The Mixed Emotion Thread

[Merrymaker_Mortalis]

I'm happy I have a closer bond to people who I now see are my true friends.
But I am still kinda upset that one of us is no longer in the same country as us.
But the balance is closer to realistic now. So that's something. I can still talk with him via e-mails, but I'd prefer IRL interactions, since it's nice. He has a calming presence.

[Dutch guy]

Going to look at a house this Thursday to possibly buy. Like... a house! With walls, and a roof! And huge debt. And responsibilities.

*Goes back into the corner to rock back and forth slowly while hugging his knees*

[Merrymaker_Mortalis]

It's hard, when talking to such a good friend who is many hundreds of miles away.
You want to tell them that you miss them, but you're worried that saying it will colour their near future life decisions. You want them to do what's best for them, but you feel like you need them.

So you end up in a round a bout way implying it but never out right saying it. You don't want to risk having the burden of thinking it was because of you that they change their plans. Of course it won't be because of you. But you can only see, feel, taste and hear the world from your perspective. Of course you will feel like the world is your narrative.

So you stay polite. Happy. Warm. Friendly. Engaged. But you never say that you miss them. Except in a round a bout way by posting on a forum where by sheer improbability they eventually stumble across it.

[Bebop Man]

How money tempteth. I'm supposed to write this editorial I don't believe in. You know what, boss? I'm sorry I wasted your time, but I can't do it. I underestimated my conscience. Here's your money back and have a nice day. Moral upper hand!

[My pseudonym is Ix]

I finish work tomorrow.

It's been strange. I've been interning in an engineering firm all summer, and for me it's a great opportunity; a lot of engineering students leave uni without any relevant experience, and for a first year to get such a place is a particularly nice place to start from. Makes for a good reference at least. Thing is that this was not only my first piece of engineering-related work, or merely my first time working in an office- this has been the first paying job I've ever had (refereeing aside, since technically I don't get paid for it). So... quite the culture shock, certainly for the first couple of weeks. Which wasn't helped by working in a field of engineering in which I have zero experience or education (I'm a mechanical engineer, the job was with a firm whose main area of expertise is software).

As a workplace, it's been fantastic; people are lovely, really great working environment, boss is a legend, and I've been free to do kinda my own thing so long as I'm being productive and getting the job done. I've even been pretty well paid for the privelege. But... it's been rough. I've often felt like I didn't know quite what I was doing, like my line of work didn't quite fit in, and living alone all summer too... it's been hard on my mental state. I've been quite lonely a lot of the time.

Either way, it's been an experience I've been glad to have had, and just as glad for it to be over. But... damn if it hasn't taken a lot out of me.

[Master Gunner]

Yep, that about sums up my experience with my first internships too.

You'll be used to it next time around...though a year after graduating, I still find this whole "work" thing weird.

[Elomin Sha]

I decided to go through my physical XBOX 360 collection of games to catalogue them so I don't buy doubles.

At current count I have 213 phyiscal games with a potential of being around 260. This is in addition of the 100+ digital games I have on two 320GB hard drives.

I've worked out that my first love is definitely video games.

[Tycherin]

And your second love is cataloging things?

[Merrymaker_Mortalis]

Still missing this one person, despite acquiring and the realisation that I am good friends with many people that are more than one person.

[Elomin Sha]

And your second love is cataloging things?

That maybe third.

[MinniChi]

Silly, but I managed to get discharged from the hospital and to the nearest subway 2 minutes before the last train of the night arrived. WOOT! And anyone familiar with canadian hospitals knows what a feat this is.

Mixed because I also discovered I'm definitely deathly allergic to coconut. The hard way.

[Kapol]

It seems like I've likely got a job...

[viscomica]

It seems like I've likely got a job...

Why is this on mixed emotions thread?

...


....

Oh, right.

[MinniChi]

I got my appointment with an allergist moved from 2:15pm to 9:30am!

I had to request the switch so I can go to the funeral for my fiancée's grandmother.

[viscomica]

I have an exam due tomorrow. I wanna get it over with but at the same time I fear I will not do well.
THE FEELS

[Merrymaker_Mortalis]

I want to stop fantasizing about a potential and hypothetical thing in the future.

It's going to be an awesome thing if it happens, but if I keep fantasizing about it, and it doesn't happen, I'm going to be majorly disappointed.

Like when I was in Uni and I invited my friends over to my place for my 21st Birthday. I got all excited and imagined about all the things I could do, like mental planning. Then a few days before they were meant to come they were like "Oh yeah, we forgot. We aren't coming because it's too far away".

Thanks arseholes...

[Geoff_B]

I want to stop fantasizing about a potential and hypothetical thing in the future.

It's going to be an awesome thing if it happens, but if I keep fantasizing about it, and it doesn't happen, I'm going to be majorly disappointed.

This is true for me as well. The thing in question has an incredibly low possibility of actually happening, but it potentially could happen and that "could" is what's driving me insane.

[Merrymaker_Mortalis]

Thing that could happen is very likely.
To happen in the exact way is questionable.

I'm worried if it does happen, but not how I want it to happen, I'll be too focused on disappointment and not notice the good thing.

The irony though, is by fantasizing, in a way I'm preparing myself and planning. I have social anxiety and even amongst people I am very close to I might shut down.

[empath]

"It's not the despair, Laura. I can take the despair. It's the hope I can't stand." - Clockwise

[Bebop Man]

Today I board the plane back to Argentina, after 3 weeks of leading a fantasy life as a hack journalism across Spain and France and two different film festivals. It's been an amaazing journey and now it's (almost) over, but at least I can tell a good time when I'm having one.

[Merrymaker_Mortalis]

Come back to Europe sometime soon

[viscomica]

Today I board the plane back to Argentina, after 3 weeks of leading a fantasy life as a hack journalism across Spain and France and two different film festivals. It's been an amaazing journey and now it's (almost) over, but at least I can tell a good time when I'm having one.

You made me remember Holden Cauldfield with that last phrase

[Merrymaker_Mortalis]

Be nice if when I sent an e-mail that I don't feel like why was I that honest?

And then I realise... then, perhaps I should be more honest more often. I mean, I was honest about myself. I wasn't "honest" in the way which people wield that phrase as an excuse to be a judgemental prick.

Yay social anxiety drips into text communications.

Why is this good? Talking to someone I like. The honesty is good honesty rather than damaging honesty or weaponized honesty.

[My pseudonym is Ix]

Freshers fair is tomorrow, and I'm recruiting for two of my societies... I'm really goddamn nervous about this. I really, really want this to go well. I just hope I'm up to scratch

[empath]

Welp.

I can say that I've got a slightly better idea of how women live than most men, and even a tiny bit better than I myself did a couple of days ago.

{WARNING - what follows gets icky, and gross, and just a little embarrassing}

So a few days back, my wife started her period, and seemingly out of sympathy, my hemorrhoids flared up. And while I'd been thoroughly getting rid of the tiny amounts of blood from between MY legs, I seem to have chafed or scratched the 'edge' of my butt crack, and I got a sore spot on that curve of my cheek where it meets the other cheek. Despite my efforts at hygiene, it became a boil, and I tolerated some discomfort for a day or two.

So, we get to yesterday morning - it's earlyish, just past seven or so, and I awake, check the clock, stretch a bit, revel in the fact that I don't have to work, and decide to snuggle back in bed for a lazy nap...um, after a quick bathroom visit.

As I pull the covers back to get out (gently so as not to disturb my wife sleeping next to me) I feel a little sharp pain - I think I struck the boil as I was getting the sheets off my legs. Oh well.

I do my expected business, but feel wet on my butt cheek. "Dangit, I think I popped the boil; better get some toilet paper"

Yeah. More TP than I expected I'd need later, my hand's clean of blood and I THINK I've got the dang thing drained, and go back to bed...

...and find that *I* (for a change) have made the Japanese flag on the sheet.

A blood stain almost a foot across, and thick enough to soak through and start on the mattress...and a little stain on the top sheet where I'd dropped it down on the big stain behind me.

NOW I'm awake! I'm dithering a little, and as I start to move for the bathroom to get a cloth, I feel a drip land on my calf...that dang boil is bleeding - maybe it's opened a blood vessel?

Fuuuu-

By this time, zyxst (who was also awake, but dozing a little before she got up at 8am) sits up and asks what's wrong. We get to work, get the sheets off the bed, asks me whether I want to rinse the stained sheets in the bathroom sink, or work on cleaning the blood off the mattress; I choose the former, she gets a wet cloth and I get the bloody bits of bedclothes under the cold water tap.

Maybe ten minutes of rinsing, scrubbing, soaping, and more scrubbing and more rinsing and so forth - interspersed with brief breaks to blot fresh blood off of my hind - I've gotten everything out that we can (just some faint brown smudges showing where the blood was), and zyxst has finish getting the blood out, then using the hair dryer to dry the mattress. We pop the sheets into the laundry drier, and then she gets to work on my butt.

She cleans and squeezes the dang thing as best as she can, but it's still kinda seeping a little blood, to the point that it (and the profuse body hair there) make it difficult to keep a bandage on the wound.

At this point, she makes an offer of one of her 'sanitary napkins' (she likes to jokingly suggest I try one whenever I get a hemorrhoid flare-up; in all honesty, I appreciate it but feel like it'd be a waste - those things ain't cheap, and I'd hate for her to run out in an inconvenient time) but now? I'm still a little sleepy, tired from standing on a damp morning on my arthritic legs at the sink for so long, and this damn thing won't stop bleeding.

I accept.

{thus ends the more gross parts}

She gets a pair of her panties, grabs a pad, I sit on the toilet, follow her instructions (and the memories of watching her do this for years) and get the thing onto the gusset and rear of the underwear (a little further back than a woman would usually place it because it's there for just a small, specific spot), and pull them up.

I was surprised to find they fit really well - a little tight in the crotch but it seems my wife's hips and mine are very similar.

ANYWAYS, we now sit out the dryer, waiting for the sheets to get done, and I get comfortable with a wad of absorbent fabric and other materials stuffed between my legs, hoping I got it situated right and the wound doesn't bleed around the pad.

After a while, we check - things are working just fine, not as much blood as we expected, but it's going solidly into the pad. Fair enough.

We get the clean and dry sheets back on the bed, and I'm about to decide to FINALLY get back to bed and nap some - the adrenalin of the shock and panic has long since worn off, leaving lethargic and heavy-limbed...but we realize that the errand we were planning to run that day would need to be done before lunch if zyxst was going to have a sandwich; no bread.

So we get dressed, I change into some of my own boxer briefs, and fiddle with attaching a pad to the right spot of those, and we walk off to the store, get bread, stop into a pita place on the way back (it's rainy and damp and my knees are complaining, plus I feel some food might perk me up a little...and I wanna pop into their bathroom and check how 'things down there' are doing) The fresh pad is working fine, but it seems like walking around is increasing the blood flow, so when we get home, I change into ANOTHER fresh pad, and finally crash for a few hours, confident that I won't stain the sheets again.

The rest of the day I got used to feeling how a lot of women feel, once a month-ish. Went to bed (with a fresh pad) and got some sleep.

This morning, I woke up, confirmed that I didn't leak onto the bed, and went to the toilet. Since the pad didn't have nearly as much blood in it as previous (and I was again worrying about depleting my wife's supply), I steeled myself, and {WARNING - kinda gross again} carefully shaved around the wound while I had my morning shower. Then after drying off, my wife put a large patch bandage over the boil, and we crossed our fingers that this would hold...it has.

So, yeah, I guess I finally grok why my first aid trainers suggested we include some 'sanitary napkins' in our kit - and not just because we might encounter a patient who happens to be on her period!


And, the best part of all this, is one choice line that my darling wife got to utter, that made me break out the kleenex for tears of laughter, and probably tired me out even more from all the laughing:

while she was working on my boil, me lying on my stomach, trying not to move, she made a seemingly offhand remark "this is closer to your asshole than I've ever wanted to be!" Laughter: the best medicine.








Oh, HELL. I just realized...

...I'm REALLY glad my wife doesn't use tampons.