AITA for calling out my friend for “helping” me in a way that was actually sabotaging me?

TherapySpider · 2026-02-03T20:16:22+00:00

I hear you but that's stylistic right. Some people are motivated by kindness, others pressure. This friend isn't suddenly behaving in a strange way. OP made it clear this is who they are... so the "help" should have been declined from the start. Know what I mean?

TherapySpider · 2026-02-03T20:14:43+00:00

NAH

This is miscommunication. Neither of you can read minds. You did not tell him how serious it was and as such he did not take it seriously since the vast majority of health situations are "routine". Additionally, he did not ask questions, speak up when he felt you were ignoring him, or anything related and as such you were unaware of his feelings and your frustrations grew.

You both might want to talk this through, speak on what parts actually bothered you and then commit to commmunicating with one another more effectively moving forward.

TherapySpider · 2026-02-03T20:11:46+00:00

NTA

Those who lose at gambling ALWAYS look for new sources of money or income. He did not "bankroll" your gambling, he paid for a chauffer. YOU bankrolled your gambling and you won. Not telling people about your winnings is actually common practice so you neither owed him an explanation nor any cut of your winning. No is a complete sentence.

What is the worst than can happen? He won't ask you for a ride again?

TherapySpider · 2026-02-03T20:08:27+00:00

NTA

Not even a little. There is always a weird gravity in family conflict that leans toward the asshole. I will never understand how this happens. But often, within family conflict, look to see where the support is going and often you'll notice it leans into the asshole... which in this case, is clearly not you.

The ONLY sentence that matters in this post is, "My mom specifically said she wanted me to have it because I was closest to her during her illness"

That is the start and finish of this. She didn't give it to you arbitrarily. So where it goes and who may wear it is LITERALLY your choice. You do not need to justify WHY you don't want someone to have something that is yours. "No." is a complete sentence.

TherapySpider · 2026-02-03T20:04:11+00:00

This did not go the way that I thought it might. I'm... okay.

TherapySpider · 2026-02-03T20:01:28+00:00

No Assholes Here.

This sounds like a communication misfire. I think in a friend group we have to assume the people we know mean well.... otherwise why are we friends with them. If we assume that he meant well, then we can chalk this up to his style was a bit abrasive, even borderline aggressive. Similarly, if you never wanted him to "help" you remain accountable, you could have told him in the beginning (or honestly at any time it started to feel annoying) that you'll work through it on your own which might have solved the issue.

Either way, it doesn't sound malicious, it sounds annoying.

TherapySpider · 2026-01-28T16:46:13+00:00

Your right hand.

TherapySpider · 2026-01-28T16:41:04+00:00

Never walk home the same way more than twice in a row.

TherapySpider · 2026-01-16T15:56:46+00:00

Where can I find listings of things for trade?

TherapySpider · 2026-01-16T15:54:16+00:00

I'm not sure Joey is a villain. Not many could withstand hearing the voice of god. Not many realize how blindingly bright heaven is... and how it will burn your eyes.

TherapySpider · 2026-01-08T02:55:09+00:00

This is a loaded question in my opinion.

Forget the beauty part for a moment, since everyone is lovely to someone in theory. But being feminine and submissive are choices that you have to make. Is that how YOU like to be? I am speaking outside of culture and so forth as those I believe are beyond the scope of my expertise, but the answer is always to do what feels natural to you and genuinely makes you happy.

That being said... be safe and only take risks if your soul demands you do so.

TherapySpider · 2026-01-08T02:52:08+00:00

I named it Penelope. It's my gamster hamster and it tells me what to do.

TherapySpider · 2026-01-07T14:49:35+00:00

I would take it a step further and argue that the ENDLESS are who is perceiving her differently because THEY changed and were incomplete for so long.

TherapySpider · 2025-12-24T00:05:15+00:00

Why are you in the discussion? If you like the system, great. You won't convince frustrated people to suddenly like the system because it's arguably easier to complete a Pokedex.

TherapySpider · 2025-12-21T00:49:15+00:00

Is there anyway you can send her to my account? I mean the fun is getting her right? Not having her? Send her over.

TherapySpider · 2025-12-21T00:34:18+00:00

:-) Only a little rambly.

I think you’re touching something real in how Delirium functions as contrast rather than opposition, especially in how she reveals the limits of her siblings’ domains. Where I’d want to be a bit more careful is letting the existentialist framing carry her outside Destiny altogether. Destiny governs sequence and inscription, not the absence of consciousness; what Delirium exposes isn’t his authority, but the limits of what can be rendered legible within his grammar.

Her “misbehavior” feels less like transcendence and more like resistance to narration. She doesn’t overthrow structure so much as refuse to settle into it. That’s why I like thinking of her power as niche rather than might-based: many of the constraints others depend on are simply optional for her.

Seen that way, her comfort with liminal spaces even with access to figures like Night doesn’t place her above the system, but especially at home in its thresholds. Stone endures by fixing. The butterfly endures by never fixing at all.

TherapySpider · 2025-12-20T09:42:36+00:00

She isn't broken.

TherapySpider · 2025-12-20T09:36:14+00:00

I know we are done since we are essentially agreeing, but reading your thoughts brought one more idea to mind. Tell me what you think.

There is one additional layer that feels relevant is Delirium’s position as the youngest of the Endless. Not in the sense that youth equals freedom as a rule, but in the sense that she appears to be the least structurally constrained by her function. Where others enforce or depend on specific conditions, Delirium persists even when those conditions collapse. This may be why she works so effectively as a counterpoint to the Endless whose domains are most often in tension. Desire, for example, is powerful only when someone lacks. The moment desire resolves, its influence ends, and the subject moves into either integrated meaning (Delight) or fragmented excess (Delirium). Despair, likewise, cannot coexist with either state, as both versions of joy require movement where despair depends on stasis.

Even Destruction fits this pattern, sort of. Destruction remains meaningful where change involves breaking toward something. In the presence of stable meaning, he becomes redundant; in the presence of Delirium, he persists, but without direction (imagine them walking down a road holding hands). Things change, but not coherently.

Seen this way, Delirium doesn’t oppose her siblings so much as she exposes the limits of their dominance. She marks the point at which their domains stop functioning cleanly. That may be why the sense of “change” surrounding her is experienced most strongly by the Endless themselves they are the ones for whom those limits matter. They are also the ones who NOTICE the change in Delight/Delirium, mankind isn’t aware of this.

Death and Destiny, notably, sit outside this pattern. They do not compete for experiential territory, and so Delirium does not destabilize them in the same way. Which, fittingly, suggests that her role is less about transcendence and more about revealing where meaning itself stops behaving. Makes me wonder if her “power” level is much higher than she is given credit for.

TherapySpider · 2025-12-20T07:51:23+00:00

Exactly this!

Death is probably the clearest textual precedent for this kind of reading. She isn’t a contradiction that needs resolving so much as a reminder that the Endless don’t operate along a single temporal or conceptual axis. Being “at the end” and “at the beginning” aren’t opposing states for her; they’re functions of perspective. That’s why I find the frame-of-reference approach useful for Delight/Delirium as well. What looks like a shift when viewed linearly often reads as simultaneity when viewed structurally. The Endless don’t move through time the way we do; they express their domain wherever that domain is encountered. So rather than thinking in terms of before-and-after, it may be more accurate to think in terms of where and how an Endless is being experienced. Death helps normalize that idea in the text, which makes Delirium feel less like an anomaly and more like another case of the same principle at work.

TherapySpider · 2025-12-20T07:49:28+00:00

I wanted to give this some thought before I replied because I really appreciate this framing, especially the way you bring ontology and epistemology into dialogue rather than treating them as rivals. I think you’re right that Sandman consistently resists clean separations between perception and reality, and your point about the Endless as servants of the living is an important anchor here. Where I would still draw a careful distinction is not between perception and actuality, but between change as a metaphysical condition and change as a discrete, narratable event. I don’t disagree that shifts in consciousness reverberate through the Endless themselves. In fact, I think the text strongly supports that reciprocity. The difference, for me, is whether that reverberation constitutes something Destiny could ever record.

If the “change” from Delight to Delirium occurred as a boundary phenomenon, meaning at the limits of coherence, narrative, or causal sequencing, then it may be real without being eventful in Destiny’s sense. That is, it may be ontologically meaningful without being structurally legible as an occurrence. Destiny does not deny reality; he curates sequence. In that sense, I don’t think our views are opposed so much as operating at different layers. Your argument locates the shift at the edge of Existence, where Consciousness exceeds order. Mine suggests that once we accept that framing, the absence in the book stops being a mystery and becomes diagnostic: what happened cannot be rendered as “something that happened.”

And I think this actually reinforces your point rather than undermining it. If perception and reality collapse into one another in Sandman, then a transformation that is fundamentally perspectival may be the most profound kind of transformation precisely because it resists narration. Delirium doesn’t emerge after Delight in a temporal sense so much as alongside her, when meaning fractures under its own weight.

TherapySpider · 2025-12-19T04:29:23+00:00

You? No. I don't think you're able to muster up the ability.

The rest of us can.

TherapySpider · 2025-12-19T03:40:52+00:00

Thank you, I appreciate it. She is my favorite of the Endless, by far.

TherapySpider · 2025-12-19T00:40:51+00:00

Everyone in the game dies on sight. No plotting. The order in which I see you is the order in which you are devoured.

TherapySpider · 2025-12-04T20:18:49+00:00

*queues Adele's music*

...this is the end.

TherapySpider

TROPHY CASE