u/Prestigious-Throat46

First of all, Gordon is my sister’s dog, but her and I live together with her husband. Over the weekend someone she knows had some type of criminal psychotic break where he is bent on r^ping and k^lling her. Our whole family and friend group has had one of the worst weekends of our lives, for me seconded only by my dad dying. I have never held a gun before and two days ago I aimed to k*ll twice in two hours. Perpetrator came back twice in a row trying to jimmy our lock open (and ofc the cops couldn’t do anything but serve a trespass since he wasnt caught the first time, AT THAT MOMENT, he was a felon first thing monday morning). It was so terrifying, my elderly neighbor who was visiting our house when it happened, immediately started vomiting from fear.

So now we have sensors and cameras everywhere, triple locks, and Gordon, 5 year old fixed male. I’ll keep details brief because I’ve gotten 3-4 hrs of sleep every night since Saturday and it’s seriously affecting my functioning, I’ll answer questions tomorrow. We went to shelters knowing we were going home with a dog, and Gordon had been there for one month, previously owned by one family only with a litter mate of his, one other dog, three cats and 5 kids 😳. They had no issues with him to tell us, besides the reason they couldn’t handle him was because of his reactionary stuff with strangers, they gave away both of their RR’s. One recent incident was a child that didn’t belong to them was running in his house, ran past him and got a warning nip on the calf that didn’t leave any mark. He was in puppy training to what extent we don’t know.

Break to talk abt my fear of dogs rq. I’m just a super anxious person ever since my dad died and mental health problems. My anxiety about dogs was really stemmed from the fear of being helpless. I think what happened is because i was chased and attacked, alone, outside, right after my dad died at 17, it just cracked open my sense of safety. That feeling stuck with me hard and i couldnt walk alone for years to the point it really was overdramatic but i couldnt help it. I did grow up around big dogs and i am comfortable around ones i know well. I’m comfortable enough with him that im masking my nervousness most of the time. But im not sure of myself enough to control him yet like if he was pulling toward a dog, but he listens to my sister lol. All of that to say, though, after going through something that felt genuinely a lot more threatening, when my sister talked about a dog i was 1,000% in agreement and it literally felt like my past anxiety melted away. Usually i would be jumpy going into shelters, but for some reason, i felt for the most part really safe. It’s rly like one trauma kicked the other out.

We are very aware of his breed’s protective nature and my sister had a big pitbull before him she had to be careful with strangers with. We chose him from the shelter because he was perfect for our situation. We were told to introduce strangers on neutral ground but that’s really all we know about how to get him to know they’re safe with my sister. He’s already very protective of her. So far, when ive been alone with him, he is the same with me, not leaving my side and always checking on me. But when she is home and i go into her room and sit on her bed, he stands over her body and guards from me, and that’s not really what we want. Her husband works odd hours AND he refuses to sleep in her bed and only sleeps on the couch (that’s their problem) so he has to go into the room in the dark early in the morning.

Gordon is very confident and relaxed in nature. We have a cat and he doesn’t give two shits. I guess I want some assurance that with him having been with a large family for 4-5 years, he shouldn’t be guarded against regular house things, like going in and out rooms, horsing around with each other, waking up in the middle of the night, stuff like that, once he gets comfortable. And some assurance that even though they favor one person, bc they’re protective of the whole group they don’t ever get confused about that in a way that has bad endings. At first he was a little alarmed when i had come out of a shut room and i had to start being extra obvious it’s me by talking or something, but when he’s asleep he’s not waking up for that, and that really does seem to be going away. I don’t want to make too many judgements on his first few days of being with us. The first night, my sister and her husband hugged as a test to see how he’d feel, and he barked for the first time and pricked his ears. But after that they got into bed together while he watched and he snuggled in pretty quick and relaxed. But he’s still cautious about me in her room. I don’t want to have to worry about touching my sister, especially with how much she needs support right now. We’re doing treat and food association with everybody. His full name is Gordon Ramsay and he’s 115 lbs (on a diet!) and my sister will take fantastic care of him.

If I slipped up and said a name here let me know if u notice, much appreciated 😵‍💫

You can see in r/dreams is a great example of people thinking adding an ai generated depiction of their dream makes their vision so much clearer or cooler. As someone who can actually draw and paint really well, it’s sad to see something that was once a rare trait only some humans could make happen, now spread out and watered down across the whims of the average public.

Another example is people responding to someone’s post with “i made this ai picture for you!!” and it’s like a cute drawing of whatever story they told in their post. Like every time that happens an artist somewhere loses a commission. I know not really because those people wouldn’t be paying artists for smth that’s now free, but that’s the road it’s on, and it’s depressing. I hate this world we live in right now a lot :/

This has been on my watch list but not because I anticipated it to be a really scary watch. I once went on a search for horrific/creative sci fi body horror after watching the ship scene from Three Body Problem and Color Out of Space came up. But the overall plot got me so on the edge of my seat, and this one scene had the most masterful second of building tension that there’s a jump scare coming, and it still rocked me so much I SCREAMED like I have when someone really really surprises me. The actual scare (spoiler maybe) made me scream I think because it was similar to a spider and that was so out of nowhere in this movie 😭😭 I’ve had movies make me cry out of horror or make me not blink with terror, but never as an adult has a movie made me scream so it was really surprising and fun lol

I have a lot of mixed feelings when I hear of people who are on disability for mental health diagnoses. I just want to vent my feelings and where they’re coming from.

I was raised around people who highly value hard work and “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps” and taking care of others through difficulties. The closest people to me always give me advice about how they became workaholics when life was hard. So it’s been hard for me to accept how I haven’t been able to work full time. At the same time, it took me years to realize I was autistic precisely because of how popular it is. For some reason I’m just on the side that has a sour taste in my mouth about all the mainstream rhetoric about mental health. It just feels fake, all of it. I immediately side eye people who post about being on disability for mental health reasons bc it just has the ghost of feeling grifty. But there’s a level to all of that which is a sort of fear of being inauthentic and unremarkable, i see myself in what i dislike and that’s why i dislike it.

Then there’s the an equally strong force going on in my mind, saying “why the hell haven’t I gotten to do that?” I think I would have been okay if my trauma and grief hadn’t happened, but I already had a history of mental health problems because 1) im autistic 2) like 10 people in my family have various mental illnesses 3) im transgender. I actually had my first bizarre out of body episode before the big things happened. But then from ages 16-17 i was abused by a teacher and during that my dad died unexpectedly and tragically. I went through mental illness Hell after that and I’ve never really recovered. I wonder, how have I seen so many psychiatrists and therapists and never been asked about how my struggles are affecting my ability to house and feed myself. I’ve had over a dozen jobs because I do the math and know that I need to work full time, but put me on a 40 hr schedule and I call off every three weeks. I’ve had public breakdowns where I make myself bleed with how forcefully im harming myself and during these im out of my body and cant control it at all, and then obviously after these i ghost jobs and don’t come back. My nervous system is so beat all the time. If i get hurt or bumped unexpectedly i immediately freak out and pass out, which only started when i was 20. It’s physically exhausting being this way. When I work full time I inevitably wake up and Im so nauseous and sick i sometimes pass out from the pain in my body or am just miserable, and i think it’s bc of how anxious i am at work that my body can’t take it. I have had one job where i worked alone with no coworkers or managers/supervisors on site, and i loved it so much i literally worked 16 hours every day just for fun, bc i never even knew what it was like to not be miserable at work, but that was a temporary project. It’s the world of the authority caste system and everything I do and go being managed that makes me unsafe I guess.

I have no savings. I wonder about what would be different if I had just had someone give me the correct influence to help myself more when I needed it most. Like I’m doing slightly better overall now, but there was a time when I needed to just focus on myself, but I never got to because everyone in my life expected me to be independent.

I never have a dream once, always at least two or three nights in a row, up to some dreams that have been recycled for years now. I cycle through like a catalogue of dream material as time goes on. I know to an extent some of this is because of unresolved grief/loss, but really, every dream I have, I have at least twice in a row. Anyone else like that?

I have so much ability and purpose that I’m just wasting away. I can draw and paint realistically literally anything that I want but I haven’t for years. I can write poetry that heals my grief and makes me proud of myself but I don’t. I can listen to a recording of my dead father’s voice and feel innocent again and remember him, but I feel like I can’t.

I was creatively prolific as a teenager and had a set path to be in college for my 20s, already had a scholarship early on. I was always debilitatingly shy and awkward but I think I would have grown out of it fine. But to be honest, my exposure to unfortunate sexual things on the internet wasn’t monitored as a kid and teen. Around 11 is when I was paying incredible attention to authority figures and starting to have really confusing feelings. Sometimes it was like I was actually attracted to the person and that’s why I was shaking with nerves, sometimes it was just anybody who I either idolized or they made me feel uncomfortable and vulnerable. I think this can probably be explained by that i didn’t have enough healthy attention and affection from adults I was close to and I didn’t have any grandparent figures and no male figures besides my dad, who I was absolutely obsessed with but only saw twice a year. Adults I got nervous around were male or female. At this same time, in private I was becoming interested in nsfw things really just starting with age gaps but for some reason ended up with a noncon interest. I think I was on my way to also growing out of this though, but I never really had the chance to figure it out because at 16 my teacher started to groom and abuse me. I was a natural target because of my issues with authority figures already. Cue (queue?) the last two years of high school being awful bc everyone eventually found out right before I graduated, and also right before that my dad randomly died overnight, two and a half months after I had seen him for winter break.

So I lost my scholarship after graduating high school pretty quickly and have been a very mentally ill adult that works dead end jobs ever since. I dream every single night about similar things about school, both my high school and my college I was at for a few months. I haven’t gotten over the grief of how exciting it was to be on a university campus, starting my adulthood, then slowly losing my mind and realizing for the first time that I would never be the same. After I dropped out I attempted for a while to get better mentally but it was going so insanely awful I gave up. I had girlfriends in high school and after high school, but somewhere in here, at 18/19, I really abruptly decided to lose my gay virginity and start sleeping with men over 40. The summer after I dropped out of college I hooked up with random guys at their house every night doing random drugs until I was borderline kidnapped by this 60 year old which rly traumatized me but did make me go to rehab. SO, from there, I could have taken all this new gross sexual trauma and heal, and I did try. But the porn got me 😔. I’ve been sober since, but my sexuality has been stalled and I’m addicted to degrading and gross porn instead of spending my time doing the things that I used to love. Cont. in comments:

I have so much ability and purpose that I’m just wasting away. I can draw and paint realistically literally anything that I want but I haven’t for years. I can write poetry that heals my grief and makes me proud of myself but I don’t. I can listen to a recording of my dead father’s voice and feel innocent again and remember him, but I feel like I can’t.

I was creatively prolific as a teenager and had a set path to be in college for my 20s, already had a scholarship early on. I was always debilitatingly shy and awkward but I think I would have grown out of it fine. But to be honest, my exposure to unfortunate sexual things on the internet wasn’t monitored as a kid and teen. Around 11 is when I was paying incredible attention to authority figures and starting to have really confusing feelings. Sometimes it was like I was actually attracted to the person and that’s why I was shaking with nerves, sometimes it was just anybody who I either idolized or they made me feel uncomfortable and vulnerable. I think this can probably be explained by that i didn’t have enough healthy attention and affection from adults I was close to and I didn’t have any grandparent figures and no male figures besides my dad, who I was absolutely obsessed with but only saw twice a year. Adults I got nervous around were male or female. At this same time, in private I was becoming interested in nsfw things really just starting with age gaps but for some reason ended up with a noncon interest. I think I was on my way to also growing out of this though, but I never really had the chance to figure it out because at 16 my teacher started to groom and abuse me. I was a natural target because of my issues with authority figures already. Cue (queue?) the last two years of high school being awful bc everyone eventually found out right before I graduated, and also right before that my dad randomly died overnight, two and a half months after I had seen him for winter break.

So I lost my scholarship after graduating high school pretty quickly and have been a very mentally ill adult that works dead end jobs ever since. I dream every single night about similar things about school, both my high school and my college I was at for a few months. I haven’t gotten over the grief of how exciting it was to be on a university campus, starting my adulthood, then slowly losing my mind and realizing for the first time that I would never be the same. After I dropped out I attempted for a while to get better mentally but it was going so insanely awful I gave up. I had girlfriends in high school and after high school, but somewhere in here, at 18/19, I really abruptly decided to lose my gay virginity and start sleeping with men over 40. The summer after I dropped out of college I hooked up with random guys at their house every night doing random drugs until I was borderline kidnapped by this 60 year old which rly traumatized me but did make me go to rehab. SO, from there, I could have taken all this new gross sexual trauma and heal, and I did try. But the porn got me 😔. I’ve been sober since, but my sexuality has been stalled and I’m addicted to degrading and gross porn instead of spending my time doing the things that I used to love. Cont. in comments:

It’s hard to introduce myself accurately without doing a little bit of a trauma dump, because I’ve been socially isolated and just haven’t really came back from the events that happened to me before I graduated high school that included my dad dying. I have this wall irl where I can’t loosen up and can’t explain to people why, and that’s built up over time to an extreme loneliness and burden.

I’m passionate about philosophy, stories/movies, and music, and would love to talk to someone about all of it, and of course not only talk about my interests either, as much as this post seems like it. My favorite musicians are Frank Zappa, Pharaoh Sanders, Alice Coltrane, and Weather Report, but I also love 2000s pop and nostalgia/dance music. I also love visual art and design and architecture, I love my pinterest account where i have pictures of all the textures i want to touch. I’m very aesthetically tuned to my space and I’m the kind of person that takes labels off all my products bc the clean look is very important to me.

I also like poetry and write it but I have a big sense of cringe and will laugh at a lot of things trying to be serious.

There’s a lot to me that is strange. One of my favorite things is smelling freezers and people I live with find me with my head in there a lot. It feels good in my nose and doing this is one of my first memories lol. I also can’t walk outside by myself because of severe anxiety of dogs. Just a lot of things like that. As the years have gone on, I do get tired of being laughed at or being immediately called a pick me for certain things, and overall I just haven’t met someone who seems to want to want to step outside of their neurodivergent life and be interested in me at all.

It’s really really tough for movies to really scare me. I am sensitive to scenes of trauma and dread (like torture, grief/death or body horror), and those can be really good, but I love it most when something supernatural scares me.

Things i like:

The dead boy in Terrified spooked me a bit.

The dancing ghost lady in Pulse/Kairo, terrifying

The corpse behind the wall at the end of Caveat, terrifying

Also, the devil man at the end of The Wailing made me pretty uncomfortable.

I have seen when evil lurks, the ritual, 28 days later, Noroi the curse, Sninamarink, Lake Mungo, Oddity, most indy horror movies on Netflix like His House and Under the Shadow, and most classics like The Thing, Hills Have Eyes, Poltergeist, Exorcist, Evil Dead, Shining etc. However most special effects from older movies kills the vibe for me.

One of my biggest fears is the woods at night and I was scared shitless of slenderman as a kid. I would love a movie that played on that eeriness. But scarier than the Blaire Witch or The Ritual.

Maybe someone can help me get over this. Idk. I don’t get very many likes on my posts at all, and neither does my sister. There’s something that’s really depressing and uncomfortable about that where it’s like, i don’t want the one of five likes i get to always be my sister. I’m not sure what the emotional or mental blockage/reasoning is. I don’t want the person who we already spend all our time together to always see what my social media consciousness has going on. I want there to be a barrier for some reason. But when I was under 18 and a lot more active on instagram, i didn’t have a problem with her seeing everything. And im not sure what changed between then and now. We lived together then too.

In our conversations, my sister is the closest i have to holding two truths at once: the curation and all the ordinary processes of going through social media is absurd and ridiculous, but equally absurd and ridiculous are ppl who turn their nose to participating or can’t feel the double layer of seeing the performance but still and acting and connecting as an individual among other individuals. Anyway, it would seem like she is in tune to the funniness of the performance, but, her instagram post captions are kind of the worst, most long winded and cringiest performance ever. It’s tough to bring myself to like them cuz im like “sister…what even is this”

Maybe it’s because on instagram i can disconnect from caring if all the viewers of my post are in tune to who i am and how i see, i can’t control how they interpret a post, so i can have a little fun without feeling so uptight about it. But the question of whether my sister understands me is a lot bigger of a deal, and her misinterpreting the intentions behind a post to the level of how SHE uses instagram feels insulting to me, as well as just depressing that my own sister might not understand how i see the world.

But i just had a conversation with her where i said “listen, i love boundaries, but i can’t be friends with people who talk about boundaries 100% seriously because they’re gonna be mad when i laugh in their face” and she actually really understood that. So maybe im actually underestimating my sister and not giving her freedom to write her cringey ass fan fiction sounding novels in her post captions. But it’s just like, how can you understand me, BUT WRITE like THAT, lol.