Context for the q: was browsing tiktok and saw a video while scrolling. it was about a 35 year old woman with a 25 year old boyfriend. Everyone in the comments said it's wrong and predatory, how 25 is basically a kid and 35 is middle aged, etc

I've been a tomboy from a young age. My friends have always been guys, and I developed a dislike for being around other girls around age 10-11 because the people who bullied me were all girls.

When I was a teenager, I kept hearing that girls and women supposedly have a strong "fishy" smell. I know it's a meme, but I'd seen and read enough firsthand stories that it stuck with me. I even came across accounts from gay men who said that every woman they knew smelled that way, and that it influenced their attraction to men.

In my case, I seem to be an exception. There's no fishy smell on myself, just normal skin or sweat when I'm active, or at night when I'm due to shower. But that actually made me even more uncomfortable around groups of girls and women, because I really hate the smell of fish or seafood in general, and if there's a lot of women in a room, that smell lingers even after they've left.

Sometimes I feel embarrassed, because people see me, see that I'm female, and I worry they automatically assume I've got a rotting crab factory somewhere.

I got bullied a lot. The only clique that didn’t bully me, was them. They were very ride or die people. They always made me laugh, my first ever crush was on one of them, but I never told him. Then, years after school, I’d get random people from that subculture helping me. A bunch of them talked me out of suicide. I didn’t even know them, but that’s what they did. And now that subculture’s just…gone. I know those people still exist, obviously, but every time I think about it, or watch old videos involving people of that subculture, I feel a wave of warmth followed by emptiness. I never got to thank some of them for making my teenage years my golden years. I felt safe opening up to them emotionally. Otherwise, I was a closed book. My family are very "get on with it" "stop crying or I'll give you something to cry about" people.

I forgot to put my age, but I’m a woman, and 30.

I got bullied a lot. The only clique that didn’t bully me, was them. They were very ride or die people. They always made me laugh, my first ever crush was on one of them, but I never told him. Then, years after school, I’d get random people from that subculture helping me. A bunch of them talked me out of suicide. I didn’t even know them, but that’s what they did. And now that subculture’s just…gone. I know those people still exist, obviously, but every time I think about it, or watch old videos involving people of that subculture, I feel a wave of warmth followed by emptiness. I never got to thank some of them for making my teenage years my golden years. I felt safe opening up to them emotionally. Otherwise, I was a closed book. My family are very "get on with it" "stop crying or I'll give you something to cry about" people.

I forgot to put my age, but I’m a woman, and 30.

He was an old friend who stood up for me in school when I was facing harassment. He had a tough persona, but he spoke softly to me and was gentle with me. That was in 2006. I messaged him on Facebook a month ago, nothing too detailed, just asking him if he was at [school] in 2006. To be specific, the exact message was "hey, were you ever at [school I went to] in 2006?". I have a picture of my face as my profile picture, and my intention was just to re-connect with old friends or maybe to just thank him for what he did. That day, I was being harassed so badly that I was in tears. I'd been bullied a lot, and he was someone I looked up to. Today, his profile in my Chats list just says "Facebook user" and how he's not available on messenger. My sister can't find him on Facebook either.

The best way I can explain it is like how the back of a Playstation or other console when it gets hot and the air coming out of it is hot. Combined with a slight armpit smell. As long as I have been on the internet, I keep reading about how women smell "fishy" down there, and I was always confused by that. Am I just weird?

He's elderly (84 or 85). My house is joined with his. There's a third house that is partially joined to his and they recently had a new kitchen fitted, so there was a lot of drilling in the morning. Since then, he's been blasting the radio on what sounds like a subwoofer aimed against the wall every morning at 7 AM. I live with my brother and my mum, and it wakes us all up. It's a very deep bassy noise so it's hard to block out or drown out. It goes on until 1 PM.

He is doing this on purpose. He did the same thing in 2023 and I went over to his house assuming he didn't know he was being loud and politely told him to turn his TV down in the morning because it's waking us up. Then he told me he's doing it to wake my brother up because "every night at 1:30 AM he wakes me up making wolf noises in the garden so I'll wake him up too since he's obviously not sleeping during the night since he's making noises all night" (foxes frequently visit our garden at night). He's also accused my brother of "cloning my phone", "stealing my water", "stealing my food deliveries", and other crackpot things.

All Summer this year he was blasting one of those 120 dB sirens at 1:30, 2:30, and 3:30 AM each night. He'd then scream at the wall for a minute or two after sounding the siren, seemingly to do with my brother. Sometimes he'd then wake up at 7 AM and immediately go and blast the radio all day. He would also come outside into his garden with a frying pan calling my brother's name. The sirens stopped in July.

The kitchen work on the third house is done and was completed on the 24th of November, but they've left a fridge next to my neighbour's drive. A few days ago he came outside and my mum heard him yell "move your fridge, [brother's name]!".

In August and September and much of October he was quiet but now he's blasting the radio multiple days in a row for weeks on end. I have health problems and don't need this. I have other things going on in my life and recently this was the straw that broke the camel's back and I had a mental breakdown on the 1st of December which caused me to knock stuff off a shelf which caused a very old and very sentimental item of mine to break (I did not mean to break it, just to knock stuff off the shelf). I feel on edge because I can't really sleep early because he also blasts his TV until 12 PM. It's not just the loud noise, it's also the reason he's doing it.

We have complained numerous times to the council (environmental health), as well as the police. They have sent him letters but he has ignored all of them and continues the harassment. He is obviously refusing to take his medication.

He has also called the police on us and we had two police officers arrive at our door because of his slander. All 3 of us are not well, we don't make any noise, and need our sleep. I don't want to move as this was my grandparent's house that was given to us by them after they died.

We are at wit's end here. We just want the harassment to stop. Is there a way we could get him sectioned under the mental health act? From what we know, he stopped taking his medication in 2020. This is when most of the bizarre texts my mum received from him began (she still has them all saved).

edit: For non UK readers, being "sectioned" means being involuntarily hospitalised and forced to take medication

Someone in my street keeps harassing me and my family, and I lost my temper 2 days ago and whacked a bunch of things off a shelf. One of the heavier things ended up falling on my soup bowl and smashed a third of it. That specific soup bowl has been discontinued for many years. The manufacturer did make very similar soup bowls just with a different pattern on them, but they're old and only being sold on places like Ebay. I'm going to take the bowl out of the trash tomorrow and measure it in detail and maybe post it on Facebook to see if anyone has this bowl. I feel like a whole bunch of nice memories have been literally smashed, like that bowl was with me for all that time and I smashed it by accident. That bowl was like a friend and reminded me of a time in my life where I was happy so just ordering some generic soup bowl that isn't extremely similar or the same is going to remind me of what I've lost.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c0/Red-blue-noise.gif

Lately I've been trying to put into words a strange pattern that's followed me since I was about eleven. Every five years or so, whenever I'm overwhelmed or deeply stressed, I end up hallucinating a being I've made up in my head. It's based on a mythical creature that's usually portrayed as dangerous or cruel, definitely not something meant to offer comfort especially to someone vulnerable. It appears almost like a normal human, close enough that at a glance, you could mistake it for a person. There are tiny details that give it away every time though.

The most recent time, a pair of them came up to me during a depressive episode. They spoke to me calmly, gently, and somehow pulled me back from that dark place. They told me they spent time in the exact spot where I saw them, and said reassuringly they were there every day if I wanted to talk to them again. But even though I went back daily for weeks afterward, I never actually saw them again. I can still picture their faces and voices as clearly as if I saw them yesterday. It wasn't like a dream where some details are fuzzy. It was like they were really there.

I even asked one for his social media handle after I asked him if he has one, to which he said yeah. When I got home that day and searched it, I could've sworn a real profile showed up. But now, when I look, it doesn't exist, there's not even a "this user deleted their account" message. It's just…... nothing like it was never there at all?

It's happened four times so far. The first time was right after I'd seen something about that creature in the news and a magazine, and I remember feeling incredibly lonely. Each episode happened in a public place, once it was at school and one time, a few years back, the one I mention with the social media question, I lost about thirty minutes of actual time which is the amount of time I was talking to them. Every one looked slightly different, like another individual of the same species rather than the same guy, and once there were two of them talking to me and also chatting with each other as if they were completely separate.

I haven't had hallucinations of anything else in my life, just those four, and part of me feels conflicted and guilty that I miss them. This creature is supposed to be evil, something that harms or even kills innocent people, yet the versions I see are the opposite, they're quiet, kind, and grounding. It's comforting and unsettling at the same time. I catch myself searching for the creature in movies, shows, books anything. It comforts me yet it also leaves me feeling strangely sad and just empty. I spend about an hour a day looking up information or stories about it. It's like some part of my brain is always itching for more, even though most portrayals paint it as monstrous instead of compassionate.

That's also the reason why these people looked so familiar. The school one looked very much like me in the face, except he was a boy, and when I "encountered" the pair a few years ago, one of them eerily resembled my cousin, even down to his build. I have a hostile family, but I remember reading somewhere that your brain cannot create new faces from scratch. It has to base them off of people it knows.

I don't think I'll get over the fact the people who were there for me to comfort me when no one else would never really existed.