christian

joined 5 years ago
[–] christian@lemmy.ml 2 points 19 hours ago

It's very hard to talk about but I had a mental breakdown worse than I had ever imagined was possible. I have almost a full week after that I have no memory of, but after being taken to the hospital I have a lot of memories that are still extremely vivid in my mind of experiences there that did not actually happen in reality. I was living in an alternate universe for about three or four weeks.

So the answer is that initially we had parted on good terms, but right now our contact is entirely formal, I assume to look out for her own mental health.

[–] christian@lemmy.ml 24 points 2 days ago (2 children)

The decision was made at the end of October last year, so still very fresh and still very painful. Legally still married for a few more months.

I watched her spirit die in slow-motion from my health issues making me unable to meaningfully contribute and turning her into a caretaker while being the breadwinner. It wasn't one single thing with my health, it was a series of one issue setting off new issues, and after a long enough time of that you stop feeling optimistic that getting through your current problem will be the end, and emotionally the new ones hit harder. I know this sounds bad on her, but she tried so hard for so very long. I knew it was killing her, it was killing me watching what she was going through. It wasn't her fault for giving up, and anyone who watched what I did would understand that.

I've moved back in with my parents as a man in his late thirties. I wish I had had the courage to make that decision myself a year ago rather than forcing her to decide to give up. I kept trying to have faith that if I just kept pushing I could get back to a better place and fix everything. My parents are a nine-hour drive away, with my mom having severe cat allergies, so moving out also meant abandoning my best friends, and obviously my human friends too.

Counseling helps a lot but I feel like twice a week is still nowhere close to enough. And of course, almost every single problem I'm going through has health insurance fighting tooth and nail to not treat and I feel limited in my emotional ability to be constantly fighting on all of that.

I also had a really good relationship with my parents before but I am absurdly sensitive to the weight I'm putting on them right now, which I think is a trauma reaction. They are doing everything they can for me and I just totally withdraw and don't feel like myself at all around them now. They want the best for me but right now I do not have the emotional strength to make any requests of them, no matter how light.

This mostly turned into venting, but given the thread topic it's probably expected. I don't really want suggestions for actions to take because right now I'm still too dead inside to follow through on anything.

[–] christian@lemmy.ml 13 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

I have never played Mario 64 outside of a couple five-minute sessions on a Toys-R-Us demo when I was maybe 10, but the Watch for Rolling Rocks half-A-press video - a speedrun with the added condition that a longer time will trump a shorter time if the player presses 'A' (jump) less than in the faster run - is almost unquestionably my favorite youtube video ever. It's a hilariously silly niche thing, but beyond that it's like watching someone try to explain their doctoral dissertation, making their best attempt while knowing full-well both that they won't be able to get their audience to follow every piece and also that no one else is as engaged in the topic as they are. As long aa I don't feel like a captive audience, I can find a real joy in exposure to that sort of enthusiasm. Laying that on top of something that's just a little funny hits the spot for me so much.

Now, you're probably wondering what I'm gonna need all this speed for. After all, I do build up speed for twelve hours. But to answer that, we need to talk about parallel universes, and if you thought my other tangents were complicated, just you wait. Okay, so Mario's position is a floating point number, but it's converted to a short when the game uses it to test for collision with floor triangles...

[–] christian@lemmy.ml 2 points 4 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

This hurts a lot to watch, but I really appreciate the conclusion she draws at the end about showing gratitude for positive impacts even if the experience isn't great as a whole. A few times I have gotten thank-you emails after a semester that have remained extremely meaningful to me many years later. I wish I could let them know the impact it had, but I'm not going to hunt down old students. I would say don't feel any need to send something if you don't fully mean it though, platitudes after a student sees their grade are not the same. They're not insulting but if it feels like a template the student could send to all their professors with a couple changes it just comes across as networking.

The "thank you for caring" note resonates with me a lot too. About a year ago after I started breaking down I had a lecture where I really didn't have my shit together and it was embarrassing. I knew I was half-assing my prep for that day but I just needed to show up. I was kind of caught off-guard when three students stayed after, but it meant a lot to me that they phrased it as "are you okay" rather than as a complaint. I opened up more than I should, definitely more than the teacher in that video, I knew better but I was too broken at the time. I think support from an unexpected place was helpful. So many of the people I have come across in my life have been exceptionally kind to me.

[–] christian@lemmy.ml 15 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

I felt like I had to double up because she was already late on vaccines and it was very unlikely I'd have another opportunity soon to get her to the vet.

Knew we were moving months in advance so about six months before the move I was trying to get her comfortable going in the cage by giving her wet food in there. I thought after a couple months I would try shutting the door quietly and opening it right back up and then gradually get her used to the door being closed for longer durations, but the very first time she was very unhappy and the next couple months she basically said fuck you I'm eating the dry food in protest right in front of you when you're doing this. When she finally started going back in I felt like I can't play with getting her accustomed again, I've got to just do it on the day, and I was pretty confident that if I didn't get her vaccines then it would be a very long time.

[–] christian@lemmy.ml 66 points 5 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (3 children)

Our little lady had some trauma in her youth and was extremely resistant to being picked up and would absolutly not take direction to go into a crate. After a few years of her getting more comfortable I knew I could probably get her in again one time by tricking her, but I should save that for an emergency and nothing else. Eventually that was needed when we had to move. Of course, knowing I had to make the most of that I scheduled a vet appointment for that day.

It was somehow much worse than I had anticipated, starting as soon as I shut her in. She was so scared, throwing her full body with as much force as she could against the walls of the crate over and over and over, keeping that up while I was carrying her to the car and the first few minutes of the drive before she finally started to calm down. Watching that shook me, emotionally painful and just building anxiety about the appointment.

She actually was very submissive for the vet, who seemed to think I was crazy because at that point I was visibly a lot more terrified and upset than the cat.

Awful day in general, I have never seen an animal more depressed than she was after finishing that appointment and getting to the new place, it was horrific. She was normally extremely skittish about potentially being touched, but would invite pets sometimes. In that first day though, she was just do whatever you want I don't care. I had to pick her up body basically limp out of the crate, she had never let me pick her up. She didn't move from where I had placed her for hours, zero reaction to any action from me. She got back to her old self after a few weeks, but that day is still very painful to think back to I feel like I'm about to cry just from writing this.

[–] christian@lemmy.ml 5 points 5 days ago

I think we can all agree that Trump should respond to this baseless libel by unsealing every inch of dirt he has on Elon.

[–] christian@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 week ago

I too was naïve enough to think that since my girl was shy around people I needed to solve that by getting her a companion. I wasn't aware growling was something cats did until making that mistake. It's especially weird because I don't think I ever heard her hiss. Her growl was very intimidating to me, but not to the kitten. Okay little man, I'm not sure she wants to play today.

I think she was mad about that decision for a long time.

[–] christian@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 week ago

And an AOC candidacy would really, really excite me if I didn't know that Democrats rig their primaries.

Yeah at this point I think you could take a person from my own life that I have literal love and respect for and I would still be more inclined to interpret surviving a primary as a character indictment than as reason for optimism.

[–] christian@lemmy.ml 17 points 1 week ago (1 children)

It is kind of depressing to be honest. I'm antifascist, I just happen to also be a loser.

When in a healthy relationship it doesn't bother me, but now that I'm single again and will be looking at revisiting the whole dating thing at some point it's uncomfortable to think too much about.

[–] christian@lemmy.ml 10 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

A couple people here have suggested wet food to lure the cat down, but when mine found a spot abouve the cabinets that was much easier to get up than down that solution crossed my mind for only an instant before I realized it would probably only take one more go for him to realize there's a huge incentive to risking injury.

He would do this thing when he was angry where he would howl like a dog to make sure everyone within earshot understood the severity of whatever great injustice had taken place, and not taking him down when he wanted to be was definitely one of those cases. I'd give him maybe an hour to get his screaming in before getting around to helping him.

[–] christian@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 week ago

Completely missed their opportunity to start the headline with "Proud New Dad" and having the reveal at the end be that he was no less proud of this before fatherhood.

 

Ovi really did grow into the leadership role, but there's something to be said for the knowledge that someone else would have been the NHL's best leader if opposing goalies had stopped four more of his shots than they actually did over the course of his career.

(Also Messier is enough of a blowhard that receiving his endorsement feels like a character attack.)

 

I'm an aspiring screenwriter and need some constructive criticism. Please go easy on me, I've poured my heart into these.

Only five unique ideas so far, could stay that way for a long while or maybe not. Inspiration comes when it comes.

 

I mean on the one hand, I could take the two minutes right now. On the other hand, I could lie awake for another half an hour thinking about this thing I could easily take care of immediately, and then later on take time out of my day to actually do it. It's an easy choice which is a better management of time, I'll be back in bed in a minute.

Alright, now that I've had a full minute back and comfy and tucked in again I've thought up another task that's even less time-consuming than the last one.

 

Had to check online to be 100% sure the superPAC that mailed it was Trump-linked. I've never heard of Elissa Slotkin before, but apparently she's a US rep for another district in Michigan. Our rep is Rashida Tlaib, who is Palestinian descent, so I'm guessing the PAC's thought process in designing this was they don't want to link Harris to our actual representative so just pick some other random rep nearby.

As someone who does not want Trump to be re-elected, it's at least relieving to know how easy it will be for the democrats to counter these dirty tricks. All they need to do is have their candidate make clear public statements to clarify that she doesn't want this linked to her campaign. Of course, she'll have to clearly point out which specific parts are offensive, so people don't just think she fine with antisemitism. Explaining that being anti-apartheid is not the same as being antisemitic is pretty straightforward though, so this should be no big deal.

 

We've had my cat Roto-Borola (pictured here) for over two years, we got him when he was maybe five months. A couple months back I discovered he really enjoys having his head massaged. He likes me to put a good bit more pressure on his head than I would expect him to be comfortable with.

He's still a very playful cat at times, and I try to engage with that as best I can but I don't always love being play-bitten. At some point a while back, if I'm petting his head and move my hand somewhere else near him, including petting his back or somewhere else on him, it sets off a timer of 15-20 seconds typically (usually around 10-15 seconds with no reaction, when he opens his mouth just a hint it means he is about five seconds away) for him to play bite me. If he's laying on top of me the timer it sets off is just for exiting the ride. I've been playing with him pretty rough by squeezing his head or giving him a little noogie, but it just hit me that this has really been him training me in how he wants to be pet.

So I'll give him a pretty rough noogie and he acts like "oh no, I'm really trying to bite you but I can't when your hand is right there", but he's definitely able to outspeed me. And I'm realizing now in retrospect, I started going for the back of his head because he left me one spot to find where he would pretend that he can't get to me. And he gradually trained me I needed to be more and more violent if I wanted to not get bitten.

So yeah, I put my entire hand around his skull and squeeze a bit tight and somehow he loves this. Realized a few months ago that this is his thing, realized today that this is something he taught me.

 
:: Starting full system upgrade...
resolving dependencies...
looking for conflicting packages...

Packages (1) deepin-icon-theme-2024.06.21-1

Total Installed Size:  138.93 MiB
Net Upgrade Size:        5.96 MiB

:: Proceed with installation? [Y/n] Y
(1/1) checking keys in keyring                     [########################] 100%
(1/1) checking package integrity                   [########################] 100%
(1/1) loading package files                        [########################] 100%
(1/1) checking for file conflicts                  [########################] 100%
error: failed to commit transaction (conflicting files)
deepin-icon-theme: /usr/share/icons/bloom/icon-theme.cache exists in filesystem
Errors occurred, no packages were upgraded.

Running a search for the error I didn't find one for deepin-icon-theme, but the same error for other packages in arch updates show up and the other ones I saw laid the blame on improper packaging. Given that this is the one from the arch repositories and not some AUR package, I'm nowhere near confident enough in myself to jump to the conclusion that this is someone else's fault, so I'm asking here.

 
 

Hear me out: a "Wild West" ditto, which looks like a regular ditto but with a moustache and cowboy hat, and when it transforms it looks just like the target pokemon, except with a moustache and a cowboy hat added on.

Unfortunately I have no artistic talent so cannot provide sketches at this moment, but I intend to start a gofundme to commission the concept art sooner or later.

 

I need some relationship advice. I suggested 125% but my wife won't budge from 10%. Is this normal? How did it go when you had this conversation with your romantic partner?

 
 

Roto-Borola usually likes to hang out with me when I'm working at my desk. Earlier today my wife snapped this photo of him chilling by me. Every so often he sits like this, but I think this is the first time we've seen him nap in this position. I laughed a little and it woke him up, he looked at me and did a loud meow and then got up.

view more: next ›