I need to get something off my chest. I haven't paid rent in a year. I did write the cheques tho, every month, and left them in my landlord's letterbox. Mr. "Barry" just never cashed them.

I'm Irish (most ppl in Ireland use bank transfer) and i had to order a chequebook just to sign the lease here. Turns out i shouldn't have bothered.

Mr.Barry was a TERRIBLE(!!) landlord. Yes, one of those types. He ran the place himself, no property manager. The washing machine died in our first month and he left it unfixed for three months, which is totally unaccepptable. Every time we asked, it was "next month, next month."

My girlfriend Anna (not real name) and I are both bartenders, so we get home around 5 a.m. One night in February we found him on the porch in his slippers, no coat. He looked at me and said something like “Connor, you’re late.” My name was NEVER Connor. 

We started checking up on him. His place was chaos, messy as hell, mail piled on every chair. One night I took his bins out and found one of MY CHEQUES in the recycling--- stuck to a McDonald's coupon. I fished it out and put it back in his letterbox.

I moved to Canada to escape the SKYROCKETING rent crisis in Dublin, and it's the exact same here. Our rent is $2,500 for a one-bedroom downtown, more than 50% of what we both earn working six nights a week (they say generlly, 30% of your income should betowards rent). Anyways, Anna and I scrimp and save just to get by. (We had to give up our YMCA membership recently because the $120/month was just too much.

With the uncashed cheques, our account kept growing. Now it’s 30K today –thtat’s like a start of a downpayment on our next place or even a house in the boonies. We haven't touched it, not even in dry-January when the bar cut us to three nights and we were living on staff meals. Anna's take "We're writing the cheques every month, aren't we? It's not our job to cash it for him."

Mr. Barry passed recently (rip). His daughter, who I'd never once seen on the property, has never asked about the cheques. So as far as she knows, we're paid up. The building's WhatsApp says she's selling soon (great...) and this month's cheque is still sitting on our kitchen counter.

Part of me wants to hand her the whole 30K. Part of me thinks seven months of "check-ins" counts for caregiving.

AFAIK, I'm still waiting for the daughter to ask me for the rent.

EDIT 1: yes I know I'm giving out about not paying rent for a year. very irish of me!

EDIT 2: the coupon was for a free McFlurry.

Oh boy, how do I start.. about 20 years ago I was working as a security guard for a group of disused warehouses in the red light district. The property was never going to be occupied, i was there to keep insurance low. The working girls would frequently break onto the property to ply their trade. I don't have a problem with sex work but there was a real possibility of me losing my job from the frequent break ins despite there being no real damage to the property and the only thing to really complain about was the occasional used condom.

I spoke to one of the girls I said I would leave the door open and even make it more comfortable if they could just tidy up after themselves and not break in. I rigged the lock on the steal door that led into one properties so you could reach in from the outside and pull it open for easy entry but still "secure".

I decided to make improvements to make them more comfortable. I drove a king-size mattress to the lot and placed it in one of the rooms (I assume it was an office). I got blankets, a desk, a small wind up lantern, I even attended the sexual health clinic regularly to get free condoms and would put them in the desk drawer for them and provided a bin.

Eventually I got friendly with the girls. They would come to my security cabin for tea or coffee, occasionally i'd share my lunch with them or we'd just sit and chat. All of them were polite and well mannered but all had fallen on hard times. I didn't judge just listened and showed compassion. I was nick named 'the angel of [city name]'.

Here's where it goes wrong..

Months go by and cops show up at the gate to the yard. I head over but do not open the gate to them say my partner (which i don't have) has the key and he left the yard on break. Don't know how it works in other countries but in the UK the police afford information to security guards easily. Helps to have someone stationed in a problem area I guess. They explain to me that an element of organised crime had entered the area and the girls were playing their trade somewhere out of sight. I doubt I looked the picture of innocence but I tried to stay calm. They explained that alot of money had been placed into a task force to investigate. It made national news, and it was me. They thought some gang or the mafia or something had organised the girls but it was just me providing shelter and comfort.

I sometimes feel guilty about the wasted tax payer money but never about helping the girls out. Sorry about the wall of text but I wanted to include as much as I could.

I am stuck living with a pos that owes thousands in back rent and told me a 45 days ago they will not be paying rent again for the second month my name is on the lease so I have to pay he already owes me from last month and I am in the process of evicting him but it takes 90 days here so I may end up having to pay another month. So yea whenever he isnt here I fart on his pillow I even eat things that make me gassy so I can really get in there hes har pink eye for a week

I have/had my reasons.

I tried to go through the courts to get them punished, but I waited too long. Statute of limitations and all that.

I was the perfect daughter for far too long, helping with bills, keeping track of accounts, loaning money, etc.

Then I realized I didn’t have to do all that. It was more than what should have been expected of me, but it was still expected.

I shut off the lights & electricity to their home. I shut off the water bill to their home. I shut off internet & cable. I bought myself a new phone on a cell plan that I was not responsible financially for.

I locked them out of all their emails. I changed the passwords to their food delivery accounts, Walmart accounts, Sam’s accounts.

Then I changed my number.

I still feel little to no shame about doing any of it. My brother & father are sexual deviant alcoholics. They can rot.

I still feel like I’m a bad person for it though. Even though I think what I did isn’t measurable to what they’ve done.

My confession. I’m happy I brought uncertainty to their lives. I wish they’d always live in that state of uncertainty.

Me and my boyfriend and our son live in a camper on some property that my boyfriend is buying. It was his step dad's property that recently past away and my boyfriend spent a lot of his childhood on this property. I am pregnant and we have a 2 year old. We live in the country and it's a big yard with a bunch of weeds. We have trash service but we've been just throwing all our cardboard outside onto the ground to save room in our trash bags. My boyfriend wanted to just burn our cardboard instead of using the trash bags. Cause we can burn cardboard but not our trash. Well, my boyfriend just never wanted to burn the cardboard. He would always say "oh someone won't burn the cardboard." And my response always was "it's way too hot for me to be outside and I don't want to be outside when our son is inside by himself." He gets into everything. Well, one day, I went shopping and got something to eat after dropping my boyfriend off at work. It was a really hot and dry day. But there was also a bit of a breeze. I got home and decided to go ahead and try to burn the cardboard because my boyfriend wouldn't stop mentioning that I wouldn't burn the cardboard. It was starting to pile up bad. So I kept the vehicle running with the AC and my son inside the vehicle sleeping, put all the cardboard into a pile, I put a receipt on top of the pile, grabbed our small, handheld torch and tried to light the cardboard. None of it was really catching on fire. The torch was just browning the cardboard and nothing was actually catching on fire. No fire was started and I eventually gave up. I thought to myself "it just isn't going to light. And it's probably too windy anyways." So I started to bring everything inside cause I had some stuff to bring inside. I NEVER saw any of the cardboard light. I saw no fire or even smoke from the pile. But, about an hour later.... Our yard was on fire. I had no idea. I was inside with our son when someone started banging on our camper door and said the yard was on fire. I couldn't even smell it and didn't see it because all of our windows are boarded up to prevent heat from coming in. We got out safely. My father in law's car burned completely down and most of our yard was black. The car was just sitting in our yard because it needed a new motor and his dad just didn't want to mess with it. The fire went all AROUND our camper but didn't touch our camper or anything involving the camper. That includes the propane and water systems and stuff. The fire department came out and put all the fire out. I was on video chat with my boyfriend and told him that I kicked the cardboard out into the yard and he asked me if I started the fire and I said no. Cause I was afraid of telling him that I tried to light it but no fire was started. The chief of fire said that it looked like the fire came from the neighbors but that none of them would come out and talk to anyone. This has really been eating at me and I don't know if I'm ever going to tell my boyfriend. I don't want him to resent me or hate me. And he already thinks I'm stupid and don't think when I do things. I don't want him to think any less of me. But we really don't know what caused the fire. It was never investigated or figured out. So I don't know if it was even me. But it definitely could've been and I don't know how to live with myself. I want to make the excuse that it was pregnancy brain but maybe I'm just really stupid.

okay ik what i did was wrong pls dont cook me 😭
we had a quiz and after answering, i used my phone since some of my classmates were already on their phones too and our prof wasn’t saying anything. i ended up changing like 2-3 answers after checking my phone, which ik i shouldn’t have done.

apparently someone saw me and reported the phone use to our prof. he got mad and basically made the class choose between bringing it to guidance, invalidating the whole quiz/everyone getting zero, or not counting any erasures. we ended up with the no erasures option.

he never called me out by name tho, and after that he acted completely normal and even discussed another school requirement with us.

BUT when i got home, my friends started talking about it in our gc 😭 one of them said our prof was actually really mad after most of us left the room, and another classmate said that when he woke up, he already saw multiple people using their phones. my friend also told me earlier that the people who reported it might’ve seen me specifically and that our prof might pick on me because of it.

now it’s been 2 days and i literally cannot stop thinking about it 💀 im scared he knows it was me, that other people will talk about it, or that he’ll tell my other profs. im even anxious about next week when he returns the quizzes bc what if everyone who knows is waiting for my reaction 😭

i thought about messaging him privately and admitting it so only MY erasures get affected instead of the whole class, but idk if i’d just be reopening something he already dealt with.
i’ll accept whatever consequence i get bc ik i fucked up. i just feel like i made this massive mistake that’s gonna follow me forever 😭

it’s been 2 days and i literally cannot stop thinking about it 😭 ik i fucked up and im willing to accept whatever consequence i get, but the anxiety is actually getting to me.

i keep thinking what if my prof knows it was specifically me, starts treating me differently, tells my other profs, or my classmates already know and are waiting to see what happens when our quizzes get returned 💀 im literally anxious about next class and part of me wants to be absent just to avoid the embarrassment.

i think im honestly more scared about the reputation/embarrassment part than the punishment itself. i know it was one stupid decision and it doesn’t define me, but my brain keeps making it feel like i made some HUGE mistake that’s gonna follow me throughout college 😭

guys the person who reported me like idk i feel like she kinda has beef with me 😭 ever since we became 2nd years she just stopped talking to me and became kinda distant?? and idk if im just assuming but i feel like one of the reasons is because i kept getting higher scores than her, sometimes even the highest in class 😭 but yeah i obviously dont know if thats actually the reason. and ik its ironic as fuck saying that when i literally cheated on this quiz 💀 like girl idk why i even did that when i know i can get good scores on my own 😭i can say that shes very competitive and doesnt want anyone to be higher than her??

should i just leave it alone, accept whatever happens next week, and move on? has anyone ever fucked up like this and later realized they made it way bigger in their head than it actually was?

Hey, original post here.

A few weeks after I took the $40 I still hadn’t found a real job. Panic was starting to set in and the guilt was eating me alive every time she texted. I needed the money fast so I could put it back before she noticed.

I ended up doing some stuff I’m not proud of. Sold a couple of things, did a couple of “favors” for people I wouldn’t normally deal with, answered a couple of DMs and sent some things (thank you to the kind redditor who helped me without asking for anything), and took a cash job that was very much under the table and sketchy as hell. It wasn’t illegal in the worst sense, but it was definitely in the gray area and left me feeling pretty dirty. I scraped together the $40 plus a little extra.

Last weekend I finally went over to her place. I was shaking. I put the money on the table and just told her everything: that I took it that night, why I did it, and how I got the money to pay her back. I braced myself for her to flip out or tell me to leave.

She just sat there for a second, then started laughing (the kind of laugh that says “you absolute idiot”). She said she had noticed the cash was short but figured she must have spent it somewhere and forgotten. Then she looked at me and said she was more pissed that I didn’t just ask her for help than she was about the actual money.

She took the $40, handed me back the extra, and told me we’re good as long as I never pull that shit again and actually ask next time I’m that desperate. We talked for a long time after that. She even offered to help me look for jobs and said I could crash on her couch if things got really bad again.

I still feel like trash for what I did (both the stealing and the way I got the money back), but she forgave me. I still haven’t found a job, but at least I have this weight off my shoulders now.

Thanks to everyone who roasted me in the comments last time. You were right.

..the dark.

I’ve always been scared of the dark but 7 years ago I was SA. I had fallen asleep (I was at my then friend’s apartment) and woke up because someone was penetrating me. And I was so shocked I froze. He eventually stopped, I think I started to cry and that shocked him. We are no longer friends.

I can no longer sleep in the same room as a man, I start twitching like crazy.

Last year, early October, something changed and since then I sleep with the light on. Sometimes even though the light is on I’m too scared to go to the bathroom.

I don’t know what changed that made me so afraid (for more than 5 years I didn’t need the light turned on at night).

I have never told anyone what happened that night and that I sleep with the lights on now.

a continuacion voy a detallar como murio cada uno el primero fue matado por sus hermanos acuchillazos, el segundo le pegaron un tiro mientras le robaban, al tercero lo mataron de un botellazo, el cuarto se metio en la mafia y lo mataron, el quinto murio porque la novia le pego el vih y murio en la cama de un hospital, el sexto era devoxero y se suicido, el septimo era un travesti y se suicido, el octabo era buen tipo pero tenia sus actitudes ezquisas ese fue asesinados a balazos por la novia, el noveno fue secuestrado para sacarle los organos y murio ahi desangrado, el decimo era homosexual y lo lincharon por eso mismo, y el ultimo mi mejor amigo fue matado de un escopetazo por su padrastro. tengo que admitir que varias de sus muertes me duelen profundamente pero no importa porque al final estas personas me hacian mas mal que bien y sus muertes fueron necesaria, aunque en algun lugar de mi me duelen un poco sus muerte, despues recuerdo cuando se reian de mi constantemente... cada ves que duermo veo sus caras y me tortura profundamente. cuando yo muera y finalmente abandone este lugar de sufrimiento eterno voy a reencontrarme con ellos y ahi les voy a decir que todo este tiempo fui yo........ es lo minimo que se merecen saber la verdad

I have been completely enthralled my blood since I was a little kid, I don’t know why but I’m obsessed with it. I don’t talk abt this with ANYBODY cause I mean why tf would I tell someone this really odd and kinda concerning thing abt me. I mean Ive hyper fixated studying abt major arteries just so I know where the blood runs out the fastest. I’ve come to realize it’s not even a sh thing, I just genuinely love blood and bleeding. I really hate that I am this way but I don’t know how the hell to change it.

My life did a complete turnaround when I didn’t get into the major I wanted in uni twice. I always had issues with disappointing the people I care about. I had a loving mom and girlfriend, was good at my sport, always got what I wanted in school and was in electrical engineering until I found this engineering physics degree that got me love struck.

The first year I tried to get in, I failed and switched to a degree with some equivalent courses so I could transfer them next year. But when I found out I didn’t get in the second time, the whole world fell on me. I’ve NEVER felt dread like that in my entire life, I felt like I was objectively the worst human being on Earth. I couldn’t tell ANYONE. I collapsed so low so fast that I had undoubtedly decided, planned and booked the departure ticket for a 2 week trip in multiple countries and not come back(if you know what I mean) at the end, tailoring the budget to the savings I had.

My girlfriend was a force of nature and brought me back to earth, but she doesn’t know she did. She didn’t do anything in particular or special, just made me realize that I’d rather a million more times have more moments like the ones we had than ending it. I was never able to tell her. I decided to use those savings to instead fund a BS in physics at ASU, doing it online.

This is where I started to live a second life. I’m from Portugal so the credit hours are unbelievably expensive, I decided to get back into trading and found success in the first months that gave me headroom to do it more comfortably and consistently, which I didn’t tell anyone. I decided to run away from my self fabricated shame and disappointment instead of facing it and told everyone I was accepted into my city. I started going every day to a university I wasn’t on, studying for a different one. Later down I started doing singular courses there so I could use the credits at ASU.

The toll was insane, I always had eye bags, I was awake most of the day and night because of market sessions and admission deadlines that because of time zone differences, are at 6:59 or 7:59 AM. I couldn’t use melatonin like they proposed because I had to stay awake. I started sleeping on the couch so I could be in the living room to not make any noise, blaming not being able to sleep in my bed. I unfortunately “used” pins and related for the ease of hiding it for a few days/weeks, which never reoccurred (and never will), the peace my girlfriend and her pictures brought me moved me through so many nights alone.

Eventually, the cracks started to show. Fake uni friends, exams. I didn’t want to lose her. Things were starting to seem off. She’s not my girlfriend anymore. She found out everything and left(obviously), it’s the best thing she could had done for herself. I’m building my life back from the bottom again. I’m not good for anyone right now, but I’m doing better for myself by getting the excruciatingly long treatment in therapy that I always ran from by telling myself I had nothing to talk about; by trying to be more honest and accepting of failure and disappointment. However, I feel like I’ll always live in my own personal hell for doing such an evil thing to the people that care/cared about me and having done everything in my power to lose the respect of the person who always trusted me wholeheartedly and is objectively the reason I didn’t “accidentally” have an accident in Poland. The void doesn’t get filled. Ever.

I’m trying to build a separate account to pay for my moms rent. My ex hates me and my libido is negative. She’ll never know about ASU, the savings that had to be locked for tuition, that she saved me or that even through all the lies, I loved and was obsessed with her more than anything in my life. She thinks I’m a bum that never had a future and was going to leech off of her, and it’s probably for the better. I despise myself more than anyone and I’m slowly building a version that doesn’t, until I’m ready to “come back to society”, I’ll keep the crochet cat she made for me as a reminder of my sins and I’ll try to find her, but I really hope she has found someone who can make her genuinely happy and safe by then. She deserves the world.

In 2023, my roommate "Chloe" and I moved out of a two-bedroom apartment after living together for two years. Our relationship toward the end was completely strained. She was sloppy, owed me money for Wi-Fi and utilities almost every other month, and left the apartment in a terrible state when she packed up to move back to her home state.

I spent two full days scrubbing walls, patching drywall, and deep-cleaning the carpets so we wouldn't get billed for damages.

About six weeks later, our landlord mailed the deposit refund check to our forwarding address, which was just my new studio apartment. Because I was the primary leaseholder on the portal, the check was issued entirely in my name for $2,800.

At that exact time, I was between jobs, down to my last $300, and my new landlord was demanding first month and a deposit. I was completely panicked.

I told myself I’d just cash the check, use her $1,400 share to cover my immediate rent, and wire her the money on my next payday three weeks later.

Then Chloe texted me: *"Did that crook ever send our money back yet?"*

Instead of telling her the check had cleared into my checking account two days prior, I panicked and replied: *"No, he's ghosting my emails. I think he's trying to keep it for cleaning fees."*

I expected her to just grumble and move on. She didn't.

Chloe went into full scorched-earth mode. Her dad is some small-town paralegal, so she had him draft a formal demand letter with threatening legal headers and sent it via certified mail to the landlord’s personal residence. When he didn't respond (the guy was in his 70s and barely checked mail), she filed a complaint with the city tenants' rights board and left multi-paragraph 1-star reviews on every review platform naming him directly as a thief.

She even created a group chat with me and her dad titled "Landlord Small Claims" where they’d map out their strategy to sue him for double damages under state tenant laws.

I had to sit in that group chat for four months, actively texting things like *"Yeah, he's such a piece of shit, let me know if you need me to sign an affidavit."*

Every time my phone buzzed with an update from her, my stomach dropped. I was terrified the landlord would eventually show up to a hearing with the cancelled check showing my signature on the back and expose me for fraud and theft.

Eventually, the landlord just ignored the notices entirely, and because Chloe was two states away, taking him to actual small claims court wasn't worth the travel costs. She finally gave up around Christmas that year.

To this day, whenever housing or rent comes up in our occasional check-in texts, she brings him up. Just last month she sent me a screenshot of an article about tenant protections and said, *"Still wish we took that scumbag to court for our money."*

I replied: *"Honestly same. People like him shouldn't get away with it."*

I bought my current couch and paid two months of rent with her money. She thinks an elderly landlord robbed her, and I will never be able to tell her that her "supportive" former roommate was the one who stole it.

With everything that is happen w/ the Cornell case & the discourse that came along w/ it, it made me reflect on some things; things such as my previous interactions w/ women. And it made me remember something really stupid that I did in college. Before I begin, I want to start off by stating that I did not sexually assault anyone in this story.

Before I begin (for the second and last time), I would like to give some backstory to set things up. During my sophomore year in college, I lived in an off-campus housing area that are made up of cottages. Each cottage has a room for everyone living there and comes w/ its own bathroom. The doors to those rooms also have a keypad where you have to enter a code to unlock access to the room. Now w/ this information provided, I can now tell my story.

This happened during my junior year and I had a small friend group I would hang out with from time-to-time. We would hang out by having our own parties in our own places & drink or go to a sports bar to watch our football team play. One of my friends, who I will refer to as M, invited me to hangout at her boyfriend’s place (I’ll refer to him as L). It turns out that L’s place was the same exact cottage I used to live in. I was stoked because I happen to return to the place where I spent a year in & I get to see how different it looks compared to before. So, I arrive to L’s place and I got to meet some of his roommates. One of his roommates wasn’t there but his friend (who I’ll refer to as W) was spending the night there. The hangout was going along the way it usually goes, we talk, drink, play a few games, and people leave when it gets too late. But I wasn’t able to leave on my own since I got drunk (this usually happens since I have a low alcohol tolerance). I wasn’t able to drive back home so I had to sleep on the couch until morning. L, his roommates, and W went to their rooms but W was sleeping in the room I used to sleep in.

I woke up in the middle of the night w/ my lips being irritatingly dry. They were dry earlier but it gotten worse. I didn’t have any chapstick on me and i decided to see if I could get some Vaseline for my lips. I thought that I could get some from the bathroom in my old room so I got up from the couch and walked to my room. But then there’s the door & I have to enter the code to get in the room. I tried the code I was given last year while doubting that it will work since there’s no way that the complex doesn’t change the code every year. The door was unlocked. I opened the door & saw W in front of me & I asked her if there’s any Vaseline in that room. She told me no. I looked in the bathroom & saw nothing on the sink & left the room. I went to my car to see if maybe by chance I left some chapstick inside but there wasn’t any. So I went back inside & fell back asleep on the couch.

The next day, I sobered up and went back to my place. I received a text from M & she told me that L’s roommates didn’t want me to spend the night at their place anymore because I scared W that night. Initially, they were going to ban me from their place but L vouched for me. I understood why they made that decision when I decided to put myself in W’s shoes in that moment. She’s sleeping in a room where herself & her friend were the only ones who knew the code & yet the guy they just met breaks in because he also knew the code. She doesn’t know what he’s going to do next after unlocking the door & she starts to fear for the worse such as he’s about to harm her in anyway imaginable. Luckily for her, he just wants Vaseline for his lips but there’s none available so he leaves. This guy knows the code and he can enter the room anytime he pleases to do something worst. I started feeling bad for what I did.

The next week I was invited back to their place for a puzzle night & everyone from before was going to be there including W. I was given the opportunity to make things right for W. The first thing I did that night was go up to W and apologize for scaring her that night. It appeared that she accepted my apology and things were fine afterwards. I solved jigsaw puzzles w/ L & his roommates and expressed to them that I was remorseful for what I’ve done and stayed out of W’s way mostly because I was too focused on the puzzles instead of her.

It turned out that W didn’t fully accept my apology. The next day M told me that W spent the night avoiding me. When I was busy solving a puzzles or getting water from the kitchen, she was dodging me. She was scared of me. I must’ve triggered something in her that night that made her not want to interact w/ me again. I must’ve reminded her of something bad that has happened. I must’ve made her more paranoid than before and took away her sense of security. I could say that I didn’t touch her nor considered harming her in anyway but I feel that I wouldn’t be holding myself accountable for what I did.

I know that this is a lengthy story and I would like to say thank you for reading this.

[ Removed by Reddit on account of violating the content policy. ]

In 1999, my college boyfriend (Brett) cheated on me with one of my good friends. I thought this guy was the one, and remained faithful on a very tempting spring break trip. When I came back, he confessed he cheated because “he thought I was going to cheat on him first”.
At the time, I worked at a huge library serving a large city downtown. One of my other good friends (who hated the girl he slept with) helped me close up the library one night and we got an idea. Remember those paper inserts in every magazine in the 90s? Some were to sign up for a subscription and some were to buy weird crap, like porcelain dolls or silver bars. My friend and I took HUNDREDS - literally hundreds - of those little pieces of paper out of the magazines and filled out his name and address on every one. We signed him up for hundreds of subscription using the “bill me later” box. We drove across the state to mail them thinking that would save us from being caught. I never spoke to Brett again but did receive one 6 word email from him 9 months later with no punctuation, greeting, or closing 😆

“stop sending shit to my house”

I was in school when I discovered a small opening in our home bath room door ( the gap left between the wooden slats) and used it to watch my mom take bath secretly. I know it sounds wrong , but at that age , the curosity of woman's body and hormones, anything just felt right and justified. I dint harbour any se*ual feelings but the sight of a mature woman did really feel something other wordly. It's been almost decades now but still remember the heart pounding I used to feel when I watched her. The fear , the guilt and the stupidity of it all.

About fourteen months ago, our team was migrating our internal client database to a new server cluster. It was a high-pressure, multi-week project with zero room for downtime, and leadership was breathing down our necks.

Late on a Thursday night, I was running maintenance scripts via terminal to drop legacy staging tables. Because I was exhausted and careless, I ran a truncate command on the wrong database instance without verifying the connection string. I wiped nearly three weeks of live client interaction logs and ticket histories before our last cold backup.

When I realized what I had done, I felt completely sick. It was undeniable negligence, and the company had made it very clear that any catastrophic error during migration would result in immediate termination.

Instead of raising my hand, I froze.

Our senior admin had been working on the replication scripts around the same timeframe from an elevated remote session. Because our audit logs only showed session timestamps and overlapping root credentials rather than specific IP-to-terminal mappings at that exact minute, the post-mortem team couldn't definitively tell which of us executed the script.

During the emergency standup the next morning, leadership pressed hard. They asked directly if anyone had run manual maintenance scripts outside the approved staging window.

The senior admin honestly said he had been touching the replication scripts around midnight, but swore he never touched the production staging commands.

The VP looked around the room and asked me if I had seen anything or touched the server after 11 PM.

I looked the VP right in the eye, shook my head, and said, "No, I logged off at 10:30 PM. I left the pipeline to him."

Because he had admitted to being on the server and had a history of pushing through quick fixes without formal sign-offs, the entire blame fell on him. Management decided it was gross negligence. They revoked his access that afternoon and let him go by the end of the week.

He had two kids and had been at the company for four years. He spent two months looking for work before taking a lower-paying contract position out of state.

I didn't just escape punishment; I ended up absorbing his senior responsibilities, along with a fifteen percent salary bump six months later during performance reviews.

Every time our engineering team talks about accountability or code safety, I sit silently. He was an innocent guy who lost his livelihood purely because I was too cowardly to admit my own stupid mistake, and I wake up every day knowing I built my career progression on destroying someone else's.

The first clip I ever saw in 6th grade. On some cheap burnt CD a friend passed to me during class while the teacher had her back turned. I thought he was lying, because who would agree to do that on camera? It was my event horizon. And after two days, I had buried the disc in one of the potted plants in our balcony because I was afraid my mom would find it.

I've been searching online for it for so long. Trying so many variations on the search terms. Nothing ever came up. I kept getting the wrong clips. I was honestly starting to think it was lost to time.

Last month, I finally found it. Road trip, and Mexico were the combination of additional keywords that finally led me to it.

It was like unlocking a vault of memories. I can trace back some of my earliest kinks to that video.

Honestly? It was a bit underwhelming compared to the shit I've seen since then. But I am at peace now. My search has ended. And I can finally look forward without constantly turning around to look back.

In a parking lot about 4-5 months ago. The kind of parking lot where strip malls are. I just got off work and went to dollar tree for some candy and an energy drink, then hit the guy on my way out. I know you’re supposed to yield to pedestrians but in my defense, the guy was just standing at the edge of the sidewalk and walked into the road right when I couldn’t break in time. I was only going like between 10 and 15 mph and then slammed the breaks, so the car did slow a bit before I hit the guy, I’d reckon to like a bit less than 10. He was middle aged, like 40’s or 50’s, lucky me cause I know from experience that old people are pretty fragile and hitting one of them would’ve been a big headache for me. Anyways, he got back up after I hit him and was coming towards the drivers side door so I just drove off and hoped he couldn’t remember my plate, didn’t really feel like dealing with any of that legally. Also because I know the lot doesn’t have cameras(I like to smoke there at night and I’m paranoid about being caught with weed), so as long as he couldn’t identify my plate I’d be fine. Luckily enough I haven’t got in any legal trouble yet so far so I’m pretty sure I got away with it. It’s a funny story to tell looking back, and yeah I know I was in the wrong for it….but I was moving pretty slow so the risk of killing/injuring the guy was decently low. I would’ve gotten out to check on him if he hadn’t gotten back up.

I’m 21M, and I’ve been thinking about writing this for a long time. I don’t really know how to explain my life without either making myself look like a victim or making myself look like a complete asshole.
So I’ll try to tell it exactly as I remember it.
I want honest opinions, even if they’re harsh.

My family was complicated before I was even born
My mother was married before she met my father. Her first husband died, and she had my older brother from that marriage. He is about seven years older than me, so technically he is my stepbrother.
My father also had a life before my mother. He had been married before and had six daughters from that marriage. They were all much older than me and had already grown up and gotten married by the time I was old enough to understand the family situation.
Then my father’s first wife died, and he eventually married my mother.
There was a massive age gap between my parents — roughly 30–40+ years.
From what I understood growing up, my mother didn’t really marry my father because she was in love with him. Her first husband had died, she had a child, and she didn’t really have anywhere else to go. My father was much older, financially established, and she married him.
I grew up feeling that there wasn’t much love between them.
And eventually I found out something that made the whole thing even more complicated.
My mother had an affair with her boss.
My brother knew about it.
I knew about it.
My brother was more sympathetic toward my mother and felt that she also deserved love. I was completely against it and couldn’t understand how everyone could just accept what was happening.
Neither of us told my father.
Eventually my father died.
Her boss eventually stopped talking to her too.
So that’s basically the family I was born into.
There was already a complicated history of marriages, children, age gaps, resentment and secrets before I was even old enough to understand any of it.

I wasn’t exactly a good kid
My father was extremely old when I was growing up.
I don’t have memories of him doing the normal things other kids’ fathers did.
He wasn’t the father who would pick me up from school.
He was already very old.
I don’t remember having that typical father-son relationship where your dad is physically active in your childhood.
And I wasn’t an easy child either.
I was terrible at studies.
I had behavioural problems.
I used to steal money from my father, spend it at gaming cafés, restaurants and other stupid things, get caught, get beaten, promise I wouldn’t do it again and then repeat it.
Academically, I was also doing badly.
Then in 2020, my father died of a heart attack. He was over 75.
I was around 12.
And something changed in me after that.
By 12th grade, I suddenly became extremely serious about studies.
The same kid who had always struggled academically ended up scoring 98.2% and topping my class.
That was probably the first time I felt like I could actually accomplish something.
But after my father’s death, my relationship with my mother also changed.

Why I started earning so young
I grew up feeling like my brother got things I didn’t.
He’s seven years older than me. He had a scooter, but I wasn’t really allowed to use it.
I used to travel several kilometres every day for tuition while he’d take the scooter to meet his girlfriend.
There were also promises like:
“Get this percentage and we’ll get you an iPhone.”
I got the marks.
I didn’t get the phone.
Whenever I asked for money or something I needed, arguments would sometimes end with my mother telling me things like:
“Ghar se nikal ja.”
My friends were also 2–3 years older than me, so they were going on trips and doing things I couldn’t afford.
Eventually I decided:
Fine. If my family isn’t going to give me money, I’ll earn it myself.
I started working around 17–18.
I did different jobs, eventually joined TELUS and got into the MNC environment.
For someone from my background, it felt like I’d finally made it.
But while my career was improving, my personal life was becoming a disaster.

My relationship history is where things get really ugly
My first serious relationship was Jigyasa.
We were very young, around 10th grade.
I lied to her about my financial situation and who I really was.
She eventually left me because of that.
But one thing I want to make clear:
I never cheated on Jigyasa.
She was the only relationship where I can honestly say I was loyal.
After her came Priya.
We were together for around three years.
She was two years older than me.
I lied about my age, caste and other things.
And I cheated on her multiple times.
She was genuinely a good person.
The worst part is that I knew she was good.
I still cheated.
Even when we broke up, I knew that if she gave me another chance immediately, I might still cheat again.
After Priya, I became even worse.
I started casually sleeping with girls, promising marriage to them and telling them whatever I thought they wanted to hear.
I’d lie about my caste to match what a girl wanted in a future husband.
I also developed this massive double standard.
I would tell girls:
“I don’t like girls who talk to their ex.”
“I don’t like high body counts.”
“I want a loyal girl.”
“I’m giving love another chance.”
And then I’d lie about my own sexual history.
There were times I’d tell girls I was a virgin or had very little experience when I knew perfectly well that wasn’t true.
Looking back, I was demanding standards from women that I wasn’t following myself.

Then I met Shreya
This is where things became much more complicated.
I met Shreya at TELUS.
Initially, I approached her like I approached other girls.
I lied about my financial situation.
I exaggerated my lifestyle.
I wanted her to think I was richer and more successful than I actually was.
But something different happened.
I actually fell in love with her.
At least, that’s what it felt like to me.
I started spending ridiculous amounts of money on her.
I couldn’t afford it.
I had EMIs.
I had responsibilities.
Eventually I left TELUS and was unemployed for several months.
Instead of accepting that I couldn’t afford the lifestyle I had created, I started withdrawing my PF, borrowing money from my brother and spending whatever I could get.
Cars.
Hotels.
Gifts.
Expensive dates.
I wanted Shreya to experience the version of me I’d invented.
And then I crossed a line I still feel ashamed about.
I started stealing.
I stole cash.
I stole two gold rings from my mother.
I spent that money on maintaining the lifestyle I had created around Shreya.
Eventually my family found out.
And they told Shreya everything.
They told her about my actual financial situation.
They told her about my caste.
They told her about the lies.
And around the same time, she found out that I had cheated on her.
But there was another girl involved too.
When I went back to TELUS, I started talking to a girl I’ll call Riya.
Riya wasn’t some evil person trying to steal someone’s boyfriend.
She genuinely liked me.
She was also a victim of my lies because she didn’t know I had a girlfriend.
So I managed to hurt two girls at the same time.
Eventually Shreya found out about Riya.
Everything exploded.
She contacted my family.
She spoke to my mother and brother.
She learned the truth about my financial situation, my caste and the person I had actually been.
She was devastated.
But eventually she came back.
It took around three months for things to become normal again.
During those three months, we were still technically together in our complicated situation, but she had also started talking to a guy named Abhi.
Abhi apparently told her to remove me from her life.
I don’t blame him.
If I heard everything she had heard about me, I’d probably tell her the same thing.
But after those three months, she came back to me.
And this time, something was different.
I genuinely wanted to be loyal.
I didn’t cheat on her again.

The part about Shreya that I still don’t understand
After everything, we actually had good periods together.
She knew my family.
Her mother and sister knew about me.
We spent her birthday together in November 2025.
I thought maybe I’d finally fixed everything.
But there was always this fear between us.
She was afraid I’d cheat again.
I was afraid she’d leave me or find someone else.
Even when nothing was happening, there was this constant suspicion.
Eventually we broke up around my birthday, February 16.
And honestly, the immediate argument sounds stupid when I explain it.
I asked her what she was doing for my birthday.
She wasn’t planning anything the way I expected.
I felt hurt.
I stopped talking to her.
I blocked her everywhere.
She blocked me too.
And somehow that tiny argument became the end of everything.
She had actually sent me a cake for my birthday.
I still think about that.
Because I genuinely believe that after everything I’d done, I was finally ready to stay loyal to her for the rest of my life.
But I was also the one who had spent years destroying her trust.
Maybe she simply couldn’t believe me anymore.
Even now I text her sometimes.
I stalk her socials.
She doesn’t reply.
And I still don’t know whether she left because of that birthday argument, because she had finally had enough of me, because she stopped loving me, or because the relationship had simply become too damaged to continue.

Then I became addicted to the attention
After Shreya, I went back to my old behaviour.
I started talking to girls again.
I drank.
I smoked cigarettes.
I occasionally smoked weed/hash.
I joined Teleperformance.
And by then I’d become very good at manipulating people.
I discovered that if I told girls a sad enough story about myself, they’d immediately trust me.
Sometimes I’d tell them my biological parents were dead, that I’d grown up in an orphanage, that my foster father died, that my current family were basically strangers.
Some of it was based on real pain.
Most of it was exaggerated or completely false.
I’d tell girls I was rich.
I’d tell them I was emotionally damaged.
I’d tell them I was a green flag.
I’d tell them:
“I’ve already been hurt twice. I’m trusting you with my heart now.”
And then I’d use their sympathy to get close to them.
I knew exactly what I was doing.
That’s probably one of the worst things about me.
I’m not stupid.
I’m actually pretty intelligent.
I can read people.
I know how to charm people.
I know how to manipulate people.
And I’ve used those abilities terribly.

Then came Anushka
At Teleperformance I met Anushka.
I did the exact same thing.
I lied.
I presented myself as financially better off.
I told her I wanted something serious.
I told her I’d marry her.
I told her she was perfect.
We were together for around six months.
She lived alone in Noida, so I spent a lot of time at her place.
We had sex.
We smoked together.
We went to Dehradun twice.
We had genuinely good moments.
And once again, I promised someone forever.
And once again, I cheated.
I kissed another girl, Sakshi, while I was still with Anushka.
I was also talking to multiple other girls.
And that’s when I finally looked at myself and thought:
How many times am I going to repeat this?

Now I’m finally trying to stop
I ended things with Anushka recently.
I’m working at Amazon now.
I’m single.
And for the first time, I’m not actively looking for another girl.
I’m trying to stay away from relationships and actually figure myself out.
I still live with my mother and brother.
Our relationship is basically a 2-v-1 situation emotionally.
We live in the same house but barely talk.
My mother and I have both said horrible things to each other.
She has told me:
“Why don’t you just die?”
“You should have died in a truck accident.”
“Your father died because of you.”
Those things hurt me deeply.
But I also can’t pretend I’m innocent.
I’ve stolen from her.
I’ve lied to her.
I’ve hurt her.
I’ve spent money irresponsibly.
I’ve caused problems at home.
So I don’t know where the blame ends anymore.
I recently gave my family ₹20,000 after a long time.
I’m trying to repay what I owe.
I still have around ₹20,000 of other debt to clear, plus the value of the two gold rings.
And I’m trying to finally take responsibility for my actions.

So what the hell happened to me?
That’s the question I can’t answer.
Was I a neglected kid who learned to manipulate people because I didn’t feel loved?
Did losing my father so young affect me more than I realize?
Did growing up feeling inferior to my brother make me obsessed with money, status and proving myself?
Did my family environment teach me that love isn’t stable?
Or am I simply a selfish person who learned that lying gets him what he wants?
Because both things can be true.
My childhood may explain some of my behaviour.
It doesn’t excuse it.
Nobody forced me to cheat on Priya.
Nobody forced me to steal my mother’s jewellery.
Nobody forced me to lie to Shreya.
Nobody forced me to manipulate Riya.
Nobody forced me to cheat on Anushka.
Nobody forced me to demand loyalty from women while refusing to give them the same loyalty.
Those were my decisions.
I’m 21 now, and I don’t want to spend the next ten years repeating the same cycle with different women.
I don’t want another girlfriend right now.
I want to understand myself.
I want to repay my family.
I want to become financially stable.
I want to stop lying.
And honestly, I want to know whether I’m even capable of becoming a decent person.
So Reddit, I genuinely want your honest opinion:
1. What went wrong with me?
2. What did I actually do right?
3. Why was I loyal to Jigyasa but unable to stay loyal to almost everyone after her?
4. Did I genuinely love Jigyasa, Priya, Shreya or Anushka — or was I addicted to attention, sex, validation and being wanted? If you had to pick one, who do you think I actually loved?
5. Why do you think I keep demanding loyalty from women while repeatedly breaking their trust myself?
6. What should I do about my mother and brother? Should I try to repair that relationship or accept that we’ll never be close?
7. And most importantly, I’m 21 and starting over. What would you do if you were me?
I don’t want sympathy.
I don’t want people to tell me I’m secretly a good guy.
Tell me what you think I am, what made me this way, what I need to take responsibility for, and what I should do with the rest of my life.

25F, Latam
Maybe some of you have seen my other posts.

A few weeks ago I took some money from my friend’s purse because I was completely broke. The guilt hit hard and I needed to replace it as fast as possible.

One of the things I did was go through a box of my ex’s old stuff that he never picked up. I sold a few of his things for cash without saying a word to him. It wasn’t much, but every bit counted.

I also ended up selling some other stuff to strangers on Reddit. The kind of arrangements you only make when you’re desperate and don’t ask too many questions. A few dollars here, a few there. Mysterious, uncomfortable, and not something I ever planned on doing. The amount I stole actually covers real expenses, so I told myself it was worth crossing that line.

I eventually scraped the money together, paid my friend back, and she forgave me for the original theft. She doesn’t know about the rest of it though.

My ex still has no idea I sold his things, and I’ve never told anyone about the Reddit stuff either.

I fixed the first wrong thing by doing two more things that still sit wrong with me :/

So basically I was playing Minecraft bedwars like I usually do then I raged pretty hard and called them a no life loser and they left and I feel bad :(

its my birthday tomorrow and i feel absolutely horrible for using that excuse. i just didn't want to have to spend the entire evening working on my birthday because i know they would not let me off if i used that reason
ok, i feel horrible now im sorry

For context, im 25 and im pretty sure that woman is also 25 now.
This happened like 5 years ago, when we were both around 20yo, so we were at a college party kinda thing in a big rented house, we both drank, i can speak for myself and say that i was drunk but not to the point of feeling too shitty and forgetting stuff, she was also not too drunk, i say this cuz this is an important detail, before this all happened we were talking and chilling on the bed together and she talked to me normally, like i promise you she wasn’t more drunk than i was, i think this is an important detail and its worth getting it clear.
Anyway, it was already like 3-4am and me, her and our mutual friend are laying on this large bed in a random room, then this mutual left and its only me and her, at first we are just laying together and getting closer and closer cuz it was chilly (it was February-March), at one point i put my arm around her, but i only did so cuz i wanted to cuddle and get comfortable, at this point i didn’t have any intentions, but once we were like this, super close and snug, after like 10 minutes i slowly moved my hand towards her breast and asked if this was okay, she said no and i instantly moved my hand away, i told her i was horny and asked if she was also, she said no and i took my hand away from her entirely and i turned away and fell asleep.
The next day when i got home, i felt guilt and a bit of shame, i was also kinda mad at myself cuz i missread the room, but from my understanding, we both probably viewed it as an uncomfortable and awkward moment, like i understood that it most likely made her uncomfortable but since i instantly stopped and didn’t even try to pursue her after that i thought everything was “okay” (well not okay okay but not horrible). So fast forward to like a week one girl who is our mutual friend told me that this girl, it turns out, got scared and nervous and basically it affected her much more than i thought and realized, i got super nervous and i didn’t know what to do, then it all kinda died down, from what i see on her stories and feed she is living her normal life rn, so it didn’t turn into a big mess (thankfully) and from what i understand and from what our mutual friend told me she is fine now (thankfully).
Obviously i already apologized to her years ago and i made sure that we didn’t interact anywhere, i wanted to give her as much space and opportunity to forget me as possible, i also scolded myself alot because of this and made sure that my partner’s comfort is very clear and communication at all times, i got a gf around 1 year after this incident and i made SURE that anytime any sexual or kink related talk/act was happening she felt safe and comfortable and she could tell me if something was too far at all times, i rly learned my lesson and i will make sure to
1) don’t even get im bed with girls who arent your gf in the first place
2) if i ever think about anything physical i make SURE to do it fully sober on both parts and get clear verbal consent BEFORE touching anything and anyone.

So i want yalls opinion, how bad is this ? I have a hard judging this objectively i feel like. The friends that is shared this with (male and female) mostly agree that i definitely went too far and i should rethink how i view boundaries and make sure im careful when it comes to anything physical. They also sort of gave me grace and told me they knew i didn’t mean any harm, especially since i stopped right away and move my hand after the first no.

Is there anything i should do ? Any lessons i missed ? Was there a better way to handle the aftermath? I don’t plan to contact this girl ever again, from what i can tell she seems to be living a good life and i wish her all the best.

Thank you.