r/RedditStoryTime

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So for context, my mother-in-law and I never really got along. Polite, but cold. Fifteen years of birthdays and holidays where she’d smile at me like I was a stain she couldn’t quite scrub out.

On my wedding day, she pulled me aside — away from my husband, away from everyone — and handed me a small wooden box. She said, “Promise me you won’t open this until I’m gone.” Then she just… walked away. Never mentioned it again. Not once in fifteen years.

Last week she passed. Heart failure, sudden, nobody expected it.

At the funeral, I kept thinking about that box. It had been sitting in the back of our closet for a decade and a half, and honestly? I’d almost forgotten about it. But that night, after everyone left, I finally opened it.

Inside was a letter, a photograph, and a ring I’d never seen before.

The letter started with, “You were never who I was cold to.”

Turns out, she’d mistaken me — for years — for someone else entirely. Someone who’d hurt her son before he ever met me. A situation my husband never told me about, because he didn’t think it mattered anymore.

The photo was of a woman who looked eerily like me. The ring belonged to my husband’s first fiancée — the one who left him two weeks before their wedding, for his own brother.

My mother-in-law wasn’t cold to me. She was terrified history was repeating itself. And she never told either of us, because she didn’t want to reopen the wound.

I haven’t shown my husband yet. I don’t know if I’m going to.

I don't know her name. I don't know where she lives. I don't know one single fact about her. I met her on a bus, I never spoke to her once, and I have thought about her more than people I have known for years.

I'm 27. I've spent my whole life quietly avoiding exactly this kind of moment. Staying in my seat. Not looking up. I never once minded. Not until that evening.

It was an express bus, the late afternoon service, about an hour's ride. I hadn't planned the trip at all . it was one stretch inside a much longer journey I was already making, for reasons that had nothing to do with any of this. If a single thing had gone differently that week I would never have been on that bus.

We got on at the same stop and ended up almost in the same row, a couple of seats apart, her near the window. For that first stretch she was nothing to me but a stranger. I didn't look twice.

Then she gave her seat to someone else and moved back to stand near her family. Three or four rows between us. That distance is the only reason any of this happened.

I don't remember who looked first. I only remember looking up and finding her eyes already on me. For a second I didn't know what to do. Look away? Smile? Pretend I hadn't noticed? I did none of those. I just kept looking.

Every time our eyes met after that I felt a strange pressure in my chest. Not uncomfortable exactly. More like I'd suddenly become too aware of myself where I was sitting, how I was sitting, what she might be thinking.

She was covered head to toe. I could not see her face at all. Only her eyes. She was laughing, and the smile was there in them, so I smiled too.

After a while it turned into a game. Look away. Look back. She was already looking. Four or five times, like we were competing to see who would give in first.

For almost half an hour we said nothing at all. And it never once felt like silence.

Then she started making little signs with her eyes. I couldn't understand them. She tried again. Still nothing. She raised her eyebrows, as if to ask "what's going on?" I raised mine back.

Then she took out her phone.

She was trying to show me her Snapchat ID. The road was rough and every time the bus moved her phone moved with it. Three or four rows away, with the engine going under both of us, the background on her screen made the username almost impossible to read. Maybe that's why I couldn't get it. Or maybe I was just too nervous to focus.

She took a screenshot. Zoomed in. Held it up again. Still nothing.

That's when it hit me. She wasn't looking at me for fun. She was genuinely trying to give me a way to reach her.

So I got up. My heart was going faster than it should have for walking a few rows. The aisle was packed — people standing, bags between feet — and I had to turn sideways and squeeze past them the whole way, asking myself if I was actually doing this. For once I wasn't thinking about what anyone around me might think. I was just trying to reach her.

Then I heard the conductor calling her stop. Her mother was already standing, telling her to get down. Her sister was ahead of them in the aisle.

I reached her exactly as she had to leave. A lifetime of hesitating, and I was late by about ten seconds.

She stepped down. Outside, a dozen women in burkha were getting off at the same stop and for a second I lost her completely in the crowd. But something in the way she stood told me it was her before I could even be sure.

She said something to her mother, then started walking toward my window with her phone pressed to her ear, like she was on a call. Her mother was right there the whole time, watching the bags, the road, everything — and she kept talking into that phone the entire way, never once looking like she was doing anything but making a call.

She got close enough, lowered the phone for a second, and held up the screen. I tried. I still couldn't read it.

She turned and walked back toward her mother. Before she looked away completely, her eyes asked me a question I understood without a single word: did you get it?

I shook my head. No.

She tried again same trick, phone back at her ear, walking toward the window like it was nothing at all. She held the screen up a second time. I still couldn't get it.

This time I took out my own phone and tried to photograph it instead. But my camera couldn't focus fast enough. The username came out blurred.

It was only then, a little too late, that I finally understood the small gestures she'd been making with her eyes all along. I understood her at the exact moment they stopped mattering.

The bus started moving.

She stayed where she was. I stayed where I was. And we kept looking at each other the whole way down that road, until the distance was too much, until I couldn't make her out anymore.

And then she was gone.

No name. No face. No Snapchat. Not even a proper goodbye.

I didn't lose someone I knew. I lost the only chance I would ever have to know her at all.

She got home that evening and went on with her life.

I never got off that bus.

For context this person was a hoarder but not an extreme one she didn’t hoard everything like trash or broken items just a lot of random stuff. Such as she kept her mail from the past 10 years as well as 50+ movies on disk but she didn’t have a disk player, 100s of books, and all her sisters items which were plentiful. All of this stuff was in a pretty small 1 bed 1 bath apartment. Why my boss was annoyed was because her smoke detectors needed the batteries to be changed he learns this via a calendar reminder he made weeks beforehand and when he sees this he says “crap we gotta change her smoke detectors batteries” and follows up in a joking tone “this might be her last battery change”. The next day she was found dead via welfare check from being essentially old. My boss since has regretted this remark dearly and swears he didn’t kill her. I still don’t whether to laugh at this or not.

I’m a mailman and on my route I deliver to my local Costco. I don’t have a membership cause I’m broke and I only use the Costco for the food court (hot dog) so I don’t see it worth getting. They started enforcing the membership rule so I ask people to borrow their cards at the kiosk for the hot dog. Most of the time people are super cool about it cause I guess they see me in my mailman uniform and feel bad cause it’s really hot right now 😅 but there are some few people who think I’m trying to scam them somehow. I find it really bizarre. Just something I wanted to share.

this one time in my french class I had a supply and he was strict and he was loud. He said to everyone that he used to be a french immersion teacher but now he supplies so he is more qualified than the average supply for french. So, every time we made a mistake he makes a long statement about it. the next day our actual teacher asked how the supply was and lots of people said he was bad. Then, my friend had the same supply for science class and at the end of the class he shouted “ok you have the next 60 seconds to leave the classroom!!!”. My friend nicknamed the supply “Fishcracker” (I wont say his real name because I believe in privacy). The next semester, my friend had him 2 times and he had to deal with him sadly.

Fast forward to close to the end of the year and one of my friends searched up his name and found out he has a facebook and there was a shirtless photo of him🤣🤣🤣🤣. then I told my friend ”wait, I have facebook! I wanna attempt to friend him!!!“ my friend said it was risky but I wanted to be cool so I decided to take the risk and send a friend request. I showed my teachers the next day that I found a shirtless photo of Fishcracker and my teachers all knew him and they were laughing about it (you can’t blame them its funny). Then, over the next few days I looked at his photos and I commented on how cool the photo is. Then, he accepted my friend request and now im friends with my supply on facebook (im now the teachers pet LOL). I found out you could get fired for that so that means I have the power to fire him but I wont because he doesnt deserve it. plus, he is single so if I fire him he would most likely be homeless.

Okay so first of all I do not like really I guess believe or like worship any god buttt I have also never told this story and I'm pretty sure I'll get a lot of hate but I don't really care because I know it happen so let's get started.

So I was like 9 but my birthday was that day so I turned 10 anyway I was shopping with my grandma in Walmart it was probably like 11-1 in the evening and we were checking out and my grandma was telling the cashier it was my birthday so there was this old white lady behind us now take note there was NOBODY behind her she didn't have a buggy but she did have a purse and like this grey blanket like jacket or coat she was like really sweet I didn't have a good or normal childhood so talking with her those few seconds felt pretty calm anyway she handed me a 20$ bill and said "Have a happy birthday Jay and smiled" my grandma... Said "let me hold the 20$" for u (lol I never got that back btw but that's besides the point) it was like 4 seconds after my grandma said "Don't forget to tell her thank you", I TURNED AROUND AND SHE WAS GONE! I swear I looked both ways outside the checkout area and SHE WAS NOT WALKING. Fast forward maybe a year or too and I was at a JCPENNY the one where they connect it to a mall and well this time she had a buggy I remember my mom was at a makeup area and I was bored looking around I saw her and pointed at her "OMG I REMEMBER U" I started speed walking towards her down the middle of a few aisles trying to talk to her but she walked away from me I followed her down 1 aisle she turned left went down one AND SHE WAS GONE AGAIN. Now I've told this story to a old lady before she said maybe I wasn't suppose to see her and maybe she was watching somebody else BUT I ALWAYS think if I wasn't meant to see her THEN WHY was I at that location on that day at THAT specific time she was standing there now also I guess a important detail to add is I do get a lot of deja reve or what other people call clairvoyance but I always thought it was karma out to get me until recently I realized oh shi they are warnings but anyways that's my story I've encountered a few other I guess odd spiritual things in my life but haven't shared this story and wanted to tonight hope u enjoyed let me know what you think.. or don't 🤷🏻‍♂️

Insanely long, jump ship if ya need, No need to come back and explain why.
I get it!

This telling of my experiences is loaded with warnings (caveats, clarifiers) and over explanations. Some will find it ad nauseam.
I elaborate because I’m not great at clear, concise in a first draft-this needs to be a 1st draft for now, and -i’d normally go back, eliminate a lot of that autistic inner-dialogue i inadvertently type out.

My story Came up in another discussion, some of the scattered thoughts may have pertained to a specific thread discussion -sorry for added level of difficult-read.
IT’S ME, not you, but be ready for a few bumps.

TLDR at bottom-

Also labeled- “actual story, experience:” below

I write weird! I’m not an asshat, or ai.. i am old, have autism, a strange *”formal command” (feedback from others) of English; it’s not my day to day language. Repetition is used in my language for emphasis. Over explanations are entrenched in me, going back and forth, bilingual, but not same comfort, or confidence. I try to not belabor &repeat, but this was stressful, i may do it horribly.

Don’t read it if I’m already annoying you, or you’re formulating some dumb argument- you gotta have effort! I’ll ignore dumb.

Huge story came out, I’m choosing to reply with it-

Likely poorly punctuated and a proofread fail. i can’t do it. No drama!, just doing something new here. I can’t read it. I’ll obsess, it’s the story, not my nature; I’m feeling the anxiety. Bravery and readiness show up, then, my hatred of mean comments (i have an appreciation for witty, fun- at least challenge yourself if you’re here to entertain) the strong feels about sharing are winning-
Huge Apologies for the autocorrect crap that will surely be there. I am neurodivergent, intelligent, and fully aware this will betray that last one; I’m okay with it. My phone hates me, and aside from that anthropomorphic issue, i have no psychological issues, or medications. I’ve taken adderall, and will take it in my future, no addictions, willing to enjoy cannabis for sleep- occasionally. I own my struggles willingly- ask if ya like, attacks won’t be attended to.

Actual story, experience:
I cannot purport to have any idea why people don’t remember things they see that don’t align with the world they were taught- but, i have seen it at work. I see UFOs, not all the time, but I’ve seen about 6 up close and personal, several in distance, and many suspicious lights, movement… i have been lucky enough to be, for the 6 up close sightings, with others; many who saw, commented, chatted that day about, and not again. My saving graces 1) not alone. when i saw a huge triangle occlude the whole sky, i was in a downtown area- it could not be ignored or denied. Easily 2 football fields, decently bright lights, insane movement, the absolute deal! Others out of their cars… i watch, for 10 minutes, my heart in my throat. Everyone starts getting in their cars, it has been eerily silent, but cars start to honk, people get moving, i head home. I knew what i saw, i knew there were intelligences beyond here. They were in there, an entire population maybe. I do nothing but obsess on what I’d seen, run into my house blabbering on with it 2) the’ rents, highly educated, intelligent… come right back with their own excited chatter. They had sat in their convertible down the street and watched it for more than 30 minutes. My father, an engineer, inventor, was giddy, on with it was going thousands of miles per second, then right down or, crawling over the top of them. My parents had been just over a mile away from where i had been. Had seen it zoom at least 3 times, twice back to glide over head, and once tip like there were strings at each corner and one was lengthened, dropping that corner down, revealing what ask 3 of us saw as an absolute city snaking out all over the top. There was an exhaust like happening from the ‘back center’ i likened it to a spray of a bottle rocket, bright lights in an acute trianglar spray. It made no noise, and when it was close the frogs, crickets, everything doused. My dad was on about the, “No sound” for s long time after that. We’re chatted that evening for hours. We chatted about it here and there, but the interesting part- my brother came in, had been about a mile from me, maybe 2 miles from them, saw it, chatted a bit, got quiet. He refused to speak of it, if it was mentioned, he was out.
Kind of 3) it had to be acknowledged, a downtown space occluded. The newspaper printed a story, calling it a ‘military formation’ thing…
I have hunted and searched. I paid subscriptions, even looked through microfiche- cannot find the article. I know it happened, we all saw it, separately and solidified the memory with conversations about the impossible movement, practically instantaneous speed, then amazing control as it glided just a couple hundred feet over head…
Others stopped talking about it, i asked a few who’d seen it, and they weren’t able to discuss it, then others would deny seeing it. I knew they saw it, we had acknowledged it. To this day, my brother will say, “No, it was definitely a formation of planes”
He didn’t forget, he’s freaked out by the whole bit, he protected himself.
I remember it so vividly, the other 5 up close, also vivid. I know of one conversation my buddy was willing to have following. No more. She just kind of started furrowing, denying within 2 days. There’s no way to reach out to the crowd I’d been in. It was an outdoor festival thing, (Denver, late 90s) i can’t remember which. But- obviously it faded. We were in the corner of 13th +(facing) Speer. Kinda feels like we were walking toward the civic center park, i remember walking, pointing, talking, people were along Bannock, all out and again it was like the world stopped. The silence was like being in a tornado’s inception, it feels like time stops, got in slow motion, the soundtrack stops, and the air feels wrong. I felt like i was indoors, seeing myself, all these people around surrounding go slow, freeze, shift… then, like a dj comes back on, sound, and motion straighten out.
I felt like one of 2, from a crowd of 60 visible people- who actually saw, really saw clearly what it was, and we were the only/ in real motion.
So freaking weird! I’ve never written this, it’s freaking me out, but It’s real. I try to convey, and i know my delivery lacks good proofreading. It freaks me out to reread it, ngl. I am one who has to rewrite and rewrite. So very sorry if this is shit to read. If i do it, i know i won’t hit that ‘reply’

TLDR: I’ve had the most amazing experiences, and seen undeniably some things not from here, with hundreds of other people. It is within a day or 2 that most of them lose the memory, a week or so later almost no one is able to/ willing to discuss it, high percentage outright deny it.

Context if ya care to continue-

I luckily had a father enthralled, also an experiencer. I believe my retaining was, i didn’t have fear, i didn’t shut it down, and- we talked about it at length, factors, aspects,... solidifying. Other experiences confirmed, for me, our capacity for storing these traumatizing/ outside our understanding, messing with our psyches, flooding us with fear… those things don’t find a foothold in memory, they no longer consciously exist, therefore, did not happen. It’s protective, it’s a trauma response, and it’s what they need to believe for their reasons.

The vault two floors under the Antwerp Diamond Center was the diamond trade's gold standard, in a city that handles roughly 80 percent of the world's rough diamonds. The control stack:

• Combination lock, 100M+ possible sequences
• Separate keyed lock
• Multi-tonne steel door
• Magnetic field sensor on the door
• Seismic sensor for drilling or force
• Light detector
• Infrared heat-and-motion sensor
• Doppler radar sweeping the chamber
• Camera coverage on the approaches
• Private guard force monitoring the whole apparatus

Ten controls, each independently credible, and the industry's assessment was that the stack was effectively absolute. Dealers stored inventory there specifically because nobody believed it could be opened.

Over the weekend of 15-16 February 2003 a crew opened it without tripping anything, forced roughly 100 of about 160 safe deposit boxes, and left with north of $100 million. No weapons, no violence, no forced entry into the building. It wasn't discovered until staff came in Monday morning and found emptied boxes and missing tapes.

What each control actually fell to

The IR heat-and-motion sensor — the layer specifically designed to catch a warm body moving in a dark room — was temporarily blinded with a film of ordinary hairspray, long enough for someone to reach it and physically disable it.

The magnetic contact on the door, which should have fired the instant the door broke its field, was defeated by holding the two halves together with aluminum and tape so the field never opened.

The light detector was covered. The combination had been captured weeks earlier by a concealed camera recording the dial being turned.

The University of Washington security group made the point that lands hardest here: taken individually, the exploit against each of the ten high-tech controls looks trivial to the point of absurdity.

Why that's the interesting part rather than the funny part

The stack was never ten independent defenses. It was ten expressions of one shared assumption — that no attacker would get close enough, for long enough, to study the set.

An IR sensor is formidable if you meet it by surprise in the dark. It's a can of hairspray if you've known its make and position for two years. A magnetic contact is unbeatable if you don't know it exists and a strip of tape if you do.

The stack's real security was a sum of surprises. Remove surprise and the layers stop multiplying difficulty and start merely adding to a to-do list. Ten controls became a sequence of known problems with known answers, and the arithmetic changed from multiplicative to additive.

That's the failure mode, and it's the one the industry eventually internalised the hard way — which is why the impenetrable perimeter got abandoned in favour of assume-breach, continuous monitoring, and blast-radius limitation.

The access model

Leonardo Notarbartolo didn't break in to study the vault. He rented in it.

For roughly two and a half years he posed as a diamond merchant with an office and a safe deposit box in the building, which gave him an unremarkable reason to come and go and to descend to the vault whenever he liked. From inside, he filmed the door and its controls with a concealed camera, took notes on guard schedules and the brand names of the locks and safes, and at some point obtained building blueprints. He carried all of it back to Turin and built a complete model of the target.

He defeated the vault by being welcomed through it, repeatedly, until he understood its controls better than the firm that installed them. The taxonomy for that is a decade old now — legitimate access, long dwell, extensive reconnaissance, single objective, exfiltration in one event — but Antwerp is the physical-world version, and it predates the vocabulary by years.

The control that was actually missing

Everything in the stack was a prevention control. The vault could be opened, and there was no meaningful capability to notice that it had been.

It was opened, occupied for around two hours, comprehensively looted, and closed again — over a weekend, with nobody watching, and the only record of any of it walked out the door in a bag. Detection lag was roughly 40 hours, and detection when it came was a human noticing empty boxes.

Ten prevention controls, zero response capability, and log integrity that depended on the logs being physically present in the building the attacker was inside.

The cleanup

They engineered every step of the intrusion and none of the exit.

The evidence bag was supposed to be burned. One crew member, left alone with it, convinced himself he heard someone coming, scattered the contents across a patch of ground off the E19 and fled. The land belonged to a retiree with a documented hatred of litterers and a habit of reporting illegal dumping.

Within about 48 hours he found the pile and called the police. Recovered from it: a Diamond Center videotape, envelopes from the building, payment stubs, a business card belonging to the crew's electronics specialist, a discarded SIM card, a supermarket receipt whose timestamp let investigators pull store camera footage of one of the crew, an invoice for a low-light surveillance system naming Notarbartolo as the purchaser, and a half-eaten salami sandwich carrying his DNA.

Notarbartolo drew ten years. Others got five apiece. Several participants were never identified. Almost none of the diamonds were recovered, because loose stones are fungible, anonymous, and effectively untraceable once they re-enter the flow through Antwerp and Mumbai and Tel Aviv.

The attack was the engineered part. The cleanup was the part that generated attributable artifacts, which is more or less exactly how sophisticated intrusions get attributed now — not by failing to get in, but by reusing infrastructure, leaving metadata, or otherwise producing the digital equivalent of a sandwich with your DNA on it.

Full write-up on the vault, the reconnaissance, the crew, and the Wired interview where the ringleader claimed the whole thing was an insurance fraud:

https://unteachablecourses.com/antwerp-diamond-center-heist/

The question I'd put to this sub: the Antwerp stack failed because ten controls shared one assumption and nobody stress-tested the assumption rather than the controls. In practice, how often does a layered architecture get audited for correlated dependency — where the layers look independent on the diagram but all rest on the same premise about attacker dwell time, or the same identity provider, or the same assumption that a tenant with valid credentials isn't the threat? I've seen plenty of control-by-control audit. I've seen much less "what single assumption, if false, degrades all of these at once."

last year, when i was 17 i was in a relationship with a guy who was 17 as well, but one year older than me. we began dating in june, he was sweet and nice, but seemed too afraid of me. not scared, but afraid of feelings, my impulsive reactions, etc… he was never in longer relationship than couple of weeks before me, he was very immature and i didnt care (bad i know) because we clicked and that was the first time i’ve fallen in love.

anyway, i kissed him on our second hangout. we began dating, without actually getting to know each others (another red flag—but that’s not the point of story). we hung out often, every other day almost. it was sweet and innocent love.

one thing about me is that i love making out and kissing in general. i’ve kissed many for my 18 years. and anytime i’d hang out with him, we would just kiss every now and then, and those were short (butterfly kisses) without any length (like literally 1 second) and obviously without tongue (which i love using while kissing). i used to tell him to use his tongue more but he never did until our one month anniversary when we made out for the first time ever.

i know that seems good, he’s respectful and nice towards me (at that time at least) but boys that age love touching and kissing and i was always overthinking why isnt he doing anything. he did kiss couple of girls before me, so i wasn’t really sure why was he so scared of making out. and the first ever make out was good, he was good. like i said, we clicked and i swore that he is my soulmate for long time, even after the break up (my delusions)

long story short, we broke up just three months after that (his wish not mine). after that we were kinda on an off (6 months after break up) and he told me he made out with two girls who he didnt even date ever (i taught him how to have moves obviously-ungrateful pig). then i got in contact with ex girlfriend of his ex best friend. she and i then started talking about both mine and her relationship with those two, and their friendship in general. them she tells me secret…

he nutted in his pants the first time we made out.

mind you we never did anything sexual and obviously this fucker never had anything like that in life with another girl.

When I was born, my parents were flatmates with another couple who had a 6 months old daughter.
My parents relocated multiple times in first 18 years of my life but we (the girl and I) continued to meet each other. When I was 18, I promised her that I’ll live with her for the rest of my life and then, she will have the freedom to wear anything or be anyone (which she didn’t have in her house) AND we weren’t even romantically involved with each other at the time.

BUT, one day my father got drunk and visited their home, created a scene and our families became enemies. Unfortunately, I lost my phone around the same time and we lost touch even though we just lived on the same street.

4 years later, day, I received a message from an unknown number about some project that they have submitted. I was in an underground metro with no internet, so I thought to play along. After some back and forth, I apologised to the person that I was fooling around but the texts kept going. Then, she told me her name and place of residence and it clicked. I became the happiest person in the world. We chatted 2-3 times in a month for 3 months. Till this time, there was no flirting at all. One day, I just told her that I remember the promise of staying together and want to meet her the next day.

She never had a drink and I was only an occasional drinker myself. So, we decided to meet in a bar. After 2 pints, we went to a hotel (again, with no ill intentions but just because we chatted throughout last night and wanted to sleep and sober down before heading home).

We slept on the same bed but on opposite ends. 1 hour later, I was lying on top of her almost about to kiss when she woke up and she kissed me back. We didn’t know how we got there but loved every bit of it.

6 months later, we eloped from our houses and rented an apartment in another city. Both are families were against this marriage because she was a step daughter of my step uncle and the families hated each other. They told us - we are with the wrong person!

Its been 6 years now. I hold her right hand with my left hand (as they both have a straight line going through the palm which we could not find in any other person) We have moved to mountains, both retired from work, living with our dogs and have never spent a night away from each other.

Edit: I dont understand people calling me a freak for not seeking her consent before getting on top of her. I DIDNT KNOW HOW I GOT THERE. Even she doesn’t have a problem with that, why the internet does?

When I was around 8-9 years old, I was for no reason at all obsessed with trying to call Jojo Siwa. I think, maybe, it was because I was obsessed with those stupid videos like “CALLING JOJO SIWA AT 3AM, SUPER SCARY” or whatever.

Anyways, after a few days of searching for her real phone number, I found one that I called once as a joke. I was starting to give up.

When I called the number, someone picked up with a confused voice asking “Hello. Who is this?”

I got nervous, and hung up within seconds. I didn’t expect someone to actually pick up, plus I was only 9 years old.

I went outside away from my parents, who I knew would question who I was on the phone with.

I called the number back, and the same voice spoke.

I asked “Jojo Siwa, is this really you?”

“Yes!”

She responded with an almost surprised, yet confused tone. I didn’t know what happened after that, but all I know is that I kept telling her I’m a huge fan.

Eventually, she handed the phone over to someone else, because she said she needed to get something.

I think it was her manager or something, because the person on the other end had a very deep voice.

He kept questioning who I was, and I told him (if I’m not mistaken) that I found the number on a random website or YouTube video, and I was determined to find her number.

Again, I have no clue why I was obsessed with finding random celebrities numbers, I still point to those random videos from YouTube.

After I told the person on the other end I had to go, I was confused and almost nervous. I couldn’t believe I actually called Jojo Siwa.

A few hours later, I called the number back. What I assume was Jojo who picked up had an irritated tone in her voice.

“I’m sorry, I’m very busy right now. You call my number again, I’ll block it.”

She immediately hung up, and I was left baffled, and I haven’t called the number since.

I am now sixteen years old, and I still have the number on an old phone of mine, but it’s deactivated if I’m not mistaken.

If somehow on God’s green earth she sees this lol, I want her to know I’m very sorry for my stupid, kid self calling her continuously, and bothering her.

There’s a girl named Manisha, but I used to call her Rinki. I first saw her around September 2024, when her family moved into the house next to mine. There was a wall and a mango tree between our houses, and somehow I started noticing her from my terrace. At first, it was just me quietly looking at her from a distance. I didn’t know that this girl I was simply watching from my terrace would eventually become such an important part of my life.

One of the first real memories I have with her is from the Rath Yatra mela. We went on a ride together, and she got scared and held my hand. Later, she became unwell, and I helped her get home. At that time, I don't think I understood how special that moment would become to me.

Later, she moved somewhere around a kilometre away. I somehow found her through her brother's Instagram. I followed her and eventually started talking to her. I remember bringing her Manchurian and a cold drink, and there was this small moment when we shook hands and she actually held my hand back. Eventually, I got her number, and that's when we really started talking.

From there, she slowly became a part of my everyday life.

We would talk for hours. I was alone for most of my life, and then suddenly there was someone I could tell things to, someone whose messages and calls I would look forward to. We would walk together in the evening, holding hands and talking about completely ordinary things—our day, our lives, random stuff. But those ordinary moments became some of the most precious memories I have.

We also used to take my scooty and just go somewhere without really having a destination. We explored places together, and I still remember our first ride to a familiar city. I remember sitting with her and listening to her talk about her childhood and the place where she grew up. She was very shy in person, and I loved that about her. I remember her smile, the way she spoke, her quietness—little things that probably wouldn't mean much to anyone else but became unforgettable to me.

The strange thing is, we never really had a proper ending.

There wasn't some huge fight between us where everything suddenly fell apart.After my proposal she gradually started ignoring my calls, and sometimes when she answered, she would hand the phone to her sister. Eventually, after an argument involving her sister, I was told not to contact Rinki anymore. And that was basically it.

I never got a proper goodbye from her.

That's probably one of the hardest parts for me. There was no final conversation where we sat down and said goodbye, no chance to ask her what happened or tell her what she meant to me. One day she was such a big part of my life, and then suddenly I had to accept that I wasn't wanted there anymore.

For someone who had spent most of his life feeling alone, she had become something completely different. She made ordinary days feel meaningful. She gave me someone to talk to, someone to wait for, someone to share little things with. For a while, it felt like I had finally found the person who made the loneliness disappear.

And then I lost her.

Recently, I saw her again while I was riding. Seeing her brought everything back. And knowing that she has moved on and has someone else hurts more than I know how to explain. The hardest thought isn't even that she has someone new. It's the realization that the girl who once felt like such a huge part of my life doesn't want me in hers anymore.

Sometimes I look back at those memories and they feel almost unreal, like maybe they never actually happened. I miss the evening walks, holding her hand, our conversations, the scooty rides to nowhere, her smile, her quietness, and simply having her around.

I know I can't force someone to stay in my life. I know people change and move on. But my heart hasn't caught up with that reality yet.

I don't think I'm only grieving the relationship. I'm grieving the life I imagined could have happened with her—the conversations we never had, the places we never went, and all the ordinary days that I thought we would have together.

She came into my life when I was used to being alone, and for a while, she made that loneliness disappear.

That's why losing her has been so difficult.

I don't hate her. I don't even want anything bad for her. I just wish things had ended differently. I wish I had gotten a proper goodbye.

Because for me, she wasn't just a girl I liked.

She became a part of my life that I still don't know how to let go of.

This happened a while ago now. I’m not looking for advice on fixing the friendships because I no longer consider the two main people involved my friends. I’m mainly posting because something incredibly minor escalated into years of hidden resentment coming out, and I’m curious how it reads to people completely outside the situation.
For context, we were a friendship group of seven women who had known each other since around 16, with some of us knowing each other on and off since primary school, from around age five. I’ll call the main friend involved A, the bride B and another friend C.

For B’s wedding, I was putting together “letters to the bride.” Everyone sent their letters to me so I could format them onto individual A4 pages. A submitted only 2–3 sentences, and when I pasted hers onto the page it looked noticeably sparse compared with everyone else’s. I asked if she could add a little more and explained why. She got annoyed and said I was “overstepping” and not respecting her privacy.

I found this strange because when another friend had previously got married, A herself had given us less than a week’s notice to write letters for her, and we all wrote more than half a page. I wasn’t asking A to disclose anything deeply personal or write an essay. I just wanted her to add a little more so B wasn’t left with an almost-empty page from her.

Instead of staying on the letter, A repeatedly redirected the conversation towards C, another friend who had hidden and lied about a 3–4 year relationship from most of the group before revealing it shortly before her engagement. C had actually told me the truth from the beginning, but hadn’t told A, despite A claiming she was closest to C. A became noticeably more hostile when she realised I’d known for years, as she’d assumed we’d all only found out around two months before C’s engagement. A called the others petty and mean for not arranging an engagement gift, flowers or a card for C. I said I understood why they were hurt after being lied to for years, but pointed out that we’d done none of those things for B either because, in both cases, there was less than a year between the engagement and wedding. A eventually acknowledged this, while I kept trying to bring the conversation back to the original point: none of this had anything to do with me asking her to add a few sentences to an almost-empty A4 wedding-letter page.

Rather than returning to the letter, A moved from talking about C to unloading her wider grievances about the friendship group. She told me she’d deliberately distanced herself because she no longer felt close to the others. She also said that although she was happy B had personally called her about her engagement and wedding, she thought the call was odd and that B might simply have been trying to include her rather than genuinely considering them close.

This surprised me because A and I hadn’t spoken properly one-on-one for a long time either. In my mind, we were still friends, but primarily friends within the group. We rarely had meaningful conversations independently anymore.

Meanwhile, some of the others had separately spoken to me because they’d noticed A distancing herself and were upset and worried about her behaviour. So I now had A talking to me about them while they were talking to me about their concerns about A. My feeling became: you all need to talk to each other instead of through me.

I privately told the others how A had spoken to me once our conversation ended after 10 hours of her berating them, and that, as far as I was concerned, A and I were no longer friends. I also shared a screen recording of our conversation with them. I personally stand by doing it in this situation. I’d repeatedly caught A lying over the years and had seen her present situations differently depending on who she was speaking to, so I didn’t trust that the argument wouldn’t later be presented differently. The people I shared it with were the same people A was discussing, and it allowed them to see exactly what she’d said rather than relying on my retelling.

The recording also confirmed that what the others had already noticed wasn’t in their heads. A had explicitly told me she was deliberately distancing herself from them. I addressed that in the group chat because I didn’t want to continue being the middle person. I’d already ended my own friendship with A by this point and wasn’t asking anyone else to do the same.

That’s when everything properly exploded.

During the group conversation, A said her issue with me actually went back to 2016, when we were 18 and I blocked her on social media. She said she hadn’t been “a fan” of me or my behaviour for around nine years and repeatedly said she didn’t “rate” or respect me.

The context behind the blocking is that A regularly posted about feeling suicidal and self-harming. I’d see the posts, become concerned and message her asking what was wrong, but she’d often respond with “nothing.” At the same time, I was dealing with significant mental health struggles of my own and found repeatedly seeing those posts extremely triggering, particularly when I couldn’t actually do anything to help her. Muting or soft-blocking wasn’t really an option available to me back then, so eventually I blocked her. I’m not saying she wasn’t entitled to be hurt by that. We were both 18 and struggling with our own things.

However, that wasn’t the end of our relationship. We continued seeing each other at group meet-ups and remained in the same group chat. We reconnected on social media in 2019. Then, in 2021, I discovered that A had discussed me blocking her with other people in our friendship group but had never spoken to me about it. I approached her myself, explained why I’d done it and apologised. She accepted my apology, so I genuinely thought we’d resolved it.

I was therefore stunned to discover years later, during an argument that had started over a wedding letter, that she apparently still viewed something I’d done at 18 as a major issue and was now saying she hadn’t been a “fan” of me for nearly a decade.

A also said that the blocking had affected her so much because she’d considered us best friends and felt blindsided and betrayed by me. A and I have known each other our whole lives as our parents were friends but we were never best friends. This confused me because I hadn’t considered A a close friend for years and never a best friend.. Part of that was because I’d developed significant trust issues with her after repeatedly catching her lying, including about relationships when were teenagers.

I didn’t announce that I’d “demoted” her or secretly dislike her. I simply adjusted my expectations of the friendship. I thought we’d naturally grown apart and settled into being group friends rather than close individual friends.

So while my understanding was “we’re not particularly close anymore, but we’re still in the same friendship group,” hers seemed to be simultaneously “I considered you my best friend” and “I haven’t liked, rated or respected you for years.” I genuinely hadn’t known there was that level of hostility underneath our interactions. She often liked and commented on my posts and gave compliments.

Eventually I left the group chat because I didn’t want to continue the argument on the gc. Afterwards, B brought up the fact that neither A nor C had acknowledged me moving to another country. I hadn’t asked anyone to confront them about this. I’d noticed it myself and had already privately adjusted my expectations of those friendships. C apparently said she’d forgotten because she was consumed with planning her wedding and didn’t consider missing my farewell or my move that big of a deal. Fair enough. I wasn’t asking her to justify it.

A’s response was very different. She continued talking about me after I’d left the group chat, repeatedly saying that she didn’t like me, didn’t rate me and had no respect for me, and that this was specifically why she hadn’t acknowledged my move. At that point, there wasn’t any ambiguity left for me.

One final part of the aftermath that I found strange was that B had largely been the person speaking on behalf of the others during the confrontation. Both A and C subsequently apologised to other members of the group for their respective behaviour, but neither ever apologised to B, despite B being the person who had voiced many of the group’s feelings directly to them. The whole situation had also started around B’s wedding letter, and A ended up ruining the surprise of those letters during the argument.

Despite everything, the others still socialise with A and C and remain in a group chat with them. I don’t expect anyone to cut them off because I did. Their relationships with A and C are separate from mine.

I also don’t claim I handled every part perfectly. I shared a private conversation and brought what A had said about the others into the group chat. I personally stand by those decisions in context, but I understand other people may disagree.

Before blocking A, I also sent her a final message. I told her that it seemed clear this wasn’t really about one incident but years of resentment she’d never communicated directly to me.

I no longer consider either A or C my friend and I’m not interested in reconciliation. I can be civil if we’re ever around each other, and I don’t expect our mutual friends to choose sides.

I just still find it wild that “Could you add a few more sentences to your wedding letter because the A4 page looks really empty?” somehow ended with me discovering that someone I’d known since my teens apparently hadn’t liked or respected me for years.

I’m curious how this reads to people with absolutely no connection to any of us.

UPDATE 1: I sent this before blocking A

A,
I’ve had some more time to reflect on the tone and manner you’ve spoken on the group chat. It is so so clear to me now that this is not about one incident regarding me but some deep rooted issues you have towards me. You’ve carried resentment for years without ever communicating it directly to me - EVER.

I only apologised to you because you bought it up at a meet-up in 2021 that I wasn’t even at.

Saying you’ve “not been a fan of everything I’ve done for the last 9 years” and that you “don’t rate me” makes it obvious that there was no respect left. That goes to show that you’ve been sitting in silent judgment for nearly a decade instead of communicating or working through anything.

Even if you didn’t want to- bringing this up on a group chat indicates:
a) that you need some kind of therapy since you’ve clearly held a grudge over a social media removal… sorry you’re no longer 18 to still be bringing that up 😂
b) you are clearly hurt to be bringing it up unprompted
c) you refuse to acknowledge that you have not processed it as you’ve made it everyone else’s problem.

Or it’s just simply that this may have been a contributing factor but you just decided to weaponise it for your own convenience because let’s be real, I have never ever considered or claimed you as my best friend- so I don’t know why you’re rewriting history.

I don’t need to defend myself against narratives that are being rewritten to make me the villain just because you have unresolved issues.

I apologised years ago, I stayed civil, and I even tried to maintain group harmony. If that is not enough, then nothing ever will be.

For my own peace, I will now be blocking you.

Update 2: added a TLDR and made it more concise!

TL;DR: I asked a friend from my 10+ year friendship group to write more than 2–3 sentences for a bride’s wedding letter, especially as she’d previously expected much more effort from all of us. The disagreement spiralled into her unloading her issues with the group and revealing she’d secretly disliked and not respected me for years over me blocking her on social media when we were 18, despite us reconnecting and me apologising years later. I shared what she’d said with the group because everyone was talking about each other through me, which caused everything to blow up. She continued saying she didn’t like, rate or respect me even after I left the group chat, so I ended the friendship and blocked her. The rest of the group still remain friends with her.

I was a nice student of an english teacher of mine and during the winter break, she told me that one of her students from the 9th grade (I was 10th) (which i have been knowing since the start of the year) wanted to be my girlfriend.

I didn't have an interest in her whatsoever but I eventually asked her out, knowing that she already was going to 2-3 days after i would.

She was way happier and jollier than me at the start because she actually loved me and found me cool and interesting.

I coped with the relationship because she was the smartest student of the 9th's and was sweet, cute and finely attractive, that was enough for me to love her and i knew that my love would grow bigger into a serious relationship because she was actually my type.

We were the two most beloved students of our english teacher who at the time was both of our favourite teacher in the school and we were always chatting together, attending speaking courses together and was pretty much enjoying school itself with everyone being optimistic and flattering.

Months went by and our first serious feud came by, it was because of her classmate.

Her classmate was the most frequent boy she was hanging out with after me or equally to me idk really and he had to change his class to a lower class because he came last in the placing exam inbetween classes and she was in a really bad mood and was constantly blabbing about him being gone and even sketched out a tally chart near the classroom wall where she sat counting the days that went past without him.

And at that time, i saw many relationships between my classmates and none of their girlfriend was that frequent with another boy and that started to piss me off and i eventually tried to warn her but not too explicitly by saying that none of the girlfriends of my friends were that chatty with another boy.

She understood but also started to flame me because i was comparing her to a friend of mine who was notorious for hanging out with multiple girls at the same time.

After the incident, i simply apologised and moved on, not pushing it further because it had already engaged her into hating me a bit for a moment.

Again, months went by and so did her manners but nothing serious happened.

Then came july and the last day of school, i arrived in the morning and after putting my backpack down at my class, i made my way into her class (there is like 10 ppl in the school apart from us so no one is restricting is from anything except not joining the classes at all) and saw that her other boy friends with his friends playing an electric guitar unplugged, i mockingly said that since when did you guys play guitar and continued to say satiric stuff until she snapped and dragged me into an empty class.

She told me that i must respect her friends and not mock them, i defended myself by saying that i was only doing a serious criticism about their playing but she denied and said the same thing.

Then her boy friend came by and we just sat there doing nothing because their teacher didn't came and i didn't have a class at the time.

Then came the noon recess, on fridays we were allowed to go stroll eat or do something else in Kızılay for one hour then return for the class. Kızılay was the neighbourhood our school was located in.

I wasnt on a great mood after that incident and decided to grab an icecream alone at the mcdonalds, then i was halfway through my icecream and she phoned me and said where i was.

She dropped the restaurants location which of couse she and her boy friend was eating at and i arrived there but didnt even spare a smile to neither of them because as i said i was both fuming and sad.

After she and her boy friend ate their burgers, and paid the bill. i immediately took of comically fast from a lying on the table position to sprinting position straight to the school because of the same reason.

She didn't say anything and made her way to the school with his friend.

After the classes ended, I walked with her to her house then to my house like we always did everyday afterschool and she was also really sad because or history and favourite english teacher were resigning.

Again a month went by and nothing happened, i was texting her and my resigned english teacher frequently like in the school days.

But then came the 16th of July, the worst day that i've ever lived so far, i came home from the school's summer camp and was solving text then she suddenly texted me that we must talk.

I didn't think of her leaving me because everything was going just fine but then she said the she had to break up with me because her mother wanted her to focus on her lessons more.

I was staggered and furious because if all along, your mother wanted you to focus on your lessons, then why did you wanted to be my girlfriends months ago?

Out of my shock, i quickly texted her, you're not playing truth or dare with your friends are you?

And she said no and wanted to break up.

I coped with it from the momentarily mix of feelings and quickly mailed my old english teacher the situation and she basically said that she couldnt do anything because it was her mother's decision, which she was right, dammit.

I slept the night crying and after i woke up, I listened to Yesterday by The Beatles because it was the right song for the moment and texted her again about if we could still be friends and overnight, she had changed her thought about me all of a sudden and wanted me to stay away from her and her friends.

I chased her back, apologising and claiming every past event's faults as mine and wanted her to come back but she sent a whole paragrahp about how i was wasting her life and her friends with my manners and ignoring her while daydreaming all the time, and she continued to blame me for nearly everything.

And then i unwillingly blocked her and i was alone.

I was constantly texting my old english teacher about the stuff and she quickly refused to claim any type of responsibility because we were basically two grown teens that could fix this on our own and she wanted me to move own on my life.

What she said to me were the right things but i still loved her and continued to chase her.

I texted his notorious boy friend if he could help me rebuild my relationship with her and he all of a sudden said that i was being obsessive and stalking her and called me honorless and then blocked me.

Not that far away from those things, my english teacher started not responding to my messages and after a few days, she texted me saying that she was getting married and was going to move to an another city and didnt wanted me to text back.

Out of my momentarily respect towards her, i coped with it and wished her a nice life.

She removed me from her instagram but ONLY ME, not any of my other friends following her which made me feel something was off.

I mostly think that she lied to me and wanted to stay away from me because my ex and she was more close to one another and was supporting eachother more and she basically wanted me to stay away.

Phew, after those events, i kinda managed to get back to my normal state until i started seeing my ex in my dreams over and over again.

So, i lost my so called favourite teacher (I'm mostly furious about her because she could've just honestly stated what she was feeling about those stuff and acted at her age) my girfriend, my girlfriends boy friend which i was actually friends with until me texting him.

I know that my story is silly af and i know that theres grammar errors because English is not my first language even tho im trying to get to c2 someday.

I just wanted to share what happened and what i felt, im feeling a bit okay because i still have my friendgroup and my band to spend time with but mostly, this summer was the worst of my life.

I dunno if i did any mistakes in this relationship, certainly i did but mostly it was her fault, she started it and she ended it with her mother first and then hating me afterwards.

So that's it, im still trying to recover, its been a month or so and i think im getting better but still feeling really down.

I'm sorry if my story is silly and out of context again, i just wanted to do what i can do and get along with life.

What are your thougts? I'm always eager to this community's view

My best friend (31f) and I (31m) have been really close for about two years now. She’s married, and though we’ve always kept things friendly, there’s been this unspoken tension between us , that spark you can feel even in a crowded room. The way we look at each other sometimes, lingering between eyes and lips, it’s something neither of us ever wanted to acknowledge out loud.

One day, we were alone at her house. As usual, we started playfully arguing over the TV : small, silly things like who got the remote or what to watch. Those playful fights often turned into gentle pushes or tickling, just harmless fun. But that day, it felt different.

Our laughter turned into a sort of challenge. She dropped the remote, and suddenly we were both fully focused on this “fight,” teasing and pushing each other harder. At one point, we ended up on the floor, holding hands, each trying to pin the other down. She smiled and said, “Let’s see who’s stronger,” her tone half-playful, half-serious.

I didn’t want to let go, so I matched her energy. She’s surprisingly strong and that only made my heart race faster. Eventually, she managed to get on top of me, pinning my hands down. “Admit you lost,” she said, teasingly. The moment was charged the air between us thick with tension.

I refused, still smiling, and she laughed, saying, “I’ll bite you if you don’t.” I told her I’d do the same. We kept struggling, laughing, our faces so close that our breaths mingled. She leaned in and playfully bit my cheek; I responded in kind. Those playful bites turned slower, gentler… until our faces aligned and our lips brushed…which we didn’t wanna stop , so I bit her gently with my lips close to her lips but not her lips ..

For a second, everything stopped. She gave a soft, nervous laugh and whispered, “Stop…” I said, “You stop…” Neither of us moved away. The energy between us was overwhelming

I whispered near her ear, my voice low and teasing, “You’re going to regret challenging me one day.” She laughed softly, replying, “Oh, we’ll see about that,” all in a soft sensual voice near our ears, before playfully nipping at my ear. Instinctively, I rolled over, shifting her beneath me as our bodies pressed tightly together. Our faces were close, breaths mingling, eyes locked in that same electric tension that had been building all along. She cupped my face with her hands and pulled me straight and before either of us could think, our lips met in a deep, lingering kiss — slow at first, then desperate, until we both finally pulled away, breathless and stunned by what just happened, all while we were in this missionary position (with clothes on ofcourse, but dry humping like we wanted to fuck if clothes weren’t on)

We finally pulled apart, both breathless, realizing what had just happened after a good minute of smooching and tongue. We sat there quietly for a few moments, still processing it, before her husband came home and instantly, everything went back to normal, as if nothing had ever happened..

I don’t really need an advice. Please allow me to share this. I have lost the love of my life, my best friend, and now I have no one to actually tell this to.

It only happened this morning.

Please do not copy / repost outside Reddit. Seriously.

He wanted to talk in person but I insisted that he should at least give me a gist. A bullet-point summary would suffice. I don’t deserve to be left anxious, thinking I did something wrong, and wait several days before I could actually see him in person.

I had a hunch. I just didn’t want to believe it. I gave it the benefit of the doubt that maybe the pessimism is induced by the bad, bad anxiety — that, now that I actually think of it, he caused.

Even with hesitation, he followed through to my request. I read. I listened to his reasons. I didn’t take it personally. I wanted to truly understand him, because I didn’t want to end up hating him just because I didn’t get the outcome I wanted.

I didn’t make it about myself.
I didn’t take it against him.
I didn’t make it seem bad.
I didn’t argue.
I didn’t try to change his mind at all.

Honestly, I saw it coming.
I just didn’t think it would happen much sooner.

The messages, the litany of his reasons why he needs to do this written on a screen, were ultimately for him, so I have something to look back to as point of reference to truly understand him.
I took what he said at face value.
I didn’t even feel the need to verify.
I just trusted his words, and respected the decision to end the relationship.

It made me realize a lot about myself.
I love him so much, I humanized him and his actions.
I didn’t care, at this point, whether or not those reasons are true.

To set aside the pain this situation gives me to understand him as a human, not seeing him as a boyfriend, or lover, or any title, is a manifestation of my love for him.

Most of his break up reasons are circumstantial. He isn’t in a good place right now, and as cliché as it already is, he apparently needs to focus on himself.
Alone. Without me in the picture.

I only had one question; one, personal, quite selfish question that I desperately needed to be answered by him, with complete honesty.

I asked: if the circumstances are different, and he is in a better place, living a better, much comfortable life ideal to him, would I be someone he’d actually want to be with?

I just needed a yes or no. It was a question he doesn’t need to think about at all.

And I didn’t have an answer.
He reasoned himself out of it— he cannot answer it because he already is thinking about a lot of stuff. One question about my value in his life was too overwhelming, he decided to keep it unanswered.

That’s it. That, itself, is an answer.
Loud and clear.

I am the disposable one. I am the least priority.

In everything I do, he is always considered.
I always think about how my choices, decisions, and actions will affect him and people he value. I always look at the big impact. If there is something I am proud of myself, it’s how I love so purely and wholeheartedly. It’s a double-edged sword; but if it’s pure and non-transactional, it’s always a win. Pain and grief are just the caveat, as nothing is ever truly free.

But I gave it to him out of my own volition. He didn’t force me at all. I loved him, because I wanted to love him. I chose to be with him. I could’ve been anywhere else with anyone else doing anything else, but I am here, because I consciously decided to be here and give love to the person I chose.

Now, I am just dealing with consequences of my own actions. And, you know what? I am actually okay with that.

I have to hold myself accountable.
I cannot control my lover, or rather, my former lover.
And I am okay with that.

It hurts me that it took him this long to realize our relationship isn’t something that will do him good, with his current circumstances.
Yet, I am also grateful that he realized it sooner than later.

I know it’s bare minimum, but I am thankful that somehow he was honest about it, even if that’s questionable. It’s not my problem anymore whether it is or not. Whatever this is, it speaks more about him more than me.

I wouldn’t say this doesn’t hurt.
It hurts like a motherfucker.
I wanted it to work so bad.
Perhaps, this is another reminder that I can’t get everything I want.
It’s not because I don’t deserve it.
It’s a redirection towards the path of better things I deserve.

Destruction must occur to create space for better things I actually deserve.
Not getting what I want is a redirection much worthy things I deserve; it is not a dead end.
I will trust the process.
Come think of it: I have always figured it out.
Why am I so worried?

In the end, I still won— even if the outcome was different than what I really, really wanted.
You know why?
I came out as a better version of myself, compared to its version coming into the situation.
Now that I know better, I thank the experience, and hope that he gets what he wants out of this.

My journey continues.

I would like to sleep for now. I am tired.
This better be worth it.

(29 year age gap. F, gen z. M, gen x.)
Not written by AI. I wrote this trying to tire myself to sleep. If you made it this far, thank you for your time. It’s nice to be heard. 🤍

I didnt know who my boyfriend was when we met. We met on set for a class project. We had to do a short film and I was cast as the female lead. My friend, the director, said she knew someone who could play the supporting lead who would also be my “love interest” in the film. Call me superficial, but my only request was that he wouldnt be ugly.

At the first day of the shoot, I started fixing my hair and retouching my makeup in the bathroom before starting. It was a publiv bathroom behind a supermarket so you had to pass by the girls bathroom door before you got to the guy’s bathroom. At the corner of my eye, a cool green jacket passed by. I didnt see who wore it, what the person looked like at all. I didnt care either way, i just thought to myself. “Cool jacket”. I finished retouching and went back on “set”. Lo and behold, jacket guy was sitting on our table. He was gonna be my on-screen partner. We finished filming and transferred to a bunch of other spots around the place all through out.

While we were chilling out, i asked him why he looked so familiar & if we went to the same school. Apparently, we did. We went to preschool together, and we were classmates too. The reason why he was so familiar is because he had his whole face plastered over one page in our preschool yearbook. No wonder he was so familiar. He remembered me but I couldnt remember him (being my classmate). He teased me about him remembering me, he said he had his reasons. He refused to tell me what those reasons were.

Days past we would talk about anything and everything. Through out filming, he would be so kind. He ran home, through rain that could only be described as a storm, to get me a jacket. After shooting a scene in the rain, he knew I would be cold, so he got me that jacket and a shirt to dry myself with. He made me breakfast so i wouldnt have to spend 200 pesos on overpriced siomai rice. He walked me to the taxi stand and helped me cross the road, keeping me on the inner side the entire time. Asked me if I was okay, if I ate, if I caught a cold or a fever after getting drenched. He was the sweetest.
He even learned how to ride the train to see me at school.

I agreed to go out with him, and only after did he reveal that he had a crush on me during preschool, and after 12 year he still had remembered my chubby cheeks. After 12 years, he remembered the snacks I had packed for recess and their specific flavors. He told me everytime he would meet people from our school he would ask if anyone knew me. So basically, 12 years later, we found each other again. We now have been together ever since (four years) and we dont plan on ever being apart again.

P.S. im glad my friend satisfied my only request 😉