TW - SA, CSA, physical abuse, emotional abuse, religious trauma/upbringing
I often remember different things from my life that absolutely disgust me.
One time as a child, I was at a cardiologist appointment (due to my congenital heart disease) and for whatever reason the nurse stayed in the room when I was changing into the provided hospital gown. She kept saying how beautiful my breasts were....
And at some point in elementary school, I was forced by the nurse to take my shirt off during a scoliosis test because I wore a top with a training bra rather than an actual bra. I tried covering up but was told to move my arms. She just didn't care that I was uncomfortable.
I remember being terrified of getting spanked whenever I knew I'd get in trouble with my parents, specifically by my dad's belt. But I don't actually remember a time where it did happen (to me at least). It's likely I was threatened with it a bunch, or maybe even spanked and blocked the memory.
Though I do remember a few years ago that my dad was pissed at my brother for whatever reason, and he had stormed into my brother's room and suddenly started hitting him with a belt. We were all adults by this point....
I vaguely remember my siblings and I being brought to the office in elementary school and being asked if our parents ever hit us. My twin and I had laughed and demonstrated small slaps on our hands, but our older sister told us to stop laughing. Idk when I realized that was probably CPS...
During highschool I found out due to being in an IEP meeting that I have dyscalculia. My case manager was shocked that I hadn't known. Later I asked my parents why they never told, and they just assumed I knew. And yet they - mainly my mom - shamed me for being confused by math concepts and any other difficulty I had from being neurodivergent. I then found out a year later that I have adhd, and no one thought to see if I had known about that the previous year. Also when I was getting evaluated for autism last year, my dad straight up said that in his opinion I wasn't autistic - as if he were a professional in the subject. Turns out I am on the spectrum.
As a teen and just after high school, my older sister would smack my butt and constantly talk about it. I remember calling her a pervert and she just laughed. At one point I had a panic attack over it....it was the final straw that lead to me going to a behavioral health hospital for a week. I couldn't stand to let her to see me undress for years after that, even if I needed help with getting a dress on or something, I'd never go to her because of that.
And through my entire adolescence and current adulthood my family has been obsessed with my breasts being huge. At this point, they've gotten worse. My parents and older sister have been forcing me to get a reduction when I want a radical reduction. At one point I considered top surgery. But they've said how it doesn't make sense and that I wouldn't look normal, and that if I'm not getting this reduction I'm not getting anything and I'll just stay as is....I don't currently have a choice because my dads insurance is paying for the procedure (and he'll have to pay whatever the insurance doesn't).
My being nonbinary doesn't matter to them, they think it's nonsensical and that I'm confused.
Man, even my aunt's bring up my needing a reduction....And according to my older sister everyone in the family is waiting for me to get it.
And then one particular day I had walked into the kitchen and my dad immediately exclaimed "hello big titties". As if that's a normal thing to say to your child - to your perceived daughter.
Just. What the fuck was all of this.....
And ugh, I can't forget that my parents are conservative evangelicals that would probably throw me out if they learned that I'm not necessarily Christian anymore....been debating on the existence of god as a whole. Maybe they exist, but I doubt it's the horrid Christian one....
Most if not all of the way my parents (and older sister) treat me is because they're Christian...
Honestly I just want to get out of here....But I can't go on Medicaid until after I get the reduction, otherwise dad's insurance won't pay for any of it. Once I'm able to, I'm going on Medicaid so I can get through the process of finding affordable housing. Hopefully my twin and I can escape together...

Ive only been seeing her since September of last year but she's awesome. Her practice is fairly small which is why I think she's able to connect with her patients on a more personal level. My mom sees her as well and she literally hugs us whenever she sees us, asks how my grandma and brother who also love in the area are doing, etc... She's just an amazing person.
Anyway ever since my colon cancer diagnosis and the brutal surgery that followed (had my bladder, a large portion of my colon, my prostate, my rectum, and my seminal vesicles all removed and then had my remaining colon resected into an ileostomy along with a urostomy) I've been getting 10mg oxycodone x180 and 40mg oxycontin x90 every month. After she wrote my first script, the next time I came in to see her she was telling me how my insurance had been all up in her shit about it for whatever reasons. The next time she wrote it the pharmacy only had 40 (which is a 13 day supply) of the oxycontin so my Doc told me that after 13 days I can go and pick up the rest of my script. Well I get to the pharmacy and they tell me I need prior authorization for the oxycontin so it'll take a few days, but I'm still able to get my script of 10mg oxycodones so I'm like fuck it whatever.
Basically every month I abuse the fuck out of the oxycodone because I can snort em while and then take the oxycontin as I'm supposed to because from what I've read online the only way to make those abusable just seem way too over the top for my tastes (though I have tried the method where you chop them up into small pieces and dissolve them in coke overnight and that worked pretty alright). Plus I find the oxycontin works better for my pain anyways.
Well I run out of my oxycodone WAAAY quicker than usual (I think because I didn't have the oxycontin as well) and it's been like 2 weeks but my oxycontin still aren't available, and to make things worse it's on a Friday so my Drs office nor the pharmacy I use will be open till Monday, which is when my next appt was anyways. so I patiently wait through the weekend in medium-brutal withdrawal and go to my appt. Her nurse takes me back to take my weight and vitals and whatnot but right before she asks if I have any concerns I want to bring up to my Dr. I tell her about the prior authorization situation and sling some bullshit about how the 10mg oxycodone doesn't work as well as the oxycontin and then lie, saying I still have my 10mg oxys but I've been taking them more frequently and I'm worried about running out. The nurse goes out and tells my Doc real quick and all I hear is my Dr say, "On it."
Before my Dr comes in I hear her in the hallway on the phone with someone and she sounds like really upset, then I just hear her say, "Well the poor guy has fuckin stage 4 colon cancer you don't think that's a good reason? Yeah? Ok then." She hangs up her phone and comes into the room and looks at me shaking her head and just says, "I fucking hate insurance companies chocolate_factory!" I laugh and thank her. The next day I wake up to a text from rite aid saying I have a script release to pick up, thank the opiate lord.
Remember that part somewhere in this long ass post where I said the day my Doc originally wrote the script they only had 40 in stock? Ok so I get to rite aid and they hand me a script for 40 pills. "That's weird," I think to myself, "You'd think that they would have gotten the rest in stock by now." Then I remember my doc had to specifically send in one script for 40 and thrn a second one for the remaining 50. I had a fucking feeling at the time too that there was gonna be some bullshit standing between me and the second half of my script.
I got a text from rite aid on Thursday last week saying that they would fill that script this past Monday but I was going to be running out of pills after saturday. I call my Drs office only to find out they were taking last Thursday up until yesterday off for vacation and memorial day. After a miserable weekend I go to rite aid on Monday and the pharmacist tells me I'm a day early. I show her the text and she has no explanation other than it was apparently an error, she can't fill it till tomorrow. So I leave feeling defeated but still optimistic because it's just one more day.
Except it's not. The next day I go in and the pharmacist (who was SUPER nice every time I went in and she had bad news for me) tells me I need prior authorization AGAIN. And my Drs office is still closed until tomorrow (which was today) so once again I leave feeling defeated. I even let go of any little bit of hope I had at that point and figured I was completely screwed until I see my doc again next week. There had been too many delays and shit for me to have reason to believe anything else anyways.
So today I call my Dr office and of course it's during the half hour they close for lunch and of course it's only 5 minutes into that half hour so I leave a message and just chill. I'd planned on waiting until about an hour after her lunch ended to call her if I hadn't heard from her but she calls me back like almost immediately after her lunch is scheduled to end.
I tell her I need another prior authorization for the other half of my script and she just goes, "Are you fucking kidding me? Jesus." I tell her I wish I was but I had been out of pills all weekend and then she says she'll get right on it but it might still take a couple days, then asks if I had any of the 10mg oxycodone left. By all rights I shouldnt run out of those for another weeks and a half or so but I tell her the truth which is that I'm out. I expected her to question me as to why or how I'm out so early or make a comment about me taking too many or any number of things. The last thing I expected, which is what happened, was for her to be like, "Ok I'll send rite aid your script for the 10mg oxycodone. You can pick that up today to so at least you'll have those for however long it takes for your oxycontin to be ready okay dear?"
I swear to God I might've kissed her if I'd been in the same room as her when she told me that. Literally less than 2 hours after that phone call I'm damn near skipping out of rite aid with my drugs. Had a scare while waiting because the cashier at the pharmacy told me they thought my script was for 5mg oxycodone and they didn't have the 10mg for my script in stock, but the pharmacist herself chimed in and said they had 100 pills not the full 180. I don't care of they only had 8 I'll fuckin take em.
If you read all of that, congratulations! There's usually a $26 copay for my oxycodone but since it was a partial fill I paid nothing today and will pay when I pick up the rest. So I bought a few sodas and then got a $20 sack of meth, hence the wall of text.
Tl;Dr my Dr is a badass little old lady battle axe who fights my insurance company for me and makes sure I have my scripts so I don't run out and get dopesick.

Going to ramble so if this doesn’t make sense, I’m sorry lol I am 32(F) and still struggling to find what kind of opportunities there really are for me. I think I’m struggling with imposture syndrome as well along with just anxiety about getting to the destination in the “right” way to the ultimate career I want to have even though I’m still unsure. To give a bit of a background story, I am a first gen college student and one of my parents growing up worked but limited education. They have been at the same company for over 30 years now. Which affected my view of jobs and the need to be tied down to one thing in order to feel secure (working through that in therapy lol) I graduated with an Associates of Arts, B.A Psychology with a minor in Marketing and currently just started working on a M.A Behavioral Economics. I have worked with the Autism/ABA community for about 6 years now as a behavioral technician. This is where I fell in love with behavior. Working collaboratively with SLPS, OTs, and BCBAs to provide the best therapy for the clients. I love the overall process of seeing a client grow and knowing I’m part of their progress. I loved working with clients from ages 18m-4yr as they kept me on my toes and everyday was different (I have adhd, so novelty is a top priority) I started to get my masters in ABA as I thought this was the route to naturally take but dropped out my second class realizing I was just merely going with the waves with colleagues rather than pursuing my overall individual interests. What I really loved was consumer behavior and the urge to understand it more, hence the M.A.
I’ve been off of work for a couple of months due to a work injury/recovering from surgery and in this time frame is when I started my Masters.
I don’t know if these low self esteem thoughts are due to being out of work for a while or just simply thoughts that are finally catching up.
I really enjoy what im learning so far in my Master’s program but really struggling to find what I could really do with it. I feel like I just don’t have enough information about potential careers to feel secure enough about my place in my career life.
It took me a while to finish my undergrad but I enjoyed my 20s to the fullest, moved, took many trips, experienced my favorite things in life and ultimately feel fulfilled with my character development.
I also just moved back in with my parents to start to tackle my large undergrad, credit card and car debt but since the injury I haven’t even started paying it off. So far my plan is go back to the ABA field very soon, try to see if I can work 30 hours (to continue to have health insurance), throw money into the fire of debt for a year straight, continue to go to school, then when the year is up and I’m half way through my program, go find an internship somewhere where I can utilize my M.A. BE degree to gain experience in that field.
I’ve never had an internship before as I found ABA before I finished undergrad and just stayed in the field for this long.
The problem is that I’m unlimitedly drained from the ABA (Autism) field and don’t know if I should stay in it to follow through with this plan or just go with something else??
Do you have an advice on entry level jobs/internships I could possibly start to align with behavioral economics?
At my age (32) would they still take me as an intern?
How should I balance graduate school and a full time job?
General career advice is welcome too!

I mean aatreus as a human and not god ,killed him. For example if Aatrox was meeting a champion like Draven (who throws axes from distance) or Irelia or Caitlyn, would they be able to kill him? Or he can take more that just a normal person would?

This isn’t even me being salty but I’m 2100 atm almost 2200. And essentially every time I queue a 2300 to 2400 with the exception of bow and blasters players for the most part they all just spend 2 jumps and a dodge before deciding to do anything. I hope it is just the bell curve where 2300-2400 is floaty central and above that people play more grounded cuz holy crap it is bad. It feels like 90% of the things ur taught/ told to do like dash jump or fast fall or whatever is a lot less useful than u would think it is. And the most important part of the game is just having patience to not throw the first move. The nice thing about 2400s tho is that the playstyle of whiff sig that leaves u in the air (think sentinel katars nsig) then dodge cuz it’s unpunishable on purpose kinda dies out for the most part.
List of things I notice the 5 2400s I queued do:
Always recover to stage high like super high. The wall is lava.
Use recovery in an unpunishable way in neutral then start floating (spea axe/ gs especially)
Jump dodge backwards in neutral or jump jump dodge backwards in neutral.
Walk away from u. Turn around whiff punish if u commit to something.

Okay, so a bit of context. I'm a full-time shift supervisor RX. Been training and busting my rear to get my cross-training done. Finally have my OJT scheduled soon. Well, my store manager has been cutting my hours by 50% every week. Meaning I only work two days a week, which is an issue since I NEED my benefits that I've been working for. So, the solution I came up with was to work two days in pharmacy and two days up front, since I've only been getting scheduled two days a week. That way I can keep my insurance, which is something I desperately need. I consulted with our pharmacy manager, the person who makes the schedule for pharmacy, AND the DM for pharmacy--all in person--and they're all perfectly fine with it. I've even consulted with my ops manager, who even suggested to get it lined up and have everything ready by the time I talk to my store manager. But, when I spoke with her, I gave her EIGHTEEN days notice about my availability for front store changing so I can keep my full-time status, but she had a problem with it, saying that she needs me in the front store more, even though she's only scheduling me 2 days a week already. I just so happen to be choosing the days. Keep in mind, she had asked me about my plans with pharmacy early in the year whilst we were doing employee surveys, and I told her that I plan on splitting my hours, which she said was fine at the time. However, when I brought this up to her as well as the fact that I'm already working two days a week AND that I've already spoken to the pharmacy DM, she said that it didn't matter and still needed to go through her. I reminded her that I was still full-time and needed the hours, but I got the same response from her. Then she proceeded to ask me why I was unavailable on weekends, even though my other coworker doesn't work weekends and does only opening shifts (I do closing shifts)--but that's a different rant for another time. As for the reasoning, I simply told her that it was personal reasons that I didn't want to talk about. I've been having SO many more issues with this manager, that I've never had with the previous manager, but this is the main issue as of right now. It seems like she shows favoritism and I'm definitely NOT a favorite, for legal reasons, I won't explain this any further. But she's really messing with my hours, disrespecting my availability, and basically threatening my benefits just because I cannot work weekends. Side note: my availability is closing (we close at midnight) Mondays-Fridays. We literally have plenty of employees that are more than happy to work weekends, but only two of us that literally cannot work weekends (me, and another employee). I do understand that my availability can be an issue, but that's why I was going to split my hours between front store and pharmacy.
Keep in mind, I need ACTUAL assistance and advice as this job is the best option I have currently due to travel reasons. And I actually LIKE the job, just been dealing with a toxic manager who makes my life hell for literally no reason (I have my theories, but I'm not gonna throw around accusations without solid evidence). So if you're a typical corporate suck-up whose only advice is "Just quit if you hate the job! MEH!", just move right along. Please and thank-you.

TLDR: My period hasn't gone away in 5 months and I'm scared there could be something else wrong besides PCOS and I'm a poor college student who doesn't have insurance. Does anyone have any advice?
Hi, I'm using this throw away account I made a few months ago for a different issue because I have some friends that follow me on my main account.
Anyways, I (23) female got diagnosed with PCOS back in high-school when my mom was concerned I wasn't getting my period, had facial hair, and couldn't seem to loose weight. Normally those are my 3 biggest issues, but in December my period started (after not getting it for about a year) for background info when I do get my periods they are pretty heavy and last on the longer end of the period spectrum. This time however was different, it was so heavy I'd bleed through overnight pads in a few hours and the pain was miserable it was so bad I missed a few days of work and spent my birthday in bed. Finally it seemed to slow down and stop and I was free from the pain for about 2 days when it started up again. This is when things got weird, ever since then my period has just stayed going, sometimes I'll have a day or so reprieve but it always come back.
It doesn't really seem like a normal period because it's not a continuous flow? It stops and goes. On days I'm bleeding I could go hours between incidents but when they hit blood just rushes out like a tidal wave. (For example, I had just taken a shower put on some new clothes and since I hadn't been bleeding for about a day so I didn't think I needed a pad. Well like an hour later I felt it start and it happed so fast that by the time the wave of cramps that almost sent me to my knees was done I was bleeding through my shorts so bad I had blood running down my legs.) I can't seem to figure out any triggers for what's causing this. The only thing I have noticed is that any kind of sexual activity makes it so much worse. It will even start the bleeding if I wasn't bleeding beforehand. I can't be intimate with my fiance without like 2 towels down on the bed and everytime he ends up covered in blood and I end up in extreme pain. Even if we did other things including activities that don't involve penetration.
This has been going since December and honesty I feel like crap, I'm constantly in pain, constantly buying pads, I've had to start taking iron pills, and I'm constantly tired.
I'm trying to figure out what's going on, at first I thought this was PCOS related but now.... I'm not too sure. I'm worried something else is wrong. I don't have insurance because I work a part time job while I'm in school. Has anyone ever had this happen to them? Is it even PCOS that's causing it??

TLDR: My period hasn't gone away in 5 months and I'm scared there could be something else wrong besides PCOS and I'm a poor college student who doesn't have insurance. Does anyone have any advice?
Hi, I'm using this throw away account I made a few months ago for a different issue because I have some friends that follow me on my main account.
Anyways, I (23) female got diagnosed with PCOS back in high-school when my mom was concerned I wasn't getting my period, had facial hair, and couldn't seem to loose weight. Normally those are my 3 biggest issues, but in December my period started (after not getting it for about a year) for background info when I do get my periods they are pretty heavy and last on the longer end of the period spectrum. This time however was different, it was so heavy I'd bleed through overnight pads in a few hours and the pain was miserable it was so bad I missed a few days of work and spent my birthday in bed. Finally it seemed to slow down and stop and I was free from the pain for about 2 days when it started up again. This is when things got weird, ever since then my period has just stayed going, sometimes I'll have a day or so reprieve but it always come back.
It doesn't really seem like a normal period because it's not a continuous flow? It stops and goes. On days I'm bleeding I could go hours between incidents but when they hit blood just rushes out like a tidal wave. (For example, I had just taken a shower put on some new clothes and since I hadn't been bleeding for about a day so I didn't think I needed a pad. Well like an hour later I felt it start and it happed so fast that by the time the wave of cramps that almost sent me to my knees was done I was bleeding through my shorts so bad I had blood running down my legs.) I can't seem to figure out any triggers for what's causing this. The only thing I have noticed is that any kind of sexual activity makes it so much worse. It will even start the bleeding if I wasn't bleeding beforehand. I can't be intimate with my fiance without like 2 towels down on the bed and everytime he ends up covered in blood and I end up in extreme pain. Even if we did other things including activities that don't involve penetration.
This has been going since December and honesty I feel like crap, I'm constantly in pain, constantly buying pads, I've had to start taking iron pills, and I'm constantly tired.
I'm trying to figure out what's going on, at first I thought this was PCOS related but now.... I'm not too sure. I'm worried something else is wrong. I don't have insurance because I work a part time job while I'm in school. Has anyone ever had this happen to them? Is it even PCOS that's causing it??

Respect Juggernaut

This won’t hurt me! Nothing can!
♫Theme
Cain Marko was the son of nuclear scientist Kurt Marko, who worked in Alamogordo, New Mexico with Brian Xavier. After Brian died in a lab accident, Kurt married Brian’s widow Sharon for her family’s money, resulting in Cain becoming the stepbrother of the Xavier’s son Charles, the eventual founder of the X-Men. Kurt proved to be an abusive father to both Cain and Charles, which combined with Cain’s jealousy over his brother’s telepathy, fostered a lasting resentment between the two of them. After Kurt died saving them from another lab accident, Charles and Cain would end up serving with the army together in Korea. During their service, Cain would stumble across a cave that had a temple dedicated to the powerful mystic being known as Cyttorak. Touching a crimson gem at the heart of the temple, Cain was transformed into Cyttorak’s avatar on Earth, an unstoppable human Juggernaut. Shortly after, the cave collapsed, with Xavier barely managing to escape. Years later Cain would dig his way out and seek revenge on Charles for the perceived slights he had inflicted upon him. In doing so, Cain would come into conflict with the X-Men, Hulk, Spider-Man, Thor, Doctor Strange, and many other superheroes before eventually burying the hatchet with his brother. However, despite joining the X-Men and later Thunderbolts, Cain would return to being a villain each time. Throughout his life and various goals and motivations, only one constant has remained for Cain Marko. No matter the obstacle, he will never stop.
This respect thread is abridged due to Juggernaut’s large number of appearances. A full version is available on the Juggernaut Mega Respect Thread, with links to the unabridged sections posted where appropriate.

Key and explanation of periods where Juggernaut was stronger or weaker than normal

• [50%] Briefly lost half of his power after Black Tom absorbed it
• [X] Was made weaker by Cyttorak after deciding not to do his bidding anymore
• [T] Was made weaker by Cyttorak after he was angered by Juggernaut temporarily becoming Captain Universe
• [Kuurth] Became possessed by one of the Serpent's Asgardian Worthy named Kuurth after picking up his hammer
• [Once and Future] Had his power completely removed by Cyttorak but regained it after taking the place of an alternate universe Cain Marko, though it began to fade
• [Unstoppable] Was given more power by Cyttorak than he had given anyone else

Strength

Unabridged Force Field and Advancing Sections

Force Field

• Needs his helmet to use his force field - Uncanny X-Men #32
• Transforms a metal gauntlet into a new helmet - Amazing Spider-Man #628
• Can summon his helmet and armor out of thin air - Venom: The Madness #1
• Pushes Professor X's wheelchair back with a wave of force - Uncanny X-Men #13
• Stops a 10 ton rolling steel barrel with a current of energy and rolls it back through a wall and into Beast hard enough to knock him out - Uncanny X-Men #13
• Shoots globules of sheer energy, with a single one powerful enough to break a tree in half - Uncanny X-Men #46

Advancing

• Exerts enough pressure to buckle and shatter a metal wall that had 50 times the tensile strength of battleship steel - Uncanny X-Men #12
• [Limits] Loses his footing after some stairs he was climbing are turned to ice by Iceman - Uncanny X-Men #13
• Shatters a concrete power station by running through it - Amazing Adventures #16
• His powers let him swim in water even though he should be heavy enough to sink - Amazing Adventures #16
• [Limits] Sinks in water after Colossus knocks him into it unexpectedly - Spider-Woman (1978) #38
• Knocks Hulk over a hill and shatters it with a single charge - Hulk #172
• Walks through a building while Spider-Man was trying to pull him back - Amazing Spider-Man #229
• [Limits] Sinks to bottom of a 40 foot foundation of wet cement - Amazing Spider-Man #230
• Walks through miles of bedrock and fractures the tectonic plates under Manhattan, which results in a catastrophic earthquake months later - Amazing Spider-Man #629, 628-629
• Holds onto Thor's hammer as it’s returning to him and tackles him through five boxcars and into a building hard enough to shatter part of it and knock him out - Thor #411
• Knocks down a uh... certain skyscraper by charging into it - Spider-Man (1990) #16
• Literally walks over Thunderstrike when he tries to push him back - Thunderstrike (1993) #2
• Makes footprints in concrete - Professor Xavier and the X-Men (1995) #13
• Charges into War Hulk and pushes him through hundreds of meters of rock, though Hulk is eventually able to stop his advance - Hulk #457
  • War Hulk was strong enough to lift and throw one of the pyramids of Giza - Hulk #456
• Rams his fellow Exemplar Stonecutter through a stone staircase - Juggernaut (1999) #1
• [X] Him and Sasquatch collide into each other hard enough to create a large crater in the ground, with Juggernaut being the first to recover - Uncanny X-Men #422
• [X] Climbs through a pile of wreckage and causes the ground the shake and knock cars into the air - New Excalibur (2006) #6-7
• Fights evenly with World War Hulk and pushes him back, undermining the foundation of the X-Mansion, though Hulk is able to knock him away by sidestepping him and adding to his momentum - World War Hulk: X-Men 3
  • World War Hulk was strong enough to prevent the crust of a planet from splitting by shifting tectonic plates - Hulk (2000) #102
• [T] A Raft scientist says he has endless kinetic energy and is unstoppable once he begins charging - Thunderbolts #144
• [T] Charges downwards through 1.3 kilometers of bedrock - Thunderbolts #149
• [Kuurth] The X-Men try at least 42 plans to stop him from walking towards San Francisco that all prove ineffective, including:
  • Face shooting him with a unique energy annihilation beam
  • Teleporting him to the bottom of the sea and the heart of the sun
  • Siryn combining her sound energy with Dazzler's sound-to-light powers to generate an extreme intensity laser
  • Gambit and Rockslide combining their explosion powers to create a detonation that nearly exhausted Cecilia Reyes from the effort of protecting civilians with her force shield
  • Magneto throwing an aircraft carrier into him - Uncanny X-Men #542
• Charges through a force wall government scientists couldn't find a way to penetrate - Dark Avengers #181-182
• D-Cel, a mutant that can slow down kinetic motion to the point objects stop falling, can't stop Juggernaut from advancing towards her - Juggernaut (2020) #1

Unabridged Striking and Lifting Sections

Striking

• Creates an earthquake across a valley that causes a cliff to collapse by slamming the ground - Uncanny X-Men #33
• Stuns Hulk with his blows - Hulk #172
• Backhands a 3 ton steel ball thrown at him by Spider-Man through a building, causing its side to collapse - Amazing Spider-Man #230
• Incapacitates the Thing in three hits - Secret Wars II #7
• Backhands Rogue across Edinburgh and through a stone wall - Uncanny X-Men #218
• Punches Captain Britain through hundreds of meters of ground and incapacitates him with two more strikes - Excalibur (1988) #3
• Knocks out Professor Hulk after a prolonged fight while not wearing his armor or helmet - Hulk #402
  • Professor Hulk was strong enough to punch through doors capable of withstanding a nuclear blast - Hulk #410
• Levels a building with a punch - Deadpool: The Circle Chase #2
• Splinters apart the God Machine and the glacier it was on top of in an exchange of blows with Stonecutter and overpowers him - Juggernaut (1999) #1
• [X] Punches Rhino into a concrete wall hard enough to shatter it - Uncanny X-Men #435
• [X] Causes World War Hulk spit blood with a punch - World War Hulk: X-Men #2
• Punches a force field hard enough to create earthquakes registered at magnitude 4.6 and 8.0 - Hulk #602
• [Kuurth] Destroys more than half of the Raft island prison with a strike - Fear Itself #2, Thunderbolts #158
• [Kuurth] Punches Moonstone miles away - Thunderbolts #160-161
• [Kuurth] Strikes the ground hard enough to create a massive crater and a tremor registered at magnitude 0.6 - Thunderbolts #160-161
• [Kuurth] Levels Salem Missouri with a strike - Fear Itself: The Home Front #3, Fear Itself: Youth In Revolt #3
• [Once and Future] Makes Colossus spit blood with his punches and overpowers him - Amazing X-Men (2014) #17
• [Unstoppable] Slams the ground hard enough to create a massive crater - Amazing X-Men (2014) #19
• Knocks out Immortal Hulk after a prolonged fight with the help of D-Cel and a gamma radiation siphon - Juggernaut (2020) #1
• Shatters a metal vault door - Juggernaut (2020) #4

Lifting, pushing, pulling, throwing, grip, etc.

• Snaps a steel cable as if it were paper - Uncanny X-Men #12
• Sweeps the O5 X-Men aside - Uncanny X-Men #12
• Pulls Hulk's head from behind and starts to break his neck, though he overpowers him due to getting angry - Hulk #172
• Tears apart a solid concrete wall reinforced with steel - Spider-Woman (1978) #37
• Rips off and lifts the corner of a building - Amazing Spider-Man #230
• Lifts a tank by its turret and swings it onto another tank hard enough to wreck both of them - Marvel Team-Up #150
• [50%] Black Tom with half of his power suplexes a building - Marvel Team-Up #150
• Throws the Crimson Gem of Cyttorak into orbit - Marvel Team-Up #150
• Throws a boxcar into a weakened Thor hard enough to hurt him before lifting another one and ramming it into him - Thor #411
• Sends a pile of debris created from two boxcars getting thrown into him flying with a shrug - Thor #412
• Shatters a steel cocoon encasing him - Thor #412
• Sends tanks flying with a swipe of his arm - The All New Exiles (1995) #1
• Holds up a collapsing building - The All New Exiles (1995) #3
• Rips up a massive chunk of the street and throws it into a SWAT van hard enough to crumple it - Spider-Man (1990) #84
• Throws a truck through a building while weakened - Uncanny X-Men #361
• Rips off and swings the corner of a building while weakened - Uncanny X-Men #361
• Starts crushing Thor with a bear hug - Thor (1998) #17
• [X] Pushes a tank onto its back - X-Men (1991) #160
• [X] Flexes out of ice that was covering him - New Excalibur (2006) #2-3
• [X] Holds onto a metal beam with his fingers while being dragged underground until it snaps in half - New Excalibur (2006) #7
• [T] Pins down Luke Cage - Thunderbolts #150
• [Kuurth] Magneto can't stop his hammer after he throws it despite it being made of metal - Uncanny X-Men #541
• Rips off an icicle the size of a person and throws it through a Frost Giant - Punisher Kill Krew #3
• Swings an Asgardian dragon by the tail and into the ground hard enough to crater it - Savage Avengers (2019) #14

Unabridged Durability Section

Durability w/ Force Field/Armor

Blunt

• Only slowed down slightly by a continuous optic blast from Cyclops and a punch and kick from Angel - Uncanny X-Men #13
• [Limits] Angel is able to rip off his helmet after Beast loosens it - Uncanny X-Men #13
• Fine after Hulk strikes him in the back and tears up the rock under him - Hulk #172
• Fine after Colossus kicks him into a stone wall hard enough to make it collapse on them and knock Colossus out - Uncanny X-Men #102
• Started welding his helmet on with a laser torch, making it hard for Spider-Man to pull it off - Amazing Spider-Man #230
• [50%] Fine after Spider-Man yanks out a manhole cover he was standing on while he was stretching his webbing, so that it slingshots him into Black Tom hard enough to make a building collapse - Marvel Team-Up #150
• Started bolting on his helmet, making it hard for Colossus to rip it off - Marvel Team-Up #150
• Unharmed after getting struck with 1.37 kilotons of steel by Nimrod - Uncanny X-Men #194
• No-sells a punch from Rogue that shattered every window on a street - Uncanny X-Men #218
• His force field kills all of the momentum of Thor's hammer after he threw it at him - Thor #411
• Unharmed from Nova and Namorita throwing two boxcars into him - Thor #412
• No-sells a full force hammer strike from Thor - Thor #429
• Hurt but mostly unharmed after getting punched by Post-Crisis Superman - DC Versus Marvel #1
• Knocked out but quickly recovers after getting hurled from Canada to Hoboken by Onslaught - Uncanny X-Men #322
• Fine after War Hulk throws him from Giza to Cairo - Hulk #457
• Fine after getting punched through a concrete wall by War Hulk, though he's able to remove his helmet before he can get up - Hulk #457
• No-sells Spider-Man punching him with everything he had - Spider-Man (1990) #84
• Unharmed by a rain of blows from Thor that shatter the street around them - Thor (1998) #17
• Unharmed by a optic blast from Cyclops that he says had enough force to rip a small planet in half - Cyclops (2001) #1
• Fine after getting punched from Earth to Mars by Skaar - Hulk #602
• [T] Still able to fight after taking several attacks from Thor, Luke Cage, and Iron Man that make a large crater and shatter a cliff - Thunderbolts #150
• [Kuurth] Unharmed after Hope Summers with the powers of the X-Men flies into him hard enough to shatter a highway - Uncanny X-Men #541
• A non-Mjolnir Uru hammer shatters when Thor hits him with it - Thor (2018) #1
• [Limits] Thor makes him spit teeth by hitting him with a bigger Uru hammer, though Thor broke it and dozens more to knock him out - Thor (2018) #1
• Fine after getting punched into the sewers through part of a building and the street by Venom - Venom (2018) Annual #1
• Fine after getting punched through six stories of a building by Quicksand - Juggernaut (2020) #3
• His force field stops Swarm's bees from touching him - X-Men Unlimited Infinity Comic #19

Piercing/Cutting

• No-sells a bazooka shell - Uncanny X-Men #33
• A spinning helicopter blade breaks upon hitting him - Uncanny X-Men #33
• Isn't cut by Wolverine's claws - Uncanny X-Men #102
• No-sells a concentrated barrage from assault rifles and rocket launchers that would reduce a house to splinters - Amazing Spider-Man #229
• No-sells a point blank tank round - Marvel Team-Up #150
• [Limits] Shatterstar's swords that were forged in a dimension of magic and science are able to cut through his flesh and helmet - Spider-Man (1990) #16, X-Force (1991) #4
• No-sells several tank rounds - The All New Exiles (1995) #1
• [X] No-sells assault rifle rounds - X-Men (1991) #160
• [X] Sabretooth's claws gouge but don't cut through his helmet - X-Men (1991) #162
• [X] No-sells bullets while a knife shatters upon hitting him - New Excalibur (2006) #14
• [X] Still able to fight after getting slashed across the chest and back with a sword by another Juggernaut, and catches the sword in his hand - New Excalibur (2006) #15
• [X] Fine after getting blasted through a concrete wall by some firearm - New Excalibur (2006) #16
• Unharmed from Skaar hitting him with his sword - Hulk #602
• Survives but is knocked out after getting hit by a giant Asgardian rocket launcher - Punisher Kill Krew #4

Sound

• Unharmed by a sonic scream from Banshee that shatters the stone floor under him - Uncanny X-Men #103
• Unharmed by a sonic scream from Siryn - X-Force (1991) #3
• Fine after getting hit by a sonic scream from Siryn that causes a building to collapse - Deadpool (1994) #3-4

Heat

• Unharmed by jets of chemical flame - Uncanny X-Men #13
• The Human Torch’s flames can't penetrate his force field - Uncanny X-Men #13
• Unharmed from a speeding tanker truck crashing into him and exploding - Amazing Spider-Man #230
• No-sells a microwave blast from Firestar that caused his armor to glow white hot - Thor #412
• Unharmed by Firestar melting a pile of steel girders surrounding him - Thor #412
• Unharmed from a vat of molten metal being poured on him - Deadpool (1994) #2
• Hurt but mostly unharmed after falling into molten steel while weakened - Juggernaut (1997) #1
• Rocked but doesn't fall after Inferno blasts him with enough sheer energy to vaporize countless tons of titanium steel in a split second - Avengers (1998) #24
• [X] Was supposedly fatally burned but still able to move briefly after taking the brunt of a flammable liquid explosion that destroyed part of a building - Uncanny X-Men #420
• [Kuurth] Unaffected by Adam-X igniting his blood - Uncanny X-Men #542
• Unharmed by Pyro's flames - Uncanny X-Men (2019) #16

Cold

• Unharmed after falling into a frozen lake - Cyclops (2001) #1
• [X] Fine after getting knocked through a stone wall by a stream of ice from Iceman - Uncanny X-Men #411
• [Kuurth] His helmet is only slightly cracked after Iceman lowers its temperature to absolute zero and Colossus punches it - Uncanny X-Men #541

Electricity

• Unharmed by a 20,000 volt electric fence - Amazing Adventures #16
• No-sells a lightning bolt from Storm - Uncanny X-Men #102
• No-sells a full strength venom blast from Spider-Woman - Spider-Woman (1978) #37
• Hurt but mostly fine after Storm and Spider-Woman blast him with enough electricity to cause a ship to explode - Spider-Woman (1978) #38, Amazing Spider-Man #229
• Unharmed from a million volts arcing over him - Amazing Spider-Man #229
• No-sells Thor calling down a lightning bolt on him - Thor #412
• Still conscious after Bishop channels enough volts of electricity to maintain the city of Hoboken through him while weakened - Uncanny X-Men #322
• Unharmed by electrical blasts from the Max Dillon and Francine Frye Electros - Sinister War #4

Light

• Recovers in minutes from a strobe effect created by Dazzler that she thought would stun him for an hour - Uncanny X-Men #217
• No-sells a photon blast from Dazzler that used all her power and that she says would've punched a hole through a mountain - Uncanny X-Men #217-218

Energy

• Fine after Nimrod knocks him through a concrete wall and into a construction site hard enough to make a crater with an energy blast - Uncanny X-Men #194
• A God-Blast from Thor that crumbles the concrete foundation he was standing on only pushes him back - Thor #412
• Tanks an energy blast from Frankie Raye Nova while weakened - Doctor Strange (1988) #44
• Unharmed after getting hit by an energy blast from Stellaris that created a massive hole in the road - Thunderstrike (1993) #2
• Walks through a continuous bio-energy blast from Chamber, though he's a hurt a little - Generation X (1994) #61
• No-sells an energy blast from Black Tom - Generation X (1994) #61
  • Black Tom's energy blasts can wreck a tank - Spider-Woman (1978) #38
• [X] Survives getting hit by a plasma blast from Havok that created a trench in the ground - X-Men (1991) #162-163
• [Kuurth] Unharmed after Hardball blasts him with a sphere of energy that destroys part of Las Vegas and helps cause an earthquake that collapses skyscrapers - Fear Itself: Youth In Revolt #3-5
• Tanks a blast of the power cosmic from Cosmic Ghost Rider - Wolverine: Black, White & Blood #3

Chemical

• Unharmed by Night Thrasher's acid bombs - Thor #412

Adhesive

• His force field prevents Spider-Man's webbing from sticking to him - Amazing Spider-Man #229, Marvel Team-Up #150

Biological

• Still able to fight after his fellow Exemplar Conquest hits his pressure points - Juggernaut (1999) #1
• [T] Resists being mutated by the Terrigen Mists - Thunderbolts #146
• [Kuurth] Burns out nanites in his body designed to knock him out - Thunderbolts #145, 160
• [Kuurth] Starts dissolving Mercury after she fills his lungs with his internal fauna and antibodies - Uncanny X-Men #542
• Survives but is knocked out by a plant manipulator growing valerian inside of his body - X-Men Unlimited Infinity Comic #17

Matter Manipulation

• Nimrod's disintegrator beam affects a steel I-beam he was holding but not him - Uncanny X-Men #194

Phasing

• Hurt but still able to fight after Vision briefly phases his hand into his head before increasing his density - Hulk #403
• Unharmed by Viv Vision phasing into him and becoming tangible - Deadpool (2018) #2

Magic

• [Limits] Thor is able to create a cone that negates all mystical energy and removes Juggernaut's force field by making his hammer spin around them - Thor #429
• Unharmed after hurling Stonecutter into the core of God Machine, causing it to explode and release enough mystical energy to destroy a glacier - Juggernaut (1999) #1, Avengers (1998) #24
• [T] Still able to fight after getting hit by cannon shot that had poltergeists smelted into it that emerge out of his shoulder - Thunderbolts #156-157
• Unharmed by the Scarlet Witch's hexes - Uncanny Avengers (2015) #29

Soul/Life Force

• Only has a headache after D'Spayre consumes enough of his soul/life essence to give most mortals a coronary rupture - Juggernaut (1997) #1
• [T] Quickly recovers after running through a human mutated by the Terrigen Mists that could drain life force with a touch - Thunderbolts #146-147
• [Kuurth] Casts out Ghost and Satana after the former combines his intangibility with the latter's magic to try and free his soul from Kuurth/the Serpent's control - Thunderbolts #160

Power Absorption/Nullification

• Rogue can only absorb a portion of his power - Uncanny X-Men #218
• [Kuurth] Rogue trying to absorb his powers incapacitates her - Uncanny X-Men #542
• Cut off his link to Cyttorak while keeping his powers by using the Crimson Bands of Cyttorak to make a new armor - Juggernaut (2020) #3-4
• A power dampener doesn't work on him - X-Men Unlimited Infinity Comic #14, 18
• The Human-Adaptoid can't use the Absorbing Man's powers to absorb Juggernaut's powers - X-Men Unlimited Infinity Comic #17

Mental

• His helmet protects him from any mental attack - Uncanny X-Men #13
• Unaffected by Professor X's telepathy - Uncanny X-Men #12
• Unaffected by Rachel Summers telepathy - Marvel Team-Up #150
• Eventually made a smaller helmet from scraps of the original that also protects him from mental attack, which he wears underneath it - Marvel Team-Up #150
• Resists Dazzler using light to hypnotize him - Uncanny X-Men #217
• Psylocke manages to hurt him through his helmet with a psycho blast, though it only stuns him for a moment - Uncanny X-Men #218
• Fine after getting stabbed with Psylocke's psychic knife while weakened - Uncanny X-Men #322
• Resists his fellow Exemplar Bedlam's telepathy - Juggernaut (1999) #1
• Captain Universe can't read his mind - Amazing Spider-Man #629

Durability w/o Force Field/Armor

Blunt

• Fine after Hulk swings him around hard enough to rip off his helmet and send him flying into a cliff - Hulk #172
• Fine after getting tackled from behind and through a wall by Colossus - Uncanny X-Men #183
• Unharmed from a building collapsing on him - Uncanny X-Men #183
• Fine after Rogue absorbs some of his power and throws and flies into him hard enough to create a massive crater in a rail line - Uncanny X-Men #218
• Still able to fight after getting pummeled for nearly a minute by Thor - Thor #429
• [X] Fine after getting tackled through a house by Sasquatch - Uncanny X-Men #432-433
• [X] Unharmed from a double-decker bus crashing into him hard enough to total itself - New Excalibur (2006) #3
• [X] A continuous optic blast from Earth 6141 Cyclops doesn't even slow him down - New Excalibur (2006) #3
• Survives getting thrown to Earth from orbit by Captain Universe - Amazing Spider-Man #629, 627
• [T] King Hyperion hurts his hand punching Juggernaut in the head repeatedly - Thunderbolts #153
• [Kuurth] Tanks getting tackled through the deck of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge by Colossusnaut - Uncanny X-Men #543
• [Kuurth] Still able to fight after getting pummeled by Colossusnaut hard enough to collapse a building - Uncanny X-Men #543

Piercing/Cutting

• No-sells a tank round - Excalibur (1988) #3
• [X] Unharmed by minigun rounds - Uncanny X-Men #433
• [X] Still able to fight after getting stabbed in the abdomen by Rhino's horn - Uncanny X-Men #435

Sound

• [Limits] Incapacitated by tight beam ultra high frequency sonics from Nimrod - Uncanny X-Men #194
• [T] Still able to stand after Iron Man blasts him with enough localized sound to put down a whole regiment - Thunderbolts #150

Cold

• Unharmed from getting encased in ice by Iceman - Uncanny X-Men #33
• [X] Unharmed from getting covered in ice by Earth 6141 Iceman - New Excalibur (2006) #2-3
• [Once and Future] Tanks getting launched into the air by a stream of ice from Iceman - Amazing X-Men (2014) #17

Heat

• [T] Hurt but mostly fine after getting hit by King Hyperion’s atomic vision - Thunderbolts #153

Gravity

• [X] Survives getting sucked in by Xorn's black hole along with the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants and ending up in the Mojoverse, though they survived as well - X-Men (1991) #164, Uncanny X-Men #460

Light

• [X] Unharmed after getting launched far into the distance by a photon blast from Dazzler

Energy

• No-sells a continuous energy blast from Nimrod right after he used one to create a large hole in a concrete wall - Uncanny X-Men #194
• [X] Fine after getting knocked through a thick stone wall by an energy blast from the Shadow King - New Excalibur (2006) #3
• Unharmed after getting knocked through a concrete wall and from Upper Manhattan to the New Jersey Palisades by an energy blast from Captain Universe - Amazing Spider-Man #627-628

Chemical

• [X] Unharmed by Mammomax's stomach acid - X-Men (1991) #164

Biological

• [X] Possibly unaffected by Polaris trying to reverse his blood flow with magnetism to knock him out - Uncanny X-Men #426

Mental

• Manages to keep moving out of hatred after Professor X attacks him telepathically, though he's knocked out with a second attack - Uncanny X-Men #13
• [Kuurth] Emma Frost is incapacitated from trying to affect his mind - Uncanny X-Men #541-542
• [Unstoppable] Rachel Summers can't read his mind - Amazing X-Men (2014) #19

Unabridged Endurance, Speed, Skill, and Temporary Powers Sections

Endurance and Regeneration

• Barely slowed down by enough sleeping gas to stop a herd of elephants and a gas that causes loss of balance - Uncanny X-Men #12
• Doesn't get tired - Amazing Adventures #16
• Starts to age rapidly due to strange forces in a dimension Eternity cast him into, but is able to remain young as long as he feels hate - Doctor Strange #182, Amazing Adventures #16, Hulk #172
• Doesn't need air, food, or water - Amazing Spider-Man #230, 629
• Quickly regenerates after getting stabbed in the eye and cut several times by Shatterstar's swords - Spider-Man (1990) #16, X-Force (1991) #4
• Still able to move after D'Spayre absorbs most of his power and uses it to reduce him to a skeleton, and quickly regenerates after getting it restored - Juggernaut (1997) #1
• [X] Seems like he needed air after being weakened - Uncanny X-Men #412
• [X] Later walked from somewhere in the Yellow Sea to South Korea however - New Excalibur (2006) #13-14
• [T] Needs air - Thunderbolts #145
• [T] Still able to fight after King Hyperion breaks his knee - Thunderbolts #153

Speed

• Grabs Angel and shoves him into the path of Cyclops optic blast before he can redirect it - Uncanny X-Men #13
• Nearly as fast as Beast and ducks under a tree swung by him - Amazing Adventures #16
• Catches a girder slingshot at him by Spider-Man - Amazing Spider-Man #230
• Slaps Speedball out of the air - Thor #412
  • Speedball was fast enough to dodge gunmen at point blank range - Speedball #1
• Tags Spider-Man with a backhand after tearing off some webbing he sprayed in his eyes - X-Force (1991) #4
• Smashes through a wall to catch two people falling - The All New Exiles (1995) #2
• Fights evenly with Conquest, who was fast enough to grab Quicksilver on the run - Juggernaut (1999) #1, Avengers (1998) #25
• Dodges energy blasts from two Sentinels using some kind of hovercraft - X-Men Forever (2001) #5
• [Kuurth] Catches up to a speedster called Nonstop - Fear Itself: Youth In Revolt #3
• [Kuurth] Colossusnaut says he's faster than him even as he runs into Kuurth and accelerates to 600 miles per hour - Uncanny X-Men #543
• [Once and Future] Tags Nightcrawler and Rachel Summers with backhands and knocks the former into Northstar despite Rachel warning them he would attack with her telepathy - Amazing X-Men (2014) #17

Skill

• [X] Fights well against someone with the full power of the Juggernaut using his skill and experience - Uncanny X-Men #436
• [X] Catches Dazzler after she blinded him by listening for her position - New Excalibur (2006) #19
• [T] Lets a Hand ninja get in close so he can grab him - Thunderbolts #148-149

Temporary Powers

Telepathy

• Somehow absorbed Professor X's telepathy after he tried to drain his powers with a machine - Uncanny X-Men #32
• Reads the O5 X-Men's minds to anticipate their moves - Uncanny X-Men #32
• Knocks out Jean Grey with a mental bolt - Uncanny X-Men #32
• Never used telepathy after this

Mystic Abilities

• Gained mystic abilities while trapped in the Crimson Cosmos - Uncanny X-Men #33, Doctor Strange #182
• Casts mystic spells that shrink Nightmare to his size and makes him collide into him when Nightmare was large enough to hold the Earth in his hands - Doctor Strange #182
• Him and Nightmare cast spells that shatter a chunk of rock and destroy bonds of cosmic force that held Eternity - Doctor Strange #180, 182
• Gave up his mystic abilities in exchange for having his youth restored - Hulk #172

Trion

• Became more powerful than ever after getting possessed by an evil spirit - X-Men (1991) #88
• Grows to giant size - X-Men (1991) #88, Uncanny X-Men #369
• Punches through the fabric of spacetime - X-Men (1991) #88

Captain Universe

• Became Captain Universe after being chosen by the Enigma Force - Amazing Spider-Man #629
• Traps Spider-Man in a force sphere and repairs fractures to the tectonic plates under Manhattan to prevent a catastrophic earthquake - Amazing Spider-Man #629

Kuurth

• Can fly - Thunderbolts #160-161
• Calls down lightning - Thunderbolts #158
• Colossus says his lightning could incinerate armies - Uncanny X-Men #543
• Possesses a man by touching him with his hammer - Uncanny X-Men #540
• Teleports back after Pixie teleports him to the bottom of sea, low Earth orbit, and the heart of the sun - Uncanny X-Men #542

Once upon a time, there was a man. A man who got everything he wanted. In the end it wasn’t enough. In truth, it could never be enough. No amount of power could change who he was. It could never quench his thirst for power. He was now and forever the Juggernaut. And he would never stop.

Timestamp: https://i.imgur.com/88VEmtP.jpg
Other images: https://imgur.com/a/akGCJVm
Complete Upper -- throw this on any .223/5.56 lower and it's ready to go.
I am asking for $700
(I paid originally spent $880+)
Please read details and see my original costs below.
I assembled this around 2019/2020 and shot it one time. No exageration, I did not shoot more than a magazine (and likely only 10-20 rounds).
Please see the list of parts below and the price I paid. All-in I spent about $880 with tax.
Aero Precision 5.56 Bolt Carrier Group, Complete - Black Nitride
SKU: APRH100615C
Magpul Industries MBUS Generation II Sight Set Front & Rear - OD Green
BCM GunFighter Charging Handle (5.56/.223 w/Mod 3B (Large) Latch
SKU: BCM-GFH-Mod3B-556
SureFire Procomp-556 Muzzle Brake
M4E1 Enhanced 16" 5.56 Mid-Length Complete Upper Receiver
SKU: APAR640231M7
Select Your Finish: Anodized Black Handguard: 12" M-LOK
Payment method: PayPal G&S (fees included in my price)
Shipping: I’ll cover shipping within U.S.

There are instincts that you develop when you’re a parent. If you don’t have any children it might be a little hard to understand. If you have a toddler, for example, and they’re in the other room and silent for more than a few seconds, there’s a good chance they’re up to no good. I take that back, most of the time they’re doing nothing, but you still have to check. You feel a compulsion to check. I don’t think it’s a learned skill, I think it’s an actual instinct.
Paleolithic parents who didn’t check on their toddlers every few minutes, just to double check that they weren’t being stalked by smilodons were unlikely to have grandchildren and pass on their genes. You just feel you need to check, like getting goosebumps, a compulsion. I suppose it’s the same reason little kids are always demanding you look at them and what they’re doing.
I think that instinct starts to atrophy as your kids grow. They start learning to do things for themselves, and before you know it, they’re after their own privacy, not your attention. I don’t think it ever goes away though. I expect, decades from now, my own grown kids will visit and bring my grandkids with them. And the second I hear a baby crying in the earliest morning hours, I’ll be alert and ready for anything, sure as any old soldier who hears his name whispered in the dark of night.
I felt that alarm just the other day. First time in years. My boy came home from riding bikes with a couple of his friends. I’m pretty sure they worked out a scam where they asked each of their parents for a different new console for Christmas, and now they spend their weekends traveling between the three houses so they can play on all of them.
We all live in a nice neighborhood. A newer development than the one I grew up in, same town though. It’s the kind of place where kids are always playing in the streets, and the cars all routinely do under 20. My wife and I make sure the kids have helmets and pads, and we’re fine with the boy going out biking with his friends, as long as they stay in the neighborhood.
You know, a lot of people in my generation take some weird sort of pride in how irresponsible we used to be when we were young. I never wore a helmet. Rode to places, without telling any adults, that we never should have ridden to. Me and my friends would make impromptu jumps off of makeshift ramps and try to do stupid tricks, based loosely on stunts we’d seen on TV. Other people my age seem to wax nostalgic for that stuff and pretend it makes them somehow better people. I don’t get it. Sometimes I look back and shudder. We were lucky we escaped with only occasional bruises and road burns. It could have gone so much worse.
My son and his buddies came bustling in the front door at about 2 PM on a Saturday. They did the usual thing of raiding the kitchen for juice and his mother’s brownies, and I took that as my cue to abandon the television in the living room for my office. I was hardly noticing the chaos, by this point, it was becoming a regular weekend occurrence. But as I was just leaving, I caught something in the chatter. My boy said something about, “... that guy who was following us.”
He hadn’t said it any louder or more clearly than anything else they’d been talking about, all that stuff I’d been filtering out. Yet some deeper core process in my brain stem heard it, interpreted it, then hit the red alert button. My blood ran cold and every hair on my skin stood at attention.
I turned around and asked “Somebody followed you? What are you talking about?” I wasn’t consciously aware of how strict and stern my voice came out, yet when the jovial smiles dropped off of their faces it was apparent that it had been so.
“Huh?” my son said, his voice high-pitched and talking fast, like when he thinks he’s in trouble and needs to explain. “We thought we saw somebody following us. There wasn’t though. We didn’t really see anybody and we’d just spooked ourselves.”
“What did he look like?” I asked.
“Nothing? We really didn’t see anybody! Honest! I just saw something out of the corner of my eye! But there wasn’t really nobody there!”
“Yeah!,” said one of his buds. “Peripheral! Peripheral vision! I thought maybe I saw something too, but when I looked I didn’t see anything. I don’t have my glasses with me, but when I really looked I got a good look and there was nothing.”
The three boys had that semi-smiling but still concerned look that this was only a bizarre misunderstanding, but they were still being very sincere. “Were they in a car?”
“No, Dad, you don’t get it,” my boy continued, “They were small. We thought it was a kid.”
“Yeah,” said the third boy. “We thought maybe it was Tony Taylor’s stupid kid sister shadowing us. Getting close to throwing water balloons. Just cause she did that before.”
“If you didn’t get a good look how did you know it was a kid?”
“Because it was small!” my kid explained, though that wasn’t helping much. “What I mean is, at first I thought it was behind a little bush. It was way too small a bush to hide a grown-up. That’s why we thought it was probably Tony’s sister.”
“But you didn’t actually see Tony’s sister?” I asked.
“Nah,” said one of his buds. “And now that I think about it, that bush was probably too small for his sister too. It would have been silly. Like when a cartoon character hides behind a tiny object.”
“That’s why we think it was just in our heads,” explained the other boy, “That and the pole.”
“Yeah,” my son said. “The park on 14th and Taylor?” That was just a little community park, a single city block. Had a playground, lawn, a few trees, and some benches. “Anyway, we were riding past that, took a right on Taylor. And we were talking about how weird it would be if somebody really were following us. That’s when Brian thought he saw something. Behind a telephone pole.”
“I didn’t get a good look at it either,” the friend, Brian, “explained. Just thought I did. Know how you get up late at night to use the bathroom or whatever and you look down the hallway and you see a jacket or an office chair or something and because your eyes haven’t adjusted you think you see a ghost or burglar or something? Anyway, I thought I saw something out of the corner of my eye, but when I turned there wasn’t anything there.”
“Yeah, it was just like sometimes that happens, except this time it happened twice on the same bike ride, is all,” the other friend explained.
“And you’re sure there was nothing there?”
“Sure we’re sure,” my boy said. “We know because that time we checked. We each rode our bikes around the pole and there was nothing. Honest!”
“Hmmm,” I said. The whole thing seemed reasonable and nothing to be concerned about, you’d think.. The boys seemed to relax at my supposed acceptance. “Alright, sounds good. Hey, just let me know before you leave the house again, alright?” They all rushed to seem agreeable as I left the room, then quickly resumed their snacking and preceded to play their games.
I kept my ear out, just in case. My boy, at least this time, dutifully told me his friends were about to leave. He wasn’t very happy with me when I said they wouldn’t be riding home on their bikes, I was going to drive them home. The other boys didn’t complain, but I suppose it wasn’t their place, so my boy did the advocating for them, which I promptly ignored. I hate doing that, ignoring my kid’s talkback. My dad was the same way. It didn’t help that I struggled to get both of their bikes in the trunk, and it was a pain to get them back out again. My boy sulked in the front seat on the short ride back home. Arms folded on chest, eyes staring straight ahead, that lip thing they do. He seemed embarrassed for having what he thought was an over-protective parent. I suppose he was angry at me as well for acting, as far as he knew, irrationally. Maybe he thought he was being punished for some infraction he didn’t understand.
Well, it only got worse when we got home. I told him he wasn’t allowed to go out alone on his bike anymore. I’d only had to do that once before, when he was grounded, and back then he’d known exactly what he’d done wrong and he had it coming. Now? Well, he was confused, furious, maybe betrayed, probably a little brokenhearted? I can’t blame him. He tramped upstairs to his room to await the return of his mother, who was certain to give a sympathetic ear. I can’t imagine how upset he’ll be if he checks the garage tomorrow and finds I’ve removed his tires, just in case.
I wish I could explain it to him. I don’t even know how.
Where should I even begin? The town?
When I was about my son’s age I had just seen that movie, The Goonies. It had just come out in theaters. I really liked that movie, felt a strong connection. A lot of people do, can’t blame them, sort of a timeless classic. Except I wasn’t really into pirate’s treasure or the Fratellis, what really made me connect was a simple single shot, still in the first act. It’s right after they cross the threshold, and leave the house on their adventure. It was a shot of the boys, from above, maybe a crane shot or a helicopter shot, as they’re riding their bikes down a narrow forested lane, great big evergreen trees densely growing on the side of the road, they’re all wearing raincoats and the road is still wet from recent rain.
That was my childhood. I’ve spent my whole life in the Pacific Northwest. People talk to outsiders about the rain, and they might picture a lot of rainfall, but it’s not the volume, it’s the duration. We don’t get so much rain, it just drizzles slowly, on and on, for maybe eight or nine months out of the year. It doesn’t matter where I am, inside a house, traveling far abroad, anywhere I am I can close my eyes and still smell the air on a chilly afternoon, playing outdoors with my friends.
It’s not petrichor, that sudden intense smell you get when it first starts to rain after a long dry spell. No, this was almost the opposite, a clean smell, almost the opposite of a scent, since the rain seemed to scrub the air clean. The strongest scent and I mean that in the loosest sense possible, must have been the evergreen needles. Not pine needles, those were too strong, and there weren’t that many pines anyway. Douglas fir and red cedar predominated, again the root ‘domination’ seems hyperbole. Yet those scents were there, ephemeral as it is. Also, there was a sort of pleasant dirtiness to the smell, at least when you rode bikes. It wasn’t dirt, or mud, or dust. Dust couldn’t have existed except perhaps for a few fleeting weeks in August. I think, looking back, it was the mud puddles. All the potholes in all the asphalt suburban roads would fill up after rain with water the color of chocolate milk. We’d swerve our BMX bikes, or the knock-off brands, all the way across the street just to splash through those puddles and test our “suspensions.,” meaning our ankles and knees. The smell was always stronger after that. It had an earthiness to it. Perhaps it was petrichor’s lesser-known watery cousin.
There were other sensations too, permanently seared into my brain like grill marks. A constant chilliness that was easy to ignore, until you started working up a good heart rate on your bike, then you noticed your lungs were so cold it felt like burning. The sound of your tires on the wet pavement, particularly when careening downhill at high speed. For some reason, people in the mid-80s used to like to decorate their front porches with cheap, polyester windsocks. They were often vividly colored, usually rainbow, like prototype pride flags. When an occasional wind stirred up enough to gust, the windsocks would flap, and owning to the water-soaked polyester, make a wet slapping sound. It was loud, it was distinct, but you learned to ignore it as part of the background, along with the cawing of crows and distant passing cars.
That was my perception of Farmingham as a kid. The town itself? Just a typical Pacific Northwest town. That might not mean much for younger people or modern visitors, but there was a time when such towns were all the same. They were logging towns. It was the greatest resource of the area from the late 19th century, right up until about the 80s, when the whole thing collapsed. Portland, Seattle, they had a few things going on beyond just the timber industry, but all the hundreds of little towns and small cities revolved around logging, and my town was no exception.
I remember going to the museum. It had free admission, and it was a popular field trip destination for the local school system. It used to be the City Hall, a weird Queen Anne-style construction. Imagine a big Victorian house, but blown up to absurd proportions, and with all sorts of superfluous decorations. Made out of local timber, of course. They had a hall for art, I can’t even remember why, now. Maybe they were local artists. I only remember paintings of sailboats and topless women, which was a rare sight for a kid at the time. There was a hall filled with 19th-century household artifacts. Chamber pots and weird children's toys.
Then there was the logging section, which was the bulk of the museum. It’s strange how different things seemed to be in the early days of the logging industry, despite being only about a hundred years old, from my perspective in the 1980s. If you look back a hundred years from today, in the 1920s, you had automobiles, airplanes, electrical appliances, jazz music, radio programs, flappers, it doesn’t feel that far removed, does it? No TV, no internet, but it wouldn’t be that strange. 1880s? Different world.
Imagine red cedars, so big you could have a full logging crew, arms stretched out, just barely manage to encircle one for a photographer. Felling a single tree was the work of days. Men could rest and eat their lunches in the shelter of a cut made into a trunk, and not worry for safety or room. They had to cut their own little platforms into the trees many feet off the ground, just so the trunk was a little bit thinner, and thus hours of labor saved. They used those long, flexible two-man saws. And double-bit axes. They worked in the gloom of the shade with old gas lanterns. Once cut down from massive logs thirty feet in diameter, they’d float the logs downhill in sluices, like primitive wooden make-shift water slides. Or they’d haul them down to the nearest river, the logs pulled by donkeys on corduroy roads. They’d lay large amounts of grease on the roads, so the logs would slide easily. You could still smell the grease on the old tools on display in the museum. The bigger towns had streets where the loggers would slide the logs down greased skids all the way down to the sea, where they’d float in big logjams until the mills were ready for processing. They’d call such roads “skid-rows.” Because of all the activity, they’d end up being the worst parts of town. Local citizens wouldn’t want to live there, due to all the stink and noise. They’d be on the other side of the brothels and the opium dens. It would be the sort of place where the destitute and the insane would find themselves when they’d finally lost anything. To this day, “skidrow” remains a euphemism for the part of a city where the homeless encamp.
That was the lore I’d learned as a child. That was my “ancestry” I was supposed to respect and admire, which I did, wholeheartedly. There were things they left out, though. Things that you might have suspected, from a naive perspective, would be perfect for kids, all the folklore that came with the logging industry. The ghost stories, and the tall tales. I would have eaten that up. They do talk about that kind of thing in places far removed from the Pacific Northwest. But I had never heard about any of it. Things like the Hidebehind. No, that I’d have to discover for myself.
There were four of us on those bike adventures. Myself. Ralph, my best friend. A tough guy, the bad boy, the most worldly of us, which is a strange thing to say about an eight-year-old kid. India, an archetypal ‘80s tomboy. She was the coolest person I knew at the time. Looking back, I wonder what her home life was like. I think I remember problematic warning signs that I couldn’t have recognized when I was so young, but now raise flags. Then there was Ben. A goofy kid, a wild mop of hair, coke bottle glasses, type 1 diabetic which seemed to make him both a bit pampered by his mother, who was in charge of all his insulin, diet, and schedule, and conversely a real risk taker when she wasn’t around.
When we first saw it…
No, wait. This was the problem with starting the story. Where does it all begin? I’ll need to talk about my Grandfather as well. I’ve had two different perspectives on my Grandfather, on the man that he was. The first was the healthy able-bodied grandparent I’d known as a young child. Then there was the man, as I learned about him after he had passed.
There was a middle period, from when I was 6 to when I was 16, when I hardly understood him at all, as he was hit with a double whammy of both Parkinson’s and Alzheimer's. His decline into an invalid was both steep and long drawn out. That part didn’t reflect who he was as a person.
What did I know of him when I was little? Well I knew he and my grandmother had a nice big house and some farmland, out in the broad flat valley north of Farmingham. Dairy country. It had been settled by Dutch immigrants back in the homesteading days. His family had been among the first pioneers in the county too. It didn’t register to me then that his surname was Norwegian, not Dutch. I knew he had served in the Navy in World War II, which I was immensely proud of for reasons I didn’t know why. I knew he had a job as a butcher in a nearby rural supermarket. He was a bit of a farmer too, more as a hobby and a side gig. He had a few cattle, but mostly grew and harvested hay to sell to the local dairies. I knew he had turned his garage into a machine shop, and could fix damn near anything. From the flat tires on my bicycle to the old flat-bed truck he’d haul hay with, to an old 1950s riding lawnmower he somehow managed to keep in working order. I knew he could draw a really cool cartoon cowboy, I knew he loved to watch football, and I knew the whiskers on his chin were very pokey, and they’d tickle you when he kissed you on the cheek, and that when you tried to rub the sensation away he’d laugh and laugh and laugh.
Then there were the parts of his life that I’d learn much later. Mostly from odd passing comments from relatives, or things I’d find in the public records. Like how he’d been a better grandfather than a father. Or how his life as I knew it had been a second, better life. He’d been born among the Norwegian settler community, way up in the deep, dark, forest-shrouded hills that rimmed the valley. He’d been a logger in his youth. Technologically he was only a generation or two from the ones I’d learned about in the museum. They’d replaced donkeys with diesel engines and corduroy roads with narrow gauge rail. It was still the same job, though. Dirty, dangerous, dark. Way back into those woods, living in little logging camps, civilization was always a several-day hike out. It became a vulgar sort of profession, filled with violent men, reprobates, and thieves. When my grandfather’s father was murdered on his front porch by a lunatic claiming he’d been wronged somehow, my grandfather hiked out of there, got into town, and joined the Navy. He vowed never to go back. The things he’d seen out in those woods were no good. He’d kept that existence away from me. Anyways…
Tommy Barker was the first of us to go missing. I say ‘us’ as if I knew him personally. I didn’t. He went to Farmingham Middle School, other side of town, and several grades above us. From our perspective, he may as well have been an adult living overseas.
Yet it felt like we got to know him. His face was everywhere, on TV, all over telephone poles. Everybody was talking about him. After he didn’t return from a friend’s house, everybody just sort of assumed, or maybe hoped, that he’d just gotten lost, or was trapped somewhere. They searched all the parks. Backyards, junkyards, refrigerators, trunks. Old-fashioned refrigerators, back before suction seals, had a simple handle with a latch that opened when you pulled on it. It wasn’t a problem when the fridges were in use and filled with food. But by the 80s old broke-down refrigerators started filling up backyards and junkyards, and they became deathtraps for kids playing hide-and-seek. The only opened from the outside. I remember thinking Tommy Barker was a little old to have likely been playing hide-and-seek, but people checked everywhere anyway. They never found him.
That was about the first time we saw the Hidebehind. Ben said he thought he saw somebody following us, looked like, maybe, a kid. We’d just slowly huffed our way up a moderately steep hill, Farmingham is full of them, and when we paused for a breather at the top, Ben said he saw it down the hill, closer to the base. Yet when we turned to look there was nothing there. Ben said he’d just seen it duck behind a car. That wasn’t the sort of behavior of a random kid minding his own business. Yet the slope afforded us a view under the car’s carriage, and except for the four tires, there were no signs of any feet hiding behind the body. At first, we thought he was pulling our leg. When he insisted he wasn’t, we started to tease him a little. He must have been seeing things, on account of his poor vision and thick glasses. The fact that those glasses afforded him vision as good as or better than any of us wasn’t something we considered.
The next person to disappear was Amy Brooks. Fifth-grader. Next elementary school over. I remember it feeling like when you’re traveling down the freeway, and there’s a big thunderstorm way down the road, but it keeps getting closer, and closer. I don’t remember what she looked like. Her face wasn’t plastered everywhere like Tommy’s had been. She was mentioned on the regional news, out of Seattle, her and Tommy together. Two missing kids from the same town in a short amount of time. The implication was as obvious as it was depraved. They didn’t think the kids were getting lost anymore. They didn’t do very much searching of backyards. The narratives changed too. Teachers started talking a lot about stranger danger. Local TV channels started recycling old After School Specials and public service announcements about the subject.
I’m not sure who saw it next. I think it was Ben again. We took him seriously this time though. I think. The one I’m sure I remember was soon after, and that time it was India who first saw it. It’s still crystal clear in my memory, almost forty years later, because that was the time I first saw it too. We were riding through a four-way stop, an Idaho Stop before they called it that, when India slammed to a stop, locking up her coaster brakes and leaving a long black streak of rubber on a dry patch of pavement. We stopped quickly after and asked what the problem was. We could tell by her face she’d seen it. She was still looking at it.
“I see it,” she whispered, unnecessarily. We all followed her gaze. We were looking, I don’t know, ten seconds? Twenty? We believed everything she said, we just couldn’t see it.
“Where?” Ralph asked.
“Four blocks down,” she whispered. “On the left. See the red car? Kinda rusty?” There was indeed a big old Lincoln Continental, looking pretty ratty and worn. I focused on that, still seeing nothing. “Past that, just to its right. See the street light pole? It’s just behind that.”
We also saw the pole she was talking about. Metal. Aluminum, I’d have guessed. It had different color patches, like metallic flakeboard. Like it’d had been melted together out of scrap.
I could see that clearly even from that distance. I saw nothing behind it. I could see plenty of other things in the background, cars, houses, bushes, front lawns, beauty bark landscape.. There was no indication of anything behind that pole.
And then it moved. It had been right there where she said it had been, yet it had somehow perfectly blended into the landscape, a trick of perspective. We didn’t see it at all until it moved, and almost as fast it had disappeared behind that light pole. We only got a hint. Brown in color, about our height in size.
We screamed. Short little startled screams, the involuntary sort that just burst out of you. Then we turned and started to pedal like mad, thoroughly spooked. We made it to the intersection of the next block when it was Ralph who screeched to a halt and shouted, “Wait!”
We slowed down and stopped, perhaps not as eagerly as we’d done when India yelled. Ralph was looking back over his shoulder, looking at that metal pole. “Did anybody see it move again?’ he asked. We all shook our heads in the negative. Ralph didn’t notice, but of course, he didn’t really need an answer, of course we hadn’t been watching.
“If it didn’t move, then it’s still there!” Ralph explained the obvious. It took a second to sink in, despite the obvious. “C’mon!” he shouted, and to our surprise, before we could react, he turned and took off, straight down the road, straight to where that thing had been lurking.
We were incredulous, but something about his order made us all follow hot on his heels. He was a sort of natural leader. I thought it was total foolishness, but I wasn’t going to let him go alone. I think I got out, “Are you crazy?!”
The wind was blowing hard past our faces as we raced as fast as we could, it made it hard to hear. Ralph shouted his response. “If it’s hiding that means its afraid!” That seemed reasonable, if not totally accurate. Lions hide from their prey before they attack. Then again, they don’t wait around when the whole herd charges. Really, the pole was coming up so fast there wasn’t a whole lot of time to argue. “Just blast past and look!” Ralph added. “We’re too fast! It won’t catch us.”
Sure, I thought to myself. Except maybe Ben, who always lagged behind the rest of us in a race. The lion would get Ben if any of us.
We rushed past that pole and all turned our heads to look. “See!” Ralph shouted in triumph. There was simply nothing there. A metal streetlight pole and nothing more. We stopped pedaling yet still sped on. “Hang on,” Ralph said, and at the next intersection he took a fast looping curve that threatened to crash us all, but we managed and curved behind him. We all came to the pole again where we stopped to see up close that there was nothing there, despite what we had seen moments before.
“Maybe it bilocated,” Ben offered. We groaned. We were all thinking it, but I think we were dismissive because it wasn’t as cool a word as ‘teleport.”
“Maybe it just moved when we weren’t looking,” I offered. That hadn’t been long, but that didn’t mean anything if it moved fast. The four of us slowly looked up from the base of the pole to our immediate surroundings. There were bushes. A car in a carport covered by a tarpaulin. The carport itself. Garbage cans. Stumps. Of course the ever-present trees. Whatever it was it could have been hiding behind anything. Maybe it was. We looked. Maybe it would make itself seen. None of us wanted that. “OK, let’s get going,” Ralph said, and we did so.
I got home feeling pretty shaken that afternoon. I felt safe at home. Except for the front room, which had a big bay window looking out onto the street, and the people who lived across it. There were plenty of garbage cans and telephone poles and stumps that a small, fast thing might hide behind. No, I felt more comfortable in my bedroom. There was a window, but a great thick conical cypress tree grew right in front of it, reaching way up over the roof of the house. If anything, it offered ME a place to hide, and peer out onto the street to either side of the tree. It was protective, as good as any heavy blanket.

Ok, I've now officially gone farther than ever before in my budding new foray into DCSS. I've cleared all 15 levels, the Lair, and the Orcish Mines. I know the next step is to head into the Lair Rune Branches, but I'm terrified! I've been doing so well!!
​
I'm not sure how much of a dump anyone wants, but here's a lot. If anyone wants to offer advice before I plumb these new depths, that would be great!

HippieInHawaii the Warrior (Minotaur Berserker) Turns: 28739, Time: 06:25:46 Health: 128/157 AC: 29 Str: 30 XL: 16 Next: 47% Magic: 14/15 EV: 18 Int: 4 God: Trog [*****.] Gold: 928 SH: 0 Dex: 14 Spells: 15/15 levels left rFire . . . a - +4 battleaxe (heavy) rCold . . . (shield currently unavailable) rNeg + . . s - +4 plate armour "Xuikofo" {rPois Stlth+} rPois + (helmet restricted) rElec . j - +1 cloak "Zucoomul" {Rampage rN+ Str+4 Stlth-} rCorr . H - +2 pair of gloves {infuse} SInv . O - +2 pair of boots Will +.... n - amulet of magic regeneration Stlth P - +4 ring of slaying HPRegen 0.46/turn C - +5 ring of evasion MPRegen 0.54/turn %: rampage, infuse magic (1 MP) @: very slightly contaminated, studying Fighting A: horns 2, retaliatory headbutt a: Renounce Religion, Berserk, Trog's Hand, Brothers in Arms You are on level 15 of the Dungeon. You worship Trog. Trog is extremely pleased with you. You have visited 3 branches of the dungeon, and seen 22 of its levels. You have also visited: Gauntlet and Volcano. You have collected 3260 gold pieces. You have spent 2332 gold pieces at shops. Inventory: Hand Weapons a - a +4 heavy battleaxe (weapon) b - a +3 arbalest of draining Q - the +7 battleaxe of Tenacity {protect, rC+ Will- SInv} (You found it on level 3 of the Lair of Beasts) rC: It protects you from cold. SInv: It lets you see invisible. Will: It decreases your willpower. S - a +1 heavy executioner's axe Z - a +4 battleaxe of flaming Missiles d - 27 poisoned darts (quivered) e - 7 boomerangs L - 8 javelins Armour g - a +2 plate armour of fire resistance j - the +1 cloak "Zucoomul" (worn) {Rampage rN+ Str+4 Stlth-} (You found it in a Gauntlet) Str: It affects your strength (+4). rN: It protects you from negative energy. Rampage: It bestows one free step when moving towards enemies. Stlth: It makes you less stealthy. If you remove this armour, your AC would decrease by 3 (29 -> 26). s - the +4 plate armour "Xuikofo" (worn) {rPois Stlth+} (You bought it in a shop on level 1 of the Dungeon) rPois: It protects you from poison. Stlth: It makes you more stealthy. If you remove this armour, your AC would decrease by 20 (29 -> 9). A - the +0 plate armour of Feasting {rC+ Will+ Int+3} (You found it on level 14 of the Dungeon) Int: It affects your intelligence (+3). rC: It protects you from cold. Will: It increases your willpower. >!If you switch to wearing this armour, your AC would decrease by 4 (29 ->!< 25). F - a +1 cloak of poison resistance H - a +2 pair of gloves of infusion (worn) O - a +2 pair of boots (worn) Jewellery c - a ring of flight n - an amulet of magic regeneration (around neck) v - a ring of fire C - a +5 ring of evasion (right hand) I - a ring of protection from cold K - a +4 ring of protection N - a +6 ring of strength P - a +4 ring of slaying (left hand) X - the ring of Caghir {rN+ rCorr Str+2} (You found it on level 5 of the Lair of Beasts) [ring of resist corrosion] Str: It affects your strength (+2). rN: It protects you from negative energy. rCorr: It protects you from acid and corrosion. Wands k - a wand of digging (4) l - a wand of light (8) y - a wand of iceblast (19) E - a wand of polymorph (13) R - a wand of flame (28) V - a wand of paralysis (3) Scrolls i - 11 scrolls of teleportation m - a scroll of fog t - 7 scrolls of fear u - 3 scrolls of magic mapping w - 4 scrolls of blinking J - 2 scrolls of silence U - 11 scrolls of identify Potions f - 5 potions of haste h - a potion of invisibility o - 2 potions of flight p - 3 potions of berserk rage q - a potion of magic r - 11 potions of curing x - 2 potions of heal wounds z - 2 potions of cancellation B - 3 potions of might G - 5 potions of ambrosia Miscellaneous D - a lightning rod (4/4) M - a phantom mirror Skills: * Level 17.9 Fighting * Level 17.3 Axes + Level 11.0 Ranged Weapons + Level 10.3 Throwing + Level 12.6 Armour + Level 11.6 Dodging + Level 9.6 Stealth You have 15 spell levels left. You don't know any spells. Your spell library is empty. Dungeon Overview and Level Annotations Branches: Dungeon (15/15) Temple (0/1) D:5 Lair (5/5) D:11 Shoals (0/4) Lair:2 Snake (0/4) Lair:3 Slime (0/5) Lair:5 Orc (2/2) D:12 Elf (0/3) Orc:2 Vaults (0/5) D:13 Depths (0/4) D:15 Volcano (visited) Gauntlet (visited) Altars: Cheibriados Dithmenos Elyvilon Fedhas Qazlal Ru Trog Wu Jian Shops: D:1 [? Orc:1 ! Orc:2 (([? Innate Abilities, Weirdness & Mutations You have a pair of horns on your head. You reflexively headbutt those who attack you in melee. 

Timestamp: https://imgur.com/a/2LvdiBK
This is one of the biggest sales I have done and its in response to some major life milestones, nothing bad but need to reprioritize and sell a lot of gear I can live without on a lot of my excess builds.
Some ground rules:

• Please try to refer to the item number, and if you want additional details or pictures I will respond as quickly as possible.
  
• This is intended to be a fundrasier for non gun stuff unfortunately and at this time NO TRADES, thanks for understanding
  
• A Dibs Takes precedence over a PM to haggle which itself takes precedence over a Question for information
  
• I have a lot going on in my life and may take a few to several days depending on how many items I sell, I try to pride myself on being as quick and reliable as possible however finding enough packing material and shipping this all will take some time - ASKING FOR A STATUS OR “haVe yOu ShipPeD yET” WILL BE IGNORED. You will get a tracking number and I will do my best effort to communicate but be forewarned.
  
• Almost all items have the OEM boxes, screws, etc unless otherwise noted you will be good to go to install on delivery
  
• Please respond within 30 minutes or less or you may be passed on for a second dibser
  
• Discounts given for bundles
  

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Now that that’s out of the way:
OPTICS

1. Sig Sauer Tango6 1-6 in Anodized Gray, SFP, 30mm, HellfirePlex Reticle which is a dual illuminated fibeLED dot. Incredibly similar glass and performance to a Vortex Razor 1-6 in a better budget package albeit with a more straightforward reticle, capped turrets and throw lever, box and papers included - $600 shipped
   
2. PA SLx MD25 Single Dot, Gen 1 not shake awake, like new, with low mount, and riser mount with three spacer heights and all paperwork but not factory box, fantastic red dot that blends the best of a micro dot and a fullsize COMP dot - $60 shipped SOLD
   
3. Holosun 510c ery good condition with only some minor housing wear if any, red reticle, no factory box but will ship padded and insured - $220 shipped SOLD
   
4. FDE Deltapoint Pro 2.5MOA with a low mount and factory rubber cover and screws - $325 shipped
   
5. Holosun 407c V2, single dot, BIG BUTTON version, no factory box but includes screws, very good condition - $225 shipped
   

MOUNTS

1. Arisaka Micro Mount 1.7” Height, really solid underrated mount, comes spray painted wolf gray, if you give me a couple days I can clean it - $60 shipped
   
2. Badger Ordnance 30mm Scope Mount COMM, good condition 1.7”, 0MOA, want to include if possible this JArm and Micro Plate and ACRO plate - $375 shipped
   

AR STUFF

1. My Gucciish Competition Upper - Lantac Dragon, 16” BA Hanson Premium 1:8 Twist .223 Wylde, Wojtek Adjustable Gas Block, Aero S-One 15” Handguard Cerakoted a custom “tanodized” color, Ripcord Clear Anodized Upper with a FCD Double Dimp Rose Gold Dust Cover, FCDxHodge Dimpled FA, and some rail panels -$700 OBO
   
2. Reptilia RECCE Stock, FDE, some light install marks that get covered, otherwise great condition, really awesome, ultralight stock, the cooler UBR - $100 shipped SOLD
   
3. Daniel Defense Tornado Gray Stock with both stock pads, very great condition - $45 shipped SOLD
   
4. Griffin ECS Maritime Stock, Gray, $25 shipped
   
5. Cloud Defensive CORv3 Handguard, 10.7”, Clear Anodized, Long recessed rail segment to allow Laser and Tape switches to be below the window of Lower 1/3 and higher optics and flush with receiver height, will come with all necessary hardware to install but you will need your own armorers wrench tool. Was installed and removed may show minor install and MLOK attachment marks but great overall condition - $150 shipped
   
6. B5 Systems Gray Pistol Grip with screw, I did a homebrew epoxy/grit powder grip and imo it came out pretty nice - $25 shipped SOLD
   
7. Railscales Polymer RSB-M in Stealth Gray, like new, $20 shipped SOLD
   

LIGHTS

1. Cloud Defensive REIN 3.0 FDE full kit with light, charger, Picatinny mount, and tape switch and an FDE flip up cap, mounted and removed but never shot with - $250 shipped SOLD
   
2. Tan Surefire X300U-A with all keys, great condition - $200 shipped
   
3. Modlite PLHv2 Head, Black, minor housing wear but very clear lens, ships with a One Hundred Concepts cover - $160 shipped
   
4. Cloud Defensive/IWC Offset Scout Mount, MLOK, Black, very good condition - $30 shipped
   

NYLON

1. Trex Arms Ready Rig, Wolf Gray, fitted and loaded with mags but almost never larped in ,just been sitting - $75 shipped

SLINGS (First One will Come with a Pair of QD Points Free! Ferro Concepts Brand)

1. LBX MAS Gray 2 Point Sling with an Upgraded Ferro Concepts Adjuster and Sling Silencer - $40 shipped
   
2. ESD Snow Camo Sling - $40 shipped SOLD
   
3. Defense Mechanisms Sling, Wolf Gray with Built in Rilfe Elastic mounting - $40 shipped
   

GLOCK STUFF

1. Glock 19 Gen 5 Slide, Jagerwerks F9 Cut/ACRO Footprint/Chamfered Edges/Enhanced Rear Serrations/Carbon End Plate/Nitride/All Internals/OEM Marksman Barrel from Black Phoenix Customs removing the unmatched rollmark and then Nitrided/OEM Iron Sights - $750 shipped
   
2. Zev G17.3 Barrel, Bronze, Dimpled, very low round count with no significant wear - $150 shipped
   
3. Zev Lightened Striker Spring/Red Channel Liner and Zev Extractor (Gen 3 or 4) - $40 shipped
   
4. Agency Arms AOS Plate for Glock, DeltaPoint Pro, Irons Front with Ameriglo 5XL Cowitness Irons installed (Black ReaTritium Front) - $80 shipped
   

OTHER

1. CHPWS 509t Plate for a PDP Gen 1 cut, - $40 shipped
   
2. Pair of Random Docter Optic Plates for Pic Rail from a FastFire 3 and a Vortex Venom box - Free + Shipping Cost if you want them
   

Thank you all for looking and I appreciate you all!

Key and explanation of periods where Juggernaut was stronger or weaker than normal

• [50%] Briefly lost half of his power after Black Tom absorbed it
• [X] Was made weaker by Cyttorak after deciding not to do his bidding anymore
• [T] Was made weaker by Cyttorak after he was angered by Juggernaut temporarily becoming Captain Universe
• [Kuurth] Became possessed by one of the Serpent's Asgardian Worthy named Kuurth after picking up his hammer
• [Once and Future] Had his power completely removed by Cyttorak but regained it after taking the place of an alternate universe Cain Marko, though it began to fade
• [Unstoppable] Was given more power by Cyttorak than he had given anyone else

Force Field

• Needs his helmet to use his force field - Uncanny X-Men #32
• Transforms a metal gauntlet into a new helmet - Amazing Spider-Man #628
• Can summon his helmet and armor out of thin air - Venom: The Madness #1
• Somehow uses his force field without his helmet here - Thor #429
• Pushes Professor X's wheelchair back with a wave of force - Uncanny X-Men #13
• Shatters a block of ice he was encased in with a wave of energy and knocks chunks of it into Iceman hard enough to incapacitate him - Uncanny X-Men #13
• Stops a 10 ton rolling steel barrel with a current of energy and rolls it back through a wall and into Beast hard enough to knock him out - Uncanny X-Men #13
• Stops Jean Grey's telekinesis with his force field and knocks out Beast and Iceman by creating enough raw energy to send the former careening into the latter after Beast leapt at him - Uncanny X-Men #32
• Shoots globules of sheer energy, with a single one powerful enough to break a tree in half - Uncanny X-Men #46

Advancing

• Walks through a thick wall of ice and causes the X-Mansion to shake and start collapsing - Uncanny X-Men #12
• Walks through an electromagnetic force field - Uncanny X-Men #12
• Exerts enough pressure to buckle and shatter a metal wall that had 50 times the tensile strength of battleship steel - Uncanny X-Men #12
• Pushes aside Jean Grey's telekinesis as though it was a physical thing after she lifts him into the air - Uncanny X-Men #13
• Crawls through a solid wall of earth and erupts out of it - Uncanny X-Men #13
• [Limits] Loses his footing after some stairs he was climbing are turned to ice by Iceman - Uncanny X-Men #13
• Walks through a wall - Uncanny X-Men #46
• Charges into Nightmare and forces him back - Doctor Strange #182
• Charges through a solid steel parade float - Amazing Adventures #16
• Snaps a tree in half by charging into it while Beast is on top of him - Amazing Adventures #16
• Shatters a concrete power station by running through it - Amazing Adventures #16
• His powers let him swim in water even though he should be heavy enough to sink - Amazing Adventures #16
• [Limits] Sinks in water after Colossus knocks him into it unexpectedly - Spider-Woman (1978) #38
• Starts breaking through a metal wall designed to hold a hundred Hulks and eventually does so with Hulk's assistance - Hulk #172
• Shatters a tank by charging into it - Hulk #172
• Knocks Hulk over a hill and shatters it with a single charge - Hulk #172
• Runs through machinery - Uncanny X-Men #103
• Colossus, Storm, and Wolverine can't stop him from climbing some stairs - Uncanny X-Men #103
• Knocks Colossus, Wolverine, Nightcrawler, and Storm out of his way with a charge - Uncanny X-Men #103
• Climbs through the metal deck of a ship - Spider-Woman (1978) #38
• Walks through a building, with Spider-Man saying he's never seen Namor smash through a building as destructively as him upon viewing the aftermath, but before meeting Juggernaut - Amazing Spider-Man #229, 214
• Walks into a net of Spider-Man's webbing and stretches it to its limit until pieces of the buildings it's attached to rip off - Amazing Spider-Man #229
• Makes a large hole in the road by climbing out of the sewers - Amazing Spider-Man #229
• Walks through a building while Spider-Man was trying to pull him back - Amazing Spider-Man #229
• Walks through a police barricade and tips over an APC - Amazing Spider-Man #229
• [Limits] Sinks to bottom of a 40 foot foundation of wet cement - Amazing Spider-Man #230
• Walks through miles of bedrock and fractures the tectonic plates under Manhattan, which results in a catastrophic earthquake months later - Amazing Spider-Man #629, 628-629
• Jumps from a plane and lands hard enough to make a large crater in the ground - Marvel Team-Up #150
• [50%] Rams Black Tom into a bus hard enough to crumple it and make it explode - Marvel Team-Up #150
• [50%] Jumps from the top floor of a building and lands in the street hard enough to make a large crater - Marvel Team-Up #150
• [50%] Runs through a concrete wall - Marvel Team-Up #150
• Creates tremors that fracture a street with his footsteps - Thor #411
• Holds onto Thor's hammer as it’s returning to him and tackles him through five boxcars and into a building hard enough to shatter part of it and knock him out - Thor #411
• Rams Thor into a stone wall hard enough to shatter it - Thor #429
• Knocks down a uh... certain skyscraper by charging into it - Spider-Man (1990) #16
• Knocks Hercules and several other Avengers out of his way with a charge - Hulk #403
• Literally walks over Thunderstrike when he tries to push him back - Thunderstrike (1993) #2
• Warps and knocks down a metal door - Deadpool (1994) #1
• Runs through two thick sewer walls - The All New Exiles (1995) #3
• Jumps off a cliff and lands hard enough to knocks trees into the air and make a large crater - X-Men (1991) #53
• Creates a large hole in the hull of a ship - Professor Xavier and the X-Men (1995) #12
• Makes footprints in concrete - Professor Xavier and the X-Men (1995) #13
• Walks through a massive barrier of ice like it was made of tissue paper - Professor Xavier and the X-Men (1995) #13
• Charges through the walls and doors of the X-Mansion - Professor Xavier and the X-Men (1995) #13
• Charges into War Hulk and pushes him through hundreds of meters of rock, though Hulk is eventually able to stop his advance - Hulk #457
  • War Hulk was strong enough to lift and throw one of the pyramids of Giza - Hulk #456
• Walks through a police car - Spider-Man (1990) #84
• Rams Post-Crisis Wonder Woman through a concrete wall - Unlimited Access #1
• Rams his fellow Exemplar Stonecutter through a stone staircase - Juggernaut (1999) #1
• Knocks down the Stranger by jumping into his head - X-Men Forever (2001) #6
• Jumps hundreds of meters off a giant tower - X-Men Forever (2001) #6
• [X] Lands on a concrete roof hard enough to shatter it - Uncanny X-Men #420
• [X] Him and Sasquatch collide into each other hard enough to create a large crater in the ground, with Juggernaut being the first to recover - Uncanny X-Men #422
• [X] Knocks out Sabretooth by landing on him after being pushed down an elevator shaft - Identity Disc #4
• [X] Charges straight through Earth 6141 Jean Grey's telekinesis - New Excalibur (2006) #3
• [X] Climbs through a pile of wreckage and causes the ground the shake and knock cars into the air - New Excalibur (2006) #6-7
• [X] Jumps from a plane and lands in the road hard enough to shatter it and disable several mechanical tendrils - New Excalibur (2006) #7
• [X] Runs through a concrete wall - New Excalibur (2006) #8
• [X] Walks through a pier, two huts, and numerous trees - New Excalibur (2006) #14
• [X] Jumps into a Shadow Captain Britain hard enough to crater the ground - New Excalibur (2006) #14
• Fights evenly with World War Hulk and pushes him back, undermining the foundation of the X-Mansion, though Hulk is able to knock him away by sidestepping him and adding to his momentum - World War Hulk: X-Men 3
  • World War Hulk was strong enough to prevent the crust of a planet from splitting by shifting tectonic plates - Hulk (2000) #102
• Rams Hulk through a log and knocks him on his back - Marvel 1985 #2
• [T] A Raft scientist says he has endless kinetic energy and is unstoppable once he begins charging - Thunderbolts #144
• [T] Runs through several trees - Thunderbolts #145
• [T] Charges into two Asgardian trolls hard enough to kill them and shatter a tree and part of a hill - Thunderbolts #145-146
• [T] Breaks through a section of the Raft two prisoners thought no one could get through - Thunderbolts #147
• [T] Pushes back Man-Thing - Avengers Academy #4
• [T] Charges downwards through 1.3 kilometers of bedrock - Thunderbolts #149
• [T] Cracks the shell of a giant lobster monster by running into it - Thunderbolts #152
• [T] Stops a building sized monster by charging into its foot, though it knocks him away with a strike from its tail - Thunderbolts #152
• [T] Rams King Hyperion into a boulder hard enough to embed him in it - Thunderbolts #153
• [T] Runs through a fortified stone wall Fear Itself: The Worthy #2
• [Kuurth] Runs through an upwards spiral Songbird created and lured him onto to cut down on his running area - Thunderbolts #160
  • Songbird's sound constructs are stronger than concrete and steel - Avengers (1998) #34
• [Kuurth] Charges through a burst of kinetic energy from Speedball that shatters the road and knocks him out of his way - Fear Itself: The Home Front #3
• [Kuurth] Runs through a building - Fear Itself: The Home Front #3
• [Kuurth] Knocks train cars into air by charging through one - Fear Itself #3
• [Kuurth] Flies out of a deep pit through the ground - Fear Itself: Youth In Revolt #3
• [Kuurth] Flies into the road hard enough to make a large crater - Uncanny X-Men #540
• [Kuurth] The X-Men try at least 42 plans to stop him from walking towards San Francisco that all prove ineffective, including:
  • Face shooting him with a unique energy annihilation beam
  • Teleporting him to the bottom of the sea and the heart of the sun
  • Siryn combining her sound energy with Dazzler's sound-to-light powers to generate an extreme intensity laser
  • Gambit and Rockslide combining their explosion powers to create a detonation that nearly exhausted Cecilia Reyes from the effort of protecting civilians with her force shield
  • Magneto throwing an aircraft carrier into him - Uncanny X-Men #542
• Charges through a force wall government scientists couldn't find a way to penetrate - Dark Avengers #181-182
• [Unstoppable] Jumps into a giant Living Monolith hard enough to topple him - Amazing X-Men (2014) #18
• [Unstoppable] Walks through a wall and scatters the O5 X-Men - X-Men: Blue (2017) #1
• [Unstoppable] Trips through a metal railing - X-Men: Blue (2017) #1
• Runs through Iceman's ice ramp and a metal fence - Iceman (2017) #5
• Pushes back Rogue and shatters the ground under them - Uncanny Avengers (2015) #29
• Runs through a brick wall - Despicable Deadpool #298
• Makes footprints in rock - Thor (2018) #1
• Charges through police cars and knocks them high into the air - Venom (2018) Annual #1
• Pushes back Venom and and causes him to tear up up the asphalt he was standing on - Venom (2018) Annual #1
• Dismembers Frost Giants by charging through them - Punisher Kill Krew #3
• Jumps through the ground above a basement and few meters into the air - Uncanny X-Men (2019) #18
• D-Cel, a mutant that can slow down kinetic motion to the point objects stop falling, can't stop Juggernaut from advancing towards her - Juggernaut (2020) #1
• Charges through a portal that teleports him high above an Asgardian dragon, and lands on him hard enough to set church bells ringing for miles and create a large crater - Savage Avengers (2019) #14
• Jumps through a giant Quicksand - Juggernaut (2020) #3
• Jumps from a helicopter and into a mountain hard enough to reach an underground bunker - Juggernaut (2020) #4
• Jumps through a metal roof - Juggernaut (2020) #5
• Fractures a street and knocks cars into the air by charging through it - Sinister War #4
• Charges through a concrete pillar - Sinister War #4
• Knocks down a concrete guard tower by charging through it - X-Men Unlimited Infinity Comic #13
• Walks through several trees - X-Men Unlimited Infinity Comic #19
• Runs across Krakoa and creates a wide trench in the ground - Legion Of X (2022) #3-4

Welp, it happened. We danced and now we have to pay the fiddler. This is going to be a long post— part explanation that I think I want to write out for my own sake, part plea for sympathy for how hard this is, and part… who knows.
We’ve been together for 8 years. We had a long talk about engagement one night in autumn 2019 and he gave me a music box of a little bride and groom. That same night I got incredibly sick and ended up hospitalized, then in a rehab program, having to leave my job and house and move back in with my parents. We put the wedding on pause until things got more normal. I was healthy, feeling normal, processing the losses I’d had, and started job hunting again in February 2020.
March 2020 was not normal. We were scared shitless for 6 months, like everyone was. Once things calmed down a small amount, we talked about eloping. Nope, we decided. We wanted a wedding-wedding. Plus, his mom didn’t think he was ready, and her disapproval really affected him. Marriage is a good thing, a celebration. Let’s wait until we can make it a celebration.
And around that time, too, we started making love. I know, I know. We shouldn’t have. We’d been together for 6 years by then. College, mental illness flare-ups, a disaster internship for me, his mom’s cancer, my sickness, a parent divorce, losing grandparents, his mother’s disapproval of him dating anyone at all, sexual harassment, the pandemic. The world was scary. Being together was safe.
We’d talked about sex at the start of our relationship and decided no, we would wait. Occasionally it got brought up again and we knew we weren’t ready to be parents, so we said no, we’ll wait. We had a conversation at one point where he said he felt ready. I asked him what would happen if we got pregnant. He said we’d live our lives in love like we had always planned. We weren’t in bed, we weren’t all riled up. We were our normal and rational selves. I had trusted my mind and my soul with him for years. It made sense that I trusted my body with him, too. I regret some things, I really do. But I can’t regret trusting him, and I can’t regret him trusting me.
So, early 2023. We’re both in good places professionally and health-wise. He says he’s struggling to pick out a ring that is like, we decide to go ring shopping together. It was such a happy day. We decided on a custom one and picked out elements to combine, so it was still going to be a nice surprise.
My period had been late. I had been working 60, 65 hour weeks in November and December and I had had a nasty respiratory bug in December. I’d been having cramps and spotting for a couple days and was like “Yep! This is my period!” But it still didn’t come. I took a test when we went back to my place after looking at rings. I didn’t even tell him. He was watching TikTok in my living room when I walked out and said “Hey, my period is still being weird, so I figured…” Then I saw the result.
We were numb for a while. I called a friend who’d just had a baby, who is a good Catholic who did everything correctly. She was kind and loving told me congrats. I was in complete shock. It didn’t seem real at all. We would do maybe 10-30 minutes of practical discussion, then I’d sob hysterically for about 10-30 minutes, then I’d calm down, then start again.
He was really strong at first. A bit quiet, just taking care of me. Eventually it all hit him. It’s one of the worst things I can remember seeing. He was in so much pain. He and his mom had never talked openly about relationships and sex. She disapproved of me. She would tell him “Don’t ruin your life tonight,” whenever he would spend time with me.
I’ll admit we talked about termination. We’d never considered it, of course we hadn’t. I was also scared that I had hurt Baby— we didn’t know how far along I was, I was on two medications that weren’t recommended for pregnancy, I’d taken copious amounts of OTC cold and fever reliever, and I had binge drank a few times in the month before. Going back to my last period, it was possible I was 9 weeks along at that point with no symptoms except cramps and spotting.
It’s really easy to say “You got pregnant, you pay the consequences. Move in, get married, buy the diapers.” Everything is so much easier said than done. I had to find a sublease for my apartment. We both had to move. We had to find an OB. Our work schedules are different and had no days off in common after my Christmas break— one of us would have to miss work to go to any appointments. And that’s without all the pain of pregnancy, delivery, and a newborn.
We had to think about my job— I’m a teacher and I have been working with a group of students for two years. I was supposed to be able to work with them a third year. I PUSHED at work to be able to be keep working with them. I got additional certifications, I balanced rigor with fun to keep kids engaged, I reached out to parents and families constantly, and I told the kids that I’d be there next year, and yes, they had to sign up for my classes. I told 120 children that I would be there for them as they kept going in high school.
We had always planned on my staying home with a baby when we got there. I’m a teacher and I’ve worked with younger kids. Childcare is crazy expensive. What’s the point of paying someone to get yelled at by my kid while I commute to get… yelled at by kids? I’ve also had mental health issues and knew for a long time that leaving my baby too early wasn’t going to work for me. Having a baby meant leaving my job and leaving the kids I’d built painstaking relationships with.
So, right after finding out, it was pretty much agony. (At one point the night after taking the test, we did play a board game together.)
The first appointment was terrifying. I cried. The OB was very nice. He held my hand the whole time. I also felt so stupid. When was my last period? Early November. What birth control were you using? None. How did it take me 9 weeks to consider being pregnant? And if being pregnant was so horrible, why had we had sex? The first ultrasounds they do are transvaginal. They put a big stick up your vagina. Not fun.
I cried when we saw the embryo. Good and bad cried. Good because it’s an absolute miracle. Bad because we weren’t ready for this miracle. I have always wanted kids. Always. Always always. But in those moments… I had been hoping something bad had happened and we could wrap this all up. But we couldn’t. There was a 6 week embryo, healthy as could be. We heard the heartbeat.
Outside on the street after the appointment, we were numb.
We stopped walking and looked at each other and we both smiled, maybe for the first time that we smiled about this. He touched my face. “We’re going to be parents,” he said. We kissed. He touched my belly. We were going to be okay.
I’m very lucky. I’m in my late 20s. I’m well-educated and have a job in my field. I’ve worked with children and babies. I am in a relationship with the father, a healthy relationship. I’ve been in therapy on and off for years and have a good handle on recognizing my needs and emotions. I have supportive family and I have family who can buy baby supplies or help with rent or expenses if worst comes to worst. I have friends in my city, I have friends who have children, and friends who are teachers and nurses. I have my sister’s codependent best friend, who is NOT ready to have kids and has no experience with them, and signed herself up for Grandparent/ caregiver classes when she found out.
And still. It’s been so hard. Moving is exhausting. Just cleaning my apartment to get the pictures to advertise the sublease was too much! I had to go off one medication and fatigue was a side effect of quitting it cold turkey—I slept 18-20 hours a day for a week and a half. Eventually nausea and vomiting hit and I had to navigate that, medication for it, and side effects. And I pee myself every time I throw up.
I’ve missed so much work— I’d be fired if I wasn’t already leaving. My students are happy for me (and LOVE asking me about baby names and clothes and stuff) but I’ve had kids look me dead in the eye and say, “You can’t leave us. I can’t be at this school without your class and your room during lunch.” My fiancé’s mom is extremely disappointed— she hasn’t said the words “pregnancy,” or “baby,” and she hasn’t asked about me when they talk. My fiancé has two leather chairs that are family heirlooms, and my cat clawed at them the day after he moved in.
We need to be married to be on the insurance, so we had to ask the church if we could be married despite my evidence of sin, or if we should get married at the courthouse. We had a lot of special touches planned for our wedding, and I have a lot of emotions about having to do a small wedding instead.
I think I’m writing all this to ask for sympathy, for me and for others. Please see the paragraph about ways I’m extremely lucky. I just keep thinking about women and girls in this situation who don’t have what I have— a stable relationship, a job, supportive parents, friends who can give used baby gear and step up to help.
It’s not easy. I’m going to be just fine, and this is just going to be a blip in the story of our family. Just please believe me that it’s not easy. Please reach out to your pregnant and parenting friends and family and offer help. If you can, please support programs for young moms and victims of abuse. For Americans, please support paid parental leave at your own jobs and on a bigger scale. Please be kind and giving.
Thank you for reading.

I live, worked, and had surgery in Ohio. September 2022 I went on maternity leave from my work. I was supposed to return to work in December 2022, but decided to stay at home in the end. I had health insurance through my employer and had a gallbladder removal surgery scheduled for December 22, 2022 so I called them and explained the situation asking if my surgery would still be covered since I was not going to be returning back to work and my leave was about to be up. The phone call was recorded and I was told regardless of the date I resigned I would have health insurance coverage until December 31, 2022.
December 21, 2022, the day before my surgery, I went into my office to clear out my desk and explain the situation to my supervisor. He asked me to email him my official resignation letter and to please participate in an exit interview that would be scheduled by HR.
A few months ago my medical coverage for this was denied and when asking my insurance about it they said my last day of coverage was the 21st and that my work would have to update that if it is incorrect. I told them that they told me I was covered when I asked about this specific scenario and they said we shouldn't have said that because your work sets your coverage. I asked for a recording of the conversation I had with them where they told me I would be covered and they are still working on providing this but I know that they said I was covered because I was planning to either wait until January or file a life changing event in order to get on my husbands insurance.
On the other side of things I called my work and asked HR if they could update my last day to the 24th which is the day I sent in my resignation letter (email) and they told me that they are sorry but I told them my last day was the 21st (I did not) and that there is nothing they can do.
I've read that verbal resignation is accepted in some workplaces but my manager said he would need a formal written email from me for my resignation which I sent on the 24th after the surgery. Is this something worth fighting for them to change or am I out of luck?
Also in regards to the case with my health insurance where they told me that in my exact situation I would be covered and now are backtracking saying that is not true is there anything I can do on this end either?
The total medical bills we are owing for the procedures come to $20,000 and this is really not something we can afford to just throw away over these small mistakes when we tried to do our best to make sure we would be covered as I would have waited until January when I would be covered on my husbands plan or filed a life changing event to add me a few days early.

I am planning a weekend in MKE with my friends soon. Due to an unfortunate medical emergency we had to cancel our plans last year for our trip. We were planning on going to lakefront brewery, axe throwing, an edelweiss cruise and the barcade. We had a brewers game as a contingency plan for weather. Does anyone else have any other suggestions or improvements for my plans I already have. I can't wait to come back and see the city again and any info helps