When I was living at my parents home, and covid started… before that j never had to leave. I felt fine loving at my parents. But when they became covid deniers, and I was a journalist at the time, I suddenly had the very strong urge to get up and get out.

After I moved out by sheer luck, (finding a place was hard), I noticed a switch flicked and that I no longer needed approval of my parents. For anything I did. At all.

I probably saved my life with ecstasy because it took one night with it to get me out of my depression. I tried a few times afterwards but it was never as good as the first time so I stopped but my depression never came back, the colour stayed in my life.

I’m not saying drugs are good but at the right time at the right place with the right amount it can help.

I know what you mean, and yes. At 20 years old, I turned down a job in my field to take one outside that I wanted to do for a few years just to see where it led and get it out of my system. I almost physically heard a door close and wondered if I’d done the right thing. Almost forty years later, I’m still not sure.

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I was in highschool suffering from multiple mental health disorders and social isolation. I was smart sure, but as I later learned you can’t outsmart your own brain. What it took was finding a girl, as studious and hard working as me, but even more stressed and destroyed by home life and a destructive boyfriend that preyed on their undiagnosed autism and major depression. It started when I simply told them that their emotions mattered, that they mattered as a person. Suddenly I was confronted with a person in their most stressful senior year, previously a danger to their own self, offloading their sorrows to me in need of anything resembling emotional support.

I had to learn (the hard way sometimes) how to listen, and listen with intent. I felt this urge, this duty to help, no matter how little I could do with how I was faring. I felt like if I didn’t do this, I would regret it for the rest of my life. It eventually lead to friendship into a relationship on fundamental compatibility, but I didn’t have any of those feelings at the beginning. I just accepted their texts, their calls, the first ones I had ever made to someone outside of school. It was the first time I ever felt I had a purpose. It was the first time I felt like I could do what was right, rather than what was expected.

Our relationship is rekindling as we both near college graduation. We’re far more stable now, but we crave our scant few hours shared on weekends. I can feel my life trajectory flying wildly out of prediction as the day they move in with me nears. However, I know that if it was anything like the last time, I can afford to be bold and to be true to myself. It’s one thing for your life trajectory to change, but it’s another to be committed to making it as good as possible.

One day, I understood that my then-boyfriend was the real thing.

Before him, I had a couple of good relationships. I was happy, but always wondered if I would have been better off on my own. The thought would pop up every couple of days, I would seriously consider it for a bit, then decide I was happier with them than in my own. Then my now husband showed up and we started dating.

One day, some three-four months into this new relationship, I realized I never had that old thought. It just never crossed my mind for months that I should evaluate the relationship. We clicked on so many levels, he made me a better person because it made me want to be better.

We got married “fast” for some external reasons and I never doubted that was the right choice. Since then, i don’t have to think about it: I know my life is so much better with him in it.

My senior year of college right before graduating with a history degree, I bought a canon rebel t3i after watching a short film that made me go “I want to make these.” I don’t do narrative work anymore, but I’ve got some film fest screenings notched on my metaphorical bat and I produce content for a tech startup now with excellent healthcare and a solid salary. Wife, kids, the whole deal.

Still have that rebel, it’s one of the few things in my life that I can point to and go “this thing changed everything.“

My mother is a conservative who poured subtle homophobia into me when I was a child.

I was at a rave, high on MDMA (ecstasy back then), smoking in the rain in the parking lot with some other young people. This flamboyant gay guy was hilarious and making everyone laugh heartily. In that moment, I realized that we were the same. He just wanted to go out and have a good time and take drugs on a Saturday night, too. My homophobia was gone in an instant. (I won’t lie; I had to have more exposure to LGBTQ people before I stopped noticing them so hard, but moving from the midwest to the Bay Area fixed that problem).

When I was young, I decided that big choices would go through a filter in my head…

What would my mother do in this situation, what would my father do?

I think both of them are horrible people that constantly make bad choices, so I would always look for the solution they wouldn’t choose.

It has been the recipe to my success.

I was about 19, a magician friend told me I was good enough at juggling to do busking but I was too shy. Decided to give it a go anyway and remember shaking so hard while lighting the fire torches I was using. Made R30 ($2) so not a lot but I did it. I remember thinking to myself, “I’ll never have to work again!”

That was over 20 years ago, and since then - with the exception of that stupid pandemic we had recently - I have made a decent living as a circus performer and magician.

I won’t tell you it wasn’t a bumpy ride at first, but that first show was the turning point for me I will never forget.

I was always mildly overweight growing up, despite doing enough sports and physical activity to be relatively fit. One day a flip switched and I started going to the gym daily. 6 months later, while doing cardio I pulled something or otherwise hurt myself and a month of back and forth later discovered I have herniated discs. My trajectory very much went downhill from there. PT made me miserable, the steroid epidural didn’t work. I was too young for surgery. I had to get rid of my motorcycle since riding it caused me to be bedridden in pain. I had to stop any recreational sports. Going shopping is rolling the dice over whether I’ll be in pain the next week.

Lift with your legs, not your back.

Yeah a few times. The one that came to mind first was my ex wife. She always made sure to not say anything about divorce but couldn’t even stand to be in the same room as me anymore. I was texting her about a year into the “separation” and it just clicked. She didn’t want to be the reason for the divorce but she had no intention of trying to fix anything.

Yep, when I was a young it pup I was working for a hospital making $15 an hour which was enough to afford rent and food and taking care of a wife that didn’t work and all that shit but I kept feeling like something was off and I kept getting passed over for raises and after 3 years with the same company yeah I finally said enough is enough I either need a raise or I’m going to quit and they told me they can’t give me a raise so I quit.

In my two weeks offboarding a friend of mine recommended me a different job and I applied for it and got it and it was an immediate jump from $15 to $21 an hour.

This was in 2014, so $21 an hour is not that much money but it was a hell of a lot more money than $15 an hour so I took the new job.

I worked there for three years and I took a new job and I worked there for three years and because of finally having enough I’m now making over $60 an hour 9 years later.

Which I know could be a lot more, but $60 an hour is more than enough to support myself and take care of my shit and it all came down to me just having that little mental fit where I said there’s no fucking way I’m going to keep working for $15 an hour and not getting pay raises.

It was years later that I found out that the hospital had hired somebody else with the exact same name that I had and they had gotten their numbers or something confused in the system and I was getting the other bizarrolands reviews and he was getting mine.

My coworkers that stayed there are now making like $19 to $22 an hour so I would say that it was definitely a good call for me to run away.