Nice try, mom.

A guy I used to work with, who was in his early 30s, in great shape, didn’t drink or smoke, and always showed up to work with a smile and an almost annoyingly positive outlook on life, got diagnosed with a rare and aggressive hard to cure form cancer. He was very open about his lifestyle, proud to not smoke and not drink, was really into music, worked out every day. I’m talking this guy was the exact poster child for someone who would live a long life. The chemo reduced him down to a bald husk of his former self for several months, but he still came into work a handful of times in a wheelchair to fill us in on the details.

Finally it went into remission, he told everyone. He was still pale and skinny but he gained strength back and was able to walk. Facebook posts about his recovery and thankfulness to be alive, able to enjoy food again and play music like he wanted. One year after remission the cancer came back aggressively and k**led him. This man was as innocent as they come, just a happy go lucky dude. He was brave. and gave cancer a run for its money for a couple years though. F**k cancer you f*****g absolute f*****g f**k.

When I was a kid, there was a peeping tom in the neighborhood. But the weird part is we all knew who he was, a little older guy named Ralph who lived a couple streets over and smoked like a chimney. We knew because he was caught once early on by a neighbor while on their roof, watching them through the skylight (the neighbor had left a ladder against the house when doing work earlier that day) but after that he was like a ghost, impossible to catch.

People would find footprints and cigarette butts outside windows, smell cigarette smoke, and occasionally see the red cherry on the cigarette glow in the woods. Occasionally angry dads and teenagers who spotted him out in the darkness would give chase, but he moved like a deer through the woods and no one could put hands on him. The cops were involved a few times and they dragged him in, but it was never for long (partially I think because he had a disabled wife for whom he was the sole carer.) He was sorta a neighborhood boogie man, though thankfully seemed mostly harmless if terribly creepy.

Many years later, there were a rash of break-ins around the neighborhood. People even joked at the time that it must not be Ralph, because we all figured he had copies of everyone's hide-a-keys already if he wanted to go inside (sidenote: we later learned that he definitely DID have keys to some houses.) Anyway, everyone's guard was up.

One night, one of the neighbors heard a commotion outside, and ran outside to find a stranger laid out in his driveway, beat to s**t. They called 911 and when the police arrived, they were able to identify the guy as someone who had previous arrests for B&E and found items from the previous break-ins in his vehicle nearby and later at his apartment. As for how he ended up taking a bloody nap in the driveway? He said he was jumped from behind in the dark and never got a good look at the guy. All he remembered for certain was that the guy stunk of cigarette smoke.

Chronic fatigue, everybody thinks im just lazy because i need SO much sleep. I hibernate on the weekends.

Abusive relationship. It’s so easy to ask “why didn’t you just leave if he was hitting you?” It’s not an easy question to answer. The abuse doesn’t start with a knock out punch on the first date. Abuse starts with arguments usually after the honeymoon stage. Maybe he pushed you, snatched your phone out of your hand, or slammed the door in your face.

By the time you’re getting your a*s whooped- walking away with black eyes and broken ribs, that’s when you start to realize it’s abuse. It’s not just a fight that went too far like you’ve conditioned yourself to believe. At that point you probably live together, share bills together, own things together and you start to question would it be easier if I just stay? What will he do to me if I leave? Is it really my fault like he says?

OCD.

I always roll my eyes when people simply pass off a casual thing as OCD.

"Oh I'm so OCD about this cabinet!"

You don't have OCD. OCD is an actual disorder.

OCD is when your mind is overthinking like crazy. Every interaction with someone, no matter how big or small, gets blown completely out of proportion in your head; and you might have what I have in which I need to reflect and use this weird face ritual to clear the thought from my head, where any other noise in the room can throw me off and force me to restart the process.

If I touch something with my left hand, I have to touch it with my right hand. I find myself getting flashes of anger towards myself and other people when something isn't happening the way I think it should be. Intrusive thoughts are in my head far, far too often.

It's a hell of a lot more than just wanting your rooms clean, or making sure your feet are walking in the squares on a tile floor.

I really hate that OCD is sort of trivialized by the majority of people.

Being autistic in a society that doesn't understand you.

Sexual Assault. It's a different whole beast that you have to experience it before you just spout off on what you think, and you have to really understand what's going on and what to do to deal with the aftermath.

And the trauma and recovery of regaining your identity as a person and not as a victim and the fact that we still don't think about it or work with it with any gender is appalling.

Having a loving relationship with people.

Not necessarily romantic, just a human bond that isn't some cheap aqcuaintanceship.

ADHD. I think it's really hard for someone with normal executive function to understand what it's like to not.

Any form of addiction.

I was "the ring girl" back in the day. Had my own little scene set up an open maze type format. Essentially you walk into an outdoor opening of trees, giving the illusion of being lost in the woods (it was blocked off though). In the middle there was a styrofoam well that I would..well...creep..out of (strobe light effect). Anywho, there I am, mid October, barefoot with wet hair cuz I'm a teenager doing my best.. and I'm standing alone in the trees waiting for this next group to come through. It's nearly pitch black aside from the strobe, the group walks in and those who are gonna freak out are already doing so. I liked to split the groups up by running though them in the open maze. I had sufficiently broken up a big group and was sneaking up behind a boyfriend/girlfriend duo attached to each other..had them isolated..in the dark.I get behind them and right before the big scream, I start to lose my footing..because.. barefoot on a hill at night. I do this cartoonish backwards- trying- to -catch- my- balance thing..the couple sees me, starts screaming/running but by now I've completely accepted that I'm gonna eat s**t. Right before the back of my head cracks on the ground, a set of hands catches it. I look up, skinny old guy with a big mustache just holding my head. Had a fireman's ball cap on. I said thank you feeling like a dork, gushing a little.. he just kindly nodded, smiled a little and kept walking while everyone else is screaming in the distance, running around the maze. I realized that to everyone else I was the scary, but to him I was a teenage girl about to bust her head open in the woods.

One night this couple comes in with a 3-4 year old girl. She is throwing a huge fit, kicking, screaming, crying, the whole 9 yards, she doesnt wanna go in.

Now, a logical human being would see this and say, "well I guess we dont go" but not these two f**kos. They keep trying to force little girl to go through the house, but she wont budge. This is causing a bit of a scene as well as backing up the line. Myself and one or two other monsters tell them "look, you gotta either get her to go in, or you gotta leave, you're holding up the line" but they are adamant that she has to go through and she is not having it. Now were pissed off because, why the f**k are you trying to make this small child go through when she is obviously terrified and scared out of her f*****g mind? We realize something has to happen, so we seek out one of the girls from further down the house who was a witch we called Baba Yaga since she was the most human looking of us. We told her the situation and asked if shed help walk the girl through the house, and she agreed.

So we bring Baba to the little girl, and she goes into this cartoonish russian accent "HellO leetle gorrl, I am Baba Yaga the gOod weetch! I am going to heyalp you scare all the mon-stors awaY!" She takes the little girls hand and off they go. We run off through the house spreading the word, "If you see Baba with a little girl, let the little girl scare you". Sure enough, whenever they got to where one of the monsters was hiding, the little girl would yell "BOO!" and whoever was there would lose their marbles. Screaming, running around in circles, falling all over the place. Sometimes there be more than one monster and they'd run into each other like the Three Stooges, all to the delight of the little girl, who was now giggling and jumping up and down, clapping her little hands, it was adorable. The adults that were with her look annoyed, but f**k them, the rest of the group that got lumped in with them were having a great time as well watching this tiny child scare the mean ugly monsters away.

I've never seen an entire house break character like that, but it was fun to be a part of.