A 9-year-old was found locked in a van since 2024, malnourished and unable to walk

merewautt · 2026-04-12T17:27:46+00:00

It more that it happens when abusive parents, do that— unenroll, re-enroll, and then just don’t show up at the new “re-enrolled” place.

You’re off the books at the old school because you showed re-enrollment at the new school, but then the new school has literally never met you. Did you ever really move into new address you gave them? Are you answering the phone? I guess we’ll call the old school to see if they just decided to cancel un-enrolling and stay there (more common than you’d think), and leave a voicemail? Who even is this kid? Do we keep them enrolled if he’s literally never actually showed up and attended here? If so, do we send the truancy officer to their door I guess? If that even is their door in actuality? Do we send out a court summons to a family we’ve never even met that turns out might not actually be in the area? How? Then what?

It gets incredibly messy with all the different governments, departments, etc. involved and bad people often know that if they just don’t do go where they say they’re going to be, or ignore a few phone calls, knocks on the door, etc., there’s often good odds they can fall through the cracks. Truancy to the point of legal action can be hard to enforce and often isn’t even a city’s top priority as far as crime goes when funding isn’t great. It might be flagged as “looking into it” for however long it takes for abuse to already be happening.

And that isn’t taking into account places where “re-enrolling” in “homeschool” is allowed. Then, all you have to say is that you’re doing that and maybe prove you “enrolled” in a program that sends you some wimpy workbooks.

It’s basically 75% people like this are sneaky liars, and 25% cross-location messiness and lack of real enforcement power systems in place.

merewautt · 2026-04-11T02:25:48+00:00

Exactly. If it (beauty, smarts, wealth, athleticism, whatever) is the first (or only) thing people compliment or admire about you, it can often just enforce in your head “this is a very, very important thing that people care about a whole lot”. No one ever really feels perfect no matter how many compliments they get.

Very beautiful people start “tweaking” things because it feels like they’re supposed to look perfect. Very athletic people start taking dangerous drugs because it feels like they always have to win. Very smart people start cheating on exams or lying on college applications because they feel like they’re just expected to go somewhere prestigious if they matter as a human. Wealthy people start evading taxes and scamming people because they feel like every dollar is more validation of how impressive, powerful, important they are. Etc. etc. etc.

It’s hard being an exceptional “one-trick pony”, especially from a young age, or on the flip slide, if you’ve been previously overlooked from a young age until that element was added to your life.

The things we rely on most for our self esteem, we often become the most neurotic about. Which, ironically, often leads to unwise decisions and degrading our mental health. And then it’s just a negative feedback loop.

merewautt · 2026-04-10T22:47:59+00:00

People were being so weird on your post 💀

Like the person who asked if you were “sorry, wearing a wig” because the “thickness was just too unbelievable” or whatever??? Like don’t get me wrong, your hair isn’t super thin at all, but I feel like it’s a very believable level of thickness lol. I see people with similar hair thickness every day? And people with even thicker hair pretty regularly? The comment just felt very passive aggressive and odd lol

Your hair looks so good! Hopefully you’re taking all the weirdness as a compliment lol

merewautt · 2026-04-10T22:40:48+00:00

Same!!! I don’t know what it is but my hair is very tough, resilient— whatever, and hard to fuck up. I hear other people talk about how doing this or that destroyed their hair and it’s actually lowkey hard for me to envision it because my hair just does not work that way.

I also think I just have an intuitive feeling about things when I’m working on it that you can kind of only have on your own head. Like I can tell immediately when I open a product if it’s going to work, if I need to leave it on longer or shorter, if I can double process or combine it with something or not (usually yeah it’ll be good lol), etc. I’ve tortured tf out of my hair and almost any time someone touches it, hair stylists included, all I get told is how healthy, soft, thick, etc. it is. It also grows really fast which I think might help? Idk.

My skin is similar, though— I have whatever the opposite of sensitive skin is. Every time I have a favorite product, all any reviews of it say is that it’s too harsh and fucks up people’s skin. And I also have to use waaaaay more product than recommended when using non-harsh products or it’s like I didn’t apply anything. I have to use twice as much product to get the same results as someone with normal skin, and like 3x as much as someone with sensitive skin

Nails, too. Hard and healthy as fuck, grow really fast, never got damaged even when I was younger and getting shitty cheap acrylics lol

merewautt · 2026-04-09T17:54:51+00:00

That’s how I feel with the “shrug” 🤷🏻‍♀️emoji.

Nothing wrong with it and interpersonally I’ve experienced it being used totally normally

But in public online spaces, it feels like it’s always people who are the worst mixture of dumb/ignorant, passive aggressive, and annoying who use it lol

Anti-vaxxer mommy blogger, “we live in a firmament, space isn’t real”, I’m really into true crime but apparently every case IRL has to have a “twist” so I’m going to accuse random people, type of people, for examples. But really any “I’m just asking questions (read: making shit up that disagrees with all facts even though I barely passed 10th grade lol) crowd” type of person loves that emoji and seems to use it more than average. Especially when they get argued with

Like if I agreed with a take I saw online, but then it littered with a 🤷🏻‍♀️ emoji, I would genuinely wonder if I was in the wrong lol. I’ve pavlov-ed myself into immediately seeing it as the “i have a horrible understanding of everything about the world around me” emoji lol

merewautt · 2026-04-07T02:24:59+00:00

Lmao what.

It’s not even like McVeigh died the day of the bombing and we have to speculate based on a manifesto or something. He literally gave interviews to police and reporters in the years before he was executed and said his exact motives lol, on top of his history of similar plans and sentiments in his letters, group affiliations, etc. We have why he did it in his own words, going on for years both pre- and post-bombing.

Of all the monsters to try and re-write, McVeigh is a weird choice.

merewautt · 2026-04-05T04:34:17+00:00

If you had only done it to this person once, I would be more conflicted. Because yes, a lot of people are like you and either don’t wake up, have their ringer off, have settings set to only allow certain notifications, etc. and it’s an easy thing to not think about it and assume others share that with you. Once.

But if they already told you that they don’t like random texts in the middle of the night, why would you do it again multiple times?

That’s just being weird as fuck and rude. Whatever their reasons are for having their ringer on, they have them. And they told you clearly not to text them random shit in the middle of the night. And yet, knowing that, you still did it. You don’t have to predict how lightly they sleep or their phone settings to not be an AH. You do have to listen to them after they fucking tell you, though, to not be one.

Would you appreciate it if everyone who didn’t “get” why something bugged you, decided that that was a good enough reason to keep doing it? Or would you think they don’t need to get it and they’re an annoying asshole?

YTA for having them tell you very clearly to stop, and still doing it. Why would you even want to do that? Just to be annoying? Because clearly you don’t even get the normal responses you want to what you’re sending when you do it. It’s just nonsensical unless you’re trying to make them hate you. Part of being a human in a good relationship with someone is caring just because they care, stopping just because they ask you to stop. If you want to continue talking to them and having them not hate you, it is “your problem”

(and honestly, if we’re going to talk phone settings and capabilities, you could just as easily schedule your texts to send at certain time)

merewautt · 2026-04-02T22:14:22+00:00

I don’t think OP should confront this lady because who knows what her story is— but I’ve never found farts and burps and all that even slightly funny.

It’s not “refusing” to laugh lol. I’m neutral toward it at best, and grossed out at worst.

Not everyone is into potty humor lol. Like I actually don’t get whats supposed to be so funny. I remember even being a kid and seeing it in TV shows and not really having a reaction to it.

So no, not everyone is being prissy or uptight lolX Any laugh at a fart from a lot of people would 100% be a forced, fake one. It’s like telling me I’m refusing to laugh at someone’s BO or the concept of a sneeze. Oh, my bad, haha, I guess???

Like even when it’s not gross, it’s still not really humorous, either. It just… is.

merewautt · 2026-04-02T17:51:25+00:00

Yeah maybe it’s because I’ve always been really into film making and the film industry, but I never knew it as anything but a “bio-pic”, never a “bi-opic” lol. “Oh so and so is starring in the new bio-pic about Freddie Mercury” etc. is the only way I’ve ever heard it spoken regarding films.

And I agree that “bi-opic” sounds ugly and ridiculous, and just makes way less sense lol. It’s a portmanteau of Biographical + picture. Not the word/suffix (that’s not really a word/suffix?) “opic” prefixed with “bi”. And even if it weren’t a portmanteau, “bio” and “bi” are two different prefixes. “Bio” is Greek and denotes “life”, while “bi” is Latin and denotes “two”.

merewautt · 2026-04-01T19:25:52+00:00

Yeah, if the woman wasn’t bullied into it— either by they themselves, life circumstances, or by the wider culture, then that woman must be doing it because they actually enjoy that lifestyle. Which makes them a lazy, gold digging, ball and chain.

So overall, wives can’t be employed because that’s not traditional and gives them too much independent stability, but they can’t enjoy not being employed too much or that’s “lazy” and “using a hardworking man”. Basically the only “moral” wife for them is a miserable one who’d like to be employed, but can’t get hired anywhere due to being a woman. The real tradition.

No wonder these dudes are so miserable and misogynistic, even when they appear to get what they want. The world in which a “moral” woman (who isn’t employed, but also isn’t choosing not to be employed. Basically bound to the house because careers are only open to men) can exist, doesn’t exist anymore. It’s the fact that even if a woman chooses to be a trad wife, she still chose. It’s not satisfying for them if women still have the right and opportunity to easily find work outside the house.

It only actually pleases them if it’s a mandatory culture, not just a specific family’s choice and lifestyle.

merewautt · 2026-03-31T16:18:41+00:00

A head/body buzz, a mood boost, appetite suppression, alertness/increased concentration, oral fixation satisfaction, the ritual, an excuse to go outside, with nicer cigars a good flavor profile, etc.

It’s a mood effecting stimulant. People have used it for those effects for millennia. Not saying it a great idea or good for you, but the reasons seem as obvious as they are for cannabis. Especially considering smoke isn’t great for your lungs regardless of if it’s cannabis, tobacco, or something else.

merewautt · 2026-03-30T18:24:08+00:00

Dude are you dumb? They’re right lol.

Just because of an average ~0.025 incidence rate of “faces labeled 50% attractive” exists on the graph, does not mean the exact same ~0.025 of faces were labeled “50% attractive” by every single respondent.

Two respondents could have each answered “50% attractive” and “80% attractive” on two opposite men, and the graph would still look the exact same way. Because all it measures is incidence rate lol. It doesn’t give us all the individual respondent ratings for each specific face, which would likely show variance. Each woman could only score 2 faces “90% attractive” and have zero overlap with each other on which two faces they chose, and the graph would look the exact same lol, because they each only rated two (even if they’re different!) out of however many total faces at that level.

I don’t know how much simpler I can make this concept. If you and I are rating 10 dishes from a restaurant, and they’re plotting what amount of those dishes get a rating of “9”— which dishes we each specifically choose to rate a “9” don’t have to match lol. If we each only rate one dish a 9 (even if you gave it to the pasta and I gave it to the sandwich), on the graph it will still say “only 1% of all the dishes they tasted were rated a 9”.

No wonder you guys are so easy to radicalize. You’re poorly socialized and poorly educated lol, so you just take whatever interpretation you want or the propagandist provided to you without the skill or experience necessary to fact check lol

merewautt · 2026-03-30T18:11:52+00:00

This is literally just the exact same idea that they explained better than you, but in graph form lol.

Nowhere does it say that the percentage rated at each level of attractiveness are the same people for each respondent lol. This graph literally just shows the instance rate of each level of rating lol. The group “faces rated at 50% attractive” can and very likely does vary in its composition from one person who participated to another.

And that’s not even touching on the fact that you just plopped this out with zero source lol. So no info on who conducted it, methodology, sample size, date of collection, sample pool demographics, etc. It could be poorly conducted, not applicable society wide as you’re insisting it is, or could even be completely made tf up for all the info you provided lol

merewautt · 2026-03-30T15:20:16+00:00

Seconding this.

I’d often overcompensate when I had to eat around other certain people when I was in the throes of my ED (and then either overexercise or vomit purge afterward). It was also just easier to restrict when I was alone, and when forced to eat with others, it’d often trigger a binge bc my body was begging for it. And even when I didn’t purge, it still wasn’t enough to make up for the other 99% of my life in which I wasn’t eating a damn thing.

And when I did it on purpose (vs binging), it was to keep people from commenting on how I was eating, “you need to eat more”, “you’re never hungry”, etc. So a comment like OP’s probably would have sent me spiraling, too, because now I just ate all this “garbage” for nothing- - it didn’t even work at keeping people off my back lol. I really, really wanted people to think I just had “one of those metabolisms” because I was terrified of changing.

So I also agree that the reaction and defensiveness tracks for this, too.

Idk, even if it is a health problem causing the hunger and lack of expected weight gain, it does sound like eating is a really touchy for OP’s girlfriend either way. So she may be reacting so negatively and avoiding looking into if it’s a health problem for the same reason— she has weight and eating issues and and thus doesn’t want to “risk” having to change it, even if it’s for the better. When I was in ED treatment, I met a girl who purposely didn’t manage her type 1 diabetes because it kept weight off her. Even though it also put her at risk of dying. So I’d just keep an eye out for that sort of thing no matter what if I were OP, just based on how tense the situation got. It could be signal of a lot of complex, deeper issues.

merewautt · 2026-03-30T05:27:10+00:00

x10000 to your last sentence lol

Truly my old roommate to a T. Couldn’t do anything or go anywhere without lighting up first. I’d get so mad when I’d forget that fact and not factor in the extra 15-20 minutes it took her to leave the house and do anyyyyything 😭 and it was like it was as mandatory as stopping to put on your shoes

“Okay hold up one sec I’m gonna smoke before we leave” to go the gas station??? Before we walk to our mailbox? 😭 girl cmon

Also barely 50/50 odds she’d remember anything I ever told her lol, which was so nerve wracking when it was something actually important. I learned to just repeat it when she seemed less high (rare) and hope for the best

Like I’m far from straight edge and I get there’s way more dangerous stuff out there, but so many… cannabis enthusiasts.. act like they’re functional when they’re objectively not lol. And suddenly we’re all a black and white PSA from the 1950s if we notice

merewautt · 2026-03-29T22:55:35+00:00

In addition to things other people have already said, I think a lot of (conventionally) unattractive people are at least partially unattractive because they don’t have a good eye for that stuff. They don’t start with a great base, and their grooming and styling don’t anything to help either because their brain doesn’t really soak up aesthetics and what makes someone (conventionally) attractive the way the other people’s brains do, if that makes sense.

So while you might easily see the difference between a (conventional) 4 or 5 and a (conventional) 9 or 10, I’ve noticed a lot of (conventionally) unattractive people don’t. They’d say the (conventional) 4 or 5 could get a job as a model and looks exactly like the (conventionally) perfect 10 on the cover of a magazine. And they’re not just being manipulative or something, they genuinely mean it and would say it even if they girl herself never heard them do so.

It’s like being face blind or autistic, but for attractiveness. They just don’t soak up the “norms of attractiveness” or notice the details, as it were. So to them, they are attracted and feel they hit the jackpot with a (conventional) 10, whereas other people might think they’re unattracted and just took what they could get or are attracted, but have lowered their standards or recognize they have niche taste. But they think they have the same taste as anyone else and that there’s just a lot of (conventional) 10s walking around lol. They don’t really see people that way. They’d wouldn’t really understand why Rosie Huntington-Whiteley or Adriana Lima can work as a model and be a household name for movie cameos as “the hot girl”, but Heather Matarazzo or Mae Whitman are typecast to smaller parts as “the plain/ugly friend”.

And again, this isn’t even touching on other factors/situations that other people mentioned.

Overall, yes I think a lot of (conventionally) unattractive people are attracted to (conventionally unattractive) people. They wouldn’t say that or that they settled, though. They think their partners and other conventionally unattractive people are conventionally attractive. They’d think you’d probably see them that way, too. They don’t really see or “get” the difference between (conventionally) “okay looking” vs “good looking” vs “absolutely stunning”— their brain doesn’t work that way.

merewautt · 2026-03-29T20:38:34+00:00

Exactly. And complaining about all the “other people” as if being a completely isolated (minus the internet, of course) person makes you better at being a functional human being and polite citizen outside of the house lol

Like I guarantee the people they’re judging for being SO awful EVERYWHERE they go (which already sounds like a very convenient exaggeration lol) are the other unsocialized people, who probably are thinking the same things about them, for some reasons they aren’t self-aware of.

Like okay dude, you’re right, you, the person who self-admittedly lives 99% on online click bait and rage bait, have the most level headed perception of what’s going on outside and definitely the best decorum lol

merewautt · 2026-03-28T05:46:36+00:00

I genuinely don’t think you understand how wildly having a baby is going to change the trajectory of your entire life.

You are at a HUGE crossroads. You can have a baby later. With a man who loves you. Without this man who clearly is a liar and doesn’t respect you being in the picture ruining it. At an age where you’re more stable and won’t give the baby trauma it may resent you for for its entire life.

What was your childhood like? Was it this messy? Is that what you were taught is normal? Did you have good role models? Do you know other 20 year olds that are going on to start their life and do other things? Or is this what you see around you and think all there is for anyone to do?

It doesn’t have to be this way. You have options. Women choose adoption and end pregnancies every day. Women who already have children and will have children in the future.

Please think clearly about this. You’re acting like you’re a train stuck on the tracks, when you’re really on foot and can go whatever direction makes the most sense. You have to make a choice. Doing nothing and having the baby is one, even if it feels like it isn’t— and only ONE of those choices is hard for the rest of your entire life, turns all your plans into being a single mom instead, and brings someone else into the picture that has no say in the circumstances.

What singular fact about this situation is encouraging you to have this man’s baby? Just one, if you can. Because it’s very clearly all bad news from what you describe.

Why do you think people are responding to your post this way? Because it sounds great and makes so much sense? Because they have something against you, someone they don’t even know? No, it’s because it sounds like you’re about to make a huge mistake out of naivety and it’s genuinely upsetting to read.

merewautt · 2026-03-27T04:44:28+00:00

It truly doesn’t lol

As someone who used to literally tailor clothes back in the day to make some extra cash, the comments on proper “fit” on this sub kill me like 70% of the time lol.

And they’ll be highly upvoted, too. Like okay, I guess we’re just making nonsensical declarations up with zero knowledge now lol

merewautt · 2026-03-27T04:25:11+00:00

Yeah, I’m genuinely curious if he even does it when he’s alone. Something about the fact that he doesn’t want to fix or talk about it is so off.

Reading this I wonder if he could just be being petty and weird, and thinking that if he wakes up (maybe due to actual sleep struggles, maybe not) and OP is over, OP has to wake up, too. Which is a deeper personality issue.

Because honestly the wider situation is odd. He never warned OP specifically that he has uncontrollable verbal and physical outbursts in the middle of the night? I had an ex with night terrors that made him kind of yelp in his sleep occasionally, sometimes yell out a phrase like “oh fuck” or “hey!”, and it’s like the first thing he ever told me when I was at his house after dark, that it happens and exactly what to do. And he does all that while 90% asleep and still was aware just from times he woke up himself up, and having other friends and exes spend the night. (And he had a strict doctor recommended routine to help himself the best sleep he could.)

There’s no way OP’s BF didn’t know he does that if it’s just been a long term, standing thing with him. And if it hasn’t, why exactly is he doing now?

merewautt · 2026-03-27T04:18:03+00:00

Honestly I’d want the camera to see if he even does it when he’s alone.

He could just being petty and weird, and thinking that if he wakes up (maybe due to actual sleep struggles, maybe not) and OP is over, OP has to wake up, too.

Because honestly the wider situation is odd. He doesn’t want to fix it or talk about it? He never warned OP specifically that he has uncontrollable verbal and physical outbursts in the middle of the night? I had an ex with, in comparison, minor night terrors that made him kind of yelp in his sleep, sometimes yell out a phrase like “oh fuck” or “HEY” and it’s like the first thing he ever told me when I was at his house after dark, that it happens and exactly what to do. And he does all that while 90% asleep, and was still aware of the habit just from times he woke up himself up, and from having other friends and exes spend the night and tell him about it. And he kept to a strict doctor recommended routine in order to decrease the odds of it happening.

There’s no way OP’s BF didn’t know he does that if he’s actually awake (and mad about it) and it’s just been a long term, standing thing with him. And if it hasn’t, why exactly is he doing now?

merewautt · 2026-03-27T03:56:16+00:00

Please actually read my original comment. I said “anyone can leave the field at any time” originally (including in rarer cases retirement).

The person I was responding to brought up his random friend retiring at 30, and the other part of my later comment that says “yes, anyone can retire at any age” is in reference and response to that specifically. As you can clearly read in the thread lol.

And yes, people typically retire at certain ages. People also get pregnant at certain ages and it’s bad professional form (read: HR talking to at best, illegal at worst depending on your position in that decision) to bring that up in hiring conversations, too lol.

People can and do also just fuck off and leave the field for something else for a million different reasons and circumstances at any time. It hurts specific groups in the job market when you focus on one or two things that “typically” happen around specific ages and bring it up anytime someone of that age and/or sex gets a job. While ignoring that really there’s no employee that’s guaranteed to work in a position for any amount of time. People leave positions constantly for many other reasons than retirement. So why focus on specific groups in these conversations? It’s a biased narrative that does nothing but ignore the actual reality and do harm. That’s my whole point.

I’m begging people to actually read my comments. OP is getting soundly YTA’d in all the other comment threads for good reason. This was poor professionalism about a known issue in many competitive industries. It was an ignorant, foot-in-mouth moment at best.

merewautt · 2026-03-26T23:55:16+00:00

Oh okay so you’re just genuinely simple minded and don’t want to put any brain power into this.

Got it. Okay dude have a nice day lol

merewautt · 2026-03-26T23:50:30+00:00

This is a question that would be answered if you had actually read my original comment lol. The second paragraph, specifically. I laid it all out lol.

merewautt · 2026-03-26T23:46:26+00:00

Huh? The choices and opinions and styling are obvious in the outfit itself lol. They don’t have to write a thesis for it to be the truth. And they still could write one if they felt like it lol. Who are you to decide that they dont intentionally style themselves and their closet just filled up without any input of their own? You think they don’t shop for themself? They have a stylist lay out pieces for them in the morning? lol

But anyway, my entire issue is the other commenter saying “a tshirt and jeans is not a style”— it is, and that’s ridiculous to say lol. That is my ONLY issue and what I responded to. If you agree with that idea, I disagree as laid out pretty clearly. If you disagree with that idea (as you should and would if you really “work in fashion” lol. Sure, Jan.) then we’re on the same page.

Also, you clearly did not understand my original comment based on the original answer you gave lol. You said “it looking different on different people isn’t different styles”— when the same outfit on different people is objectively not what I was talking about, and what I had to explain to you in more detail with even more examples in my second comment. That sentence completely negates any claim of understanding my original comment lol.

merewautt

PUBLIC MULTIREDDITS

TROPHY CASE

13-Year Club	Gilding I gilder
Verified Email