It's not what it looks like...

[CenotaphGirl]

So when I was 17 I marched out of my mothers prison and went to be with the cool kids aka my older sister.
She lived in a small flat cut off from all our parents money because she was breaking every rule my parents ever had.
My sister lived a very.... scary lifestyle and I spent most days outside the flat waiting for the last man to leave.

I met a lot of people in the block but one that I particularly liked was a older man, called... Steve for the story sake, he recently lost his wife, and every day I would take him a meal and a jar of cake,
I enjoyed going because he reminded me of my dad (who was then about an hour away), he told me stories about his wife, and what good care she used to take in making sure he was always well looked after.
He also told me how he always wanted to go before her, I have heard many men say things like this, very sad.

Anyway, I had to stop brining him food because people started to talk about how this old man had a 17 year old in his flat every day,
I didn't know it at the time but he randomly became very standoffish with me, and scared me the last time I went there.
I remember crying confused for a very long time, scared to bump in to him so much, but after my dad passed it happened,
He told me how sorry he was for my loss and explained he felt awful that he scared me, but people were calling him all sorts of awful things.

Anyway, this story just came to mind, was a hard thing to get over, but what shocks me till this day is people would have rather seen him completely alone than with any support.

In my opinion they knew nothing.... wrong was happening, but just felt ashamed that they never offered to help their fellow neighbour, I think, maybe I am naive? I just cant see the point of spreading such awful gossip.

 

[okidoke]

People make their own lives more palatable if they can create a stir.

 

[CenotaphGirl]

People make their own lives more palatable if they can create a stir.

Just awful and negativeee

 

[NoxApex(N/A)]

Probably a little of both.
It is common that older men, especially if they are single and lonely, gravitate towards younger women.
But, that's not always with ill intent.
Were I not me, solidarity would drive me to the very edge of my sanity.
Fortunately I am me, and there's not much sanity left for me to bother guarding.
I spent three months alone once...
No internet, no cable, no television, no Playstation or Xbox, all my friends had moved out of town, and I was financially scraping by on half a former paycheck to pay my bills, because I was preparing to move and then go on a two week business trip.
At least one of those months, I only ate lettuce throughout the week, while heavily daily drinking, and doing a physical day job.
It got bad. Really bad.
I started hallucinating so much that I would talk to myself in my own apartment just to hear another voice.
Probably the closest I've ever gotten to actually killing myself, if I'm totally honest.
For the next year or two, I kept talking to myself in public, without really realizing I was doing it.
Every now and then, I'll still loosely paraphrase to myself while I'm at work.
Occasionally a customer will hear me and inquire:
"Are you talking to yourself?"
And the only thing I can think of is those three months and my internal monologue goes off: "Lady, you have no idea..."

 

[CenotaphGirl]

Probably a little of both.
It is common that older men, especially if they are single and lonely, gravitate towards younger women.
But, that's not always with ill intent.
Were I not me, solidarity would drive me to the very edge of my sanity.
Fortunately I am me, and there's not much sanity left for me to bother guarding.
I spent three months alone once...
No internet, no cable, no television, no Playstation or Xbox, all my friends had moved out of town, and I was financially scraping by on half a former paycheck to pay my bills, because I was preparing to move and then go on a two week business trip.
At least one of those months, I only ate lettuce throughout the week, while heavily daily drinking, and doing a physical day job.
It got bad. Really bad.
I started hallucinating so much that I would talk to myself in my own apartment just to hear another voice.
Probably the closest I've ever gotten to actually killing myself, if I'm totally honest.
For the next year or two, I kept talking to myself in public, without really realizing I was doing it.
Every now and then, I'll still loosely paraphrase to myself while I'm at work.
Occasionally a customer will hear me and inquire:
"Are you talking to yourself?"
And the only thing I can think of is those three months and my internal monologue goes off: "Lady, you have no idea..."

Thats so awful! i’m sorry Apexieee i think the rumours were so uncalled for someone could have asked me or something

 

[NoxApex(N/A)]

Thats so awful! i’m sorry Apexieee i think the rumours were so uncalled for someone could have asked me or something

It's a societal problem that's not really being well addressed, is the big part of the problem. There are countless videos of teens on Tiktok now, crying because they're alone and don't have any friends and are graduating, getting ready to go off to college, but are totally alone.

I remember the first time I heard of something like that happening was somewhere between 2009 and 2010, when I watched a documentary about a woman who worked in an insurance firm that died alone in her apartment in London, and nobody knew about it until the landlord had her door kicked down by the police two or three months later.

In that instance, cause of death couldn't even really be properly determined due to the stage of decomposition, but it was later suggested by the medical examiner that she'd passed of some unknown medical condition she might've had. She was only in her 20s.

Nobody noticed.
She was single and lived alone, showed no signs of mental illness, seemed otherwise happy, just she spent her life mostly alone. She had love among her and her family, but they didn't talk much due to distance and work schedule differences. Because of the size of the corporation she worked for, they had hundreds of employees on multiple floors, your typical office cubicle type of a job, her bosses didn't notice her absence, nor did her co-workers.

A neighbor had reported a foul odor coming from her apartment, she'd countless unpaid bills that the mailman had slipped through her dropbox, mostly unpaid bills, tax collection agencies, etc.

I remember the general consensus of the documentary being that the people in it seemed haunted that something like that could even happen. One man in particular just kept saying: "No, things like this don't happen in this country" in his disbelief that it had happened.

 

[okidoke]

@NoxApex(N/A) yes it's a sad state of affairs too often in modern society. I think tech in that way has crippled us too much. It's too easy to "socialise", watch sports, fill out forms, contact necessary liaisons for various services and groups via electronic equipment, which in many ways is good, but it has taken away our need to "get out there amongst it" and mix with people and even know how to talk with them. Most kids today will avoid making phone calls. I made my kids call up for appointments or services and physically go into offices to submit forms etc. Communication is becoming a lost art, and we all know very well how posts and messages can be misconstrued and cause anguish. We need to mix with other people more.

 

[NoxApex(N/A)]

@NoxApex(N/A) yes it's a sad state of affairs too often in modern society. I think tech in that way has crippled us too much. It's too easy to "socialise", watch sports, fill out forms, contact necessary liaisons for various services and groups via electronic equipment, which in many ways is good, but it has taken away our need to "get out there amongst it" and mix with people and even know how to talk with them. Most kids today will avoid making phone calls. I made my kids call up for appointments or services and physically go into offices to submit forms etc. Communication is becoming a lost art, and we all know very well how posts and messages can be misconstrued and cause anguish. We need to mix with other people more.

A lot of the time that can happen because text isn't exactly a stable medium.
Inflection, tone and inference can all get lost among text. Which is actually the real reason why emojis became a thing in the first place, to try to help clarify, but that's not exactly accurate either, because they can get misused. I don't socialize much outside of the internet. But due to what's happened with socializing ON the internet, I'm not really on things like Facebook or Instagram either, so in a way I'm kind of cut off from everyone that isn't immediately in my life. But because I got involved with a subculture that I otherwise wouldn't have known about through the earlier days of the internet, it sort of leaves me in an awkward spot. I have one friend I see in person every week, an old bar mate of mine. He's on disability now and is agoraphobic as well as has some physical problems from a suicide attempt. I have another friend in town, I see him sparsely due to schedule conflicts. Otherwise, I live with my family and tend to my parents and grandparents as their health declines. My sister and niece are also here, but her and I have opposite schedules and different lives. I've always been really introverted. So much so that I actually had to re-teach myself how to socialize in person again after I dated an extroverted woman for 8 years, who wouldn't ever let me get a word in edge-wise. Had I not been through what I've already been through, this situation would otherwise probably have more of an effect on me, but I'm mostly fine living this way. For now, at least. I spend the brunt of my time now, preparing for the future, keeping up with housework, dietary and exercise, somewhat preparing to suddenly be shafted and totally alone again. I feel more confident now, having been through it before, but I'd be lying if I said that it doesn't scare the Hell out of me.

 

[okidoke]

....... but I'd be lying if I said that it doesn't scare the Hell out of me.

That's understandable.

 

[user 164061]

People just enjoy being nosey and creating drama as they are mega nosey, but also lack anything better to do. Lots of people are sh*t stirrers in general and gossip merchants, but some people are that bored or weird they'll turn a good turn or something kind into something way more sinister than what it actually is. Damned if you do, damned if you don't comes to mind.

 

[littlefish555]

What is a jar of cake? It sounds wonderful.

 

[ringwood]

You’re not naive. You’re kind. And there is no point to gossip - from my experiences, it’s usually used in a malicious, mean manner and usually misguided and based on assumptions. I have no use for it, period. I don’t gossip and I don’t listen to gossip.

When I was 8, my dad was diagnosed with bipolar illness. A really hard time and what made it harder is how we were treated by former friends and neighbours - like outcasts and lepers, and all based on gossip. Nobody bothered to actually come and talk to my mum about what was going on. To some people, it’s just easier to make baseless assumptions about others rather than make an effort to find the truth.

 

[CenotaphGirl]

What is a jar of cake? It sounds wonderful.

It’s a normal cake but I jared them because I was so crap at decorating them lol they looked something like

You’re not naive. You’re kind. And there is no point to gossip - from my experiences, it’s usually used in a malicious, mean manner and usually misguided and based on assumptions. I have no use for it, period. I don’t gossip and I don’t listen to gossip.

When I was 8, my dad was diagnosed with bipolar illness. A really hard time and what made it harder is how we were treated by former friends and neighbours - like outcasts and lepers, and all based on gossip. Nobody bothered to actually come and talk to my mum about what was going on. To some people, it’s just easier to make baseless assumptions about others rather than make an effort to find the truth.

Wow this is so awful, and hits harder and closer to how than you’d know, wow, made me tear up. Its really cold simply awful. The amount of heartbreaking experiences caused from meaningless gossip.