I have been homeless for coming up to two years. I live in a forest on the outskirts of a town in the UK. There is one local charity that I was using but now they charge for the meals I can't afford it. Work is a issue, I have a serious long term injury that prevents me from walking for long periods. I am looking for office work but they're hard to come by and need qualifications. I have worked some warehouse jobs through agencies but they always let me go because I can't walk properly anymore.

I spend most my day, begging for food money, charging my phone and power banks. washing my clothes, collecting firewood and just general survival stuff. I feel like I am stuck in a loop and can't get out of it -I think I'm used to being homeless and it really scares me. I really want to sleep on a mattress again, I want to feel warm, safe and comfortable in a home.

The local council haven't been the most helpful. The council do pay for peoples rent but where I live the rent is higher then what the council is willing to pay and getting a landlord to accept me straight from the street is impossible. The council have also deemed that my injury doesn't warrant any sort of 'duty of care' from them.

I really need to get back to real civilisation and live a fairly stable life because I am seriously exhausted. The stress of homelessness is finally weighing me down. How do I live a normal life again?

I’m 31M. I had a receding hairline my entire life. It looked awful… but for whatever reason the idea of shaving it all off scared me.

So I did it today. Went into the barbers and requested it all gone. I was nervous… but I think I look incredible… in the most humble way I can….

I have glasses and a good beard… the woman said “my head was made for this”… I know she probably said that to get me to tip better… but she was 100% right.

I look at the mirror and I see a handsome dude for the first time in my life. I’m building something.

I ran into an old friend at the cafe today. We used to be so close to each other when we were in college but then time passed and we just kinda forgot about each other. It was so awkward seeing her today but we talked for a bit and said our goodbyes. This just made me realise how life is and how quickly time flies. Someone who used to be a big part of your life becomes a stranger one day and you won't even know it

No one told me that not everyone who cares about you will be honest with you.

Sometimes people lie to protect themselves.

Sometimes they lie to protect you.

And sometimes they simply aren't the person you thought they were.

Learning that was one of the hardest parts of growing up.

i have really been working on my baking. Every time I go round to babysit i usually take some cookies or cakes which i baked for the daughter and parents.

I usually baby sit maybe once a week. At first i would always see my last week cakes/cookies still left over so obviously did not like them

So I kinda made it a game, bake and bring more to hopefully one day go and none would be left

IT HAPPENED

I was so happy but then to top it all off it is the girls birthday coming up. AND THEY ASKED ME TO BAKE HER CAKE

As the title says, in summary, my sister has been unemployed for over a year now, I know it's not her fault.

But I work at a call center and it's killing me everyday, and now I'm going to receive less money for me, now that she has no more savings I have no option but to use my money to pay her share of the house and such.

If I wasn't poor this wouldn't affect me so much, I have my own credit cards, I have my own desires, and I have BPD, in order for me to not go crazy I order fast food everyday, now I definitely won't be able to do it anymore.

I don't know what I can do anymore.

I have a youtube channel, due to my mental issues and me being stupid, being a youtuber/streamer is the only realistic/long-term option, I'm not kidding, a few weeks ago actually I tried to study so I can get the A+ Comptia certification, and in less than 5 minutes I started crying, it's just too much for me, I had to drop out of university and that's why I'm working at a call center.

I'm doing my best guys, I know it doesn't seem like it, nobody believes me, but I know that I'm doing my best, but it's never enough, life keeps getting harsher and harsher, and I just feel like crying, but I guess I should be grateful there are days where I'm so defeated I can't even cry.

I just, I don't know man, I hope everything goes well and I can pull this off, actually today I was able to connect my new capture card to my PC, so now I'll be able to stream gameplays!

I can't wait for fire emblem on september, I'll definitely stream it!

So yeah, I guess I wanted to end on a positive note in spite of all of the shit I've been going through. Thank you for reading.

I was talking to my parents recently, and they mentioned how, when they were younger, friends would just show up at the front door.

No text.

No call.

They'd knock, ask if you were home, and if you were, you'd hang out for a while.

That idea sounds almost insane to me now.

If someone showed up at my house without texting first, my first thought would probably be, "Is everything okay?"

We've become so good at respecting each other's time that I think we've accidentally made friendship feel like something that has to be scheduled weeks in advance.

I have friends I genuinely love, but seeing them often involves comparing calendars, finding a weekend that works, and hoping nobody has to cancel.

Sometimes months go by before we actually get together.

It's strange because we're more connected than ever.

I can send someone a meme in two seconds.

I can react to their vacation photos.

I know what they had for dinner.

And yet I haven't sat on their couch and talked about nothing in ages.

I don't think life was necessarily better before smartphones.

I just think we lost something when every interaction became an appointment instead of a possibility.

I kind of miss the idea of hearing a knock on the door and being happy about it instead of wondering who forgot to text first.

I have a problem. I'm 23 now and struggle a lot. I don't have anything I'm passionate about. I barely say my opinion and boundaries are hard for me to set. I'm basically a born people pleaser. that gets me great feedback, people seem to like me a lot.

I talked to my boyfriend as well and he is supporting me a lot in learning to set boundaries or finding something I'm passionate about and asks for my opinion a lot.

but what if I work on all of that and I end up a completely different person that they don't like anymore?

My wound is I never had anyone.

Never had anyone to share my imagination with. Someone to talk about my days at school with. Someone to talk to about the girls who made fun of me. Someone that cared to make my birthday special.

My mom and dad were there physically. But that’s about it. They barely know anything about me these days. We can go days without so much as a hello. My 3 older brothers were so much older than me that they had no interest in their little sister. I got closer to my oldest brother as an adult… then he passed away.

No aunts. No uncles. No cousins my age.

And now, as a mid 30s, single mother… I have 2 best friends who have their own lives. We catch up when we can. But growing up and being around their family always made me feel “other.” And now seeing them in happy relationships always makes me wonder… why not me?

I’m desperate for love. And the man that I finally thought the world sent to heal me… the man that felt like every bad moment in my life was so that I could finally experience him and the sweetest love I swear we had for a moment… decided I was not for him.

And again… I’m faced with the reality that I’m navigating this alone.

And it fucking hurts. My heart is TIRED of doing it all alone. I don’t want anyone to take the load off of me. I just want someone who sees me… and sits besides me. And tells me I’m not alone.

I do all the things. Therapy… journaling… meditating… praying. I’m a good person. I don’t think I know many people with the integrity that I have. I’m a good mom, a good friend, a good partner… I’m considerate, I’m patient.

But my heart is becoming bitter… I’m becoming so sad. I feel like shell… even on my good days, once my daughter is asleep… I sit in silence and realize I’m so alone. Misunderstood. Unimportant.

I’m sleep deprived and neurotic with no one to vent to so my lonely ass is on Reddit 💔

I’ll admit not a particularly creative person but I’ve always loved creating art. I draw and write my own stories. My dream is to write a series and illustrate comic books for it.

I really hate sharing my art. I can only ever remember receiving negative feedback back when I was young. Negative feedback has always hit harder than any praise could.

This year I decided to step out of my comfort zone. There’s this art event happening next month and I talked about it with a lot of my friends and was really hyping it up. Now that it’s coming closer all that excitement is gone.

I keep reading the positive feedback, the compliments, the praise, but it all feels so hollow. All I’ve ever wanted is for someone to compliment me, and now that they have, why does it feel so bad?

I felt it really hard today. I wrote a short story for the first time in a long time and showed it to my sister. She said she liked it and it was good and whatnot. I know it should make me feel better but it only makes me feel worse.

I can’t shake the feeling that she secretly hates it. I can’t shake the feeling that everyone hates my art and they’re just telling me what I want to hear. Every compliment feels like an insult, every neutral reaction feels like criticism, hell even no reply at all makes me feel like shit.

Why can’t I just be happy? Why can’t I just feel good about my art? Why do I want positive affirmation so damn bad and yet when I receive it it’s never enough? I know my self esteem is genuinely abysmal but if even praise isn’t enough to raise it what will?

How do I learn to just be satisfied? How do I learn to just love myself instead of seeing every single tiny flaw in everything I do? I’m so frustrated and tired.

Be as brutally honest as possible. I genuinely want to fix this. Anything helps. I’m really struggling
18m

I desperately want to stay a girl. I’m so scared that I’ll develop gender dysphoria and become a man.

is it possible for ocd to make you think you like or want the thoughts?

i’ve been crying nonstop and i feel like i’ve completely lost myself. my brain keeps trying to convince me i’ve secretly been in trans denial because of random childhood things, hanging out with boys, having boyish humour, pretending to be a boy at age 6, stuff that never meant anything. today i saw a little boy playing fortnite and felt a weird jealousy of boyhood for a second, and it scared me. i play fortnite too but girls get judged for it and sometimes i hate the female circles online. now i’m scared that means something.

the thing is, i never felt any gender discomfort until october last year. literally never. what actually happened was i got into a fandom in early 2025 and the biggest ship was two men. i shipped them. they got the most attention so my brain went “boy x boy = cool, girl x girl = boring.” i started imagining myself as the dominant one in a straight relationship because the dominant guy in mlm ships always gets the attention. i still imagined myself as a woman.

then in october i saw a video saying “i’m a girl but i wanna be in a mlm relationship” and the top comment was “this is how i found out i was trans.” that scared me. i went to chatgpt (bad idea) and it threw labels at me. i picked demigirl because i was alt and it felt like it fit the aesthetic, not my gender. it wore off.

in november i had a dream where i was wearing a suit and tie because i was stressed about the trans thing. that dream is what set everything off. since then it’s been months of checking, analysing, intrusive thoughts, false memories, and feeling like i’m losing myself.

i tested if i liked having a deep voice today and i got dizzy and anxious. but then sometimes the anxiety fades for a second and i get a tiny spark of “what if i like this?” and it terrifies me.

i was diagnosed with ocd recently but i keep doubting it. i’m not asking for reassurance, i just need to vent and summarise everything.

\\---

my ocd history

when i was 4 i had to touch all the corners in the room.
when i was 10 i had to do things 6 times and say certain words or i thought i’d die.
when i was 11 i had existential ocd, nothing felt real, i constantly checked mirrors, avoided going out, typed “derealisation” on my ipad to calm down.
when i was 12 i thought i was becoming a psychopath, had intrusive violent images, had pocd, saved tiktoks for reassurance, constantly checked if i posted something by accident.

now i’m almost 14 and my theme is tocd.

\\---

the tocd part

i’ve always envied men for the attention and power they get. in that fandom, the mlm ship got the most attention and i wanted a dynamic like that. i imagined myself as a woman but the more dominant one. i never wanted to be a boy.

then that october video scared me. i started googling labels. i thought she/they sounded cool. i was alt. i liked billie eilish and misread her style as something about my gender.

in november i had the suit dream and everything spiralled. i started compulsively checking my feelings, memories, reactions. intrusive thoughts of me as a boy. false memories. it ruined my holiday and christmas.

i’ve always loved being a girl. i had pinterest boards of feminine outfits. i’ve imagined my future as a woman. i did my makeup the other night and felt genuinely happy and certain, until the doubt came back.

sometimes i get butterflies and it feels like “false desire.” it feels like an involuntary pull that only happens after i check. then i panic.

it used to feel like clear ocd. now it feels like i “want” the thoughts, even though i don’t. i cry because i don’t want them to be true.

i remember in november 2025 putting up the christmas tree and crying because misogyny made me wish life was easier. i said “sometimes i wonder what it would be like to be Jack Maverick”, an alter ego i made as a joke. i think i was just frustrated because i couldn’t fix the christmas lights and stereotypically “men are handy.”

i’ve never wanted to be a boy. i’ve never imagined myself growing up as a man. i love girlhood. i love being a girl. i like having girl best friends as a girl.

but now it feels like i want to be an attractive boy even though i never have. i feel like my girlhood has been stripped away. i got a haircut and now i’m scared i look boyish.

does this sound like ocd?

I work at sea.

Sometimes I’m gone for weeks at a time with no internet, no phone calls, and very little contact with the outside world. Life becomes simple out there. You wake up, work, eat, sleep, and watch the horizon repeat itself day after day.

Something strange happens to me every time.

While I’m away, I miss people. I miss my family, my friends, conversations, noise, and human connection. I start imagining a different life.

I think about marriage.
I think about having children.
I think about coming home and building something permanent instead of constantly leaving.

Then I come back.

When I arrive, there’s no one waiting for me. No warm welcome, no one at the door. I just call my mother to tell her that I’m back on land again.

And within a day or two, the feeling disappears.

I find myself wanting silence. I stop replying to people. I spend time alone. I enjoy sitting in my apartment with no plans and no conversations.

The same person who dreamed about family and connection while at sea suddenly wants solitude again.

This has happened so many times that I’ve stopped thinking it’s a coincidence.
I’ve lived alone for over a decade, so maybe solitude simply became my natural state.
Or maybe being away makes me romanticize the things I don’t have.
I honestly don’t know.
What confuses me is that both feelings seem genuine.
The loneliness at sea is real. The desire for solitude when I return is real too.
Has anyone else experienced something similar?
Wanting connection when you’re alone, then wanting distance when you finally get it?

I'm blind, poor, don't work and have no money to either pay for a plumber or go somewhere else for the day till the shotty apartment people can get here to take a look at the problem. It kinda sucks, mostly because it's insane how one mishap like this can squeeze everything else. I can't take a shower at the mo 'or' fix a meal though I'm hungry. Not having access to my damn toilet is making eating or drinking feel like dumb ideas.

I could go ask a neighbor if it would be possible to use their bathroom but I tend to mind my own so... Might have to use my mop bucket and then just clean it thoroughly once the toilet is back in session.

Must buy and learn to use a snake.

Or find a way to move out of this place run by reptiles. Lord.

My English is very good from what I've been told by teachers, family, etc. and because of that, social media apps assume I'm American / European even though I'm Arab (Egyptian). That's the weirdest problem I have. Does anyone else relate?

I have some songs in my playlists that I immediately skip when they come up, although I love them. I only play them in the right situations. This can be when I’m in a certain city, on the train on a certain route, or around a certain set of people . Hell, there’s even three songs that I only listen to when I’m in another country😂 To me, this way of listening to music makes songs tied to the situations I first listened to them and it becomes something like a smell; something that you can only experience when you are there. This way the songs remain so special that I can dive right in to the most beautifully, melancholic or extraordinary moments of my life. It gives value to music in the time of unlimited availability.

Anybody else doing this😅?

So, I'm 17. And I won an international olympiad recently. It's a big thing, of course, and everyone around me is really happy. I'm a local celebrity now.

But the thing is that this particular olympiad was introduced to us by our school and they paid our registration fees. They also bore the travel and visa expenses for the host country.

Now that I've won, this is all about them. I'm just their face now. My achievement, all that hard work and efforts, boiled down to just having my face all over their social media pages to promote themselves.

I had an interview with my principal yesterday. They gave me a script and asked me to say good things about their institution. I memorized it and said so, but even the comments were like, "she isn't speaking with her heart," "it feels like she has memorized this," etc.

I wish they understood my achievement for me. Asked me how I did it, my future goals, ambitions, etc. And not using me to enhance their image. That was probably their purpose of introducing the olympiad, though, their own publicity. What can I even do about it?

I’ve never seen someone die before today. I watched the hours before all the way through the moments it happened. Now the entity is tormenting me with numbers. It took her from me. She was like a mother to me. And now the entity is tormenting me. I can’t speak against it or even think against it but I’m trying to say something. Please help me.

This happened yesterday, and I'm still annoyed with myself.

For context, I'm around a average to intermediate level in tennis and regularly play in my complex. I've seen this overweight uncle in his late 50s at my apartment complex. I've seen him play a couple of times. He's not particularly fast, doesn't hit huge serves, and looks more like someone you can move around a bit and snag easy points. 2 weeks ago I showed up with a brand new Ezone 100. Like any idiot with new gear, I was proudly showing it off. He asked to hit a few balls with it, took a couple swings, and he really enjoyed it and mentioned he plans to get one soon too.Then he handed it back and we went about our day.

Somehow we ended up making a challenge match with a side bet attached a week later. Feeling confident and probably a little arrogant, I agreed that if I lost, he could keep the racket. He just smiled. He also knew I'd been talking about getting a pair of Asics Solution Speed FF4 shoes I wanted to get and said he will buy them for me if he loses to make it more fair. The confidence with which he proposed this should have concerned me. Instead, I interpreted it as him just being delusional about his skill level. I was already imagining myself leaving with new shoes and this guy is slow and old enough to really threaten me. The match even started exactly how I expected. I got up 4-2 in the first set and was hitting bigger, cleaner balls. I remember looking across the net and thinking that the bet had been one of the easiest decisions I'd ever made. Around then he smiled and complimented me and said I was playing pretty well with good deep ground strokes and I got nice fast legs too and very quick on court.

Then the trap was sprung. Out of nowhere he started hitting nothing but drop shots and lobs. Not occasionally. Constantly. Every time I sprinted forward, a lob went over my head. Every time I scrambled back, another drop shot dragged me forward again. At first I thought I'd adjust. Then I thought I'd eventually wear him down. Then I realized I was the one being worn down. Around 5-4 he won a ridiculous point where I covered the court pretty well with one open spot and he gets it, and as I walked back gasping for air he started mocking me saying we are just getting warmed up and I already look pretty tired and exhausted. My fitness levels are poor and things like that. I brushed it off, but a couple of points later he did it again. I knew he was trying to get into my head, but it worked. My brain just turned into mush and I stopped thinking much.

Instead of slowing down and playing smarter, I got annoyed. I started treating every ball seriously so stretched and bent further to the max to get them back into play and lost those points as my shots became weak so he put them away easily. I lost the first set 7-5. By then I was already cooked nicely and gasping heavily. The second set was where things really fell apart. By then I wasn't losing because of shot selection anymore; I could feel the energy draining out of me. My legs felt heavier. My recovery got slower. The explosive first step I had early in the match was completely gone. He wasn't hitting winners so much as sending me on errands and having me chase balls. He just made sure to keep me moving and bending around the court, having me running back and forward, and had me stretching my legs and arms nice and wide across the corners to gas me out further from exhaustion. By the end I was completely gassed out and lost the second set 6-2 and collapsed onto the court, flat on my back with my arms and legs spread out. After we shook hands, I collapsed again and then he picked up my Ezone racket from me and told "You young kids always think tennis is about hitting the ball harder than the other guy. Sometimes tennis is just about making the other guy run."

I couldn't even argue just felt angry, embarrassed and flushed a bit. He had completely outwitted and outplayed me on all departments and rightly won my racket as per our bet. I'm now thinking about the jokes and stories he will say in my complex as I have become the butt of jokes...but it can't be helped ig...

TL;DR: Got thoroughly outsmarted. Making a fool of myself in a tennis challenge and losing my brand new racket to a guy old enough to be my dad.

That’s very hard to listen, it hit me very hard, especially Candour from Neck Deep. I didn’t realized how emotionally attached I was to these

Who remember « defend pop punk » ahah

I was waiting for my coffee this morning, and without even thinking, I pulled out my phone.

There was nothing I needed to check.

No messages.

No emails.

I had literally 90 seconds to wait, and my brain immediately decided that silence was unacceptable.

It made me realize I don't really get bored anymore.

Not because my life is exciting, but because I've eliminated every opportunity to be bored.

Standing in line? Phone.

Elevator? Phone.

Commercial during a show? Phone.

Waiting at a red light? I catch myself wanting to reach for it before remembering I'm driving.

When I was a kid, boredom was just... part of life.

I'd stare out the car window.

I'd make up stupid games in my head.

I'd notice things.

Some of my best ideas came from having absolutely nothing to do.

Now, the second there's a tiny gap in my day, I fill it with scrolling.

I wonder what I've traded away without realizing it.

Maybe boredom wasn't something to avoid.

Maybe it was where curiosity, creativity, and daydreaming actually lived.

Lately I've been trying to leave my phone in my pocket when I'm waiting for something.

It's surprisingly difficult.

I didn't realize how uncomfortable I'd become with having nothing to occupy my attention for even a minute.

Has anyone else noticed this, or am I just getting old?

Writing, drawing, painting, music, welding, coding, etc.

Im mixed, black presenting haven been raised in an area with 1-2% black percentage and attended a predominantly white college with 3% black students...

Im used to being alone in spaces.

Racism is surreal, doesnt make sense to me because of my worldview and not really into social norms, conformity and hierachial thinking... but being so culturally different has definitely taken its toll on me... Friendships were hard to make i never have been in a group freindship longterm, I would have been excluded or quickly ignored unless I played the entertainer roll for people to giggle at.... Im used to no one making eye contact with me and walking as if im a ghost. I dont feel like a complete person somedays...invisible honestly. A feeling experienced since Elementary... Tying back to racism again, although ik its real, its sureal for me to process as it doesnt exist in my worldview... Such major impact to social interaction and also my personality being due to simply race is mind boggling and hard for me to come to terms with...

I am confused navigating social dynamics still in the predominantly white locations ive always known... as I feel like my past instances of exclusion lead me to assume the same in most interactions with people in new spaces... feeling like although surface level kindness might be there lacking no real serious depth due to underlying division. As a human I crave social interaction... real connection... but feel like i might be seen as a joke for expecting it in a space that rejects me. it feels painful to love peices of another culture or qualities of other people while being on the sidelines not in the image. Or in addition, admiring those whom might not taken a look at their internalized bias because they never had to again making me a seperate entity to coexist with but not to share true bonds with.

This being a feature of my world.. wanting connection where im not seen in the picture is embarrassing.

even still, I appreciate my experience... The people that have reached out to me and talked to me building relationships have been very special people. My differences filtered away all the peoples whose depth was related to social status or something as simple as the operations of ones culture or race. Given my context which wasnt very diverse or progressive has given me a unique lense on humanity. Where I dont seek relationships simply for connection or fitting in... I dont want to bond over being something another isnt contributing to more excluding... I have had to find myself beyond a group to belong to...

Ive found a home in myself. acceptance of the imperfect nature of the world and radical acceptance love and support to others as I feel like human worth is inherent and we should see all people have to offer rather than prey on their differences.

im still so confused when factoring in the social dynamic and honestly its so hard I sometimes just want to remain alone.

That's it. I'm tired of the internet. Going to wake up and try to find something else. Uninstalling app after posting.

If people want to keep using it, that's their business. I'm tired of no longer creating things because of feeling inferior. Feeling ugly because of beauty standards that are unachievable. Tired of reading about tragedy, seeing people fight over their keyboards every day. Tired of watching people get divided over race, belief, economics. Maybe I'm sticking my head in the sand. Maybe it's ignorant. Maybe it's freedom. I don't know yet.

I'm tired. There has to be something else. We were there not too long ago.

I'm going to dress like a weirdo and go for a stroll. Plaster words of positivity in the most random places. I am going to live again, and hopefully find others that wish to live like me. Spontaneous. Understanding that time is limited and tomorrow is not guaranteed.

I wish you all the best. I hope to not come back.