u/afraid28

Does anybody else have a family full of secrets from each other?

In my family, there are things that are okay to tell mom, but not dad. She will actually tell you not to say anything to him and protect the secret, but then sometimes she immediately tells him stuff. She herself had a cancer scare once and threatened me not to tell dad at all that she's getting tests done. She literally kept that from her own husband.

There are also things I told my brother in confidence, but he immediately ratted out to mom. And then some things she kept to herself but some she immediately blabbed to dad. It's like there is a filter and she decides what is to be shared and what is for her ears only. She completely understands he's not safe to tell everything to, yet she still works with him behind my back. Brothers act like flying monkeys.

I grew so sick and tired of not knowing who knows what or why they do or don't know something. Tired of the "rules", that dad can't know something. Sick of telling my brother something private and then finding out years later he immediately told mom and they kept it a secret. Etc.

I really don't understand how anyone can like summer. Every single year I get so sick during it because of the AC, fan and constant temperature changes. Everyone always talks about the flu season during winter, but I haven't had the flu in so many years. I don't get sick at all during the cold months.

One year I had bronchitis for 3 weeks in the summer because I can't sleep any other way but with a fan directly pointed at me. I also can't sleep for very long either because sooner or later the heat wakes me up, and I often wake up feeling literally drunk, all dazed and confused from dehydration.

I'm currently fighting a mild sinus infection, it's nothing bad but it's extremely annoying because I keep having a bad smell like chlorine inside my nose, It's so congested and my voice gets all raspy. My immune system is basically shot to hell. Not to mention I can barely cook anything and have to blast the AC in order to get it done. Then I forget about the AC and sit down in front of it until I turn into an iceberg because my body is so numb to everything at this point and doesn't even realize I'm freezing because inside I'm so hot. I HATE SUMMER

I'm sorry if this isn't allowed as it might be rather depressing.

Yesterday, I was reminiscing about my past, although I'm only 30 (but I feel about 80). I remember a time when I had just turned 18. I felt like I had an entire world full of possibilities ahead of me, and I was SO excited to jump in. I thought that so much was still waiting for me and couldn't wait to get started.

Since then, my life has literally just been on a continuous downward spiral. Family abuse, falling chronically ill, getting worse, then becoming disabled, then damn near having a complete mental breakdown, crippling loneliness, being broke, more family abuse, becoming housebound, having to flee from my home because the situation in the family just kept getting worse. And now I don't speak to family at all or my best friend of 12 years because it took me 12 years to realize he was a raging narcissist who was just using me.

Yesterday, I was venting about all of this to my boyfriend and I asked him: when did you lose your spark? At what age did it happen for you? And he sort of just thought for a second and then said: it's still going for me, I still feel that way - like there's so many opportunities still waiting for me. I'm ngl, it stung. I literally can't even imagine that feeling anymore. It's long gone.

After I met my boyfriend and he told me about his family (and I saw how he interacted with them), I noticed that they were staying in touch but nobody was pestering him all the time. Like, they ask him how he is doing and showing general care as family should, but no one is ever forcing him to call them, or message them more frequently, or meet up with them, etc. He kind of just ... Does his own thing without their interference? The first time I took notice of that, my instinct said: wow his family doesn't care about him. But then I realized that it was actually what my family was doing that was wrong, not the other way around.

One time, my dad asked me where my brother was, out of the blue. My brother, who was in his late 30s by then, married, had a child and was long moved out. I said: I don't know, how am I supposed to know where he is? And my dad immediately scolded me: how can you not know where your own brother is? And acted like I was the crazy one. He keeps tabs on where everyone is at all times, and it was always expected of us to share our whereabouts at all times. My other brother moved across the planet for 5 years - they called him every single morning when it was evening for him. They knew every single thing he was doing and stayed in the loop. They still kept tabs on him from across the WORLD.

Did you ever have situations like that where you realized something they did just wasn't normal at all but you never knew that before?

I've been listening to a podcast that got me reading about plants and it seems like they are even more complex creatures than I initially thought.

https://davesgarden.com/guides/articles/surprising-plant-senses?\_\_cf\_chl\_f\_tk=5q6l7wgkT31xeDCbpj8WFZUIVrnrGSlikUAAN32m7oQ-1782758019-1.0.1.1-QVHNAVIM5OctBDEDwt5.kNV3.tw.Oh24i\_Z0WkpY0co

^Here's an interesting article that explains some very complicated processes that plants are capable of, such as communicating, remembering, learning, problem solving, heck, they can even be classically conditioned (like Pavlov's dog).

https://www.webitenola.com/journal/10-surprising-ways-plants-interact-with-humans

^This article explains how plants communicate with humans, they can even differentiate their caretaker from a stranger and respond to gentle touch.

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/sunday/plant-intelligence-light-eaters-1.7196448

^This article talks about how they can interpret sounds and recognize their own kin.

Knowing all of this, how intelligent in their own way they are, and the fact that it is still speculated whether or not they are actually conscious since they don't have a brain like animals do, I wonder what vegans think about this? What would they say to explain this all away? That just because a plant doesn't have a brain and can't scream it means it isn't somehow still sentient? What's their proof?

Does anyone else have equal if not worse problems with their narcissistic siblings?

My oldest brother is much older than me (12 year difference) and growing up he took care of me and I truly adored him, to a point where I often called him dad by mistake. He has always made sure I don't go without because growing up we were very poor.

But something changed after I grew up. Absolutely everything I do now, annoys him. When I still used to live with our parents, he would come by and complain about everything I did. If I turned the electric kettle on, I had to turn it off the second it boiled, otherwise he yelled at me in front of everyone across the room that the kettle is boiling, am I blind, am I stupid etc. He yelled at me if I made his coffee "wrong" by using water that was "too hot" and he even poured it out without a word in front of me once, or if I put the fire on the stove on high (he would literally come over and give me an entire lecture about fire), he was basically just monitoring me in the kitchen with everything I did and complained.

At the dinner table, he would ask me why I am laughing when everybody else would be laughing, too. He would criticize me and literally wouldn't shut up complaining about me while I was just trying to eat, and if I said absolutely anything to defend myself, my parents would immediately start yelling at me to respect my older brother and that I was being rude and to be quiet.

One year at Christmas I took pictures of him, his wife and his then 2 month old child, in all the pictures his hand is waving at me and his face is angry because he was yelling at me. Then he complained that the pictures were ugly and that I don't know how to even take a picture.

Eventually I stopped coming downstairs when the family got together. I left the house over a year ago. My brother has since told me that I have "isolated" myself from the family for years now anyway but that I should come back home for mom's sake (I am 30 btw). When I faced him with everything he did to me, he left me on read and hasn't spoken to me since.

And it's only just begun!!! 😭😭😭

I am agoraphobic also and I literally don't leave my apartment. I am laying under the AC in my underwear in the middle of the night and I am still feeling like someone shot me with a tranquilizer gun. I am drinking so much cold water, staying fed as best as I can and about to have a lukewarm shower to cool myself off. But omg 😭😭😭

I hate feeling like I'm literally slowly dying every single summer !!! I wanna move to the north of Norway or something and just live like a bear outside and roll around in the snow. The cold does not bother me at all.

Send help 😭😭😭 or better yet, send me off to the Arctic to live as a happy make believe polar bear

I've known this friend since we were 7 (we are 30 now) and we are very close. She's married and has a kid, and I'm chronically ill and disabled so we don't get to see each other often. But we do talk almost every day via texts.

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A few months ago, I was telling her about how I'm thinking of getting my rugs and couch professionally cleaned. She immediately offered to come by some day and bring her own appliance and clean my rugs for me. I was like really, you'd do that? And she said of course! I told her I'd like to have this done before the summer so that everything is clean before the heat starts.

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Since then, I've mentioned it 2 or 3 times. She always just brushes it off and starts talking about something else. This isn't the first time that she's offered doing something together and then flaked on me. But I don't understand why?? I never asked her for this, she offered herself. I didn't even know she owns an appliance like that! So it's not like I made her offer it to me. Now I didn't find anyone to have the rugs cleaned, she never came, when I tried to talk about it she just went into a different topic, and I just feel stupid.

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What is the point of a friend offering something without being prompted to, and then avoiding it as if it never even happened? I never complain about stuff like that to her because she has a stressful life and I don't want to add to the stress, which is why I don't understand why she offered it in the first place. But I do think this is very rude of her. Am I just overreacting?

I've overhead my dad gossiping about me on the phone or with my mother many times. He's called me manipulative, rude and disgusting. He said that I can wrap my mom around my finger but that this doesn't work on him. He acts like he can see right through me while all the way describing me exactly the way I'd describe him (cough cough, projection). In the past he claimed my mother was insane and told me not to listen to her because she lies. And now he stopped targeting her and is instead targeting me.

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How do these things affect you? Do you get actually hurt by it? Or does it make you laugh? For me, it makes me feel very shocked, upset and disappointed. Like I can't believe someone would say such vicious things about me. And even if anything he ever said about me was in any way true, he was my father and he failed me.

I know this might seem so obvious, but as someone who hates summer and the heat, and can't physically shower more often than every 2-3 days due to exhaustion, this is a revelation.

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I am someone who spends the summer in darkness under an AC (like so many of us). And I am literally never cool enough. I constantly feel like I'm slowly decaying in the sun. It's a rather hot morning already where I live and the night was hot enough for me not to even attempt to open the windows. I'm currently under my blankie and spent the entire night basically freezing all because of one small thing.

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I washed my hair. That's it. I cursed everything because the towel I used was a scam and basically didn't do anything in terms of drying my hair. So it was soaking wet and I knew it would take ages to dry. I got under my fan like always after a shower, and ever since then I've practically been freezing.

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I haven't changed anything else, the apartment is hotter than usual actually because the AC has been off for hours. But I am still comfortable. I think I'm literally just going to be dunking my head into water all summer long even if I'm not showering. Mind = blown.

I'm just thinking about how growing up I kept waiting for that moment of relief. That final "ah now I can relax" moment that literally never came.

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That is because childhood and growing up WAS supposed to be that moment. That was the time we were supposed to just be kids, have fun, be safe and protected, loved and treated well, so we would grow up into well rounded individuals ready to take on the world.

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But instead, I spent my entire life growing up in harsh conditions with no moment to take a breather, ended up developing chronic conditions, and now I am so tired when life literally just keeps getting worse and worse. I'm not prepared, I'm not ready for anything, I am the exact opposite - I am tired. I'm done. But this was only supposed to be the beginning.

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Nobody else will ever understand this pain. This deep, soul level exhaustion that penetrates every single atom of the body and mind.

I was wondering if anyone here has a similar experience as I do. I have a lot of spine issues and also very tight and sore muscles all over my body. I am in general very into massages, I relax very fast during one and I feel comfortable with a stranger touching me, but for some reason my body responds to them in what I would consider an odd way.

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I always thought that massages are supposed to feel relaxing. For me they always felt 50/50 - somewhat relaxing but also somewhat painful and uncomfortable. But the worst happens after a massage. I feel sore and like someone literally beat me up for days afterwards. My muscles feel very much beaten up. I've went on massages for two before where the other person felt amazing the next day, while I couldn't even touch my arm or upper back without feeling like I had literally been beat up. The massages I've had were standard and also various Thai massages. I never felt like I was under excruciating pain or anything like that during a massage, maybe just uncomfortable and slightly painful at times like I said. But mostly I always feel very relaxed and like a weight has been taken off my shoulders immediately after a massage. I also have to pee A LOT for the rest of the day and night. But after one night's sleep, is when the pain starts.

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Is this considered normal? I have diagnosed hypothyroidism, and suspected dysautonomia (possibly pots), CFS, and what might be EDS and/or some form of arthritis. I'm 30 but felt this way since I had my first massage when I was 18.

This happened a few years ago now, but it was so crucial to me that I still remember it often and fondly.

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I have panic disorder and agoraphobia, which means I don't really go anywhere. But I had to go to the bank that time in person. The double doors locking behind me, not allowing me easy access to the exit, the cameras and guards everywhere doesn't help with my anxiety at all. I was stood and waiting for the bank lady to type my stuff up at the computer. Nothing to do but wait. Started sweating, the lights were triggering, I felt alarmed. About to have a full blown panic attack. I was on the verge of completely losing it when a random other bank lady that was just passing by looked at me, gave me the biggest, most heartwarming smile I've ever seen on someone working in that position, and she passed by. I was literally wowed by her positive energy. This gave me enough internal peace to finish up without fully spiraling and successfully leave, shaken but okay.

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Dear bank lady, I hope you're still smiling to this day and making people's lives better just by being in them. I love random little acts of kindness!

At the age of 16, I didn't need to know about all of the "whores" (mom's words, not mine) that my father was allegedly sleeping with at work or on work trips. I really didn't need to listen to my parents screaming at each other over it, or have my father come to my room just to whisper to me that my mother is crazy, she's making things up and not to listen to anything she says. I didn't need to repeatedly run down the stairs in the middle of my studying to separate them so they wouldn't start hitting each other, as I used my own body to stand in harm's way, making sure they couldn't reach each other. I didn't need to break up the scene they created in the middle of a busy street after we accidentally ran into one of those supposed "whores" and my mom started screaming at my dad that he'd done that on purpose, arranging to see his alleged mistress while book shopping with his wife and daughter.

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I didn't need to listen to my mother's constant rants about how much she hates men, how they are all the same, how she heard from my aunt who works in an office that all her male colleagues are cheating on their wives and ridiculing women. I didn't need a mother who treated me as her surrogate partner, her BFF and her peer even though there is 34 long years of age between us.

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I needed to get pimples, develop crushes, study hard and just grow up. Fuck you, mom. And fuck you too, dad. You should have just went to therapy and left me tf alone.

I have many chronic ailments including dysautonomia which makes my blood pressure and fatigue levels completely unpredictable. But I also have damage in my inner ear that completely messes with my sense of balance. It makes me dizzy, I can't look around too fast or close my eyes because I will fall over as my body can't tell where we are positioned in space. That's why I constantly keep accidentally bumping into things and injuring myself. The worst part is that this affects my vision so much that my eyes can't get used to my new glasses (and I'm extremely short sighted with astigmatism) so everything looks like I'm seeing through a fish lense. Also, a lot of visual stimuli like in the grocery store or with big open spaces and buildings make my brain go into overdrive and makes me super dizzy. I have no idea where to begin.

I have many chronic ailments including dysautonomia which makes my blood pressure and fatigue levels completely unpredictable. But I also have damage in my inner ear that completely messes with my sense of balance. It makes me dizzy, I can't look around too fast or close my eyes because I will fall over as my body can't tell where we are positioned in space. That's why I constantly keep accidentally bumping into things and injuring myself. The worst part is that this affects my vision so much that my eyes can't get used to my new glasses (and I'm extremely short sighted with astigmatism) so everything looks like I'm seeing through a fish lense. Also, a lot of visual stimuli like in the grocery store or with big open spaces and buildings make my brain go into overdrive and makes me super dizzy. I have no idea where to begin.

Everybody is always talking about stuff like acquiring weapons, finding a good hiding spot or picking the perfect vehicle. Me?! I'd be on my way to raid the local pharmacy because without my meds I'd literally die sooner than from a zombie bite 😭

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What are your absolute necessities in case of a wild zombie outbreak?? 😁

I know we are supposed to do everything in short bursts rather than all at once and respect the good days and not overdo it.

But I feel terrible grief around the fact that I'll never be able to just pick a day and clean the entire house at once. If I wasn't sick, I would gladly be like one of those social media content creators who clean everything all the time, to a point where people say that they are faking it. I love a clean home and cleaning is so good for my mental health. But just the fact that I'll never have that satisfaction of looking at an entirely clean home, and instead I'll have to force myself to find joy in stuff like "great, you wiped the bathroom mirror today, good for you" just makes me downright depressed.

It takes me weeks to clean everything and even that is not thorough enough for me, and by then I can just start all over again. The house is never clean enough or tidy enough, I want to organize so many things but I just... Can't. Debilitating fatigue is my worst symptom of all, by far. I just want to be able to clean again. :/

When I was still living with them, I asked if they could buy a new shower head because ours started showing signs of mold. Next thing I know, my father removed it and replaced it with a plastic, dirty moldy shower head that I remembered us having literally years prior to that. I don't even know where he had kept that thing or why. It looked like something that would be fished out of a dumpster. I knew he was deliberately doing it to punish me because I "complained", putting all of our health at risk with something that looks like it belongs in Silent Hill.

I showed the shower head to my mom and asked her what is going on. I told her this needed to be replaced immediately. She just said that "dad thinks it's fine, I don't know" and shrugged. I ended up replacing it myself and throwing the one that looked like Satan's chew toy away. He was not pleased.

What are some of your stories of petty behavior like this? I'm talking small, ridiculous things like these that should be a complete non issue.

My oldest brother is a 42 year old married man and has 2 small children. He and his wife both work in IT, at respectable companies, they have a lot of money, they work from home most of the time and they own their place so no rent. Their children are in daycare. They travel so many times every year. They go to beach resorts, skiing and what not.

My mother keeps saying that "they need our help". My brother gives her his kids to babysit all the time, like he will pick them up from kindergarten early and bring them to either my mom or their other grandparents every day of the week. While I was still living there, I was constantly asked to help.

For reference I'm 30 and have been suffering debilitating chronic conditions and disability for over a decade now. I have agoraphobia so I can't go outside. Most days I feel like I'm going to faint and it takes a lot for me to keep myself fed, rested and clean. My parents just kept pressuring me to get a job and nobody ever cared about how I was doing. To a point where they tried to include me in the babysitting and cooking for my entire family, because my brother would work from our house while my mom watched his kids and then he'd come downstairs, eat our food and insult me on the regular. Nobody defended me, I wasn't allowed to "talk back" to him. I have moved since and now am living with my boyfriend and we don't get that kind of help at all. I don't even speak to them anymore. We are struggling but at least we're away from them.

Why is it that an obviously functioning and well off family member "needs our help", but I, who actually needs their help, don't get anything? How is that fair? In what world and HOW do they justify these things to themselves, rationally???