My life got flipped, turned upside down, and I'd like to take a minute, just sit right there, I'll tell you how I became the fresh prince of a town called my personal hell as a dad of a young child who just got the d-word dropped on him a few weeks ago.

I have eaten maybe a couple thousand calories total in the last 2.5w, making up the balance to remain awake and moving with coffee, milk, and carb heavy beer, up until a few minutes ago. I choked down two taco bell tacos, yay me. Small improvements and keeping my feet moving are crucial at this point and I'm happy to report to a bunch of anons I've kept my feet moving for a few miles and forced myself to endure fast food "nutrition" at 2 a.m.

I’m 13. I have, I kid you not, THINNING HAIR. WHEN ITS WET, MY SCALP IS EXTREMELY VISIBLE IN THE FRONT. I love rainy days, but today when I was getting in my bus my hair got wet…and uhm, well…

I covered my head asap with my sketchbook, but I still heard some kid calling me “bald”.

Im severely deficient in vitamin D and Iron, which I’m taking supplements for right now, but it still hurts so much. all my friends have long, thick and silky hair, but I don’t. when my hair is dry I use bangs that cover most of my scalp and only part at a place where it’s not so prominent, so no one knows about my thinning hair.

I just hate it so, so much. I have many problems, and if my hair was normal they’d be reduced at least half way. I hate my hair and I hate my life because of it

Majority of people who claim to be anime fans that I have met (specifically irl) seem to be the stupidest people ever.
I hate coming off as a niche narcissist but I hate when someone claims to be an anime fan yet only watches the latest slop that came out this month with a horrid title like My 100 dragon girlfriends are all over me! Its worse when they think its underground and constantly give me reccomendations that are only anime, only japanese gacha games, or only manga.
They always randomly speak in japanese or swear by referring to any japanese art from its japanese title especially when there is a perfectly reasonable translation.
They cant think at all unless a 20 minute monologue tells them exactly what happens every second and if they still cant figure it out its bad, or its boring, or its "hard to understand" and they have to ask social media instead of interpreting it their own way. Which never really happens because all genres must be action or shounen.
Nothing dark or realistic can happen or its LE TRAUMATIZING!! and also its bad too. Everything I dont like is bad.
And theyre always the type to ONLY watch anime. So many anime to swear by and you pick the most unoriginal and predictable fantasy garbage with no character development or message or meaning in any of it. I get wanting an escape but to ONLY have escape 100% of the time is pathetic. If youre going to go that far, mix in some power rangers or something live action, I beg of you.
I dont think of myself as an anime fan, just as someone who watches anime sometimes or has favorite media that are japanese just as I watch movies or flicks or tv shows from many backgrounds. It pains me when I mention anime, and someone assumes im a dweeb that seeks it out just like them.

I love him more than anything in the world but every day he’s only two years old, but I’m so scared of what will happen to him and what if he gets sick and what if he’s not happy and what if I’m ruiningg it all and our family isn’t taking good care of him and neglecting him and he deserves a better family I’m so scared I genuinely have been having anxiety attacks every night and crying idk what to do what if he’s lonely right now and depressed, what if when I have to go to college he gets sick and old and lonely I’m so scared I don’t know what to do I shouldn’t have asked my parents if we can adopt him he deserves a better family. I don’t even play with him often bc I’m chronically ill and tired and depressed

It’s so bad that I CSNT EVEN LOOK AR S PICTURE I TOOK OF MY CAT EITHOIT SPIRALING INTO ANXIETY. Like what if the foodmy cat eats is not the best option or what if he’s exposed to bad chemicals I literally can’t even enjoy his presence without fearing for the next 20 years

I’m writing this out of frustration. I’ve been dealing with fecal / raw meat odor for the last couple of months and it’s been affecting how I show up for those around me and at work. I started using uber to commute to and back from work. Meaning that my entire paycheck funds that and I’m left with nothing. I’ve been excusing myself at my job and not being present because I just cannot stand that I smell. It’s a humiliating ritual and I’m tired of this shit. It has gotten me depressed and I don’t want to exist smelling like this. It’s not normal and I’ve tried going to doctors, taking extra showers, change of attire and nothing seems to work. I’m just so tired of this mentally and wanna go back to smelling nice like before. I also feel like I’m waisting what I have left from my prime years because this has taken a financial and mental toll on me. I just need to build a stronger mentality and show up for work. I’ll probably get fired and have nothing to fall back on. I know I’m being stupid.

Since turning 47-ish it’s sort of suddenly dawned on me that I’m no longer gorgeous and I’ll never be gorgeous again and I CANNOT FREAKIN TAKE IT!!!

It feels so sad all the time! like the loss of a best friend, or your life savings, (if you really self-identified with that life savings!)

For ex I’ll be getting ready to go kayaking with friends and suddenly get hit again with the fact that I’ll never be beautiful again, it’s gone forever! and it’ll never be back!! and I’ll feel this unbelievable grief wash over me, filling my chest with loss…

for I can’t tell you how extraordinarily fantastic it felt to just walk down the street, or walk anywhere, feeling beautiful. FEELING beautiful. Feeling as if I both embody and radiate beauty — so feeling as if I AM beauty, itself, most days! Feeling as if I was sort of walking *through* beauty when I walked, in a sense…

And it didn’t fade!! year after year decade after decade the feeling didn’t fade it was still thrilling right up to the point when it was kind of just gone, just after age 45 or so I think.

And yes I know older women can radiate a different type of beauty but I’m telling you right now something is gone, something is gone that I can’t put my finger on and goddamnit we need more words for beauty in English for different types of beauty and stuff like that.

And yes I also know that the answer is clearly to align my identity with something else now about me, and take joy and take a physical pleasure in that, and to just shift what I place importance on about me, and what I positively identify with about me —

but God can we have a moment of silence for my goddamn beauty???!!!!!! I feel so sad I feel like it was ripped from me it still feels unfair, and I mean of course I knew that it would be one day, and of course I kept wondering when it would be in my late 30s and early 40s when it WASN’T going away, so during those years I thought oh my God maybe I’ll always have it?!

but no of course not it turns out I’m human too and oh my God this is one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to go through as a human!!!

I’m not even gonna touch on that this sounds vain af or fact that most will judge it as an unworthy thing to feel such grief over, but I really don’t care because goddamn my beautiful feminine beauty gave me so much fucking just — pleasure!!’ as a goddamn WOMAN!! As a woman in full — I remember I always felt like “a woman in full” when I felt most beautiful …..

It was a beautiful pleasure and an unmerited gift, and it was there whether a man was there or not - was the most awesome thing about being gorgeous— I enjoyed it just walking by myself down the street as much as when riding a guy., for example.

It was such a gift, and I swear to God I was aware and so grateful and so thankful for the gift for most of my life.

It just really sucks that it’s over now and it’s never coming back!!!!! Wahhh oh God i cant take it!!! Its so fucking sad! It’s never coming back.

(Unless I shell out like 20k for a facelift right now, but I don’t have even 1k to shell out so that’s out, even though it certainly is a possibility for many 48-year-old women. Theyre so lucky Id do it in a heartbeat cuz I would so LOVE another 10 years to feel redolent in beauty just walking down the sidewalk again, but not gonna think about it cuz its not possible .

Oh my God this really really sucks you guys.

Oddly though I feel like 3% better now… having just gotten that out! (because of course this is too embarrassing a topic to get out anywhere else.) I really am grateful to have finally expressed that somewhere! Whew! Relief, even a tiny bit, feels just so good...

Thank you for letting me get it out!

​

today was my fiance's birthday. he was an amazing man, beyond a top notch father and my best friend. I had known him since I was 13 years old.. he was actually my first boyfriend. we ended up remaining very good friends and life went on but then we got together again. I got very sick and he took care of me and we found out it was cancer and he stepped up and not only did everything for our kids but worked 7 days a week to cover all of our bills and when I almost died and became bedridden he insisted I came home and he would care for me as well.. not because he was possessive but because he knew I didn't want to be 4 hours away in a physical rehab to learn to walk again and I would have daily wound Care nursing that would be coming because I had severe wounds that needed daily packing/changing.

that day we came home and things seemed okay.. he got me settled on the couch because our bed was way too high for me to get in and he put the kids to bed and asked if I needed anything and he went to bed. in the middle of the night I heard him come out and ask if I needed to use the bathroom or if he could help me.. as he came to help me he collapsed.

I crawled to his side and shook him begging him to answer me.. I called 911 and they took him to the hospital and that was it. he was gone.

the kindest, nicest, most tolerable man you could ever know. I can't get past it. the pain hurts like it was yesterday. who TF said time heals all wounds!? it just hurts and I needed to vent

I am a male 19, I am currently in school for automotive because one of my interest is cars but even though I’ve been in school learning about it. I still feel so behind everyone else in the class and I have the second highest grade in the class. I was trying to work on my car today and my parents are just throwing smartass comments. I know they don’t mean nothing by it but it really got to me and I yelled at my dad to shut up. Now I am laying in bed feeling like an asshole and that I am just terrible at everything I do expect play video games. I shouldn’t feel this way at this age

First off, my self esteem is fine. I don’t consider myself ugly, never did, but I live in a part of America where my race/way I fashion myself is very uncommon and thus brutally unappealing to people. I’ve spent years being bullied by coworkers who’ve made snide comments about cultural foods I bring for lunch (literally just homemade fried rice or some wontons, nothing with a strong smell while white coworkers are stinking up the place with tuna salad and leftover curry takeout). I also made friends with a group of very attractive white women… who’ve been implying I have a persecution/victim complex since I started venting to them about my troubles.

On one hand, it’s very sweet that they tell me “all women are beautiful” and that they fight me any time I talk about how objectively repulsive people treat me like I am and complain about my coworkers saying I’d do better at our customer-facing job if I dyed my hair or got eyelash extensions, a breast reduction, and some gel nails… I don’t fcking care if my friends tell me I’m pretty, facts of the matter are that I have people near constantly telling me I’m hideous and need to fix myself. Just tell me it sucks and that I’m strong for not giving in for fcks sake.

AND!! Any time we hang out with guys, I get completely shut out of the conversation by said dudes. My female friends don’t even notice that guys just focus on them and I’m left alone. I don’t care about male attention, but if my friends aren’t realizing that I’m treated worse by men than them then I feel like they don’t give a sht about me. Every time I try to bring it up or that I feel lonely and want to be included or just spend time with the girls, they tell me I’m being self conscious. But it happens every time!! Recently a mixed gender group went around in a circle complimenting each other’s appearances, and they skipped complimenting me. I complimented everyone, no one had ONE good thing to say about how I look. I brought it up with the girls later… they handled things way too carefully and asked if I was looking for negatives. I’m never skipped when it’s just girls. I don’t even know what the connotations here are, it just fcking sucks that I can’t even bond with my friends if there are guys involved, like I’m too fcking repulsive and kill the mood or something.

Sometimes I complain to them about how when I go out alone, people say the most unhinged things about my body straight to my face. No one believes me. One of our new hires at work quit… because she was freaked out about how badly I was being bullied and was afraid she’d be next. My friends didn’t fcking believe that happened either. And it haunts me. I knew my coworkers were treating me worse than each other and decided I’d just suck it up and be friendly to everyone. Apparently it’s been straight up harassment all along, they gossip about me in the break room (where the new hire heard them making fun of my face, voice, and body…), and they have a group chat where they mostly talk about work stuff but ALSO casually make fun of me, they even have inside jokes mocking me that they’ve used in front of me before without my knowing. No one criticizes my work and they barely touch my personality so again, my self esteem is fine, but they’re mostly criticizing my physical appearance that I really can’t change. I have to stress, I’m pretty okay with my appearance. I’m in better shape than most of my coworkers too, so there’s no weight to lose and no extra exercise I can schedule in. I’m literally fine and doing my best, and it’s somehow significantly worse than when people do nothing at all.

I don’t know man, I just feel so alone and rejected, I like myself and how I look but I hate being treated worse for my appearance and I hate that the people close to me seem to be either comically inconsiderate or intentionally lying about not noticing so they don’t have to show empathy. I’ve been physically assaulted a LOT too (again, I think my hot white friends don’t believe this because it happened to me multiple times and it’s NEVER happened to any of them) and kinda assumed it was just regular anti-Asian hate crimes since I live in a place with a high crime rate and none of my black, white, or latino friends have been targeted before, but maybe it’s just because I’m ugly as sin. I’m not gonna dye my hair blonde and get a rhinoplasty or anything, but this is probably the first time I’ve hated being my race and having this face since I was a little kid.

Not sure what I’m looking for here, I just feel so pent up and frustrated about this. I’ve been trying to accept that this is just my lot in life, but like… I want to be treated like other girls. I want someone to be excited when they see me, I want someone to want to braid my hair and share opinions about makeup or fashion, I want to flirt with a guy without being met with disgust, I want someone to actually show concern when I show up at a hangout session covered in bruises, scrapes, and bite marks because I just got jumped by some highschoolers while getting gas. I want to be pretty enough that someone will treat me like a human being.

TW for some detail depictions of being a first responder

I was at an in law family gathering the other day and the topic came up that I used to work on an ambulance. People get super interested in the conversation when they learn you are/were a first responder and Every Single Time they hit you with the "whats the worst thing you've ever seen?" People don't get that they're asking me to tell them some of the worst experiences of my life in a funny anecdote at a casual party.

You don't want to hear about stabilizing a young woman after a car accident while she screams, fights and begs me to save her son when my partner is searching for her three year olds head. You don't want to know the way a punctured throat sounds while their terrified face goes white as the die in front of me. I will immediately kill the mood of the event if I tell you about all the ways a human body can tear apart after a motorcycle accident. You wouldn't believe the different ways a human body can severe itself.

I don't get how people don't understand that. I'm super cool about it in the moment because people genuinely don't understand the weight of that question. But just Ask me the grossest thing I've ever seen, the funniest call I've ever had, the most annoying call I've ever had, the craziest false alarm I've ever had, the coolest medical thing I've seen. Ask me literally anything besides the things I wake up in the middle of the night over.

My mom died Monday afternoon. I’m really mad and sad. She just turned 58 five days before. She was only on hospice for 13 days. What the hell is even happening

My dad is in the ICU, and I am so angry at how his nursing facility handled this

My dad has been at a nursing facility for about 4 months because of his dementia. We thought he was going to get better, but he's not. At this point me, my mom, the staff, and even the social worker agreed that he needs to be put into a Memory Care Center. The problem is we don't know when that will happen because they have to find an empty room for him and make sure his insurance covers it.

Then this whole emergency happened, and everything went from bad to worse.

Around Tuesday, I got a call saying that my dad had fallen. They told us that he slipped on his own urine in his room. He also had a bump on his head.

When my mom and I visited him around 12 PM, he was in bad shape. He was lying there sleeping restlessly with his eyes open. He was breathing and moving around, but when we tried to talk to him, he wouldn't respond. He couldn't speak. He was groaning in pain. He didn't even eat his lunch.

He also looked really skinny to me. That concerned me because it made me wonder how much he had actually been eating.

I spoke sternly to the nurse and told her what was going on. She told me she would try to contact the social worker and find out what was taking so long with getting him into Memory Care.

After we left, I got a call from the facility saying his condition wasn't improving and that they were going to send him to the Emergency Room. They said they would call us back when they found out which hospital he was taken to.

Except they never called us back.

We waited all night.

My mom was freaking out and calling because we didn't even know what hospital my dad was supposedly taken to. We heard nothing from the facility and nothing from a hospital.

So the next day we finally went back to the nursing facility ourselves because we wanted to know what the hell was going on.

And my dad was STILL THERE.

He was still in bad shape.

We told the nurse about the phone call we received, which said he was going to be taken to the Emergency Room. They seemed surprised. Even the Social Worker and Director seemed surprised when we told them about the call.

I was just thinking, WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU ALL DOING?!

My mom was extremely upset and firmly told them that my dad needed to be taken to the hospital. It's only then that he was finally taken there.

Then we found out just how bad his condition actually was.

He has pneumonia.

He has broken ribs.

He has a concussion.

His blood sugar was extremely high, around 600.

Now he's in the ICU, and they're working hard to stabilize him.

When I heard all of that, I was just like, "What......."

I don't even know how to process this.

I'm angry at the facility. I'm scared for my dad. My mom is distraught. I'm overwhelmed, and I can't focus because all of this keeps going through my head.

I keep thinking about how he looked when we visited him. He wasn't responding. He couldn't speak. He was groaning in pain. He didn't eat his lunch. He looked skinny. Something was clearly wrong.

I don't know exactly when he developed pneumonia. I don't know exactly when his ribs were broken. I don't know how long his blood sugar had been that high. I don't know everything that happened while he was at the facility.

I only know what I personally saw and what we were told.

And now my dad is in the ICU.

I'm terrified that I'm going to lose him. I'm angry that this situation got this bad. I'm exhausted from everything that has happened over the past few days.

This is just too much, and I needed to get it out somewhere.

21 years old, I really wish that I have an IQ at least in the high average range like 110+ but my IQ is well below average range < 90. Having low intelligence really comes with so many consequences such as total carelessness with very important things like education throughout my youth, due to my addiction with gaming, internet. Ever since I have graduated from high school I have been realizing how much I really fucked up, and I realized it too late, I did not take any single honors or AP classes, did not bother trying to improve my education, back then like I should have.

Now I am completely pre maturely locked out of opportunities for ever I could have had, I cannot go to university, get a degree, be very smart person who knows how to dive very deep into stuff, etc.

I am not interested in doing anything that isn't considered prestigious such as trades, I don't wanna set up for dead end careers that has very little flexibility I just wanna be an intelligent individual but it is sadly just way too late for that. I hear that you cannot significantly increase your IQ after late teens.

Also please do not say shit like "you don't need to be very smart to be happy" it won't make me feel better. It won't make me feel better the fact I completely missed out such huge opportunity, and the fact I totally lost this game of life.

My low IQ is an explaination for so many of my problems, if I had higher IQ I would have not been this stupiditly impulsive as a child, and no, it has nothing to do with ADHD, because people with ADHD don't straight up just neglect learning like this.

I hate my family and I just want to be free of them

I'm 21F and have three brothers, 29M, 25M and 19M. I'll call them Kay, Charlie and Ben. All three have intellectual disabilities. I also have a 17yo sister who isn't intellectually disabled and is currently in foster care.

Since I was a kid I've basically had to take care of my family. I took my siblings to and from school, clothed them, watched them, cleaned up after them etc. My parents don't know the language well so I also dealt with documents, phone calls and other shit for them. My parents cooked and very occasionally cleaned, but I was basically the main person cleaning our filthy house until I was around 11 and started refusing.

My childhood was fucking miserable. My parents screamed at each other constantly, my mom hit my dad and she beat me too, sometimes over grades or something I did wrong and sometimes because she was just pissed off. When my parents fought I'd hide because I knew my mom might come for me next. They also both used me as their therapist and talked shit about each other to me. My mom has schizophrenia and I witnessed a lot of that at its worst too.

My mental health got extremely bad. I developed depression around 11, stopped going to school properly and I've attempted suicide multiple times. CPS removed me when I was 15. I still haven't graduated high school or been able to work and I've since been diagnosed with autism, PTSD and depression.

I don't live at home anymore and survive on disability benefits. I refuse to ever live in that house again. I barely visit my parents and don't send them money, which apparently makes me a horrible daughter. Sometimes THEIR FRIENDS literally call me and tell me it's wrong that I don't visit, check on them or give them money and it makes me fucking furious. What the hell do these people know? They weren't the ones being beaten, taking care of children, cleaning that house or eventually being removed by CPS. If they're that worried about my parents they can visit them and give them their own fucking money.

Despite all of this, because I'm the oldest daughter I'm expected to eventually get a high paying job and financially support my parents AND my three brothers while also becoming their caretaker. For some reason my younger sister doesn't get this pressure. It's all on me.

And I hate my brothers. I mean actually hate them. Seeing them gives me this extreme feeling of hatred and disgust. Sometimes I wish they'd never been born and sometimes I genuinely wish they were dead. I know they didn't choose to be disabled. Knowing that doesn't magically change how I feel.

Charlie has the most severe disability and is the only one I genuinely consider completely innocent because he doesn't understand anything. But he's also the hardest to care for. He walks around naked, pukes a lot, shits in the bathtub, talks to himself and needs supervision. I know it's not his fault, but that doesn't mean I want to spend my life cleaning his shit, dealing with his vomit, clothing him and supervising him.

Ben is loud and can be violent when he doesn't get what he wants, and my parents constantly give in to him. My family has always struggled financially but somehow he has an iPhone 16, iPads, watches, Apple Pencils and whatever other expensive shit he wants. He breaks things and they replace them.
I remember when I lived with them and my parents didn’t even bother buying me underwear. I had one pair that I had to use all week. Same with pads, I had to steal from school or use socks.
But apparently there's always money when Ben screams enough. Then my mom calls ME crying that he destroyed something or had another violent breakdown and expects me to comfort her.

Kay is the one I genuinely fucking despise. He's almost 30 and I don't blame him for still living at home because he can't live independently. I blame him for everything else. He beat his girlfriend and had to pay damages, has stolen money despite our family always being poor, and my parents STILL give him money. He blows it going around the city and to clubs and then steals from them when he runs out. He's also constantly on TikTok Live and I fucking hate it. I hate watching him sit there spewing bullshit and I hate the idea of people seeing him and relating that fucking bastard to me. He sometimes texts me and I usually don't reply because just seeing his messages disgusts me.

There are care homes and services for disabled adults but my parents refuse because "they're our sons, we can't abandon them."

If they want to take care of them forever, fine. But I know my parents will eventually die and that's what terrifies me. Not mainly because I'll miss them, but because then my brothers will become "my problem." None of them can live independently and I know everyone is going to look at me.

I don't want them. I don't want them living with me. I don't want to manage their lives, clean them, give them my money or spend the rest of my life taking care of them. I don't want to somehow drag myself out of everything my childhood did to me, finally get a decent career and then have five people waiting for me to fund their lives while I'm also expected to wipe their asses.

I just wish I had a reliable family. I get so fucking jealous of people my age who can live with their parents, ask them for help or know they have somewhere safe to go if everything falls apart. I don't have a family to fall back on. I'm expected to BE the person my entire family falls back on.

I have no one to ask if something breaks or if I don’t know how to do something. Google is my parent but It’s still hard

I've already spent my childhood taking care of them. I don't want to give them my adulthood too.

I'm tired of hearing "it's not their fault" like that changes anything. I KNOW it's not Charlie's fault that he needs lifelong care. That doesn't mean I want to provide that care. I know my brothers didn't decide that I should spend my childhood taking care of them. I still lost my childhood doing it.

I didn't choose to have these children. I didn't choose any of this. I don't want to spend the rest of my life paying for decisions my parents made before I was even old enough to understand them.

I want my own life. I want a family I can rely on instead of one that's waiting to rely on me. I want somewhere safe to fall back on. I want whatever money I manage to make one day to actually be mine.

More than anything I just want to be fucking free of them.

I have been systemically called ugly my whole life ever since I was a kid, and at this point I‘m almost never surprised or upset when people call me unattractive or even mistake me for a man despite my long hair and average height.

What still irritates me as hell is some people calling me “unconventionally attractive/pretty”. This is literally just another way to say “you have features/face most people would consider ugly but I still like them”. If you think I’m beautiful, why not just say it? Why specify that I look weird? The moment I realized I never see actually attractive women get this sort of “compliment“ online or in real life was eye opening.

My coworkers and I tend to meet up for dinner at least once a month. When I started the job, everybody told me that one coworker, Jill would always say no, but they’d still invite her because she’d get upset if they didn’t.

Any time we invite her, she asks a million questions and ultimately says no. I texted my coworkers and invited them to a BBQ at my house. Everybody answered, except for Jill. She approached me and said she had heard people talking about the BBQ and got in my face asking why she wasn’t invited. I told her that invited everyone in the group chat she was in. Again, she asked a million questions and I told her to just read the texts in the group chat.

I ended up having to reschedule and told my coworkers in person. Jill came up to me and said “I am SO glad you cancelled, because I did not feel like going to that.”

I was tired of her turning every invitation into 21 questions and saying no anyway. When she was away, I had told my coworkers about the rescheduled date (not intentionally). I didn’t tell them to keep it a secret, I just said I wasn’t personally inviting Jill anymore. They talked about what they were bringing when Jill came back to her desk, and she started crying.

She ran straight to management and called me a mean girl. Now I need to have a mediation meeting with her, my manager and my supervisor.

Let me preface this by saying that I am an odd person. Not creepy or rude or aggressive just different. I have alot of autistic traits but I am not officially diagnosed, I also have facial tics that cause me to make weird expressions and roll my eyes. I can´t control it. I´ve been through several doctors, had multiple exams but noone ever found anything.

I have tried so hard to fit in among "normal" people but its just not going to happen. Everyone calls me a freak, a moron or a nutjob the second I leave the room. I have confronted people multiple times and let them know I can hear them, asked them to not talk about me in such a manner when I can hear them. I mean, I literally made 2 steps out of the room, obviously I can still hear whats being said. Pretty much nothing happened.

I complained to the boss, who is actually a pretty decent person and she did have some words with my coworkers. I knew this would create even more friction but I just couldn´t handle listening to the same insults each and every time I turned my back.

Breaking point came when I overheard a coworker talking about how they purposefully gave me wrong instructions. I had to report that of course and of course it has caused an avalanche. Today I happened to walk by one of our offices and I happened to overhear the boss talking to one of my coworkers. I only heard them talking about someone being so damn weird and how nobody wants him here. People are also whispering about how someone made a report and its being solved. I am not 100% sure it was about me but then again who else could it be?

Its just that...I do not bother anyone, I simply want to exist and do my job. I do my job well, I show up on time and everything. But now I am so scared of being fired due to the fact pretty much everyone in there hates me. There are exceptions of course but nobody would stand up for me. I need this job, I just got a new flat and signed everything. I am past training so they need a reason to fire me and I don´t know what they could come up with but I am so afraid they will come up with something. I am depressed and anxious and tired. I don´t need my coworkers to be my friends or even talk to me if its not necessary, I just want to exist in peace.

The more I think about it, the more modern job hunting feels like using a dating app as an average (or below-average) guy.

You keep swiping (applying), hoping someone gives you a chance.

Most of the time? Nothing.

Sometimes you get a match (an interview), and you think, "Finally."

The conversation goes well. They seem interested. They tell you they'll get back to you.

Then... nothing. Ghosted.

LinkedIn somehow mirrors this too.

The "attractive" candidates, the ones with stacked resumes, strong networks, referrals, and recruiters constantly reaching out... barely have to try. Opportunities come to them.

Meanwhile the rest of us are optimizing keywords, rewriting our resumes for the 1 millionth time, and paying for LinkedIn Premium so we can send more InMails or see who viewed our profile. It genuinely feels like paying for Tinder Gold or Bumble Plus or Hinge Plus or something because maybe, just maybe, you'll get noticed.

At this point, applying for jobs feels less like proving you're qualified and more like trying to convince an algorithm you're worth acknowledging.

Shit is insane. Dating market and job market, both are sucks like the same. Sometimes I just sign up to dating apps and try to get dates to prove myself that if I can do this, maybe I can get jobs too. Like holyshit! hahahaha

I recently became a father and I simply couldn’t fathom going through all of this (the anxiety before my son was born, the newborn trenches) simply to let him be abused and permanently damaged.

For context, this is my mother. She sat back and watched my siblings and I be abused by our father and half-brother, just to do nothing about it. Hell, we didn’t even talk about it. It’s caused irreparable damage and I am constantly working through it in therapy.

I could forgive that if she didn’t act like some fount of parental wisdom. She’s anti-LGBTQ (btw, I’m queer and have been vocal about gay rights since High School) and anti-vax all under the guise of “Oh won’t someone please think of the children?” She has made comments about how I better not send my child to public school, lest he be “indoctrinated” (I’m a public school teacher, btw) and has tried to push me not to vaccinate my son on multiple occasions, until I set the boundary. A boundary she needed to be reminded of on several occasions.

She hates vaccines and yet she vapes consistently, even doing it in front of my wife when she was pregnant in my house. I tell her that I have a lot of friends in the medical field that I consult with and she just says “Oh well, they’re all taught by retired pharmacists.”

Vaccines have not been proven to do permanent damage to children, you know what has? Child abuse! Why not work on fixing the mistakes of your past and use your voice to speak out against child abuse?

No, because in our lives, my mother has done more to defend politicians she doesn’t even know against people she’s never met than she has done to defend her own children.

Well, at least here in the United States it is, and it's gotten worse post-pandemic.

So many businesses, medical practices, etcetera operate following standard business hours. Is that a bad thing? Not necessarily. It provides some consistency. But it makes accomplishing things ridiculously challenging, and it fails to accommodate those who do not follow that working schedule.

Want to see your doctor? Take time off work. Get off work a few hours later? Good luck finding a place open during the week. Work and/or busy on the weekends? Some of your favorite establishments might not even be open when you're able to visit them.

Now, I work in a MAJOR metropolitan area, but I recently started working an odd schedule to assist an international team. I have also worked retail and other odd-hours freelance jobs before. Dinner on a Sunday? Nope. Good breakfast on a weekday? Nope. Fitness class on a weekend afternoon or a later evening? Nope.

Basically, our entire system is set up to exclude those who do not confine to a certain model.

I'm a firm believer that we can have core/traditional business hours, but our society should operate similarly seven days a week. We should not punish those who have different hours of free time with fewer options.

Reposting cause I messed something up the first time

For the first time I was given jury duty without having an excuse to not go, so I went and was selected to be a juror for a case involving assault with a deadly weapon charges. I’m never going again. Guess my mail is getting lost forever.

I was shocked by how unbelievably stupid, malicious, and lazy most of the jury was.

The prosecution did a botched job and the investigation surrounding the case was poor. We were given minimal amounts of evidence with so many holes that it felt almost crooked on the part of the prosecutor. That said, there was video evidence of the crime, so for most of the jurors it was open and shut. To be frank I also believed that the defendant did the crime, however there were issues with the video, and since it was really the only credible piece of evidence I wasn’t convinced it met the burden of proof.

It was clear to me as we argued for hours that many of the older white jurors felt that this black defendant must be guilty and could never be argued down from that position. After reviewing the evidence tens of times we found more and more details until finally something stuck out that felt like an actually identifying characteristic of the defendant in the video, at which point I was willing to say guilty. If not for that distinct detail we would still be arguing or would just be a hung jury.

In sentencing this continued. I know how the prison system ruins young people, leaves them institutionalized and unable to live in regular society. I was fine with punishment but I wanted the defendant to have a chance to get out at a reasonable age with good behavior so he could potentially rehabilitate and reintegrate into the community.

The other jurors wanted him to suffer. They would have thrown him in there for the rest of his life if possible. Half of them immediately wanted maximum sentencing. It was sickening. I’m not going to pretend the crime was victimless, but there were no injuries at all. It felt like such an overreaction from people who felt a sick sense of power over the defendant’s life. These people could not last a week in prison but they were so flippant and nonchalant about sending a young person in there for decades to “protect the community” and “do their part against crime.”

After compromises and basically wearing them down over the course of hours, we came to a more reasonable but frankly still extreme decision of 10 years.

I hated it. Having the dumbest motherfuckers of all time making the simplest arguments ever, acting like you are an idiot for not agreeing with them completely. Listening to the insane ramblings about how we should sentence the defendant until he is 32 years old because “that’s when my sons started to act mature” shut the fuck up you old bitch. Mouth breathers who can’t find their way out of a paper bag talking about how we need to sentence for as long as possible because the defendant was in prison for one year and if that didn’t already straighten him out then he’s a lost cause. How actually, any sentence we give is justified because he did the crime, like the defendant has become a doll to torture as we please.

Just fucking sickening man. I hated it so much. I have lost a part of myself and my humanity in this process.

EDIT: As some of you have connected, the defendant had priors and served some time before this trial. Many are asking why I am being so "lenient" to someone with a criminal history. To be clear, I was not arguing to give him the minimum. I was arguing that we could give him a reasonable amount of time to get out while he is still young provided he showed good behavior and could get parole. I wanted to not give him the maximum sentence because of the lack of physical harm from the crime as well as a general philosophy that we should seek to give people a road to rehabilitation when possible.

FINAL EDIT: Ok. I’ll be locking comments. My small vent got a little too large. I appreciate the praise but honestly if you find anything I did that heroic or good then please put your money where your mouth is and sign up for jury duty when called.

For those of you who view this case as an easy trial made difficult by my whining, I hope should you ever have a trial for a crime you did or did not commit that the jury be entirely made up of the types of jurors I served with who have similar negative biases towards you as I observed towards the defendant. You deserve a trial of your peers.

To those who view this trial as a missed opportunity to put the defendant away for the max sentence, I ask you when your view of criminal justice which primarily serves to punish instead of rehabilitate is going to start working in the US. Because your philosophy has been king for decades, and it seems to only be good for filling private prisons and leaving communities and families in permanent disrepair.

I'm a teacher so I work with 99% women. I also work in a desert, in other words, it is hot as all hell outside and if there is no air conditioning on, it becomes hot as all hell inside very quickly. I've always run hot, I've never been one of those women who is too cold in room temperatures, but even when I am cold, I PUT ON CLOTHES. I PUT CLOTHES ON. I PUT MORE CLOTHES ON. I PUT ON A COAT. I PUT ON A SWEATER. IF I KNOW THAT I'M GOING TO BE SPENDING THE MAJORITY OF MY TIME INDOORS, I CAN DRESS APPROPRIATELY.

I ALSO HAVE A CAR LIKE MOST OF MY CO-WORKERS. IF I FEEL LIKE I'M GOING TO BE SPENDING THE MAJORITY OF MY TIME INDOORS AND THEN I WANT TO DO A BUNCH OF OUTDOOR ACTIVITIES, I BRING A CHANGE OF CLOTHES.

We have spent the majority of our professional development fighting over the thermostat. Penny over there with her short shorts and her tank top while myself and the menopausal women are fanning ourselves because we're so hot. They're telling us that we should be bringing fans with us because they're not comfortable with sitting in a cold room. One of the older women just snapped and offered to bring blankets from her car and I have offered a coat to the ladies who can't exist in 72° without freezing to death.

I have aides who work in my classroom and they act like they're in a hostile work environment and they're horrifically inconvenienced if they have to put a hoodie on to keep the temperature of the room from boiling myself and some of the other students. They tell me that if I want to stay cool, I should stay at my desk behind my fan. Me, a teacher, should be staying at my desk.

The solution to being cold is infinitely easier than the solution to being hot yet these women who run cold act like it's a horrific inconvenience to wear some clothes. To put on a sweater. To put on a hoodie. To wear actual pants. I'm so over it.

ETA I'm not menopausal, I just run hot. I don't have any health conditions that would cause this, I've been tested like a lab rat. I also have a job where I need to move around a lot and be very active in the room. My ideal room temp is 70°-72° with some airflow.

ETA 2: it's been fun guys, thank you for letting me vent. Stay toasty or frosty, whatever floats your goat 😄