The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
Jump in the discussion.
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You're welcome.
I know how that can feel. It's difficult to move in that kind of world but you always need to do your best to retain good judgment while navigating through somber circumstances and having to make hard decisions. There's no other way to make progress. The boyfriend simply sounds like a deadbeat and is a dead end. Better to cut your losses early now than come to the same conclusion after you've pissed away too much time and end up right back with the same problem.
I had a very difficult life myself growing up. I had a lot of people around me when I was young. A lot of positive and negative influences on both sides, but the latter always weighs on the mind much more than the former which we quickly subsume and take for granted. When I was in school I had a very difficult time connecting with other kids. I was usually that kid that sat all the way in the back corner of the class and stayed quiet the whole day but always did his homework, stayed in an isolated corner on the playground during recess playing with sticks in the dirt, performed well and wasn't generally a nuisance to anyone. But there wasn't a lot of opportunity there either. The other kids couldn't keep up with me and the adults didn't want to have anything to do with me, so I was usually on an island to myself most of the time. I was just there to do my jail time and leave. Outside of that, I was very active in the neighborhood, but things weren't great there either.
I spent most of my time raising myself and learned to be skeptical of the thoughts others try to impart with you. A lot of the time others aren't independent actors looking out for your self-interest. They're motivated to have you think a certain way which benefits themselves. As I always told other neighborhood kids I'd mentor as I was getting older, "Always listen with your eyes, not with your ears." Don't ever do things that go against your own best judgment.
Whether it was school, the neighborhood or the home, one was almost never a reprieve from the other; and it was like a permanent nightmare that would never end. I still have thoughts about it every day and have for 20+ years that I've never been able to shake and probably never will. But experience is only what you take from it and I've learned a considerable amount from the things I've been though. Some lessons I think I would've never learned had I not gone through difficult things. There's little sense in moping or complaining about things as I see it. I was dealt a bad hand and played it as best as I could. You do your best. It's all that can be expected. And I'll continue to do the same. All you can do is have fun and smile as life takes you for a ride. And where that’s not always enough, I sometimes like to read some of my favorite religious scriptures:
“And recite to them the news of Noah, when he said to his people, "O my people, if my residence and my reminding of the signs of God has become burdensome upon you, then know that I have relied upon God. So resolve upon your plan and call upon your associates. Then let not your plan be obscure to you. Then carry it out upon me and do not let up on your attack.”
I hope things pick up for you and your family.
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