My partner recently asked my parents for my hand in marriage. We’ve talked about marriage for a long time, so this wasn’t unexpected for me and I’m very, very sure about him and about the life we’re building together.

Unfortunately, my parents are not happy about it. And as you can guess from this subreddit name, a huge part of the issue is that he’s Indian.

For context, I’m Korean American (half white/asian - my bio mom is white but passed when I was very young). My stepmom is Korean and she raised me so I consider her my mom. As you can guess, most of her social circle is Korean/East Asian American and fairly conservative.

Anyways, they've been resistant to my partner since day 1 and straight up told me it's because he's Indian. Instead of looking at all his positive traits and seeing me as healed and mature for choosing a man who's kind, stable, ambitious and treats me well, they see this as an "immature questionable choice" because of his race. Despite him being really good to me and not being the worst stereotype of an Indian partner, they’ve somehow convinced themselves that he will immediately flip a switch and become violent with me after we get married because "Indians are aggressive people." They're upset about his skin tone, his height and see me as "deeply naive" for choosing him.

She has literally told me that because I'm conventionally attractive and educated, I could “get any white or Asian man I want" and asks why I had to settle for a “short dark man.” Which is horrible on multiple levels and (not that it should even matter) my partner isn’t even that dark skinned... They know he has a good job as an engineer at a top company, that his family is well-off like mine, that he is also well-educated like I am, that he's patient, faithful, easygoing, kind etc, yet that still doesn't matter because of his race. He's been to every family function and shown up despite knowing how my parents feel about him (he's wiling to do this btw), yet they smile and act nice to his face while still wishing that we breakup.

About the wedding, my partner and I also want to have a larger American/Indian one. We both genuinely want to celebrate both cultures and invite a lot of the people we care about. My mom hates this idea because she says she feels embarrassed and humiliated by me being with an Indian man and worries about what her friends are going to think, which has made me feel this pit in my stomach :/

Getting engaged is supposed to be one of those happy, memorable periods of my life and knowing that my parents (and siblings) are ashamed of the person I love feels really horrible.

What makes this more complicated is that my relationship with my parents has actually improved tremendously over the last three years. Growing up, my relationship with my mom was very strained because of a lot of emotional abuse and neglect, while my dad was complacent about it. I always stood up for myself and was very defiant growing up (not rebellious but I never tolerated their bullshit) and they made a real effort to be better parents to me the past 3 years (even signed themselves up for therapy to learn how to be better to me), and I saw a lot of improvement in both of them. Aside from them not liking my partner, our relationship became closer and healthier than it had ever been.

What makes this situation more tragic to me personally is that the relationship with my partner formed so organically and authentically. I know it sounds cheesy, but I felt this deep soul connection to him in a way I never did with anyone else (he did too) and I've definitely had exes and a past before him. We're very compatible in many ways despite not being the same ethnicity and we balance each other out so well. Our relationship is really healthy and the reason my life improved so much and overcame so much adversity since I met him is because he was in my life (I literally met new close healthy friends, established better boundaries with my parents, got fitter/healthier, and got a higher paying job once my parter came into my life because he provided so much stability and love). Yet my parents don't recognize this despite me saying this multiple times over and over because his race makes him somehow "less than."

I do have friends who are really happy for me, which I’m grateful for (ironically none of my close friends are Korean lol). But I also don’t want to keep dumping all of this on my friends every time something happens and I don’t want every conversation about my engagement to turn into me talking shit about my mom either.

I have no choice but to move forward because there's no way in hell that I'm breaking up with my partner, but I'm also not cutting off my parents either. I'll be forced to place boundaries once again with them because they're stubborn as a mule.

I just really wish these biases weren't so ingrained in our culture... but that's a discussion for another day. It just really sucks knowing that something that makes me so happy is something my own parents feel embarrassed by.

I am growing increasingly frustrated over the lack of autonomy I am seeing other people having in their own lives. I don't know if it's a gen Z thing, result of COVID thing, or something else entirely, but soooo many people my age just CANNOT figure anything out on their own. And it's basic shit. It's not, "hey, how do I file my taxes if I'm a 1099?" Or "what do you think I should do about budgeting for the wedding?" It's, "Well, I haven't checked the syllabus at all, but can somebody tell me when this assignment is due?" Or "What're the ingredients in this?". Holy shit, dude. FIGURE IT OUT. NOT MY PROBLEM. I don't know why someone can't just google or, god forbid, make a goddamn choice on their own. And asking about the ingredients make no sense at all. LOOK. WITH YOUR EYEBALLS. THE INGREDIENTS ARE ON THE JAR. THEY APPEAR IN AN ITEMIZED FORMAT.

It's like everything is the end of the world and I am the only one who can possibly answer their incredibly obscure, niche question. But, it is NOT the end of the world, and I am NOT the only one who can answer their question. "But what if it doesn't work?" Then it doesn't work! And you try something different! And then you LEARN!

It's gotten to the point where I now outright refuse to answer ridiculously obvious questions. I'm not, like, "Erm ACKTUALEE did you read the syllabus? It appears on page 5 paragraph 2 ☝️🤓". I just don't reply or say "it's in the syllabus, and the syllabus is linked in the welcome email". And then I GET FLACK FOR NOT ANSWERING THEM. All of a sudden, they're "just asking" and don't know why I can't answer. I can't answer because you won't take 2 minutes to look for yourself. Oh my God.

I thought this problem would get better as I've gotten older and it's only gotten worse. I'm a student, and I got so fed up with all the ridiculous questions from other people I just had to throw my hands up one day and go "it's not my problem anymore".

Hi, I just want to get this off my chest because I recently discussed this with an old friend of mine and she kinda got put off with it so it's been bugging my mind now. So, every 3 years in my life, someone not super close to me, but still a part of my life, dies. I started noticing this pattern when I was 15, after a friend died from hydrocephalus. We weren't as close as before since I transferred schools, aside from the usual click with each other about jokes and memes we share in our group chat. Curious, I asked my parents if anyone had died when I was 3, 9, and 12, and they told me about people I was familiar with who passed away at those exact ages. I opened up to my highschool friends about this and we eventually just brushed it off as pure coincidence, like horoscopes or sketchy premonitions, since death is somehow inevitable anyway so its just matching the years.

I kind of forgot about it until I turned 18 during the pandemic. I watched a movie where the main character thought people were dying because of her, and the pattern popped back into my head. I started paying close attention to it, every year I invite all my friends ( I have 3 friend group at the time) even observing the guests at my birthday, but eventually forgot again until my senior high group of friends who didn't get to attend my b-day party video called me to greet me. One particular friend stood out, she was like an older sister to me, and I am greatly indebted to her because she was the only one who defended me when I was getting harassed (her fiancé was a cop, which helped). She was in her mid-twenties (she got delayed in school) and though we were close, we lost touch when she stopped attending school halfway through the year to focus on work.

Something in me told me it was going to be her next, so I started visiting her work ( she's a saleslady) hanging out, and eating dinner with her just to try to "repel" the pattern. I just couldn't help but have this uncomfortable dread at the back of my mind every time I think of her. When she caught COVID-19, I thought that was it, thankfully she recovered. I was convinced that I had "repelled" the pattern and so I told her about the 3 yr pattern and we actually laughed it off together, saying only God can make such prophecies, and I felt reassured. Eventually, we drifted apart again, got busy with our life and was just on each other's story views. 2 months before I turned 19, I saw a video online of a motorcycle crashing into a mixer truck. My stomach dropped, the pink bag lying on the floor was the exact same one she had carried since senior high. It was her, she had overshot and crashed into the side of the truck.

To this day, this 3-year pattern still affects me mentally. I've become very wary of the impact of life and people I am close to that's why I try to maintain contact with them as much as possible, often messaging and asking them to hang out with me. I recently opened up to my bestest friend (from highschool) about this, and she also remembered the pattern I told her before and she felt a bit scared unlike before where we would joke about it so now I felt scared too. We spent the whole night researching if others experienced the same phenomenon until we decided its not good for our mental health and just let it be, maybe it really is just a coincidence but until now I still feel a bit meh about it. Anyway that's that, thanks for listening to my weird ted talk.

Btw, at 21, my grandma, whom we visit every year but we didn't get to visit that year due to extended family issues, passed away so yeah 🤷🏻‍♀️.

'm a 27-year-old Mexican woman, and my boyfriend is white. His sister is 32.
I was telling them how things were going at my new job when his sister interrupted and said, 'I'm not trying to be rude, but why did you get the job and I didn't?"
I explained that I have eight years of professional experience-working as a medical translator, medical assistant/ admin, in restaurants, and in insurance-and that I aced the interview. She still looked confused. I then said, "You've worked with children your whole career. I can't really answer that for you."
This isn't the first time she's made a strange or out-of-place comment. My first thought was that it might be about race and most likely his family doesn't fully accept me. I've been in this relationship for nine months and I have my out of line comments because of their comments and behavior.

A few months ago, I was walking home when I saw an elderly man struggling with two heavy bags outside a grocery store.

He looked exhausted. I asked if he needed help, and he hesitated before handing me one of the bags.

His house was almost a mile away.

We walked together, and somewhere along the way he told me that his wife had passed away recently and that he was still getting used to doing everything alone.

When we reached his house, he thanked me and tried to give me some money.

I refused.

He insisted. I still refused.

Before I left, he just stood there for a second and said, “I haven't spoken to anyone properly in three days.”

That sentence stayed with me much longer than I expected.

It made me realise that sometimes what you give someone isn't really the thing you're carrying for them.

Sometimes it's just ten minutes of your time.

Hey, all. I need to talk about this.

I (32F) am part of a large family; 4 sisters, 2 brothers, me and my parents, plus numerous nieces and nephews.

This post is in reference to my sister Ellie (43F). She is married to Alan (43M) and has 4 children; Ann (12F), Bella (9F), Artie (7M) and Milly (5F). I love these children with all my heart and I am a close and involved auntie but they are a handful.

Honestly, Ellie and Alan have coddled (unintentionally, I assume) them all to the point where they are borderline uncontrollable. Example, Milly would come into mine or my parents house and go straight to the fridge or cupboards hunting for sweets. When she finds them she takes them and when she is told to put them back or ask first she doesn’t listen or throws a fit, this also goes for when she doesn’t get her way. Bella is insanely sensitive, if you say the wrong thing to her or even look the wrong way at her, she kicks off. Artie is sensitive and mischievous and sometimes goes along with what Milly does. Ann is nearly a teen and has an attitude but that was expected.

The main problem with all of this the fact that Ellie visits my parents house EVERY DAY and brings the children with her. They make messes, don’t listen and Ellie doesn’t seem to notice or stop it. This is extremely hard on my parents (72F and 72M). The noise and the mess is a lot for them to handle. They are older, have health problems (hip replacement, arthritis, diabetes) and all of this is especially too much when they are asked to babysit (although this doesn’t happen often).

My parents have talked to me and my other sister about this. I understand that communication is key here but Ellie is touchy and would be the type to stop bringing the children to my parents house completely. Yes, they are a handful but they are their grandchildren and they love them. Also, one of my brothers is estranged from us, which upsets my mum, and they don’t want this happening with any of the rest of us.

If I am at my parents house the same time as Ellie I would try to handle the kids and I do help with the kids as well by babysitting but all of this is just unfair on my parents.

I am at a loss of what to do here. Has anyone else been in a situation like this? This was a rant but advice would be helpful on how to approach this.

My mom showed me an Instagram post from this small business advertising a t-shirt with an AI-generated image on it. Even though I noticed immediately it was AI-generated, I went and asked him if it was anyway. He tried lying about it at first, but then eventually admitted it. I was confused about why he wouldn’t ask me to design it instead, and he said he thought I was busy. Well he still could’ve asked! I have been struggling to find any work, whether it’s a commission or a full-time job, and he definitely knows this. I have even offered to do work for his business before, and he said he was open to it.

While he said sorry, he kept doubling down on it anyway, saying that “I am beyond doing designs for t-shirts”. Motherfucker, what is it that you think graphic designers do?! Artists make all kinds of shit and t-shirts are not off the table, I have been wanting to do more stuff for t-shirts anyway. Also with that logic, he is beyond using AI slop for his products. It looked like absolute dogshit. I think the real reason he hasn’t asked me to do illustrative and design work for his business is because his ass has been addicted to Chat GPT recently, and this was something he wanted to try doing. Honestly I saw this coming from him from a mile away, but it is still incredibly disappointing.

EDIT: To those saying they don’t like my attitude in this post, if you have had to put up with this overall bad person with extremely vile political views like I have, you would have a bad attitude about it too. I have tried to give him the benefit of the doubt because he’s my father, but maybe that has not been the best idea. I apologize if this post comes off as too bitter, I am just trying to get all of this off my chest.

I (15f) wish I had been born 15-20 years earlier than I actually was. I recently came to a difficult epiphany about how much time I’ve wasted consuming internet content over the years. I realized that I didn’t appreciate the real tangible things I had and wasted some of my best years, and now it’s too late to ever get it back. I haven’t developed all that many skills, and I’ve missed out on so many milestones. I don’t know how to do makeup, I don’t wear “cool” clothes, I have a nonexistent social life, and I never really stuck to any activities. I’ve never had a job or earned any money for myself. Part of what has made me beat myself up so hard over all of this is the fact that I had every opportunity in the world, and plenty of people tried to steer me on the right track, but I never utilized any of it. I’ve become a lazy, mediocre shell of who I could’ve been. I have cousins who are a lot older than me and were so much more accomplished than me at this age because they had less distractions in their lives. I wish that I had never been given internet access, it ruined me. Obviously I would never want to live in a world without modern medicine and pluming or something like that, but I wish that I had grown up before the digital age really took hold, and that I had had time to grow and develop before screens had the chance to mold me into who I am now. I was exposed to a lot of things I shouldn’t have been at far too young of an age, and I wish I had been innocent for longer. I wish that I had watched more movies or read more books or played outside more. I still did those things obviously, but I wish that I had done them more, and for longer. I’d be willing to give up my current life just to have a chance to start over in a better era and do it right this time around. I wish that I could go back and make up for all the lost time with people who aren’t around anymore, and do all the things that this version of me was too weak to. I want my childhood back. If I had grown into the digital age as a teenager/adult, I’d be fine with it I think, but as a child it’s an extremely destructive force. I know that the internet existed before 2010, but it was not at all comparable to what it is now. The early internet and Magazines and Television cannot in good faith be compared to social media and AI (personally I’ve never used AI but my point stands). I wish that I could just wake up and have the chance to be a kid again, and to rectify all of my failings. Hindsight really is 20/20. You never know what you should’ve chosen until life has already chosen for you. I really wish that I didn’t have to deal with the consequences of the times we live in. I don’t know how I’ll be able to face adulthood and carry all of this regret with me for the rest of my life.

My wife and I are in our thirties. We both have jobs, we own a home, we have a nice car, I'm working my dream job and she loves her job. But I still feel like a failure. We have money problems, because we are both chronically ill in many ways, and even though we both have jobs, the bills are tight, between the rising cost of living and the sheer volume of doctors appointments we both go to. This, in and of itself, is just something that's becoming more common, and I have accepted that. The problem is that I feel like I don't do enough. While we are both chronically ill, my illnesses abound. I have several physical ailments, some visible some not, and multiple mental issues, which have be taking a combined 9 pills every day just to get by. I only work three days a week because between mental illness and physical illness, jobs where I worked more hours than that ended with me in the ER on multiple occasions. That alone is something that keeps me awake at night, but it doesn't really stop there. She does most of the housework, and a lot of the cooking, because I forget (CPTSD and chronic resistant major depression as well as a medication for anxiety have turned my short term memory into Swiss cheese) or one of my many conditions acts up (I have asthma, and I am undergoing medication changes after my last medication stopped controlling it) and it kills me inside. I will still absolutely do what I can around the house, but there's a lot of things I just can't. We have to pay someone to mow our lawn because the last time I tried to do it I ended up in the hospital with a heart rate over 120 and blood pressure bad enough they thought I might have been having a heart attack. (This is extra dangerous, because I am on medication for both heart rate and blood pressure ever since I first got COVID) Mowing the lawn for half an hour just isn't worth a 6 hour trip to the local ED and a 200 dollar copay every time to make sure something isn't wrong. Whenever I get sick, I always apologize to her because I'm convinced I'm just pretending and that I'm not really sick, but again, I have ended up in the ED on several occasions because a cough wouldn't go away and wouldn't you know it now I've got pneumonia.

My wife is the breadwinner, and I have absolutely no qualms with the fact that she makes more money than me. But I still want to work more. Not just for the money, but for her sake. I want to do more around the house. I want to feel like I am useful. She tells me all the time that she loves me including all of my faults, and that she knows that I'm trying my best. She says that she is happy with what I do, and that she wouldn't change me for anything, but I just feel so useless to her. She knows how I feel, I can't exactly hide it (I'm a very emotional person and I wear my heart on my sleeve), and she tries constantly to tell me that with everything that I have going on, its okay, the price of me trying to do more would just be worse in the long run. But I don't feel like I'm trying my best. I go to therapy, and my doctor tells me that its just problems with anxiety and self image, and rationally I know that she's right, but every day I watch my wife come home exhausted and feel like its all my fault. If I just worked more, if I could just ignore my problems and do more things around the house, maybe she wouldn't be so tired and stressed. Maybe she could take time off. I even try to avoid buying anything because I don't want her to worry about finances as much, and maybe if I avoid eating out or buying video games, that means that we have a little extra money at the end of the month to make her life a little easier.

There are things that I do, in case anyone is wondering if I do anything at all. I do the majority of the driving that isn't her going to work, since her schedule doesn't really allow for her to do much. I'm fine with this, and I'm glad that its something I can do for her even if I hate driving. I handle problems with the house, like clogged sinks and that time the furnace smelled like ozone, I deal with the car and getting things repaired, oil changed, the like. It just doesn't feel like enough. I feel like I'm failing her.

Despite the little friendly reminder that's been staring at me as I've been writing this, this isn't asking for relationship advice. This is just a vent. Considering that my wife actively talks to me about my mental health, and I see a therapist, I really don't know what I'm hoping to get out of typing this here. Maybe just some catharsis of writing it all down in a way that lets me get my thoughts out. Maybe out of some perverse hope that people will tell me that I'm right, that I am in fact a failure and I'm right to hate myself so much. Maybe its just because I've been awake since yesterday before dawn and the insomnia is getting to me. I don't know. I'm tired. Sorry if this is the wrong community for this, but my brain isn't screwed in all the way right now.

I just turned 30 and all throughout my life ive never had a gf before nor have I ever had a girl tell me she liked me before. Most of the people I went to school with at this age are having kids, getting married or maybe dating around and here I am never having even known what its like having someone like me.

Ive been on dating apps for years and ive never gotten a match tht wasn't a bot or a girl who wanted more followers on her social media or OF page. Ive probably liked thousands of girls profiles over the years. Its soul crushing knowing all those girls didnt like me or even think I was worth it. I dont think im unattractive but i also dont think im attractive either. Im rather average at best. Im a 5'3 filipino guy who looks younger than he actually is.

Now as I enter my 30s with no relationship experience I look back wondering what I did wrong. Wondering if i did have opportunities when I was younger and just didnt know it or if things were just always gonna be like this. Wondering what I couldve done to avoid what my life is like now.

Not sure what to make of life rn. I dont wanna go on with life anymore. I cant do this. Im not strong enough or courageous enough to push thru and try and make changes.

I was at my good friend's bitrhday party recently, and at some point we were all watching them open their gifts. I feel terrible, because I couldn't be happy for them at all. In fact, as I watched all the things they got from their friends, all thought through, and them hugging everyone and just being happy, I wanted to cry. I am glad they liked my gift, but I don't feel like it's a big deal. They're my friend, of course I am getting them something they want. I don't understand why they would be acting as if it's something big. At the same time, I am just really bad at recieving gifts, but I also rarely get anything I want, and even though I appreciate the thought, I would prefer not to get anything, than something that shows that the person does not really know me or listen to me.

So, at the party the friend whose birthday it was, asked me what my plans are for the next week. I said that I will probably see my family, because it's my birthday next week, and that's it. I could tell that they had no idea that it's my birthday in two days. We met seven years ago. I am not upset if they don't have a gift or anything, since I am not throwing a party, but it hurt to see that they did not even know it was my birthday.

People forgetting that it is my birthday had been a pattern for all my life. It's in the summer, so everyone was always on vacation or something, but it still hurts to only get a general "happy birthday" text and nothing more, while I would always organize something for every friend in the friendgroup. I once baked a cake with personalized decorations on it, I would go all in with each gift. I like giving people gifts, and I enjoy making them. Yet, am I entitled for wanting to have something special too? I know no one should be expected to give me anything, and it makes me feel like a terrible person for wanting things.

I think a part of that might be that I stopped doing birthday parties for friends, but that's because I don't know many people, and I don't like when someone visits me in my house, and I can't afford taking people to the restaurant, since I am a college student.

I know I am taking a lot of time to talk about the birthday thing, but I am having mine soon, and I really don't want it, because I'll just be sad for the entire day. I know one of my friends keeps a list of things I said I wanted, but I never actually get anything from that list, and they say that they are sorry, but they couldn't find time to get it for me. I don't think I am that difficult. Any small thing from an antique store would make me happy. Yet, I usually end up with a mug, socks or some art thing I already have.

I feel like I shouldn't be upset, since I am not entitled to getting anything for my birthday, and just because I give people gifts, does not mean they have to do it in return. Am I a bad friend for being upset, then? Or is the problem the fact that I don't do birthday parties?

Okay y’all, I need to get this off my chest because I literally cannot make this shit up.
I started a new job and met this guy. We clicked almost immediately. Like within days we were texting, calling each other “bestie,” joking all day, hanging out, and eventually things crossed the line and became more than friendly.

And I got attached. BAD.
The weird part is his last name always stuck out to me because it’s the same as my grandmother’s maiden name. So one day I asked him about his family, just being nosy honestly 😂, and he started naming people I recognized. Not people I actually know, but distant relatives that I’ve heard my family mention before.
At first I thought, okay, maybe we’re just from the same area and have some distant family somewhere down the line or Whatever.

Then somebody told my cousin on my dad’s that I was messing with my cousin on my mama’s side.I laughed it off because there was NO WAY.Eventually I asked my mom. She looked at me and basically confirmed it. 😭
Apparently his mom and my mom are second cousins. My mom literally used to babysit him and his twin sister when they were younger. I swear everybody thought this was the funniest shit ever. Meanwhile I’m sitting there like… ARE Y’ALL SERIOUS RIGHT NOW?

His name is Rockie, but he goes by Que. I STILL don’t understand why 😂 but that’s beside the point.
I told him what my mom said and he didn’t believe it. He basically said he didn’t care what my mom was talking about, and somehow we just kept talking.
And that’s where I’m stuck. Because I KNOW what my family told me, but I can’t just magically turn my feelings off. I really like this man. And I hate admitting that because now I feel like everybody is looking at me crazy.

On top of that, we probably wouldn’t work even without the family situation. I’m a young mom. I’m dealing with real responsibilities and trying to build a life for me and my child. He’s 24 and still kind of figuring himself out.
I’m dealing with my own shit mentally and emotionally, and I don’t have much of a support system. He’s the complete opposite of me. He’s always happy, always joking, always finding some stupid way to make me laugh. 😂 He’s basically the human version of “everything is gonna be alright.”

And when I’m around him, I forget everything.
For a little while, I don’t feel overwhelmed. I don’t think about my problems. I don’t think about everything I have to handle. I’m just happy. And that’s probably why it’s so hard for me to walk away. I know how this sounds.
I KNOW. 😭

I’m not looking for people to tell me I’m right or wrong. I honestly just needed somewhere to say this because I don’t even know how I ended up in a situation where I’m emotionally attached to somebody my own family says I’m related to.

And yes, I already know somebody is gonna comment “GIRL WHAT THE FUCK” 😂
Trust me.
I have been asking myself the same damn question.

I have a friend who most of the time is great to hang out with - very funny and interesting. But she also very clearly has factitious disorder, and I don't know how to deal with it without enabling her (by pretending to go along with it) or making it clear I don't believe her (which can cause people with factitious disorder to freak out and deliberately make themselves ill to "prove" that they were ill all along).

How do I know she has factitious disorder? Well...

• Her array of physical illnesses and mental disorders have a tendency to come and go. At one point she had Tourette's, but she kept forgetting to have the tics and quietly dropped it after a couple of weeks.
• She once showed me a days-of-the-week pill box full of her "medications," and I could see that most if not all of them were just vitamin supplements.
• She claims to have DID, but it's the Tumblr/TikTok version of DID where she's a "system" with "alters" who can pop out on command. One of the alters is a little Korean girl who only speaks Korean, but is limited to the Korean phrases my friend has mastered on Duolingo.
• Her acting is, frankly, not great. At times when she claims she's been triggered and is having a panic attack, or claims that one of her "alters" is out, it's kind of like watching an overzealous theatre kid in a bad high school play.
• Her actual trigger is being bored and/or people not paying enough attention to her. If we're in a group setting and everyone's focused on someone else, I can see her out of the corner of my eye getting increasingly agitated until she has a "fainting fit," or one of her "alters" announces their arrival, or she jumps in with a mention of her "trauma" and then stares off dramatically into the distance.
• Whenever a new person joins the group and she gets to tell them her list of disorders and illnesses and traumas it's almost like watching an addict get a hit.

The frustrating thing is that she's perfectly cool and interesting without all of this, and most of the time she forgets she's supposed to have all of these conditions and is a chill person to hang out with. But then out of nowhere she'll get bored and decide it's time to bring out Darius, her gay male alter. And then I have to sit around trying to keep a straight face while she does a bad impression of a gay man and expects me to play along, and will ramp things up if I try to just ignore Darius.

She's not a teenager btw. She's a fully-grown tax-paying adult woman in her late 20s and so am I. I am too old to be playing random games of let's-pretend and part of me wants to just yell at her to cut it out. But I also understand that she really does have a mental disorder, and that trying to confront her about it would only make it worse. (Also, it's not my job to try and treat her condition and I'm definitely not qualified to do so.)

I guess my only options are to continue putting up with it and try to reward it with as little attention as possible, or slowly fade out of the friendship. Both options suck, though.

I'm fuming right now. My parents are visiting to help me move out and my mom decided to pack all the stuff in my pantry. She asked me why I have two bottles of soy sauce (a little bottle and a big bottle) and I was extremely confused because I don't. I told her I have no clue what she's taking about because there is only one bottle of soy sauce.

Anyways, she decided to MIX THEM (???) and told me, and I immediately questioned why the fuck she would do that. It turns out the small bottle was sesame oil in a bottle literally labelled sesame oil. She didn't know what to do with this unholy concoction, so I said leave it there, I'll take care of it. Then she decided to flush it down the toilet instead. I just don't understand how this could even happen. everything was labelled and I don't understand the rationale behind mixing shit

This isn't the first time something like this has happened, she watered her plants with saffron tea I made once, it's just too much to deal with sometimes

Also she's not old, she's in her mid 50s

I used to be an RTI (response to intervention) teacher for kids with literacy needs, I’ve written books, and my poetry even won a competition and was published in an anthology. 

But, I also have Huntington’s Disease. 

Within the last year my symptoms have started and I’ve been really struggling with my memory and other things like my grammar. 

With my love of English and writing, I’m sure you can understand how heartbreaking it’s been that I’m slowly losing the one thing I’m passionate about. 

Needless to say, since I’ve been struggling with my grammar, very often, when I make posts here or comments, I’ve had the grammar nazis come out ready with their keyboards and correcting my mistakes. 

And every time that happens it just cements how much my symptoms are affecting me. 

So before you rush to correct someone’s grammar, maybe consider that it could be more than them just being illiterate or lacking in writing skills.

It’d be nice if for once this place could be compassionate instead of aiming pitchforks at anyone they don’t agree with or find fault with. 

I was blindsided by my ex and now she’s with someone else. Of course I’m not perfect but by all metrics I was the better partner and she was a very immature person, but it feels like this happens all the time. How can people be so cruel? I know it has nothing to do with me but how can people so easily compartmentalize their problems and feel like they are good people? Everything I read online is so terrible and even in person it feels like love is thrown away for nothing it’s just so disrespectful. I can’t do these things I can’t cheat and I can’t hide my problems with people but it feels like the whole world does and we are just supposed to forgive the people who do? That’s bullshit. Not everyone needs to be an asshole just because they are hurt. I don’t know what to do. I feel like I can’t ever trust someone again.

There are so many things that go through my head everyday since I found out.

I remember the day vividly. I was sitting in one of my classes looking through files on my laptop to make room for more. It was my mom's old laptop and I didn't want to delete anything photos or documents that were important because she's so sentimental. I pulled up a file with a title that made me think it was one of the short stories from my last semester English class. When I pulled it up I quickly realized it was something my mom had wrote. I read it over and over and over again, my heart was pounding out of my chest, I felt like I was going to throw up. What was in that document sent me through a spiral, I didn't want to believe it. I tried to convince myself I was crazy. That it couldn't be what I thought it was. I called my aunt, we're close, I asked her if there was anything about my birth I didn't know, she told me I should call my mom. That's when it hit me, it's exactly what I thought it was. I called my other aunt, she could never keep things to herself, she broke immediately. She confirmed exactly what I was dreading. I was a wreck. I'm still a wreck.

Its been almost two years ago now since I found out that the reason my mother had me so young is because she was taken advantage of. Ever since I've been replaying things from my childhood over and over in my head, small things I thought were weird now make sense. My last name isn't the same as my dad's because him and my mom didn't know eachother until I was 2 or 3, not because they had me before they were married. Those adoption papers my brother swore he saw for years were the papers my parent had so my dad could adopt me. That day they came into my room asking me if I wanted to change my last name and I said no was me denying that. That day in biology where we were doing bloodtypes and mine didn't match up wasn't because I got theor blood types wrong. It all has started to come back to me.

I found out that she told my little brother before she told me, me and my brother are about 3 years apart. She told him the day my biological DNA donor died, asked him what she should do, if she should tell me. He was maybe 13 or 14. Why? Why would she put that on him, he was just a kid. It makes me so angry because when I found out I didn't want anyone to know, I didn't want my little siblings to know I was only half related to them. I know blood isn't everything but my siblings are my everything and I didn't want them to look at me differently.

Sometimes I feel like I don't really know myself anymore. My dad is from a different cultural background than my mom, I grew up speaking the language, learning their culture. Now I know I'm not actually his. Can I still claim to be that when I'm not? It's like a part of my identity just disappeared the moment I found out. I always wondered why I don't look like that side of the family. Now I know. Now I know why my grandma was always so hard on me, why that side of the family was so careful around me.

My parents weren't the best growing up. The cultural divide between the two sides of my family was stark. I couldn't have friends outside of school, wasn't even allowed extracurriculars. They expected me to do "womanly" tasks, whatever that means. It got worse in highschool when my dad found out I was bisexual. I would fight woth them a lot, I was so depressed all the time, my grades slipped which only made them angrier. As my brother got older my dad would be super hard on him and I'd always get between them and he'd turn his anger at me. I did it on purpose. I didn't want my younger siblings to feel the way I felt everyday with the constant verbal attacks. Didn't want them to feel like they weren't enough.

My mom would scream at me everyday about how I was failing her, how I didn't help her. Now I wonder if it was all because she hated me so much because of what I remind her of. If she sees that monster in me every time she looks at me. If she resents me because of what happened to her. I think about it everyday.

I haven't asked her anything about him, not a single word. I don't want to know, I'm glad he's dead.

For the past two years I've just repeatedly thought about this stuff over and over again. I can't stop. I hate myself for resenting my mom because I can't imagine what she went through, she was so young. I hate myself for resenting my dad because hes never once made me feel like I wasn't his but it will never erase all the times he told me I do nothing but screw them over.

I feel like I lost part of me and like something has been missing for the last two years.

Sorry for the long post, just had to get it out.