Kodus to you for 1/ getting therapy, 2/ expressing genuine concern for Taylor (you want her to be happy, even if she can't be with you), and 3/ reaching out when you're in a dark moment. None of those things are easy.

What truly hurts is the kind of throwaway comment near the end where you say you don't feel like you can talk about this with your friends... That must feel incredibly isolating.

I wish I had a full-proof solution, but all I can suggest is that you try and expand the limits of your current friendships so you can share important stuff like this, or try and build new ones with broader emotional foundations.

Wish you all the best, seems like you're on a good (if painful) path.

Damn I also suffer from this multiple times a year and have done for like 18 years (I'm late 30's now) my doctor refuses to refer me to let me have my tonsils out, I can see why.

Never realised It was that bad.

Edit* Just like to add full blown strep / tonilitus In adult years Is one of the worst things you can ever go through In life. So much more than sore throat.

You're hanging on to a fantasy. You didn't work, as shown by the week she spent in LA. Don't ruin her life by lying to her and pretending you're different.

If you go over to /tonsillectomy they have a lot of posts and things that are helpful. You can ask questions on there as well as usually you’ll be able to find someone to help pretty quickly.

Sports is the best remedy. You'll be too tired and full of endorphines to have the energy to torture yourself. It takes time but at each down period of my life, physical activity saved me

I (22F) just had my tonsillectomy for thanksgiving. Absolutely horrible. Was getting up every four hours to take that damn nasty ass medicine. I can’t handle liquid meds very well so it’s a matter of me fighting to get myself to take it and then fighting to not vomit profusely immediately as it hits my lips. By some miracle I was able to keep it all down but the one time I skipped it due to it being 3am, I woke up feeling like I had just tried to swallow a entire uncut pineapple. PLEASE take your meds if you get a tonsillectomy.

Just don't jack off until you've healed

It's ok. Sometimes the timing is just not right. It happened to me too, and even though I have regrets, I know it was not meant to be, and I cannot go back in time to change who I used to be.

You weren't ready, don't beat yourself up.

As long as it doesn't hold you back, I don't see issues keeping this person in your life and having some news every now and then. You have to respect basic boundaries though, and telling her your feelings is clearly a big NO. Especially that you might have been too much inside your head, idealizing what could have happened.

The fact is you were not ready, she might not even have been, and you and her might have wanted different things. Don't hang on to the possibility that something will happen one day. Life your life, enjoy yourself, be happy.

OP, you did not fuck up. Stepdad did.

So weird to smoke weed in the middle of the night when on family vacation. But then again, I can’t handle weed, I just become anxious.

You didn't FU, if anything you saved their life. They probably were gonna run either way, you simply made it so that they can be safe. You can't blame youself for what's going on in their personal life, it's like a driving instructor being mad that a student got in a car wreck or chase or something.

Plus, you're only getting the parent's side..there may be more to this story.

Now Ik for the future, thank you :))

Next level paranoia strikes again

Bro she would have run away regardless. You taught her skills that will keep her alive. Because of your teaching, she’s in the wilderness, which is orders of magnitude safer than the inner city streets where a lot of runaway teens end up. You didn’t make her run away but you are probably the reason she’ll come back safe.

That was genuinely horrifying. Like anxiety levels reading it went through the roof

Imagine she was in a situation where she needed to get away and didn't have these skills, what would happen then?

She'd either 1) Not be able to run away, and be trapped in a situation that feels unliveable to her (HUGE risk for suicidal action there. or maybe she was in physical danger and would actually be harmed if she stayed?), or 2) Run away in the middle of winter without any survival skills at all.

And yes you showed her how to treat injuries. That is one of the biggest harm-reduction techniques taught to people who self-harm. That makes her safer.

Imagine how unhappy this poor girl must have been to be self-harming regularly and then leaving her home with no good place to go. If you gave her happiness and made her safer (which you did), then you did a good thing.

While this is true, you don't actually need both parents to raise the child, realistically, only the female has to survive.

Although I suppose even for males, it would be more optimum to survive long enough to impregnate multiple partners in order to maximize potential surviving children, so it's still not ideal to die.

People have run off for years. Just look at the story "into the wild". The difference is you gave this child a chance to survive.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_McCandless

Licence to nut

[deleted]

The man with the golden nut

The thing that struck me is that, since people celebrate Satan's birthday, maybe the other angels also have birthday parties. Since the kids weren't allowed to celebrate their own birthdays they would probably see this as unfair.

have you talked to your therapist about taylor? it sounds like you’re romanticizing the idea of her as a partner. especially when you say "I just missed it" about her being engaged. she's a whole person with her own relationships and her own life, not a prop that was available to you until the moment she got engaged.

it's unhealthy and unrealistic to make a checklist of ideal traits and expext to find someone who meets them all. and the fact that you think she meets every aspect of your list implies that you don’t see her as a real person with flaws. you are creating a "perfect girlfriend" in your head and using Taylor as evidence that this perfect girl can and does exist. please please talk about this in therapy.

Sounds like you helped this kid. That's not a fuck up.

I had it in middle school. I had to take my pain medication on time every time (every 4 hours), make sure to drink water to keep my throat from drying out too much (chewing gum was also helpful), and rest. Felt almost entirely better after a week, but after the first 3 days of sleeping, I was able to be up and about to play games or whatever.