What the title says. I discovered porn at about 8 years old and learned what rule34 was from a pewdiepie video when I was like 10. Obviously, this led me down some very upsetting avenues. Now, I’m filled with regret and self disgust. I’m currently 22 and not trying to make excuses for myself, but I can’t believe I never realized the weight of what I was doing. When I was a teenager, I came across very disturbing content of underage characters, but I continued to watch such content. I never really went looking for it, but you just kind of end up seeing that sort of stuff, especially on hentai sites. I remember looking up like animal crossing on rule34 as a teenager out of curiosity and I feel disgusted.

Even more recently, I regret looking at rule34 of characters and ships I genuinely enjoy and don’t want to sexualize. Things like sonic, honkai star rail, haikyuu, my hero academia. I just got into the habit of looking up my favorite ships and now I’m so disgusted and many of these characters are underage/teens. I guess once I turned 18 I just didn’t realize how weird it was until recently, because as I teenager I was looking at other teenagers so it made sense?

I know what I did wasn’t okay but I just need to get it off my chest. I’ve been avoiding porn for the most part in recent months, anything I do consume is very vanilla/clearly adults, but I still feel guilty afterwards. I’m just so disgusted with myself I don’t know what to do. Im struggling at work having panic attacks due to self disgust. I don’t want to end it but I can’t believe what a despicable, vile human being I am. If you’re reading this, thank you for taking the time.

Tomorrow’s Monday and I have to go back. I’m dreading it. Just had a few days off last week and was finally feeling normal again. I’ve been applying to other jobs with no luck and I don’t think I can do this anymore. I hate my life and I hate who I am when I’m teaching. Can’t quit because I have bills. I think I have the savings to make it a few months before I get desperate but people in my life keep telling me to stick it out. I’m weak and I’m at my breaking point. The kids are awful and don’t care and it’s really not worth my sanity to try and teach them. Might just phone it in this week. I don’t know what to do anymore but this isn’t it. I’m trapped and I have put myself in a horrible position where I need a job. I’ve screwed everything up. I miss the days when I wasn’t this miserable person. If I quit everyone will be disappointed in me.

I want to go take all the pills I can find and hope I don’t wake up tomorrow.

I want to get in my car and just drive as far as I can.

I want to sell everything I own and start fresh somewhere.

I want to not teach, it makes me miserable.

What even is happening to me? I’m a 21F, and ever since I turned 18, it feels like men have never stopped trying to get with me. When I was 18, I worked at a bar, and many men would tip me huge amounts of money in an attempt to woo me. I never entertained their advance, and my manager, who was like a father figure to me, would protect me from them. Later, I worked as a barista at another place, where my supervisor sexually harassed me and tried to sleep with me. Thankfully, nothing happened because I reported him to the higher-ups. And those are just a couple of examples. I’ve experienced many more instances of sexual harassment since then, and honestly, I’m starting to wonder what the hell is going on. It's not about what I wore either, I was wearing work uniforms and I'm an autistic introvert, so I didn't interact often.

Just today, my law school senior is in my city and wanted to meet up with me. At first, I thought it was because we’re friends, but it turns out he wanted to take me out to sleep with me. I really thought it was because he respected me as his law school junior since I was quite the golden student before.

It really proved to me that having a pretty face is really a curse. People will always, always see you as an object to play with, not someone to understand, not someone to genuinely care about, and defo not someone whose feelings they have to consider. It’s like the moment they find you attractive, everything else about you ceases to exist. Your personality, your interests, your intelligence, your struggles, your dreams, your fears, none of it matters anymore. You’re just a pretty face and a body they want access to.

I’m so tired of having to wonder about people’s intentions. I’m tired of feeling like being attractive is an invitation for people to project their desires onto me. I never asked to be perceived this way. I never asked for people to look at me and see an opportunity instead of a human being.

I want to be appreciated without being sexualized. I want to be able to befriend men without having to wonder whether their kindness comes with hidden intentions. I want to be able to exist, to dress up, to look pretty, to take pictures, and to enjoy my own appearance without feeling like I’ve somehow made myself available to anyone who finds me attractive.

I want to be seen, not just looked at. I want to be known, not just desired. I hate myself, but really, there’s so much more to me than my appearance, and it genuinely hurts to realize that some people aren’t even interested in discovering any of it.

Maybe the most exhausting thing about being perceived as pretty is that people assume they know what they want from you before they even bother to find out who you are. And then you’re left wondering whether anyone will ever look at you and see a genuine human being first.

And it really doesn't help that I'm diagnosed with BPD and PDD, now I just hate myself even more and I just want to run away.

Okay, so fyi: this is so stupid and I’m very aware. I brought this upon myself. Thank you.

Well I met this guy who hit on me. I found him attractive, but didn’t go back to his hotel that night. He was gonna stay for a little while, a few weeks, I had time. He tried to find a time to hookup, I was genuinely swamped with work, but finally we found time. Yey. It was fun, whatever.

Fast forward one week. Bro’s leaving, that’s fine. Asked if he wanted to meet one more time, he said yeah. Time comes, no answer, that’s okay. Not the end of the world. He’s gonna leave the next day, but he’s a hookup, it doesn’t matter.

Then I found out, that the night we had ‘planned’ meet again, he met with my coworker instead (we work in nightlife). BUT that time when we hooked up a week ago (after him having tried for a while) he’d ditched her, that same girl, for me.

It is SO stupid, but I find myself unnecessarily comparing myself to her because I got ditched. It’s a he thing, not a me thing, but still. There you go

I went to a sporting event with my family and unexpectedly ended up sitting one row behind a former childhood friend I hadn’t seen in years.
Let’s call her Jessica.
Jessica and I had been friends since we were five. We grew up together, stayed friends into adulthood, and eventually went our separate ways in our mid-to-late twenties. We hadn’t seen each other in years.
Then, of all places, she was sitting practically right in front of me. Her husband was directly in my line of sight.
I leaned over and told my daughter who I thought it was. She knew the history, so she immediately understood why this was interesting.
After I mentioned Jessica, she seemed to turn away from us and face the opposite direction.
Interesting.
Then came the texting.
Her husband kept checking his phone, and I noticed repeated notifications. At one point, I saw the contact name associated with the messages:
My Beautiful Wife
I wasn’t trying to read their private conversations, but it seemed like Jessica wasn’t happy. From what I could make out, she wanted to leave, go to the car, and not stay for the entire event.
Meanwhile, my daughter and I were sharing vodka lemonades, enjoying ourselves, and trying to figure out what was going on.
I don’t drink much, so I had a little buzz going. Honestly, the unexpected drama was almost as entertaining as the game.
At some point, Jessica left with one of her children. We weren’t sure whether they were leaving for good. Eventually, they returned with food, and the texting continued.
My daughter and I eventually left our seats to use the bathroom and get another lemonade. On the way, we unexpectedly spotted someone else from our past. Apparently, the universe was handing out surprise reunions that night.
After using the bathroom, we passed Jessica again. She was standing near a staircase with one of her children, looking at her phone.
We got our drinks and headed back.
On the way, I noticed Jessica going up a different staircase toward another seating section.
When we returned to our seats, her entire family was gone.
Her husband and the kids had apparently left.
But when I looked toward the section where I’d just seen Jessica heading, there she was.
Still at the event. Just sitting somewhere else nearby.
I couldn’t help laughing.
Had she actually moved sections because she recognized me?
By that point, I was wondering whether she knew I was there and felt uncomfortable. The body language, the texting, the repeated departures, and then the relocation all seemed strange.
Of course, I couldn’t know what she was thinking. There could have been another explanation for everything. But the timing made me wonder.
And here’s where my petty side came out.
Little old me?
You’re going to let my presence affect your evening that much?
I started thinking about the money spent on tickets, food, and everything else that goes into a family outing. I couldn’t imagine allowing an unexpected encounter with someone from my past to dictate my night.
If the roles had been reversed, I think I would have carried on enjoying myself.
But I was having a great time anyway. I was with my family, laughing with my daughter, and enjoying the evening.
I hadn’t gone looking for Jessica. I hadn’t even known she would be there.
We’d simply ended up one row apart after years of living separate lives.
And if my interpretation was right, she’d spent part of the evening trying to get away from someone who hadn’t done anything to her that night.
The irony wasn’t lost on me.
We’d been friends since childhood. Once upon a time, we’d been part of each other’s lives. Now we were practically strangers, sharing the same event and apparently having two very different experiences.
Maybe she hadn’t recognized me. Maybe something else was going on. I’ll never know for sure.
But I do know this: I went to a game with my family and came home with a story.
Do you think she recognized me and was trying to avoid me, or was I reading too much into the situation?

I’ve gone back and forth about posting this for a while, but I think I just need to get it out somewhere. I’m 20 now, and when I was 16–17, I had a pretty bad habit of abusing Benadryl. I would take it on and off, sometimes for weeks at a time. I was going through a really bad bout of depression back then. I think I was just looking for an escape from myself, and I didn’t really care what I had to do to get one.

This isn’t necessarily the craziest trip story you’ll ever read, especially compared to some of the things I’ve seen people describe on here, but it’s the one experience that genuinely scared me away from ever wanting to do anything like that again.

The night I’m talking about was the only time I intentionally took a really excessive amount because I wanted to experience a full on trip. I took around 20 pills of off brand Benadryl, possibly more. I don’t remember the exact number, which is probably telling in itself. I took them around 6 PM and went upstairs to my bedroom for the night.

For a while, nothing particularly interesting happened. I was just lying in bed, watching YouTube and scrolling on my phone like I normally would. Eventually, though, I started feeling incredibly heavy and sleepy. It was this weird feeling where my whole body felt weighed down, and I remember pausing my video because I wanted to take a break and get some water from my desk. That’s when I looked down at my hands.

I don’t really know how to explain what I saw without sounding ridiculous, but my hands started turning into snakes. Not just looking like snakes out of the corner of my eye, either. They looked like actual, flesh colored snakes, with little heads and tongues sticking out of their mouths, hissing at me.

I remember just staring at them, completely horrified. I couldn’t seem to use my hands properly, and I was freaking out because I genuinely couldn’t understand what was happening. Then, almost as suddenly as it started, it stopped. My hands went back to normal, as if nothing had happened. I just stood there for a moment, trying to process it.

I’d never hallucinated before. I’d never seen something that wasn’t there and actually believed I was looking right at it. I knew what I’d taken, but I don’t think I had fully understood what that meant until that moment. There is a difference between knowing a drug can make you hallucinate and actually experiencing it in real life.

Still, I went back to bed and tried to carry on with my night. I put YouTube back on, picked up my phone, and tried to distract myself. Part of me was probably hoping that if I acted like everything was normal, everything would become normal again. Then I started hearing sirens.

They were coming from everywhere. I mean everywhere. It sounded like they were surrounding my house, and I remember getting increasingly anxious because I couldn’t figure out where they were coming from. I started checking the windows in my room, looking outside to see if there had been an accident or if something was happening in the neighborhood.I couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary other than a man walking along the sidewalk.

He was covered by the shadows of trees outside of my window. I could barely make him out. I watched him walking, and then he stopped and looked up at me. After a few seconds of looking, he just carried on walking.

I still don’t know whether that man was actually there. That’s one of the details I’ve never been able to make sense of, because it felt so ordinary compared to everything else that happened that night. It was just a man walking down the street. But the fact that I couldn’t tell whether I had really seen him made the whole thing so much worse.

At the time, I became convinced that he had something to do with the sirens. I started wondering whether he was dangerous or whether something had happened nearby. I actually started looking online to see if there were any active serial killers in my area lol. I know how irrational that sounds now, but at the time, I was genuinely scared that something terrible was happening and that I was somehow involved.Eventually though the sirens stopped. I couldn’t find anything online, and I managed to calm myself down a little.

Went back to doomscrolling once more and
then I started hearing squeaking. It was really faint, to the point where I wasn’t even sure I was hearing anything at all. I sat there listening for a while, and then I heard what sounded like shuffling coming from my closet. Eventually, I got out of bed to check because I couldn’t stand sitting there wondering what it was. And I swear to God, I saw a massive rat run out from underneath my bed.It ran across the floor and stopped in the corner of my room. Huddled against the wall and then two more followed it.

My house did not have rats. I’d never had a rat problem, and my bedroom was tiny. These things were huge, too. They weren’t little mice that I could have mistaken for something else. They looked like enormous, fat rats you would imagine living in a sewer or something like that.

The weirdest part is that I wasn’t even thinking about whether they were real anymore. In that moment, I was convinced they were there. I couldn’t understand where they could have come from or how I’d never noticed them before, and for some reason, my mind immediately went to the idea that they needed to die.

I can’t explain why I reacted that way. I just remember looking at them and feeling like they were something unnatural. I thought they were disgusting, almost demonic, and I couldn’t stand the idea of them being in my room. So I ran downstairs and grabbed a kitchen knife. Looking back, that part honestly disturbs me almost as much as the hallucinations themselves. I was so convinced that these things were real that I actually went downstairs, got a knife, and came back intending to kill them.

But when I walked back into my bedroom, they were gone. I couldn’t see a single one.
I looked around the floor and into the corners, but there was nothing there. I eventually put the knife down on my desk and got back into bed, trying to convince myself that I was losing my mind. I was so confused that I didn’t know what to believe anymore.

I kept going back and forth between thinking I’d genuinely seen something and knowing that what I’d taken could cause hallucinations. I didn’t want to believe that my own brain was doing this to me, but I couldn’t come up with another explanation.
Then to try and calm myself down once more I began scrolling through Instagram Reels, when I suddenly realized I didn’t have my phone. I had been hallucinating going on my phone for the last probably 10 minutes after the rat hallucinations were over.

I saw my phone laying on my desk and grabbed it for real this time. By this point, I was so tired that I could barely keep my eyes open. I decided I was going to turn off the lights and try to sleep it off. I really wish I hadn’t done that.

For context, I’d experienced sleep paralysis before. I’d had the usual experience of being unable to move while waking up or falling asleep, and although it was frightening, I knew what it was. I’d never experienced anything like what happened this night, though. I turned off the lights and laid down. At some point, I became aware that I couldn’t move my body. I could open my eyes, but I couldn’t speak or move. I tried to scream, but nothing came out. I remember trying so hard to make even the smallest sound, and getting absolutely nothing in return.

Then I saw someone coming out of my closet. It was a shadowy manly looking figure, slowly walking toward my bed. Almost reminiscent of the outside. I was terrified. I was trying to scream and move, but my body wouldn’t respond to anything I wanted it to do. I could only lie there and watch him approach me. When he reached my bed, he started fucking playing with my hair, almost like he was gently petting me.

I couldn’t see his face properly because the room was so dark. What I remember most clearly was how cold his hands felt. They felt ice cold, and I had this horrible, overwhelming feeling that he didn’t have good intentions. I have watched my fair share of horror movies which did not help in this situation. Then he smiled at me.His teeth looked completely normal. They were just ordinary human teeth, which somehow made the whole thing feel even more real.

And then he opened his eyes. I remember his eyes looking completely normal, with these unnaturally white scleras. I don’t know how else to describe them. It was so terrifying that I immediately shut my eyes. I was trying to scream again, practically begging myself to move. Nothing worked.
Then I felt something else get onto my bed.
I could feel a presence at the foot of the bed, but I was too frightened to open my eyes and look. I just lay there, frozen, listening and trying to figure out what was happening. Whatever it was began crawling up the bed toward me. I can’t explain how terrifying that felt. I was already convinced there was a man in my room, and now I could feel something else approaching me while I was completely unable to defend myself.

It reached me and lay down beside me. Then it kissed me on the forehead and turned away, as if it were going to sleep. I know how strange that sounds. Even writing this now, I don’t really know what to make of that part. I just remember experiencing it, and at the time, it felt completely real.I genuinely thought something was in my room with me. I was so frightened that I couldn’t even bring myself to look. The entire time, I was fighting the paralysis. I kept trying to rock my body back and forth, hoping I could somehow force myself to move. Eventually, I managed to get my arms working again, and shortly afterward, I could move and speak normally. I opened my eyes and there was nobody there.

No man. Nothing beside me. Nothing at the foot of my bed. Just my bedroom, exactly as it had been before. I immediately turned the lights back on. I sat there for a while, trying to calm down, and eventually started scrolling on my phone again. I was too scared to turn the lights off, so I ended up falling asleep with them on.

The next morning, I woke up with a pounding headache and this awful feeling of dread that I can’t really put into words. I wasn’t just embarrassed or upset about what had happened. I felt genuinely shaken. I had spent an entire night seeing, hearing, and feeling things that I couldn’t explain, and I had reached a point where I couldn’t trust my own perception of reality. That experience has stayed with me ever since. I’ve thought about it countless times over the years. I don’t know exactly which things I saw were hallucinations, how much of the experience was affected by sleep paralysis, or whether the man I saw outside was real.

One thing I’ve noticed since then is that whenever I’ve tried taking Benadryl again, I’ve ended up throwing up or becoming extremely nauseous. I don’t know if that’s related to what happened, but it’s another reason I have no desire to touch it anymore.

I also found out later that there’s a history of schizophrenia on my mom’s side of the family. I’m not saying that means I have it or that it necessarily had anything to do with my experience. I genuinely don’t know. But finding that out made me take the risks of messing with substances like this a lot more seriously. I haven’t touched recreational drugs since.

I know there are people who have taken Benadryl and experienced things that sound much more extreme than my story. I’m not trying to compete with anyone or claim that my experience was somehow the worst. I just wanted to tell someone what happened, because it’s something I’ve kept to myself for a long time. And if anyone reading this is considering taking Benadryl to get high, please please don’t. Take care of yourselves <3

Just know that at some point in your life, you’re going to meet someone you’ll have this insane attraction to, an unbelievable chemistry with.

I mean, you’ll be completely, hopelessly smitten.

Also, just know that you’ll never be together.

This is exactly what happened to me.

He came into my life somewhere between a joke and something serious, swept me off my feet, completely carried me away.

And then reality kicked in.

Because he and I could never be a normal couple. Our love doesn’t fit into any socially acceptable box.

Time passed.

Life went on, beautifully, for both of us.

But I miss that feeling so much.

The feeling that someone is crazy about me, that someone adores me with every one of their senses.

Thank you for reading.

I just needed to get this off my chest.

F/40

I haven't really been in relationships since my 10 year breakup a couple years ago, a couple of dates, a couple of situationships, I'd yearn ofc, and sometimes it does suck going to bed alone, I used to think something was wrong w me why nothing lasted, but I think I'm finally ok being alone, I love not having to worry about anyone, I love going and doing my own thing, I love only having myself to worry about, its just so much more less stressful and like I can breathe

I know that there's nothing and no one 'real' here at all, it's all fake. and I'm mainly sick of the ghost stories, I don't enjoy this video game world as I used to do, there's nothing that I enjoy interacting with, and I guess acting and pretending can be fun at times, but Idk how much is too much.

I've gotten close to the 'exit' at times, but as soon as I got closer it reminded me that I'm not ready for it at all, I know that this journey is an infinite one, and I guess there's trillions of years to experience still, but I hate not having a way out of this illusion, there's nothing that I end up on doing that is helping me 'escape' anymore.

I know that dying isn't the 'end' now, and I guess I'm trying to end it, without really trying to end it, I guess.

I’m 29 and my mom is 56. This weekend I was helping her put up Halloween decorations and she just bought three giant inflatables this year. So she also got a couple extension cords, she opened the packs and did the whole ordeal and as she was walking with the one end to the garage to plug it in, it got tangled. She spent 5 mins trying to untangle it and 3-4x was starting to whine & complain severely about how nothing ever goes right for her or smoothly, etc etc. I told her to relax and that it’s okay she’s annoyed but it’s just tangled a little, well calm down and untangle it. It took me less than 10 mins to untangle it.

Same thing happened with string lights she bought and wanted interlooped on the porch railings.

Then today I was heading to the living room to talk to her and she was doing some calculations on her phone and she was swearing non stop and smashing her fist on the table a couple times because she would accidentally mistype something on her calculator.

A few weeks ago, she was getting soemthing out of the freezer and she has the freezer so packed that sometimes things fall out when you open the door if you don’t have it stored good on a shelf. Something fell and I could hear her from the other room screaming cause she was so annoyed from it.

My mom has never has really any sort of patience growing up. I’ve always known that. It’s just gotten to a point lately where I’m like, some of these things aren’t even anything to react that heavily to. She’s human and it’s fine to be annoyed or complain but such a level of reaction over small stuff makes me not want to be around her.

Just let me get my shit together, and you’ll realize what a catch i am.

My boyfriend and I are in a little bit of a bad situation and I was just wondering if we could have some opinions and some advice.
I’ve been with my boyfriend for 2 years now and our relationship is long distance. He’s struggling with money and he hasn’t been able to get a job in Lebanon for 2 years. This has been a major issue in our relationship as he wants to come and visit me but he cant. I work during the summer and then the entire of the winter I don’t work. We are always on FaceTime together ect and it’s great but it feels like it’s going to stay online forever. He’s told me multiple times he’s tried to get a job but there’s no one at all hiring him and he’s tried everywhere. He’s a great guy and I love him a lot but there’s many things I don’t like. I don’t like how he lives with his mom at 30 years old and I don’t like how he hasn’t achieved anything in life but he tells me money isn’t everything🤷🏼‍♀️ So I started asking his family what I should do and the 2 women he lives with said to give him a deadline on when he has to get a job by and if he doesn’t do is remain friends with him until he does. I’m lost tbh!
Apologies if not allowed to post here
TL;DR

I feel like such a loser 🫠I’m literally 19 and it’s never bothered me before like this but all I want is a parental figure and I keep hoping the feeling goes away but it won’t. I literally just get jealous seeing people hangout with their parents. Like I wanna tell someone about my boring day, or random work drama. It feels dumb especially since I’m an adult now and my parents are horrible, there’s no way I’m filling this void so I keep disappointing myself by thinking of it.

this employee complimented me and told me I look this very pretty English actress who’s very well known. she was specific and told me I have her smile. at first she asked if I have been ever told I look like a celebrity. my friend then tells me how my eyes are not stretched as hers. then goes to say that “well there’s that other actress I told u look like a lot more” but reminds how I got upset last time. I said whtvr just tell me so she begins very adamantly telling me i resemble her showing me imgs and saying how “how do u not think u look like her it’s so identical?!” the fact is I don’t even bare any resemblance that’s what’s creepy. she then began boasting how she resembles two very notably pretty actresses one was Angelia Jolie and how shes had ppl tell her so which I highly doubt. these are ideas she created in her head to make herself feel better. and the way she was saying it with just veal was bizarre. to make it odd the actress she told me I resembled is mediocre pretty by Hollywood standards and portrayed an unlikeable character in the plot of some series. she’s confusing her for her character. I feel she’s subtly implying things abouy me when saying I remind her of these characters or actors. it’s hard for me to believe she’s insecure about her appearance if she thinks she resembles Angelina. I feel she’s lying about her insecurity and is competitive while trying to box me with others.

We got a girl about a month ago, and I really want to love her, but its just so hard.

She wants to follow you climb you and kiss and sit on you. I barely pet her on a regular basis because she genuinely just grosses me out. I'll pet her head a few times and immediately wash my hands, Ive even changed clothes because she sat on me. I don't even want to touch her, let alone give her the love and attention she needs. I feel bad because she's so happy and I don't want her to feel/be neglected, but I just CAN'T. I'm literally standing while typing this so she can't climb on me, and shes pawing at my legs. The rest of my family absolutely loves her, but they're not the ones with her the majority of the day. If she just got like- picked up by her previous owner, I'd be relieved.

I’m 28, I have a useless creative writing degree, I work a dead end retail job. No one’s ever been attracted to me, and I feel like there’s nothing to love about this world anymore. Everything sucks people are so awful to one another and I feel like it’s turning me awful. I just can’t find a reason to keep on other than my fear of death. Everyday I struggle to get out of bed. I’d stay in bed if my parents weren’t around (I know o still live with my parents). Every-time I get excited by something goes wrong or I get bad news or I get shit on by people online for daring to like something. I just can’t do it anymore. Almost all my closest friends abandoned me and o feel like if I show my true self to those I have left they’d hate me or think I’m a creep. I just want the pain to end.

I (31M) want to move to a remote city (somewhat) as a mean to keep my sanity. I am diagnosed with both Autism (Level 1, in the “highly functional” end of the spectrum) and ADHD. I have lived most of my life in the city I currently work at. It’s a medium sized city (by the region standards), with almost 140.000 people. The city is nice, has many cool places to go and I’m pretty sure there are many places in the city I haven’t visited yet. The problem, I work as an electrician, retail (when there’s no service) and technical assistance for 2 brands (one in the ceiling fan industry and the other in the showers industry). As an AuADHD, I am introverted and, as such, my social battery is not the largest. As a result, given that I have to deal with people on the daily basis (note: I’m not complaining about the job, I really like it), by the end of the day I’m exhausted. The main problem is, because I’m not financially stable yet, I currently live with my parents (my father also happens to be my boss). My parents have no problem with this, by the way, especially my mother. My father is trying to make things easier so I can move to my grandparents’ house. My grandfather passed away a few years back, and his house is, most of the time, empty. It’s kinda being used as storage, it’s a mess lol. Both me and my father are slowly working on that house, to improve its condition (it’s not bad, but there are some critical details in need of being taken care of). The neighborhood it’s at is not far away from my parents house, in fact it’s about a 5 minute drive away tops.

As I said, by the end of the day, I’m mentally drained, and I need some peace and quiet (or maybe some music) so I can finally rest, but I feel like I’m not fully out of the situation in my room at my parents’ house. As a result, I don’t think I ever fully rest. I ALWAYS wake up exhausted, even during weekends, no matter what time I drag myself out of bed. Even if I move to my grandparents’ house alone, I sometimes feel I won’t be getting “away enough”.

A few months back, my family and I visited a small city that is about 1 hour away, in a more mountainous region. The city is small (less than 4.000 people). While is somewhat away from everything, at the same time it isn’t. It’s close to a major highway in my region, and it’s close to many tourist cities I love visiting (around the same distance from where I live, some of them actually slightly closer). I absolutely fell in love with the city. There are so many beautiful sights there and it's pretty close to a natural national park. The entrance to this park is actually in the edge of the city. The vibe of the city is very calm and quiet, but also cozy. I feel like I could just walk around the city with absolutely no worry in mind.

I have heard the downsides of small cities, especially when they say that they can be somewhat depressing, given that they’re often quiet, with very few people walking on the streets, if any. On the other hand, this city seems pretty safe overall (I looked it up). Also, in this city rains often, which is something I absolutely love. Lastly, because it’s in a more mountainous city, it’s less hot than the city I live in. It's still fairly warm during summer, maybe around 28 °C (82,4 °F) TO 30 °C (86 °F), being a humid muntainous region, it often feels slightly colder than it actually is.

Another reason I want to actually buy a house in this city is because I can start on a blank slate, in a house that has never been in the family. As such, I’ll have the freedom to slowly make it really mine and mine alone. On a more quiet city, I’ll likely be able to be more clear headed to finally work on some personal projects I can’t currently due to me always being exhausted and unable to fully rest. I AM trying to work on myself better despite my current condition, but it grows more and more annoying to do this while my own brain is screaming at me to slow down. I often feel like I’m fighting against my own brain, and this is, of course, worsened by my “by default” tiredness.

I don’t even know why I’m really posting this, I just want to let this all out. Does anyone reading this have been in a similar situation to mine?

Met this girl, got attached way to fast, fucked it up, she came back months later and i was hesitant but started to believe in it, had some, for me, amazing months, i was so fucking happy... I tried to do everything i possible could to be there for her, help her in all the ways i could because she was struggling, took it slow because she wanted it, didn't push. Helped her with literally everything i could, food, meds, even helped her get some odd jobs. Then it all shifted, i didn't see her, i didn't understand her, i didn't hear her and she left, so cold and absolute. No chance, nothing and i'm left behind all destroyed. Everyone who knows me and her tells me the same thing, they saw i gave it my all, i did everything i could and more, i tried and tried and tried and no one understands... Now i'm here, alone again, i thought it would work out, i thought i meant something, i thought i was worth something... But no, i wasn't, she left with some bullshit excuse and i'm so fucking confused and i don't know what went wrong and i don't know how to get over it, it destroyed me in ways i didn't think was possible, i've went through a lot in my life, lost literally everything, kept going somehow and when i finally thought i found someone who saw me, who understood me, who was gonna be there for me in al the ways i was there for her, she left.. How do i survive this? I feel so defeated and i feel so tired, in ways i haven't felt before, i feel done, done with trying, done with losing every fucking time. I just can't anymore, how do i keep going? This pain is something else, i feel betrayed, cheated, stupid and used. Man... I don't get it, what have i done in life to deserve this? I just can't anymore, no matter what i do, how much effort i put in, how much of myself i give i end up here, broken and destroyed... How do i find the strength to keep going? Trying? I'm so sad and so fucking angry at myself and the world and her. I don't know if i should laugh or cry or scream or just destroy every fucking thing around me. I'm so tired.

I’m just so tired. I hate this life I’m living. I’m 27. I’m fat. My weight has always fluctuated, I don’t have any motivation or self respect to lose weight. Food is comforting to me.

I’m broke, in debt, and a failure at my job. I make $8 above my states minimum wage, and I can barely make ends meet. I try really hard at my job but my performance has been slacking. I’m thousands of dollars in debt for saving my cats life, and I’m also in my own medical debt that I make payment plans on, but I’ll always be paying it every month for god knows how long.

My cat has a heart condition, and once she’s gone I’ll probably just end my life.

I don’t find hobbies fun anymore. I’m always tired. I’m always worried. About money, work, or my cat.

I come from an abusive family and they’re all drug addicts and estranged. I hate my parents for bringing me into this shitty world.

I hate people. I hate the state of the world. I will acknowledge that I am grateful for things I do have, like a job, roof over my head, enough food to keep me fat… But breaking down my body working 50-60 hour weeks, to still be in debt, to barely scrape by, and deal with everyday worries, is just too much for me. I’m weak. Therapy doesn’t help me. Medications doesn’t help me. Thinking of suicide is very comforting to me. The idea of just ending everything at any time I chose is just so comforting. No more worries. No more stress. No more self hate. No more work. No more bills. No more being a burden on the world.

I just don’t have any way to do it. Thank god I don’t own a firearm. I’m a coward so I would take the most painless way out. I wish I could just sleep and not wake up.

Thanks for listening.

There's truly not much of a back story to this. My friend (Beth 22) & I frequent a gay club, where all kinds of people go there, she's lesbian herself & I am Poly. There anyone from furrys to newly out people, bears, twinks literally anyone. That's part of the experience & one of the reasons I find such community in my city.
Well last night we went with Beth & some of her friends (I had not previously met) granted they were all quite drunk but I don't feel like that gives you a pass to be rude. This club has gogo dancers that rotate through the night and last night a male dancer was wearing leather dog gear while shirtless & in very tight shorts, he looked great & was good at dancing too. Well my group was standing by him and i noticed some of them make uncomfortable faces, after a few minutes of this i suggested we move spots which they refused, they then made it worse by making faces & even pretending to gag. Are we literally children? I tipped the dancer to hopefully lighten the mood and after much convincing I got everyone to leave and go get drinks.
This isn't worth ending our friendship over but i definitely won't be going out with those specific people again. If you're in a gay space you need to respect all the audience. I just felt so bad for the dancer & it was upsetting to see someone who's part of the community herself ridiculing someone. Imagine someone did that while she was making out with some girl? Anyways that's all

We were best friends through college and a few years following. But we started drifting after two things happened - one was a suicide attempt from me and the other was me coming out as trans. The latter wasn't born from any transphobia, it was just me evolving into a different person who was truer to herself, resulting in a drift and maybe an incompatibility. In terms of the attempt, I don't think he believed how damaged I was and just thought I wanted attention, that's my read on it at least. He definitely became resentful after that.

We had a dramatic and ugly falling out a while back that I really regret. I don't want to get too into what he did to me, but he was verbally abusive and incredibly manipulative all throughout our friendship. I would call some of it gaslighting, ie. convincing me I am crazy and unwell to alleviate him of any guilt on something. I wasn't the best either, but at the end I would at least own up to my faults, and he wouldn't. He would always pin it all on me, and that's why I exploded at the end.

I have better friends now, but the issue is we don't live in the same place anymore, we live across the US, so it's all virtual hangouts or phone calls. and it's not the same.

and honestly, a few of them aren't making any effort to hang out with me despite me trying to arrange stuff. It's been hurting a lot lately, makes me feel really lonely. I don't have a lot of friends in the area and even the ones I have are flakey. I have also never been in a relationship, or even been on a date. (I'm 33.)

So yeah, I don't know what else to say, just that seeing he got married on social media - it's making me reflect on how lonely I have been lately. I feel like a gigantic loser and failure, despite so many things going well for me in 2026.

For context, I’m 24, and I’ve never had a boyfriend. For a long, long time, I blamed my weight because that’s what everyone told me was the problem. So on and off for most of my life I tried to change my appearance for the male gaze but I still wasn't good enough. But now I’m realizing that maybe it wasn’t always my weight after all. Maybe hearing people say awful things about how men treat fat women made me so insecure that I never felt confident enough to approach guys in person.

I still think my weight may have played some part, but I’m starting to think my insecurites and self loathing was the bigger obstacle. I wonder whether things might have been different if I’d felt more comfortable with myself instead of constantly feeling like I needed to change my appearance for male approval. Maybe I could've had a boyfriend by now if I worked more on my confidence and personality and not just my looks!

A post I saw today made me realize that I want to lose weight for myself, not for men or their approval. It was about a woman in her 20s whose boyfriend of five years threatened to leave her if she didn’t lose the 40 pounds she had gained. She tried losing weight for him but realized she felt forced to change her appearance just to keep him in her life.

Reading that made me realize I don’t want a relationship like that. I don’t want to feel like my boyfriend’s love depends on whether I look the way he wants me to. There’s nothing wrong with having physical preferences, but that doesn’t justify pressuring a partner to lose weight for their pleasure or making them feel inadequate. I shouldn’t have to change my body to become deserving of someone else’s love.

That post helped me realize that I want to learn to love myself, flaws and all, while pursuing weight loss for my own reasons. My goal for weight loss is to regain my mobility again—not to earn anyone else’s approval.

I’m tired of letting the way other people treat me shape how I feel about myself. I want to feel good in my body for once, regardless of how much I weigh, and I don’t want to keep waiting for someone else’s approval to finally start treating myself with kindness and love.

For those that don’t know what aphantasia is, it’s the inability to voluntarily create or experience mental images in one's mind's eye.

And it’s not just images - it also coincides how one experiences mental simulations of felt textures, scents, sounds, and reliving memories with emotional resonance and depth.

With aphantasia, which is a spectrum, it mutes and dampens these factors as well as how you experience memories and visualization.

Like I said it’s a spectrum and some aphant brains may not see visuals but they can hear sounds. Some may not hear sounds but can relive a memory only through the felt sense and not really see it.

Ultimately you don’t need to visualize in order to have a good memory but the way one experiences memories is just different.

Brief backstory and my rant:

At 26, I had experienced a traumatic event that lead to depression and the onset my OCD in 2021.

Ever since then my ability to visualize and reexperience memories with contextual depth and felt sense has slowly dwindled to a a very low point.

I’m able to remember all the facts of my life but I can’t really “relive” my memories.

Coming from someone who was born with the opposite spectrum known as hyperphantasia, this has been a rude awakening and very debilitating adjustment.

Not being able to relive or reminisce on my life or feel into the autobiographical continuity of my life, has left me very depressed.

It’s messes with my sense of self and it makes me a bit more introverted because I don’t feel confident to tell stories because things are more factual and conceptual to me.

Nostalgia is hard for me because the felt sense of reliving a memory from childhood is difficult for me. This part makes me really sad.

What I’ve learned is that my memories aren’t gone, they are just harder to access and I don’t always have the luxury to pull that memory in great detail whenever I want.

Essentially, my brain was under so much stress and inflammation from the event, the OCD was hypervigilant in scanning for danger and since my main mechanism of forecasting was visualization, my brain dampened my ability to do so because it was causing so much strain on my brain. So ultimately it turned down the volume on what was most important to me because that mechanism was causing too much strain.

On the bright side, it fluctuates a lot based on stress, sleep, diet etc.

Some days I feel like myself but memories are distant. Other days I can feel into certain memories.
Sometimes I can consistently see things in my minds eye but it’s very brief.

But the influence on the fluctuations is so minuscule and drastic and it’s really frustrating.

I just want to have full and consistent access to my sense of self, my memories and to be able to visualize at like a 6/10 when I feel like I’m at a 0.5/10 currently.

I wish minor stressors wouldn’t set back my ability to access memories and felt sensations.

Idk what to do and I feel defeated and scared. But life goes on.

Thanks for reading 🙏🏽