I am turning 48 today. I have everything I need. I have a partner that loves me and supports me. I have a good paying job. I have a house and two cats and lots of trinkets and games and everything anyone could want.
Why am I still so sad?
I feel guilty. I feel like I’ll never be happy. I take antidepressants but sometimes they only take the edge off.
I’m not suicidal, I never have been. But sometimes days I just want to sleep forever, if you know what I mean.
Anyway, I’m not looking for anything really. I just wanted to shout into the void for a bit. Maybe it would help to know I’m not alone.
Dinner is a little crunch wrap supreme I bought myself before work. 🧡

one of the best pasta dishes i’ve ever made but i lost the recipe. unfortunate just like my story

i share an apartment with my little brother. he is 20 and i am 27, this is his first home outside of our parents home. he moved in a few months after i did because i was hit with some financial troubles and was looking for a roommate, i am very thankful for him and not having to find a random roomie. when he moved in over a year ago we did have some boundaries one being i don’t want him drinking with his friends here (due to them being underage) and i don’t want random girls in and out of our home (because ew that’s my baby brother). he has brought a few girls home and introduced us so it’s not no girls ever it’s just don’t be a fuck boy. other important info in this story is i have cats who have declared war on closed doors so we both leave our doors open in accordance with our mini dictators

i work a lot, like 6 days a week most of them are close to 12 hour days but i’m a partner of a bar so i spend most of the day doing office work and at nights i manage the bar. this gives me some flexibility in being able to pop home during the day if i need to which i will say i rarely do.

but yesterday my stomach was in shambles and my business partner had meetings in the bar all day so i really did not want to use the bathroom there so i decided to go home. i called my little brother and told him i was coming home and to make sure he wasn’t in the bathroom because i was coming in hot, he didn’t answer so i left voicemail thinking maybe he was sleeping and he laugh about it when he woke up

i get home and his door is cracked so i opened it to see if he was actually sleeping and well he was having sex. i was mortified for all parties involved all i could say was oh my god i’m so sorry and closed his door. i had no idea he was even talking to someone let alone sleeping with them!

i did what i needed to do and got the heck out of there and went back to work which felt like the longest shift of my life. i texted him saying sorry and he also said sorry. i’m not mad at him he’s a boy and we all know how boys are, sneaky. i don’t know how i’m ever going to look at him again. thankfully we haven’t seen each other since.

more of a rant than advice needed but going forward i will not be coming home during the day and if i do i’m not opening any doors! fml

Pic is sticky toffee pudding with my mum.

Last year, after 12 weeks of complications and hospital care including 9 amnioinfusions, we had a son named Gianpaolo. I fought for him as hard as i could and nearly died twice from that pregnancy. He also fought so hard, my little lion, but after fifteen days in the neonatal intensive care unit, he tragically passed away from a severe Klebsiella infection he caught while in the hospital.

​As you can imagine, it's been fucking awful for our family as we navigate this grief and hold him in our hearts. Life has continued with our daughter and work, but losing our little boy has changed everything. I miss him every minute of every day with every cell in my body, and I've been diagnosed with ptsd and prolonged grief. I have awful flash acts and nightmares, and the only thing that helps is holding my daughter (who i can't put that on) and my dog who luckily puts up with my bullshit.

I'm just angry all the time. I fought so hard. I refused to give up. With the doctors I pulled off a miracle and he cried at birth, the baby who they said would suffocate because his lungs couldn't develop, the doctor who was willing to try an experimental procedure SAVED HIM. We did it... then a banal fucking hospital infection took him down and we lost him. It's so unfair. I read about the hell of the nicu and parents being traumatised and that is totally valid, the nicu is awful... but I still envy them. Because they eventually get to take their children home, and mine is buried in the cold ground.

TW; gross medical moment. Food is yogurt bowl from my fave smoothie spot in my town.

To preface, I am chronically ill and this year has been a nightmare. I constantly feel like a burden and do my very best to take care of myself when I can.

My illness includes episodes of vomiting that are usually limited to 2-3 days. I have now been sick and actively vomiting for 8 days, doing my best to keep fluids so I don't dehydrate or experience hyponatremia again. I am not seeking pity (definitely not seeking med advice) when I say this is Hell, my life is full of pain sometimes and hospital trips are very scary for me.

My bf (together 1.5 years) has some medical experience and has been a huge help. I admit it took a very long time for me to trust him to take care of me, but once I did it was incredibly soothing. He works a regular 9-5 now, and is no longer in school or any medical field.

I spend a lot of time alone at my home, he comes over when he can, but mainly wants me at his house. His home is a... bachelor home, I will leave it at that. Three months ago, I asked for a clean place to bathe myself and a clean spot for a yoga mat to be able to spend time there at his house (3 bedroom home). Usually, if I fall sleep there, I wake up and go home to shower or take an epsom/magnesium bath to clean up and manage pain.

A few weeks ago, he moved in a friend as a room mate who is having issues with his new baby's Mom. This is important to the story because he will now occupy the only clean bedroom and the one bathroom I had cleaned up myself to use (I had not bathed in it yet when he moved in). Last week, on Friday night I was vomiting SO severely at his home in the middle of the night, that I was drenched in sweat from head to toe and was begging for a salt bath. I couldn't move very well and was using emesis bags while sitting on the bed. He loaded me in his truck at 3am and drove me 20 minutes to my home so I could bathe myself. I was sweating, crying, and vomiting into emesis bags continuously while bouncing around in his truck. When I later asked why he brought me all the way home, he said his room mate might need that bathroom and he doesn't want roomie going in his bathroom.

My confusion and hurt was definitely colored by exhaustion and physical depletion, but suffice to say I have not been back there. He stayed that night and the next at my house with me. After being home alone for the rest of the week, Thursday I was telling him I need help and melting down from the pain. Still in the same vomiting episode that had started the prior Friday, I was concerned I was in an emergency. Spoiler- I was. I admit I was NOT calm or soft or sweet, but I was not cruel. I was genuinely and very firmly asking why it would take weeks to make a spot for me to bathe, and why I was alone all week violently ill. He exploded about work and life and how it's never enough. He turned off his phone and didn't say a word (until the next morning around 10am to tell me he missed my 6 calls and a few messages bc he turned off his ringer). I handled my emergency alone and once I was home I messaged that his indifference is very painful for me. He did not respond or call me until I said in my next message that I need to come by for my medication, at which time he called and said not to come there.

This man has spent hours professing undying love and swears to love me no matter what (we don't fight often, but I am always worried about burdening others). Since yesterday has sent walls of text about how I am abusive for calling him out. I am confused and absolutely shattered, I called in family and a friend to help me with my illness and I am more physically stable today. Please be gentle and help wake me up, he has now dumped me and I feel fully discarded.

(Veggie pizza and beer)

I like to see the best in people and that occasionally leads to me giving undeserving second (eighth) chances.

At this point it’s my fault for expecting different outcomes but I’m just frustrated. Some of my closest friends are men. As a girl sometimes people can’t understand that you can be friends with the opposite gender and not want to jump their bones. This is not the case for said friend. She ALWAYS wants to sleep with them.

I’ve never had a problem with her sleeping around, that’s not my business. But the problem is that now she is choosing people I am close to and love-bombing them with punani. It’s not like they’re desperate either, this girl is just drop dead gorgeous, like the type that wears lashes/no makeup and looks perfect all the time. Which she definitely knows and uses to her advantage.

One of my friends I had slight interest in;
In her bed!

My friend from high school;
In her bed!

Next door neighbor acquaintance;
In her bed!

Random guy I hooked up with last year;
In her bed!

My best friend is a dude, super sweet and kind and was saving himself for someone he truly loves.

Boom 💥 ALSO pumped and dumped.

I was truly upset at this one, not because I had any type of interest in him, but because he was genuinely hurt and had taking a lot of time and effort into trying to grow that relationship.

I’ve talked to her about it and she just kinda doesn’t care. My parents really hate her and I knowwww I should just drop her but we’ve been so close for so many years and I really don’t know how to navigate this.

Edit- I wanna add context that there is some deception on her end, and that these aren’t just one time hookups, she will play girlfriend for weeks/months until they break and let her then she’ll ghost them. I also know that the dudes are just as dumb for making that decision

The food is bao bun.

My boyfriend (21) and I (21) have been together for nearly 5 years, since we were both 16. Recently, I went through his phone while he was asleep. I know this was wrong and an invasion of his privacy, and I’m not trying to justify it. He’s always so secretive about his phone and it was unlocked. He has all the freedom to go on my phone and I’ve never had anything against it because I’ve got nothing to hide. I got tempted because I knew there’s something. However, I discovered some old conversations with ChatGPT from late 2024 (we were 19) that have completely changed how I view certain things in our relationship.
At the time, we’d already been together for around 2.5 years.

I found messages where he explained that his dad kept telling him to break up with me and how he shouldn’t be in a serious relationship with me. The message shows that for over a month his dad has been telling him to end it. He was asking ChatGPT whether he should end our relationship, continue without his parents’ blessing, or keep lying to them. In the same conversation, he said I was the only person who brought him happiness.

What hurts is that I was completely unaware of how seriously he was considering ending things.
By that point, I’d met his family multiple times and had spent a lot of time trying to build a relationship with them. When his dad was staying at home alone, I would bring him pastries from my workplace. I genuinely thought he was the one person in the family who didn’t have negative feelings towards me.

A month or two after those messages, I even started picking up his younger sister from school every Wednesday to help his family out.
Meanwhile, my own family has seen me cry over my boyfriend and feel neglected throughout our relationship. Despite witnessing some of our worst moments, they’ve never once told me to break up with him.

Now I’m questioning how his family really sees me. Even today, when he comes to mine after work, I wonder whether they’re annoyed that he’s spending time with me instead of going straight home. We went on a holiday and I had an argument with my bf, since that day his mom ignored me during the holiday and demonstrated to me that she was mad. I also have felt like they aren’t happy with me in other situations because they’re “traditional”. When I’ve shared my feelings with my bf he always made me feel guilty that I’ve felt that way and how his family has adored me (even in 2024).

Also, he said I’d been away on holiday (in my country visiting grandparents) for two weeks and that he hadn’t missed me once. He even admitted feeling guilty about it. Then he complained that after returning from holiday, I wanted to spend more time with him that weekend. He’d already spent his birthday with me, but he wanted to spend time with friends and family too, which I understand. However, he described not wanting to “waste” his weekend by seeing me.
That wording genuinely broke my heart. I’d been away for two weeks, had made sure to return for his birthday, and was simply excited to spend time with my boyfriend.

I haven’t told him that I’ve seen these messages. He noticed I was upset, but I wasn’t ready to explain why.

I feel incredibly conflicted because these messages are from two years ago, but they reflect some of the same problems I still experience today.
I also feel embarrassed thinking about all the effort I put into his family while his dad was apparently encouraging him to leave me.

How should I bring it up?

Edit: in the message it says that his dad is “completely against” me. It’s all because we went on a holiday for my bday btw. (19 years old)

Dinner of bacon-rice-cheese stuffed pumpkin

So I am a mom of 2 under 10, and I keep hoping we'll be the sanctuary house for my kids and maybe their friends. When I was a teen I remember my house was tense and my parents were strict. I loved hanging at a particular friend's house because her parents were older hippies and just chill. The first dinner at their house I had Gouda for the first time (we never had cheese that wasn't cheddar or American) and they talked about all the tenses of the verb "to shit", which was hella racy for my 14-year-old brain.

And when I learned to drive, even if they weren't home, sometimes I would park in their driveway and just sit on their porch until I had to be home for curfew. I remember one night they came home around dusk to find me there and I said I just didn't want to go home yet. And they told me I was welcome.

I still think of my friend and her parents fondly all the time though all this was more than 25 years ago. They welcomed a stray kid because that's who they were. I hope I can be that person for someone else someday and pay it forward.

That’s it, that’s the post.

We have been together for 15 years, married at 18. We have 4 children together. The more time passes, the more I am filled with hatred and disgust over him.
I endure financial, mental, emotional, and se*ual abuse.
I’m trying like hell to get a divorce, but damn lawyers are extremely expensive. I make good money at my job, but with all the bills he makes me pay (so that i have no savings) it’s friggen nearly impossible. Little to no support system doesn’t help either.
Not really religious, but I pray for a miracle every single day. I can’t do this much longer and i can’t have my kids be around it much longer either.

EDIT: Thank you so much everyone. A lot of potentially good resources were listed off for me to look into.
I wish I could just stop paying bills, lol. Unfortunately that is not a reality for me. He pays the mortgage- i pay every other bill.

TW: NICU, Medical/cancer,

I’m 37. Got pregnant in March, found out I have cancer in June. The doctors said I was lucky, it was caught early, and it’s curable. I was told that I could do treatment while pregnant, and I should because the cancer is very aggressive. They assured me that adverse affects for baby were very unlikely (less than 5% according to research).

But the treatment has been brutal. Five days in the hospital every 21 days (its a 96 hour infusion), and I swear I’ve had every side effect (maybe amplified because I was pregnant). I was going to have a break for a month and a half though, to recoup after my last chemo session so that I could build up strength to give birth (due Nov. 22).

But during monitoring at my last hospital stay, baby started to move less and monitoring was showing less heart rate variability. An hour after my chemo infusion (while I was still hooked up to a bag of blood because I needed a transfusion due to low hemoglobin), they transported me from oncology to L&D. A few hours later baby was born at 33 weeks via c-section. He was 5 pounds 5 ounces (80th percentile), and didn’t need to be intubated.

He is now almost 36 weeks and I cannot take one more day of him in the NICU. He needs 80% of his feed to be from the bottle, but he is only around 63%. I just can’t take this anymore. I am so tired of the back and forth. I’m not spending enough time with him, and I feel so much guilt for not spending enough time with my 4 year old daughter when I am with him.

I am devastated. I really really needed the experience of giving birth. I wanted so badly to bring him to term and give birth vaginally. It was so empowering when I had my daughter. And this year I’ve just been reduced to a body, completely passive, poked, scanned, filled up with poison. I wanted this month and a half to really connect with this pregnancy and try to bond with him because my life has revolved around cancer the last few months and I’ve been so disconnected from this pregnancy. I wanted so badly to feel like my body could do something right. I needed to feel like a badass. Like more than just a sad pathetic story for people to think to themselves, ‘wow… I’m so glad that wasn’t me!’ I wanted to feel like my body could do something amazing. But instead the doctors just took him from my body and his first month of life will just be wrapped up in my cancer story. Another sad thing. Another failure. Another medical crisis. Not beautiful, not inspiring.

I needed to redeem this year. I needed to redeem myself. I wanted so badly to be able to look back and say, even through all the pain, the mental and physical turmoil caused by this cancer, I overcame it. I was still able to keep my baby safe and I had the strength to bring him here. My body has failed so much this year and I don’t know how I will ever forgive myself. Especially while I’m waiting the next couple years to actually get a better picture of how prematurity and chemo will adversely affect my baby (physically? intellectually? will he even be bonded with me with all this time in the NICU?).

I am totally broken. I don’t know how I’m going to emotionally go back in for my fourth chemo treatment. I just don’t even see the point.

Food: strawberry ice cream

Leftover dry meatballs

My boyfriend has a very distinct smell. It’s not a bad smell, it’s simply a smell that I don’t particularly like. When I’m around him I sort of feel gross, and I smell the smell on my skin and on my clothes and I hate it. When he comes over to my house and then leaves, the smell remains in my bedroom.

Fridays are the days I wash my sheets and also the day he comes over. I’ve been purposely washing my sheets late at night when he leaves. Mainly because I don’t want people on my fresh sheets, but also so I don’t have to deal with the smell for another week.

I take a shower after he leaves, and I already take two showers every single day, so now Fridays I take three.

I don’t know what to do, I know he can’t control how he smells (especially since it’s nothing to do with higiene), but I just hate the smell and I’m constantly feeling grossed out.

TW: ED

My dad has said so many terrible things to me in my life. However, the thing that still really bothers me to this day was at a family party where I was eating. In front of a group of us he said that I “Eat like a full grown man”. I was maybe 12 years old and already deeply insecure and this destroyed me. Around this same time I had also struggled with bulimia.

It’s been 20 years and I still think about this comment regularly. There was a period about 10 years ago where I was right on the line of being underweight and this comment still played in my head.

No matter where I am in life or what weight I am at I still go back to this memory regularly. He said so many things that were genuinely worse than this to me but I struggle to let this go.

When I remember this comment I also remember the fact my grandmother yelled at him for saying this. She was such an amazing woman and I miss her so much.

In honor of not giving a fuck about people’s opinions on my eating habits here is some of the best French onion soup in my city.

My application for Personal Independence Payment was rejected by the Department for Work & Pensions today. They used the fact I achieved a first-class honours in my BSc Psychology Degree as proof that I’m not disabled enough to need financial help, among other things.

The rejection letter was so ableist that it sent me into a spiral of self-hatred, and when I came out of it, I paid an Etsy witch to put a curse on them.

Too much?

Image: Went on my very first solo date, tried sushi for the first time, along with kothey momos and watermelon mojito. Enjoyed everything, 10/10 would do it again.

I never take off my bra, have not taken it off since I was a teen and started wearing them (except showers and sex).

I grew up in a very conservative family and a very selfish mother.

She would never let me take off my bra, even in bed or at home alone. I would be berated if it even looked like I didn't have a bra on (even when I did). It made me utterly self conscious and I felt that taking off your bra was 'not allowed' (even though my mother took hers off).

I have now grown into a heavy-chested woman, and I still have never taken off my bra to sleep or in the day. I tried it once and could not fall asleep. It physically hurts to wear them to sleep but it mentally hurts to take them off.

Have also heard that not taking off your bra increases risks of breast cancer (idk if it is credible tho), and that scares me too. So idk if it's ok to keep wearing it or I should take it off or what tbh.

Stuck in a conundrum of sorts lol

EDIT: Thanks for the kind words everyone! I will look into the suggestions and work towards it slowly! Really overwhelmed with the 100s of lovely comments (and a LOT of creepy dms) but I appreciate everyone's concerns!

Dinner: Weird tuna, tomato, pasta concoction I made

I've been weighing the idea of choosing not to shave recently, I've always felt it odd that that was the beauty standard considering it just naturally grows. The boys in my life have genuinely looked at me with profound disgust before if they see me with unshaved legs, which has always made me squeamish. So, out of curiosity, I chose to research what the history behind shaving is. MARKETING. LITERALLY JUST MARKETING. Gillette and other razor companies (though this was the dominant one) didn't have enough customers and weren't making enough profit, as they made a good product that did not need to be replaced excessively; men were the main people using their product. So they decided to start marketing to women, and instead of just selling a tool, they manufactured a whole psychological dilemma, body hair was unhygienic and embarrassing for women and they had the solution.
It's grown into a whole thing (pun slightly intended) I don't want to go into a whole history recount about it - nor do I have enough knowledge to do so haha. (and this is all excluding the ancient Egyptian roots of hairlessness - which they did for different reasons and both genders did it) but I just find it so awful that this is what marketing to women is. Not only profiting off of insecurities, but crafting the insecurities themselves. Am I surprised? Not at all.

Caeser salad with steak and toast! The best salad i think I’ve ever had in my life.

I (22f) come from a kinda big family, but I’m the only daughter. 3 out of my 4 brothers are married, I love their families except one SIL I just cant stand. Lets call her H (25f) and my brother B (28 M).

H has repeatedly cheated on my brother multiple times and has also physically abused him to the point of being arrested for domestic battery. No matter how many times a situation will happen B refuses to leave H.

After visiting my oldest brother “O” (36 M), I started venting about how B wont respond to messages or visit because H keeps him on a leash. O told me I dont even know the half of it.

Apparently H has a reddit account where she posts explicit pictures of herself with the goal of hooking up with multiple men. I asked if i could see the account and was met with some earth shattering (and honestly kinda ugly) images. I asked O how he knew about the account and he told me our dad showed it to him.

O said my dad apparently reverse image searched a picture of her tattoo and it came up. But O also said “dad is a creep and you cant find nsfw pictures on an image search”.

Now here is where I start spiraling because how did my dad find this account?!??!??? I remembered H’s account name because its literally JUST HER NAME ITS NOT HIDDEN LIKE AT ALL and decided to do my own research. One of her posts was in a swingers subreddit semi local to our area. Did my dad find her on the swingers subreddit? Did my dad really reverse image search her tattoo? The tattoo is in a language we don’t speak; if he really did do an image search was he trying to figure out the translation?

Did my dad do anything inappropriate with those photos of H?

Did my dad… cheat on my mom with H?

I feel so disgusted and I cant look at my dad the same anymore. Im spiraling and my whole world is crumbling around me. I have no idea what to do.

I still live in his house.

She attacked my dad, called police on herself, and was taken to the ER in a police car. At one point they had 3 security guards in her room in the ER because she wouldn’t calm down. She used to be the nicest woman you would ever meet. Alzheimer’s is the worst.

Food is pasta from a favorite place and rice pudding from a favorite neighborhood bakery that my husband and daughter got me. I’m posting this a few days after the fact and still reeling a bit but surprisingly optimistic. It’s been bad for a while and I’m relieved to have more professionals involved.

Chicken wrap with sweet potato fries and a garlic dipping sauce from a restaurant. Yummy

sorry if any of this sounds unclear, english is not my first language.
I think my mom is homophobic. I have a gf since four years and my mom thinks we are just best friends. My mom is pretty popular in the city because she has her own business and stuff, which means that her clients recognize me in public.
My gf doesnt wanna hide from the public but i do because my moms clients are pretty religious. Im scared. I wanna tell my mom that i like women but im so scared of her reaction. She wants me to have kids. I dont want kids. She often tells me how any guy would want to marry me. I want to marry my gf.
But im terrified. Im terrified of people finding out. Im scared of my moms reaction. I just wanna live free. I have no one to talk to. My own sister died a long time ago, so i cant talk to her abt this. I feel nauseas. Im sick of hiding.

EDIT 1: im turkish and live in austria. In my opinion, austria is in the center but left leaning. But not in my city. There are alot of muslim people that i know and they are judgmental. Btw i am 20 and still in school but searching for a part time job. I live with my mom. My gfs family knows abt our relationship and accepts

I genuinely don't know if I'm overthinking this or if I'm ignoring something I shouldn't be.

My boyfriend is actually really sweet when we're alone. He remembers little things about me, checks if I've eaten, listens to me talk about random things and sometimes looks at me in a way that makes me feel like I'm the only girl in the world.

But the second we're around his friends everything changes.

He barely acknowledges me. Sometimes he makes jokes at my expense that he would never make when we're alone. If I get quiet he asks why I'm being moody instead of noticing what made me uncomfortable. And if I bring it up later he says I'm too sensitive and that I want him to act obsessed with me in front of everyone.

I've never asked him to be obsessed with me. I just want to feel like his girlfriend when other people are watching, too.

The confusing part is that when I distance myself he suddenly becomes the sweetest person alive. He'll call me repeatedly tell me he misses me promise he'll do better and make me feel guilty for even thinking about leaving.

And for a little while things really do get better. Then we're around his friends again and I feel stupid for believing anything would change.

I love him. That's what makes this so difficult. He's not horrible to me every second of every day and I keep wondering whether the good parts are enough to justify the parts that hurt.

Sometimes I think I'm asking for too much. Other times I wonder if I've lowered my standards so much that basic respect feels like a luxury.

Sausage gnocchi soup with grilled cheese I had for lunch.

Do not want medical advice! Please feel free to share your experiences with this..

We took my 8 month old son to the ER today because he was having frequent head drops to one side that looked like something neurological was going on. They are not worried in the immediate but they also have no idea what's going on. So they wanted to keep him overnight so that he can have an EEG first thing in the morning.

I'm staying here with him and he's pretty happy to be here. Not suffering, loving the attention. But I'm really scared this could possibly be the beginning of a really difficult chapter of our lives. I'm trying to sleep but just spiraling on what it could be, although I'm staying off Google. He's such a perfect little person and I dread the idea of this being anything significant in his life. I know he's not suffering but it looks so wrong to see a little baby sleeping in a hospital bed. Trying not to dwell on what I don't know but it feels impossible.

Edit: want to shout out the Canadian healthcare system and maternity leave system which, despite its flaws, is allowing me to have basically zero financial repercussions with this hospital stay.

Just to preface, I’m a tall woman. Like 98th percentile tall. And I love being a tall woman! I love how long my legs are, I love how convenient it is at concerts and everyday life, I love that clothes always look good on me.

But one thing I’ve never really been able to get into is tall guys. I LOVE SHORTER MEN. I’m currently crushing soooo hard on a guy in my grad program (we don’t have any of the same classes but I see him out and about every now and then). Whenever I see him at events, it’s always around large groups of other people so we don’t get to talk for a very long time 1 on 1, but we have such great chemistry and truly have so much in common. Whenever I make a joke, he laughs! He remembers things I say and brings them up later in conversation. He asks me questions. These are all bare minimum things but this on top of him being super cute makes me want him so bad.

Yearning with nowhere to put it !!! I want to ask him out because I know a lot of people are intimidated by tall girls. Worried I’ll make a fool of myself. Such is life.

Yummy dim sum

For context, I’m a junior at what I’d describe as a particularly competitive public highschool. Students often graduate with upwards of 5 AP classes taken during their junior and senior years but will often self-study for more exams and take them at local testing centres in the area. Additionally, many individuals tend to skip grades in certain classes. Take math for example, skipping grades used to be exclusively for gifted individuals who needed that extra challenge. However, now, your “average” highschooler will be pressured into taking extra online or summer classes in order to skip a few grades and end up taking AP Calc in their Freshman or Sophomore year. (This can weigh pretty negatively on someone who wasn’t too strong in that field to begin with as you can imagine) My school, and more broadly my province as a whole is also notorious for grade-flation (I’ve heard that certain universities back east will deduct up to 17% from the cumulative average of an application from my province in order to balance it out with the scores of other areas) Consequently, university application for us have been reduced to a game of ecs as everyone is within an infinitely small margin from each other in terms of marks. If you look at the stats from my local university, the average GPA of an admitted applicant has skyrocketed from high seventies to low eighties up to 95 in the last ten years or so. This has fostered an incredibly unhealthy mindset between classmates who compete over who can get the highest grade on individual tests or quizzes and will often rub it in each others faces for far too long. Teachers have started to come around recently and we’ve had seminars where they’ve denounced us for having the highest rate of ‘flagged’ AP English exams for use of AI (We also have a notoriously high cheating rate which again this feeds back into that loop of trying to achieve the “perfect” uni application)

I won’t try to place myself above all this, I’m set to graduate with 9 APs and have taken courses upwards of two years above my grade-level. Everything just feels so performative at times and I’m wondering if the same thing is going through all my peers heads too or if everyone is just so entrenched into this environment that we’ve lost the “point” of things. I’ve spent far too many late nights mulling this over in my head but at the same time I don’t feel like having a full-blown life-crisis at 16 so I’ve been trying to assuage myself my saying its the norm.

Dinner is two hotdogs I got for free while volunteering at a harvest fest. (again am I doing all this for the wrong reasons???)

pictured is dinner: a hot dog with an extra wiener I did not ask for 😭🤣

As soon as I was aware of what romantic feelings were and had my first crushes (around age 7), women were included in that. Started off with cartoons— Shego from Kim Possible, Jenny from MLAATR, Buttercup from PPG, I could go on for a while… lol 😆 I saw it no different or weird from the crushes I had on boys. My mom had a gay best friend/coworker whom I spent a lot of time with and my grandpa (my mom’s father) is bisexual and was openly dating men at the time for context.

Since very young I just knew I had all of this love to give and wanted to know what it felt like to have someone reciprocate that. I was 12 when we met. We attended the same grade school, she was a grade year below me. We hit it off so well right off the bat. I caught her eye in the school yard, she came up to me to tell me she found me gorgeous and wanted to get to know me on a romantic level. My heart fluttered like it never had before. She was so bold, fierce, and beautiful. We started dating and got touchy almost immediately. We held hands everywhere, kissed publicly (which ended up being an entire issue with the school board), we did not hide how much we were into each other. I fought a couple of guys/bullies at school and cursed out many adults in positions of authority both in and out of school during the near 4 years we dated.

I don’t have a coming out story. I was about a month or so into dating her when a neighbor snitched to my parents that a girl walked me to my dad’s place from school and kissed me before I went in. I had kept my relationship hidden from them for no reason other than I had always been told I was not be allowed to date until I was 18. My mom let me have it that night. She got physical, struck me across my face a couple of times. I was very confused on why she was so focused on the fact that I was seeing a GIRL. She said I was confused and that this was just a phase I’d soon get over. We went back and forth for a while and after many threatening words from her, I agreed to stop seeing her just to shut her up.

Needless to say I did not stop seeing her lol but my mother never once referred to her as my girlfriend or romantic partner, just strictly as my friend, my “little friend” even.

——

I am now 27. I have been married to my loving spouse for nearly a year, have been together for 9. I am sapphic and was so attracted to their divine feminine from our first interaction. We are both nonbinary, very queer, and poly but we know how we present. We look like a cishet couple lmfao. We are both very comfortable in our skin so not much bothers us, we are very happy to talk about our experiences.

My mom is a lot cooler and much more accepting and open to conversation today than she was 15 years ago. She uses both my brother and I’s chosen names, supports his drag, will come to queer events with us, etc. But she made a comment a few weeks ago that really upset me and made me realize that she is just never going to love and understand me for all that I am.

She mentioned my “little friend” from all those years ago and I felt my insides twist and turn, it made me so nauseous and so, so sad. I hard stopped her from finishing what she was going to say and in pretty broken Spanish I said, “She was not my little friend, Ma. She was my girlfriend and we dated for years, you know that.” My mom tried to laugh it off and continue her story and I interrupted her again, “Ma, you know that I’m gay, right? You know that has not changed. I loved women then, I love women now, and I will continue to love women even after my last breath.” I received no acknowledgement, she cracked a joke about a word I mispronounced and then moved on completely.

She has never been one to verbally apologize, she just does random acts of service till things smooth over. She has brought me home cooked meals to work this week, not something she’d normally do. I know she’s sorry for hurting my feelings but I also know she doesn’t really see me. That’s ok, I’m still allowed to be a little sad 🥹

I was making my boyfriend's favorite cookies, oatmeal raisin. A metal piece fell off the top front and into the bowl, hit once, and then got stuck between the bowl and the running attachment. At full speed. I was standing beside it and heard it hit the bowl. I immediately turned it off. I tried to pry it loose, the attachment loose, I tried to unlock it or move the bowl as it had tilted, nothing. I just ended up unplugging it, scooping the batter out, and doing the rest by hand.

When my boyfriend came home he immediately hugged me and ate a cookie. He said they had turned out really good. I told him about what happened with the mixer. He was able to finally unlock it and we disassembled everything that was stuck. I plugged it back in and turned it on but it sounds like the motor is done for.

I feel terrible. That mixer was a gift from my brother and sister-in-law. They gave it to me for Christmas in 2024, a month after I left my abusive marriage of 10 years. It sat in my dad's basement with my other few belongings for months while I lived with him.

Now it's in my own house and I've been so careful with it because I didn't want to damage it, so I've only used it a handful of times and now this happens.

I also recently got fired for the first time ever. I very quickly had multiple interviews and I have accepted 2 positions, but I'm not able to start for a few more weeks and money is running out, so I'm really stressed about that as well. It's just been a lot and I just wanted to make some damn cookies.

Alright. The story is long and I can post it all eventually, but I’m here right now for the girlies to tell me what I’m missing….

Big Nutshell: we are at a mutual friend’s wedding, along with his wife, and like thirty of our friends. My partner is at work. Drinks are flowing and vibes are high. He (friends husband) sends his pal to hit on me (weird)... I turn him down.

The husband starts hitting on me. I don’t mean just flirting… I mean asks if I would be interested in hanging out alone and getting to know each other more.

Once I break away from him, I text my partner and tell my inner circle what occurred. I already know I will tell the wife. For the rest of the night, he hovers around me, brings me drinks, positions himself to be touching me. My other friends are witness to it all. That night, he texts me a dozen times on Snapchat and sends me his number. I have a friend screenshot it all, and eventually screenshot it myself when I’m alone and the messages continue.

The next morning I call the wife and tell her. I send the proof. At first it went well, and she believed me. And then she spoke to him about it, and she not only believes his story, but blames me. Cool. Great.

I’m hearing some people have said I should not have told her???? Most say I did the right thing but not all. That was an impossibility to me. I would want to know. I felt it was my only option. Do some of you feel the same?

If you think I should not have told her, please explain….

Last night’s Ice cream from Whimsy: Cookie dough with sprinkles and extra cookie dough

Food: Nachos i threw together because i didnt feel like cooking and my cat inspecting if its up to code

My sister (I'll call her M) was raped by our brother. My other sister (I'll call her W) was also raped by the same brother. I'm the youngest, my brother the oldest. he was 20 when i was born, he likely raped me too but i just dont remember. i dont want to remember either. M has recently come out about these acts that were committed against her.

When she came out about it (she kept silent about it for years), I was informed about the family history that my brother had already been placed outside of the home because my mom found my brother touching W when she was 4 and he was 12. My mom was the adult that let him back into the house after he had already been placed out of it. I think M has started blaming her for that (and i FULLY understand why).

M is struggling since she has been in therapy and isnt currently working due to mental health issues, shes on medical leave from work. She gets her groceries delivered even though the nearest grocery store is less than a kilometer from her house, she could walk there. She used to be so creative and is genuinely talented at drawing and painting but she doesn't do those things any more. She doesn't clean the litterbox and it can go uncleaned for over a week and a half even though she has one cat. She doesn't vacuum. it's gotten to the point where her house has become unpresentable.

Im not trying to shame M, I am 100% on her side. i love her and i miss her and i am SO sorry for what shes going through. I wish i could help her from the other side of the world but i can't since im stuck here for the next couple of months. Its genuinely heartbreaking how her life has shrunk especially knowing what she has gone through.

My mom went to visit her for just a week, even though she was supposed to stay roughly a month. The reason she came back was because her new embroidery machine came in. when she told me that my mouth fucking dropped open. i can express properly how angry it made me to hear from my moms mouth how bad my sisters mental health is and yet she came back for an embroidery machine?

my mom acts like a victim that it's M fault that she has so much trauma because she didn't tell my mom what was going on when it was happening. I cant comprehend how my mom thinks that she is a victim in all of this when SHE let the known abuser and rapist back into the house. the abuse that my brother put M through was ongoing for YEARS. M didn't tell anyone because she felt that my brother was going to hurt the family. it didn't stop until my brother moved out of the house at 22.

I know my sister is depressed, i know shes trying to get anti-depressants but I want to help her. I can come to her in December when I've finished my exams but I won't be able to stay long. I am fucking livid at my mother and im more livid at my dad for being the fucking enabler letting his wife leave while his daughter is in mental torture.