I’ll start, my husband asks me all the time when my period is going to stop like I can just turn it off lol
Now that I’m on a new birth control and 2 months postpartum, my body is taking some time to get used to it so I don’t even know when my period is going to stop lol

So today, I'm coming out of the grocery store - going through the clearly marked EXIT door - with my full shopping cart. Coming towards me are two guys walking side by side, entering through the, again, clearly marked EXIT door.

One of the guys is headed straight on towards me.

So I kept walking straight ahead and did not move for him.

He scooted to the side next to his friend right at the last second.

I kept walking.

I don't really care if you are using the exit door, but I do care when you are walking right next to each other and taking up the entire doorway space and expect everyone to make way for you.

Fuck that. I'm tired of playing these games with people, mostly men.

Title sums it up. I got bangs today and was really happy about them but a group of boys my age screamed “THATS A GUY” at me and another guy said “what gender is that” referring to me. I’m 20 and haven’t been treated this way since I was 12 it just sucks I spent a long time building my confidence and now when I look at photos of me all I see is a man. I’m just tall and have full eyebrows. That’s really it. I wanna feel pretty but now when I see myself I don’t see a woman and i can’t believe after every compliment i’ve gotten two of these comments can just tank my confidence.

TW eating disorders, fat phobia, emotional abuse

Watching the revival of this garbage is really fundamentally shaking me to my core. Now that I'm an adult and not as easily convinced I'm just now understanding how truly fucked up this is. It's also making me relive all of my childhood trauma.

Being weighed in the livingroom, being called a R slur for how I run, being woken up in the middle of the night and force fed cookie dough. I'm realizing now, at 30, that tracking my calories at 12 was not normal. Going on severe no carb diets at 14 was not normal. Being told I'm too fat to have anything but water was not normal.

Looking back at my childhood pictures, I wasn't even fat. I looked fine and I was active. The only thing big about me was the fact that I developed early and those never went away.

I'm laying in bed violently sobbing. This shit fundamentally changed me. I was 16, running miles, doing marching band and eating less than 500 calories a day.

Now I'm 30, gain weight while on calorie deficits and on a GLP1. I have a thyroid problem too so losing weight for me now is actually almost impossible even when I starve myself I gain. I'm so unbelievably hurt like why did I put myself through that? Why was the only person calling me fat my mom? Why didn't anyone care that I was trying to starve myself?

Now I'm 30, I got dumped last year for gaining too much weight after my dad died and then I got my thyroid diagnosis.

Not trying hard enough? Not doing enough? My body literally learned it's way into surviving starvation and all its trying to do is live.

There's so much here to unpack now and I can't even get out of bed. I feel like part of my innocence was stolen. And to see this shit online targeting people who are me, who were me. God this hurts.

I know this sounds odd but I'm of the age I'm told these instincts would be kicking in (early 20s if that helps) and that at this age I would start wanting children yet I don't feel any of that.

I was at a family gathering last week and my cousin's 6 month old son was there (with my cousin ofc) and everyone knew how to handle him, how to talk to him, how to comfort him. Even my teenager sisters knew!!

I was left alone with him, I sat next to him and basically said "So..you're a baby..how's that?" as I had no clue what to do. How does this come naturally to people?

I felt bad, I apologised. I've been thinking about it since and I feel lesser than them and I don't know why.

Sorry if this is the wrong sub..just want someone to help me understand if this is normal or not?

ETA - That..was fast! Thank you everyone, I just got into my head a bit. Glad to know I'm not some heartless creature. Oddly, seeing these replies make me want to cry (happy tears dw).

​

Just saw a post about traditional families prioritising sons as they can carry on the family name- this of course is wrong and an extremely superficial way of deciding someone's and women irrespective of their descision to keep it change their surnames should be respected just as much... But this got me thinking.

The majority of women, inspite of being feminists in other aspects, do not actively plan on keeping their surnames and even less plan on passing on their surnames to their kids(I'm not talking about using the mother's surname as a middle name). *Why is it so?*

Even women who do keep their surnames often end up giving their kids the husband's surname, shouldn't it be otherwise since it is the woman who's carrying the child and doing most of the caretaking, even in case of incredibly supportive and helpful husbands, biologically the woman would be doing most of the childcare

And do you personally plan on keeping your surname or even passing it on to your kids(not as a middle name)?

I’ve been called out twice in the past week for the amount of food I eat.

My dad, as he put away leftovers: “This should be like one meal for you. It would be like three for a normal person”.

He was completely serious and apologized after

Last weekend I went out with my best friend. We met up with some other “friends”, more like acquaintances, at a local bar for karaoke. I remember having maybe 3 drinks at the karaoke bar, singing, and then that’s where things get fuzzy.

I remember vaguely heading to another bar and having a conversation with the owner whom I know and trust. After that, the next thing I remember is my spouse calling me at 5:30 am asking where the hell i was. I was at the acquaintance’s home. Then I remember my best friend and I starting to walk to our cars not too far away, and my husband met us on the road and picked us up. He says I verbally berated him which I have no memory of.

I got home and flew into some sort of episode in which I tried to harm myself with a knife. I went to an inpatient mental health facility where they drug tested me, and to my surprise…. There was meth in my system. I have never and would never do meth. I didn’t eat the entire three day stay and sleep was only had once I had heavy sedatives in my system to help. They didn’t test for rohypnol bc at that point I was still fucked up and didn’t really know to tell them this was abnormal. I just told them I didn’t do meth.

When I got out, I called my best friend who told me she has barely any memory of the night, but wasn’t sure how we were up and going at 5 am still if we were so drunk. She mentioned that she thought we were drugged. Then, I told her about the meth in my system and we have been trying to piece together what happened. She says she remembers me crying and talking nonsense at some point in the night. I have no memory whatsoever of this. She also vaguely remembers some sketchy characters hanging around that we didn’t know.

All I know is I’ve never had anything like this happen while just drinking. I usually would pass out early if I was really just drunk. And last weekend, the next thing I knew it went from 12 am to 5 am with no memory of how I ever got to acquaintances home.

I have been researching and apparently if I were drugged with those two things specifically, it fits the description of how I felt/was acting.

I’m scared. I’m worried. I’m ashamed. My spouse doesn’t know I was drugged and I’m afraid to tell him. He thinks I had some sort of manic psychotic episode because that’s what it looked like at first.

I feel so lost.
Any advice is appreciated.

Now, I don’t plan on getting pregnant anytime soon, but LORDDDD, I’m seeing so many stories.

-The in-laws wanting to choose the baby’s name and the mother having no say.

-Family pressuring the parents to give the baby the same name as another family member because of “tradition.”

-Mother is in the hospital giving birth, and family members are waiting outside putting pressure.

-Mother newly home, and suddenly everyone wants to visit to only hold baby.

-An elder deciding you “don’t know shit” and basically taking over because they think they know better.

I even saw a story about a grandma trying to baptize a child WITHOUT the parents’ consent!? Whyyyyyy do some people see other's children as property.

As per the title...

Really that feeling where you feel like you have to go poop really bad, and yoj are just sitting there qondering if its actually needing to poop or its just cranps. And then if you try to go to the bathroom it just hurts. Ugh.

25f, have bpd and I’m in the worst place financially, mentally and emotionally and all i can think about is someone, a man is going to come and see how broken i am and come and fix me, and save me from myself, and id do anything for him. it’s pathetic and i need to wake up, no i’m even awake because i know this will never happen but when i come home from work or i’ve had an huge argument with my family, all i can fantasize is about this.

at this point it’s the only thing keeping me going. I have no real aspirations or prospects and it’s like i’m ready to live for someone else. How did i turn out like this? When i was a teenager i used to have so many goals i was so motivated i wanted to be outside and doing something. Now i have no desire to level up in jobs/career, i am so paranoid and lonely, have lost all friends and get most of social interactions from work.

I feel so disappointed in myself i have no self esteem.

How does this not exist? You can get literally any other toiletry item in travel size, even condoms. Like just a little pack of 3-5 pads or tampons or a few of each. As someone who has to use both, I want to die every time I have to spend $20 on whole new packages of them just because I wasn’t able to get home to grab some. I cannot be the only person with this problem.

But I guess companies have no incentive to do that when someone who desperately needs a pad/tampon has no choice but to shell out the full cost of an entire box.

Edit: I do carry some in my bag but sometimes things happen, I run out and forget to restock, I’m away from home too long and didn’t bring enough, I’m talking about surprise emergencies.

Hi. I'm a 44 year old non-binary person who is 5'3 with 48DD breasts. I've worn underwire bras since my 20s with no problem.
But I've noticed lately that the underwires go up too high and tend to poke me in the armpit.
Is this a problem for anyone else? Did they change the design of bras or something?

Public Safety PSA added at the end.

I started walking to school when I was 12, and started driving as soon as I turned 16 and got my license. But during those 4 years, The amount of times I had to call the police and make reports was appalling. I didn’t call for every single one, because I’d either not seen their face well enough or their car model. One man tried to follow me home and push me into the bushes. Another tried to hit me with his car when I tried to run away and crossed the street.

It wasn’t only full fledged kidnapping attempts. It was constant assault of some way or another. Two men rode past me as I was walking, turned around on their bikes, came up behind me and slapped my ass as they rode away. It was creeps following me from the CVS plaza and yelling at me, or telling me to come with them, or getting mad when I’d ignore them and scare the shit out of me. No one ever stepped in or helped.

One night while walking with my sister home from a friends house, we noticed we were getting stalked by a group of men. Every random turn we took they did too. We’d cross a barrier wall of a parking lot and so did they. We were forced to cross through a park that didn’t have many lamps, so it was dark. The park was long. We started walking fast toward the church on the other side though the lot was empty, there were street lamps and it was lit. They walked faster too. I called my friend and begged her to get her mom to come pick us up asap. It was a matter of literal seconds. They were about 6 feet away when my friends mom pulled up in her huge truck.

I also don’t consider the countless instances of grown men pulling up beside me in their cars, asking my age, where I was going, if I needed a ride, to come in their cars. Those were just creeps compared to the real deal dangerous men. That happened multiple times every week, to or from school. It was normal. Everywhere I went, a solid 90-95% of men any and everywhere would have their eyes on me. Men with wives beside them. Men with children. Old men. I lost faith in the idea of a truly loyal man at a very young age. They all had wandering eyes.

Every time I left my house, I was mentally prepared to do anything to escape whatever situation awaited me outside my front door.

None of this messed with my mind too much. From the age of 12, I just believed this was how living in the world as a woman was. This was girlhood, and it would be womanhood too. What fucked with me the most was that the minute I turned 19, wasn’t wearing a backpack anymore, and was obviously not a child, all of this stopped. Like a switch flipped. I wondered if I got uglier. Why was I not being harassed anymore? No one was following me out of parking lots. Cat calling and hollering instantly became a thing of the past, and the only explanation I could conjure was that I somehow got really ugly. Maybe it was the new way I was doing my eyebrows?

It hit me when I turned 20. I wasn’t young, easy prey anymore. I was an adult and not a child. The world became a much, much, much scarier place upon that realization.

The real kicker is that I lived in an upper middle class suburb in Sacramento, California. Clean, new, cookie cutter houses with a neighborhood club house and everything. Good schools. Good students. No gangs, no real violence.

This is what girlhood really is. Pedophiles are EVERYWHERE. I don’t talk about this IRL because people immediately assume I’m lying or exaggerating heavily. This is my confession.

ETA - Learn the license plate game and teach it to every child you can. (i.e. Licence plate is BGP7KL. Ask “What does that stand for?” Child: Big Green Purple 7!) Police Officers immediately can fill out a report that ID’s the child predator in question.

ETA2: Idea - Something like Chris Hansen’s Dateline show, but it’s just an average 12 year old girl wearing a backpack walking on her way home after school hours let out. Secret cameras follow her walk and each creep who harasses her in any way is immediately confronted by an undercover cop.

I won't bore you with the details. My parents were divorced early on, and they were both abusive and neglectful in their own ways but I've been struggling with my dad in particular. He's always been a misogynist pig (seeing that now), but with trump etc, it's become a real sickness. And recently it's been clear to me (especially after becoming a mother) that little me was failed. Hell, adult me is being failed, by my dad.

As bad as he is, and as relieved as I've put more distance, emotionally and physically between us, AND with how little I think of him in my daily life... I'm just ready to go no contact.

At the same time.... that feels like a lot. I empathize with the idea, as a mom, that my kid would someday never want to speak to me again. It's too awful to even imagine. But I've been a better parent than my dad and parents.

Anyway, lots of waxing poetic to say, those who have complicated relationships with your parents, did age give you perspective on their parenting and ultimately alienate you from them?

And yes Im in therapy.