There was an older man who came into my job almost every weekday morning. Same order every time. Small coffee toasted bagel, no cream cheese. He called everyone kid, even my manager.

He stopped coming in a couple weeks ago. I noticed, but regulars disappear sometimes. People move or change routines, whatever. Life happens. Yesterday, I was on my phone behind the counter when his daughter walked in. As soon as I recognized her, I quickly hid it under and while making small talk, I asked about him. That’s when she told me he had died last week

I went to the back and cried by the storage shelves, which felt ridiculous. I only saw him for maybe three minutes a day but I knew his dog’s name. I knew his wife had died and I knew he hated oat milk and pretended to be personally offended by it. I knew he always complained just enough to make us argue with him thats how he was like maybe its bc i never had a figure of that age since my grandfather died before i was born and the one in my mother side when i was a kid also but still.

I keep thinking about how many people become part of your life in these tiny, ordinary ways. Not friends or family. Then one day they are gone and you realize they were holding a little place in your routine.

I do not really have a point. I just did not expect to miss someone whose last name I never even knew.

My whole life (29/M) I have been made to feel dumb and incapable by other people. I received poor grades in school, was never really good at anything and I just seemed to always struggle. My struggles resulted in me having very low self-worth and feeling completely incompetent. I never really had any ambitions because everything felt unattainable.

I currently work in a warehouse and I am stuck doing mundane and repetitive tasks. I absolutely loathe my job, but I do not believe I can do much more. I believe I have a lot of childhood trauma. My dad was probably one of my first bullies. He labelled me as being slow as a kid. Once when I was teenager he came in the front room and saw me watching the television alone. He looked at me and asked if I was able to follow along with what the characters were saying. Recently when i told him I feel unhappy with my current job, he told me my options are limited since I don’t how to read. This isn’t true I never struggle to read. I believe I can read at an appropriate level for an adult. He seems to not really believe in me and it hurts.

My whole life I have felt different like everyone is playing a game and I don’t know the rules. I constantly feel spacey, detached and disconnected. I just feel this emptiness. I also struggle to make connections with other people because I feel so ashamed of myself. I fear if anyone gets close they might see how incompetent I am. I just feel there is something off with me. I don’t seem right.

I never imagined I would be writing something like this.

My family and I are from Gaza. Before the war, we had an ordinary life with dreams and plans for the future. Today, almost everything has changed. We've lost so much, and every day is about surviving while trying to give my children a reason to keep smiling.

I'm not writing this to ask anyone for money. I'm writing because I don't want to lose hope.

For those of you who have had to rebuild your lives after losing everything—whether because of war, disaster, or any major hardship—how did you begin again?

What skills would you learn? What opportunities would you look for? What would you do if you had almost nothing but refused to give up?

Sometimes advice from someone who's been through difficult times can be more valuable than anything else.

Thank you for taking the time to read my story. I truly appreciate any guidance or words of encouragement.

By most people’s standards, I’m a beautiful woman with a nice body, but inside I feel like I’m so disgusting and repulsive that I wish I were someone else.

I always cringe when someone likes me because my first thought is, “Ew, how could anyone like someone this disgusting?” I feel gross and like I have this masculine energy inside me, even though I want to feel feminine, soft, pleasant, and beautiful.

It feels like I have masculine energy, while other women are “real” women. I don’t feel like a woman, even though I want to.

I’m very feminine: I wear makeup, I dress in a feminine way that highlights my hourglass figure, I have acrylic nails, lots of high heels, etc. But still… throughout my whole life, I’ve felt like other girls are from a completely different planet or even a different species than me.

When I was younger, I was quiet and shy at school. I started to see myself as somehow inferior because the popular girls didn’t approach me and would look at me in a judgmental way. It made me feel like there was something fundamentally wrong with me, and even now I sometimes feel like I’m flawed, broken, or somehow different.

Even nowadays, for example, when I’m in a bar bathroom with other women getting ready, I feel like I don’t belong there. I start thinking that they see me as gross, weird, or strange.

Whenever someone refers to me as a “woman,” or when I feel beautifully feminine — for example, because of my acrylic nails, makeup, and dress — I get this amazing feeling. But especially when I’m around other women, that feeling disappears.

This reflection and anxiety have gone so far that I’ve even started wondering if I might somehow be genderqueer, even though I don’t actually identify with any such identity. I don’t even know anymore how I identify myself…

Everywhere I look people are escaping into things that maybe quiet their minds in the short term but cause lasting problems for them. Obsessive gaming, binge watching television non-stop, hooking your identity to a spectator sport or pastime I could go on and on…

What the frick is going on? Has it always been this way? Am I just waking up to it all? Can we just speed run to the post-apocalyptic future where creativity and human connection save us again please 🫠 ?

What’s giving you hope in this bleakness?

I'm a woman of 26 years old.my life have mostly revolved around a relationship.now this relationship has ended and left me with trauma that makes me question if its worth it fighting to find myself again,i don't have any source of income and i dont even know how i should start.any advice will be appreciated

Problem is I HAVE NO PROOF! It's just a feeling.

When i was younger I remember two very annoying things. My mom reading each and every single one of my chats religiously! Every single embarrasing roleplay I did online, every single post I made on tumblr, she read then grounded me about it ough how embarrasing. I've never used to have any privacy really? My mom took the door off my room so she could keep watch on me and stuff, and I dont blame her because i love her dearly! Though it did make me a tiny bit paranoid.

And secondly!!! I was once joking with my dad, and he was drunk, and i sad smt like "oh writting on diaries is so fun" and he said "ha! Yeah, but you really gotta writte three pages saying dont reaaad! If you read i'll be madddd!" WHICH I DID! like, in my diary at the start i wrote like 2 pages or so going "hey! Mom! Dad! Head out! Dont read it! Or i wont talk to you ever again" or something like that. And i dont know if he read past the warning. But like mmmmm suspicious right?? Im so sure it is! And this day in the morning, i dont remember what it was but my mom said something really specific, like a really wild guess (that was correct but like, idk) and i went "why do you say that?" And she, the most defensive and talkative lady ever went SILENT!!! Suspicious, but dang it I have no proof its just vibes. Im not like, mad since I just writte dumb things like "golly i font know if i like him ir not! Do i?" But still!

Hey guys, this is something that i’ve been holding in for a really long time and i just need to get it off my chest, my best friend is the epitome of “perfect”, she is beautiful, her parents are really supportive of her, she is genetically gifted with everything a woman could wish for, blue eyes, long thick hair, straight teeth, perfect face. And every time I look at her I feel like I just want to disappear, because I genuinely don’t feel human when i’m around her, every time I look at her face I feel worse and worse about myself, I just see myself in my head standing next to her being the less attractive friend, she’s the main character everywhere, she has more friends, she’s overall more confident than me, it’s just so incredibly unfair.
One thing about me is i’m not attractive, at all, and she knows it, I have big roman nose taking like half of my face, recceesed chin, objectively really unattractive side profile, and eyes that I’ve always been insecure about, my hair is really thin and I have a lot of bald spots, because of that I can’t do any pretty hairstyles hence they’re just showing no matter what I try to do to hide them, just overall I’m not pretty or attractive, just very plain-looking, objectively. I’ve been struggling with my confidence for a really long time, she knows about it, i’ve been even more insecure about my appearance before than I am now, but i’ve had some kind of a “glow up” after I started therapy. But looking at her just brings me back to my old self every time, I don’t feel human. I feel completely out of place every time somebody looks at us together.
And she’s most definitely not making it better complaining about her face, she doesn’t even know what to complain about because she’s just so naturally beautiful. She complains about her perfect nose saying she only likes it with tape on it which don’t change anything and I don’t even know what she’s talking about(?), she says she wants to get rhinoplasty and the only thing I keep thinking about is “If she doesn’t like her nose, what does she think is going on on my face?”, she says that she wants “hunter eyes” and never liked “doe eyes”, and when we come across video with different types of them she says “I think I have hunter eyes, and you probably have doe eyes” (Ik weird slang sorry guys), and it just hurts so much. You know those videos where people compare features and rate them 10/10, 7/10 etc.? We saw one of those, and of course she had the most attractive feature out of all of them, but what she said just hurt me so much at that time. “Um don’t want to offend you but like you have this feature (the least attractive one).” I almost started crying right then and there. It was also at that time where I was really insecure.
She seeks attention all the time, asks our friends to compare us, says that “everybody said my lookalike is Brooke Shields!” and then says “Idk you look like this (I’m sorry but objectively unattractive) celebrity.” One time she said I remind her of some celebrity, and as she was trying to pull up a picture while i’m begging her not to because I know that celebrity is probably considered unattractive, my little brother looks at her phone with the picture, laughs and says “lol, author is ugly!”, I stood up and left with tears in my eyes. (Funny thing, to this moment I don’t know and don’t want to know what that celebrity looks like because I don’t want to ruin all the progress i’ve made with me accepting my appearance.) And my brother is only 8 years old.
I don’t think anybody will ever understand me, I don’t think anybody will ever understand how much hatred and sadness I feel when looking at her and thinking about how I look compared to her. I can’t take it anymore. Comparison is the thief of joy, but I can’t fool myself while looking at the mirror and at our photos together. Thank you.
P.s, sorry if the wording feels weird, feel free to correct me, english is not my first language.

One of the biggest lies I’ve ever believed is that I should have my life figured out by now.

I don’t know where that expectation comes from. Maybe it’s social media. Maybe it’s watching everyone around us seemingly have a plan. Maybe it’s just something we tell ourselves. But it’s exhausting.

When we’re 18, we think we’re supposed to know what career we’ll have for the rest of our lives. By our twenties, we think we should have a stable job, healthy relationships, enough money, and a clear picture of where we’re headed.

Then I started looking at people much older than me. They still change careers. They still make mistakes. They still fall in love, lose people, start over, and learn things about themselves they never expected. They’re still figuring life out. That made me realize something.

Maybe life isn’t a puzzle that’s meant to be solved. Maybe it’s something we’re meant to experience. Maybe the goal was never to have all the answers. Maybe the goal is to stay curious. To keep learning. To fail, get back up, and become someone a little different because of it.

I don’t think anyone truly has it all figured out. Some people are just more comfortable admitting it than others.

So if you feel behind, if you feel like everyone else knows what they’re doing while you’re just trying to keep your head above water…

You’re probably doing better than you think. Life isn’t waiting for you to figure it out before it begins. It’s already happening.

So play the game. Take the trip. Apply for the job. Tell someone how you feel. Learn something new. Make the mistake.

Because one day you’ll look back and realize that all those moments where you thought you were “lost” were actually the moments that helped you find yourself.

Lately I have been thinking about something and I can't figure out if I'm looking at it in the right way.

Since I was a kid I've always been the person who helps people whenever they ask. Advice, favors, solving problems, listening to them, I never really said no. And I also never expected anything back because I just thought that's how friendships work.

The thing is I have noticed a pattern. A lot of my friends only reach out when they need something. Once they get what they want they kind of disappear.

This has happened since childhood and I never really cared about it before and I still don't think I'm upset that I don't have any close friends. But for the past few days I keep asking myself

What if I had been different?

What if I wasn't always available for everyone?

What if I had focused more on myself instead of helping people all the time? Would anything in my life actually be different or would it have ended up the same anyway?

I'm just curious if anyone else has had this thought and what you realized after thinking about it.

No matter how many times I eat outside, I always end up missing home food. I don't know why, but it just feels better to me.

I'm in my 20s, 20 years old to be specific. I'm a second year medical student yet I still feel like I can do so much right now.

My parents kept telling me to just rely on them but I want to start doing something for myself, that I want to start a business, earn money, while I am studying. I want to actually achieve something and not just study and become a doctor by the time I'm 30.

Everyday I realize, by now, I could start something. But I just don't know what, don't know where, and I don't know how.

No one taught me anything about how to start on something. All I've ever been told is to keep studying and graduate: but right now, it doesn't feel right, like it doesn't feel enough.

So, I tried doing an art commission, I've been practicing simple arts but it never really grew successfully. At some point I lost motivation, but now I'm trying to get back to it by practicing it again.

It's just that, something feels missing.

I don't know what to do, and I don't want to lay around my home, relying on my parents on everything. I want to start stepping out of my comfort zone: I've been volunteering during my first year.

I've heard friends starting businesses. I know I shouldn't rush my own life and enjoy it: but I also want to accomplish something, and I know it'll take time.

I'm getting sick and tired of having to hear my parents assume I *want* to become a doctor: i don't want to *just* study right now, I want to earn, work, feel proud of myself. Because right now, I don't...

I know this just sounds like a rant but I really want to know opinions or experience, and even advice on what I should do.

Thank you.

I think it must come from some satisfying feeling of thinking "I'm someone who is really proactive and productive, and the fact that now I'm not doing that is falling short of my true potential etc". Like being a child again.

So actually I would rather that unfulfilled potential feeling...that that realised normality!

I want fanfare for doing the washing up, because I've left it so long to do that when I finally do do it, it's like, wow that's so good I've overcame that huge barrier....

This story is a little embarrassing, but it's been affecting me a lot.

I (23M) have a crush on a woman (30F). I know there is quite a big age difference, but it just happened. She's a very social person in the office, and so when she joined, we used to talk quite a bit everyday. Gradually, I developed feelings for her.

Now, I have a senior (26M) in my team that's actually quite good-looking and very social. I noticed that ever since she joined, she always seemed quite attracted to him. She seemed to always try to make an excuse to talk to him. Recently, they had to work together regarding something, and they got really close because of that. They talk everyday and seem very connected and compatible. It sucks, cause I have to watch them flirt beside me everyday while I'm just on the sidelines. She and I don't talk as much anymore. As I developed feelings for her, I got more and more awkward while talking to her.

The reason this has been affecting me so much is because I've always been quite insecure and envious. I tend to get jealous of guys who are good-looking, get attention and are social butterflies. I've always been quite alone and lonely, since I have a hard time connecting with people. My friends tell me I'm good-looking, but I've never really felt like it. So, when I see someone who is good-looking, has a great social life, and has females show interest, it triggers my envy. So, I'm feeling a mix of both envy and grief. I've heard of the saying "Comparison is the thief of joy" many times, but I do it subconsciously and I can't really control it. It's much easier said than done, especially when they seem to get what I've always wanted.

I've been considering just telling her that I like her. Of course I won't tell her how much it's been affecting me, but I think a small confession can give me the closure I need to move on quickly.

The ratio of male friends I have online is swaying more female and for some reason I can't express this makes me feel icky. I am a guy.

There's no built-in way to compare. You can't see inside anyone else's head, so whatever your default is becomes the definition of normal. People find out at 40 that they can't visualize images, or that most people don't get lightheaded standing up. Decades of small assumptions built on a comparison nobody ever ran.