redditor of the day Semi-Annual Gala, aka "The Official Party Thread"

Saydrah

Thank you. I appreciate that, and I imagine you're one of the people around here who really understands how much something like that can mean.

Is there anything I could do to help with this whole penitentiary business? Will you be needing a pen pal or someone to send you art supplies or something?

Regardless, I'd like to keep in touch, and anytime you want to chat I'm on AIM most days--same username as here.

Saydrah

Oh gosh, I'm really glad it worked out! Kleinbl00 gives great advice when he wants to. I'm eternally grateful to him for some he gave me, too (which I still owe him thanks for--I didn't want to hear it at the time so I didn't respond right away, but a few days later I realized he was very right).

I'm doing fine. Life is pretty good overall. Spending a lot of time with my niece after noticing how damn fast she suddenly started growing up. She's starting to look and act more preteen than little kid (but still a complete tomboy thank goodness, no boy craziness yet) and I want to get as much time in with the sweet little girl as I can before she turns into an adolescent. I'll love her no matter how much of a brat she is, of course, but if it's true that your kids as teens are punishment for what you put your parents through as a teen, my sister is really gonna be in for it and my niece is going to be a terror.

Saydrah

How are you doing? Did your court case work out?

Saydrah

Oooh! <3

Saydrah

You have to name her Scream. Look at the markings. The eyes are on her poll, her forehead is the mouth, her nose is the lower jaw.

Saydrah

::shudder::: You're giving me a twitch.

Saydrah

Augh! Dude, I'm afraid of balloons. T_T someone make the background go away...

Saydrah

Are the kitties okay?

Saydrah

:(

And I did too tell him what I wanted my avatar to look like... but he told me it couldn't have an alien boner.

Saydrah

Oh yeah? Well I bet YOUR country doesn't spend its entire GDP on a bloated military and a failed drug war! So there! Wait....

Saydrah

I'm glad my posts have had such a profound and lasting impact on you, but if you need a hobby there's probably a soup kitchen near you that could really use a volunteer with that sort of dedication.

Saydrah

Hm, let's see, I answered the question and you left an off topic reply serving your own interests. Which one was the spam post again?

Saydrah

Pee. On. Everything.

Saydrah

Just a little Reddit with 3 subscribers where a few people take note of things like this, hence why I thought this post was there. Not my subreddit to talk about, but you're welcome to join the inactive r/sayds as a consolation prize if you like :P

And I think at least a few of the downvotes following me around are scripts, they have to be, it's too fast. Or people have some sort of Greasemonkey thing to notify them when I post anything new. Meh, if it makes them feel better, more power to 'em. The only time it irks me is if I make a serious advice post and it gets hit hard enough to get below the default hide threshold, but I rarely make serious posts now and the couple I have made seemed to get spared to some extent by the downvoters, so I don't really mind if they want to give me some blue arrows on my random "a wild Saydrah appeared!" posts.

Saydrah

Haha, I actually confused this with a private subreddit, probably wouldn't have posted if I'd noticed this was r/violentacrez, not the one I thought it was. But on the other hand, anyone subscribed to this one probably likes a little shit-stirring from time to time.

Saydrah

I think we all know when r/IAmA went downhill ;)

Saydrah

Well, I don't really come here anymore except to read the relationship advice mod mail or when somebody instant messages me to tell me that I've been mentioned and it would be funny if I popped up in the thread. But I've had mixed experiences the few times I've made a serious, on-topic post. It seems like the majority of Redditors either have forgotten the whole drama, moved past it, or joined after it happened, but there are still a few vocal people who want to "retry the case" as Qeraeth put it in one thread.

I did leave a couple of serious comments in the past week--one was in a private subreddit so not a good barometer of community sentiment, but the other seemed to get a fair number of upvotes. I didn't bother checking the downvote count because I really don't care; I commented in hopes of offering help to someone I really, really sympathize with, not in hopes of getting some comment karma. I do hope I can continue to occasionally leave comments like that without upsetting people too much. The best thing about Reddit for me has always been those rare moments when you can connect with someone who's struggling and provide a little bit of help.

Saydrah

I've been in this situation, with the genders reversed. I feel your pain and if I could give you a big hug and tell you in person that sacrificing yourself won't make her mentally healthy, I would. But all I have to offer is an Internet comment.

First of all, I would talk to her parents before the breakup. Tell them that their daughter is suicidal and that you intend to end the relationship but you don't want her to commit suicide. Give them a chance to rearrange their schedules to be with her as soon as you leave. If you have a good relationship at all with any of her friends, pick a close one who you can trust and tell them, too, and have them prepared to go over and be with her the minute you leave. She will probably be in crisis and in need of constant supervision for a few days at least--have that lined up before you go.

From now until when you leave, respond to suicide threats with, "If you are suicidal, you need immediate professional help. I couldn't live with myself if I didn't seek that help for you when I heard you say you want to kill yourself. If you are suicidal, I am calling an ambulance and we will go to the hospital to get you help now. Are you suicidal?"

Don't start fights or feed the chaos in the relationship. Don't accuse her of anything. In fact, stop telling her about how you feel about the relationship until you are ready to leave. You've made a decision. Dragging out the process is not going to change anything; it'll just prolong the amount of time that she feels this emotionally vulnerable and the length of time that you have to feel responsible for her mental health. Just step away from the emotional involvement with her and be practical for the rest of the relationship.

Make your plans to leave, make sure you have someone ready to go be with her when you do, and then leave. Change your phone number and block her number and her email address and her IM handles. Be watchful of your surroundings; if she finds you and stalks you, get a restraining order. But I think it is more likely you'll have the same experience I did--once the festering wound of the relationship is gone, no matter how desperately the suicidal person thought they wanted to cling to it, they'll begin to heal more thoroughly without the relationship than they ever could have if it had lasted.

Saydrah

Your boyfriend needs to visit a counselor who specializes in treating survivors of rape, with you, and talk through those issues with expert mediation. That's really the only answer here, if you want to deal with these situations with a minimum of pain, tears, and dragging up old things. There are some situations where a professional needs to see a couple. This is one of them.

Don't think of it as something punitive for him or as if you're saying there's something wrong with either of you or with your relationship. If you were thinking of having children, you'd visit an ob-gyn together and talk about what to do when trying to conceive. What you're trying to have now is a relationship, and if you're struggling a little with parts of that because of your sexual history, you visit a specialist in that area and talk about how to make things go more smoothly.

If he's as great of a guy as you say he is, he wants to understand how to help you, and a professional can verbalize the things that you can't about your experiences.

Saydrah

Yeah, I probably missed it in the flood, though. I had about 2,000 PMs in a week.

Saydrah

And someone made me a mod of the latter one. WTF? When did that happen?

Saydrah

What? You're not? Did we have a female mod with another name that started with D? I have no idea why I was convinced you were female but I have always thought you were an indie chick from the Eastern seaboard somewhere.

Saydrah

Well, if you go in my submission history there's an AMA thread that covers everything possibly relevant to this topic and plenty of things that aren't, though I was pretty emotional at the time and those comments aren't exactly going to depict me at my best. If there's anything you really want to know specifically, I'm on AIM most afternoons (and right now for a few more minutes) as Saydrah.

I understand the morbid curiosity, but I also kind of prefer not to spend too much time rehashing things that have been discussed over and over again--at this point I don't really come here except to read the relationship advice mod mail or when VA or someone else points me to a thread where I'm mentioned, so I figure my history can stand on its own and people can make their own decisions about what I contributed when I was a daily Redditor. I haven't deleted anything; the posts where I acted like a jerk are as intact as the posts where I hope I was able to make someone smile with a cute photo or give some helpful advice at a difficult time.

Saydrah

While I immensely appreciate your support on this, in the case of dearsomething and r/IAmA, I understand and support her decision--but I also understand and support another moderator's decision to leave after some issues in that subreddit got out of hand around the same time. IAmA is one of the few subreddits where the moderation really strongly matters to the lives of real people who disclose very personal information in order to verify threads. Any experienced mod who can do a good job of protecting users there and who feels mentally up to dealing with the frequent drama should stay a mod there.

And really, I should have unmodded myself and left Reddit for a few months much earlier than I finally did. I thought I was handling things well mentally--as it turned out, I wasn't really okay enough to be in a moderation role. I shouldn't have put "not letting them win" over actually being able to execute my responsibilities as a mod, especially in Iama where the srs business isn't confined to the Internet.

Inciteful Comment 2010-03-01	Well-rounded 2010-02-23
Secret Santa	Two-Year Club
Fantastic Voyager	Calendar Girl Ms. July
ComboLinker 2009-11-04	Inciteful Link 2009-10-15

Inciteful Comment 2010-02-27	Well-rounded 2010-02-18
Well-rounded 2010-02-03	Well-rounded 2010-01-26
Well-rounded 2010-01-25	Well-rounded 2009-12-21
Well-rounded 2009-12-11	Well-rounded 2009-12-10
Well-rounded 2009-11-24	Well-rounded 2009-11-19
Well-rounded 2009-11-17	Well-rounded 2009-11-13
Well-rounded 2009-11-05	Inciteful Comment 2009-11-03
Well-rounded 2009-11-03	Well-rounded 2009-10-30
Well-rounded 2009-10-26	Well-rounded 2009-10-22
Well-rounded 2009-10-21	Well-rounded 2009-10-16
Well-rounded 2009-10-13

Saydrah

TROPHY CASE

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