Bad cold leave application

Long post... We've been married 32 years.
We've been separated twice, 2004 and 2022. I had began to take steps to move out when he became chronically ill the end of 2021. I left the beginning of 2022 and finally felt like I could breathe when I was informed he had let himself go so bad that I had to rush back. I know that is his Trump card.
If it was just the medical issue, I know I would just stay as I couldn't do that to anyone - who leaves someone that is in chronic pain ?!?!?
He refuses to have real conversations about our finances ( he had to medically retire from Homeland Security) we lost over half of our income. Yet, he spends like we still make 200k. I have begged for years for marriage counseling - not going to happen if he has to go.
I have been working on building my own business and working - he wasn't interested in building it together. Unless he was talking to his family and buddies, then it was our business 😳 in the last year I had to sell my rentals to cover medical and living cost.
We sold our home to move back to our hometown, since we were only away for his career. We've been here for 1 year and need to make a decision where to live.
Since we haven't been able to improve our relationship, communication or finances; I truly just want it to be over. However, I know I would be worried about him, what am I supposed to do?
Thanks for letting me rant 🙏🏻

Don't really know what I am hoping to accomplish with this. Moral support I guess, as I am kind of terrified.
Been with the same company (more or less due to mergers and acquisitions) for my whole career. Due to some restructuring of how we go to business, my workload has changed. I manage a warehouse that recently had a bunch of volume moved to another warehouse one state over. Writing is on the wall that there is more of that to come. My boss (who is currently out on leave due to stress, I think) advocated for finding other work for me to justify keeping me around. I despise the work they found for me. It's a mix of corporate nonsense (filling out forms, etc), garbage work no one else wants, and stuff an intern should be doing. (for example, my skip level boss told me to plan on renting a SUV for an upcoming meeting so I can drive people around.) Lately this whole situation has been really messing with me. Losing sleep, constantly worried about work, etc.
Also as part of these changes we had to let some of my crew go. They weren't offered severance, which really leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I don't know that this has also contributed to me being so unhappy, but it hasn't helped.
As for my financial situation; m47, married, two kids still at home one of them finishes HS in a couple weeks the other is a sophomore. One more already in college. They all either pay their own way or plan to do so. I'm willing to help them if needed, but think it's important for them to stand on their own.
Net worth is just over 2MM counting house (conservative estimate on value) or 1.6MM not including house. No debt. Wife works and makes enough for us to live but we wouldn't be saving much. Last year's expenses were around 65k but that doesn't include anything that's withheld from our checks (taxes, insurance, etc)
I don't have anything lined up, but when I do I don't want to keep doing what I'm doing. I want to have a job that I don't need to take home with me. Just applied for a job maintaining trails for the parks department this morning. Pay would be minimal, but my thinking is it would be enough to keep us building up savings instead of just relying on compounding. I also can't just do nothing and expect the wife to bring in the only income until we hit our number (which I'm thinking is right around 2MM) Honestly, with some expense cutting we could possibly scrape by and call ourselves lean fired even if she didn't work, but that's not really ideal.
I know it makes more sense to wait to quit until I have something lined up, but mentally I just don't have it in me.
Any support anyone cares to offer is greatly appreciated.

Me and my partner have been together for four, almost five years and we are long distance. we have never met.
this will be a very long read but it honestly doesn’t even sum up everything. there’s been so much more stuff with terrible abusive details and so much emotion that I cannot capture in this post. I also could not explain everything to detail and left out a lot about this girl im eventually going to mention in this post and have left out a lot about other stuff my bf has done and said to me.
to preface, me and my bf both are not in therapy. He is going to therapy in a few months. He is in college and has friends, while I have no friends.
I have a lot of jealousy issues and insecurities. my boyfriend has messed up countless times with his friends. he’s broken a million boundaries over and over throughout this whole relationship. he says he can’t get better. he says he needs me to be more appreciative of the good things he does and to stop getting so mad when he hurts me. any time I talk to him about the bad stuff, he victimizes himself, brings up things I did in the past that I no longer do, gaslights me, manipulates me and tries to break up with me. when he breaks boundaries with people, he just breaks up with me and gets super mad. every boundary broken has been with girls.
he’s emotionally cheated, lied a billion times, hid things a billion times, done things I tell him make me uncomfortable with other people, ranted (talked shit) about me to his friends a billion times but left out all the things he’s done to provoke me and abuse me..and through all of that he has yelled at me and cried and blamed me. I am always very up front about my boundaries and try to be stern every single time.
so through all of that, I have horrible trust issues and insecurities. now we are having issues with this girl in his hometown at his work. he did substances with her, hid it, lied about it, and since then he has made her a HUGE deal. I told him one of my boundaries is not hanging out with people nor being their friend if you’ve messed up boundaries with them intentionally. all of the boundaries I have placed are ones that I follow as well by the way.
he told me he can’t get rid of her because she works with him and can’t find another job and doesn’t want to find another job (it’s a summer job). he wanted to hang out and explore abandoned places with her like the last time they hung out for six hours and also did substances and other stuff at her place. he cried and complained and started about 6 different big fights with most of them resulting in him trying to break up with me or breaking up with me for a few hours to a day.
this girl has a boyfriend but I have this gut feeling she likes him but I could be totally wrong! Like I said, I have really bad jealousy and insecurities but with that comes paranoia. I don’t think every girl likes my bf but there has to be signs and I guess my mind has convinced me there are “signs”.
the signs are: she followed him on Facebook, added him on snapchat, has him on discord and instagram.
she only followed my boyfriend despite knowing I exist.
she only follows my boyfriend and three other people (who are famous). she does not follow her boyfriend on that account.
she friended me on Facebook so I asked her why she friended me on facebook and not instagram (where she always talks to my bf) because she knows I exist on instagram but she said she didn’t notice she wasn’t following me which just feels complete lie. I asked then was asking why she only followed him , (a few famous people), and did not have her bf on this account. she said she has multiple accounts but she was snappy and rude when she responded to me saying stuff like “can’t I follow who I want to what’s the problem here lol” and stuff. I asked a simple question, I wasn’t rude or anything. she apologized for being rude a few minutes later and then went to my boyfriend while he was working (she was in to grab some food) and she told him she thinks I hate her because she was rude to me and didn’t want me thinking she’s a “fucking bitch”. her words told from him to me.
Since my boyfriend said he cannot leave or distance since they work together and it would be too awkward he tried breaking up with me multiple times and said this summer would be miserable with him because all ill do is complain and cry about being anxious with what he has caused. I told him to just be distant and he agreed to.
he had ended up telling her im uncomfortable with them hanging out because she kept begging him to hang out again and he didn’t think it was fair to not explain why he keeps saying no to her. he told her he slipped up on a boundary with her and that I don’t allow it. it made me sound so shitty and he refused to explain my side of why im uncomfortable in more details like I begged and then when I tried to explain it to her (I ended up just not sending it) he kept telling me to cut out parts that make him look bad and that she “doesn’t need to know everything about our relationship”. so I know she thinks im a shitty partner now and I know she does not like me but she doesn’t know anything he’s done.
the day before yesterday was his first day back to work for summer break and they only worked together for about an hour and thirty minutes but still managed to talk quite a bit. she also came up to him and said she wishes they could still hang out and that she’s sad or something about it despite knowing im uncomfortable and that we’ve already made it clear that wouldn’t be happening. She also asked him if they were still good (she was definitely asking because there’s tension between me and her even though her and I like don’t really talk, I’ve also tried inviting her to play games with me and my bf online before he messed up with her and she refused every time and wouldn’t reschedule but then she wants to play games alone with him.) then he asked her if he could get his cigarettes back that he gave her. he says he can’t help talking to her at work because he doesn’t want to be rude and that it’s hard to avoid her.
Today they are currently working together and it’s only been a few hours yet so far she’s come up to his register behind him and looked at his phone, talked a bit and told him she could try and get him a free electric guitar, gave him a piece of gum without asking, showed him pictures of her and her boyfriend at a prom event, talked about working out, etc. Doesn’t sound like much maybe but it hurts when you’ve asked him to distance himself and it was barely half of his first shift and all that has already been done. and not to mention she was stocking while my bf was on register so she kept coming out of her way to talk to him.
if I complain, he just wants to break up. I wish she knew why I don’t want them hanging out. he made me sound like im just a toxic girlfriend. I can’t explain anything to her without him threatening to like cut and kill himself and break up with me.
if I break up with him they’re just gonna hang out all summer and he do god knows what and talk shit about me for sure. he would never explain what he’s done. I’ll look even worse. I just want peace but my heart is breaking. I don’t want to victimize myself but I have such a big heart, i believe in and love god, I love with my whole heart, I try to see good in people, I gave him everything I had and im still trying to pull more out of me. it feels like it’ll never be enough. I know he will forget about me because last summer we were on break and he said he let himself “slip” up and looked at a girl who came into the store with lust and full attraction because he was trying to imagine his life without me. he didn’t even tell me because he didn’t think he needed to since we were on break. He recently told me maybe a month ago. the break lasted like two days and it was because our relationship was so bad and he did not love me anymore. there have been multiple times he has not loved me but it was always because of my reactions to his abuse.
I’ve never not once stopped loving him and I’ve never once found anybody else attractive while I’ve been with him, not even celebrities. I’ve tried to warn him a thousand times that if he breaks boundaries again or hurts me some other way, I’ll be done. he just does it like he breathes. he says he feels remorse but he just always does it again. he said he feels better without me because im always hurting him. I “hurt” him by reacting to his abuse, asking him questions about things he’s done, asking him if he’s broke boundaries with his friends when he’s with them, etc. His first day of work this summer I was asking him questions about the girl and he was so defensive. I still feel like something else happened like he ranted about me or she said something about me that he doesn’t wanna tell me. it was not a normal reaction to a simple question.
is there any way I can get over this without having to break up? It feels like my world is ending. he is my only friend. he is doing great in life. he can move on easily and will move on easily when I am gone. he said before he would just put himself more into work, friends and school and would just forget about me. I have nothing really. I do nothing all day as I don’t even have access to a job.
I just need advice on how to go about controlling my emotions when he’s around this girl and other potential friends.

Hi, I made an account just to share this but I lurk here a lot and I feel like I’ve really hit a breaking point, so hi I guess.
I’m 17F and in the UK. I’ve been wanting to get help for a while but I feel kind of stuck. I‘m leaving school next month, and moving cities in September to go to uni, so I will need to get a new doctor? I feel like there’s point in asking if Im just gonna leave school and move cities because they won’t have any record of anything. But I really need to do something because I feel like Im losing my mind. I binge eat everyday and I actually feel insane.
I’ve really hit a breaking point. I was restricting for a while and then I relapsed back into BED and it has been worse than ever, I’ve gained 50lbs and most of my clothes don’t fit me anymore. I feel shit mentally and physically so much, I don’t know if this is related but my chest hurts a lot now a lot, especially after bingeing or getting out of breath and it feels like sharp pains which worries me. I ate nearly 5k calories today and I don’t even know why, nothing triggered me I feel like I was just born greedy sometimes. Sometimes I feel like it’s not bad enough to get help but I feel like eating nearly 5k calories probably is right?

I know if I get TSA it is only helpful when I am leaving the US, and not coming back, but not having to take my shoes off and liquids out, is actually quite useful, given, I don’t know how long the GE application will take.
Some people mentioned if I am traveling internationally, my application will be conditionally approved faster and I can do EOA when I come back? Is this true? I applied for GE on Friday - my travels in the last 5 years were a lot of places (mostly Europe) but some places like China and Russia too - does this mean they need to obtain police check in all of those places? That will take a long time to check those 20 countries I visited and my application might be long….

So, she leaves the dog all day alone to loaf around Los Angeles regularly then takes him out to do an #ad on a trail when there is money involved (note: I hope the dog is on flea and tick medication since Lyme is no joke and needs a vet visit). She ditches the dog (again) to go to Texas to do nothing. Meanwhile, the dog is desperate need of a visit to the groomer.
Who is watching this dog and keeping him on a schedule while she's gone all day? She's showing her colors here. I used to feel bad for her but whatever feeling sorry feelings I had are nonexistent anymore.

Hey guys. I'd be happy to hear your input on the following situation. I read the book up to 5 times a while ago and am now reading it again.
So I've been seeing this 22 yo Filipina online since I'm visiting the country later this year. We've been texting every day and video calling 3 times a week for almost 2 months, and I believe we have a good connection. We talked and texted a lot initially and she was very forward, always initiating contact, sending pictures, etc.
🚩Red flags include: • drinks, travels to islands where there are a lot of foreigners • recently out of a 4-year relationship (few months) • sensitive when I'm not answering quickly, • removing messages and pictures she's sent, • removed many pictures from her Instagram, • unsure if she wants kids (but appreciates that I'm good with children), • comes from an 8 kids family with no stable father figure
My interest fell early on when I was mistaken for a "French guy" by her friend, so I pulled back and I could sense that she was as well.
This week she gauged my interest it seems by asking me if I'm seeing other people. She also asked if I said "girlfriend" out of the blue. I asked if she wanted me to get rid of the others and she said "It's up to you". I asked her to be my girlfriend (not a good move). She blushed and smiled but didn't give a straight answer.
Later her manners had changed and she wasn't as sweet. She told me she wanted to get to know me better, and gave some instructions on how I should act, implying that I needed to text and call her more. She said I could ask her again in a month. I concluded that we are not a couple.
I felt like she wanted me to ask considering the hints she gave me, and then pulled back which confused me. Now I understand that she was gauging my interest by seeing where my head was at. Her hot and cold behavior made me second guess where we were headed, so I decided to walk away since I was also seeing other people (which she knew) while leaving an open door if she changed her mind.
Yesterday she drunk-called me explaining that she was upset and confused about my texts, that she was unsure about how I felt about her, that she felt like an option to me, that I'm different from the others, and that she missed talking to me and wanted to get to know her better before entering into a relationship. I asked if she wanted to be exclusive and she said "Yes! Of course!". I said, "Okay then I'll get rid of the others", which I now have.
Currently, she's on a trip to an island with her girlfriends where there are a lot of parties and foreigners. She said that she remembered most of what we talked about, and agreed to talk when we were both clear-headed and that she would call me. I've got a few things I'm considering bringing up.
What do you think about all of this, and what advice do you have for me?
Thanks for reading.

Ever since I was a kid, I've been good at school. Gifted classes a few AP classes here and there. Either way I maded it to a decent school and graduated with a Bachelor's in Games and Interactive Design, and an associates' in computer information systems but I can't seem to get highered anywhere. Ive sent out a literal 1000 applications and have been met with either radio silence or rejection letters. I keep getting told to keep at it and I don't know how much longer I can just sit in place. Its been a year since I graduated and I have nothing to show for it. Its gotten so bad I'm thinking of giving up on everything entirely and joining the military just to start wiping the debt away and hope it'll get me some of the help I need. It feels though if I join the military I'll be giving up on the education I have and it'll all have been a waste of time. I want to work in video games even if its thankless and I'm underpaid because it really is my passion. I just don't know what I'm doing wrong. My computer's been broken for a few months and I can feel my skills atrophy with each passing second. I've been rejected from every service work/retail job near me for someone who "more suits the stores needs".

Currently CS freshman at Purdue. Applied to transfer and got CMU math, Cornell, and Brown. Kind of interested in comp bio.
Some things that are making me want to stay: - Good friends and close relationship with professors - Good CS research opportunities - Cheaper (My family can afford tuition at the other schools but I kinda feel bad)
Things that want me to leave - Location - Prestige (lets be honest this matters somewhat since this is not the grad school)
If I were to rate my first year here I would say like a 7/10 mostly enjoyable. There were some stressful moments but not too bad. I want to have a good undergrad experience, aim for top CS grad schools, and if that doesn’t work out try to get a high paying job. Im on the fence because I think I can achieve the above by staying but wonder if I can do even more at a new school. Also I know this is the Purdue sub but please try to be objective. Thank you.

Unfortunately I cant study anything related to my dream job (being a music artist) because all the music degrees in my country suck and are useless. No one cares about the degree in the industry and I've been into this for 6 years and I know a lot, and I'll keep learning on my own.
My other interests are biology and human mind as a whole. I think I could be a good therapist, also I've heard that psychology opens many doors. I'll also say that in my country you cannot get a bachelor in psych, only a master's. So if you decide to pursue psychology you sign up for 5 years instantly. I'm really good at reading a lot of text and remembering it.
The bad thing about psych though is that I wont do much with biology, and I love it. Bioinformatics sounds really good but the bad thing is I've never been good at maths. I dont know shit about programming either. A week ago I picked up a maths textbook for idiots and it's been going pretty well, but for now I'm relearning what I had to learn in high school.
What do you advise me to do? Should I keep studying maths on my own and decide later? I still have like a month to find out before the application deadline. However, I have no idea how to decide between the two even if it turns out I can learn maths, because none of these degrees appeal to me as much as music does. It feels like a curse to be fair lol

Sorry for the rant, I just had to write this down as I am still feeling kinda depressed because of this interaction.
I just literally made us dinner, the entire dinner she complained about the taste, told me I am a bad cook, threw the entire meal in the sink and after I made us both some tea she asked me "why didn't you hug me today, you have being rude to me the entire day" (note that I just got back from work like 40 min before that) I told her that I literally did nothing wrong to her and she just started to complain about my speech tone and how rude it was. I was emotionally deflated and told her "okay." I got her tea and was about to leave and she actually had the audacity to ask me "where are you going? Are you not going to seat with me?" I got upset and told her "no, I won't, you are not pleasant to be around right now" She literally said to me "you can't blackmail me like that" I just said to her "sorry, you can't act like that and expect me to want to be near you right now" And she finally shut up.
I just can't with her sometimes, she always tries and excuse this mean comments as "making me a better person" but it's just feels like bullying. No one is forcing her to eat my meals, no one is forcing her to be nice to me, but to go out of her way to put the blame of the bad vibe in the house because "I am rude" just feels iffy.
Btw, anyone experienced a situation where you asked your mom if she want something (in my case, I made popcorn and asked her if she want some) and she said "no I want to eat dinner first", fair enough, I make popcorn, take it to my room and she asks me loudly, "where's my popcorn?". I told her I heard her say no, and she argued with me that she said yes and teased me that my hearing may not be that great.
Again, so sorry for the word dump, I just feel depressed I can't even relax at home while she makes these comments 🙁

My manager has constantly told me and 2 of my colleagues that we need to talk more be really chatty with the donors. I've only just realised all three of us MUSLIM. No one else has been told to be a certain way or to talk more. Is this discrimination or am I overthinking it too much. I find it really rude and hurtful being told that I need to talk more than I need to because as long as l'm doing the job, the donor is happy, no complaints have come in. What's the need for me to carry on entertaining them? Wasting my time in pointless conversation with a random man or woman when I don't really care about their life? As long as l've asked them things listed in the SOP, Health and safety and work related medical questions? Why am I being told to go have a chat with them about anything and everything not related to work? When I can just carry on with a different task. I'm not a chatty person to begin with but I know how to have a normal civil conversation with a stranger. But l'm being asked to do more than that which in my opinion is weird and offensive to some extent, how can I tell my manager that this is actually affecting me? All three of us get along with the staff fine cuz we actually know these people but when it comes to donors, we don't understand how we can just yap our gobs off at people e so much for making everyone feel equal and included. People have a problem with calm chilled people who don't gossip. They think something is wrong with that person. We literally just can't be fake that's all there is to it. Can't chat shit that's all like is that really a bad thing team I losing my mind cuz this has been brought up twice now at work.
If I click with the person I'll happily talk to them but every interaction isn't the same and can't be forced some donors I can stay there talking until the end of the donation until they leave the centre but that's rare while most the donors that come in it's the script I have and that's it I'm gone on to the next donor.

Eternia. The world once knew by many is now knew by few. The aftermath of a world ending apocalyptic event left civilization fractured and disparate, while the different cultures fight themselves and the superpowered beasts of the past. Mysterious, ancient artifacts discovered by a few brave souls accelerate the technology of civilizations while mythical magic infused beasts roam the land and guard that secrets that exploration yields. You, the hunter, the curious, the ambitious, leave the safety of sheltered civilization to discover gain new abilities and discover the truth about why the world collapsed.
Hello, I'm Zack Brown, I've been a dungeon master for quite some time, and have always homebrewed things into my adventures. so, I thought why not make a system of my own that isn't limited by the flaws of other systems. I love to tell stories, and I love to help players tell their character's stories through roleplay. I've also built a flexible, classless system that allows for build diversity and complexity, while remaining simple to those who don't want the hassle of min max powergaming. (Even though you can make some powerful builds)
If you are interested in my game, please message me here, or gamezbrown on discord and I will send you the application form so I can start shaping what our game will look like. If the game is full, apply anyway because I plan on running multiple.

Gaz had crawled high into the apple tree and was pulling fruit down, lobbing it into the net his sister Tibble was holding out with her four hands. He hooted as he saw Jonathan walking through the rows.
Tibble turned, her blue fluff ruffling. "Human Jonathan! We have gathered many of the apples!"
Jonathan smiled as he approached, noting the large pile stacked on the ground. "Tibble, you have to put them in the baskets. Contact with the dirt will cause them to rot." He laughed. "I've told you this."
She shook her head. "Pyramid shape best. I like this." She pointed at the pile. "This is best way. You said you would make more cider. We like the cider. You will make it for me."
He knelt down and picked up an apple, taking a bite. Juice oozed out around his lips as his teeth pierced the skin of the fruit. He chewed for a moment while looking up at Gaz. "Yes. I said I would. Get these in the baskets and I'll carry them back."
She growled at him. "Piles are best." Tibble then began moving the top of the pile into the basket.
Jonathan sat under the tree as she filled the first basket, finishing off his third apple. She stacked it as high as she could before they started rolling off the top, and he got up. He lifted the basket and started carrying it toward the shed. "I'll be back for the next basket shortly."
He walked the half mile through the ruins of the city and stopped outside the door to the shed. He placed the basket down next to the apple masher and pulled the first apple up. He felt something ping on the back of his neck. Instinctively he scratched it, not remembering the sensation. He scratched a second time before he remembered what that particular vibration meant.
"Ares. Answer transmission."
The silicon based assistant accessed the relay and transmitted it to his subneurals.
An image of a man appeared in his ocular display. "Activation code Xeres Zulu three Kappa Alpha seven." The man said.
Jonathan tensed up and took a long breath before sighing. "Go ahead, admiral I'm guessing?"
"Admiral Alexander Oline, and you are Remnant Jonathan Kurzov?"
"I am."
"You are being activated."
Jonathan shook his head. "I'm retired."
"Retired?" The admiral asked. "You're done being human? I didn't know that was a thing."
"I'm retired from whatever you're wanting to ask me to do. Unless it's gardening, I don't give a shit about whatever you're doing."
Admiral Oline looked away for a moment and then back at Jonathan. "I have a report here describing in depth contact and conflict with an alien species, conducted by you. We received this information along with an application for a species of blue fuzzy creatures to be put under our species protection from a communications relay you and your assistant built. Am I wrong in this?"
Jonathan groaned. "No, you're right. I did a good deed."
Alexander nodded to himself as he looked over the report. "Yes, and now for your punishment." He smiled. "Prior to this, we thought all expansionist missions into your galaxy were extinct. The only traces we have left, before you, are the four sentience probes that were sent with your colonists. Do you still have access to those probes?"
Jonathan shook his head. "Haven't seen them in a few centuries. They left this system to continue scanning."
The admiral nodded. "Well, they have been continuing as programmed. They've been transmitting the entire time, and their data as mothballed during the last era, but now." He paused for a moment, his face growing stern. "A lot has changed since you left the Way. We, humanity, are on a similar path as yourself it seems."
"How so?" Jonathan asked.
"Humanity is making peace with our existence. We have gone back to our roots, trying to find peace in this darkness. Gardening, zen, familial ties, these are major values we have fostered, same as you and your adopted blue friends."
"Well, good for humans. Woo." Jonathan said. "Get to the point Oline. What do you want."
"Okay, I'll cut the curtsies. Those four probes from your expedition, their transmissions got bought up by a young entrepreneur. He went through them, refocused the probes to blue planet and found something. There's a species there, Isopodal, smart, but technologically savage. They're never going to reach beyond their atmosphere. They're planet locked, hell, probably never going to see electricity."
"Okay, so savages are causing a problem how?"
Oline sighed, shutting his eyes for a moment. "He watched them, then shared the feed with his friends, who shared the feed with their friends, and it became a phenomenon. These big bug, they're nice with extended families. They build their homes out of their shed carapaces. The longer they stay in a place, the bigger their homes get. Some are a hundred generations old, children walking through their halls touching the shells of ancestors long long gone. They scavenge, filter feed. The build tunnels to channel wastes from their small towns to the forests nearby, perfect balance with their ecosystem. They don't wage war, plan long term settlements with population quotas, living exactly as how the new human government envisions we should."
Jonathan nodded. "Sounds nice."
Oline sighed again. "It's a whole thing. We have a moon dedicated to making plushies of these things. People love them. The probes have been following specific towns for four decades now. Generations of people are involved in this ideology."
"And where do I fit in?"
"Your conflict with the Brin. Our Isopods biologically cleanse their environments of heavy metals. Their towns are built out of high demand, refined, high value materials. The Brin have since shifted their focus away from your blue fuzzy's and now are predating upon the Isopods."
"Fuck. Alright, I'll put a stop to them. You got coordinates for their homeworld?"
The admiral shook his head. "No, we're not into genocide anymore. We have to consider voters now. Your galaxy is being watched in detail now, with your little communication relay set up. We have to do this hands off, plausible deniability."
"For fuck's sake. Okay. How you wanna do this then?"
"Open source a Hadronic engine, give it to them. Basic freedom fighter protocols."
Jonathan nodded. "Understood."
Admiral Oline looked down at his templates and transmitted them. "Remnant Jonathan Kurzov, you are authorized to commence Project Pandora, classification Ultra Secret."
---===*===---
The father and eldest daughter and melted in the house of her forebears. She screeched through the walls, begging them to get out while she focused on the twins. She grabbed the two balls and tucked them into her filter pouches before running out the front door. She made it out to the beach as the heat intensified and the floating disk began sucking up their home. She stood in the water, her visual plate peaking out from the waves watching as she shivered with sadness. Her feeler appendages stroked the twins in her pouches as they fed from her filters, safe under the water. The beams finished melting down her home, pulling the slag up into the belly of the floating circle. She watched it float slowly away, disappearing down the beach.
She stood in the water, watching the smoldering hole that was her home far into the night. The stars were bright, and a dim glow came from beyond the horizons. She didn't dare leave her home, her ancestors. She kept shivering in grief, then she saw it.
A shadow contorted and a figure moved. Her vision, being as highly sensitive as it was, could barely make it out. She watched as it stood next to her ruins, her family home. A flash came from the thing.
"Fear not." It said as clearly as if it were her own blood.
She tiptoed out of the water, her weight coming back to her as she walked onto the beach. She shimmered back at the creature. "Spare us. Please."
It turned toward her, its face horrible and full of holes. Two orbs peered down at her, sending waves of fear through her shell. "A mother stands before me." It said, reflections appearing in front of it, cascading infrared to her. "I will do more than spare you."
Terror welled up in her and she fell down to the ground, but she resisted the urge to coil up and maintained her gaze upon the creature. "You are not them. You, you are different."
It walked closer to her, moving upon a mere two appendages. It lowered down next to her, extending a manipulator arm toward her. "Chance has sent a plague upon your peoples, one that you will not survive." It stared deep into her visor plate. "My people weep at that thought and offer you, Mother of three now two, a gift."
She could not help herself, and as if commanded without words, she extended two of her manipulator appendages up toward it. It opened up the ball at the end of its arm, five digits unfurling to reveal a black cube. It gently pushed the cube into her two pointed appendages.
"What is it?" She asked, shimmering.
The creature shimmered the air around it, speaking in ways she couldn't. "It is the gift we wish we did not have to give. It is horror, pain, and destruction. You know it in your organs, you feel it thinking about your mate, your daughter. Those that brought this feeling to you, will not stop until you give them this feeling back. This, this will allow you to do so, and I am sorry to have to give it to you."
She looked down at the cube in her points, feeling it as it vibrated across her limbs, reaching into her. Lines traced across her shell as she watched it grow on her. She looked back up toward the being as it crawled across her body but the shadow creature was gone.
A voice spoke to her, vibrations in her very core. "Hephaestus online. Greetings Mother."
She stood, her numerous feet appendages poking into the wet sand. "Where are you, being?" She shimmered with her shell.
"I am in you Mother, and am at your service." It replied within her minds.
"What has happened?" She asked, shivering with fear.
"You have been called upon to save your people."
She looked around before touching her own carapace. "How do I, how do we do that?"
"Where are the survivors?" It asked.
She thought for a moment, visions of the deep, visions of safety in the dark filled her minds.
"Go there. Help them."
She shivered again, defeat in the squish of body, her filters feeling the twins feeding at her sides.
"They will not stop, and more will suffer and die."
She turned her gaze back toward the horizon, seeing the glow of other homes melting in the far distance. "We can stop this?" She asked, now solely using her thoughts.
"I am but your tool. You can stop this." It replied.
---===*===---
She had not been to the vents since she picked her mate. They had fed there, filtering, hardening their shells together while discussing their future family. She could see the flickers of bioluminescence in the dark as she approached, her filters tasting the dense biofilm from the sea. She was close, and the flickers were from many peoples, many different families. She watched them talk, brothers, sisters, mothers, daughters, fathers, grandparents, all missing loved ones. Pain was the primary color, loss and heartache shared through the broken peoples.
She stepped into the outer ring, the heat of the vents warming her and her twins at her sides. Shimmers rose up to her asking who she had lost. She replied. "Mate and eldest daughter." But her reply wasn't heartache, but rather tinged with a new feeling and color. She replied with deep reds, a red tied to a thought from a people people beyond the stars, a red of blood and fire, things she knew nothing about.
The people's around her shifted in confusion at the colors. An elder great mother rose up to her. "You speak confusing daughter. What are you saying? Are you injured?"
She looked around, her visor meeting with dozens of others as they raised up to look at her. "The darkness came to me, spoke with me." She looked at the great mother. "The darkness touched me and has told me what we must do."
The elder mother walked over and touched manipulators with her. "Sit with us daughter, you need to rest. You have come far and need to heal."
"Our mates burn." The Mother of three now two said. "Our children, our families, our fathers burn. Things of light and pain come here and kill us. I will not heal these wounds. I bleed in my organs, pain beyond pain. I will not rest until they cease, until they feel my pain. They will feel this in their organs!" She flashed brighter than those around her thought possible. "I will stop them!"
A father stood up, pain shown in his colors. "They burn us. They are in the sky! How do we stop them? Do you know how? If you know anyway I will lend my spikes to yours. Please, tell us how! Anyone, tell us how." He shouted as bright as he could, lament touching his words.
The Mother of three now two walked over to him, placing her appendages upon his. Dots of blue light shifted from her carapace onto his. She looked into his visor plate and spoke with tinges of red. "The darkness has come and has promised us vengeance."
He flexed his carapace, breathing deep as he sucked in the sea. "What is this?" He asked, his own colors shifting toward the red.
"Our pain made flesh." She replied.
---===*==---
Brin operator Noloc was marking the next metal deposit while the syphons were busy pulling up the slag. It radioed over to buddy Lana. "You nearing full?"
Lana replied back. "Yeah. You want to get food while we empty?"
"Yeah, obviously." It replied. "Care to stimulate bodies while we eat?"
"Yeah obviously." Lana said. "Hey, are you getting any weird readings?"
"Like what?" Noloc asked.
Lana sent over telemetry. "Heat spikes in the water. What are those?"
Noloc looked them over and then scanned the water nearby. "Yeah, I got a dozen near me too. What are those?"
Noloc turned to look out the window just in time to see something leap onto the outer hull of its ship. "Um, one of the native creatures is on my miner."
Lana screamed through the radio.
Noloc shook at the noise and looked back out at the native. The creature was larger than normal, its color darker as well. Noloc watched as the thing curled, hunkering down on the hull. Deep scratching sounds echoed through the ship. "I am in need of assistance." It radioed up toward the mothership. "Assistance needed, native attack."
Telemetry came down. "Wait time for assistance five minutes. Ten minutes. Three hours." It read out, the time continuously increasing.
Noloc looked around. "What is happening! I need assistance!" Another thud on the hull and Noloc looked out to see another native boring into the ship. "Help!"
---===*===---
The Mother walked over to the downed ship and watched as the warriors cut apart the pilot. Hephaestus highlighted the mining beam as she walked across the machinery. She pointed with one of her manipulators. "There Father. We need that piece." She shimmered.
One of the fathers walked over and cut it free with his new sharps. "What is it Mother?"
"It is a tool of light and fire."
He shook, remembering his family burning.
"Remember that pain Father. They will feel it as they burn."
He paused and looked at her. "We will be as they are then. Burners, bringers of pain. That is not who we are."
She felt at the empty filters at her side. "My twins are in the deep with the mothers. That is not who they are, but that is who we must be so they can stay that way."
The Father shimmered back in tones of red. "They will be as we were before."
She flashed understanding. "We will suffer, become the monsters so they won't have to."
He replied understanding.
--===*===---
Three galaxies away, sitting in their living rooms across numerous worlds, humanity watched on. The four probes, hidden in their cloak fields, displayed in completed holographic representations, the forgotten horrors of war. Beams of fire and light rose up from the depths of the seas, melting Brin ships out of the sky. Day after day, the Isopods did what they did, scavenged. More fallen tech fed them, and within three months they had risen out of their gravity well, taking the fight into orbit.
A year later and several scavenged stations and the Isopods had opened up communications, seeking the others hiding in the shadows.
A world of blue fuzzy creatures were quick to respond, welcoming the filter feeders to the galactic community.
The Mother of Three now two was aboard the ship crossing the darkness as the first gathering commenced.

My wife, our son and I were at a wedding of her friend. We ran into a guy she was dating that was also a friend from the bride. My wife was socked for a moment to se him with his date. She introduced us and we went our own way. 10 minutes later our kid was using the trampolin and I was watching him while she went to talko to people. Sure thing, of all of the people she could have talked to, she ended up standing beside a high table with one other couple and the guy she dated and his girlfriend/date. She was there for 30-60 minutes there with some pause (she would drop by to se if everything is fine a cople of times). I finde it quite disrespectfull to leave us alone at a wedding where we know nobody. I did not want to be possesive and tell her to stop it, although she knows my opinion that talking to ex'es is a no go. I went cold because I was hurt. Afterward she was pressuring me saying that she does not feel a connection between us and so on. After pressuring me a few times I told her that I found it disrespectfull what she did. After that she snapped on me, started to cry and so on... she claims I ruined the wedding for her. She does not want to talk about the situation and is very rude to me in almost every communication exchange we have. I feel very unvalidated and I hate that the night went that way.
Am I in the wrong in this situation?
tl,dr Wife talked to a guy she dated at her's firend wedding for 30+ minutes while I was watching our kid. After I did not give her affection because of it she was angry at me.

Author's Note: Welp, I'm back. I'm going to be doing these super-short stories from now on instead of the multi-paged short stories that took several days to write. I tend to lose motivation in writing when I have long, drawn out stories. I just want to write these stories about my characters and focus on their character beats and emotions, rather than one long drawn out plot. I do intend on making an overarcing plot with these stories, but told over many, smaller instances.
This story introduces a new character that will not be recieving a character concept page. The reason why is because I simply am not interested in making game concepts and I'm not interested in Overwatch (The Game) anymore. I just want to focus on the stories of my characters.
Harvey King, the handsome, smooth-talking, knuckle-bruiser of Overwatch, now reduced to another ruffian locked behind steel bars. The once highly-esteemed son of New York Cities biggest tech conglomerate entrepenuer, Leonhard King, now another criminal locked away for life for the high crime of terrorism. Not only that, but he was thrown under the bus, used as a scapegoat to get pressure off of King Enterprises, the company that dad always loved more than his own son. His own son, dammit!
"I'm tellin you Harv," Sean muttered on from the top bunk. "you've gotta cool off or you'll get yourself killed!"
"Shut up!" Kingbursted out at his insolent cell mate. The New Worker was a fairly handsome man with a sharp jawline and beautiful nose, but his charcoal black hair had become ragged due to a profound lack of hair gel in prison. Harvey was looking into a glass shiv that he had stolen from the one-eyed punk down the isle, desperately trying to get the angle just right so that he could see his reflection in it. He ran is his fingers down his jaw line, feeling the creases and folds that had been left by Winston's Tesla Cannon. His perfect face, the face who's nose had never once been broken in all of Harvey's days of brawling, was now left with an electrical scar that he would have to live with for the foreseeable future, at least until he can break out of this hole and get it fixed with a healthy dosage of surgury. "That damn monkey, he ruined my face!" He turned to Sean. "Look at this, he ruined my face!"
"Yeah, I've been looking at it for the past month or so." Sean snickered.
"You realize I already have a life sentence?" King snarled, his tone had grew contempted.
"Yeah, so? Most people here d-"
"'That means it won't matter if I use your teeth for golf balls!"
"Oh please kid, you ain't the first young punk to threaten me li-"
"I'll be the first one to go through with it," King yelled at Sean. grabbing him by the collar and dragging him down from the top bunk. "If you don't shut your fu-"
"Shut up in there!" A guard banged his baton against the bars, interrupting King. "And get your hands off your cellmate!"
"Sorry officer," King put on a happy, personable tone of voice for the gaurd. He obediently dropped Sean. "Won't happen again, I promise."
"Yeah, yeah." The guard walked off, uninterested in King's crocodile smile.
The moment the guard turned his back, King's face switched like a lightbulb, going from bright and charismatic to dark and irritated in a mere moment. He turned back to his stupid cellmate and lashed out at him, grabbing his collar and pulling him in close. "I think we need to come to an understanding, you and I," Harvey spoke menacingly. "Look pal, I've already had to put up with a lotta bull lately. I do not need a dishevelled, ugly piece of crap, such as you, giving me more bull. So if you continue to irritate me, I'm gonna make you choke on your teeth. You get me?"
Sean, at a lost for words, simply nodded out of fear. Sean was ugly and dishevelled, Harvey was truthful when he said that, but he was also much smaller than Harvey and wouldn't be able to defend himself.
"Good." Harvey gave Sean a toothy grin. Even in the dimly lit, murkey prison cell, Harvey's teeth still glistened. He dropped Sean, who immediately crawled back onto the top bunk, hugging the wall this time as to avoid being pulled down again, and sat down on his cold, hard matress. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, trying to think of how to get out of this situation. Only he couldn't think of an escape plan, he had too much on his mind. He was trying to make sense of everything that's happened, the mistakes he made that lead to this point. He had everyone at Overwatch wrapped around his fingers like marionettes, his facade was perfectly crafted. He couldn't help but reminisce about when he first started, the conversation he had with his father to get the whole thing set up, the developing of squeaky-clean persona that would be irresistable to Winston and Sojourn, the persona that landed him a spot on Overwatch's small roster of agents and made everyone fall in love with him. Well, not literally fall in love with him, but he was a natural smooth talker and very easy to like upon first meeting.
He remembered the conversation with his father that got him introduced to the likes of Winston in the first place, the conversation between his father and the leaders of Overwatch. King Enterprises had promised to provide Overwatch with funding, but only so Harvey could get a chance within their ranks. Leonhard King, father of Harvey King, was the CEO of King Enterprises. The old man was an idealist, and so was his only son. They wanted to leave a good impact on the world, with King Enterprises having been nicknamed "The Company of the People"; at least, that's what the public saw. No, the real Leonhard King was a tyranical capitalist who valued money over human rights, a greedy old man who was born into a mafia family, but being the the second-born meant he never got a chance to take over the family when his father died. Instead, it was his elder brother, Everett King II, named after his and Leonhard's father, who got to take over the family. Unsatisfied with being second fiddle, Leonhard left the family completely to become an entrepanuer, and now, 50 years later, he was on top of New York's social hierarchy with the biggest tech conglomerate in New England. King Enterprises was built into many facets of life in America, they built all sorts of cars, home appliances, home security systems, but that's only what the media saw.
Of course, Leonhard never shook off his knack for crime. He was a King, and criminality flowed through the King Bloodline; taking money out of decent folks pockets was in their blood. The horrible truth of the matter was that King Enterprises, "The Company of the People", got into all sorts of shady business, such as illegally shipping arms overseas, racketeering, maintaining ties in the black market, and lobbying shady politicians. On top of that, King Enterprises was a major player in the Military Industrial Complex, producing all sorts of weapons for the government, and shipping all the surplus over seas to other countries; a good chunk of all equipment used by the U.S. military was manufactored by King Enterprises. And it is because of this influence on the Military Industrial Complex that Leonhard King also provides funding to terrorist organizations such as Talon, organizations who are keen on creating conflict and pushing the world to the edge of war. Corporate corruption ran through every level of King Enterprises, and everyone outside of the corporation was none the wiser.
It was yard time, and King was hanging out alone. He hadn't made any attempts to socialize with any of the other ruffians the populate the prison, for he isn't planning on staying very long, but he did intend on working out as much as he could while he was there. A long time ago, when King was a kid hanging out in the slums of New York, he had a buddy called Twig. He was called Twig because he was very skinny, but mostly because King wasn't a very imaginitive nicknamer. He got sent to prison at the age of 16 for accidentally killing a guy while trying to jack his car, and came out a few years later completely jacked. King ended up shooting and killing him a while after he got outta prison, mostly because Twig blamed King for getting locked up and wanted revenge, but King still remembered in high regards.
King was readying himself for the bench press, stretching and giving himself a mental preptalk, thinking along the lines of "just cuz you're in prison doesn't mean ain't King no more," and the like. While he was getting ready, a loud, gruff voice cut off his train of thought. "Hey, punk!" King swung his head around to see who was yelling at him, and beheld a man who was around his same height, but very, very prison-jacked. Not as prison-jacked as Twig was, but still very prison-jacked. "Your daddy wanted to give you a message." This man didn't seem particularly friendly.
"My daddy?" King was not happy about this. A message from his father? Really? That old bastard wanted nothing to do with his son, and if he wanted to send him a message, he could visit him on every other thursday! "The hell's the meaning of this?"
"He said you couldn't be naming any name, kid. Said you'd understand." The big man pulled out a shiv, swinging his arm forward while rushing at King.
"The hell!?" King exclaimed, caught off guard by the sudden attack. He managed to catch the man's wrist, stopping the shiv from plunging right into his guts. He had to act quickly, he wouldn't be able to hold this man's arm for very long before he got overpowered, so he had to resort to some dirty tactics. Spitting in the man's eyes then kicking him in the shin did the trick, causing the jacked man to faulter and drop his shiv. Harvey had been in many a street fight during his life, and with the shiv out of the equation he would be also to out-box this man. King was an experienced brawler, he learned how to tussle on the streets of New York City, and was once mentored by a prize-fighter how to box. If not for his father's interference, King would've spent his entire life living in slums, hanging around his Uncle's turf, instead of in the King's Estate with his father.
With his attacker instinctually wiping spit out from his eyes, King had the perfect opportunity to land his signature KO'ing right hook right into the man's dome. King wasn't the biggest, most intimidating fella on the block, but he knew how to throw a punch with a surprising amount of power. King threw several more punches, beating the man senseless with merciless intensity, just to let off some steam that he's been holding in since his incarceration. He would've beaten that man to death if he hadn't been hit in the shoulder by a gaurd's heavy baton from behind. King fell down and got tackled by a gaurd, ending the fight.
Thursday rolled around, and it was the other thursday. King, of course, didn't have any visitors, but he did have a phone call. King impatiently tapped on the tabletop, eagerly waiting for someone to pick up the phone. A wide, sparkling smile stretched across his face as the wheezy voice of an elderly smoker come out the phone. "Who is this?" The voice calmly asked.
"Hey, Uncle."

Me and my partner have been together for four, almost five years and we are long distance. we have never met.
this will be a very long read but it honestly doesn’t even sum up everything. there’s been so much more stuff with terrible abusive details and so much emotion that I cannot capture in this post. I also could not explain everything to detail and left out a lot about this girl im eventually going to mention in this post and have left out a lot about other stuff my bf has done and said to me.
to preface, me and my bf both are not in therapy. He is going to therapy in a few months. He is in college and has friends, while I have no friends.
I have a lot of jealousy issues and insecurities. my boyfriend has messed up countless times with his friends. he’s broken a million boundaries over and over throughout this whole relationship. he says he can’t get better. he says he needs me to be more appreciative of the good things he does and to stop getting so mad when he hurts me. any time I talk to him about the bad stuff, he victimizes himself, brings up things I did in the past that I no longer do, gaslights me, manipulates me and tries to break up with me. when he breaks boundaries with people, he just breaks up with me and gets super mad. every boundary broken has been with girls.
he’s emotionally cheated, lied a billion times, hid things a billion times, done things I tell him make me uncomfortable with other people, ranted (talked shit) about me to his friends a billion times but left out all the things he’s done to provoke me and abuse me..and through all of that he has yelled at me and cried and blamed me. I am always very up front about my boundaries and try to be stern every single time.
so through all of that, I have horrible trust issues and insecurities. now we are having issues with this girl in his hometown at his work. he did substances with her, hid it, lied about it, and since then he has made her a HUGE deal. I told him one of my boundaries is not hanging out with people nor being their friend if you’ve messed up boundaries with them intentionally. all of the boundaries I have placed are ones that I follow as well by the way.
he told me he can’t get rid of her because she works with him and can’t find another job and doesn’t want to find another job (it’s a summer job). he wanted to hang out and explore abandoned places with her like the last time they hung out for six hours and also did substances and other stuff at her place. he cried and complained and started about 6 different big fights with most of them resulting in him trying to break up with me or breaking up with me for a few hours to a day.
this girl has a boyfriend but I have this gut feeling she likes him but I could be totally wrong! Like I said, I have really bad jealousy and insecurities but with that comes paranoia. I don’t think every girl likes my bf but there has to be signs and I guess my mind has convinced me there are “signs”.
the signs are: she followed him on Facebook, added him on snapchat, has him on discord and instagram.
she only followed my boyfriend despite knowing I exist.
she only follows my boyfriend and three other people (who are famous). she does not follow her boyfriend on that account.
she friended me on Facebook so I asked her why she friended me on facebook and not instagram (where she always talks to my bf) because she knows I exist on instagram but she said she didn’t notice she wasn’t following me which just feels complete lie. I asked then was asking why she only followed him , (a few famous people), and did not have her bf on this account. she said she has multiple accounts but she was snappy and rude when she responded to me saying stuff like “can’t I follow who I want to what’s the problem here lol” and stuff. I asked a simple question, I wasn’t rude or anything. she apologized for being rude a few minutes later and then went to my boyfriend while he was working (she was in to grab some food) and she told him she thinks I hate her because she was rude to me and didn’t want me thinking she’s a “fucking bitch”. her words told from him to me.
Since my boyfriend said he cannot leave or distance since they work together and it would be too awkward he tried breaking up with me multiple times and said this summer would be miserable with him because all ill do is complain and cry about being anxious with what he has caused. I told him to just be distant and he agreed to.
he had ended up telling her im uncomfortable with them hanging out because she kept begging him to hang out again and he didn’t think it was fair to not explain why he keeps saying no to her. he told her he slipped up on a boundary with her and that I don’t allow it. it made me sound so shitty and he refused to explain my side of why im uncomfortable in more details like I begged and then when I tried to explain it to her (I ended up just not sending it) he kept telling me to cut out parts that make him look bad and that she “doesn’t need to know everything about our relationship”. so I know she thinks im a shitty partner now and I know she does not like me but she doesn’t know anything he’s done.
the day before yesterday was his first day back to work for summer break and they only worked together for about an hour and thirty minutes but still managed to talk quite a bit. she also came up to him and said she wishes they could still hang out and that she’s sad or something about it despite knowing im uncomfortable and that we’ve already made it clear that wouldn’t be happening. She also asked him if they were still good (she was definitely asking because there’s tension between me and her even though her and I like don’t really talk, I’ve also tried inviting her to play games with me and my bf online before he messed up with her and she refused every time and wouldn’t reschedule but then she wants to play games alone with him.) then he asked her if he could get his cigarettes back that he gave her. he says he can’t help talking to her at work because he doesn’t want to be rude and that it’s hard to avoid her.
Today they are currently working together and it’s only been a few hours yet so far she’s come up to his register behind him and looked at his phone, talked a bit and told him she could try and get him a free electric guitar, gave him a piece of gum without asking, showed him pictures of her and her boyfriend at a prom event, talked about working out, etc. Doesn’t sound like much maybe but it hurts when you’ve asked him to distance himself and it was barely half of his first shift and all that has already been done. and not to mention she was stocking while my bf was on register so she kept coming out of her way to talk to him.
if I complain, he just wants to break up. I wish she knew why I don’t want them hanging out. he made me sound like im just a toxic girlfriend. I can’t explain anything to her without him threatening to like cut and kill himself and break up with me.
if I break up with him they’re just gonna hang out all summer and he do god knows what and talk shit about me for sure. he would never explain what he’s done. I’ll look even worse. I just want peace but my heart is breaking. I don’t want to victimize myself but I have such a big heart, i believe in and love god, I love with my whole heart, I try to see good in people, I gave him everything I had and im still trying to pull more out of me. it feels like it’ll never be enough. I know he will forget about me because last summer we were on break and he said he let himself “slip” up and looked at a girl who came into the store with lust and full attraction because he was trying to imagine his life without me. he didn’t even tell me because he didn’t think he needed to since we were on break. He recently told me maybe a month ago. the break lasted like two days and it was because our relationship was so bad and he did not love me anymore. there have been multiple times he has not loved me but it was always because of my reactions to his abuse.
I’ve never not once stopped loving him and I’ve never once found anybody else attractive while I’ve been with him, not even celebrities. I’ve tried to warn him a thousand times that if he breaks boundaries again or hurts me some other way, I’ll be done. he just does it like he breathes. he says he feels remorse but he just always does it again. he said he feels better without me because im always hurting him. I “hurt” him by reacting to his abuse, asking him questions about things he’s done, asking him if he’s broke boundaries with his friends when he’s with them, etc. His first day of work this summer I was asking him questions about the girl and he was so defensive. I still feel like something else happened like he ranted about me or she said something about me that he doesn’t wanna tell me. it was not a normal reaction to a simple question.
is there any way I can get over this without having to break up? It feels like my world is ending. he is my only friend. he is doing great in life. he can move on easily and will move on easily when I am gone. he said before he would just put himself more into work, friends and school and would just forget about me. I have nothing really. I do nothing all day as I don’t even have access to a job.
I just need advice on how to go about controlling my emotions when he’s around this girl and other potential friends.

I think someone has been following me for a while. It started out around August when I was walking to get something from my friend's car. It was at our school parking lot in the middle of school so most people shouldn't have been out. There is a long bridge between the parking lot and school and someone was on the other end of it. I didn't think anything of it but then the person kept following until I got to the car, then I didn't see him again. He had gotten pretty close, but then just wasn't there.
For the last few months, there have been random jewelry and gifts left on my doorstep addressed to me, I always throw them out. The weirdest thing is sometimes I'll be laying in bed and there will be two or three flashes at my window, I don't know if they're related or not.
There's been this car that pulls out of the school and goes the same direction as me when I leave school. It's happened multiple times. Nobody else from my school lives in my neighborhood and I live in a cul-de-sac so this car just pulls around and leaves. It's strange.
I told my friend and she told me I was probably being over dramatic and paranoid because I had been extremely paranoid before, but it was never like this. Other friends have told me it can't be this bad and I'm just being dramatic, but I've been really panicky about the whole thing and I'm just tired of it
Now I feel like I'm going insane. Is someone actually following me or am I just paranoid? I just can't anymore

Everyone in this story is 14ish. Some background information. I have this friend let’s call her Karen, me and her aren’t best friends. My best friend is a girl, let’s call her Cy. Karen, and I have gone through arguments a lot, and tbh our friendship isn’t that positive. We have 6 periods together so we sort of just have to get along.
In Language Arts we talk to this girl named Kim. Kim, and I go back and we are sort of friends. Recently though in language arts I have started to notice that I am being practically ignored in language arts by both Kim and Karen. This obviously upset me and there wasn’t much I could do to stop it. In Lanaguage arts these are my only friends so it’s not like I could just up and leave them.
The past few days it’s gotten way worse. I feel like a shadow around them, and of course they got assigned seats together. Honestly I always sort of thought I was closer to Karen, because we have 6 periods together, and we talk a lot. Despite our negative interactions it works itself out.
This Friday though is we went to an art gallery at our school. When we left the art gallery, Kim and Karen were going hand and hand walking way in front of me. They didn’t care to look back and me not once. This made me very upset, because it gave me the feeling they didn’t care. When we got back our teacher told us we can sit where ever we want. They sat together, and I wanted to see if they would invite me over, they didn’t. I spent the entire class, practically on the verge of tears, because I thought they both didn’t care about me. At the end of class our teacher told us his friend died from cancer right then. It was really sad. Karen of course made it about herself and was depressed the next two periods because her neighbors died like four years ago.
I talked to my friend Cy about the whole being left out thing, and Cy said she would talk to Karen, and she did. Karen blamed Kim for everything saying how Kim didn’t like me and Karen felt bad. Before this she didn’t say a word about it. Tbh I think she just said that because she didn’t want to take the blame for me being ignored. If she really did care about me she could see I was on the verge of tears, and she could’ve told me what was happening before my bestie asked her.
When I asked her about it later, she actually just almost went off of on me. Saying how it wasn’t her fault, and she got really defensive. I still am very upset about that, Kim isn’t even the thing I really care about it’s Karen, because of how she’s acting about what’s happening. When I told her I cried about it also she got really clearly annoyed, confused on how I could cry about that. When she literally cries over the smallest issues. I have to work with Kim, Karen, on a project tomorrow. I also did leave a note on Kim’s desk saying that I knew that she disliked me, and I asked her what I did wrong. I sucked it up, and now Karen and I are getting along. Am I the bad apple for resenting Karen?

It’s been about two years since all this happened, and after a lot of thought I eventually came to my own conclusion that I wasn’t in the wrong. At the same time, I never really told anyone about it so feel free to change my mind if need be.
To start off, this was in 2022 when I (22F) had been best friends with this person for about 8 years on and off because she was very emotionally immature and would get mad/upset a lot even just for me not replying fast enough, block and stop talking to me for long periods of time. I’ll refer to her as Daisy(21F). She had just reconnected with me and added me into a group chat with her and a male friend of hers I’ll call David(26M). Turns out this was a guy who she had met on Tinder a year prior, but they pretty much quickly realized they were better off purely as good friends because there was no romantic/sexual energy. Nothing ever happened between them. She kept friendship with David while still looking for a boyfriend, and found one awhile later. They had been dating for about 6 months by the time she reconnected with me.
Fast forward a few months, the four of us all meet up at the beach to celebrate Daisy and I’s birthdays since they’re a few days apart. After the beach, it’s late and we all go back to David’s apartment. Daisy and her boyfriend decide to leave and go back to her place, I say I’m fine staying at David’s place for the night since I live an hour away, he doesn’t mind. I’ll spare the gory details but we were both tired and had been drinking, he only has one bedroom with no spare blankets or pillows so we slept in his bed and things happened. Next day, Daisy finds out because she asks what we did that night and I guess it was hard to hide in our reactions because she sniffed it out quick. She was angry but mostly let it go for the time being, until we had unrelated problems a few weeks later(of course) and she brings it up again. Tells me I “fucked her bestfriend” and was trying to “take him away from her” repeatedly implying I’m always trying to take the attention away from her (she has admitted multiple times in the past about her jealousy of me because she was very overweight and insecure for a long time) and calling me a whore, slut, telling me to die etc. Even accused me of sleeping with her boyfriend, despite there being no point in time I was ever alone with him. I barely even interacted with him.
I found it really odd that she was in a committed relationship, but possessive and jealous over the attention of another man whom she explicitly chose not to be with like that, and even told me in front of him she was not attracted to him in any way. I didn’t respond to her texts berating me and it’s been two years no contact which I intend to keep it that way for my own sanity. AITA? (Sorry the formatting is bad, im on mobile and new to this)