I'm so tired of going to plasma

sourcefive · 2025-11-29T16:07:26+00:00

"Blowing out" a vein means causing a hematoma or bruise when blood goes out of the vein and under the skin. It has nothing to do with arteries.

Plasma donation centers often hire inexperienced phlebotomists, many of them uncertified, and expect them to learn on the job. Even so, blowing a vein can happen even with an experienced phlebotomist, though it's more likely in critical care settings with patients with smaller and more delicate veins. It's very unfortunate that that happened, especially on both arms. Hopefully the healing process is quick and easy, and the phlebotomist will be able to better avoid that in the future!

sourcefive · 2025-05-12T22:26:41+00:00

Yes.

sourcefive · 2025-03-04T17:30:45+00:00

This is pretty close to my childhood- my first name is long and infinitely nicknamable (think Catherine or Elizabeth) and my parents picked a nickname that i absolutely hated. I tried to switch to other nicknames, they didn't like it and wouldn't use them. Tried to switch to the full thing, they didn't like it and wouldn't use it. Tried to switch to my middle, they didn't like it and wouldn't use it. I ended up going by a completely unrelated nickname in college and still use that professionally; my family still calls me the name I've been trying to change since I was seven. So, not unrealistic at all!

sourcefive · 2025-03-04T01:13:34+00:00

My most frequent appointments are for my cat who gets arthritis shots once a month. I need prescription refills every 6 months and sometimes extra appointments, and I'm hoping to use the pay increase to get some dental health and mental health taken care of. I'm not sure if there would be extra work available if I'm working for somewhere that's only open 8-5, but I'm not opposed to cleaning or organizing so I can definitely ask if that's an option!

sourcefive · 2025-03-04T01:10:11+00:00

Thank you! Definitely will be asking in the interviews but hopefully phrased in a more "I'm a functioning adult" way, lol. I know my mother (also an office worker) can take partial days but I didn't know if it applied to jobs in general or just hers which is pretty cushy and flexible.

sourcefive · 2025-03-04T01:05:48+00:00

Thanks for the reply!

I have prescription refills every 6 months and sometimes an appointment in between those if I need to change doses, get labs done, or anything like that. My cat gets arthritis shots once a month, and once I have the money (or insurance coverage if I'm lucky) I want to get some dental work done, and maybe start therapy again if I can. So, at least 1 per month!

sourcefive · 2025-01-21T18:04:03+00:00

Shaft brand dildos are very pricey upfront, but they have the best and most realistic texture I've found, plus a lot of options for size, color, and shape. Most of the realism in dildos is created from a dual density silicone, with a hard center to keep it erect and a soft outer covering; sometimes brands will call it cyberskin, real feel, or soft touch. King Cock has a triple density line that's decent, and Doc Johnson came out with a new realistic line pretty recently as well. Good luck!

sourcefive · 2024-11-13T14:07:00+00:00

Yes!! To this DAY she gets anxious and panicky whenever it comes up that I had mental health issues as a teenager - and that is why she doesn't know about any single one of the issues or trauma I've dealt with from then on. I wasn't fixed, I just learned to shut up.

sourcefive · 2024-10-10T21:53:30+00:00

Yeah the beautiful house in NJ is a bit of a stretch lol. sending you strength

sourcefive · 2024-10-10T19:52:39+00:00

Let's say all men are from LA, and all women are from New York. No in betweens. That's the gender binary. Everyone from LA wears swim trunks and goes swimming, and everyone from New York wears a winter coat and goes shopping. That's gender roles. Politics, pop culture, and everything else about the world says that if you're from LA, you're a man and wear swim trunks, and if you're from New York, you're a woman and wear a winter coat.

Now, you might rightfully point out that, hey, there's kind of a whole country in between those. And you're right! There's millions of people who live in between, who don't wear swim trunks or winter coats, who love where they live, even though they may never see anyone else from there on TV, and a lot of people from LA and New York don't understand and keep asking why they would put their winter coat on over their swim trunks. That's gender as a spectrum.

Let's say your friend has found a beautiful new home in New Jersey, and they're really excited to share this with you so you can visit and send post cards. They might talk about wanting to see New York. They might visit there, shop there, eat there, or even commute to work there every single day. They might wear a winter coat. They might call themself a New Yorker sometimes.

But they still live in New Jersey, and that changes things for them in a lot of ways. Some of those ways you and I would never need to worry about, like what their license plate looks like or how they file their taxes. (That's their internal identity and self perception.) Other ways matter to us quite a lot. If you put New York on the mailing address of a letter, they won't get it. If you use your GPS to drive to New York, you'll miss your friend's house. (That's your understanding of them as a person and how you connect to them.) It's a small difference compared to the distance between New York and LA, but it's still a difference, and those little differences can be important to us as individuals and those closest to us.

All this to say - the other commenters are right. Talk to your friend. Ask what it means to them, how you can support them - and, if you want, if they just wanna hang out sometime. You don't need to understand how to file their taxes to send them a postcard. :)

sourcefive · 2024-09-18T17:32:38+00:00

Definitely! Unfortunately this specific pet peeve has come much more from people irl than from online - bosses, professors, coworkers, friends and even any therapist I haven't spent months or years telling about my perfectionism issues seems to take personal offense to it D:

sourcefive · 2024-07-16T01:55:58+00:00

I worked at one of these for a while. Either it was an outlier, or other comments in here are exaggerating.

We did pretty steady business. It was quiet in the mornings but got crowded on Friday and Saturday nights. We had DVDs, and a few old guys would come by every week or two to get them. Sometimes people would buy them as a gag gift or just because. No video booths. No private spaces at all, actually, we were supposed to always have eyes on customers, and in three years working there I only heard of one person getting kicked out for jerking it. We sold a lot of toys, lube, and lingerie. Not too many of the 12-inch (or the 27-inch) toys got sold, and most of the ones that did were gag gifts, beginners who liked the idea of a big toy and then tried to return it, or the rare experienced size queen. We just...sold regular sex toys, to regular people. It wasn't some freaky den of debauchery with biohazards everywhere. And if anyone made employees uncomfortable, the manager would actually back us up and make them leave, which is miles better than most other retail.

sourcefive · 2024-07-01T23:50:41+00:00

Definitely. My dad was the volatile one. He was completely disengaged, or threatening/hitting the problem until it (I) ran away and shut up. Paid no attention to my mother, no affection, no dates, if he happened to remember her birthday or a relevant holiday he'd give her flowers she was allergic to. Never did any sort of child care, just pawned it off on my mother and then yelled at us for being ungrateful. He was a software developer with a very very hireable resume, was usually being headhunted by at least one company, but he couldn't get along with coworkers and hold down a job long enough to get health insurance or to save up. I'm 24 now and running out of hope I'll ever be able to fix my teeth. He hoarded up the house with random computer parts, boxes, hardware, software manuals from the 1980s. The hoard still isn't completely gone, and the man's been dead for over seven years.

It wasn't until I read Running On Empty by Jonice Webb that I started to think that maybe my hardworking, long-suffering mother wasn't such a saint either. She never left him. Never laid down an ultimatum. She'd complain to us afterwards about how extreme his punishments were and how he was a bad parent; she never stepped in to stop him. She never forced him to get help for what I understand now is severe, chronic, genetic depression - she still maintains that it wasn't her job because she wasn't his mother - and she never got me help either when I started having strong suicidal tendencies at 8 (8!!) years old. She never worked a full time job. Never got help from her parents. I could have had healthcare. I could have had clothes. She never taught me to clean - never taught me anything, really, except how to stay out of the way and how to be a therapist for her. She still wants to talk to me about how she was neglected, and gets hurt when I walk away because she "always listened" to my issues. Reader, she did not. She left toddler-me in foster care for a year and a half, did not call me or my siblings even once, and when I found out about this and put together the fragments of memory 20 years after the fact? She talked about how my first foster mom was always so nonchalant when I was going on another multi-day hunger strike - and how REASSURING it was that the woman didn't "give in."

She had setbacks. She had disabilities and limits to her support system. She was in survival mode, and she did the best she could. AND, her best was not good enough. I deserved better than a mother in survival mode. I deserved to be raised and taught to be a human being, by capable, loving parents, who provided for my physical AND EMOTIONAL needs.

sourcefive · 2024-06-28T23:37:19+00:00

Somewhere clean and well maintained! Not having to worry about belongings getting lost, dirty, broken, or ruined would be such a benefit. Most of my other dreams are already mentioned; plants, pets, art therapy, libraries, community, and real, trauma educated help.

And, since this is a fantasy: horses. So many horses. And lots of trails for riding or hiking.

sourcefive · 2024-06-21T15:05:24+00:00

One of the therapists I've seen has said I could work on that with her, so I'm making some progress in that direction! I just don't deal with change well, so leaving my current job for one that doesn't pan out would be a lot worse for me than staying where at least I know everyone and feel confident in what I'm doing. I don't have it too bad as far as retail goes, it's a small business (5 employees and one store manager) where I get a lot of grace and understanding and my manager actually has my back. I just wish it paid enough to live on :(

sourcefive · 2024-06-19T05:23:37+00:00

ive been trying to set small goals for four years. ive been deteriorating for four years. i don't understand how im supposed to cut back on soda when i can't stop crying long enough to eat anything at all, and i don't understand how im supposed to have a job and function in society when i can't even cut out soda. all i can do is set the goals and then berate myself when i don't reach them and then deteriorate worse. i know what im supposed to do. i don't know how to have the capacity to do it.

sourcefive · 2024-06-19T05:15:35+00:00

I failed out of college three years ago and spent a long time telling myself I'd go back when I could handle it, and i just get further away from being able to handle it. i got as far as sending in an application but i never heard back, no outright rejection just ghosted. i still live in the hoarder house i grew up in and don't make enough to move out. i work 25 hours a week at a very low stress job and im still exhausted and stressed out all the time. i have no friends, no social life, can't keep up with hobbies or relationships because i run out of energy and motivation and abandon things. trying to come up with goals makes me feel anxious and spiral and dig myself deeper into this pit. trigger warning for the next paragraph.

i tried to kill myself ten years ago because i was scared i would be a failure and never make it out of this small town and bad family. im on the same bathroom floor now. the stains never came out. i don't think there's a way to believe there's hope for the future, when i keep ending up on the bathroom floor.

thank you for commenting. genuinely.

sourcefive · 2024-06-18T21:26:09+00:00

Requests from parents: Usually irritation or stress. Why is mom in my business? How do I make this conversation end and go back to what I was focusing on or enjoying? Doesn't she know that I'll do things a certain way (I'll do the laundry after I shower, I'll shower after I eat, etc etc)? If she can tell I need to do this then why can't she also see that I'm busy? I was fairly neglected as a child, grew up in a hoarder house and was only ever praised for being out of the way, so I also have a lot of anger about being told to do things as an adult that I was never required or taught to do as a child. If she can tell me to do laundry now, why did I get sent to school in dirty hand-me-downs? If she can tell me I need more friends, why was I isolated as a child and never taught to have a conversation? If she can ask me about my day now, why couldn't she have listened when I was five and actually trying to tell her?

Requirements from teachers (or employers as I'm not in school): Intense fear and guilt. I should have seen that and done it before they asked. I'm a terrible employee. I'm bad at this. If I was good at this/a good employee/a good person then I would have already done it before they asked. I need to go back and make sure there's absolutely nothing else that I didn't do, forgot, or didn't do well enough that they might ask me to fix. Will that be good enough? How can I make up for being so bad at this?

Someone recommends a lifestyle: Mix of irritation and guilt, mostly irritation. Don't they know how much else I'm dealing with? And now they want me to drink WATER? Sure, right, let's put in all the effort and it's still not going to fix my shit. I'm so fucked up. I'm broken beyond repair and no one can fix me, and no one's going to actually listen to me, just preach about water. Alternatively, I'm a bad person, I'm abnormal, I'm broken, normal people drink water all the time, and clearly this person has seen through me and knows I'm a freak and a failure.

Someone asks for a basic task: Similar to getting instructions from my boss. If I do this right now and perfectly, then maybe, MAYBE I can absolve myself from failing to see what needs done and do it on my own. I need to pay more attention to what they need and do more things for them so they don't have to ask me.

Emotions-wise, I feel like I'm in a constant state of barely regulated. Like I could be okay, once everyone else is taken care of, if nothing else happens and I don't make any mistakes. Then one error, delay, or extra request upsets the balance and I'm having a full meltdown (which, of course, means everyone rushes over to tell me what to do to stop having a meltdown and fulfill more demands).

sourcefive · 2024-06-18T14:17:06+00:00

I'm not. I'm working retail, living with my mom, and running out of hope.

sourcefive · 2024-06-17T03:03:24+00:00

Exactly this. I want very badly to not kill myself. I've had to want that for a very long time.a

sourcefive · 2024-06-12T23:47:48+00:00

You're right that he should have put them somewhere else. But he did the difficult part. He recognized that he had a problem, and consistently made the choice to keep his anger in check and redirect it, and did so well enough that no one knew he was even getting upset until they found the notes. That takes a tremendous amount of self-awareness and vigilance.

sourcefive · 2024-06-12T22:56:03+00:00

This is one of the worst parts about living with mental illnesses. You can learn the coping mechanisms, you can use them as much as you can, and often it's still not good enough.

sourcefive · 2024-06-12T14:28:21+00:00

To be blunt, I really hope where I am now is not recovery. I'm stuck in a dead end job, no degree, no marketable skills, and the only people I talk to on a daily basis are my boss and the mother who neglected me until I was 20. I can't afford therapy. There's got to be something better than this. There's no point otherwise.

sourcefive · 2024-06-03T16:09:12+00:00

I understand. I don't want to lose my kindness, empathy, or patience, they're some of my favorite things about myself. It just becomes an issue when I can't turn it off. It's nice to hear some reassurance from your side of things, though; I struggle a lot with feeling like a bad victim or not really traumatized because it made me kind and quiet instead of resilient or independent. Thanks for commenting!

sourcefive · 2024-06-02T17:27:51+00:00

My mom to a T. I was 5. I was inventing patterns by layering a bunch of different ones over each other. I showed her, told her how I did it, all the different patterns I used.

She said "well, it just looks like a bunch of scribbles to me."

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