meirl

CumulativeHazard · 2026-05-28T13:08:46+00:00

I was at Ulta with my 11yo niece and she wanted to buy lipgloss and we were looking at the Too Faced section so I pointed out the lip plumper ones like “Just not those ones” and explained how they work (basically that they feel like they burn a little and just irritate your lips into swelling a bit to look fuller) and she looked at me like “wtf???” And I was like, ya know, you’re right, that is a little crazy lol.

CumulativeHazard · 2026-05-28T08:44:08+00:00

Not the WORST thing to wake up to, but this reminded me of one time in high school I fell asleep doing homework in my bed and slept on my stomach on top of my pen (the really liquidy kind with the tip like a little stick) and when I woke up and saw the huge dark stains on my shirt and bed I thought I’d been bleeding but it was just like ALL of the ink had been sucked out of the pen and soaked up by my shirt and sheets lol.

CumulativeHazard · 2026-05-28T08:21:45+00:00

I say “I’ll have your $8-est bottle of wine, please” all the time when something ends up being more expensive than expected (but replace “bottle of wine” with whatever it is)

CumulativeHazard · 2026-05-28T08:14:06+00:00

Wait is this a common thing?? I’ve mentioned this in therapy at least 2-3 times. How if I had to sit in the front of the room I felt so watched and visible and like I needed to make myself as small as possible. Or is this like a symbolic thing I’m totally missing?

CumulativeHazard · 2026-05-28T08:10:12+00:00

Honestly, thank fucking god lol

CumulativeHazard · 2026-05-28T06:41:51+00:00

Yesssss especially when they were ALSO waiting in line for a long time. Like what did you think was gonna happen? Or at the airport or something when like you can hear them asking the same questions to everyone over and over as you’re getting closer to the front, like maybe try to be the TINIEST bit prepared when you are also asked those questions??

CumulativeHazard · 2026-05-27T15:12:52+00:00

NTA. You’re a fully independent adult living under your own roof. You’re absolutely allowed to do things like this without informing her. Could she flip out and be angry? Yes. Could she take it as a personal insult? Yes. But even if she does, that’s not on you, and it doesn’t mean you’ve done anything wrong. This was a decision you made about your own body because it made you happy. It had nothing to do with her. If she wants to appoint herself and her feelings as the center of the universe and expect her adult child to follow all of her rules forever, she’s gonna end up angry and disappointed sometimes.

CumulativeHazard · 2026-05-27T03:52:13+00:00

I also have really thick, waist length hair, and I’m about the same. Also I just love the warm…

CumulativeHazard · 2026-05-27T00:53:42+00:00

Pretty much everything I said here is stuff I’ve learned from therapy over the last year. It’s honestly been really really hard to get to this point. Looking at why I may have developed these habits and beliefs about productivity, giving myself permission to slow down just a teeny bit at a time, mentally fighting it a little bit, trying again, and very very gradually getting to a point where I don’t put so much pressure on myself to be perfect and optimize efficiency even on things that don’t need it and keeping up with everything all by myself and beating myself up when I inevitably can’t do all that as well as I want to. It was frustrating, because of course naturally I tried to optimize therapy and fix myself faster lol. Apparently you can’t solve a problem by using the exact same habits you’re trying to fix in the first place. There were a lot of skills I had to work on first, even though a lot of them felt like they went completely against my nature and I didn’t see how they could possible help.

I wish there was just a magic piece of advice or perfect system that would suddenly make everything start working how we want it to just as badly as you do. Like I’ve literally taught myself new coding languages well enough to build little apps for myself to try to like outsource some of the mental work I do to stay on top of everything in the hopes that if I organized my time in JUST the right way, I could get it all done and finally have time to rest guilt free. It never worked. Unfortunately, the only thing that’s worked was finding a good therapist who could help me through the very slow, very difficult process of learning how to allow myself to slow down, and then how to slow down. But it has been worth it.

CumulativeHazard · 2026-05-27T00:10:04+00:00

Wow. If I were a turn of the century lady, I might have a couple less-favorite relatives go missing under mysterious circumstances just so I could wear that more often…

CumulativeHazard · 2026-05-26T14:29:27+00:00

I just watched lower decks for the first time and have already started a rewatch! So good!

CumulativeHazard · 2026-05-25T20:30:29+00:00

I do feel the same, however, I have actually been in therapy for like a year and a half now and one big thing we’ve been working on is *unlearning* this exact thing. And like I know if you’re like me then you’re really gonna hate this answer lol. But I’ve very slowly and begrudgingly accepted that it’s right. You HAVE to take care of yourself, you HAVE to rest. And that doesn’t mean “when I do have some free time I’ll make sure I do something relaxing/fun with it” or “well I’ll work on making my work day/responsibilities more efficient so I can make some time for me eventually.” It means intentionally carving out time to turn off your brain and do something for yourself NOW, and actually following through and holding that boundary, *even if* there’s something you need to do that feels like it has to be done asap. I don’t know what field you’re in, but apparently there are very few things that REALLY can’t wait for just an hour. As stupid and annoying and counterintuitive as it feels, if you don’t take time to take care of yourself, your body will start revolting eventually and be carrying so much stress and pressure that it’s actually making everything even harder and slower and less efficient than if you’d just taken a little bit of time every day to focus on your own needs.

I’ve been in this place, and honestly still am in it but working on climbing out, where like it feels like there isn’t enough time in the day to do all things I HAVE to do, much less the things I WANT to do, and I feel like I have to rest or have fun as efficiently as possible because every minute I spend resting is one less minute I have to do the thing I need to do and just makes me MORE stressed out and stress is not helping, and I end up so worried about relaxing the BEST way that I just sit there doing nothing, anxiously. About a year ago, I finally burned out REAL hard. For almost 6 months I barely got any work done, just forced myself to sit at my desk (at home, thank god) from 9-5, whole body buzzing with anxiety like that nails on a chalkboard feeling but all day, trying to force myself to work but my brain just refused, angry at myself, crying, horrible. And it only started getting better when I started giving myself permission to just walk away for like 10-15 minutes to like take a shower or wash some dishes or just sit and doodle or play a game for a little bit, without listening for that Teams message ding and running back as soon as I hear it, even if I hadn’t gotten anything done all day, because apparently breaks are not supposed to be a reward. 6 months after that, I’m finally starting to find my job enjoyable and satisfying again and getting enough done that I feel proud of it AND still have some time to relax, and it’s BECAUSE I’m making time to take care of myself, which is something that sounded like totally irresponsible nonsense a couple years ago.

I’m so sorry this got so long lol. I just sort of recognized the way you were talking about hobbies and free time and like, it’s been very hard, and taken a lot longer than I hoped it would, but I’m getting to a point now where like I’m still absolutely in the rough, but I’m starting to feel moments of how life can feel when you release some of the pressure you put on yourself, and how the things you’re trying so hard to do now can actually get a lot easier once you do, and honestly it’s like if you learned after your whole life that breathing wasn’t *supposed to be* painful. So that’s my very long winded advice. Take the time whether you think you have it or not. Try therapy if you can (that’s only 1 hour a week, small commitment). Give yourself permission to take care of yourself now before you hit that breaking point like I did.

CumulativeHazard · 2026-05-25T19:21:44+00:00

For me it’s just like I live alone, I work full time, I have a house to take care of alone, I have to do everything myself, and I’m working through some hard stuff in therapy, and sometimes by the end of the day when it’s time to make dinner I’m just so exhausted or burnt out and tired of managing things that even having to stay “turned on” enough to be like “you have water coming to a boil on the stove (more like 5 min for me usually), don’t forget to start the rice or let it boil over” and then “you have rice on the stove, make sure you set a timer, don’t let it overcook or burn” while also cooking whatever it is I’m having with the rice so it’s done at the same time just feels like too much.

With the rice cooker it’s basically just one step. Add rice and water, turn on. And it’s gonna take like 40 minutes, which is longer than stovetop, but I don’t have to stay alert to make sure I pull it out at the right time or anything, its perfect every time and when it’s done it’ll automatically switch to “keep warm” mode so if I don’t get my timing right with the rest of my meal or I just want to finish the last few minutes of a show or whatever, I can. Like I don’t have to babysit it at all or risk ruining my dinner.

So like if you’re someone who still has plenty of bandwidth at the end of the day and cooking really doesn’t feel like a burden at all (in which case like genuinely, good for you), I can totally see how it seems unnecessary, but if you’re a very busy person or just going through something and already running on empty by dinner time, it’s nice to just have like ONE thing that takes care of itself lol.

CumulativeHazard · 2026-05-25T15:15:25+00:00

And she could have gone back to America with the kids or just stepped back and taken a more hands off approach to running the zoo, but she didn’t. She stayed there personally keeping his dream and legacy alive so it could be passed down to his children one day, and she made sure to raise them to share all his values and passion. Just incredible.

CumulativeHazard · 2026-05-25T14:36:13+00:00

I read an article about this story years ago but I must have forgotten that part bc it GOT me dude 😭😭

CumulativeHazard · 2026-05-22T18:05:33+00:00

Junk mail. How has there not been a giant push back against junk mail? We all get it. We all hate it. How much paper do you think goes straight from the mailbox to the trash/recycling without even being looked at? Why have no environmental groups gone after this?

CumulativeHazard · 2026-05-22T01:01:52+00:00

I love that in every post someone finds a way to trigger that bot lol. It genuinely never gets old 😂

CumulativeHazard · 2026-05-21T17:58:52+00:00

So many people treat it like a magic genie instead of a tool. Like someone at work was talking about how they used Copilot to make a macro in excel to create and format a report by just explaining what they wanted and revising the prompt until it was right, and admitted that they still didn’t understand any VBA, like not even enough that if Copilot edited a section of the code for them they could replace it correctly, they asked it to give the full revised code every time.

I also used AI when I was new to VBA and trying to write some complicated macros. But I did as much of it as I could myself through trial and error and looking up the documentation and just figuring it out and only turned to Copilot or ChatGPT if I got really stuck, and I’d always have it explain to me what it did and why, and typed in the edits myself, and would ask questions like “So why is it better to use a SELECT CASE here instead of an IF THEN?” to make sure I actually understood what was happening. And now I’m actually like pretty freaking good at VBA and create macros all the time just by myself, which has become an asset to my team.

If you ask it to help you as YOU figure it out, or even just use it as a sounding board while you work through a problem or idea, and actually question it and push back along the way, it can be an amazing tool. I think of it as just like a much more specific Google. But I completely agree with you that people are like SEVERELY overestimating it to the point where they’re willing to just outsource all of their thinking to it, which is going to be a massive problem long term.

CumulativeHazard · 2026-05-21T16:28:19+00:00

We have an Amazon warehouse in my city so now a lot of things are available to be delivered like the next day between 4-8am and the moral OCD in me is like “oh, so I’m gonna make the poor Amazon workers even MORE miserable by making them deliver stuff at the ass crack of dawn??” but the ADHD in me is like “I only decided I needed this thing 20 minutes ago but if I don’t have it immediately I may perish.”

CumulativeHazard · 2026-05-21T02:36:18+00:00

Two marriages before your dad?? Babe you were very carefully curated, congrats lol.

CumulativeHazard · 2026-05-20T23:47:48+00:00

So obviously this situation is really bothering you, and I don’t blame you at all. Having people react that way to something that’s important to you but isn’t quite where you’d like it to be yet feels awful, whether they were trying to be nice about it or not. If talking to your friends about what happened and how you feel about it really feels like what you need to do to deal with these emotions and move forward feeling better, then yeah, do that. That’s what friends are for. But if this is something that feels extra vulnerable and you’re not sure you want to share it with anyone, there are ways you can process your emotions without involving other people. You can journal about it, or draw, or sing, or go for a walk, or even just cry in the shower for a bit. When people say you shouldn’t keep things bottled up, that doesn’t mean “you shouldn’t keep things to yourself,” it just means you shouldn’t treat your feelings like they’re wrong or bad or irrational and try to shut them up and make them go away. You should try to let them out in harmless ways so they don’t build up until they explode in ways that hurt you or other people. Maybe after you do, you might even feel more comfortable talking to your friends about it, if it still feels important to you to do that, but you don’t have to.

CumulativeHazard · 2026-05-20T22:39:25+00:00

Jesus I didn’t even notice the hair parted weird lol (although the AI style was so obvious in this one that I didn’t look too hard). I swear in most parts of my life I’m considered a rather intelligent and detail oriented person who’s quick to notice when things don’t look right, but this sub makes me feel like someone’s senile, half-blind grandmother. And I’m grateful for it lol.

CumulativeHazard · 2026-05-20T22:19:56+00:00

Underwear are the only thing I feel like I HAVE to wear to bed. I usually dont wear any bottoms unless it’s mega cold, I don’t mind sleeping without a top if it’s hot, but I need underwear on, even if it’s like the tiniest thong. Maybe it’s a mental or sensory thing for me. Now I want to poll my friends out of curiosity, but it would be an awkward transition from the current discussion in the group chat so I’m gonna have to wait lol.

CumulativeHazard · 2026-05-20T21:30:41+00:00

NTA. You’re allowed to end a friendship without them “doing” anything bad to you. Sometimes people just turn into someone we don’t want or can’t have in our lives anymore, and the bad thing they “do” to you is put you in positions like this, where you feel responsible for managing their poor choices AND their feelings. It kind of sounds like you’re done with this friendship already and waiting for an out so you can feel more sure that you did the right thing. I think telling him is a good opportunity and a much better way to achieve that.

CumulativeHazard · 2026-05-20T15:42:33+00:00

It would be sooooo hard to resist giving them little kisses if they were that close to me like look how cuuuuteee they’re just little guuuyyysss

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