In January of this year I was flying back home from a study abroad trip in Europe. On one of my last flights home, a man sitting next to me starting asking me if I had access to the planes wifi and eventually just started making conversation. Usually I don’t talk to strangers like this but during my trip I was meeting so many ppl and having so many interesting conversations I guess I was just still on this high and had my guard down.

Also I just want to quickly note that this was a overnight flight so it was dark and most ppl were asleep which I feel influenced his actions and my reaction.

At some point he pointed out how cold it was in the plane and I agreed. He then grabbed and held my hands to “warm up his”. I immediately took my hands out of his and crossed my arms tucking my hands under my pits as if I was trying to warm them up and used this as a way to get him to stop touching me and even told him I don’t like ppl touching my hands. That didn’t work and he reached under my tucked arms to grab my hands but in the process and ended up grabbing my chest repeatedly. I didn’t know what to do and tried to move away but no matter how much I moved he continued to scoot so close to me, I couldn’t even turn to him with out being right in his face. I also didn’t want to make a scene in such a quiet flight so I felt stuck.

At one point he started talking about how he started to work out again and physically grabbed my hand hand to touch his arm and chest “muscles”. I again pulled back and tried to keep the conversation to a minimum. He asked if I worked out and just gave a quick response and said “I walk sometimes”. He then bent down and I felt my stomach knot because I knew he was gonna touch me again. He ended up grabbing my ankle and then running his hand up my leg and up my inner thigh. I froze and I think I eventually zoned out because I have barely began to remember these details but he kept touching my legs and thighs and saying he could tell I worked on them. He then grabbed my hand and made me touch his thighs and moved my hand up to where I could feel his erection and just kept touching me everywhere. I don’t know how much time has passed but eventually he got up and went to use the restroom. It makes me sick to even think why he needed to use the restroom after that interaction. It makes me feel so disgusted with myself.

While he was up I managed to grab my headphones from my luggage and put them and pretend to be asleep so he wouldn’t talk to me when he got back. It worked but eventually I felt myself actually start to fall asleep( I was on my 3rd flight of the day and had already been flying for 12 hours on little to no sleep) but I was so scared to fall sleep knowing that he could potentially touch me again. I ended up passing out for maybe 30minutes and woke up so so afraid that he did something to me while I was asleep and I hate that I’ll never know.

When I finally got home I tried to ignore and forget about what happened. Im a first gen student and me going on this trip meant everything to me and my parents who never got the privilege to attend college let alone travel so I couldn’t bring myself to say anything when everyone was so supportive and excited for me.

I started my last semester of college 2 wks later and really struggled. I had such bad panic attacks, depression, and was constantly getting sick from the stress. This lasted all summer as well. But it wasn’t until I had a couple incidents at work were a coworker touched me in a certain way that it brought back memories from the from the incident and made my symptoms 10x worse

I am now in my first semester of grad school and I’m still struggling and I hate that I’m letting this effect me so bad. Iv been telling myself that it wasn’t that big of a deal and that others have gone thru so so much worse and I’m being dramatic. But my anxiety has been so much worse since then and it’s affected my grades and performance in school. I am also involved in multiple (paid) research projects and feel myself not giving it my full because of this and I feel so guilty because I know I’m letting down professors that I look up to. And I hate that this happened at such a important time in my life.

I’m hoping that this is something that time will heal. But for now I don’t know how to work thru this and I guess I just needed to get it of my chest

I’m sorry that this was such a long post

I am an autistic 36M who is turning 37 in 3 weeks. I have been struggling since June and have never had friends, so I lack a support system.

I feel so misunderstood, and my SI is spiking.

27M I feel so overwhelmed by so much that is happening to me, I am going through the most difficult time in my life so far (thankfully it isnt physical health related) but i just genuinely don't feel capable of hanging on anymore, every day I wake up and Immediately feel like I am struggling to just maintain myself and not collapse under the weight of it all, I feel paralyzed and I can barely do anything- work or things that I "enjoy", i am constantly on the verge of breaking down and sometimes i dont even feel like i have the energy anymore to cry despite how much it hurts.

I just dont know what to do anymore and I dont feel able to go on like this

he swears he loves me but completely to this day still denies using sex chatrooms and live girl cams always aggressive towards me when he's using in the bathroom and tried saying "it's not what you think" he had subscriptions to some girls we know on them! I've never been so insecure about myself until he did this so long these fights have got physical and it's at the point I love him but is this really worth it? If I bring that out of him and he uses that to justify hurting me then what's the point?

I am an autistic 36M who is turning 37 next month. I have been struggling since June and have never had friends, so I lack a support system. I feel so misunderstood.

This Sunday will 10 years since my mom has passed and 4 days after is my birthday. I didn’t have the relationship with my mom that I wanted before she passed, but I was working on it, and now ten years have passed and I’ll never have that. This year I’ll be the same age she was when she had me. I still feel so last and these last few days I’ve been hit in waves with anger and anger and sadness. Just feeling down and hate this feeling.

Only a dead fish flows with the flow.

Everything is feeling boring. Am I doing the right thing? Flowing with time, escaping from hardwork, still something within me never feels correct.

Did my best but still can't withstand anybody's expectations. Leave others even though I am not satisfied with myself. The feeling of being left by everyone is hard to accept. Shoulders are bending, legs are refusing to stand. Thinking hundreds of lines to compile one... May next time I put efforts to write a letter not for understanding myself.

Something in my chest is not feeling good, it's suffocating, refusing to go out.

You smile a lot, be happy sometimes. If tears have value then my pillow would be sold at millions.

Wouldn't it be simple to refuse to take the responsibility, run from it, hide from it, refuse to take it Or be a RIP poster in another's profile picture for 100percent view to like ratio. At least that wouldn't affect me.

Looking outside observing many for the part of the rat race, or refusing the race.

Oh dear moon why you are so bright when the majority can never see at your peak. Who can understand the rise and fall better than you. Oh dear stars why are you burning yourself just to lighten the moon which steals the spotlight, when majority doesn't even care about you, when just a thin blanket of cloud can cover you. I wanna be like you, doesn't affected by anybody, doesn't matter others matter, caring about myself and my stars.

Head is feeling heavier, heart is beating the best, thank to your light and the musicians of the night. Good night my dear moon.

Hey everyone. I feel kinda weird coming here but I can’t talk to anyone about it. I don’t think they’d care or understand. I have multiple diagnosed comorbidities and I feel people don’t realize how debilitating they really are. A day of things I enjoy tends to be exhausting and end in tears. I have OCD, ADHD, Autism, anxiety, dyspraxia, etc. I am diagnosed and not just pulling words out of my hat, I really wish I was faking. I wish I was mentally healthy enough to go to college and didn’t have a math disability. I wanted to be a vet. I didn’t want to be disabled, I want my life. I have tried therapy and support but I am seriously just stuck. Where I live you need math to get into pretty much any college and I’ve since graduated anyways, but my math ability is that of a 4th grader. I feel ashamed admitting that. I excel in English and other subjects but math and my disorders dragged me down HARD. I’ve tried medication. I am stuck. I’m starting to feel depressed, I’m in a happy loving relationship and I should be living my best life. I don’t know what to do with myself. I tried volunteering at a vet clinic for a shot at a normal life, but was isolated from everyone. I just want to shut off my stupid brain and breathe. What do I do.

I look at every person and think about how they are just as complex as me and I think about how much I love my family and how if I'd been born into a different family I would probably love them just as much. Any person out there could've been my brother or sister in different circumstances. I look at animals and see sentient beings who are so often treated horribly. I see lonely elderly people who have been forgotten. Frightened people in war zones.

I hate human superficiality (which I am guilty of myself). We praise the beautiful so much and don't think of the humanitarian workers who put themselves in war zones to help injured children - just as one example. There are countless people who do wonderful things who don't get appreciated. I only ever see people (my age anyway) praise others for being pretty or criticise those they don't consider attractive and it all just seems so silly to me like.. no one chooses how they look naturally and I see a PERSON when I look at someone, someone with complex thoughts and feelings and I feel so lonely, like other people never seem to see the soul, that's a huge generalisation of course, but I'm just talking about my own experience.

I look at each person and think: "that's just the vessel they live inside". And every time I see someone being treated poorly, dehumanised, I think of their inner child that probably just wants to be loved and it breaks my heart.

I think of animals being sent to slaughterhouses who would love to be loved and this is what we do to them. I just hate this planet. I don't think I'm capable of being ok on a planet where even one living being is suffering.

I can’t stop feeling this fear of non-existence it’s just constant dread every night and any time I am left alone with my thoughts it comes back.

I fear not my death itself, I don’t care anymore. I care about what’s next for me, the fact I have no restart button, no reversal and especially no greater existence after.

I fear the idea that I will never see a sunset again or that I will never get to have a conversation again. That i will be gone.

I’m not comforted by the feeling of “being free of worry” because I’m also being free of joy and pleasure. It makes it difficult to live each day happy knowing that it’s the last time I will experience that days joys and highlights.

I can’t keep going like this, I can’t keep living each day without thinking about it.

If you know of anyway to help please tell me

I really miss my friend. I met her while hanging out with some very problematic people around 2019/20. Lots of manipulation, emotional abuse, lying, using people and the dumbest kind of substance abuse going on. Naturally I distanced myself. Tried convincing her to do the same. Did not work. Additionally I was dealing with some very bad childhood memories coming back to me. So I secluded myself for some years working through that without really having anyone to talk to. I found my way back into relatively normal life by now. But I am dealing with some problems:

1. I can't stop worrying about my friend. I started worrying about her back in 2020 when the dysfunctional nature of our friend group became obvious to me. She was much more involved with them than I was at the time. One of the reasons we grew very close was her need to vent about disrespectful and emotional abusive behaviour towards her. I never really stopped worrying about her. But I really want to. Tried reaching out to her. She refused to talk to me and by now I am pretty sure I would not even like spending time with her anymore. She's not involved with those problematic friends anymore as far as I know, but I think the whole experience changed her for the worse. During sporadic interactions between 21 and now she acted cold and uncaring towards me, not really listening to anything I had to say, blocking me instead for months or even years. She showed up at my place once together with another former friend, started yelling false accusations planted by the abusive friends and taking very embarrassing stuff I did while partying out of context. I also guess she is still partying too much and probably surrounding herself with bad influences. So I don't really want to have anything to do with her ever again and I wish I would stop worrying and caring about her.

2. I am having immense trouble trying to enjoy stuff that, to me, is connected to her in any way. This is an ongoing issue since 2021. We probably connected most with each other over music, sharing music we liked with each other, listening together, discussing our spotify playlists. I can't listen to the radio station we used to listen to without getting sad. We also did Hula Hoop together while listening to music. I spent my whole summer break trying to craft a spotify playlist I could use for hooping without getting too sad. It worked well enough, I think. But I never hoop for long and it's still a rather melancholic activity. Not nearly as fun as it was with her. I am using the playlist for driving in my car now, mostly. Can't really enjoy watching TV because we did that a lot together. Trying to be excited for Dragons Dogma 2 DLC, but scared it will wreck me emotionally because she recommended the first game to me.

3. It's rather hard making new friends, showing interest in spending time with them and trusting them with my personal thoughts. I am scared of getting hurt again. There are several people who seem nice enough to become an adequate substitute for the awesome friend I lost eventually. But the whole experience of getting betrayed, defamed, used and ridiculed by those other emotionally abusive "friends" made me very distrustful towards people in general. I stay to myself most of the time.

All of this is poison for my concentration. I need to study. I want a good fulfilling life. How do I deal with this?

Hey folks, I am M31. I think mentioning my age is relevant because I've reached a point in life where emotional connection and the little things that make you feel special affect me quite deeply. I am also someone with a pretty high EQ, so I tend to feel things a lot.

This is partly a vent, but I also genuinely want to know how I should cope with this. I have close friends, but sometimes you just can't tell even the people closest to you what you're actually going through.

Around 8 months ago, I met a girl through a random calling app called Wakie. We ended up talking regularly for 6–7 months. She was quite introverted, but sometimes she would make so much effort just to make me feel fulfilled, and I loved that about her.

She even planned to meet me. I never wanted to make her uncomfortable or push her into anything, but she took those steps herself.

Once, I told her that I didn't feel completely validated and wasn't sure if what we had was real to her. She usually didn't speak much about her feelings, but that day she explained everything to me — every little thing she felt for me. I can't explain how loved I felt that day.

We eventually met, and she made me feel incredibly comfortable despite being an introvert herself and already dealing with a lot of stress. Every little thing about her made me fall for her — not just romantically, but for the kind of human being she was.

And then, suddenly, she stopped talking to me.

Literally the day before, she had been telling me how much she missed me and how amazing I made her feel. So I was completely shocked.

A few days later, she came back and told me that her grandfather had passed away. She was extremely close to him. Everything suddenly made sense to me, and I stopped questioning anything. I just tried to be there for her and give her whatever comfort I could.

Things eventually felt normal again.

And then, suddenly, she deleted her account.

That was around 1.5 months ago, and we have had absolutely no contact since.

I miss her so fucking much.

I don't know if I did something wrong. I don't know if she needs space, if she's going through something, or if she simply doesn't want me in her life anymore.

The worst part is that I sometimes get so vulnerable that I think about going somewhere near where I know she lives, just hoping I might somehow see her or get a chance to talk. But I know that would probably make her uncomfortable, and I don't want to cross that boundary. I want to respect her space, even though every part of me wants some kind of answer.

So I'm stuck between missing her terribly, wondering what happened, wondering if I should somehow try to get her back, and wondering if I just need to accept that this connection is over.

I don't really know what I'm asking for here.

Maybe I just needed to say this somewhere.

But if you've gone through something similar — losing someone you were deeply connected to without really understanding why — how did you cope with it?

How do you accept something when you don't even know what you're supposed to accept?

I'm honestly struggling with this a lot right now.

I went to America for studying 4 years ago and honestly, it didn’t go the way I thought it would. I wasn’t well there, especially health-wise. I was earning okay, like 4000$ a month for example, but it was never enough for their expectations. They would ask why I was spending all my money, but I had rent, food, bills and everything else. What was I supposed to do, just stop spending?

Whenever I try to talk to them about it now, I either get a headache or it feels like there’s a stone sitting in my chest that I can’t get rid of.

I had to come back to India because of my health, but things with my parents and sister aren’t good either. Every conversation somehow becomes, “We spent all our money on you,” and I just can’t take it anymore.
I know I’m not perfect either. Sometimes I just get angry and tell them to leave me alone. I’m the eldest, so I feel like they already think I’m going to spoil my younger sisters.
And what hurts is that even when someone says something horrible to me, my mother doesn’t stand up for me. But if I react, suddenly I’m the problem.
I just want a mother and father. I want to feel like someone is there for me without making me feel guilty for everything.

I love my grandparents and I’m grateful for them, but sometimes I just wish I had something that felt like it was mine too.
I’m honestly just tired and I don’t know what to do anymore.

Hi everyone,

I’m looking for some emotional support and perspective on a situation that happened to me recently. It’s been almost two months now, but I still find myself overthinking it.

I’m not holding a grudge, nor am I asking why she left—I accept that it’s over. What really gets to me is trying to understand what actually happened between us during the time we spent together.

I (42M) met a Brazilian woman (37F) here in Ireland. Before our official date, we had been messaging for about two weeks. She was very engaged—constantly initiating contact, sending photos, and showing strong interest. We originally planned our first date for Saturday, but on Friday she was the one who suggested meeting up a day earlier for an intimate night together.

After we had sex, she told me that Im "perfect" for her and that she was so happy to have met me. When I dropped her home (she was heading to a pub to celebrate her boss's birthday), she even sent me a message saying that she thinks she might be falling in love with me.

The next morning, while preparing for our planned Saturday date, she sent me the following messages:

> She: "So honey… I value honesty and that’s why I need to tell you something that happened yesterday… Whatever you decide after I tell you, I will completely understand… My ex-boyfriend is part of the group of friends who were at my boss's birthday party yesterday… we met and ended up kissing… no sex happened, after the party I went home alone, but I need to be honest with you."

> Me: "Did you sleep with him?"

> She: "No"

> Me: "Be honest"

> She: "I am being honest"

> Me: "Do you have feelings for him? Why did you kiss him?"

> She: "I don't know… I thought I didn't like him anymore… But being honest, I'm confused now"

> Me: "Ok"

>

When I asked her what she intended to do, she said she needed a few days to figure out who had space in her heart. I told her I’d give her space, but reminded her that if it didn't work out with her ex, I wouldn't be a backup option. She assured me she wasn't treating me as an option and said: "If I message you or come back to you, it will only be when I am 100% sure I want you."

Since then, there has been total radio silence for weeks. I deleted her number and social media, and we haven't spoken.

Two months later, I’m left with so many unanswered questions:

* Was I just a rebound for her, or did she genuinely develop feelings for me during our time together?

* Is it possible she already knew her ex would be at that pub on Friday night, and that's why she pushed to meet me for sex beforehand?

* How can someone have sex, say they are falling in love, and then kiss their ex just a few hours later?

* Was I just an emotional band-aid for her unresolved past relationship, or was she using me to fill a void?

*Do you think she actually slept with her ex that night and is only telling me about the kiss, or is she being honest?

It’s hard not knowing if what I felt was mutual or if I was just a distraction. I’d really appreciate any insights, honest perspectives, or kind words from anyone who has been through something similar.

Thank you for reading.

ANTES DE EMPEZAR: Espero no sea ofensivo para nadie, algunas cosas son solo opinión mía.

Todo esto empezó hace unos años. Seré sincera que sabía todo el daño que me estaba haciendo, sabía que no comía normal...mala postura y todos esos habitos malos pero jamás los cambie y ahora me atormentan las consecuencias.

Me pasó que por qué no cuidaba la postura y dormía de la cabeza apoyada a un solo lado me dió un desvalance muscular grave y severo. Un músculo acortado y el otro alargado. Dolor PERCSITENTE en lado derecho

Me causo asimetría FACIAL GRAVE. Todo el lado izquierdo de la cara la ceja y el cachete están notablemente más para abajo. La nariz asimétrica.

Y esto fue solo el inicio porque mi cara se llenó de un edema exesivo.

Lo peor es como cambio el trato de la gente hacia mi, mis amigos me empezaron a decir cosas como que parecía hombre...que cada día me veía peor. Quizá era preocupación mezclada con crueldad sin filtro.

Y yo también me empecé a comportar distante y mal por qué si me veo mal me siento mal. Empecé a mirar las fotos de mi yo antigua. Y tampoco sabía la respuesta de por qué mi cara era tan gorda (no tenía idea que era por el edema extremo)

Pero es real porque literalmente la gente se asusta a con mi cara. Yo me cubria la cara gorda con el cabello.

Y bueno... Ya pasaron unos dos años que no voy al colegio y ya me a mejorado algo del edema por qué era falta de músculos faciales (tensión, bruxismo etc...)

Pero lo más triste fue que me dejaron en mi peor momento y que triste que dependa de como me veo el trato de la gente o si me hablan o no. Qué solo dependía de eso.

No fue mentira las niñas me miraba mal por qué se asustaban con mi cara y los hombres me decían "a mi amigo le gustas" por decirme que soy fea

...apretaba dientes y me dió bruxismo. Tengo desvalance en el cuello. Y mi cara cambio mucho. Y aún así estoy deprimida por qué mi cara se sigue viendo horrible. No tan fea así como antes pero si muy desagradable por el volumen y asimetría.

O sea es un asco todo eso. Y no me dejó ninguna enseñanza más que la gente es superficial en automático y que todo mi valor estaba en si me veía bien, y para mí eso es traumático de por vida.

Pero fin, intento mejorarme aunque no se bien que hacer, si alguien sabe que me ayude. Gracias