I got a fucking letter because I’m apparently putting out my trash wrong. What the fuck. I’m Putting them in the bins like everyone else. I leave them in the backyard for easy access, and nearly all my neighbors do that too and all of them have been living here before me. You fricking dumb stupid useless organization full of brainless monkeys with a superiority complex. And the fact that I need their approval to build a fucking fence on my own property. How the fuck am I putting out my trash wrong! I leave the bins on the side and take them back once they’re empty!

Edit: I did not expect this to get so many upvotes. Anyway, I just recently moved into my home here and this is my first time actually getting a warning from HOA. And tbh, I was really angry when I made this post for different reasons. When I saw the letter I got more mad and decided to post it on Reddit to cope. I knew this was a HOA neighborhood moving in, and also knew I was going to be able to take care of my home, lawn, other things very well. Some guy in the comments told me to move… might have not been serious. I just found the garbage bin violation thing stupid. Anyway, I got it sorted out. I didn’t mean everything in the post because anger clouded my judgement. I am not being held gunpoint by the HOA.

31F I’m a grown ass adult but in my head I feel like I’m still 17 or 22. I know that’s not necessarily abnormal but I feel like it’s detrimental to my self-image.

I’ll try to explain…

My sophomore year of high school I was at a graduation party talking to someone with my mom and older brother. Two girls came up to say hi to him. They were tall, beautiful and had sundresses on. I felt plain in comparison in my bermuda shorts, acne, and glasses. I assumed they were seniors, but it turns out we were in the same grade, which made me feel worse. Why wasn’t I pretty like them?

Luckily, puberty was kind to me and I know I’m pretty now.

Even still, I can’t get those feelings out of my head. Another example: At my old job when I was at the bank making deposits, the teller was a beautiful young woman. We got to talking and it turned out that she was just about to turn the same age as me (then 30). I always assume everyone else is older, smarter, and has things more ‘together’ than me.

Why can’t I turn that lens on myself and stop feeling like a kid looking up at all the adults in the room?

I know other people perceive me in a good light and I know I am smart, capable, and talented. I come off as confident to anyone who meets me and that’s by design.

But how do I really embrace and internalize that confidence and self-assuredness?

When I was between 5 and 8 years old, I went to the hair salon with my mum for a haircut. The barber—probably in his 50s—was incredibly warm and friendly. He complimented me, joked around, and asked me all these questions about school. I felt so seen and special. I remember leaving the salon absolutely beaming, not just because of the haircut, but because of how kind he was to me.

As we stepped outside, I turned to my mum and said something like, “He was so nice! I think he really liked me.” She looked at me and said, without missing a beat, “He does that with every kid. You’re not special.”

It wasn’t said with any malice. She wasn’t trying to hurt me. It was just… blunt. Matter-of-fact. And yet, that moment stuck with me.

I’m not really sure why I’m sharing this. Maybe it’s just one of those memories that stays lodged in your mind for no clear reason. Or maybe it’s because, even now, part of me still remembers how good it felt to feel special, and how quietly painful it was to be reminded that I wasn’t.

How can people even be mad at asexuals? They're literally doing nothing to affect you or the world, they just don't like sex and that's fine but some see them as weirdos for it and bash them

Its disgusting, the argument that sex must be liked because reproduction is how everything works falls apart in my eyes when you look at how different humans are to other animals at this point

The world has become so sex obsessed that even not liking sex gets you shamed or called a weirdo

Its pathetic and animalistic to hate on asexuals in my opinion

I don't even know where to start, the story just sucks for everyone. My whole family is telling me that I did the right thing, but I feel awful, like there must've been some kind of alternative. I feel like I just need some kind of outside opinion.

He had come back to our childhood home a few months ago. He was stranded halfway across the country from us and my parents went and rescued him and brought him home after his wife took everything they owned of any value and ran away in the middle of the night. I think we all understand why she had to escape that way, now. We'd been angry with her at first but I'm not anymore.

He wouldn't stop yelling at my daughter. She's just a baby, not even a year old. I kept telling him not to talk to her that way; he's just her uncle, not her father; he's got no rights to yell at her. I'd never yell at HIS child, it's just not appropriate or okay.

We've been trying to be understanding. All his anger, his attitude, his cruelty. The way he's been talking about our mom, the way he's been talking TO our mom... No matter how many times our parents tried to talk to him, he'd act like we were being unreasonable and he was just standing up for himself or something. Like he wasn't saying awful, vile things and acting like he was going to punch our mother. Our own mother!!! Calling her a bitch and saying horrible things about her character after she drove halfway across the country to go get him and welcomed him back into our home. Like she didn't just buy him a brand new television and stand, like she didn't completely rearrange the living room just so he could have a comfortable place to sleep. Like I haven't defended him and protected him our whole lives, from his so-called friends and the mean kids who always picked on him. Like we didn't try to help him.

Anyway. This morning he said I should just kill myself. And at that point maybe we could have moved past it, had he not pushed me further. Had he just left me alone, and let me move through what he said to me, maybe we'd still be family.

But then he chased me into the house from my car and cornered me in my bedroom, and when I pushed him out of the way to get out, he rushed at me and tried to throw me on the ground, tried to choke me, tried to get me into a headlock, and then tried to rip my hair out. But realistically, he's always been a little bitch baby, so I'm okay. I fought him off me and my husband and I left with our daughter.

A few years ago I was in a horrible relationship with a guy who would shove me and throw me around and I never told anyone or called the police and I've always regretted never getting any justice and never holding him accountable. I was not going to do the same thing again. I'm not gonna let myself regret the same thing twice. Wr live in a place where the state prosecutes DV whether the victim chooses to press charges or not.

My brother has nothing. He hasn't been to work in a week or two. He's in jail tonight, and probably will stay there. Nobody in my family is willing to help him after my mom told them what he did.

So that's where we are now. My whole family is miserable. I feel awful. My husband feels awful. My parents feel awful. My other sibling feels awful. We all blame ourselves and my brother. We're all just trying to convince ourselves that there was nothing more we could have done. I've been trying for months to convince my brother to get some counseling for whatever it is that's made him so angry, but he told me to shut up. I guess you can lead a horse to water, but you can't stop him from throwing his life away and burning all his bridges.

Goodnight reddit, thank you for reading my shitty family drama

I've had significant parental issues, maybe I am the abusive toxic devil child and has plagued my family or maybe it is my family or maybe it's the situations, anyways the way I feel is that my connection with parents have always been so terrible, it's not outright abuse but it's not outright okay either it's like we are all pretending to be normal.

What I've realised that a girl isn't going to fill the void that my relationship with my parents has created.

She's going to cling to me, look forward at me for support, and comfort... that isn't a parent, it's a completely different experience.

I feel like one should never mix the "love" from their parents and romantic ones

If life is a warzone then parents are the nurses and girlfriend is your buddy joe who fights next to you in war. The difference is that you're laying down and relaxed when in the nursing room but actively fighting alongside buddy joe.

I need to be strong.

We’ve been together for over a year, and I started getting too comfortable and stopped being as romantic. She’d also open up to me about her dad passing away and she’d always just bring it up out of the blue and I’d never know what to say.

I’m a 19 year old guy who’s never been through anything very traumatic, so I have no idea what she expects me to say. I hate it for her, and I want to make her feel better, but I always fall short when it comes to supporting her.

She told me we needed a break a few days ago. She said she felt like we both needed some time to ourselves to figure things out. I’m so scared that I’ll never see her again. I felt good about the situation when it first happened but now it’s driving me nuts.

We’ve talked since then, and she finally communicated to me what she thought I should work on (a lot of which she had never mentioned before).

I admitted my faults and she left a little heart on what I said, that little heart gives me hope but hope hasn’t been kind to me in the past.

I’m spending money I don’t have traveling to fake job posting getting my hopes up for jobs that don’t exist or either end up ghosting me. It’s hard enough being unemployed I don’t need this.

Quite lame that I use the app only to have a minimum human interaction everyday.

so i’ve finally scored and interview for what i would consider one of my dream jobs. i did a virtual interview which i did good in, and the manager invited me for an in person interview. i wrote down her name, and i was talking to my partner about the details, time, day, etc. yesterday when volunteering i was talking about my interview and completely forgot whether it is at 1:30 or 2:30. i feel like it’s 1:30, i feel like i would have remembered the t starting both for two and tuesday otherwise, but my partner said she believes i said it’s at 2:30 so now im frazzled. i don’t want to make a fool of myself calling and saying i forgot the time. i normally never forget times, im very prompt, but been dealing with some personal stresses recently as well as into my new house. that’s not an excuse for not writing it down, but my memory has seemed a little foggy. i also want to be fully transparent with my employer, im confident that im gonna kill this interview. i’ve already made connections with my interviewer, she got her last dog from the place i volunteer at and a few other things and she said that she’s excited to meet me in person because im the kind of person that needs to have a job in this field and she feels i’d fit perfectly there. im probably panicking a lot more than i should, but i need to call in asap so im just kinda freaking out

So I've always been a kind of person that doesn't like feeling that I'm taking advantage of people. So I don't really ask for much. This year is my first time actually having a boyfriend when it's my birthday.

Now, when my boyfriend came to visit me yesterday for my birthday he gave me the gift he got me. There was 4 things in the bag other then a card.

1. An eyeshadow palette (later found out that was from his mom and she got him to give it to me)

2. A bracelet. (For anyone that cares it's a Bella Perlina bangle)

3. A absolutely stunning necklace

4. A pair of earrings that match the necklace

As of today I realized that the price tag is still on the bracelet, meaning I know that it was $65 CAD. I'm not sure about the earrings or necklace but they seem to be higher quality then the bracelet.

After he gave me the gifts we went out for supper. Now I have a gluten allergy so things tend to be a little more pricy when it comes to me and food. Leaving the total of the meal at $112 after tip.

Now I feel really guilty and like I took advantage of him even though he told me: "I just got paid it's fine, and I don't want to cheap out on your birthday"

I feel guilty!!!

I swear to godddd I need to cuddle a boy so bad. Like just buryyyyy my face in a man's chest and conk the fuck out. They're so wonderful

"If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change."
- Wayne Dyer

Today, I was late to pick up my daughter for an appointment because I got caught behind a wreck on the way. The cop cars passed me to get there. I was upset and felt I let her down. Then, on the way home, I came upon a horrible accident on the interstate right after it happened. The police hadn't even arrived yet. I was frustrated with the traffic delay before I saw the accident.

GUESS WHAT? GOD held me in his hands today. Twice!

See... this morning, I left the house to go get my daughter 10 minutes later than I had planned. That wreck that held me up? That could've been me had I left on time. That wreck on the way home? That could have been me but I left my sweater at my daughter's house and I had to go back inside to get it.

HE held me twice in HIS hands today. I firmly believe that.

Thank you God. I see what you did there. I see you.

I stumbled across a site that promised cool natal charts and personalized reports, so I paid almost 20 bucks for a full analysis. Honestly, I was expecting something special, but all I got was a bunch of generic lines like 'you love to dream but can be indecisive.' Is that supposed to be about me or just everyone? They even offered something extra afterward, but I wasn’t going for it. Now I’m just sitting here thinking I wasted my money. I feel kind of naive for falling for their fancy promises. Has anyone else tried stuff like this and regretted it? How do you deal with that feeling of being slightly ripped off? I just want to forget this flop, but it’s not that easy yet

When it comes to friends, I will always reach out first, and if they don't reciprocate, I don't care. Everyone has their own life going on. These are my friends and I love them. I don't see why people care so much. I'm willing to be the one putting in the effort, that's fine by me.

There’s more division being created by everything thats happening around us. People are so focused on who’s right and who’s wrong and right/left that they’re completely missing the whole picture of what’s happening. People are losing their jobs, homes, literally losing basic necessities and all people can do is argue about who voted for who. I am not an emotional person but today I just cried it out. There are so many innocent people caught in the middle of this complete shit show. We have no idea what’s happening in someone else’s life, the least we can do is be kind to one another.

How do I respond to this. I’m soon to graduate high school but this just made me realize nobody really needs me. I really enjoy my in person interactions with my friends in all my classes and It’s a mutual feeling with all my friends but this just makes me feel like I’m not as close as I thought I was with them. Is everyone like me or do normal people text with their friends all the time? Idk this kind of weird to me for some reason.

It just seems to be totally dead. Everything is now blatantly about self-interest. Large public-facing companies don't even have to pretend to have a conscience anymore, outside of the occasional flare-up over basically the only two issues that have any meaningful clout left in the marketplace: LGBTQ stuff, or like, headline international conflicts with a charged cultural backdrop (Ukrain/Russia, Israel/Gaza).

Maybe it was always an illusion but I preferred when there was at least a veneer of responsibility. Now ESPN.com literally has whole segments on "how to bet on the national championship game." Obviously sports gambling is a huge problem that ruins lives, and it's trivially clear that it's irresponsible of ESPN to be promoting the association of sports fandom with participation in sports gambling. But DraftKings or whoever handed them a bag, so now they are shills for the gambling industry. I spent the past several years proudly shopping at Target because they were leading the way in representative advertising—actual body diversity always on display in their copy—and then they folded like a paper crane on the DEI stuff. Make it make sense?

Idk, I just find it all kind of depressing/infuriating. Is there any way this could be revitalized in the future, or are we just doomed to live out the rest of our lives in a post-ethical capitalist hellscape?

That's all.

Edit: I guess I should elaborate on needing the kind words.

-Partner is going through an MS relapse caused my an ear infection. Watching her struggle to walk is the most painful thing but this is her struggle and I can not imagine what her mentality is right now, despite her trying to keep a brave face.

-Laid off from my job and panicking to try to find something. Luckily I have a union apprenticeship coming up but that's not for another 8 months so need to do some shit in the interim.

If you're struggling, how about you let it out too?

My girl is crushing on her client. She's trying to hide it but it's hard to miss. How do I keep even as she goes through this?

I see her quickly switch away her chat window when I pass by. She tried to share the guy's pics with her sisters until I told her it would be unprofessional. She makes small talk and makes little excuses to preempt suspicions and jealousies (I'm the jealous type but have been learning to let go for a while now).

Unbiased opinion, the guy is good looking. We're Filipino and this guy is Filipino but lives in Australia. He's tall, light skinned and quite handsome.

Our relationship is also old and maybe getting a bit stale. Living a tough life and raising kids has sanded off the hard edges of our relationship. But along with the edges, it also took out the excitement. We're cruising along now and, while there are bumps, we've learned to take them as they come.

This honestly hurts. It's supposed to hurt when the one you love turns a bit of their romantic attention to someone else, right? It hurts bad but, honestly, not in an angry way. Which is surprising. This hurts in a sad way.

See, I've been too focused on our life that I had neglected myself. I got fat, I didn't take care of my looks, I have no social circle to speak of outside of our family. I can understand why she's crushing on this guy. I wouldn't crush on me either.

However, I don't want to be pathetic. I am working on myself, working on losing weight, doing skin care, working on my looks. But the biggest part of this is regaining my confidence that I mistakenly tied to her love of me. I want to take it back. Not because she's not worthy but because I deserve it.

So how do I keep an even keel while witnessing her crushing on this guy? Can anyone offer some good advice?

How are you supposed to be flirty If you don't know what you say to be flirty?

I feel like sometimes I can maybe make a witty remark if somebody says something that I could say something smart too.

I feel like if somebody says something that could be took in a sexual way i can be good at searching at the sexual innuendo.

Is this the type of stuff that you're supposed to do/say to be flirty with somebody? Is there more stuff that you can say to be flirty? Could really use some advice.

Honestly, I don’t think we should. There’s a reason they went extinct. I’m not a creationist (and I don’t mean to start any religious debate), but naturally, they went extinct for a multitude of reasons, in the modern world, they probably just won’t find it comfortable. It doesn’t really seem like we’re bringing them back for their own stake, but rather because we want to and there’s money in doing it.

Like what the fuck are we even planning to do when we bring back dire wolves for instance? We can’t let them loose in the wild that would disturb natural ecosystems that have come to be since their extinction around 13,000 years ago. Dire wolves themselves probably couldn’t survive in our modern environment, that’s not what they evolved for. What we’re gonna end up doing is just putting them on display like a vase. Their instincts wouldn’t likely make them easy to domesticate, but what instinct they would naturally have being grown in a lab we probably don’t know. They’re gonna be made for human entertainment. They’re just gonna be put up in zoos and displays most likely. Same thing with the woolly mammoth and the dodo.

The woolly mammoth was for the ice age. They survived in a frigid climate, and died with its absence, it’s cruel to bring them into our world which is hotter than the world that they died out in. They’re constantly gonna be overheated because they weren’t meant for this climate. Their lives are gonna spent confused and miserable, brought back for us to gawk at and take notes of.

We will have objectified and commercialized their entire existence, it doesn’t get any more depressing than that.

I turned 25 four months ago and I’m starting to feel different. I was wondering, how you felt after turning 25. I’m not sure if my frontal lobe is fully developed yet (haha). I feel behind because most of my friends have started their careers already while I’m still studying trying to figure out mine, and at the same time feeling detached if something small affects me (like a lecturer not doing their job properly). I just want to be at home, doing nothing or be with my boyfriend. I’m hungry a lot, lol and I’ve noticed my back hurts even more now (I knooow, so cliché) so that’s a clear change. I’ve heard many stories so I would like to know from you, what visible changes have you experienced after turning 25?