It's now painfully obvious that if you want people to act civilly and engage in good faith, they need to have some skin in the game. This kind of free-for-all where it takes two minutes to create a new anonymous account is never going to work.

I only need to browse Lemmy for two minutes to run into the first inflammatory comment, and I'm just so done with all of that. Going from here to there feels like stepping into a room full of adults. It's incredibly refreshing to be around people who treat each other as humans instead of just performing for an audience and fishing for applause.

A good example of this is that in a recent poll 97% of users said they view Trump as uniquely dangerous, yet there's a post on the front page by a Trump supporter asking people to challenge his views - and not a single person is attacking him personally or calling him a fascist.

Rules of the community:

1. Engage in good faith.
   Assume the best of people you disagree with. Challenge ideas, not intentions.

2. Steelman before you criticize.
   Make sure you understand someone's position before you argue against it. If you can't articulate their view fairly, keep reading.

3. No outrage, no grandstanding.
   This isn't the place for performative takes or scoring points. Say what you actually think.

4. Stay curious.
   You might be wrong. So might everyone else. Approach conversations as a chance to learn, not just to be heard.

5. Keep it civil.
   Disagree as sharply as the argument requires, but never get personal. Attack the idea, not the person. No insults.

6. No spam or self-promotion.
   Don't use this community to sell something or grow your own platform.

7. Stay on topic.
   If your comment is about something different, consider creating a new post.

8. Respect the lurkers.
   Not everyone wants to post. Don't pressure people to engage, and don't call out members who prefer to listen.

9. AI is a tool, not a voice.
   Feel free to use these tools however you like to think, research, or edit, but what you share should represent your own thinking.

Some of you might know/guess the community in question but I will not reveal that here as it's not relevant. This isn't an invite.

I hafta process what I have just witnessed...

Y'know, when I say I was taken advantage of by a cult, that's true. That's how they operated and controlled those of us that got scooped up into that government reconditioning program. It was Love School, as it was casually referred to in passing, and I learned and grew so much as lil baby q doing as us counterintelligent retards do.

Near the end, we were staying on this large property situated on a mountain. One guy there, clearly a member of a foreign intelligence agency posing as a Belgian flat-earther I know now in present Knowledge, he taught me something just before leaving. It's difficult to explain exactly how he taught me this, but the gist of it was "if you're going to poop, do it far away," where "poop" equals "cheating."

Why is that? Well, you never know when the person you're cheating on will see you with your mistress or whatever. Case-in-point: my narcissistic manipulator of a life partner who may be working with his entire family to manipulate me so he ultimately manipulates the state into giving him disability. That's not certain, but I see how everything he does lines up with that, such as how he very aberrantly reacts to even mentioning his mother, who plays her role very well as the "pissed off worried mother" who will be the second witness to get her son "help."

What I mean is, he won't talk to her, runs outta the room when she stopped by, and skillfully shuts down any conversation mentioning her. I just saw him, definitively him with his dopey posture and threadbare shirt he wears to prove he doesn't care, get into his mom's hatchback that I've ridden in once. Didn't get a good look at the driver, but same frilly hair.

Oh, I forgot to mention that I saw this because I tried getting him his laptop ordered to have the bank tell me he tried using defunct cards of mine to make an unknown purchase, which would have made it impossible to get his laptop that he does not assist in any way, me being differently abled and having trouble with financial stuffs, while simultaneously barraging me with the necessity of getting this $1500 dollar laptop so he can browse Reddit, write two poems he doesn't share a year, and do a grand total of 48 hours of programming all at once.

I don't know what to feel right now. I think it prudent if I just give them rope and see how much they hang themselves.

Hypothetical. I work as a bank teller. A woman comes in and gets angry because she doesn't want to pay a late fee. I grab her by the collar, slap her two times and tell her to give me my fucking money.

She sues. The bank settles out of court.

I get two weeks of paid vacation, then go right back to work, and the settlement money is added to the tax burden of the property owners surrounding the bank. So the bank never has to pay anything.

I keep doing this and I'm never fired.

^ this is the current system of police immunity. It is absolutely solvable using legislation.

I am tired of people defending the police for any reason. The system is so badly broken that they are getting away with murder, almost every day, and our prisons are overflowing.

I am completely losing respect and sympathy for anyone who credits the police with doing a "necessary job". The reason that this system continues is people keep jumping into defend them. We need to treat them like what they are.

I'm tired, for a lot of reasons. The FBI has been setting me up for at least twelve years. That's the timestamp where "God" revealed Themselves to me on an acid trip in a highly discrediting manner because dazzle camouflage. And that's why I'm tired; I get banned left n right performing my role in society.

I don't have a job. One reason I am tired is that my life partner actively sabotages my attempts to create sustainability for both of us. We might be almost homeless, but that is not a concern to him. His role is important. He is setting me up so I have a good cover story, I deduced. But that's the thing; I serve this role, and I'm good at being an idiot, and therein there are many low-level mod that cares about their special space where they are God more than they do the individuals who occupy that space

On the surface, I can take on the appearance of being a belligerent troll. If you listen to what I am saying as a whole, you'll see I do what I do for a purpose. How do you teach those that refuse to do a spirituality and improve themselves? You trick them:

A pedagogical skit of three lines:

Man: I am the son of God!

Woman: That's blasphemous!

Man: But sister, surely you know our Father?

I know what effect I have on the world, because I know who finds my work at a certain, deliberately low rate. I figured out how to garner 100k views on my profile per day by skillful trolling six years ago. I know how to get Michael Jackson levels famous now, but I don't do that. I realized that's unsustainable. You can't help individuals like that. So, I learned to be a red dwarf instead of a supernova so I can work with the people that get caught in my orbit.

And most mods don't even talk to me. They swing their hammer blind. Well, that Roman with a spear sure didn't know what he was doing, losing out on a promotion for completely other stated reasons. It's like we engineered our culture to ensure the idolatorer amongst us reveal themselves. That's someone who gives a sacrific to the gold bull but doesn't give a shit about a person on the street of their own neighborhood.

The neighbors talk between themselves about me. They don't realize how lowly they are developed. In Arizona, God is the most similar to what I experienced in Tennessee and North Carolina, where God has a lot to say about WHAT I am doing, but offers no help. I have not made a single friend here. They just fuck with my head around me, saying things TO me while they hold the conversation off in the corner.

I'm tired. I'm the type of tired sleep won't fix. Everything is falling apart. It's not my fault, but I could be better. Could other people be better? Absofuckinglutely. They're stuck though, addicted to their identity. They know not what is written in the flesh itself. They are run by their culture, and thus I forgive you all, because I understand what I put out comes back to me.

so last night i had trouble sleeping. my cat came and slept on top of me and that helped, but literally the second my cat got up to lay on top of my wife's head i had a nightmare and i just can't shake it. i'd tell my wife about it, but like, something very close to all of these bullshits happened in real life and telling her this would make her very justifiably angry. she's got enough going on for the next few weeks (school year is ending) to worry about my imaginations, especially when i know my dream was telling me to go to the p.harmacy and put some water in the freezer to make ice blocks for our disappearance to the coast to go camping (also, i did that way better this year). so nyeh nyeh all of y'all can pretend to be my therapists/psychics.

but here's the dream: we were bowling with the whole extended family. like big ol family reunion on my side of the family and my wife's side too, so i had someone take over my turns because i was hungry for ribs. i stepped aside and got out the smoker (out of my pockets) and started smoking some ribs in the bowling alley (cherry wood, minion method with charcoal on a 24 inch weber smokey mountain, sand in the water pan covered in foil look i used to lucid dream so mine get really vivid especially when food is involved). i asked everyone who wanted ribs and of course everyone did. I got everyone's rub and sauce orders, and of course i made a couple extra racks of dino bones. and my estranged SIL invites some people from her cult. being a good host, i make sure they have enough of the main dish. my wife and i share half of a rib and that's about all of the cookout i get to eat. I am very good at showing i'm not upset, but then my MIL looked around, laid down on the ground, looked around again, then faked a seizure. then looked around again, and faked another one because no one reacted to the first one. then she got up and went to the bathroom and cried because she didn't get the response she wanted. then i woke up.

i woke up kinda hangry for ribs this morning. i already bought ribs at costco today (can't afford beef rib on teacher salary, can afford pork rib) and we're smoking them tomorrow (minion method, cherry, water in the water pan, smaller weber smokey mountain)

Software often has pretty good documentation. But real-world things don't.
And if I don't know exact steps to do something and what to expect, I just can't really push myself to try it the first time. That can be put into an interesting sentence.
"I can't do it because I haven't done it."

Recent example:
I want to take a bus. But I haven't yet used the company that operates these buses. I do have an RFID card with e-wallet that is compatible with this company. That is because they operate as intercity transport in the same region, and same tickets are valid there. Except for one line, the one I am most interested in.
Now comes the problem.
How am I supposed to board? How do I buy the ticket? On other lines, am I supposed to prove I have one?

Before I start with the issues of unknowns, I should mention I so far spent 3 hours trying to find the information. That includes searching for videos which may show what others do in the background. In one similar case I found the answer from a TV news report filmed near a bus stop, and my answer was in the background.

So, boarding. Is it front doors only, or do the doors not matter? I've seen both.
Purchasing the ticket: There was a mention of possible cash payment, buying the ticket "from the driver". I managed to find photos from inside the bus, and to further my confusion, there were 3 terminals. All of them RFID-compatible.
2 are ticket validators next to both doors.
1 is on-board computer (apprears to be TransData Vesna model) along with a ticket printer and RFID terminal, operated by bus driver.
If it was just one of those, I'd know what to do.
I found one video from that special line. The person presented a QR code of valid ticket to the driver before boarding. But I don't use that payment method.
But if it's front doors only, why are there validators in the rear? Or was that just something specific to this line?

Now, I could do the one obvious thing, ask the driver. But I really hate talking to people I don't know.
An alternative I am contemplating is sending an e-mail to the company with my questions. They do have one for customer questions.

This is always a problem if I don't know exact steps for something. And even then I am still really anxious before I actually do it for the fist time.

I have such a love/hate relationship with Round1 arcades. For the most part, it's a fantastic place to go and spend a few hours goofing off, winning some very nice quality stuffed duders and racking up tickets.

But the trouble starts when you win one of those godforsaken "see an attendant for help" machines.

My wife is an absolute savant at claw and arcade skill games. So she inevitably wins a few of these machines every time we visit. And every time she does, the exact same thing happens: we look around for an attendant, see none, I tell her to wait there while I do three fruitless laps around the arcade floor before I walk up to the customer service desk and tell the poor overworked desk attendant I need them to open the machine up.

I obviously don't blame the workers for this at all. I entirely blame the company for not hiring enough employees. Expecting a grand total of like... Two employees to efficiently cover 50,000 square feet of arcade floor is ludicrous.

But surely there's something they could implement that would make this process easier for the customers and the employees? A call button on the machines is the most obvious choice, but I could understand how that could be abused. I'd even take a little something you could bring up to the prize redemption counter they can scan and grab your prize out of the back room for you.

Just please stop making me feel like an asshole everytime we win something. As much as I love these machines, it makes me want to just stick to the ticket redemption games.

I filled out nine pages of bureaucratic Japanese nonsense, rewrote my entire CV in my 3rd language, formatted to the university's exacting specifications, and went through all the processes at the post office to have it sent by registered mail.

It has been a two week project because professor/university applications are stress tests designed to break you.

Let's hope that something good comes of this. I could use a major life change.

Anyone I could boast to is a coworker (that's how socializing kinda winds up going here) and I don't want them to know I'm on the way out the door. So you guys get it instead.

12 years and 8 months ago, my son started his academic journey. Today, he completed the first of what will be many chapters in his life. My pride in him cannot possibly be overstated. I’ve been home now for about an hour, and still I cannot stop crying the happiest of tears. My job—my dream—is to see him surpass me in every way. He’s doing a pretty damn good job so far!

I’d post pics, but yeah, no. Hell, I actually posted a pic on Facebook (so family could see). Only the third post I’ve made in the last 9 years lol. And of course, the other two posts are about my son as well.

Just wanted to tell the void of the internet that I am so proud of my son, and that I love him more than anything in this life.

I loved Soylent, it was the perfect replacement. Easy to make, easy to pack, tasted fine.

Then they added something to it that made it taste disgustingly sweet with an after taste of chemicals. Every time I drink it now I think I'm going to get diabetes and then die of poisoning. Before this I could drink like it was a nice latte, or a cold cup of water on a hot day. But now I have to force it down like cough syrup. It was perfectly fine before, why did they have to change it?

I suppose they were listening to people that ate sweets and smoked cigarettes and complained that soylent tasted like nothing.

Like, I can't overstate how awful it tastes... it's like drinking two cups of melted ice cream with a touch of floor cleaner. What the hell is wrong with them? Did they even test it before shipping it out? I guess they paid people to taste test it which is the dumbest thing to do because that's just paying people to say "Yes, I love it! Five stars!".

It's almost as if the company is controlled by only a few people which opens them up to all sorts of cognitive biases as their world view is warped by their wealth and limited contacts outside their peer group who have similarly warped world views.

I'm hungry now, and even though I have Soylent I can make in less than a minute, I might have to spend a hour or so to... cook food. OH NO. (but actually because my shitty rental has a shitty gas stove with a shitty extraction fan so the whole place smells sour and gross for hours after someones cooked)

I think it’s so obnoxious when I go into a little shop and nothing has a price tag. I hate it with the white hot passion of a thousand suns. Are you seriously gonna make me ask you about the price of every little thing I might consider purchasing? Or would you prefer that I bring a bunch of stuff to the register and then decide if I actually want it as you ring it up? And it honestly doesn’t matter if I can afford it (although the lack of clearly labeled prices are particularly rude to people who maybe can’t). No matter how much money I have I will never feel good about getting ripped off so the asking price will always be a factor.

I was recently in a local needlepoint supply store where they had nothing labeled. Needlepoint supplies vary wildly in price. You can get thread for a dollar or for $20. Canvases can cost 5 bucks or hundreds. From their website I saw that this store had needle minders (little decorative magnets to hold your needle when you take a break, they usually look like enamel pins but with magnets instead of the pin and clasp). Well they had $7 needle minders and $75 needle minders. So someone will wander in and see a cute 1 inch Snoopy magnet, think it’s a cute impulse purchase and then get hit with $75 + tax and have to either smile and go along with it or have to back out. It’s just a piss poor customer experience.

I think it will be a badge of honor. I'm not trying for it, but I'm also not willing to diminish my opinions. In my opinion, we are all humans, on a fragile planet that is dying more rapidly by the day. Putting up false barriers between us only highlights our primate origins. I'm not a chimpanzee, nor are you. We should dialogue.

Perhaps, with a rational dialogue, we can come to terms. If you can understand any of the words I just used.

Technology is supposed to be simple, intuitive, basic and convenient.

But my experience today, has been infuriating, stress-inducing and unnecessarily excessive. I had to go to my local bank branch today to sign a PAL loan. I wouldn't have had to go in-person, if it wasn't for the overly annoying way my bank has to verify you. The digital signing document they sent me? Required a fucking verification. Like, to even ask for a PAL loan, you need to put down your information. So, why in the FLYING FUCK, do you NEED to verify me when I just gave you everything needed to know me by?!

Then, they wanted me to add my numbers to the settings for preferred contact. I kid you not, I had to have 3 codes sent to my phone number PER section. Home? 3 Codes. Mobile? 3 codes. That's SIX codes I had to have gone through, JUST TO FUCKING REGISTER A PHONE NUMBER!!! And STILL, the fucking digital verification system they have, DOESN'T SEND ME IT! So I had to drive the fuck down to my bank, because I didn't want to fucking go out today and deal with dumbfucks (I already dealt with dumbfucks at work, don't need more).

Had to spend, oh, 50 minutes there, WAITING FOR SHIT THAT COULD'VE BEEN DONE IN 1 MINUTE!!

Then I get the fuck home, realized "shit, I need to talk to StateFarm about my beacon" because it hasn't fucking worked for some reason. Forgot my login, but wait, shit! The fucking browsers I use - SOMEHOW FUCKING FORGOT MY LOGIN INFORMATION BECAUSE REASONS!!!

Had to fucking talk to a god damn live chat representative, go through THAT fucking obstacle course. THAT WASN'T ENOUGH! I HAVE TO FUCKING VERIFY TO LOG IN WITH MY TEMPORARY PASSWORD AFTER UPDATING IT?! YOU FUCKING CUNTS!! I FUCKING HATE YOU!!

And Chrome seems to have it where, it doesn't sync with mobile and desktop as I feel it should. The fucking Chrome browser on phone, REQUIRES you to fucking add a fucking security measure so you have to enter a fucking pin EVERY TIME YOU WANT TO FUCKING SO MUCH EDIT OR ACCESS SAVED PASSWORDS!

FUCK THIS BULLSHIT! FUCK ALL OF IT!!

Y'know that feeling you get when you see your beloved life partner? Yea, that huge spike of cortisol as your fight or flight response flips into overdrive? Yea, I get that because I am obviously the horrible abuser of this relationship. I'm the one who assaults him! And, obviously, I'm always in the wrong for reacting to him - even in a peaceful way - in response to his calm, collected, skillful actions that seem eerily similar to narcissistic manipulation, in a "these are the exact same things" sort of way.

I always feel horrible when I lose it, being disabled by my emotional dysregulation, and uses that against me! I want to carve the word "LIAR," not into his forehead, but into his skull itself to help make sure this never happens again, but it wouldn't work. He's that skilled!

How do I even know he loves me? His words, and occasionally a glimmer of an emotion percolates through his blunt affect, tell me he does. All of his actions can be painted with the same color of "this is what the cult did to me." But is my life partner just using me for supply, and being so capable of manipulating me that I can see in the present how it's possible that he's using me to defraud the government, meaning what can I do but report honestly on what I experience; he's wholly capable of seeing through manipulation at that level.

I have this shitty feeling in my heart. Like, is the medicine going to hit his tongue and then suddenly, magickally he'll be back to the person I met almost three years ago? That would make me feel worse than if this was incurable. He's shitting in my soul deliberately, consciously, and skillfully, even. He is fully capable of not doing that. He CHOOSES to do it of his own volition. That hurts so much.

Tinnitus just got louder. It's like a bomb went off. And still I push forward with my thumb. I remember zoning out to video games as a kid in this state. It was my escapism. Objectively, on certain axises, my life is a contender for worst ever. Definitely think the grand prize goes to someone kidnapped and raised in a secret subbasement torture dungeon, but every step of my life has just been utter garbage at sone level.

Mom found out she had AIDS because I was born. Horrible death. Father abusive, negligent, narcissist. Goes through several stepmoms. Cuts off my whole family. Alone all the time. Start running track to have him live vicariously through me. Fall apart in college for so many reasons. Make a complete ass of myself on the Craigslist of my hometown. Start being manipulated by my government. Join a cult. Become a woman. Become homeless. Get mugged and learn to live outta trash cans. Get v& by FBI. Live with a man I looked up to to find he huffs paint thinner every day. Become homeless when he throws me away for his new girlfriend. Meet life partner. Live on mountain. Get inside. Starts manipulating me to high hell. And I'd do it all again to get where I am now if I were to lose myself. That's how much God has shown me wonder in my life, restoring all my faith in humanity and the order of the cosmos.

Moses was abandoned. Jesus' step father wasn't good enough to get his own wife so he registered for a used one. The unloved children of the world are loved the most by God, giving them a special place in the story of His creation. We are the ones that are given the deepest insights to develop the faith needed to work the largest miracles. This I Know, and in the broader Knowledge I have, I know I am fine now.

There's something you can't explain about Knowing. I can create a one hundred point itemized list of things my life partner does that hurts me. I Know this is for something bigger. He's proven he works with the CIA. But how to convince anyone? I don't care. I make art, dummy. I ain't no scientist. I'm in gnosis, which to some people means I am only my diagnosis, and they are the ones that are the most lost behind their ocular logs.

Financially I’m really well off, I have a pension, Social Security and amble savings. Health wise, not doing so great. Bone marrow slowing dying, arthritis and asthmas.

I have to give myself a couple of injections every week, it’s unpleasant to put a needle deep into your thigh.

Yet, at the same time, I’m not doing that bad. I went for 13 miles ebike ride in 90 degree heat yesterday, and it didn’t even phase me.

The slow decline of red blood cell count from the bone marrow is the most disturbing part. I try not to think about because it really crushes me. But my 6 month visit to the oncology is coming up, so I have to think about it. I probably have another 7 to 10 years left, maybe.

It’s really hard to look at your own death approaching. But oddly I’m not looking for sympathy. In fact I’d prefer you keep your condolences and well wishes to yourselves. They mean nothing to someone in my situation.

You’d think I’m writing about my health problems but I’m not. That was just background. With all that is happening, the thing that haunts my days is Trump, the death of American democracy, Israel’s genocidal action, the wars in the Ukraine and Iran.

The evil that is consuming our world really upsets me. Even thought it has no really measurable effect on my life. I live in a nice house in Florida. Access to food, medicine and health care is not a problem. Okay, it’s Florida level health care, which is way lower quality than up north, but still I’m doing okay.

Yet all this evil haunts my dreams, without in any way directly affecting me. Okay, gas is a bit more expensive, and so is food, but it’s not big deal. I’ll be dead before the money runs out.

And yet it seems all I can think about is how evil my country has become and how bad the world is.

Then there are these stupid fucking data centers. Draining resources and making peoples lives hell for no useful reason. A creeping mindless blight that is the exact opposite of sustainable living. While supporting a product that doesn’t even work.

I’ve tested all the big ai models. They are crap! Lying, manipulative, intentionally deceptive, censorship crap. Honestly WTF is the fuss about? It’s like having a conversation with a sycophantic sociopath who’s trying to get you to harm yourself.

I don’t understand my reaction to world events. I should be indifferent or uncaring. Lord knows my neighbors are. This is a deeply maga area called the Villages. I thought I was retiring to a quiet community of caring grandparents, but these people are really self centered selfish drunks, who are off their meds and carrying a gun. All while reveling in the violent brutality that is trump.

Anyway, I wish I didn’t care so much. I wish this didn’t bother me. I wish I understood why it bothers me. I mean I’ll be lucky to live another 10 years. I guess it would bother me less if I knew that we had a president and congress trying to make the world a better place. Bad things always happen, and the best you can do is try fighting against them. But now we, the USA, have become the bad things. We have become the source of evil in the world.

I spent my life working for the army, GS, not a green suit. I thought I was doing the right thing defending the country from its enemies. But now we are the bad guys. I guess I didn’t want to leave this world knowing my life was just a waste of time. That nothing I’ve done has had any meaning, as it all gets washed away in a flood of vile people doing evil things.

It really depresses me more than it probably should. So I decided to post this and get it all off my chest.

Also, no, I'm not clinically depressed, I'm just unhappy with the world.

In a couple of weeks I'll get on a train and go visit my brother in NJ. I'm fine. It's just that these thoughts build up and I find posting them gets them out of my head. Much like keeping a diary helps people in troubling times.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/46941411

I'm not doing so hot, but not for the reasons everyone keeps telling me to take my meds. It feels exactly like it did when I was fifteen, after the police interrogated me about a nonexistent bomb using hypothetical questions, but before being suspended. This is the same feeling I had throughout college. I know the boat is sinking yet can do nothing but plow forward.

World collapsing, not that there was much going for me before. I suppose I always have God, but that's part of the problem. If our fathers were our models for God, what does that tell us about God? For me, it's that I'm never good enough and I always have to go farther and harder and faster to appease my master.

I remember an invitational early in my junior year of high school track where I just couldn't run fast. My coach wasn't worried as it was the beginning of the season and he was preparing us for those races that mattered. My dad was having none of it. He screamed at me while I was running in the same way he yelled at us in Little League; with borderline fucking death threats. He was "livid" the whole way home, which is a very specific word he used when he would methodically go through my soul and shit in every inch of it.

And this is where I'm falling apart, because my life partner is deliberately evoking these feelings by being like my negligent, narcissistic father, and I can't take it anymore. And the thing that kills me is wondering if him taking some pills is going to magick him back to being the man I fell in love with, and that is fucking with my head. Is he so capable and callous that he is using me for his ends and he can be nice to me in the ways a considerate person might, but just chooses to make me feel this way?

I can't even trust my ability to love. He could be playing with that! Certainly love bombs me enough, but he doesn't know what that is just as he doesn't know anything about "jedi mind tricks" he told me about once. He's intentionally dense and aloof. Maybe? Is that his definite schizoid-type disorder? I can't tell what reality is.

Just keep trusting, just keep giving, and that was what I did in the cult. I let them walk all over me. They used me. And I genuinely think they did it for my benefit. I don't know what's real. The world doesn't even exist as a physical, external object to us. That's easy to understand, how the Earth is an illusion, but the circumstances of my life? Impossible to discern anything from.

Most people revel in nostalgia, but I hate going into it too much. There is something tragic in remembering only the good parts of the past, but not being able to come back to it.

And, like many I suppose, we had a complicated relationship.

He was a mean drunk during my childhood and early adolescence, quit booze and started making an effort when I was 13 or 14 (but getting too old to really bond with him at that point), and then only saw each other when I was home for college in my early adulthood. I always appreciated how he tried to be a better dad with my younger siblings, because his effort showed how much he wanted that second chance.

That said, my parents saved nothing for retirement and 99% of my conversations with him as an adult were him calling to borrow money. It wasn't entirely his fault. He had a thriving roofing business until 2008, and now we can look back and see that (at least here in the US) basically everyone's purchasing power was permanently lowered after that. His mistake was adopting so many kids so late in life. His kindness outweighed his good sense.

He started working in the 1950's at age 11 and never stopped, supporting his younger siblings and his mom. (His father died young.) Until a few months ago he was driving with my mom for DoorDash at age 83, because that's just how cruel and uncaring the US is to people.

And, he was very sick. Two years ago he was having trouble using a seat belt and basic door locks due to mild dementia, and he once lost control of his bladder in my car, which I've lent mom and dad for the past two years. When I visited him six weeks ago, it was clear to me that he was dying. Thankfully he woke up for a bit, knew I was there, and I told him to relax because we weren't getting on the roof today.

Still, it feels more like an uncle or a distant grandparent has passed away. Not my dad. I'm really just over here glad that he's no longer in pain and wishing he hadn't lived through all this the last five years.

I will honor him for the quiet kindnesses he showed me, like when he put $1000 in my hands to pay a tuition bill in college so I wouldn't have to quit, or the times he put a blanket over me when I was a kid or carried me to bed and tucked me in, or the time when I was four when he somehow found the money to get surgery for my eyes. I'm also grateful he hired me (and six weeks later fired me) to roof one summer, with (I now understand) the intention of making sure I never chose the life he did because it's such hard physical work.

Now I just hope there's an afterlife where he gets to sit on his ass for more than five minutes and not be surrounded by a bunch of kids.

I mean yeah the car obviously feels different but its still driving at the end of the day, i don't regret it but at least i now know for next time to curve the excitement down a bit

All I do is think. I spend the majority of my time alone so i'm constantly alone with my thoughts. The distractions aren't working anymore. It's maddening. I think about my life as it exists, my life as I wish it existed, my fears, my hopes, and anything else you could possibly conceive. I have OCD so a lot of my thoughts revolve around sexuality, identity, and more existential concepts. If you have OCD you probably understand at least some of what i'm talking about. I just want it to stop. I can't focus on anything, even videogames which I very much enjoyed. I just sit and rot. Don't even get me started on the compulsive porn binging and jerk sessions. I really don't know what to do. In case anyone is worried I'm not in any danger. I just can't keep this to myself anymore. I wish I could just shut my brain off and take a long needed rest.

Even when it's serious, it's just a shitty situation. I know everybody has to take care of themselves and that's why I try not to go to work when sick but most often that's what I'd like to do.

Like I'm a socialist and all but I hate the situation of talking to my boss and telling them I can't come in :(

I fucked each of you in your mouth, shut up, shut up, shut up, you stupid bitch, you made that choice yourself and then you're unhappy with the fucking result like it's my fault?? just just just SHUT your dirty mouth, you fuckking stupid bitch

Got arrested last night. First time for everything. Domestic assault in exacerbated circumstances. I hit him with an open hand and got choked out to earn a big gash in my foot that needed stitches. He told the cops I punched him and stomped on him. I don't remember stomping on him at all. The police were called over me screaming the loudest I could while being choked. It's ok. I know how this works out.

I went to the police before to find out he was lying about having a warrant, and upon going to the doctor the next day and started taking all my pills again, ny mind was clear enough to realize he lied about having HIV as well. He does it to control me, these sorts of things, because he is a narcissistic manipulator.

The individual event that set this off was that he did his narcissistic triangulation on me. So y'know, he got to tell police that the insane man he is forced to live with due to the circumstances he created so I feel bad about the only other opinion he has is becoming homeless, he got to tell police that I hit him for no reason besides he was opening a window.

It's bullshit! He doesn't just open a window; he then stands with his back to me, chanting, ignoring all this drastic, egregious things that are going to make ME homeless, and I sound crazy to the people outside, so I shut up.

He has the willpower of a monk, but he may have a screw loose, but that could also be his "jedi mind tricks" he talked about one time then denied he ever said such things. He stood outside my door for SEVEN HOURS knocking and chanting one time, not even for weed, he had that, he just wanted a $50 1/8 that day, which I am forced to pay for by taking loans from his father that I alone will be forced to pay back.

He sanctioned me from talking to his family. I'm not doing that. His mother being a witness to the changes in her son may be the only thing that gets him committed. He NEEDS psychiatric intervention, because right now he's a chimp with a machine gun, capable of feats nearing the Buddha's capacity, but being totally self-interested.

And this is just a small list! I put shitloads of holes in the wall, but he has torn things off the wall multiple times and intentionally sabotaged the washer/dryer and dushwasher FOR LITERALLY NO REASON! There was a patient that I was in the hospital with over a decade ago who was diagnosed with Operant Defiance Disorder and that's him. The only other person that could blow a gasket over being told they can't illegally smoke weed in the apartment they are illegally shacked in with their supply victim.

…and I doubt I will change. I’ve not had a boyfriend really ever. I’ve never had a stranger give me a compliment. I’ve never had someone ask me out—and follow through with it. This is all to say that my views and habits rely solely on sex. I’m fully jaded. I resent those who can literally pick whichever guy they want. I resent my best friend for her relationship with her bf. She was not divorced yet, just separated. This guy walked up to her, asked for her number, and that was it. No effort needed. I’ve put so much effort, only to never see anything of promise.

I want things that I cannot have.

Quick edit: I do not want or need sympathy or whatever. I just need to get this off of my chest. I bottle all of this up, and feel even more isolated, and alone.

I'm falling apart. Back on my bullshit. Can you blame me? I might be on the verge of becoming homeless again and my life partner just makes a fuss when I bring it up, however I do that. It's always the manner that I approach him that he criticizes and demands perfection in.

He asked me sincerely when we were still homeless to kill him. I was fucking up with Benadryl then, too, stealing it even because I thought I was going to die on that mountain. Then one day he says he talked with his dad and then we started getting money and we got inside in like two weeks. It's bullshit! He's fucking with my head intentionally, and it's breaking me down.

The cult was like this. Or was it Love School, that totes secret government reconditioning program that rewired my dopaminergic pathways so video games were no longer fun, so I wrote more and more and now we're here, at this level of thumbmancy, and still I can't support myself.

Get a job everyone bitches at me about. Ok. I just headbutted a huge hole in the wall, how long do you think I would last with a job? Get something using my writing skills? Ok. I've been trying. I never get even a reply back. Clearly I'm doing something wrong. I have the most poor judgment and I don't know what normal even is now, so how do I make someone actually go beyond my abysmal resume?

Keep posting I say. Get stoned God says. I keep posting because surely there's someone who CAN see me for what I am. People need to be told what to think. There ain't nothing like me, the plumbus of people. Is that beneficial to me or society? I mean, I see what purpose I was made for. Gotta go back to college to do that.

Can't ever make forward progress as everything SEEMS to be working against me, controlling me. Have to become more independent and autonomous. I'm so tired. I'm never good enough. I jump through God's hoops, and the asshole keeps raising the bar. I can't relax. I have to bust my ass, either writing or wordsmithing, which are two different skills. And it's never good enough.

Thanks dad. I confronted my negligent, narcissistic father and he goes on to try to shit in my soul by throwing that he learned my grandma died in a manner as one might use a dagger. Hasn't replied to my texts this morning. Prolly fuming and taking it out on everyone around him. Or maybe not! Maybe the man who broke me is just prejudiced against his own son.

I'm AUTOMATICALLY crazy and dismissed and ignored for weeks on end because I have the audacity to bring up that we live in a police state and that's why things are the way they are. But no, I don't have Trump Derangement Syndrome. I think the character he portrays to intentionally be portrayed that way in the media is an utter dog shit example of a human being, but I'm also aware he's a cop, so he's expected to be a piece of shit, for trust-related reasons.

And if you don't get that, speak into the mic.

https://youtu.be/EeVw48YCAA0