Yesterday I returned to work after a week off. We're so unbelievably short-staffed because they're still trying to sell the department and they're not allowed to hire any new people to replace the people quitting in droves, so the mountain of work I had to do completely by myself immediately drove me into a massive panic attack that lasted all day and today, my whole body is swollen and hurts. So that's great. I'm trying to hold on until they finally sell and I get the severance (which is pretty decent since I've been there for 18 years...not huge or anything but it'll keep me afloat for maybe four months) but my mental health isn't keeping up with my resolve. All I want is a job that pays enough to cover my bills, offers insurance, and doesn't make me want to kill myself. I'm tired of being on suicide watch every other month because of this place. I just don't feel like I deserve any better. I don't know why I'm even posting this here. I have been asking for way too much sympathy/support/whatever lately and people are going to get sick of my shit. This is probably all oversharing anyway, I just don't know how to process it without talking to someone. My therapist is great but he's focused on getting me to quit and I just can't do that. I will NEVER find another job. My resumé is one page because I have had ONE job for 18 years. Nobody's going to want a college dropout with only one job on their resumé. I'm just so tired of wanting to die.

r/relationships

So me [40M] and by best friend—let's call him G [90ishM]—recently had a falling out. It's complicated essentially; we sort of worked together in this high-stress industry and I had this crush on him for decades basically since I graduated college (he works out a lot and keeps super fit). we don't work on the same department or anything, so it's not like he's my supervisor or there's any HR issues. (Our line of work is really too small for HR to be common.)

Anyways, that's just part of the background, because G had this awful off-again-on-again girlfriend let's call Y [110F]. And I know I'm going to get devoted for saying this lol but she's a huge a bitch. Super mean and vindictive, and she DEFINITELY considered me a threat for G's attention bc she kept trying to kill and/or belittle me for years.

Like I said, G and I recently had a falling out after he and Y broke up for real (I think there was something about how they met? or maybe fertility issues? idk but it stressed them out and got super toxic, especially when G ended up adopting a girl without her—again, it's complicated).

I've been sort of doing my own side hustle for a while now, some grassroots volunteering, and ended up crossing paths with Y.... and she's actually chilled out a lot? Like for the first time, she stopped being a shrill harpy and we had a full conversation together and she didn't try to cut my dick off and validated my music career? (i'm not joking that we have history.) Honestly, I sort of get now why G was so into her.

And to be clear G and I only just reconciled, and only part of that is because he's been so focused on being a single dad. He's not getting back together with Y, but she's also his kid's new tutor, so it's not like they're having no contact.

TL;DR - my best friend's stupid hot evil ex is back in my life, and will it ruin our friendship if i fuck her?

EDIT: the crush on G is like still very much a thing. i don't think he's gay but he's never said he's STRAIGHT so i don't want to do anything that takes us off the table either

EDIT2: lol what did i say about getting downvoted for calling her a bitch... but if the glove fits...

top rated comment: she's his daughter's new tutor? sounds like she's not such an ex after all, I don't think you have a chance with either of them

(1) I haven't been involved in the Rey discourse so maybe I'm not interpreting this correctly, so please bear with me - but it's always been clear to me that while Rey *is* morally right, her impulsiveness did get the better of her. And I don't think she's a bitch for it: it was a stressful situation, she had just gone through a lot of adrenaline, and it makes perfect sense with her background and her characterization. She wants Ben to stop the shooting on the Resistance - which again, I get,

(2) but the problem (for me at least) is that even if the narrative wants me to believe the morally right thing for Kylo would have been to do that, he can’t - for the simple and good reason that he’s just committed high treason, and ironically enough, to save Rey, not to mention that she got herself in that situation thanks to a poorly thought plan where she almost lost her life. Calling that off is signing his death warrant, for real this time. After that, it’s joining the Resistance (or what’s left of it) on Crait for a long, painful death, because neither of them has a way of knowing that Holdo is going to ram into the Supremacy. Kylo is aware of the chase and in what state the Resistance is - Rey is not. But for the sake of the argument, let’s say Rey and Kylo could have done something… with, um, the Force, to help the Resistance, and that Kylo says no just for the evulz and still tries to get Rey to be with him, I still think Rey handled the situation poorly?Not even in a sense “she should have said yes”, because again, I don’t blame her for saying no. I guess what makes me uncomfortable is that her reaction is very similar to how Luke reacted a few years ago, and Kylo sure interprets it that way. A scene where the two of them start screaming at each other and that ends with the same outcome would have been better - mainly because the way I perceive it is that Rey basically strikes straight into Kylo’s PTSD - involuntarily, but it does leavea bitter taste in my mouth, especially that the argument seems to be that “Rey did nothing wrong”, while the movie is all about failure, so I don’t see why Rey should be exempt of it. And I don’t want to see Rey on her knees, tbh - just thinking of that makes me gag - just a little acknowledgement that while impulsiveness might have worked on Jakku in order to survive, it’s not going to work all the time. And that’s Rey’s fatal flaw, in my opinion - and it almost was fatal in TLJ.

I dunno. Rey’s impulsiveness served Reylo well when she dumped Luke’s ass to run to Kylo, didn’t it? 

My problem with this reading is that it basically validates Luke’s “this is not going to go the way you think” stance, and frames Rey’s urgency to show compassion to Kylo as a “fatal” flaw she needs to fix, which imo is all kinds of thematically wrong and messes up the subtext. Rey was NOT wrong to be impulsive, to want to act immediately to rescue the lost boy from his lifelong captor. Her instincts were not wrong—the circumstances were. If anything her impulsiveness, optimist thinking and even, allow me the term, ignorance of the complete ramifications of Ben’s fall (she only knows the tl;dr version of all the parties involved minus Leia) are what allowed her to discard all her preconceptions and open herself to Kylo so fully and earnestly in the first place. She saw a glimpse of Ben Solo and immediately ran with it—despite having NO idea of what it was like to live with Ben Solo and his growing darkness for 20+ years. Was she supposed to think this through, ponder the pros and cons of trying to redeem Ben carefully, consider the fact that maybe he wasn’t just *stolen away*, but also had ideological reasons to side with the FO, and that she needed to bring better arguments to the table to actually convince him? Probably. But I bet this would have paralyzed her just as it paralyzed Luke. Sometimes knowing all the facts and the nuances of a problem, being too deeply and personally involved with it, can prevent you from seeing a solution. And imo Rey was able to see it precisely because she’s essentially an outsider, unrelated to all this skywalker drama until two weeks ago.

Rey’s failure can be seen as the failure of the hero in the face of bigger circumstances than what she could handle at the moment. The fact that Kylo wasn’t wrong in not wanting to immediately run to the Resistance either adds nuance to their current conflict:

I guess what makes me uncomfortable is that her reaction is very similar to how Luke reacted a few years ago, and Kylo sure interprets it that way. A scene where the two of them start screaming at each other and that ends with the same outcome would have been better - mainly because the way I perceive it is that Rey basically strikes straight into Kylo’s PTSD

and that’s the tragedy of it, isn’t it? Rey does this because she was basically cornered into an either/or choice, and the result is that Kylo sees another person he loves raising a weapon against him.But judging from her face when the tug-of-war starts, she is perfectly aware of how this would look to Kylo, and it kills her.Still, she has to—Kylo was cornering her with an impossible choice, he had two sabers and she had none. Both Rey and Kylo’s actions contributed to the way the events precipitated, but neither was able to foresee it. The thing is—from a storytelling perspective, their personal conflict needs to be genuine and believable, and both have a right to perceive the other’s behavior as a betrayal.If you had it any other way, there would be no Crait, and it would be extremely difficult to set them up as “complicated enemies” for IX. But at the same time, both need to be able to eventually acknowledge—and forgive—each other’s motivations for acting the way they did. 

But most importantly, for all you can see Rey’s impulsiveness as a mistake, she really did better than anyone else who still loves him: Luke didn’t try at all—didn’t even bother offering a clear explanation of what happened at the academy, just packed and left to go sulk on his hermit island; Leia keeps on holding hope but from a distance, in secret, while officially leading military attacks on Kylo; Han did reach out to him but it was too little and too late, and he didn’t think it through, either (did he consider Ben’s realistic possibilities to go home with him, when “home” is the Resistance?). Rey, at least, formed a connection with him, gave him a reason to believe in a possible bright future, and didn’t simply go in the lion’s den to plead with him—she offered her physical help to get rid of Snoke. She got one thing right that nobody else did: that Kylo didn’t just need an escape plan, he needed to destroy the voice in his head for good. And she went there to help him do exactly that.