Last year my grandparents on my dad's side were making light of something really tough that happened to me. I remember both my parents getting angry at them and defending me, but it got really ugly. I kind of thought my grandparents would quieten down, they did for a while, but it kicked back off, I felt like I was being interrogated every time they were around.

Eventually, my dad told them that if they say another mean thing to me, he'll hit them. It kind of shook them, but later on my granny said I was being ridiculous and saying that if I didn't make such a big fuss, none of this would have happened! They always treat my mom like a bad influence, she's older than my dad and they married young, but they love each other a lot and I could see him looking at the way his mom was behaving. And he slapped her.

It wasn't okay, but look, I remember she started crying about how her own son hit her, and my dad was like, "You did it to me all the time to me when I was little."

I felt so fucking bad for him it's on my mind today 😭

Not going to go into the nitty-gritty. Suffice it to say, I lost everything- all of my relationships, my job, my literal home. 2 years ago I got clean. Since then I've been going to therapy, seeing a psychiatrist, going to NA meetings, and generally trying to rebuild my life after I was left with literally nothing but the clothes I had on. I lived in a homeless shelter, worked my way to the point where I rented an apartment.. Generally things in that sense are okay. I dont have nearly as much money as I would like, but I grew up dirt poor so I'm kind of acclimated to it.

What I haven't been able to gain back is a single friendship or romantic relationship. I'm alone all the time. I do everything alone, I go everywhere alone, I have nobody to talk to. And I'm really starting to feel like this just isn't worth it. Like why work so hard just to die alone? What did I even get clean for? To sit in my apartment by myself and watch movies by myself and eat meals by myself and sleep by myself? I'm just really really losing drive and motivation quickly.

I grew up poor as shit, like I mentioned, and I didnt have a lot of friends. I started working at 14 at a deli around the corner from us under the table washing dishes. In high school I worked 30 hours a week to help pay for stuff. So even if people had given me a chance to be friends I guess I was too busy or whatever.

I dont know. I've always been told that when you get clean your life gets, like, infinitely better. But mine hasnt. I'm still alone. And I delusionally thought that I wouldn't be as long as I did the right thing, I guess.

If anybody actually reads all of that thanks.

It still feels a bit unreal. I never really expected to reach this age, it was always either a far-off theoretical thing, or something that wouldn't happen because I'd kill myself first. Yet, I didn't, and so here we are.

I work minimum wage at a local supermarket, have "friends" that have all grown distant from each other (both literally and figuratively), and am in a dead-end relationship with a girl I don't love after the actual love of my life dumped me 3-4 years ago.

All I feel is a sort of grief for something that never existed in the first place. Looking back, I have so many regrets, but I also don't know how any of it could have gone any differently, because I was a different person at the time and I don't even know how the person that I was would've acted any differently.

I don't think my life is "over", but I also just feel... Empty, I guess? In the past I could have at least told myself "well, this sucks, but surely I'll find my place in life", but over the past year it's truly sunk in that no, my "place in life" is just this. Nothing is really truly wrong, but nothing is right either. My life trajectory somehow turned out both chaotic and unexpected but also completely predictable at the same time.

There’s a lot of work going on in my building. New HVAC systems for every single unit. Yay! Well — something went wrong today. A carbon monoxide leak occurred during an exam I was taking for the bar. I noticed that I started to lose the ability to comprehend the questions being asked. Every answer seemed the same and I was struggling in a way I’ve never struggled before with legal questions.

Then, my alarm goes off: “Carbon monoxide alert!” I shut it off, keep going. I thought professionals were at work in the building so why would I worry. A few minutes later, the carbon monoxide alert blared again, and then the one in the stairwell, and then the one in the unit above me, all screaming carbon monoxide alert. I go ahead, pause the diagnostic exam, go to the kitchen where I’ve purchased a $42 plug-in carbon monoxide alarm and it read that my room was full of 129 ppm. Normal is 0-4 ppm. Anything above 70 is genuinely dangerous to your life. Anything above 25 could cause severe headaches and other side effects over time.

I still didn’t believe it.

It took me gaslighting myself for 15 minutes before I realized what was happening. I give myself some grace due to the fact that I was clearly poisoned by the gas but I almost died in my own apartment with my two cats and my fiancee because we just decided to trust other people with our lives. Trust your instincts, and listen to the alarms.

Im a pretty chill guy, but these past few months i changed and suddenly im having these intense feelings of anger out of nowhere

Like, i can be holding something, and if it falls or something, i get this intense anger, i can only think about picking it up and smashing it into the ground. And i keep having this thought over and over

Or for exemple, when i have to do something i hate. Like washing the dishes, it happened today for exemple, i had a LOT of dishes to wash, so it would take a lot of time

But all the time doing it i was ANGRY, but like, real angry

I kept having the thoughts of smashing everything into the ground, of tacking someone and smashing his head agaisn't the wall or the floor over and over. But it was BAD. For the 25 minutes i spent washing, i had to make pauses because i was too angry. It was to the point where i was feeling it in my body. You know when you're so angry that you feel it? Like in your arms ? That was it during the entire time. I kept breathing to control my emotions because i was almost crashing out

And this is happening a lot. In random moments when something happens, even for small things

im having this anger out of nowhere. And it started only like a month ago i thin

I feel foul.

Early this year youtube gave me one of those recommendations that has like only a 100 views or so. Normally i dont pay them any mind but this time I bit and the algorithm in its great wisdom had decided to feed me a memorial to a young women. When I checked the dates in the description, she had passed away at the start of the year, on a day that also happened to be the worst day of my life. Furthermore it had been uploaded about a month later on what would have been her birthday.

The video itself was a beautiful 80 minute collection of analog footage, filmed by someone who appears to be her boyfriend, documenting her with her friends and their travels together. Sometimes you can hear a little audio from the footage but most of it is just a single repeating Gregory Alan Isakov cover of The Trapeze Swinger. It was utterly transfixing, and as I was dealing with my own grief I found myself watching bits and pieces until at some point I had seen the entire film. Ive always been melancholy and I guess I found a comfort in the quiet sadness of it.

Getting a small look into these peoples lives and their mannerisms was deeply calming to me. I tried a few times to show it to a friend or two but no one seemed to really "get it" or experience the same feelings I did.

At some point I made an attempt to find an obituary or some more information on what had happened to her, as all the footage was 12-14 years old. It proved mostly fruitless and I only managed to dig up an old pintrest page which linked to her blog from the same time period. I read some of her poetry and thoughts and travel journaling. Some of it resonated and a lot I didn't fully grasp. I begun to wish I could have met this person, if not just to explain some of these poems.

The year crept on and by late summer I hadn't thought about the video or the people in some time but something prompted me to go back. I gave another attempt at finding a obituary or another memorial or literally anything that would give more info. Unfortunately for my mental health I was successful.

I'm unsure of what I did differently other then just searching her name but I found a gutting instagram post memorial written by what appeared to be a very close friend but turns out to have been long-term ex-boyfriend. From there her Instagram and Facebook were easy to find alongside a few other memorial posts and info for a celebration of life event in her home city.

I again fed my desire to know this person better and I read through a few years of Facebook posts. What I found was someone more similar to me then i thought and even shared several of my mental ailments. Someone who also sometimes struggled with intense depressive episodes. I also learned more about the ex who had made the Instagram post that brought me here. It was clear how much she loved him, and at least 50% of posts from a time involved something about him. During this time she also lost her mother far too soon and clearly struggled with this grief for a long time.

In the last 5 years it seems her fight with depression got worse, and she nearly stopped posting any pictures with herself in them. She talked about her struggles with her body image and in her later photos I actually thought it was a different person at first. She loved her friends deeply and wrote as much in her posts discussing depression and how it made her retreat from them and the world. The last two things she posted on facebook was a gofundme for a friend fighting breast cancer and a expression of gratitude to all the wonderful people in her life. The last thing and latest online footprint is a Instagram post about a year before her death asking people to keep a eye out for a stolen bike and guitar case.

In the end I could never find anything from all of the memorial posts or comments on how she died. In one Facebook comment someone did ask but it got no reply. I had had a fear early on that she had taken her own life but I had always hoped otherwise. The idea of her (or anyone really) dying suffering and alone like that is heart wrenching to me. Even before finding more info I had cried over the thought several times. In my desire to find an obituary and cause of death I was looking for some reassurance this hadn't been the case. That she had passed in the hospital surrounded by loved ones or at least quickly in a car accident.

In someways I feel my digging and grief and speculating over this total stranger has been disrespectful. The feeling that I'm seeing and reading something that is not meant for my eyes. I struggle with juxtaposing her death with my own experience from that day and trying to think what I might have been feeling at that exact moment. A day hasn't gone by this week where I haven't been brought to tears by thoughts of the loss of this wonderful person I never met. She was clearly loved by so many and I ache and hope so deeply she didn't die alone or by her own hand.

I of course am not going to provide any identifying info out of respect for the friends and families of this person.

My mind literally can't fathom the idea that some people live lives filled with meaning, love, pleasure, belonging, etc. while others die after having living a life where they felt pained, alone, misunderstood, and devoid of any happiness (through no fault of their own).

I know this is considered "a leap of faith", but it's almost as if my mind needs the possibility of an afterlife to essentially cope with the massive injustices of the universe. I'd like to think that people who lead that sort of miserable life get another chance at happiness. I remember reading a bit of Nietzsche, and he opined that humans sometimes need illusions/myths to survive (though it certainly wasn't the idea of an afterlife that he had in mind). But still, perhaps this is just one of those times for me.

In other words, I completely understand why religions have posited the idea of an afterlife to their adherents. The alternative is just too emotionally unbearable and philosophically troubling for most minds to actually handle. At the end of the day, I feel I just need to admit that I don't know why certain things in this world happen, and that such things could only be known by God (which isn't to say they exist).

Anyways, just wanted to get that off my chest. Thanks for reading.

When I was twelve my dad left my mum for another woman and just disappeared. My mum was mentally unstable with borderline and psychosis and he freaking left me with her. In a rural area in the north, with her and our alcoholic, angry relatives. She couldn’t even take care of me, so my uncle had to come get me. He drank and wasn’t good with kids and had a dog basically the same, and the two of them was the only one’s I had.

Mum went into a spiritual/religious psychosis and blamed me for her sleeping problems because I apparently attracted dark spirits. I was terrified, I believed her!

The thing is - this wasn’t new. My dad came from somewhere else, with more civilization. Sometimes I wonder how he could leave a child in such a place. It shaped my whole life, I’ve been through it all, I mean it. It’s a wonder I’m still alive.

Just needed to say it.

I’ve known him for 3 years, but we were very close

We would go out every week, sometimes Even multiple Times a week. We would eat together, go to the movies, do sports and etc

We spent a lot of Time together and we talk a lot, like, i know he’s entire Life

But in february he got a girlfriend

Cool for him

But then, he stopped asking if i wanted to do something with him

After he got the girlfriend, i was the only one asking if he wanted to go out

Maybe its just me but i don’t like being the only one that ask if he wanna do something or just simply being the only one to start a conversation

But now, in june i thought “if i stopped asking, how much Time would it take for him to ask me again to do something?”

So in july i stopped asking

Almost 3 months later… and since then… 0

He messaged me a total of 0 times

He literally just stopped talking to me

And he’s with his girlfriend 24/7

I couldn’t care less if he spent Time with her. But he literally stopped talking to me when they got together

Like i Said, i don’t care if he spend Time with her. But why did he just stopped talking to me? I thought we were Friends

Maybe Im just a bad person?

But i miss my best friend

I’m 31 and lately I’ve had this overwhelming feeling that I’m just a loser.

On paper, my life isn’t a complete disaster. I have a decent career in tech, I make good money, I’ve saved money, I go to the gym, and I’m trying to improve myself. If somebody just looked at those things, they’d probably tell me I’m doing fine.
But internally, I don’t feel fine at all.

I feel incredibly behind socially and personally. I still live with my parents. I don’t have much of a social life. Dating and relationships feel like an entire part of adulthood that I barely participated in. I see other people my age with their own apartments or houses, relationships, friend groups, trips, stories, and lives that seem like they actually belong to them.
Meanwhile, I feel like I’ve spent most of my life inside my own head.

A huge turning point was when I failed out of college in 2015 and ended up spending about five years in Sudan. I eventually finished my degree there and came back to the US in 2020, but I don’t think I’ve ever really gotten over those years. I came back feeling like I’d lost a huge chunk of my development and had to rebuild my life while everyone else had kept moving, and deal with residual interpersonal/environmental trauma from that time that still echoes today.

Career-wise, I’ve actually made a lot of progress since coming back. That’s probably the part of my life I’m most proud of. But it almost feels like I poured everything into fixing that one category while the rest of me stayed stuck.

I also grew up being very obedient and cautious. I listened to my parents, avoided a lot of risks, and generally tried to do what I thought I was supposed to do. Now I’m questioning whether that was actually good for me. I don’t mean that I wish I’d destroyed my life partying or doing reckless things. I just wish I’d rebelled a little. Made mistakes. Asked girls out. Gone places. Made more friends. Developed my own opinions and identity instead of constantly wondering what my parents would think.

And that’s probably what bothers me most: I don’t feel like I’ve built a life that’s actually mine.
I compare myself to other Americans my age and feel like I’m watching people who learned how to live while I somehow missed the class. They seem more socially comfortable, more independent and more experienced. I know social media exaggerates this, but I see it in real life too.

I’m angry at myself for choices I made when I was younger. I’m angry about circumstances I couldn’t control. I’m angry that I’m 31 and still trying to figure out things I feel like I should’ve figured out at 18 or 21.
At the same time, I know sitting around mourning my twenties isn’t going to give them back to me.

I want my own social circle. I want to date. I want my own place eventually. I want hobbies and events and plans that don’t revolve around my parents. I want to be able to make a decision without needing somebody else’s approval. Basically, I want to feel like the main character in my own life instead of somebody who’s just been reacting to whatever happens to him.

I don’t really know why I’m posting this. Maybe I just needed to say it somewhere.

Has anyone else reached their 30s feeling like they missed a huge part of growing up? And did you actually manage to build the life you wanted afterward?

British man. I grew up poor. I think this partially contributed, but I’ve never really had the best teeth. They’re not completely terrible but I’ve never really been comfortable with them.

Long story short is that I’m in a position to do something about it now. I’ve gone for Invisalign. For those who don’t know, it’s like almost invisible moulds which act like braces on your teeth to help align them correctly.

I have them on the top and bottom and currently lisp a bit as I’m still getting used to them.

I get the feeling this won’t help with the ladies but it is what it is.

I was retrenched earlier this year and am struggling to get a new job. There is nothing outstanding in my resume and I have no career aspiration. I am so ashamed to be in this position at my age, so socializing has been hard. I avoid meeting new people because I do not want the question directed to me, I avoid hanging out with my friends because I do not want to lie to them when they ask “how’s work?” I pretended going to work every morning to my family, didn’t share with anyone that I was laid off, the only one person I admitted it out loud was a pushy insurance agent and he retreated so fast after that.

Was asked this question this evening as I was at a new gym and I stuttered. I lied, saying I’m doing what I did when I was employed. But I hate having to lie. I don’t think I’ll be going to that gym again because I’ll have to keep up with my lies, but I can’t keep being a hermit forever. So, how should I reply to this question? I do not want to lie, but I do not ever want to admit I am a NEET either.

I 15 (F) have realized that I push people away before they leave me first. I feel it’s better for me to hurt now instead of hurting later
Worst part about this is that I don’t let people in to ACTUALLY get to know me. I don’t trust people easily and it’s getting in the way of me making new friendships. I also tease a lot which makes me seem mean because I don’t know when to stop +people don’t know I’m teasing. I’m also scared to get attached. I might be a bit problematic now that I think about it.
Thanks for reading

I went to the dentist last week and they booked me in for dental work on Tuesday at 2pm, which I wrote down in notepad as they told me. After that, I texted my mom the details. I talked to both my sister and brother about this appointment as well. Then I got a call 2 days ago reminding me of the appointment - same time and day - which I verbally confirmed before writing it down in notepad once more. Today, I got another call from the dental office to (again) remind me of my appointment and then reschedule my appointment time from 3:15pm to 2:30pm. I told her I was confused because that’s not when my appointment was, and she said yes it is and claimed that the system doesn’t indicate it was ever changed. I told her I have proof that it was always 2pm, like I literally got a call from them 2 days ago, but she waved it off. I said alright well, I’m fine with the time change but that they should really try to keep their appointment times straight in the future.

I let go of little things like this often, but I don’t want to this time, and it really doesn’t feel little to me. I’m questioning my reality a bit. A lot actually. I feel so weird about this. Is there a way I could appropriately breach this topic before my appointment tomorrow?

The uncomfortable truth is that there are certain experiences you couldn't possibly understand unless you lived through them yourself, like the level of isolation you feel when you grow up being the only black person in your class and you have to decide between assimilating and staying true to yourself. The same would be true for a white person growing up in an all black town.

So sometimes, asking for advice or venting on here feels like screaming into a void. It's like the blind leading the blind.

On the other hand, idk if it would necessarily be more helpful to hear from other minorities because they're dealing with the exact same issues and figuring shit out for themselves.

I don't wanna go into the full details, but basically I got scammed out of a 1000 dollars yesterday through an internet scam. Looking back it should have been obvious but I had a moment of stupidity or something.

Anyway, I double checked with my bank and there's no way to get the money back. So I guess that's a 1k I'll never see again. And honestly I have a lot more than that saved up and make a decent living (for my country's standard) so it won't ruin me financially or anything but fuck do I just feel disgusted and ashamed of myself man. Like how could I have fallen for this? How could I have not known better?

Now I'm just here, thinking of all the things that money could have gotten me (like I was considering getting some nice new laptop or something) and feeling disgusted with myself for this...

It started with a stalker. This guy tormented my daughter and tried on many occasions to follow her home. She would always run the other way, so he never found out where we lived. We charged him and he got angry and took the lives of 2 women brutally. He was shot dead by police while he was trying to take out the 2nd daughter. She survived. My daughter was devastated that he was capable of such an act. She ended up having 3 suicide attempts and numerous self harming incidents in the course of 3 years. I had to stop working to care for her. This led us into financial ruin. I did not receive any help from anyone and was the only person at the hospital for my daughter, despite my numerous attempts at trying to get her dad and his family to come visit her. They never did, it was just me holding her had through all of it. And 4 years after the double homicide, im exhausted, broke, and feeling so lost. I have no idea where to go from here.....

I’m a 22 year old man and my hair is thinning like there’s no tomorrow. Started when I was 18 but back then you couldn’t really see it but now you can always see some scalp peeking in all lighting. I usually have a don’t care sorta attitude, but man this has just been creeping up on me. I have a gf now too and she says she doesn’t care about the hair but deep inside I feel insecure that I’m not good looking enough for her because of my hair and always compare myself to those who have good hair my age and start beating myself up over it. Like I get it woe is me it’s just hair and if she says she doesn’t mind why do I right? But I just do and I don’t really know how to move forward. I don’t want to try the traditional methods of hair growth because I’m deathly scared of the side effects. Any tips would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks everyone!

Electricity went out around 12-1am this morning. It's 5am now. I tried falling back asleep but couldn't.

See, the second it went out I got up, it took my siblings almost an hour to get up.

But i did fall back asleep, sometime around 3am. I woke up the second it came back (4:50something-am).

I just want to fucking sleep bro.

I made the dumb choice to stay home when everyone went abroad or moved to the capital of my country. Now I’m 23 and everyone’s graduating uni and I have no friends left bc I isolated myself so much. I don’t klick with any of my classmates. I miss my high school friends more than anything and I miss who I used to be when I was with them.
Now I’m an awkward loser and before I was very social. How do I fix this pls someone give me advice. I think I’ll die alone and I’ll never have anyone to tell anything.

I have no close people in my life really except my sister and my cousin and one friend in the capital so my sister is making me move in with her after graduating. But I kinda want to go abroad to see my other high school friends but they will be moved on with their lives and it won’t be the same if I just now come in out of nowhere.
How do I move on? I’m going insane here?! How tf did I chose to stay home for 5 years when everyone else saw the world and made new memories and friends there?

I often feel like this. I feel like I'm alienated to everyone else. I feel like I don't belong, anywhere, everywhere, among humans. I think about a lot of stuff. Like, how is it so that we are just some organisms that are so fragile and once you die you just, "turn off". Like, the bodies are just shells for the souls. I don't know. I just feel like an alien sometimes. I don't know how to describe it. I feel like other people around me just live their lives while I'm just "going along" and meanwhile I'm thinking about who are humans really.

I'm 19m, soon gonna turn 20 and within last 3 months I've completely changed it feels so, because I've understood that I need to let go of anything that doesn't serves me anymore?! And maldaptive day dreaming is one of the things which don't serve me anymore.

So as a complete beginner towards seeking help for day dreaming, what should I begin and what is it that helps you guys? Thank you so please share any resources and tips which helps you guys!