It’s ok to feel awkward about it. Even if you are “overthinking”, it’s a perfectly valid reaction to the scenario. It would make a good number of people out there uncomfortable.

I can’t masturbate so I don’t have a ton of advice, but I think the shower is going to be your best option like others say.

A huge bounce back, if you ask me. I hope you are proud of your accomplishments.

Which part of that is your lowest point lol? Wrong post??

Thank you. That is kind of you to say. It is weird because my supervisor isn’t a bully anymore. It took me a long ass time to believe it tbh. I’ve never seen someone make a change like that before. So despite HR treating me like shit, they must have actually did something in the background.

Yes, time itself seems to be key in wound healing…even if it’s painfully slow lol.

I’m sorry to hear. Curious on who is taking advantage of you in life? There are definitely plenty of people who will do that to others. The goal is to find a home in a group of people who don’t and leave as many of the toxic people behind as possible.

I’m so happy to hear this for you. What sort of field did you end up in?

I feel like there has always been a new lowest point for me in life lol.

Maybe this seems mild to some, but I worked my way into getting a well paid career after going through hell in grad school. I never ever had friends growing up or after…seemed to develop severe social anxiety that never went away.

At my job, I thought I finally found an irl deep friendship in my coworker. I had never had that kind of a relationship before. Maybe surface level stuff with others, but nothing like that. We seemed to always have each other’s back. I thought I had a best friend.

Well through the years, my supervisor seemed to get worse and worse with nitpicking my every move. I tried to give her the benefit of the doubt at first for many years…assuming things were a misunderstanding or something. But it kept getting worse and worse.

My coworker and I actually bonded over having mutual difficulties with my supervisor’s poor and unreadable attitude.

Well I got to a breaking point when my supervisor admitted to pushing me one day and I ended up eventually complaining to HR about her. I basically asked for a shift change because of all of the issues.

My friend/coworker was initially somewhat supportive of my struggles because she also knew what it was like to be on the receiving end of my supervisor.

Unfortunately, HR turned it into a multiple months long debacle and clearly was on the side of my supervisor. HR decided to involve all of my coworkers in the mess. My coworkers slowly lost support of me in this and I became more and more erratic as all of this was happening.

During all of this, I had tried to get mental health support as well. I was in therapy which I didn’t find overly helpful and was trying out various forms of medication.

But it was all too much…HR pulled me aside one day to talk to me about my distressed behavior a month prior. Instead of compassion, the woman outright called me selfish and then subsequently threatened termination in a written document that I had to sign the following day. The following day, a debacle also happened with my friend where she said that she wasn’t sure if she could be my friend anymore. None of my coworkers would speak to me.

It felt like my world ended. Everything from my daily life…my job and my friendships…I felt threatened and abandoned by all of that. I felt so hopeless and simply beyond destraught.

For two days in a row, I tried to go into work, but I would immediately go home “sick”. I could not perform my job. I contacted my mental health provider and they were able to put me on an emergency FMLA leave for around 1.5 weeks. So luckily my employer could not fire me right in that moment and I could have time to recover from being inconsolable.

In that time off, I volunteered near daily at the food pantry. I visited relatives and friends I didn’t realize I had. I got my first tattoo. I started wearing wristbands daily with positive messages on the inside. I told myself I would not touch a drink of alcohol outside of social situations. I applied to and interviewed at a different job as well during that time (tho I didn’t end up getting it).

The food pantry stuff helped me a lot. Something about trying to do something good while I was at my lowest instead of giving up on life helped. I’d recommend it. It helped distract me from being constantly consumed by my thoughts.

I have never done well with one on one therapy. My therapist did help me in a very important way, but overall I generally find it rather limiting. I started an intensive group therapy program several months later which I find was more helpful to me than most standard one on one therapy. My only regret is not starting it earlier. It was using the therapy modality called DBT which I highly highly recommend. But maybe I wouldn’t have been as receptive to it then I suppose. I’m also on a different medication now.

Been nearly a year since those few earth shattering days with the HR lady and my friend. I’m still employed at the same company and it’s been a long road with my friend, but we are friends again. My supervisor doesn’t treat people that way anymore. It’s been a long fucking road and I still struggle from that experience, but I’m still here and doing much better.

Sorry for the wall. What is your situation, OP?

I wouldn’t say that I enjoy it necessarily, but I heard an MRI machine recently for the first time and it makes the most bizarre collection of sometimes comically comouter-y sounds. People told me it would be loud but I didn’t know what type of sounds I would be hearing lol.

I work in a place where machinery is always whirring and I don’t find it particularly enjoyable. Our machines are more just sort of droning as opposed to something interesting.

Yeah it’s mostly fine for the most part. Just occasionally it gets to me. People describe it as such an immense pleasure that I wish I could experience something like that at least once in my life. Oh well.

Desire? I would say not really. Very occasionally yes and fleeting.

But more it’s like missing a sense. Image all of your friends and family talk about how amazing chocolate tastes. But you were born without a sense of taste. Because people talking about the taste of chocolate are everywhere around you and you’ll never get to know what it tastes like, it bothers you on occasion. You never crave chocolate because you can’t taste anyway, but you’d just like to know what everyone tastes sometimes.

Except replace chocolate with sex/relationships. It’s a bit more significant than chocolate because essentially all forms of media prominently feature sex/relationship. It’s ubiquitous. And many people’s sense of life purpose comes from the outcome of that (children). And man the way people describe what an orgasm is like, it sounds like freaking heroin or something. I’d like to just once be able to experience something that powerful and pleasurable. Most of the time I live with it and am unbothered, but occasionally it leaves me feeling really left out and at some times not even the same species.

I feel this. Getting there myself. Part of the problem is that I can’t experience sexual pleasure and I have a hard time experiencing sexual attraction. But I really wish I could experience what those endorphins feel like even once! But even doing it myself, it doesn’t work that way.

To my knowledge, I don’t seem to have any physical abnormalities. I’ve been to the doc for a checkup before there. Nerves just must not be hooked up right or something.

Idk…I’ve found throughout the years that there are increasingly greater and greater amounts of long-form content available on YouTube to watch. Of late, I’ve watched some Louis Theroux documentaries, some documentaries on abandoned facilities, and some real A&E and ambulance emergency shows. There is a ton of interesting content on there if you look for it. I guess I just find the number of streaming services to be too staggering to bother with. So I go with free alternatives like YouTube with an ad blocker and things like PlutoTV and tubi.

Do any of you ever wonder where this guy is today?

The only time I ever see a YouTube ad is when I watch a family member pull up YouTube on their phone. It looks literally unwatchable that way. There are so many workarounds to this issue that I don’t understand how people can tolerate intrusive ads every 2 seconds.

Is that what I’m supposed to be looking at? Does it really count as a racist caricature if it is just some sort of weird uncanny valley image?

I’m guessing you mean blackface. But the person doesn’t look at all black or even like blackface. There is just some weird tinting effect happening. It’s like if someone described what blackface is to a blind person…but while trying to describe it, they had a mouth full of marshmallows

Sorry for my ramble and I hope this isn’t offensive to comment. I’m just confused. Is it really even attempting to be blackface?