Despite my abuse, I was lucky to have very good friends at school. They supported me in ways my parents never did. They helped me be a better person, and to enjoy life even though I was being mistreated at home. We played together, we made things; stick figure comics, lego sets, stories and games. They helped me feel like I mattered, like I deserved happiness.

Our family moved away. I tried to make new friends, but it wasn’t the same. When my life fell apart, no one supported me. I am saddened that the relationships I thought we were building together for our whole lives turned out to mean much less to them. I am worth more than that, but it’s easier to say than to feel. When enough people consistently treat me like I am worthless, it is difficult not to internalize that idea.

I have been lucky again to find people online. I hesitate to call them “friends” because I’m scared of getting hurt again. I’m scared of getting too close to anyone. But we talk, we play games, we share music, we listen to each other’s problems, we support each other. They tell me that I matter, and I try to believe them. They matter, too. They have already made a positive difference in my life.

I think you are on a journey of discovering who you can be. It is difficult to let go of who we were. How do we make something new out of nothing? I’m still trying to find out myself.

I did not invent the idea of turning pain into love. Kimya Dawson probably didn’t, either, but I heard it in her song “Fire” and it stuck with me.

Telling the truth the best way that I’m able,

Placing my cards all face up on the table.

It’s okay to be scared, you do don’t have to act tough.

Take all that pain and turn it into love.

Take all that pain and turn it into love.

And let your emotions be fuel to your flame.

Being on fire will keep you awake.

If somebody yells out, “hey! Stop, drop, and roll!”

Say "that might save my skin, but it won’t save my soul.

That might save my skin, but it won’t save my soul"

https://youtu.be/C6mbnb4YcwM

Sorry if it’s not your thing, or if I rambled too much. I don’t know how to help you, but I can share what has helped me.

We were taught hate and told it was love. We were betrayed by the people who were supposed to care for us.

I have to consciously remind myself that my parents were wrong to hurt me. You and I deserve better than what we have been given. Children do not choose to be abused.

How do you personally define love?

My favorite way to think of it currently is as a force, like gravity. It draws people together, even if the result is not good for them. We evolved empathy and compassion for good reason, they help us survive. But they can also be taken advantage of. So it naturally feels scary to make ourselves vulnerable in sharing honest love, and it is worth remembering that we should not give away more than we are willing to lose.

I wish I knew how to help you. I am glad to see so many supportive comments here. Your pain is as unique as you are, but you are not alone.

Our omnipotent creator is of a different nature than us.

You believe god is all-powerful? So you must also believe he does not love us. Why else would he create suffering?

Before you try to use “free will” as an excuse, there is no free will with an omnipotent god. He could create anything any way, he knew what would happen, and he chose to give children cancer. That is psychotic.

It works for me, I’m not signed in too

Probably my VPN. Thank you for at least taking a look at what I have to say. I am angry because others have it even worse than I do, and it’s completely unnecessary. Stupid, selfish people believe in magic and treat their own children like property as a direct result.

How much child-beating do you believe is sensible?

Are you saying they should never be stoned to death in the public square? The bible says otherwise.

If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and, though they discipline him, will not listen to them, then his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his city at the gate of the place where he lives, and they shall say to the elders of his city, ‘This our son is stubborn and rebellious; he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton and a drunkard.’ Then all the men of the city shall stone him to death with stones. So you shall purge the evil from your midst, and all Israel shall hear, and fear.

Are you saying children shouldn’t be hit with a rod? The bible says otherwise.

Whoever spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him.

Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline drives it far from him.

And before you say something like “it’s actually a shepherd’s rod used to guide-” Nope, it’s explicitly for striking children:

Do not withhold discipline from a child; if you strike him with a rod, he will not die. If you strike him with the rod, you will save his soul from Sheol.

I called my mom a bitch because she made excuses for abusing us instead of admitting it was wrong. Should I be put to death?

For anyone who curses his father or his mother shall surely be put to death; he has cursed his father or his mother; his blood is upon him.

People like you are the reason my parents are getting away with child abuse.

That’s the special pleading fallacy. You can’t define god into existence. If you can, I can define jod into existence. Play fair, people are dying for this shit.

It can’t reason. It doesn’t think. It makes shit up as it was trained to do. It can sort of detect patterns and make a guess about what response would get it the highest score, but it’s so error-prone that a human has to verify the output anyway. It’s difficult to tell whether the perceived benefits outweigh the costs. There are many different types of LLMs and use cases.

As a person who values life and our environment, I’d rather not participate in the sloppification of our world. As a Linux user, I am wary of vibe coded flaws slipping under the radar and screwing up my system.

A dollop of hope:

A research study in mice suggests that resilience to suffering is partly due to a decreased fear response in the amygdala and increased levels of BDNF in the brain. This 2015 research found that changing a gene in mice increased resilience to depressing and traumatizing events such as forcing the mice to swim. This could have crucial benefits for those with anxiety and PTSD.

…though I feel a bit bad for the mice.

I hate how race and religion are always conflated.

I have no problem with Jewish people, I hope there comes a day where they are welcome everywhere.

As living beings, we cannot tolerate Judaism or any other death cult.

Not all Jewish people are judaist. Not all judaists are Jewish. Pretending otherwise helps protect zionists.

Why are Israel and Palestine such a big deal? Because someone said god promised land to them.

That’s really fucking stupid. We have no evidence that any god even exists, let alone what they are like or what they said. The bible is a contradictory mess, literally unbelievable. Yes, even before christianity hijacked it.

No, I’m not anti-semitic or racist. People from anywhere can tell lies. People from everywhere should correct them instead of repeating them or ignoring them.

This shit ruined my life and is still killing people every day. When are we going to stop fucking around? Will adults ever act like adults? Magic isn’t real, for fuck’s sake.

“Video unavailable.” I’m not signed in to YouTube on my phone.

I am an atheist because I see no reason to believe the baseless claim that any god exists.

Did you watch any of my videos with an open mind? Here is one explicitly about why I don’t believe in god: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgC2juc3Rx4

Non YouTube version: https://snoopsqueak.com/videos/disproving-god

Your brother, Christopher Stowe, did what he did not because he believed in God, but because of his mental state

You’re so close. Connect the dots. Who ruined his mental state and why? It was our christian parents doing what the bible explicitly commands. Hitting their children before we were old enough to understand anything. Lying to us every day about god, heaven, hell, and christ.

It’s a death cult. Stop defending child abuse.

Living life is the longest thing you’ll ever do, but it’s still incredibly short. Why not give it your best shot instead of your worst? It is unfortunate that people hurt you. We live in a time when bad behavior is often encouraged and rewarded, but that doesn’t make it right.

Think of your pain. Do you really want to spread it to others?

It is terribly unfair. But can you try to find a way to turn that pain into love?

Full disclosure, I’m being hypocritical here. I am ex-christian. I share my experiences with others in hopes that I can prevent what happened to me from happening to someone else. But I often lose my patience and resort to name-calling. It’s not who I want to be. It’s often not effective, either. Keep looking for another way.

As for hell, I don’t fear it anymore. It was only ever in my head. I hope you can find freedom from the lies you were told.

I know that feeling. My parents mistreated me. I was a people pleaser for a long time. I let people take advantage of me and I assumed they would support me in return. They did not.

I am still looking for a place where I feel at home. Maybe I’ll never find it, but I’ll never know if I don’t try.

When no one else was there for me, I did not turn to AI. I wrote my thoughts and feelings in a notebook. It’s a form of honest self reflection with no limitations; you can imbue personality into each word. Some pages contained neatly ordered sentences, others had just a few words angrily scratched into the paper. Throw some doodles in there, why not? The result is a physical log of you at a particular time in your life. You can reflect on it yourself, no external validation required.

Humanity is struggling under the weight of its own mistakes. It sounds like you are trying your best. Sometimes things are just bad. It’s not your fault. I wish you well.

Please use your goddam brain, fucking moron.

The bible compels people to abuse themselves and each other.

Christianity is a cancer.

There is no christ. There is no god.

Grow the fuck up. Your death cult is killing us all.

I can’t heal while the knife is still in. Get your goddam hand off the handle.

I have another song, for people like you: https://snoopsqueak.com/videos/fys

YouTube version, though you have to sign in due to the nature of the lyrics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7dWyYeOBkg

My life is not yours to throw away, shitbag. More real children are abused every day in the name of a god that does not exist. I’m relatively lucky. I’m still alive to talk about it.

Now stop killing us. I am not your brother. My brother was arrested for making a “christ-damn promise” to shoot up a Spurs game. Where do you reckon that came from?

Stop choosing death.

That stuff is mostly editorialized later by the people who wrote the books with various agendas.

All of the gospels were written 30+ years after he died. How are you discerning which content to ignore?

In the Book of Matthew at least, he does very little claiming to be god or the only path to salvation.

In Matthew 7, he asserts that listening to his words is equivalent to building on solid stone, and that ignoring him is equivalent to building on sand.

Matthew 10:

“Whoever publicly acknowledges me I will also acknowledge before my Father in heaven.”

Matthew 16:

“I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”

Matthew 28:

Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.”

Etc. And you didn’t answer my question. Did he ever admit that he is not god? Or did he insist on that narcissistic delusion until it killed him?

It’s more like “You religious hypocrites and rich fucks better stop being such goddamn assholes and start actually taking care of people or so help me I swear I will incinerate you.”

“I help people if they’re the right race. I believe people should give up their valuables, except this oil we’re gonna pour on me in a needless symbolic display. Anyone who doesn’t listen to me (despite my conflicting messages) will suffer, my daddy will beat you up, and he is me.”

And you mentioned the threat of hell. Yeah, that’s psychotic and abusive. He’s using fear to manipulate people.

To everyone else he’s like “Y’all are alright, just take care of each other and stop being so damn forlorn all the time.”

Nothing says “I care” more than dismissing someone’s feelings, huh?

And why does he think there is no reason to worry? Because he believes in heaven. It’s a death cult.

And yeah he let himself be a martyr. I guess he took his pacifism seriously

Or he was an idiot.

maybe he didn’t want his followers to all get slaughtered if they tried fighting for him.

But that happened anyway, he got himself and other people killed with his bullshit.

It’s hard to say exactly, but I don’t think “He got beaten, insulted, and killed by the entrenched powers because he wouldn’t stop making them look like the self-centered and greedy idiots that they are” is a very good argument for “actually he was a psycho narcissist who never knew when to stop.”

Nor was that my argument, jackass. He was a delusional narcissist because he claimed to be god. He used baseless supernatural claims to manipulate people, often to the detriment of everybody. 2000 years later and we’re still dealing with the fallout from his ridiculous claims. Real children die in the name of fake gods.

We can talk about one good thing he said, the golden rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. But A) he did not invent that concept, and B) he did not live by it. He explicitly positioned himself as being above everyone else, as being closest to god. He told deadly lies, which most people do not want others to do to them.

If he was a delusional narcissist he would have doubled down on never being wrong or changing his mind about anything ever. Narcissists don’t say “Hey actually yeah, you’re right and I was wrong. Here you go.”

Did he ever admit to not being god? Did you miss all the sermons about how he, Jesus, is the only path to salvation? He even let himself get killed for it. Psycho shit.

if christ were real he would have such stern words for them on judgement day

Or he’d say something about homeless dogs not deserving bread. I don’t understand why anyone glazes Jesus, he was a delusional narcissist and a massive hypocrite.

“There’s a high risk of death, of course people will die.”

Yeah. That’s why we should reduce that risk. We don’t have to keep killing people.

Can children understand the risks? They suffer regardless:

About 7 out of 10 emergency department visits for sports- and recreation-related TBIs and concussions are among children ages 17 and under. For this age group, boys have about twice the rate of emergency department visits for sports- or recreation-related TBIs and concussions than girls. However, girls have a higher chance for sports-related concussion than boys in sports that use the same rules, like soccer and basketball.

https://www.cdc.gov/heads-up/data/index.html

how did those nurses mix up muscle relaxer with an MMR vaccine?

Maybe similar containers and exhausted nurses?

After the second victim died nurse Luse Tauvale went to the rubbish to check the vaccine bottle and when finding it was Attracurium, she put it in a plastic bag and took it home.

I can’t imagine their pain:

The parents of both the infants broke down after the sentencing but told local reporters they have forgiven the two nurses.

https://www.1news.co.nz/2019/08/02/nurses-sentenced-to-five-years-in-prison-for-incorrectly-administering-mmr-vaccine-that-led-to-deaths-of-two-infants-in-samoa/

Do we have info about how this measles outbreak in Samoa started?

We have a reasonable guess:

New Zealand’s next outbreak would be the biggest yet.

Taking off in February, just 10 months ago, this would see the country shaken by a resurgence of such severity that, by the time of Samoa’s two-day lockdown, it would total more than 2,000 confirmed measles cases. Almost 80 per cent of those were in New Zealand’s biggest city, Auckland, where on the south side is a large Pacific Islander community.

And not only does this enjoy family links to Samoa, but daily flights to and from Apia. Last year, more than 80,000 such journeys were logged between the nations. And it is believed that from a passenger on one such trip, last August, the virus jumped from Auckland to Upolu.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/measles-in-samoa/

I’m in the US. Prisons are prisons for the innocent.

AI agents do all that now.

But do they do it correctly? Who is checking?

These were not lazy trades.

Saying this immediately after “I used to do all the work myself, but now I don’t.”

They were correct trades, and I’d make them again tomorrow.

“I’d rather be wrong than do my own research.”

Somewhere in the past year an LLM became my thinking partner, and I say that without embarrassment.

Does he know LLMs don’t think?

I’m not the only one. Hundreds of millions of people reach for these tools every day, and they are not idiots.

Did AI tell him that? Idiot.

Appealing to popularity suggests he is not thinking for himself. Too many people are outsourcing their thinking to unreliable software in much the same way that religious people outsource their morality to unreliable books.