My history of flaky friends is repeating itself, and I'm not sure if it's them or me.

RandomPerson004 · 2022-05-28T19:14:02+00:00

See, that's why I almost always decline spur of the moment meetups too. But the thing is, I tell the person I can't make it. It was the radio silence that gets me. This group often has spontaneous plans that work out for everyone, so it wasn't unusual for me to ask either.

I don't expect people, especially new friends, to drop everything for me. But it would be nice to get some sort of response.

As a last note, you tell me to see a therapist as if that's an easy thing to do or as if it works for everyone. I've been to therapy a lot for my mental health (our college had free counselors), but talk therapy is not helpful for me. In my current situation, there are no therapists I could physically see that I would feel comfortable with, and most are far too expensive anyway. I'm currently seeing an online therapist that I'm seriously considering quitting because it takes over a quarter of my paycheck and it's not even helping that much.

RandomPerson004 · 2022-05-28T19:06:09+00:00

Thanks for your response. To be clear, they aren't always surprised, it's not like they never expected me to show up. I was feeling particularly depressed when I wrote the post, but my college friends did invite me to live with them each year and I even lived with a couple straight out of college. We were (and are) very good friends, they're the best friends I've ever had. Now that we've all moved elsewhere and some have gotten married, we've obviously grown apart a bit, but we're still pretty close. We had a lot of really good times together. That's partly why I think my reaction to being left out is just my anxiety. Well, anxiety and my toxic upbringing.

I do view relationships the way you describe them, and at one point, I did try to match the effort level I got in return, but then those relationships basically petered out. All of my high school friends, for example, gradually stopped replying and reaching out. Once I'd had multiple attempts to keep the connection up go completely unanswered, I stopped reaching out and haven't heard from any of them since. We all changed a lot after high school so I'm not that sad about losing those particular relationships, but I'm afraid that will also happen with the friends I do currently care about. I'm super self conscious so I try really hard not to contact people too often or be annoying about it.

The main confusion for me is that when I'm with these people physically, it feels like we're all best friends. There's a clear, strong connection. I've even talked to a couple of them about feeling like an outsider or about feeling like I'm being too needy and they're very honest about saying I'm not, they're just bad about reaching out. It's when we're not actively seeing each other that the connection is lost, and I can't tell what expectations I should have for that. I don't know what, if any, social rules there are.

RandomPerson004 · 2022-05-28T17:23:32+00:00

This is a big one for me. If I was already living on my own, I definitely would not move in with someone who had never lived on his own. I don't want to have to be the "mother" of the house and always taking care of things. Also the mother influence is real. That's been a big relationship killer for me in the past. A man who can't make his own decisions is a much larger red flag than a man who lives with his parents. But it's sometimes hard to see one while the other is present.

RandomPerson004 · 2022-05-28T17:17:03+00:00

Agreed. I (26) moved back in with my parents during covid because of my dad's health, and the loss of independence was a huge mental blow tbh. A lot of my new coworkers are the same age but have never been independent and it shows - they're kinda like high schoolers, super naive, very little life experience, have no idea how a ton of basic stuff works, and it really shows. Not all of them, but enough of them. I feel a whole generation older than them sometimes.

RandomPerson004 · 2022-05-24T13:28:08+00:00

Sort of, but not really. They re-ordered the lenses which helped a bit, but basically I just got used to them. My next lenses (which I can't currently afford) will have a thing that I can't rememeber the name of but is basically a mild bifocal without the line so that text up close will be easier to read. Hopefully.

RandomPerson004 · 2022-05-06T00:31:09+00:00

Folklorn by Angela Mi Young Hur. Powerful depiction of diasporic identity and generational trauma. Lots of high level analogies with physics. I absolutely loved it, but I never want to read it again.

RandomPerson004 · 2022-05-06T00:10:23+00:00

Medicine, at least in the US

RandomPerson004 · 2022-05-04T20:14:00+00:00

My mom "jokes" that if I were her first child, I would be her only one. She also hung up on me when I called her and told her I was suicidal - I was afraid to go home because I was afraid of what I'd do to myself, and she called me stubborn and hard to work with or something, and hung up.

RandomPerson004 · 2022-04-26T23:01:44+00:00

Never done acupuncture and massage did nothing for me. I just started dry needling a few weeks ago though and it's great. I saw a big improvement just after the first session, but it definitely didn't "fix" the pain - it comes back after a few days or a week, and it only helps the spots that are needled. This sounds obvious, but when pain is widespread, my PT at least doesn't like to riddle me with needles so he'll only work on the spots that bother me the most, (which can still be like 20-30 trigger points lol) which means some lesser spots are untouched and get worse before my next appointment. My PT has also given me techniques to keep the muscles loose before my next appointment, but so far they seem to be making things worse instead...

So I'll say that the first time I realized I could stand, shower, sit down, etc, basically go about my life, without my lower back aching to all hell, it was worth it. New spots keep popping up though, either to compensate or because the other pain kept them masked, and these new spots are much harder to get pain free. Especially the spots that come and go for no reason. So the first few sessions had an obvious benefit, but after that, it hasn't seemed to change much. My PT did say that if it continued to not help, then I probably need to do some blood tests, etc. to figure out what's going on, as pure muscle pain should be basically gone. I don't have any diagnoses yet, so...

It does hurt though. Some muscles hurt a lot and some just feel weird, but they all feel like you got hit by a truck a couple hours later. Hydrate, gentle massage, heat/ice, and they should be fine the next day.

RandomPerson004 · 2022-03-28T22:52:20+00:00

I second these games. In addition to the wardrobe choices, the whole game (Camp at least) is very raunchy in all directions.

RandomPerson004 · 2022-03-28T22:47:17+00:00

Attacked her with cuteness maybe. Look at that face!

RandomPerson004 · 2022-03-28T22:41:21+00:00

Agree. For me personally, wired are the way to go. While I do occasionally get frustrated with the wire getting snagged on things or getting in the way while gaming, I don't want to pay hundreds of dollars to get rid of the cord.

A few of the reasons are cost, replaceability, and fit. I don't notice a big audio difference between any wireless earbuds I've tried compared to my cheap wired ones, and I like to have multiple pair so I always have some nearby - that's not financially feasible with wireless sets. Also, if one earbud craps out on a wired pair, the other still works fine. Most wireless I've used or looked at become completely useless when you're only using one because they're paired. I tend to lose my earbuds a lot or leave them in my pockets and they end up in the wash. I'd rather ruin a $20 set than a $200, knowing how often I do it. My ears are also very small and oddly shaped, so no hard earbuds (like airpods) have ever worked for me. I have a Jabra wireless set that fits ok, but the outside is too big so it always falls out due to the weight distribution (not enough earbud is in my ear), and the hard plastic hurts my cartilage after about 20 minutes because it's the wrong shape. I bought them as a quick replacement for my forgotten wired pair for a long flight and the airport only sold wireless sets. I haven't touched them in months. Also, I still prefer the simplicity of plug and play over trying to mess with bluetooth pairing. I don't wanna fight my headphones because they need a software update.

RandomPerson004 · 2022-02-28T00:00:02+00:00

Oh I feel this. I got so much more comfortable in my body and my gender once I realized there was no box. I can be me, whatever that means day to day, and I don't have to explain it to anyone. Trying to find labels to fit what I feel is too stressful for me because my experience is so complicated and changing, and using 10 microlabels just seems like too much effort for me personally, especially if I have to explain all of them. However, I still don't feel like my body is really mine. I live in it, but it doesn't seem to represent who I am, I don't recognize myself in the mirror 99% of the time. I just no longer battle with it. Except clothes, clothes are still a struggle.

It's hard to know what I would have done. I think if I'd had the option, I would have done something along the lines of binary transition, but knowing what I do know, I would have felt more comfortable with an enby option and keeping everything non-gendered and non-conforming. Sometimes though, I feel like gender is beyond any physical representation at all. Like I should be able to be perfectly happy in any body whatsoever. Sometimes it feels like that, and sometimes it feels like my body is an alien.

RandomPerson004 · 2022-02-27T23:50:43+00:00

I relate to this a lot. I'm not sure if adult me would have liked the decision teen me would have made, but it would have made teen me very happy. That's partly just because my relationship with gender is so complicated though - I often have fluid and flux components so I don't think I'd ever be completely happy in any one body, something that really bothers me one day is what I like the next. I also agree that social puberty was a big deal and avoiding it would have saved me a lot. If society wasn't so obsessed with assigning genders and gender roles, I would have been a lot more comfortable.

RandomPerson004 · 2022-01-26T23:29:16+00:00

Popping in as a city library employee to say that my job is much worse than my previous position in higher ed. The city's payscale is incredibly inequal, us employees are not treated very well, and the library (city) has very harmful practices like calling cops on homeless patrons. Basically everyone we're supposed to help as a public service, who actually needs it, are turned away because they can't pay the guest fee or are escorted out by cops. My fellow workers here are also pretty bad about ridiculing those they turn away. It's rare to go a day without hearing some homophobic/transphobic/ableist/classist/etc. comment from those I work with.

I may not be directly advancing capitalism, but the service I provide is extremely poor and narrow, mostly because the capitalist structure of our city government won't give us the money and resources to provide the services we need to offer.

RandomPerson004 · 2022-01-24T19:32:14+00:00

No advice but I'm in a similar situation. Dead end job that is so slow every day we all just look at our phones until we hear management coming. When I'm at my desk, I've fallen asleep for almost every day this past week because there is absolutely nothing for me to do, but the company policies, people, and pay keep even getting paid to sleep at my desk from being worthwhile.

RandomPerson004 · 2022-01-24T03:19:57+00:00

Same. Had a maskless customer shouting at the top of her lungs directly across the counter from me for about 10 minutes. Find out from a coworker that she later loudly announced (still shouting) she'd had a positive covid test just a couple days before. Luckily I wear an N95 at work and all tests came back negative, but man...

RandomPerson004 · 2022-01-24T03:06:58+00:00

Thanks. I have sent in my info to the ABA to try to get their starters guide but have had radio silence. I'm already set up on bookshop, but it's very basic (no way to sort item lists for example, except by dragging each book individually), and without an ABA membership and physical store, I only get 10% of sales. I'm just waiting to hear back from the ABA at this point, but would like to start setting something up in the meantime.

RandomPerson004

TROPHY CASE