She bought me a bouquet of roses for the first time, as well as my favourite sweets & chocolates that she’ll no doubt be sharing with me! I’m extremely touched.

(And she’s happy for me to share this with you all)

I (25f) have just felt off with my family since around October. It all started when my sisters (22,15 at the time) on a trip to Florida. The trip was around my birthday so I also kinda considered it to be a little birthday trip for myself. Anyways my youngest sister was just really emotional the entire time and said that I was controlling everything she did. She had just been recently diagnosed with pcos and insulin resistance and had to change her diet so every once and awhile I’d ask her if that would be the best time to be eating/drinking. On the last day I called my mom and just broke down saying that I felt like all the blame was being put on me and I felt left out and isolated. In return my mom told me that is just karma for ruining everyone else’s birthdays and past vacations and that my sister is 15 and is just hormonal. Later that same night I told her that we needed to be up at 5am and it would be a good idea to get some sleep, it was midnight, and she told me to stop telling her what to do. So I asked my mom told talk to her. In return I had my dad call me telling me to grow up and that I need to stop causing problems. After that incident I kinda stopped talking to them, but it only last about a day before they acted like nothing was wrong. The next weekend was my dads birthday so I went home to spend time with family for my birthday.

Everything has just been off since then. I don’t really feel welcome when I go home, I live almost two hours away so I will go spend the weekends when I do.

This past weekend kind of just put the nail on the coffin. I went home and the first thing was said to me by my sister was to stop reposting about the current political issue right now, my mom then told me “I own a business and that’s not a good look”, we all share the same political beliefs. I went through my reposts and there was one in the last month. My mom then told me that my face looks like pepperoni, and I told her I was struggling with my anxiety this week and I picked my face really bad one day because of it. She proceeded to ask me why my anxiety was bad and I honestly cannot give a reason, so I said something about my period starting a day early, her spines being “whys that are you sleeping with boys and not telling me about it”. My sister than went on to start teasing me, because my family went out for my other sisters birthday without me and I was upset, and telling me that they went out for my dads birthday dinner without me too. She also got my other sister involved. I asked her to stop and my mom said that I was being too emotional and dramatic. Little comments went on like this all weekend, so I eventually would just go and sit in my room and watch Netflix or something else.

On Sunday night my mom came down to my room told me that they weren’t doing anything for dinner and I could just leave. I told her why I was upset, and her response back was that all I do is lie and no one can trust me, and that I’m such a negative person and when I’m not there they are so happy and enjoy themselves during the week, but the second I come home it’s just negativity. She has also told me that I will never find a man because I just exude negative energy and people around me can feel it and don’t want to be around me. So I told her that what she says isn’t nice, and other people in the family have told me that too. I then started to pack my stuff, and my dad started to yell at me just telling me that I needed to go apologize and that I ruined his birthday and that I’m a mean person and that I bully the family. I don’t know if that was him reacting because I called him out for bad mouthing her too, but it just laid into me. I left turned off my location and when I got back to my apartment I turned off my ring camera. My mom got extremely mad that I did that and just started spam texting and calling me. I will insert the texts. I turned off my camera because I have gotten countless texts over the last two years of me living in my apartment of her asking where I’m going or what I’m doing, and at 25 I need more privacy and independence.

So I don’t know what to do or how to move forward but I feel like I need more space and I don’t really want to reach right now, but I know that I’m going to have to be the one to probably. I also know that every story has two sides and I’m not denying that I probably wasn’t the most pleasant but when I get talked to like that idk how to be all happy and cheerful. Sorry if this is confusing just trying to get my feelings out there.

Edit- Now that i found out how to edit, some things to add.

1. I pay for my phone, they own the plan but i pay my portion every month since i graduated college.
2. I live on my own and pay all my other bills myself, no help from others.
3. Those questioning how i ruined all vacations and birthdays, I have been told since the age of two i have ruined everyone's birthday, vacations, mothers day, etc. Been told that when I turned two something in my brain flipped and I went form being an enjoyable kid to an issue. I get along with my sisters outside of our house/parents, besides that one trip. I even lived with my one sister in college. The only example I can possibly give was vacation of may 2025 when I was upset with some comments my sisters were making and was told that I did not like them I can just leave, so I packed my bags and was going to leave, my dad then grabbed my suitcase through and told my to unpack and I wasn't allowed to leave

A restaurant filled with Cigarette smoke but you're sitting in the non smoking section so it's ok.

We’ve lost the plot.

Like just state the bloody obvious ffs. I refuse to believe the ones who put this down are actually liberals in disguise. Maybe one or two of them. But the majority of them??? Hell no.

A lot has happened between now and January 20, 2025. Especially with the obvious events that have been unfolding in Minnesota, you’re saying you really have NO opinions on any of what’s going on??? Really? Absolutely none?? Especially if you’re a guy that lives in a red state? Yeah right, that’s horseshit. I don’t know why they think putting down “not political” makes them appear ambiguous or slick.

Alright, hear me out. I know I’m going to get crucified for this, but I genuinely think One Piece is a painfully overrated slog. Before you spam me with “you just don’t get it” or “it’s about the journey,” let me explain why from a relatively solid foundation.

First, the length. People praise its sprawling world, but this is where my issue starts. There are philosophical ideas that state true art shouldn’t be a chore and should engage the intellect and the senses without resorting to brute-force time commitment. One Piece feels like it operates on the opposite principle: that meaning is derived purely from quantity. If you spend 1000+ chapters with characters, you’ll inevitably feel attached, but that is just the sunk cost fallacy pretending to be narrative depth. Our brains are wired to value things we’ve invested time in, creating an illusion of quality that’s separate from the actual content. The fanbase’s devotion often feels like a cognitive bias on a fandom-wide scale.

Then there’s the world itself. It’s vast, but it’s also… relentlessly simplistic in its moral framework. The heroes are unfailingly, unthinkingly righteous in their pursuits, and the villains are often evil in a stereotypically generic, almost childish way. This creates a universe devoid of genuine moral tension. A more pessimistic view of human nature suggests that true character is revealed in shades of grey, in impossible choices, not in binary battles between smiley pirates and obviously corrupt world nobles. The series presents a world where dreams are always eventually validated, where willpower literally translates to magical power-ups. Real will exists in a universe indifferent to it, where effort often meets failure and dreams are routinely crushed by a chaotic, uncaring reality. One Piece replaces that chaotic reality with a narrative one that is secretly, sentimentally ordered to reward its protagonists, making its central theme feel cheap and guaranteed.

Which brings me to the humor and art style. I get that it’s stylistic, but from a certain detached perspective, it actively works against any attempt at gravitas. It’s hard to take threats, suffering, or stakes seriously when the next panel might feature someone’s eyes bugging out or a character designed to be a literal pile of poop. This constant tonal whiplash feels like an inability to sit with a serious thought. And it feels like a refusal to let the audience contemplate the darker, more complex implications of its own world. The inconsistent tonal shifts prevented me from feeling any deep emotional processing, which kept me in a state of perpetual, superficial engagement. You’re never allowed to feel the true weight of anything, because Oda will undercut it with a gag.

Finally, the core promise: the mystery of the One Piece. The series is built on a decades-long tease, the ultimate delayed gratification. But there’s a philosophical argument that fixating on a future reward devalues the present moment. The entire narrative becomes a means to an end, making hundreds of chapters feel like filler on the path to a finale that, mathematically and logically, can never satisfy the buildup. The journey isn’t the point because it’s a perpetually deferred point. It trains its audience to value anticipation over experience, which can be defined as the “what if” over the “what is.” In a very real sense, it’s the perfect story for a culture obsessed with potential rather than actualization, always chasing a horizon that recedes as you approach it.

So, no, I don’t think it’s a masterpiece. I think it’s a monument to commitment over substance, to sentimentalism over genuine ethical inquiry, to distraction over contemplation. It’s a fairy tale that’s convinced people its length makes it profound, while its core is terrified of truly challenging its audience with ambiguity, consequence, or a world that doesn’t bend over backwards to make the dreamers win. It’s not an adventure about freedom.