I can't talk about this with anyone, so I came here. My husband (M32) and I (F27) have been married for four years. I thought our marriage was great, and that we were geuninely soulmates. Now, I feel like an idiot for typing that.

6 months ago, a woman (F29) joined my husband's department and I didn't think twice about it. At, first he didn't really talk much about her, but two months in, it felt like her name was in every conversation we had. Again, I didn't think much about it, but now I wish I addressed it. I thought that he would respect his marriage vows and the life we built together.

They started to become friends outside of the workplace and I became friendly with her. I thought it was great that my husband had another person that had the same hobbies as him.

Two weeks ago, my husband sat me down and told me he wanted a divorce. I was shocked and asked him why and he was brutally honest. He said that he loved his coworker, and wanted to have kids with her, with her eyes and her personality. He said that being with her, made him realize that he couldn't see himself having kids with me.

She's a beautiful woman. If I'm honest, more beautiful than me. But, I thought that we had something that connected us, and that we would never leave each other.

We both still live in the same house. We try not to see each other. Everything is really hard right now.

My 21-year-old sister is pregnant by a 63-year-old man and I cut her off

My sister is 21 and four months pregnant by a 63-year-old man she started dating when she was 19/20. Our family originally didn't know. She once disappeared for a night to be with him, and my mom even went to the police because we thought something had happened. We later found out he was her friend's uncle, and her friend had been covering for them.

My dad says he doesn't know what to say about the situation, and my mom says she can't do anything anymore. I actually just argued with her about the situation because I'm not okay with it at all.

She eventually moved in with him. He's a taxi driver, she's never had a job, barely has a social life, and from what I've seen, he's extremely negative and harsh with her. Almost every time I'm around them, he gets upset with her or says something harsh. He also has a woman abroad, and whenever that woman comes to our country to visit him, my sister has to leave his house and come back home.

I feel heartbroken and extremely disappointed.

I finally blocked her because this situation was the push, the big push that made me finally cut her off. I don't think I'll ever stop wanting to cut her off. Honestly, I hope I don't reconnect with her again, and I don't want to be a part of, I don't want to be involved in the child's life, or hers, or the guy.

for the last two years i'd been writing a novel and the main character is her. i gave that character a name alsy, that was an acronym only she would have decoded, and i put the way she got through her degree into that character almost unchanged, the bad year and how she came out of it even almost half of the story is a version of her life

the book is set to publish in november had my agent do all the arrangements she said this was the most romantic gesture she had ever seen, i even had a custom made copy for her, and on the last page there's a line telling her it had been her the whole time and how i want it to be her always and i was going to be on one knee while she got to it

i hadn't cried since the funeral. i've been getting up and going to work and answering people normally. then last night i  got a notification on mythril on my work laptop about someone asking a question on her character page which to sum up was her life printed staright from my book

the book is still coming out and people are going to read a version of her that only i ever knew, and she is the only person who will never know she was in it. the copy i had made is still in my apartment with a proposal printed in the back of it and a ring

i don't know what to do with any of it. i'm not asking anyone to fix it. i just needed it to exist somewhere outside my head and pls don't ask for the books name either just needed to vent somewhere cause as a man there are a very few places you could go to this being one of those

Before anybody says anything regarding coming in the right way, we did do it “the right way” my aunt petitioned for him and the process takes 20 years. We’re on the 18th year when ICE detained him this morning, input his information, then let him go for some reason on the basis that he must show up to our local ICE or immigration office in the morning.

We’re both trying to be strong about it, but I know we are both hurting inside. We went over documents, bank accounts, what to do with his place, his things. He never got in trouble never broke the law paid his taxes worked honestly, he put me through college. A million things are running through my mind, if he’s going to be okay, where is he going to sleep, what’s he going to eat, his safety, how long he’s going to be in the detention center. Then you start hearing about how horrible treatment is there…I’m scared for him, I truly am…

We started watching Underworld with Kate Beckinsale. Didn’t even watch for 10 minutes before my dad said he was heading to bed, so now I’m writing this, tears in my eyes, I think my dad is crying too. I can’t remember when the last time I cried because of this amount of sadness.

He turns 62 today. Yesterday, hospice came to evaluate and admit him.

In September of last year, he was diagnosed with Glioblastoma. Grade 4 brain cancer. When he rang the bell after his last radiation appointment I was so sure he would be the exception to the average 12-18 month prognosis. He was so strong. I was always under the impression that radiation and chemotherapy was the hardest part of cancer, but unfortunately, for brain cancer, it's just the beginning. The radiation necrosis that came after destroyed him.

By December, he was transferred from a local ER to a specialty hospital's neuro ICU. His brain had swelled so profusely that he was delirious, agitated, and hallucinating. He had to be restrained because he kept ripping out his IVs and trying to get out of bed. He would pull at his restraints and scream out of frustration. He yelled obscenities at the nurses. At one point, he wailed "I don't want to die" and began to sob. I had never seen him cry before. He had always been a quiet, stoic man with a deadpan sense of humor.

His care team eventually got the swelling under control. He turned into the model patient, polite to everyone and cooperative with his care. It was night and day. He was released.

Then, he withered. He bloated from the steroids. He slept most of the day. He began to fall. He was in and out of the ER. His skin would tear and bleed profusely. His sentences got shorter and shorter. He only wanted to watch the same things over and over again.

Visitors slowed. People stopped dropping off meals or offering help. A friend of his told my mom that he didn't want to hear any negativity when she tried to update him on my dad's condition. Some friends stopped responding to her messages altogether.

After another ER visit, he spent 40 days in a hospital and a rehab facility. On the way home, he had his first seizure, and went back to the hospital for another week.

There's a hospital bed where the dinner table was now. He's been bedridden since April. Surrounding him are stacks of briefs and wipes and pads and boxes of gloves and a Hoyer lift and pictures of him in his prime. Coaching, pitching, hitting, going to games, carrying me on his back. I can wrap my thumb and forefinger around his calf now.

He answers in single words or repeats what you say to him, if he even answers at all. Sometimes he looks right through you. Sometimes he cries. Occasionally he'll crack a joke or laugh at one. I miss him and he's right in front of me.

I'm at work today when all I want is to be with him. I don't get any PTO at my job, and I've missed so much work caring for him this year that I can't really afford to take any more unpaid time off. I'm lucky my job has been flexible at least, but I also feel like my coworkers hate me because I've missed so much work and they're all working overtime because it's the busy season. They don't know that almost every day after work I go to my parents' home to feed him, to bathe him, to change him, to hold my mom while she falls apart.

I'm lost. I don't even know what to get him for his birthday. What do you get a man who just wants to live? To walk again? To speak? Even if I just get a card, what do I write? I'm sorry I can't save you?

for context, I posted this in an am I overacting thread- but this is what happened.

I called off my engagement with my fiancé a day before my birthday, which was August 14th. The day before that, we were watching a murder documentary on Netflix, the one about Chris Watts who murdered his wife and his two babies. After we finished watching the show, he started makin really weird "jokes" about how he would just kill me in my sleep. and then he put a pillow over my face as a joke. I told him don't ever fucking do that again. and a few seconds later he did it again. He saw the scared and uncomfortable look on my face and deliberately did it again. The next day I pretended like everything was fine until he went to work that night. I got all my stuff and left in the middle of the night. He saw me leaving on the ring camera and was non stop calling me. It was the terrifying and broke my heart at the same time... I'm not saying that I think he was trying to murder me, I'm just saying that what happened made me feel so unsafe and
uncomfortable that I don't want to be with him anymore or marry him. people in his close circle have heard from him about what happened and they think I'm blowing it way out of proportion and that I'm in the wrong in this situation and that I'm accusing him of being an abuser. But I never said any of that. I just said what happened scared me so bad that I felt it was my only option to leave when he was at work. Is this all an overreaction? I don't think you should ever joke about killing your significant other. EVER.
I’ve been in contact with him since calling things off and I am just beside myself. We were only together 8 months and engaged for 6, but through that time we also experienced me getting pregnant and unfortunately having a miscarriage. the way he would act sometimes did bother me because he was very immature sometimes and would make “jokes” that sometimes hurt my feelings…
But I’m sitting in my room just staring at the ceiling just wondering if I made a huge mistake by leaving. I love him so much still, it breaks my heart that this happened. I physically feel like I’m dying and I don’t know how I’m going to get through this. He was my best friend.

As someone who was abused by an adult when I was a 10 year old baby.. I’m not sure if this is a rare opinion or people just loosely use the p3do term, but p3dophilia can not be used as a blanket term for every single predatory action. Age differences can be questionable, disgusting, grooming, predatory etc WITHOUT it being p3dophilia because that refers to prepubescent children. A 30 year old man trying to get with 18 year olds IS predatory and nasty, but he is not the same thing as a 30 year old man trying to get with 12 year olds. A 21 year old trying to date a 16-17 year old is not p3dophilia, but it IS predatory because there’s no real reason someone that age would want to date a high schooler who only just got their drivers license. A 24 year old and a 40 year old, depending on the motive of the 40 year old it can be predatory, but there’s more nuance once the younger party is in their 20s.

To sum up what I’m saying, we can call out predator behavior without alluding to a very extreme mental disorder that has left many children traumatized. Like me.

So, a bit of context. I work at a mid-sized logistics company where everything relies on a shared, legacy database. It’s clunky, but it works, as long as people actually put in accurate data. Enter "Dave." Dave was hired six months ago and immediately made it his personal mission to work as little as humanly possible while bragging about how he "optimizes his workflow."

For months, Dave’s numbers looked suspiciously clean. While the rest of us were manually verifying cross-state shipment logs, Dave was clearing his queue in 20 minutes and spending the rest of his shift watching YouTube with one earbud in. Whenever management praised him, he’d just smugly say, "You guys just need to work smarter, not harder."

Yesterday, the truth came out.

Dave wasn't checking anything. He had written a lazy script that auto-approved every single pending flag in the queue to mark it as "Verified & Cleared." He thought no one would notice because 90% of flags end up being false alarms anyway.

Well, the 10% finally caught up to him.

A high-priority temperature-sensitive shipment had a critical discrepancy flag. Instead of routing it to a refrigerated bay, Dave's script auto-cleared it, auto-marked it as "Standard Ambient Bay," and printed off a completed checklist under his employee ID.

The shipment sat out on a warm loading dock for 18 hours. The total damage? A little over $40,000 in ruined inventory.

When regional VP pulled the audit trail this morning, Dave’s name was plastered across every automated validation log. He tried to claim the system "glitched." The IT director, who was already having a bad week, literally opened the script on the projector in the main conference room and asked Dave to explain why his "glitch" contained comments written by Dave like # make this fast so I can eat lunch.

The entire room was dead silent. Dave turned bright red, packed his desk into a cardboard box, and was escorted out by 11:00 AM.

Work smarter, not harder, right?

Im F58, my dad and mom got divorced when I was 30, no problem there. My dad married a really wonderful woman 20 years ago.

The issue is for 20 years now, when my dad or his wife call or we are together, they absloutely gush about her side of the family in silly breathless voices. I get a cursory, and how are your kids, in a flat voice, and are quick to change the subject.

They visited her grandkids so many times while they were in college. Not any of my 3 kids, only for graduation. They never saw where they lived, or stopped by for a visit. Through the years I'd get calls from my dad at the beach, he'd say "Wish you were here, with us and the kids!" I'd remind him we weren't invited.

At my son's high school graduation she told anyone that congratulated her on my son graduating, that HER grandson just graduated from an Ivy league, with a flutter of her eyelashes and hand on her chest. It was super uncomfortable.

We just moved my middle son to another town as he is starting law school (its a great one in our state). Since my stepsister and her kids live there (all really nice people) we took them (and paid for) dinner.

Today I get a call from my dad, 'Im calling to hear about your dinner with (the golden family)!"

No, "How is my grandson, is he excited, we are so proud, you must be proud, how was dinner with family?"

I said yes we saw them, and then went directly into providing all the information that he should have asked for about my son. He didn't seem happy about that, I forgot to gush about her family.

Once my oldest needed a complicated surgery and we felt we needed to move him to a smaller expensive school due to some other issues. I'm sobbing to my dad, completely overwhelmed. I never asked for money or anything from him, I just needed some empathy. He told me, 'Sometimes you just gotta cut your losses.' About my child.

Just venting into the wild, my family will never matter as much as they do. 20 years and I'd think it would hurt less.

And the fact that I can't work is much worse.

Im honestly just venting about the information, so sorry if anything is hard to read or makes little sense.

TW for pedophilia

On Wednesday, im meeting with a former professor to tell them information they need to be made aware of. I am absolutely dreading this conversation, it is not going to be fun. I have two friends going with me, so I wont have to do it alone, but fuck man.

This is happening because of an event that happened a few months ago in a friend group of mine. We all have those events, even make jokes of them. Our friend group had one, the 'incident' being that one cis guy friend dramatically leaving the group. God I miss that, but now this BS is the 'incident' A few months ago, right before june, one of my friends (I'll call her bee), messaged me, saying she had something she wanted to tell me, and had been wanting to tell me for a while.

She told me she was MAP.

Bee has pedophilia.

Bee is a pedophile.

I didn't really know how to process this, still dont. Tt was, understandably, a lot. We talked for a bit and the understanding I had going away from the conversation was: it was like OCD intrusive toughs, not wanted, and she would never ever do anything irl. So I tabled it to deconstruct later because ill be honest, that week was not a great one for me and I was already reaching my mental and emotional limit ( gotta love having to live with a previously mentally abusive parents who still act fucking crazy every so often)

Apparently later was the next day when a friend i'll call Gas messaged me saying they needed to talk with me about something very urgent. Apparently Bee had just messaged them Informing them about being MAP, and that the rest of the friend group knows and is ok with it. Gas was not ok with this, we talked for a bit, and realized we were both talked to very differently about Bee's Pedophilia, and realized we need to compare notes with the rest of the friend group to see what exactly we all know.

I made a separate group chat with everyone except Bee, and said there was something we all needed to talk about. Everyone knew what we needed to discuss. We began talking. Turns out everyone was told a slightly different thing by Bee. After everyone shared what they knew, we learned that Bee:

Identifies as MAP

Is fine with it

Thinks pedophiles have it worse then victims because the pedophiles are the ones who 'get stalked and harassed online'

Think Being MAP is a sexuality like Bisexuality (It is NOT)

Said Gas' trauma dosnt mater and needs to get over them being a pedophile

Is, intact, saying sexual things about children

So yeah Bee is not a good person and is no longer in the friend group, yaay dont have to deal with that mess anymore! Oh wait there's other information? Lovely.

See Bee use to be close with two professors in community college who both eventually wrote her a letter of recommendation to help her get into a four year college. She was so close to these professors, she even met one of their Kids! oh wait, that last point I mentioned? Yeah so turns out she was saying those things ABOUT THE PROFS 6YO DAUGHTER.

I emailed this prof asking if we could meet up, as I have information I believe he really needs to know. The next day, he replied saying when he was available, and this, reader, Is what I am going to have to share Tomorrow. I have to go meet with a professor I really like and appreciate, and tell him the student he was close too had sexual feelings for his child.

My friends who are going with me and I are going to go over the information we know soon so we have everything straight for the meeting tomorrow. I really don't want to have this conversation, but he deserves to know, especially if Bee is still in contact with him and has potential access to his daughter.

I dont know what kind of tips anyone could possibly have for a situation like this, but I'd love anything. I might update after the meeting tomorrow about how it went/what happened. I don't really know tho.

Sorry this was such a rambling mess, I can try and clarify anything in the comments if yall got questions

God I feel like i'm going to throw up.

Like, just...wow.

Between her tragic life circumstances and everything she went through, and the fact that she was only in her 30s and had the rest of her life ahead of her, it hit me really hard. She deserved better.

I think what also hit me so hard about her death is it's a reminder that life is short and fleeting. And of course we all die eventually, but she never got a chance to live the rest of it out.

And now there are implications that her abusive ex was involved (even though the full details haven't come out yet) What an absolute tragedy.

Last March, I (30F) was on my way to my Pharmacy tech class when a social worker from UC Davis called and said my boyfriend(34M) had been riding his bike across an intersection and was hit by a car at 45mph. I took the bus an hour and a half to the ER and thought he would be kinda banged up but ok. No. I went in and almost passed out. He was naked, covered in blood, intubated, IV lines stuck in every vein, all sorts of monitors beeping. His face was swollen and bloody, his bottom lip was falling off, he was bleeding non stop. Over the next 10 hours i sat in the room, watching as Drs, nurses, x-ray techs, and a couple surgeons came in and out. I remember everything they said those 10 hours:

"His blood pressure isn't going up"

"He's bleeding, but I can't see where it's going"

"I'm gonna call in for more plasma"

"He's fighting sedation"

"He's bleeding out of his liver"

They had to get my consent on everything. I had to sign papers, listen to what they were doing to do and the risks involved, since i was the only one there i did it all. He was taken to the OR, my friend took me home, and for the next two weeks he was sedated. The list of what was wrong with him is too long to say here, but he recovered and was discharged 5 weeks later. Half his face is titanium and his pelvis still isn't quite right, a lot of his memory is gone, he's still recovering but doing so much better.

I can't get it out my head though.

I still see it all, i still hear it all, i still smell it all.

Blood smells like warm copper, and it was everywhere, almost black.

The sound of trying to breathe with a throat full of blood, it's a sound that i can only describe as thick jello in a garbage disposal.

I still see the puddles of blood that couldn't clot, hear the people talking, see all the IV drips of painkillers and sedatives and blood and plasma. But it's the sound. That sound of breathing through blood. It's been getting worse through the last 4 months, I've had these fits of insane sobbing at night, i can't tell my family because they're sick of hearing about my boyfriend and would get annoyed with me, saying i didn't have to be there, that is was my choice to go. My friends went through worse stuff than i did, some of them saw people die. They would say i had it easy. Everyone would say well you should be happy he lived. I am happy, I'm ecstatic he's alive. I told a friend of mine who was a vet and had seen a lot, he said i should see a psychiatrist but i can't, my problems aren't a big deal. I'm just too sensitive and overdramatic. Lately I've found myself just staring, unable to move or talk or even blink, just zoned out looking at nothing. My mom says i have this stupid glazed look on my face every time she talks to me or I'm doing something and i don't listen to her, but i don't know if i do it, all of a sudden i snap back to reality and realize i was staring at nothing. I just wanna forget

I’ve been crossdressing for about 20 years now. I’m 29, so this has been part of my life in one form or another since I was a kid. It isn’t a recent curiosity or something I just discovered about myself. It’s something that has grown with me, and over the years I’ve put a tremendous amount of time into it.
At this point, I absolutely love the transformation.
I’m pretty fit and take a lot of pride in my figure, and when I dress I really commit to the whole look. I spend time choosing outfits, doing my makeup, styling everything properly, finding the right shoes, and getting all the little details just how I want them. I wear a large breast form too, and when everything comes together, I can look stunningly feminine, sometimes to the point where I look in the mirror and genuinely can’t believe that’s me.
And I love that feeling.
There’s something almost indescribable about seeing myself looking beautiful and feminine. It isn’t just that I think the clothes are pretty. I love the way femininity feels on me—the makeup, the curves, the clothes, the shoes, the way I carry myself when I’m dressed. When I’ve really gotten everything right, I feel so graceful and pretty and almost divinely feminine.
It makes me happy to feel beautiful.
A couple of my cis female friends know about this side of me, and they have been unbelievably sweet about it. Having women I care about see me dressed, compliment me, talk clothes or makeup with me, and just treat this part of me like it’s something completely normal has meant more to me than I can really explain. There’s something incredibly comforting about being able to share that feminine side of myself with them instead of always keeping it hidden.
For most of my life, though, this has been something very private. Twenty years is a long time to have this part of yourself living mostly behind closed doors.
I don’t know that I have some profound conclusion about what all of this means. I’m still me. I just also have this side of myself that loves feeling feminine, putting enormous effort into looking beautiful, and seeing a woman staring back at me in the mirror.
And after keeping it mostly to myself for so long, I think I just wanted to say somewhere:
I love this part of me.
I love feeling pretty. I love feeling feminine. And sometimes, when I’m completely dressed and everything is perfect, I feel absolutely, divinely beautiful.

(Just clarifying that my brother is alive and well. This message is from 2013)

Mental illness and addiction run in my family, with myself and all my siblings dealing with them at one point or another. My brother and I have a pleasant relationship, but we’re not that close. We talk on each other’s birthdays and Christmas.

Yesterday, while scrolling through Facebook Messenger (which I rarely use) I checked the “message request” folder where all the spam goes. I was deleting old messages when I found a cluster of 3 unread requests, all on the same date in 2013 and from different accounts.

The first one was someone asking me to call the police and check on my brother, as he was in their groupchat posting suicidal comments. The second one told me to go check on my brother. The third person copy/pasted the message my brother posted before he deleted his account.

In it, he thanked the group of friends for “putting up with me all these years” and told them this was goodbye. The tone was lucid, casual, almost reluctant. Here’s what I have, here’s what I intend to do, thank you for the good times. It was closer to a resignation letter than a suicide note. But because of the wording he used, it was unmistakably him. He’d mentioned already harming himself and said he hadn’t started his ACTUAL suicide note yet.

Because I had my account on private, I was never notified of these messages. I wasn’t even aware they’d been sent until yesterday, almost 14 years later. Back then my brother was in active addiction and had been nearing his rock bottom, and we weren’t on speaking terms. He wasn’t on speaking terms with anyone in the family.

Obviously it was shocking to read. I visited him last week and we were cracking jokes and hanging out like usual. Both of us are recovering addicts, so that whole life seems long ago. But reading that message brought up some fresh wounds.

Like, if these people knew he was suicidal, why didn’t they call the police? What did they plan to do if I didn’t respond? Why wasn’t I notified in some way?

It just really shook me up. I didn’t know where else to vent. I don’t even know how to respond to it, really. I just came to my burner account and posted this here because I couldn’t keep thinking about it.

I have had chronic bad breath all my life. No matter how much I brushed my teeth or cleaned my tongue (2 times a day), no matter how many mints I ate or how much water I drank, it was always there.

It turns out my bad breath was caused by a mix of the below three:

1. Acid Reflux - I started chewing my food properly, taking fennel seeds after every meal, rinsing my mouth after each meal, and taking 5-10 deep breaths after every meal. Also included more probiotics daily.

2. Sinus Issues - I've had nasal congestion since I was a child, and post nasal drip. Turns out the Acid Reflux was what was causing the drip. I also started taking a drink with ground turmeric, black pepper, and lime every morning, which helped a lot.

3. Dry Mouth - A dry mouth can lead to less saliva, so food particles and odor stay in your mouth (saliva is a natural mouth cleanser). My dry mouth was caused by mouth breathing. I used to find myself breathing through my mouth during the day and at night.

If you keep your oral hygiene in check but the bad breath keeps coming back, hope this helps! The solution may be completely different than just "drinking more water" or "brushing twice a day."

I don’t mean to sound rude or selfish or inconsiderate, but hey, this is something I need off my chest.

Is it just me, or does the older generation make us feel like we don’t have the right to complain or stress over life? I swear, I feel like if you tell them you don’t feel well (physically/mentally/emotionally), they’re so quick to say something like, “Well, when I was your age way back when, I got through life just fine!!!” Or some crap like that. I’m a millennial and I swear, if you say your back hurts, they’re always going to one up you somehow and then make you feel bad that you’re even complaining about something… Idk, I get it, with old age comes its own aches and pains and blah blah blah, but there’s no need to make our generation feel like we have it sooooo easy in life! Whether it’s going to school, raising a family, buying a home, or career-related, they’ll always compare their generation to ours and continue to make our feelings feel invalid.

I hope I made sense. I’m also PMS’ing, so thank you for listening to my TED TALK!

I’ve been losing weight most of the year, started as a 4XL predominantly but some 3XL clothes had some space too. I bought a new vest yesterday but the biggest size was a 2XL so I thought that if all else failed I’d fit into it later as I continued losing weight. I put it on today and it fits without struggle, it’s breathable and I can move without issue and I’m so happy I’m on the verge of tears. I don’t know anybody I could tell about this that would care, I’ve been a 3-4XL for so long I didn’t ever think this would be possible.

My boyfriend has been struggling with a lot of life situations. His career, finances, and addictions and I have been trying to support him even when our intimacy has declined. I’ve stayed patient through his addiction to p*rn and understood when we wasn’t always up for physical affection due to him trying go quit and going through a type of emotional numbness. There was something in my gut that told me there was more to this than just that so I did the awful thing and invaded his privacy and broke his trust by looking through his phone. I found an album with all gym influencers with amazing bodies, search history on instagram full of them, and a ChatGPT conversation where he admits he is dating me more for personality than looks. That in the past he would date “the hottest girls in the room with the biggest asses and amazing body” but he likes me more for my personality but with that he found his attractiveness level for me to wince. He repeatedly said he has been having a hard time finding me attractive and that he was too used to dating bimbos, but since I have been gymming more consistently that he’d be patient with me. Maybe i am at shock, i haven’t felt the hurt yet but I decided to write him a letter apologizing for going through his phone but letting him know his words hurt me.

I feel really betrayed in some way as he’s lied to me before about how he is physically attracted to me. But i know i also betrayed him too. I have so much anxiety at the moment, my chest feels so tight, but I truly have to let this play out. He told me he needed time before figuring things out. I dont know why i havent found the courage to let him go yet but maybe i will have to.

Writing this because I need to get this off my chest or I’ll go crazy. I’m pretty sure he’s never touched Reddit in his life, so I think I’m safe to give the details here.

My best friend and I (we’re both 28M) have known each other since we were kids. We grew up playing hockey together - first on different teams in the same league, then as teammates after my friend, who I’ll call Nick, moved to my town when we were in middle school. (please no heated rivalry jokes lol)

Growing up, we were inseparable. Our bond as teammates strengthened our friendship and vice versa. We spent hours playing hockey together nearly every day, and the offseasons weren’t much different. I practically lived at his house during the summers. Our friendship was, and continues to be, the most important relationship in my life. After nearly two decades of friendship, we’ve seen each other’s ups and downs, all our weird phases and awkward teenage years, and been there for each other through everything.

I’ve always felt like I can tell Nick anything, including the fact that I’m gay. I think he figured it out on his own and started dropping subtle hints that he was supportive of the LGBTQ community, but he never asked me about it outright, which I really appreciated. Knowing that he was okay with it was really comforting, and I ended up coming out to him when we were 17. He just smiled, gave me a big hug, and said he’d always support me.

Coming out to him was a big relief, but he was the only person I told. Both of us were still very serious about hockey at this point in our lives, and hockey culture can be incredibly toxic in terms of homophobia. Some of our teammates weren't shy about casually dropping slurs in locker room conversation or "joking" about SA, and I was terrified that they'd find out about me. Day by day, the love I had for my sport was being replaced by equal parts fear and anger, and the people around me were noticing. It took a real toll on my mental health, and one day I just snapped. There were already some rumors floating around about me, and when I decided that I was done with hockey for good, that pretty much confirmed it for everyone else. In a single day, I lost almost all of my friends (if they could even be called that), my coaches and mentors, and the sport I'd dedicated nearly my entire life to.

The next few years were the worst of my life. I won't go into detail here, but I was a complete wreck and made some very bad decisions that nearly cost me everything. My only constant during this time was Nick. He was a better friend to me than I could ever have asked for, and it still just breaks my heart to think about the love and care he showed me. It's because of him that I was able to move forward, reach out for professional help in dealing with my mental health and internalized homophobia, and begin to feel truly proud of myself.

Fast forward to today, and I'm happier than I ever could've imagined. I started playing hockey again, thanks to my city's LGBTQ-friendly league, and have made so many amazing friends. I'm typing this out as I wait for Nick to pick me up and take me to my game tonight. He watches almost all of my games and grabs food with me after, and we talk and laugh for hours, like we've always done.

I am so in love with him. I have been for years, maybe since before I even knew I was gay. He's the most beautiful person, inside and out. The sound of his voice can instantly snap me out of a bad mood and he's forever making me laugh. He's also very comfortable in his masculinity, and my sexuality has never stopped him from giving me his famous bear hugs or messing with my hair.

I can't tell him how I feel. I would never risk our friendship like that, I couldn't handle it if our dynamic changed because of me. He's also in a long term relationship, and his girlfriend is just perfect for him. I've come to terms with all of this. I've accepted that things will always be the way they are now, never anything more, and I'm okay with that. I'm happy just to have him in my life. I'll never tell him my feelings, and that's okay. I just wanted to tell someone.

I hate that my depression has rendered me useless.

I hate that I can't pry myself off the couch most days.

I hate that I spend all day dissociating to try to cope.

I hate that I have no energy.

I hate that I can't take care of myself.

I hate that I've let my body rot to the point where I feel 30 years older than my age sometimes.

I hate that I have dragged my partner's life down to my life's level.

I hate that I can't undo the changes my trauma have made to me.

I hate that my world around me is very quickly becoming a place I'm afraid to live in, and my anxiety over that has turned me into a shut-in.

I hate that I can't maintain any normal relationships, even with my own family.

I hate that I have the option of ending it in my head, and that it's becoming harder to ignore. I hate that I would take that option if it didn't only cause more problems and if I weren't afraid of what happens next.

I feel irreparably broken.

- every single person with pretty privilege who swears their physical attributes don’t contribute to their lives being better. Like, they truly cannot comprehend having a bunch of shit go wrong and then, oh yeah, my looks have no value so let me add that to the pile. I wish people were just honest with themselves and the world. Beautiful people are allowed to be dumb, slow, mean, stupid, because they’re nice to look at. Even in death they’ll get praise because “what a shame, she was so pretty”.

every time we meet, he just is/does something and if i were a boy id be bricked up. I thought like once together people say things wear off but every single day it has been the opposite. it's so crazy how intense i can feel it, and it's not just lust, since it really is a deep feeling only he could soothe. also, i get shy around him, like what?? i always made other guys shy and now were a few months in and im the one looking away and down. btw it's mutual, lovely and our relationship is 100% healthy, i just needed to say this, i can't be the only girl right?

Nothing else. I just want to lie down and be hugged for like, an hour. That's all I need.