if you don't have any advice for me I appreciate you taking the time out of your day to even consider it.

American companies have been scamming us for decades, leading us to believe their products are worth waiting for sometimes for up to an hour or more for any decent customer service. Apple is guilty of this strange business model in their stores, imo, it is not good. You have all these people standing around the products and a ton of employees but somehow you need an appointment or you have to wait 5-7 people deep before someone can sell you something? Today I needed to buy an iPhone. I'm old school. I walk in, pick up the product I want and pay and walk out. Apple doesn't do it that way and I am tired of having to answer to them so today I flipped the script. I walked in, they told me they couldn't find my phone (I lost it a day ago) because the settings were not correct. Ok. My bad, the software is confusing. They almost had me waiting around for 20-30minutes for their product because it is so good. Well, it isn't. Overseas phones are better and cheaper. They are lying to you. Anyway, I'm not going to spend time trapped in their store model so I told them my expectations. I want to walk in here, pick up a phone, pay for it and leave. If I can't do it, i'll buy another phone from someone else. Not only did I have a phone (I asked for white, I got blue btw so they couldn't even get that right) in about 300 seconds, but they were even rude to me because I was not going to let them waste my time because they could. That store needs a second store with one employee and a bunch of products inside the first store. It needs innovation. It needs some smiles. When you see a customer that isn't happy, you don't become unhappy and rude, you become happy to help and assist and make that money. Ecosystem is the only thing Apple has. It is brilliant. But they are clearly ripping us off.

(The post is slightly altered because the original text was more personal and directed at my friend)
All of this is stuff you’ve already heard before so this is just my personal looks at the album, its meaning, and why it’s probably the best rap album we’ll ever see.
If you have listened to TPAB all the way through then you remember that in the final track, Mortal Man, it’s Kendrick and someone else talking. I put this together and it’s just the conversation they have so you can easily read it and see who is talking when.
This is how I interpret albums meaning: TPAB is about the issues that African Americans will face due to the neglect of the U.S. government. The idea of the butterfly is a person who has become famous, or has power. That’s why in tracks like Wesley’s Theory, the opening track, the person talking says, “When the four corners of this cocoon collide You'll slip through the cracks hopin' that you'll survive Gather your weight, take a deep look inside Are you really who they idolize? To pimp a butterfly.” A butterfly is a transformed caterpillar, so in TPAB the idea of a caterpillar is someone who the government, or really anyone for that matter, doesn’t care about. Once they become famous (transform) and have power, they are treated better or like a butterfly.
Also, fun fact about TPAB that you prob already know. The original title was going to be “To Pimp a Caterpillar.” This was because it would then abbreviate to “2PAC” instead of TPAB.
Now for the conversation:
Kendrick: “I remember you was conflicted, misusing your influence. Sometimes I did the same, abusing my power full of resentment. Found myself screaming in a hotel room. I didn’t wanna self destruct. The evils of Lucy was all around me, so I went running for answers. Until I came home, but that didn’t stop survivors guilt. Going back and forth, trying to convince myself the stripes I earned, or maybe how A-1 my foundation was. But while my loved ones were fighting a continuous war back in the dirty, I was entering a new one. A war that was based on apartheid and discrimination. Made me wanna go back to the city and tell the homies what I learned, the word was respect. Just because you wore a different gang color than mine's doesn't mean I can't respect you as a black man. Forgetting all the pain and hurt we caused each other in these streets. If I respect you, we unify and stop the enemy from killing us, but I don't know, I'm no mortal man, maybe I'm just another n*. Shit and that's all I wrote. I was gonna call it Another N** but, it ain't really a poem, I just felt like it's something you probably could relate to. Other than that, now that I finally got a chance to holla at you. I always wanted to ask you about a certain situa--, about a metaphor actually, you spoke on the ground. What you mean 'bout that, what the ground represent?”
Friend: “The ground is gonna open up and swallow the evil…”
Kendrick - “Right…”
Friend: “That's how I see it, my word is bond. I see--and the ground is the symbol for the poor people, the poor people is gonna open up this whole world and swallow up the rich people. Cause the rich people gonna be so fat, they gonna be so appetising, you know what I'm saying, wealthy, appetizing. he poor gonna be so poor and hungry, you know what I'm saying it's gonna be like... there might be some cannibalism out this mutha, they might eat the rich.”
Kendrick: “Aight so let me ask you this then, do you see yourself as somebody that's rich or somebody that made the best of their own opportunities?”
Friend: “I see myself as a natural born hustler, a true hustler in every sense of the word. I took nothin', I took the opportunities, I worked at the most menial and degrading job and built myself up so I could get it to where I owned it. I went from having somebody manage me to me hiring the person that works my management company. I changed everything I realized my destiny in a matter of five years you know what I'm saying I made myself a millionaire. I made millions for a lot of people now it's time to make millions for myself, you know what I'm saying. I made millions for the record companies, I made millions for these movie companies, now I make millions for us.”
Kendrick: “And through your different avenues of success, how would you say you managed to keep a level of sanity?”
Friend: “and by my faith in "all good things come to those that stay true. You know what I'm saying, and it was happening to me for a reason, you know what I'm saying, I was noticing, shit, I was punching the right buttons and it was happening. So it's no problem, you know I mean it's a problem but I'm not finna let them know. I'm finna go straight through.”
Kendrick: “Would you consider yourself a fighter at heart or somebody that only reacts when they back is against the wall?”
Friend: “Shit, I like to think that at every opportunity I've ever been threatened with resistance, it's been met with resistance. And not only me but it goes down my family tree. You know what I'm saying, it's in my veins to fight back.”
Kendrick: “Aight well, how long you think it take before n***** be like, we fighting a war, I'm fighting a war I can't win and I wanna lay it all down.”
Friend: “In this country a black man only have like 5 years we can exhibit maximum strength, and that's right now while you a teenager, while you still strong or while you still wanna lift weights, while you still wanna shoot back. Cause once you turn 30 it's like they take the heart and soul out of a man, out of a black man in this country. And you don't wanna fight no more. And if you don't believe me you can look around, you don't see no loud mouth 30-year old muthafuckas.”
Kendrick: “That's crazy, because me being one of your offspring of the legacy you left behind I can truly tell you that there's nothing but turmoil goin' on so I wanted to ask you what you think is the future for me and my generation today?”
Friend: “I think that n***** is tired of grabbin' shit out the stores and next time it's a riot there's gonna be, like, uh, bloodshed for real. I don't think America know that. I think American think we was just playing and it's gonna be some more playing but it ain't gonna be no playing. It's gonna be murder, you know what I'm saying, it's gonna be like Nat Turner, 1831, up in this muthafucka. You know what I'm saying, it's gonna happen.”
Kendrick: “That's crazy man. In my opinion, only hope that we kinda have left is music and vibrations, lotta people don't understand how important it is. Sometimes I be like, get behind a mic and I don't know what type of energy I'mma push out, or where it comes from. Trip me out sometimes.”
Friend: “Because the spirits, we ain't even really rappin', we just letting our dead homies tell stories for us.”
Kendrick: I wanted to read one last thing to you. It's actually something a good friend had wrote describing my world. It says: "The caterpillar is a prisoner to the streets that conceived it. Its only job is to eat or consume everything around it, in order to protect itself from this mad city. While consuming its environment the caterpillar begins to notice ways to survive. One thing it noticed is how much the world shuns him, but praises the butterfly. The butterfly represents the talent, the thoughtfulness, and the beauty within the caterpillar. But having a harsh outlook on life the caterpillar sees the butterfly as weak and figures out a way to pimp it to his own benefits. Already surrounded by this mad city the caterpillar goes to work on the cocoon which institutionalizes him. He can no longer see past his own thoughts. He's trapped. When trapped inside these walls certain ideas take roots, such as going home, and bringing back new concepts to this mad city The result? Wings begin to emerge, breaking the cycle of feeling stagnant. Finally free, the butterfly sheds light on situations that the caterpillar never considered, ending the internal struggle. Although the butterfly and caterpillar are completely different, they are one and the same. What's your perspective on that? Pac? Pac? Pac?!”

Previous chapter
A soft chuckle filled the cave, carrying with it so much weight that not a single echo chased after it. It was as if, instead of making a sound, her laugh transmitted directly into his head and filled his body.
“It is alright child,” She petted his head. “Unlike the immortals from the stories you may have heard, I do not care for customs and formalities such as these. Raise your head.”
The way that she spoke reminded Mareus of Elder Guo in the almost ancient way that he would form his sentences while speaking in commands. Though it didn’t feel as if she was being overbearing.
Mareus struggled to his knees while looking everywhere except for her face. His eyes darted around her outline, looking into the darkness behind her, at the way her hair moved in the still air. Doing everything they could to avoid recognizing the disdain present in her gaze. Instead, when he finally met her eyes, he only saw softness accompanied by lines only formed with a gentle smile. Similar to the face a mother would make when consoling a crying child.
“Tell me your name, child.”
“M-my name… my name is Maris. I-I don't have a family name, but I was raised by a grandmother with the name Hua.” Starting to feel more comfortable, he asked. “May I know the name of the person who saved me?”
“Hmm, Mare-us.” She mulled over his name for a moment, as if she were determining what characters it used and their meaning. “Yes, it's a good name. The person who picked it chose wisely.”
He wasn't quite sure what to say. He never actually asked where his name came from. So he wasn't sure if it was his parents who chose, or his grandmother. He did ask her what it meant when he was younger, she could never give him a full answer though. Instead, she told him how the first character meant ‘endless’. “Like the boundless and infinite sea,” she would explain.
Having never seen the sea Mareus wasn't sure exactly how true that was, but he did ask a villager who had traveled outside the valley once, and they compared it to the sky. Because of that, he would often stare at the blue sky during the day, tracing the heaven’s scar as it ran into the horizon.
The woman continued to run her fingers through his hair like she would with a beloved pet. “I do have no family name. As such, I have many names over my life. The one I am currently fond of is Fu Kong.”
As if she had gotten what she came for, she gracefully rose to her feet and retreated back to the edge of the darkness. The shadows that fled when she revealed herself now returning, bathing the cave in total darkness.
“Do make sure to eat your meals, I will return with a change clothes for you. Unless, that is, you prefer those rags clinging to your bandages?”
Mareus lowered him so back into kowtow. “Mistress Fu Kong, you bless me with your kindness.”
His words were met with silence, and after a few heartbeats he raised his head to find only darkness awaiting him.
After breaking free from the awe, he finally examined his body for the first time. He had become noticeably thinner from skipping so many meals while his body was healing. It wasn't quite at the level that could be considered unhealthy, but he was already smaller than most children his age, and now he even skinnier.
His thick black hair was crusted and knotted, with some of it knitted into his robes. It's oil seeping into what was left of his clothes and his bandages. That wasn't the worst of it, though. The thing that shocked him the most was the stench.
While retching, he thought. How did I noticed this before?
Mareus reeked with the pungent odor of rot and filth. He was reminded of after the wedding and the parts of the Shou that were left in the field to decompose before being turned into fertilizer.
Breaking free from his regrettable fantasy, he felt a kind of enlightenment that was quickly replaced with embarrassment. I can't believe I was in front of someone like her while like this. He agonized and rolled in his makeshift bed while covering his face.
He frantically looked around for anything to help him hide the stench and, hopefully, his shame. When he noticed a few things that weren't there before. The darkness of the cave faded again, as if the shadows were imitating the clouds on an overcast day.
Without the distraction of a heavenly fairy or his eyes blurred from his tears, he could finally clearly make out his surroundings. And it was no wonder he could find the exit before, instead of a wide area, naturally carved out inside a cave. The room was more like a misshapen bowl with a high ledge that led to several more dark passages.
In the bowl, the closest wall had a small table and stool with a used candle and some parchment. The adjacent one revealed a pile of furs he couldn’t recognize. On the far end of the cave were some plants he'd never seen before. As Mareus got closer he noticed: a small bucket of water, a piece of pumice soap, and a cloth.
He absentmindedly spoke. “I guess she really thought of everything.”
Mareus realized that either the stool was far heavier than it looked, or he had gotten that much weaker as he struggled to drag it between two bigger plants. He tore off his tattered clothes and sat down before fighting with his bandages.
“I'm glad you're taking the initiative to explore on your own.”
He connected the sudden voice into a lot of his feet while trying to cover anything he could. Although the remains of his robe didn't cover much more than the wraps already were.
Unbothered, Fu Kong continued. “I worried that you'd fall back into your depression after I'd left. But seeing you up and about is a testament to the strength of your soul.”
He slowly climbed back onto his seat as the strange woman spoke. Making sure to have most of his body turned away from her. When she suddenly stopped speaking, he looked back to see if he had disappeared again. Instead, she was gracefully sitting on a inky black ledge he didn't notice before.
“Mistress, I don't want to seem disrespectful, but do you need something from me?”
Her face didn't change as she thought for a moment. “There's no rush, I can wait until you're ready.”
Accepting that she had no intention of giving him any privacy, he started scrubbing the areas that weren't covered by his bandages. He quickly noticed that when he accidentally scrubbed over the edges of the bandage, it drank the soapy water. What was even more surprising was that the characters wriggled like they were alive before the bandages secreted some sort of brown substance.
The stink was even more horrendous than before, he immediately slapped it away and watched as it splashed in the bucket. The gunk sizzled away in a matter of seconds until the water was clear again.
Experimentally, he cupped his hand and scooped some of the water onto his leg. Mareus immediately regretted that because the smell was so overwhelming he released what little there was left in his stomach into the bucket.
While covering his nose, he hurriedly cleaned up the remainder of the gunk and made sure to only wash small sections before scraping away what came out into the bucket.
Train to distract himself, he started up a conversation with the woman watching over him. “You said you'd wait until I was ready. What am I supposed to be ready for?”
“Before anything else, we'll have to get you something substantial in your stomach, or you'll waste away completely. You’ll also be needing new robes that are preferably more durable. Your old ones are beyond anything that could be called clothes now, and there's no point of getting you ones that will only fall apart right away.”
Mareus stared at the tattered cloth that was no different than the rag he was using to wash his own body. Wondering just what exactly she had in store for him.
Next chapter

 So me and this friend (we will call them storm) became friends during Spanish class my sophomore year of high school and have been friends for about two years now. I became friends with them because we both shared a mutual friend and that mutual friend soon had a big falling out with storm and so I invited them to basically join my own friend group. During our Spanish class they would often mumble phrases in what sounded like a different language and when I asked them they said that they were mumbling Japanese because they are Japanese, they just don’t look like it. Their words exactly. I believed them thinking that no sane person would lie about being Japanese and storm seemed pretty normal to me at first. I asked more about their background and they told me that their mom was a white Christian southern woman and their dad was the Japanese one. However, their dad also doesn’t look Japanese because he hates being Japanese and so he got plastic surgery. Yes, fucking plastic surgery. I didn’t want to be rude so I once again believed them. Their dad was also directly from Japan since their grandparents still live in Japan but their dad somehow knew no Japanese whatsoever. They also told me that when they were born their parents sent them to live with their grandparents over in Japan from ages 0-8 and then they moved back to the U.S. (where we live). When I asked them what part of Japan they were from they told me that they lived in Kyoto. They would later go on to tell me that it was Osaka and then Hokkaido. Three completely different places. Storm and I were joking around one day in Spanish and they mumbled something in what I assumed was Japanese again and I asked them to say I’m a terrible person in Japanese as a joke and because I wanted to hear more of the language. They said a phrase and that was that. I asked them the very same thing the next day because I wanted to know the phrase for myself and they said something completely different. Not even remotely close to what they had said yesterday. I didn’t think much of it and just figured they used different wording or something. Storm tends to do this thing where they are very obviously lying about something that me and my friends are talking about just to join in on the conversation and have their own part. I usually have no problem with this since I think everyone lies a little to get to be better friends with people and to be included in conversations. However, I have been friends with them for 2 years now and the lying has just gotten worse. An example would be that just a few days ago me and my friends were talking about summer trips and how a few of us are going to Europe. Storm jumps into the conversation and says that they are going to Japan this summer. Mind you, they said this exact same thing last year and never went. They’ve also told me that they don’t have their passport and that their parents are awful and never let them go anywhere and are super strict. Why on earth would they suddenly let you go to Japan? It just never adds up but me and my friends never make a fuss about it. In March I was talking with a friend who also used to be friends with storm and they told me that they didn’t like them because they lied about being poor just to join in on the conversation. Storm tells people all the time how their dad gives them around 1k a week to spend and how they have a Camaro and they always offer to buy everything for their friends. I’ve been to their house and they have 5 cars on the driveway, including the Camaro. I know cars and 1k a week don’t exactly equal not being poor but it was kinda inconsiderate to say that they were since they are constantly bragging about how much money they have. It just doesn’t add up. I could see why my friend didn’t like them and I started to realize that a lot of what storm tells us doesn’t completely make sense. Now moving back to storms childhood. This is where everything really makes no sense at all. I myself am mixed (half Hispanic, half white) and one day I was talking about a horrible elementary school experience where I got bullied because of my unibrow and how I have darker hairs on my body than the other kids. Storm decided to join the conversation and says that they were bullied too for not knowing any English in elementary school. I was talking about the book Dune one day and Storm tells me that they have read Dune but they read it when they were really young to learn English. Fucking Dune. That book is hard for me to even read now how the fuck were you learning English from that at 8 years old. It could make sense if Storm was just really smart but they take all standard classes right now and get bad grades. I started to ask more people when Storm had told them the age that they had come over to the U.S. They all had different answers. I got 2,4,6,8, and the 6th grade. The person that said 8 was the mutual friend that me and storm shared before they had a falling out. I asked that friend more about what Storm had told them and they said that when they lived in Japan, their grandparents sent them away to this Buddhist camp for 6 months when they were 6 years old where they shaved their head. This threw me off completely and I started to experiment. I share art class with storm this year and I decided to ask them about their last name. I won’t disclose it here but it is a very white last name. I brought it up to them and they told me that they have their moms last name and not their dads Japanese one. When I asked what the Japanese last name was and they told me (I literally had them spell it out) and I looked it up on google. It wasn’t even a real fucking word . They told me it was Takamishido. They were silent and so I asked them more about their moms last name and they said that it was Russian and so they were part Russian because their moms parents are Russian. I looked up their last name and the only origins are Americanized Dutch. Nothing to do with being Russian at all. They were silent about that too . I asked them more about their childhood in Japan and they told me that they were homeschooled and don’t remember any Japanese or really anything from living in Japan from ages 0-8 because of a trauma response that made them forget everything. This all already made me mad since nothing was adding up but what really did it for me was when I got in trouble because during school there was a drug search in the parking lot and the cops dogs smelled weed on my car. The only friend I have that I knew for a fact smoked weed is storm and I know this because they have showed up to come hang out with me and my friends multiple times and been extremely high and smelled so strongly of weed. I had driven them to prom that last weekend and I guess they stunk up my car because they were high again. Stuff like this doesn’t usually happen to me so I was crying all day during school because I was confused and embarrassed. While my other friends comforted me, Storm ignored me all day and then at lunchtime proceeded to tell me to just fuck the cops. They know damn well they were the reason I got in trouble and said fucking nothing about it. They have also spoken multiple times about how they think people who do drugs are awful and affect others so bad yet they themselves do the exact thing. There are multiple other little horrible things they have done but these are just the main things. I’m writing this because I wanna know if I’m over exaggerating everything and they aren’t lying and I just can’t see it somehow. I feel like I am going crazy. Please help me. 

Weekly Thread: Project Ideas 💡

Welcome to our weekly Project Ideas thread! Whether you're a newbie looking for a first project or an expert seeking a new challenge, this is the place for you.

How it Works:

1. Suggest a Project: Comment your project idea—be it beginner-friendly or advanced.
2. Build & Share: If you complete a project, reply to the original comment, share your experience, and attach your source code.
3. Explore: Looking for ideas? Check out Al Sweigart's "The Big Book of Small Python Projects" for inspiration.

Guidelines:

• Clearly state the difficulty level.
• Provide a brief description and, if possible, outline the tech stack.
• Feel free to link to tutorials or resources that might help.

Example Submissions:

Project Idea: Chatbot

Difficulty: Intermediate
Tech Stack: Python, NLP, Flask/FastAPI/Litestar
Description: Create a chatbot that can answer FAQs for a website.
Resources: Building a Chatbot with Python

Project Idea: Weather Dashboard

Difficulty: Beginner
Tech Stack: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, API
Description: Build a dashboard that displays real-time weather information using a weather API.
Resources: Weather API Tutorial

Project Idea: File Organizer

Difficulty: Beginner
Tech Stack: Python, File I/O
Description: Create a script that organizes files in a directory into sub-folders based on file type.
Resources: Automate the Boring Stuff: Organizing Files
Let's help each other grow. Happy coding! 🌟

I have a few questions regarding purchases I recently made in the Wrexham AFC online store that I hope someone can answer for me,
First, I noticed that I was charged a UK VAT (Value Added Tax) which I was under the impression that was only charged to domestic purchases in the UK and not international orders, am I incorrect about this?
Second, I am an American and obviously I had to pay on the nose for shipping and handling from the UK to the U.S.A. using their only shipping option FedEx, when the package arrives in the U.S. from the U.K. does it automatically just go through customs or am I going to find an opened and taped back up shipping box after U.S. Customs and Border Protection gets their grubby little hands on it and if anything is missing how do I handle that? since one of the items was limited edition and cannot be replaced and I'd be really pissed off if I lost that.
Thank you all for your time.

So, I am trying to understand the migrant situation better so that I may become more educated and informed on this topic and be able to better understand something I currently find very confusing. I asked a series of questions in NoStupidQuestions and got some great responses, which have now triggered some follow up questions that I believe would be best answered by economists. I'm asking these questions here hoping to cut through the noise of political bias and get a truly educated opinion without some agenda or political rant behind it.
I'd greatly appreciate anyone who could answer one or more of these:

1. If US taxpayers are paying for migrants' cost of living while they await a judgement on their asylum status, how much does this cost actually impact the U.S. budget, future tax implications (raising taxes?), and American livelihoods?
   1. For example, if migrants get free healthcare, does that mean the cost of health insurance and medical procedures also increases, to make up for the associated expenses of offering free medical care?
   2. Does offering free housing increase rent by limiting supply or otherwise have other impact on the housing markets?
      1. And later on, when migrants get granted asylum, would this put a further strain on housing markets?
   3. Are the jobs associated with handling the migrant situation, and the increased spending, net-beneficial to the U.S. economy after all is said and done?
   4. Would these costs ever be recouped in the long-term, from the long-term benefits of adding more workers to the economy?
   5. What does the data say about migrants, job prospects, and welfare in the long-term, after they've been granted asylum?
2. Does the US have the economic resources or incentive to use AI to speed up the claims process, which seems to be what causes the most backlog between either issuing work visas or deporting migrants?
3. It's said that the majority of migrants are poor and undereducated, which makes them perfect for corporations to exploit in low-wage positions.
   1. Are they given low-wage positions while waiting for their asylum to be approved, or after they've been granted work visas?
   2. What is the net economic impact of this?
      1. Would this make food cheaper than otherwise not having this cheap labor?
      2. Does this "steal" the job of other Americans, or does it allow other Americans to search for more economically prosperous opportunities? What does the evidence or research studies say?
      3. This increases GDP, which boosts the economy right?
   3. Are businesses in America economically incentivized to support more migrant entries?

Today it seems that with the increasing irregularity and casualization of labor in the imperial core, for example both oppressor and oppressed nations within the USA are being pulled into the gig economy, proletarians are identifying less and less with their labor. Obviously the absolute numbers skew towards oppressed nations being more irregularized, but both groups seem to have had comparable subjective experiences of this shift.
Kites in their series “The Specter That Still Haunts” recommended utilizing the identity of “proletarian” rather than “worker” because of their specific understanding of what it means to be proletarianized. While this does seem to be part of the answer, I’m inclined to believe it isn’t the full picture. Recently Kites, or more specifically OCR, has published “Correcting an Over-Correction” which outlines the necessity of emphasizing political agitation. It was then followed up by the publication of their “meme” articles on April 1st. This seems to allow some level of memetic, meaning aesthetic based and short-form, interaction with politics that the internet is so geared towards.
However, even this seems to not fully answer the question of how to relate to subcultures or fandoms. Lenin calls for communists to intervene in all pressing questions of the day, but I am unsure where we could class something like the Kendrick/Drake feud.
Being a Hip-Hop head has become an increasingly dominant identity, so it does seem relevant to proletarians. There is also the very real aspect of national oppression inherent to rap fueds, which often turn fatal, being orchestrated by white executives to sell records the consumer base of overwhelmingly white teens. Not to even mention the undeniable reality that hip-hop has connections to the sex trade, something which Kendrick regularly referenced.
So here we finally have an example of a subculture beef which certainly has the potential to be politicized. However I’m still completely lost as to how a communist organization could intervene in this feud to politicize it. It’s not like the majority of people listening to “Not Like Us” will tune into a 20 page polemic telling them their consumption habits are actually petite-bourgeois and the methods they need to be re-educated by.

A few years ago, someone on AO3 wrote a story wherein every single member of the canon Class 1-A was a former villain or vigilante, and they had been into a UA program meant for the reformation of youths whom had fallen to villainy and vigilantism.
The story was well written, and the premise was unique. It is not terribly surprising, then, that it spawned a whole genre on AO3 centering around Class 1-A as a class of reforming criminals, and the struggles they faced in their road redemption at UA.
After reading a few of these stories, I began to wonder if there was such a story starring Class 1-B, instead of Class 1-A. I suspected not, and a quick search revealed that this was indeed the case, unfortunately.
With that said, the following is potential outline for this concept, open to anyone interested.
In this world, UA's Hero Course only has a single class, Class 1-A, containing all of its canon members. The rest of the classes are moved up by a letter, so General Studies starts at 1-B, the Support Course starts at 1-E, and the Business Course starts at 1-H. If you're wonder why none of the members of canon!Class 1-B made it into AU!Class 1-A, the answer is that none of them took the exam.
From here on, the events mostly follow canon for a while. Aside from the Cavalry Battle in the Sports Festival Arc, canon!Class 1-B wasn't really a part of the story until the Joint Training Arc. Even then, you could easily replace canon!1-B's role in the Sports Festival with a particularly determined group of General Studies students. All of this is to say that anyone writing this could just these first few arcs, or sum them up in a few chapters.
The story starts in earnest when 1-A leaves to go to the training camp. As in canon, they are attacked by the LoV. Unlike canon, however, the Vanguard Action Squad is either replaced with or joined by 20 young villains, the members of canon!Class 1-B. In this timeline, All for One decided to start a pet project; he gathered 20 promising and troubled youths, and began to train them as villains. He chose that number, 20, specifically to mock UA's Hero Course.
All of Class 1-A would have to fight here, instead of a few like in canon. They basically have a massive battle against a group of villains which is essentially a dark mirror of themselves, somewhat akin to the various Dark Guild arcs in Fairy Tail. In the end, Class 1-A manages to persevere and defeat AfO trainees, though Bakugou is still kidnapped. What few members of canon!Class 1-B manage to escape are rounded up in the raid on the LoV's hideout in Kamino.
Afterwards, the story gets back on it's normal track for 1-A with the Overhaul arc. That ultimately doesn't matter, however, as the focus of the story shifts to the 20 captured young villains. Nezu has been considering a class dedicated to reforming young criminals for years, and he decides that this seems to be the perfect opportunity. Nezu approaches each of them while they are in custody, and tells them that he has a proposition; join UA's new Villain Reformation Course, and he will do all that he can to ensure their futures. With no other real options apparent to them, the 20 villains agree.
From here, the focus of the story would shift to the newly formed class. I'll just call them by the next available letter, which, due to the other classes shifting up, is 1-K. This could be played for comedy or drama, depending on the author's tastes, but the story would presumably center around the newly formed Class 1-K's awkward and, at first, begrudging attempts to integrate into a high school setting, and their struggles therein.
Vlad King, one of the few teachers willing to give this class a chance, would be play the role of the eternally beleaguered pseudo-parental figure desperately trying to rein in, guide, and support his chaotic charges, while Nezu just cackles at this misfortune in the background.
Bonus points for Class 1-A somehow missing all of this happening in the background, and thus freaking out when their former enemies suddenly appear before them at the beginning of the Joint Training Exercise.
So that's all I've got. Thoughts, positive or negative?

Hi everyone,
This is the most random thing that popped into my head yesterday as I discussed something high school related.. the first class of the day (or what we might see called "homeroom" from American movies and TV) the name is a complete blank in my mind!
Totally not important but something I can't stop thinking about until I find the answer.
Just wondering what others called it?

I believed in fairies as a kid. More than believed in them. I think something terrible happened to me, and I've just buried it until now.
Call me a typical emotion-bottling man, but I have never considered therapy. No matter what I went through, no matter how many times I thought to myself, verbatim, that I should talk to someone about this, I just never thought of it as an option. It simply wasn't on my roster. It was just one of those things that existed on a separate plane of existence than I was living in, never to cross paths or interact lest the universe collapse in on itself.
I have no problem with therapy, don't get me wrong. It isn't like I don't understand the overall appeal. I have plenty of friends who swear by it, swear it has helped them tremendously, including my wife. It just wasn't ever something I thought was in my cards.
"I just never really thought about it," I told Alice one evening, when she had brought the topic up once again after dinner.
There was a serene sense of peace wafting through the entire house that day, and I was feeling content. It was a Sunday, and swimming season, so we had dropped Emmie off that morning at the public pool for practice and gone straight to our favorite breakfast place. The rest of the day was filled with all the conversation that had built up over the week, all the topics we couldn't fully dig into with each other while babysitting our eight year old, and lounging, all crammed in between sporadic bursts of housework and paperwork we had to catch up on. It was the perfect day, in my humble opinion. It was a lovely moment of peace in the midst of a chaotic life, as is life with kids. And now the sounds of Mario Kart drifted in from the living room, Emmie's squeals cutting through the cheery music every now and then, causing Alice and I to share small smiles of acknowledgement.
Oh, to be a child again. Still a little drenched from a post-swimming shower, full of chili, eyes glowing with the reflection of a television screen.
"Well, maybe you should." My wife was scooping leftover chili into a Tupperware with a ladle. Her hair had been tied up like it was every day after dinner, as if she planned to run a marathon rather than do the cleaning up. She wasn't looking at me, dialed into the task at hand.
It's crazy how some parts of my memory could be so good, and others nonexistent.
I reached over from where I stood before the dishwasher, sliding my arm around her waist. She gave me a look, like, what?
"I just don't think it's for me, babe," I muttered, resting my mouth on her shoulder as if I was trying to skip her ears and speak right through her skin. "You know those things make me uncomfortable sometimes."
She let out a half groan, half sigh, setting down the container and the ladle and turning to face me, draping her arms over my shoulders.
"Everything makes you uncomfortable, John."
I smiled, letting my hands fall to her hips. I knew her frustrated act was just that, an act, at least for the most part.
"It's good for you," she continued pointedly, reaching up to tap her pointer finger against my forehead as I swayed her back and forth to a nonexistent tune. "Like medicine. And I know for a fact there are some things you need to work through."
I feigned offense. "You think I'm some kind of nut job?"
"Everyone needs therapy," she snarled, pulling out of my arms, but she didn't resist when I reached out and drew her back in. "Not just nut jobs."
And that was how most of those conversations went. Some got a little more heated, ending with a lightly slammed door (so as not to wake our daughter) and a whisper-shout of "this is why you need therapy!"
I feel I'm making it sound bad, but it wasn't. Even our more serious fights never quite felt like fights. They felt like playing. We were like two cats, biting and tackling and swishing our tails, but never baring our teeth to hiss. I never felt genuine, full-bodied anger towards her, and I knew she felt the same. It sounds sappy, but we were just very in love. I sometimes felt that we had never actually left the honeymoon phase.
I'm also making it sound like that conversation was incredibly common, and it wasn't. It came up maybe once every few months. I knew she was just looking out for me. She knew me better than anyone.
We had met through mutual friends, and we had initially bonded over our terrible childhoods. We both had moms who were out of the picture, and over emotional, over compensating dads, although this manifested in vastly different ways. Alice's mother left her father for a D-list rockstar type, following him on his state wide tour. She would sometimes send Alice letters or postcards from the road, although her dad wouldn't always let her keep them if they seemed to be stained with blood or seemed to have made contact with any strange white powders.
Her dad coped with anger. He never laid a hand on her, but his shouting and the sounds of glass bottles smashing against the walls kept her up almost every night. During the days he'd take her out, buy her things, go mini golfing and bowling and to the movies. Anything to seem more fun than her mother.
My mother passed away on my seventh birthday. She was driving home from work, which was at a law firm half an hour away from our house, when it began to rain. She was texting my dad her ETA when she ran a red light and a semi truck T-boned her, completely obliterating her car.
After that, everything changed. My seventh birthday could've been my twenty-first. At night it was the worst. I remember sitting with my dad as he cried, curled up in a sobbing ball on the filthy living room carpet, whimpering like a kicked puppy. He would scream and wail so loud the walls shook. He would say, over and over as if I wasn't hearing him, sometimes mumbling and sometimes shrieking, "She was cut in half. I'm sorry sir, she's gone. No, there's no chance she survived, she was completely cut in half."
The days were almost worse. During the day, when he could decrease the helpless wails into weeping at the very least, his attention turned to me. He tried to get something out of me, almost silently begging me to break down with him. Every other second it was, "How are you feeling, son? Do you understand what's happening? You poor thing, you must be devastated, your mommy is gone... Don't you want to cry?"
But I couldn't indulge, and I didn't want to. I had to wash the sheets, because he'd pissed them again, and I didn't want him to sleep in it and smell like pee when he took me to school the next day. I had to vacuum the carpet, so the next time he curled up on it and begged God to take him too, when he finally stood up, his cheek wouldn't be caked in crumbs and dust.
I don't know if I ever truly mourned. My mother's death was more like an absence, as if someone had taken a pair of scissors and carved a chunk out of my side, or snipped off a limb. I could still feel her, I could still talk to her, but all I got back was a deep ache and a crushing silence.
I hated how people reacted when I told them my mom was dead, and had been since I was a little boy. I hated the looks on their faces when they asked how she died, and when I told them. How their mouths fell open dumbly and their eyebrows twisted and contorted in sympathetic horror. "I'm so sorry, I didn't know," they said, as if there was vomit rising in their throats, and I wanted to say, "Well, you fucking asked, didn't you?"
Alice never reacted like that. In fact, she never really even asked me what happened. We were on our second date, nursing beers while leaning against the pool table a a dingy speakeasy, when she told me about her own mom. It was the first time in a long time I actually felt like the conversation was open, like I could respond and she would listen and care, but not too much. Not an uncomfortable amount. When I told her about my parents she didn't say anything, and her pretty face didn't contort. She leaned over the corner of the pool table and kissed me on the cheek, took my hand.
The day she found out she was pregnant, we promised each other to be better, to not let our child ever have to grieve alone or feel the very specific hopeless terror that only a parent can cause.
So maybe I should have listened to her. Maybe I should have gone to therapy the first time she brought it up, the first time she told me how it had helped her get through her own terrible memories. But if I'm being honest, I didn't think I had anything to get through. I had left it in the past, I had coped so far in my own somewhat crooked way, I didn't want to dig any of that back up. I didn't want to be put back in that place where I was expected to talk, to cry, to open up. It made my skin crawl just thinking about it.
"I was always the therapist," I would say to her with a crooked grin. "And I like it that way."
Then, the dreams started.
I could tell you I don't know what triggered them, I don't know why it was now. But that wouldn't be the truth. I know exactly why I started to remember.
At first, they were brief. Nightmares that I couldn't quite recall or explain, waking up disoriented and a little sick. The rest of my day would feel strange, like I was surrounded by a thick fog. Eventually, they started to wake me up in the middle of the night, drenched in sweat and screaming, scaring the shit out of my wife. Once I ran to the bathroom and threw up, barely making it to the toilet. That was when the word "therapy" came up again.
It feels like I've been in a coma for twenty years, and I'm just waking up now.
It's so strange how different the world looks to a child.
I believed in fairies as a kid. Laugh it up if you want. When I turned four, my aunt brought me this book - we've all had one, I think. It was one of those huge hardcover books filled with information about something mythical, with little patches of fabric to simulate a mermaid's scales or a dragon's claw.
Mine was about fairies, and it was so real to me. My mom would sit up with me later than she probably should have, reading to me, placing my hand on the textures to feel. I wanted to know everything about them, I became obsessed, and naturally, my parents played along. They bought me toys, books... every year I had a fae themed birthday cake, and any kid who dared to giggle behind their hands weren't invited to next year's celebration.
When I was old enough to use the internet, supervised of course, I began further research. My mom helped me navigate Wikipedia first, and they had plenty of information to sustain me for a while. My interest turned from wings and magical powers to different types of fae from every corner of the earth, mushroom rings and their alleged distaste for iron. While I still wasn't very good at reading, I would just look at the pictures until she got home from work.
When my mom died, the fairy memorabilia began to amp up. My aunt bought me new books, gave them to me wrapped and tied with ribbons with tear filled eyes, and my dad brought them up whenever he thought I needed comforting and felt strong enough to leave the house. "Wanna go look in the forest for fairies, son?"
I'm embarrassed to admit it, but I began to worship the fairies. I was convinced they lived in the forest behind my house, just behind each tree I looked at, hiding from me. I would spend my weekends escaping into the woods with a bucket and a cheap pair of binoculars, positive that this time, this day, I would see one.
At night, when my dad finally passed out in his own puddle of tears and other bodily fluids, I would pray to them. I never believed in God, we weren't a particularly religious family, and besides, I had seen what good He had done for my dad thus far. But I believed in the fairies.
I asked them for help with my father. I asked them for peace. I asked them to bring her back to me.
They never answered.
Until they did.
It was a Friday. I remember now, I'm not sure how I could have forgotten. After school I had sprinted into the shade of the trees before my dad could stop me, gripping the hem of my shirt in my fist, the thin fabric bearing the weight of two handfuls of the shiniest silverware and most colorful buttons I could find in our dusty cabinets.
I had a plan that day. I was going to lure them to me.
My path began in a clearing where I thought a ring of mushrooms may have begun to grow... but even without that, it was just the perfect spot for fairies. I could picture them flitting between the trees, chirping to each other happily, picking wildflowers to weave into flower crowns.
I walked backwards all the way back to my bedroom window, dropping another item every few steps. When I got inside and looked out my window, I could see my trail of shiny things curve through the overgrown grass in our backyard and disappear into the trees.
I was so excited, I could hardly contain myself. Tonight, surely, they would come to me. They would show themselves, and they would help me. But after another few late hours of coddling my father, finally convincing him to drink some water and get in bed, I was exhausted. I completely forgot about my plan. When I got to my room I collapsed on my mattress, not even bothering to undress before I closed my eyes.
Then I heard it. The scratching.
I opened my eyes. The moonlight shining through my bedroom window casted strange shadows across my ceiling, shadows of the swaying grass and the creaking trees.
It was strangely silent, other than the sound. Usually there was lots of noise, or at the very least a few crickets, but not tonight. Tonight, I realized, I couldn't even hear the wind.
I sat up slowly, as if in a dream, and looked toward my window. I couldn't see anything out there, nothing glaringly obvious at least, that could be making that noise.
The scratching turned to a tap. Tap tap tap, like a fingernail against a glass. It had a playful air to it, like someone was saying, look over here!
I stood, rubbing my eyes, and stumbled over. The tapping stopped abruptly when I got to the window and peered outside, out to the dark yard, pitch black if not for the moon's glow. The grass didn't sway, the trees didn't creak. I frowned and unlatched the window, sliding it up above my head.
I was right, there was no wind. Not even a gust. Everything was still outside, like it was frozen. I actually started to believe it was frozen, that time had stopped completely somehow, before I saw it.
My trail of silverware and buttons. Sparkling softly in the moonlight.
Disappearing.
It began where the path met the trees, curving off where I couldn't follow it anymore. A fork disappeared right before my eyes, right on the edge. Just vanished, as if someone who was invisible had picked it up and stuffed it in a pocket very quickly.
Then another went, a spoon. Then a particularly large gold button. Whatever was taking them was doing what I had wanted, it was taking my bait, it was coming to me. And it was as if whatever had tapped at my window had wanted me to see this, wanted to show me.
But something felt very, very wrong.
This wasn't how I had pictured it. There was no twinkling, tiny winged thing at my window, winking at me before dashing back into the safety of the trees. There were no secrets being whispered in my ear, no fairy dust or promises of better things.
Something about this wasn't right. It felt like a mimicry, almost a mockery, of what I had imagined. Like something was trying to give me what I wanted, but was rusty at it.
I didn't want this anymore.
My stomach twisted and my hands shook as I pulled the window back down slowly, watching more glittery things disappear from the grass, growing closer and closer. As soon as it was closed I quickly locked it and pulled the blinds shut, turning my back to the window as if something would happen that I didn't want to see.
Nothing happened. The deafening silence continued for a few seconds as my ears strained to hear anything else happening outside. Then the wind picked up, and the sounds of crickets, muffled by my closed window, filled the night air.
I don't remember when I fell asleep that night, I just know I felt unnerved and jumpy for a while. I woke up the next morning feeling guilty. Had the fairies really come last night? Maybe they had come to talk to me, to bring me gifts, favors, and what had I done? I had closed my window on them. I felt ungrateful. Why had I even been scared? Because it was dark outside? What was I, a baby?
When I opened my window and peered outside, I gasped. The trail of silverware and buttons was completely gone, all the way up to the last one, which I had placed on my windowsill. In its place was a shoe. I didn't know what kind of shoe it was, but it looked sort of nice, fancy. I remember smiling out the window as I opened it, as if they were looking, and taking my gift.
How could I forget that night? How could I have forgotten what happened after? I feel crazy, either like I made it all up or like I've made up everything since then, like my life isn't truly my own.
I remember telling my dad. I remember saying, "Dad, the fairies came last night!" and the absent smile he gave me.
Until I showed him their gift. The shoe. Instantly his face went pale and he snatched it from my hands, staring at me as if I was something unholy.
"Where did you get this, Johnny?"
"The fairies, dad, I told you!"
He didn't respond. Just gave me another long, solemn look, before turning away from me, still holding the present I received close to his chest. I was upset, but I knew better than throwing a tantrum. That would be too much emotion anyways, too uncomfortable. Even back then, I didn't know how to handle those things.
I didn't show him their gifts after that. I didn't want to risk having them taken away. I tried not to be scared of the fairies, even though they always came at night, but I didn't go to my window when they came anymore. I read everywhere that fairies didn't particularly like to be seen, even though this one seemed to want to be. It always began with tapping, but otherwise complete silence that almost felt like it was swallowing me... and eventually the tapping would stop, the silence would pass, and I would fall asleep. In the morning there was always another gift for me, sitting on my window sill. A sparkly gold ring, the other matching shoe, a hat... I smiled when I took every one, wanting them to know I was grateful. And I would leave things for them too, little sweets or shiny things like coins or paperclips that I found on the ground at school.
Things seemed to get better with my dad for a while. He kept to himself more, he was quieter. At night he would cry softly in his room, rather than his uproarious wails that I used to have to quell so the neighbors wouldn't come knocking. During the day, he would talk to me, but more casually. He didn't ask me how I was feeling anymore, or tell me to let it out.
I hoped this was the fairies. I felt invincible, like I had a secret superpower that no one knew about. I was friends with fairies.
Then one night, everything changed.
It started with the tapping, as always. That night I was fast asleep, catching up on well earned rest since the nightly therapy sessions had ceased.
The tapping woke me. It was that loud. It was louder than usual... but it seemed like it stopped abruptly as soon as I raised my head to look.
That was different...
That night, I had left my blinds up and my window open by accident. Since that first night, even though I wasn't scared anymore, I had always closed them... but this time, I must have forgotten.
It was silent outside. It seemed darker than usual. I could almost make out something, a shape, way on the other side of the yard, but it was too dark and I was too far away to tell.
That feeling from that first night retuned. A twisting like a hand reaching into my stomach and mixing things around, a heavy feeling in my chest like someone had stolen all of the air from my room, even though the window was open. The silence seemed to crush me, bearing down on me from every angle, making my ribs hurt.
The feeling that something was very wrong.
I don't remember deciding to stand: looking back, I have no idea why I would do that in my state of fight or flight. I don't know if I consciously chose to. I don't remember walking over, but I remember getting there, my hands on the windowsill and my head poking out into the completely still night air.
There was something there. On the edge of the trees. Right where I had seen that first fork disappear into thin air. I squinted, leaning further into the darkness to try and make out what it was.
When I finally did, the outline taking shape as my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I began to shake uncontrollably. I remember that I tried to scream, but no sound would come. I couldn't move, couldn't do anything but stare.
Two legs stood in front of the trees, facing me. Two legs, a blood-soaked pair of slacks, no shoes on the purple, swollen feet. And a jagged, violent rip in the torso where the rest of my mother's body had been severed from its lower half.
It took me a while to realize that the legs weren't standing on their own. They began to move, jerking clumsily toward the window, like something I couldn't see was struggling to hold them up. I finally forced myself out of my trance and fell to my carpet, vomiting.
I don't remember much else about that night yet. My dad came running when I started crying, I'm sure, but he didn't see what I saw. My mom's legs were gone, or hidden. Because they weren't for him.
They were for me.
We moved after that. Before now if you had asked me why we moved so far away so suddenly, I probably would have mumbled something about the grief, and it being too hard to stay where my mother had died. But I remember why now.
It was because the next morning, when I checked my windowsill, there was a hand. My mother's hand. Purple and stiff, and missing her gold wedding ring. Reaching, fingers rested against the glass, like it was trying to get in.
Like it had been tapping.
I don't want to think about what else it might have brought, had we stayed.
That thing, whatever it was, wasn't my mother, and it wasn't a fairy. I had invited something else with all my praying, with all my naive and innocent beliefs, and with all my bottled up emotions. I had invited it, and I had let it in.
And then I had forgotten everything. Maybe I bottled that up, too.
Now I remember. Now I'm having nightmares, and waking up with that sick feeling in my gut, my eyes jumping to our closed bedroom window.
Because a week ago, my daughter woke me up very early in the morning my jumping on our bed. A week ago, she shook me awake, her eager smile stretching all the way across her face. A week ago, she told me, "Dad, the fairies came last night!"
She showed me a doll, a ballerina, with a pink tutu and beautiful long blonde hair.
And now, with all these terrible memories hitting me like cold water to the face, only one keeps me awake at night.
I asked them for help with my father. I asked them for peace. I asked them to bring her back to me.
It has granted two of my wishes, in its own twisted way. My father grew distant from me and my mother was brought back in pieces.
I'm happy now. But I don't have peace. I don't think I'll ever fully have peace, at least not with a child and a wife to try and provide for, and not with all of these memories.
So what has it come back for?

Link to my original: https://www.reddit.com/Dreams/comments/12zxqdg/my_dreams_are_real_and_i_wish_people_would/
So it's been over a year that I made the post and honestly I was trying to be on the internet less and completely forgot about it.
I had a few questions that I'll answer because I've been thinking about my dreams again.
1.) What makes me think they are real?
When you hug your friend, and feel their warmth. Or you look into their eyes and can feel the soul behind them. You don't question if they are real, you know it. You FEEL it. That connection that takes place between two living beings is unmistakable. I never dream of anything obscure or out of place. No oreos or giant toys chasing me. Nothing silly or "fun." I've looked into people's eyes. And it's something you'll never forget.
2.) Can I remember my waking life like I do so vividly in my dreams?
This one is really hard to answer. I have a bad memory. I can't remember most of my waking life. I have a few core memories but they're fuzzy and hard to conjur. I don't have an imagination. When I close my eyes it's all black, with faint outlines of what I'm trying to picture.
My dreams however, I can still feel them and 'see' them. When I'm remembering them I keep my eyes wide open like I'm there again. It almost feels like VR
I would say that I can recall my dreams better than an actual memory.
3.) Am I interested in spirituality?
Yes. I am a firm believer in everything and nothing all at once. I do believe there are things out there that science can't explain- yet. I believe consciousness is a lot broader than we think.
I did see a couple of science based theories under my post and I do appreciate it as it's good to sort of stay grounded when approaching.... the "mystical"
It's a fine line between mystifying and crazy.
3.) Have I tried reality checks in my dreams?
Yeah, I have. Most of the time I already know I'm in a "dream." I'm not sure if this question was meant as "to find out I'm in a dream" or "to find out if it's really reality."
They say you can't read in your dreams. I can say I can, and have definitely read signs and whatnot. And not just a glance. Like, really read it and see the letters and words. One of them was a cute sign for the farm behind this dilapidated shack advertising strawberries. 4.99/lb.
And then I had a couple comments saying I need to differentiate dreams from real life.
I do. I know what's a dream and what is my real life. It sometimes takes a minute to adjust back to reality when I wake up. But I'm not stuck in it forever.
I had one a few months ago however that scared me shitless and I didnt want to go back to bed ever again. I was stuck in a realm for 60 years. 60 years. People had entered and left the realm from time to time but I was stuck there. It was a gorgeous place to be stuck. But it got pretty lonely.
Long story short. I'm still having these vivid, wild dreams. A year later and I still feel like they're completely real.
Thank you to those who looked at my post then, it was very comforting that there are people out there that believe me. And a few scientific reasonings to help keep me grounded.