?

I have a fear of parasites which has led to a fear of bugs.

Some examples that show to what extent this really affects me is basically, I don t eat with utensils that touched raw meat even though I know it s highly unlikely that a parasite would 1) be in that meat and 2) be transmitted through a utensil. My sister loves raw fish but she and I can never share plates or forks if she s eaten raw fish with them.

Also, we have a cup that I saw a fly land on once (probably 10 years ago) and I never drank out of that cup again. It s been in the dishwasher multiple times since then, and I know it s completely irrational, but I m never gonna use that cup.

Also, if I m shooing a fly away and it touches my finger, I have to go wash my hand immediately. Otherwise I feel this like tingling feeling on that finger (which I know is in my head) but I have to wash it.

Also at college, someone saw something that sort of looked like a bed bug in our lounge so exterminators came and cleaned it, but there s no way I ll ever step foot in that lounge again. We have to walk through that lounge to get to and from the elevator so I just take the stairs all the time now.

I know these things are irrational, but it s not like it makes my life that bad. I just don t know if it s enough to get therapy for it.

my mom grew up really poor. She's super frugal, and I know that's what you have to be to survive the way she grew up. But now, she's married to my dad who's literally a millionaire and they're both making 6 figures. But she's still super frugal about certain things and it makes no sense.

She told me to apply for scholarships for grad school even though they've been paying $60,000 a year on private school and college every year so far. Grad school will be half that price. Also, I'm taking a year between graduating and grad school to do an internship, and she told me to choose the highest paying one even if it's not my top choice. My dad got annoyed cause he's always told me to do what I love and not worry about money. She also told me I should live at home during grad school but I don't wanna live at home until I'm in my late 20's. So my dad got annoyed and told her to stop stressing me out cause they can afford to pay for an apartment.

She already makes 6 figures and she just got this huge raise and she's still like this. She got mad I didn't use a gift card to buy 1 song on iTunes that was like $1

When we went to Japan, we spent over $1,000. We always buy gifts for people when we travel. We were at a food market and I was gonna buy Japanese cookies for my friend, and she told me to go through the whole market to find the cheapest one before I bought any. The biggest price difference was $5 and we're literally spending over $1000. It makes NO difference. It's so annoying.

Someone told me I look like I'd be the type of person that'd be a TikTok star. I know TikTok is sort of like vine but with music and stuff. But what do the stars look like? Aren't they usually kind of annoying? I'm not sure if I should be insulted or not

When filling out applications, a lot of times, when they give you options to choose your race, the option for mixed race often says (not Hispanic or Latino). I wonder what I should choose for those? I never know what to do. Do I just choose the Hispanic/Latino option? It feels weird choosing that option because I feel wrong making it seem like I’m completely Latina cause I’m not. Also, do you know why they do that? Why can t you be considered mixed race if one of those races is Latino?

So I've never really been able to eat that much in the mornings. Sometimes I'm just kind of nauseous and almost always have a bit of a stomach ache in the morning, but I always try to eat something, usually just a small granola bar cause I know I need something to give me energy until lunch. But lately, even if it's not that early, like just anytime before 1:00-2:00, if I try to eat something, I immediately get really bad stomach cramps. I am a little lactose intolerant so I started getting my morning coffees with almond milk but I don't think it's the drink. I immediately get really bad cramps as soon as I take the first two bites of any food, and then I almost immediately have to go to the bathroom. I don't think I end up digesting any of it or getting any nutrients because it just causes pain and comes right out. I can only eat after the afternoons but I'm also afraid to eat too much at night cause I know it'll just cause me more pain and problems in the morning. Also, even if I eat a lot at night, not being able to eat a full lunch let alone any breakfast, I've been losing weight. And I'm already teetering between healthy and underweight so I don't wanna lose anymore. Im gonna have to stop working out if this continues to preserve my weight and also just cause I've been low on physical energy cause I can't eat until the afternoons. It's been about a week like this I feel like it should have gone away by now.

I have this little mole on my ear right where I would have a piercing. People actually always mistaken it for an earring hole or whatever it's called. That's about how small it is. It's not weirdly shaped or anything but it does have a little bump. I know people say one factor to look out for when examining a mole for skin cancer is if it's 3D. I've had this since I was born though and it hasn't changed. Do you think it's still alright? It's not very noticeable at all so I don't know if I should point it out. Or do you think it's fine since I've had it forever? I'm just kind of paranoid.

I'm an undergrad right now and they are paying my full undergrad $60,000 tuition. But I'm going to grad school afterwards and my mom says once I graduate she'll give me $25,000 per year to help me out. I know that's a lot but that's like one year of grad school tuition. Even if I get a full scholarship, we live in NYC and I'm planning on going to grad school here. I've lived on the upper east side my entire life and I don't necessarily have to live on the UES once I move out but Manhattan is all I've ever known and I'd like to stay here but $25,000 a year is not enough for even a dingy studio apartment. I know I sound really ungrateful, but I wouldn't be expecting this if they didn't have the money and they DO. They're multimillionaires. And it's not like I'm sitting around on my *** doing nothing and expecting money. I'm gonna go to grad school. Once I have my own job I won't need anything but they can't support their child through grad school? My mom says once my dad gets his inheritance from his parents they'll give me my share right away but that could be like 10 years from now. If they're really that stingy about it, why don't they just give me the expected amount now while I need it and then once I'm financially independent and have a job I'll just pay it back to them once I get my grandparent's inheritance? We've always had a great relationship. They know I'm responsible and they've always trusted me. I don't know why they're withholding it from me.

I have/had a good relationship with my dad but then he saw me yelling at a catcaller, as I always do but it was justified. He said I shouldn't do that and I said it's what makes me feel better. Then he said "I know you think it's edgy to lash out but it's not a good thing". He doesn't get a say in how I react cause it never happens to him. But what pissed me off the most is he basically said I'm just trying to be edgy. He dismissed my anger like it's not real. I've been really rude to him and told my mom to tell him I'm gonna be this way until he admits my anger is real and he's just ignorant about the situation. But he literally said word for word what she told him I wanted him to say and he said it in this reluctant way and after he said "but I'm just saying that's not how you should react" and I said I wanted an apology, not advice. He said he wasn't giving advice, he was just justifying what he said. I said he has to try again cause I want a real apology, not a sarcastic one copying my mom, and without justifying what he said. My mom says she thinks he's not really sorry so he won't apologize sincerely so I don't know what to do. If he's not really sorry, should I just keep being rude or just ignore him until he realizes how much what he said hurt? It's tiring to keep being rude and I feel kind of bad cause he seems to think it's not that big of a deal. He just seems confused when I'm rude to him. But he won't acknowledge that my anger is real and I can't let that go.

Whenever someone does something to piss me off, I stay extremely angry and just have this deep angry feeling in my chest of like hours. Mostly it's because of men on the street being ******* assholes. As I got older, I started yelling back at them, cursing them out and stuff but I still stay mad afterwards. It feels good in the moment but afterwards I'm always still mad cause it's so unfair. I can't go walking anywhere whether I'm with my friends, my mom, or my 13 YEAR OLD sister, men have to ruin everything and I remain pissed off for the rest of the day. And my mom always gets mad when I curse them out but I would only feel worse if I didn't because then they'd get away with it. My parents always say to just let it be because life is unfair, but that's bullshit. I mean, life is unfair but shouldn't we try to MAKE it fair? Should we just let murderers get away with it since life's unfair? Why should I let them get away with it? It happens to my mom all the time too, but she just gets over it. She just doesn't say anything and she doesn't stay mad. In a way I pity her because I wish she would just give them a taste of their own medicine. But in other ways I envy her because she doesn't let it ruin her day. But they say "let it go" like it's such an easy thing. I can't! Like, how? How do you just accept it? It's not fair and I would rather get myself killed confronting the wrong man than let them think they can say whatever they want without consequences.

I have an instagram account where I just post photos of my cats and pictures of NYC. All of a sudden within like one day I gained about 100 followers. Now every hour I'm gaining like 40 new followers. Most of the accounts are like Italian bloggers who have like 20k+ followers and only follow about 1,000 people. I'm not complaining but I'm just confused why they're all following me all of a sudden. Most of my other followers are other cat instagrams. Is there some sort of algorithm? How are all of these super popular instagram pages finding my account?

We're moving into a new apartment and no one in our family can agree what color we should paint the living room wall. We like to have an accent wall. We got new furniture and it's all pretty much dark grey/black and relatively simple modern decor. It also has an open kitchen that's going to have bright wood cabinets and a black marble island. The living room also has these wooden Japanese sliding doors that leads into the library/music room. There, we have mahogany wooden bookshelves and a full mahogany piano. We can see the music room's wall from the living room so we were thinking a medium shade red accent wall for the music room would go well to keep with the warm tones of the piano and bookshelves, but we can't decide on the wall colors for the living room and the kitchen. We will probably just go with an accent wall for the living room. Since the living room furniture is kind of dark we don't want to go with a color that's too dark, but it might be alright because the living room has huge windows that take up an entire wall so there's lots of natural light. The kitchen has black tiles and the living room and music room have bright wooden hardwood floors. What do you think would look best? We're also not too set on the red wall for the music room so if you have any suggestions for that as well, feel free.

I'm moving into a new apartment and using a smaller bedroom as a library/office and I'm trying to figure out how big the room is. I have a printed out version of the layout but it provides the measurements in a weird way. It says that on this diagram, 1.25 of an inch is equal to 8'2" (8 feet 2 inches). Can someone help do the math to figure out the size of the office in feet and inches? I'm too lazy. On the diagram, the office is 1.75 inches wide, and 2.25 inches long. Thanks!

I'm considering about trying out different affordable housing lotteries for the first few years I start off my career just cause I won't be earning as much and I can save a lot more. I live in NYC so even with a pretty decent salary, you can qualify for affordable housing and it would save a lot. The thing is, do they look at other payments you get besides your income? If you get a trust fund or my parents/grandparents just give me money, will they consider that to disqualify me even if make under the maximum income to qualify? I don't want to spend it on housing. I'd rather save it for other things and since it isn't technically income from a job, would that disqualify me for affordable housing since it's technically for people who can't afford housing otherwise?

In my dream, my sister went shopping and complained cause the employees didn t smile or say "thank you" or "have a good day". My mom told her "Did you smile at them? People reflect your attitude and treat you the way you treat them"

Then the protagonist in my dream switched to Gus from breaking bad for some reason, and he was running from city to city trying to escape a zombie apocalypse. He realizes less populated rural areas would be safer so he runs and finds this family run farm in the middle of nowhere. He was surprised the family welcomed him with open arms and were really nice cause people in the city were so rude. Then a zombie approaches the family but they approach the zombie and are really nice and polite to it, offering food and everything like they did to Gus. The zombie ends up not attacking them and taking the food they offered him and everything. Then Gus sees on the news the city his mom lives in has zombies so he leaves to save his mom.

Then the protagonist switches to 2D from the Gorillaz (Don t ask why. It s a dream). He s with his mom in her apartment and a zombie breaks in. 2D tries to copy the family on the farm and approaches the zombie with a smile and being nice to it. The zombie doesn t attack them. The world then learns that to live among the zombies, they mustn t approach them with fear or aggression but instead be nice to them and they ll be nice to you.

Isn t it a good dream? It had a theme and everything. I think it would make a good movie.

I'm a 5'3" female. I thought I was on the lower side of a healthy weight, or even underweight. My friends all joke about how skinny I am and a few of my family members told me to gain weight cause i look anorexic. I decided to weigh myself and look up my BMI. I checked multiple websites and according to all of them, I'm on the heavier side of the healthy range. This sort of confused me cause according to this, I could lose quite a few pounds and still be considered healthy, but when I look at myself, I think if I lost any weight it'd probably be considered un-healthy. I'm a size xs/00 for all my shirts and I range from 0-2 depending on the brand of my jeans. My thighs are pretty much the same thickness as my calves, my upper arms are like the same size as my wrist, and I don't think my stomach could get any flatter. Like, I can already see the outline of my ribs. Unless I cut off my chest and butt, I don't see how I could possibly lose any weight and still be in the healthy range? And it's not like I'm skinny-fat. I work out at least an hour every day and on top of that, I walk an additional 45 minutes or more every day.

Don't worry I'm not paranoid nor do I feel like I need to lose weight because of this. I'm just generally shocked and confused and now questioning the accuracy of the BMI? Also, it doesn't ask if you're male or female and I know men generally have more muscle mass, so I was expecting my BMI to be even lower because of this, but evidently it's not.

I really like hearing incidences about the Mandela effects. I know all the famous ones but I m even more interested in personal stories.

For instance, my freshman year college roommate, mentioned to me during sophomore year that I was a good roommate except for the time I came into the room late at night and turned the light on, and she told me she was sleeping and I apparently told her "you can put a pillow over your head. I need the lights on". I denied this happened because I never turned the lights on when she had them off at night. I always used the light from my phone screen. And she said "no this time you turned them on because Ashley (my friend) was with you" so I called Ashley over and my roommate asked her if she remembered this. Ashley said it never happened. My roommate said she was so sure it happened and that it wasn t a dream. I told a couple of other people in our friend group about it cause I was kind of mad that she was so convinced I did this cause I would never do something so rude and she kept insisting it happened even after Ashley confirmed it didn t, and other people said she d told them this story freshman year too, and they tried suggesting to her that it was a dream cause it didn t sound like something I d do, but she kept insisting with them that it really happened cause she remembers having to get up and use the bathroom after I woke her up and checking the time and everything.

It s just kind of weird. Anyone else have incidences like that?

I've never taking a driving lesson so I'm no expert, but isn't it the law that even when your light says turn, if the pedestrian light says "cross", and there's a pedestrian crossing, you have to stop and let them cross so as not to RUN THEM OVER? Drivers are actually pretty good at doing this in general, but how come the car behind them almost always honks at the car in front whenever they stop so they don't KILL A PEDESTRIAN? So many NYC drivers do this so I'm just a little confused because as a pedestrian, it sounds like you're communicating that the car in front of you should just break the law and not stop or just run us over if we're already crossing. You know they're not just being polite, right? You know it's actually the law? Like they have no other choice unless they want to commit murder? So why honk at them?

I read that a lot of NYC buildings only let you rent an apartment if you re making 40 times the monthly rent, but what if you inherited a trust fund? What if you can use your trust fund to pay for the remainder of the rent that you don t make from your salary? Also what if your parents help pay for some of the rent? Would they still require a minimal salary?

I don't think men understand and I didn't want a bunch of them answering like "you're only bragging cause you secretly like it or anything", but how do you avoid unwanted attention from men in public? I'm not just talking about stares but like, actually getting approached, followed, having a guy sit with you when you're alone, and sometimes legitimately getting asked out? It's really appalling. Even when you're on your phone, or you've got your headphones in and you're obviously watching a show/listening to music. Even if you've got your computer or a reading out and you're obviously doing work. No matter how hard you avoid eye contact or how terse you are with them, they keep trying.

I've sort of become used to being generally anxious when I go out, and I've become quite good at being straight forward and abrupt with them, but my sister is only 13 and she's recently hit a growth spurt and I'm also worried about her cause she's also been getting stares from grown *** ******* men. I don't want her to have to deal with this especially since she's already got anxiety issues. I wish I could give her advice on how to avoid it but I really can't. All I can say is "don't be too rude to them cause they're often entitled and might have anger issues". It makes me quite angry.

I m from Manhattan and that s my favorite place in the world. But I don t like the town in which I go to college or whenever I travel to other places in America, I don t feel like I m home. Maybe it s because of the current political climate, but even before that throughout my childhood I ve never really been impressed or happy in America outside of Manhattan.

My family travels quite a bit to Europe and I feel so much more welcolmed there. My mom has lots of family in London and she used to live there. When she married my dad, they were considering moving to London and starting their lives there, but then my dad got this dream job offer in NYC so they stayed in America. But there have been multiple times where they ve considered moving to London (especially after 9/11 and when Trump got elected) but my dad s career has just been going so uphill to the point that it d be foolish to restart anywhere else.

But when we travel to Spain, France, London, even Iceland, I feel so much more welcomed and like I fit in with the people, personalities, food, and style there than when we travel to American cities. Just earlier this year we went to my dad s hometown in Oregon, a place where half of my family originated from so I should feel welcomed, and my mom and I felt so anxious there. We got so many looks it s like people knew we didn t belong. We really felt foreign in our own country. It was nothing like in Europe even when we don t know the language we feel more at home.