Don't Blame Me! - DBM: Summer Break 2025

Episode Date: July 31, 2025

In this special episode, before our summer break, we'll sharing DBT and Updates. Don't Blame Them: Men Staring Updates Friend sends too many voice memos Not going to a theme park for friend’s birthday  Settling in a relationship Join our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/dontblameme Buy Our Merch https://crowdmade.com/collections/sister-sign Listen to Meiisa’s New Show https://apps.apple.com/in/app/pocket-fm-audio-series/id1538433480?mt=8 Call In for DBM - 310-694-0976 (3 minutes or less) Write In for DBM - [e-mail] (300 words or less) Write in for BAIW - [e-mail] DBM Submission Form BAIW Submission Form Follow Us! instagram.com/meghanandmelisa @meghanrienks instagram.com/meghanrienks https://twitter.com/meghanrienks @sheisnotmelissa instagram.com/sheisnotmelissa instagram.com/diamondmprint.productions Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

hello hi megan welcome to a very special episode of don't blame me think of this like it's the day before summer break and your teacher's like i don't really want to teach anything like let's watch a movie and then your teacher also is like braiding your hair and like you know you're all doing french braids to each other and you're like whispering and gossiping and you're not getting in trouble and then they pass out candy yeah this is that mine is the candy or movie but we live a very cinematic life we do everything we do we're the main characters of our movie and you should make sure that you are the main character of your movie also know we are the main characters of your movie as well yeah that's okay it's an ensemble cast we love

a side character of course of course of course so for uh if you are have not been listening we are taking a quick summer break after uh today today i was like trying to calculate which one yeah after today because i will be digging up them holes in the mines mining we're actually recording this earlier because i will be going to beyonce this weekend we're both in the country well last weekend but yeah yeah yeah we are both in the country in different ways yeah we're country girls doing country things and being a country girl multifaceted sometimes it involves shaking your ass other times shaking a tray get the dirt off and inspecting those rocks i'm so excited for you though i'm geeked first make sure you go in a few days wish megan a very happy birthday

and if the weather's still okay maybe we'll go to disneyland on my birthday um and also the day that you're listening to this it is harry james potter's birthday is his name just harry harry james potter but it's not like harold no and i do think that that fucked me up permanently because like i i will be honest with you i didn't know that harry was short for anything until generously maybe two years ago is harry styles is his name just hearing was it never even crossed my mind that it wouldn't be his prince harry harry is just harry like i had no idea i mean i did have someone that was like a father to me and not a father my father's friend i don't even know where that man is today and his name was harry like when

someone said that like their name was harrison and then you could say harry and i said what like that didn't even make sense to me so harold really doesn't compute so yeah he is just he's harry edward who which that's harry styles and then prince harry yes he is also just harry okay so okay better but and everybody i just named is british including the potter so it's a british thing i don't know i i true i mean i don't know anyone named harry like the one harry that i did know was a black american man so would that harold or harry just i mean they call it his name might have been hero i mean sometimes when it's like turns out actually i'm not sure i know most people's government names i mean my dad has a friend that we all call posy his first name is

tony i mean his last name is posy but his first name is tony even because he's like my dad's best friend like airline and the other kids call him grandpa uncle pose i'm dead grandpa uncle that's so funny so many what a mouthful for those kids yeah i mean erlai came up with it because she's like well you're old like my grandpa yeah so like i don't want to call you uncle yeah i know but it's like i don't want to call you grandpa because that implies you're my my grandpa yeah um and she was like three when she came up with that so like his name is tony and one time i just was like anthony and he's like my name isn't anthony it's just tony yeah you never know the like you never know if someone's like oh this is what you call like this is what everyone calls me

because that's my nickname or like no my parents named me this because everyone's gonna call me this why give me four extra letters if no one's gonna use that yeah i think about that all the time when like i used to give mods shit because all of their all of his fucking college friends aside from like two that's actually generous all go by their like last name and i was like that's like so silly i'm not gonna like when i was meeting them i was like i'm not gonna introduce myself like and then when i met them all for the first time and i realized as i was being introduced to them they're introducing themselves to me when there are seven zacks in a row i said i'm understanding why we're doing the last name i'm under like it's literally like they had uh they've

got four names that 90 of the men in that group have yeah and they're all just and i was like yeah and let's call you by your last name because this is getting incredibly confusing you think there's no other name in the world besides zach yeah i had so many zacks in high school so many zacks i can only think of one that was a very popular name we had two zephyrs never heard of that except for you i've heard of you talk about them yeah what else did we have we had two keenans we had we had one emma emma is is more like a gen z really i thought it's been popular for a long time it's been popular but i feel like it was like number one i don't know but it became like a number one name a little bit after us okay like it's always been in like the top 50 but then

there's like a ton of emmas right now emmas are like what a sarah was for me oh okay because i was gonna say i thought emma and olivia were probably at the same time and like we had at least and they're both old names too is that rotation and soon everybody just know tiffany will come back yeah it's gonna be a bunch of old tiffany's and that's funny to me a bunch of old tiffany's a bunch of old like brandy's also because that gen those gen x names that's just funny to me also because like tiff that's that's the grandma i want grandma grandma tiff is her eyebrows tattooed on and like i love that about grandma tiff grandma tiff is drenched yeah in there's gonna be a lot of grandma kimberly's oh my god grammy kimmy yeah i love grammy kimmy

she gives the toll house cookies she lets you eat the half-baked cookie dough like she's a hoot and a holler she doesn't like your mom but you know whatever she's a fun time yeah i i love that idea i mean but then i'm like is gertrude gonna come back gertie i think gertie is kind of you that's what the um the the the daughter emily osment played in spy kids 2 island of lost dreams um my favorite spy kids movie that's her name was gertie gertie and she had pigtails and they spun really fast like propellers and she flew from her hair well this feels like if it's going to be have a comeback this feels like the time it does because we're in the era of like the mods and the maids and the nora i love nora

nora's always been one of my favorite names a cute name clara i knew a clara growing up a babysitter girl named clara the boy names don't cycle through like this because i feel like noah has always been a thing noah's always a thing james is always a thing but the iterations of james though like a jim and a jimmy okay we already said that i was confused about harry that's brand new information to me that that's all is james the james is the name and then you got jimmy and jims but like we don't hear jimmy or jims anymore because it's like yeah like like jim oh i just meant the plural form you're right i was like i've never heard somebody named jims no but like we don't hear james is i feel like james is having a cycle right now but yeah there's

not going to be any jimmies or jims well i guess it makes sense because like you can't really name a baby jim like this is my baby jim like but i think that comes from like having the father's name be james and then the son is jimmy and then as they get older they switch and then the son yeah and then the son has another baby so then it just like trickles so then he takes his final grandpa yes grandpa becomes jim uncle jim and then the father becomes jimmy or james or and then the baby becomes james or jimmy and that's the cycle of james but we're not gonna richard would be one they're not naming people richard anymore well i think finally they said enough with the dick joke like if it's just gonna be rich or richie yeah yeah no dicks though no dicks

no dicks here a name i really liked growing up that a kid in my school had was rocco i was like that's fun that's a kid on general hospital i would not falconary now that you say that full name i'm gonna tell you right now i would not be shocked if i found a lot of similarities of naming patterns of your soap operas and where i grew up in marine county yep like there are parents like literally thought it would be funny to like name a kid i don't want to say his first and last name so let's like say his last name was like smith or smiths and so they named him like smith smiths yeah because like that'd be funny why would your name shouldn't be a joke no no and i'm like thank god like these kids are cool so like it works and they can they're fine

but what was smith's last name on you didn't watch sex in the city what you did what are you talking about smith jared smith jared oh my god sorry you're saying i didn't watch it and you're asking of course i know smith jared's last name sorry sorry sorry unless i own the box set of dvds of sex in the city and i refuse to donate them even though they are i still have them why aren't you watching and just like that i think it ended wonderfully which iteration the movies or the tv show there you go so when i watched the tv show the tv show ended that's the end and then i watched this thing that's brand new that is not based on any original ip which is the first movie and i'm like this is kind of fun and then i watched the second movie one time and then i said

what is that never again i feel like the and just like that fixes a lot of things that was wrong in the second but also not just the second movie but sex in the city as a whole yeah but then also makes his own problems of just being poorly written but i cannot get enough of it i maybe i should i need to get moss into it and like watching it and then he'll want to watch the show i've been yeah it's just the issue is like it's so long that i don't know how i don't think you need to catch him up like i think you can come in just pick my favorite episodes i don't even think that i think you can just come in with like yes this is a brand new show i just think that he would like original saxony city i want to show him the baseball episode there's a lot we are

skipping we're skipping the russian he's gonna hate that you should do the pot episode yeah the the lady who jumps out who falls out of the window that's the one i was thinking of that fell it falls out yeah i was like smoking yes that's what it was she wanted to smoke um the post-it note that's gonna get him right in there i think you you you should watch that that one is one that you should watch for context because he does come back second season unfortunately we do need to watch charlotte struggle and then come back on top you know what struggle episode you should see with charlotte the one where she's trying to have sex to try and his penis won't get hard and she ties it charlotte is unhinged as fuck she's so and everyone's like

i'm a charlotte i'm like charlotte's a freak she's the most freaked out of all of it even samantha she's a quiet freak yeah yeah if someone's not telling you what they're doing you should be concerned yes samantha's laying it all out in the public the thing is is that charlotte is doing it with a smaller group of a smaller number of men so she's getting all her freaks samantha was just having sex with a lot of different but also like some of the biggest freaks you'll know are people who are in long-term relationships because they've been they're trying to they they need to spice it up yes yeah freaks yep well so the fun part about what we're doing today is we actually got a lot of updates today and we were like what if we do an update

episode and the fact that like oftentimes we'll only pick one update and so then if we get a couple in like the timing of them is a little bit later but these are all three recent things we talked about yeah and we have updates for all of them so like let's just do it let's do it we're gonna start with a don't blame them though and don't blame them is where someone will write in or call in with their own advice pertaining to a call or submission we had on a previous episode so they are giving their own advice it could be from personal experience or whatever anything um and they're just spreading the wealth helping out a little bit more and i just want to say when y'all write in for updates or don't blame then please let us know what episode it came from because when

you say the recent episode of don't blame me we don't i don't know when we're going to actually read it so it's not technically the recent episode and um also give us a little summary of it just in case we forget and also we've often we are we've already recorded more than you've heard so it's not the most recent for us but also i would find it helpful tell us the episode it's from but then tell us what specific part because sometimes people say the episode but then the call that they're talking about isn't from the title call and i'm like wait what yeah all right so this is the one where someone had called in about how they dress a certain way and they hate how men stare at them when they go out. This person says, I really felt this girl struggle. Sometimes I

don't want to leave the house because I feel so objectified, especially by men in van slash cars. For me, having the sense that there's a million eyes staring down at me made me walk with my head down slash feel ashamed of my body and definitely affected what I wore. But I started to give these men the death stare back, just stare deep into their souls as if to say, hi, I'm not an object. I'm actually a person and I see you and I know what you're thinking, et cetera, or just give them a dirty look and makes them feel shame. It can be fun unless there's a chance for it to get dangerous also for the caller listening to kendrick or other self-empowering music often helps me walking around i feel like a bad man and that these ugly men should be terrified of me lol

easier said than done but i hope this helps the caller she is so far from being alone yeah it's unfortunately a universal truth but i noticed yesterday on my walk that like my default face is scowling and people and i also saw online someone was talking about uh i might be paraphrasing because i might be just taking everything else i think they called it the winter soldier walk which i'm like maybe i'm just horny for bucky and i was like that's what i i interpreted are you i love oh i i not with the long hair i thought we talked about him before and you were like yuck or maybe it's just the actor no no i think sebastian stan okay is he can he can he can get it oh yeah not all the time though because similar to rami malek he's an incredible actor and when

he takes on a role of someone who is slimy somehow he becomes visibly slimy yeah i love him and i thought for some reason that you didn't no no i love him that's how but no no that's how you got me into actually enjoying captain america because you were like i promise because i was like i can't look at this what am i watching for you're like you just have to get through this you gotta get the other ones and then you'll like them and then when he popped up i said me likey yeah me like you and i'm seeing this man oh he was in gossip girl too which is crazy to think about book book somebody should make an edit to that okay

oh classic a classic classic just goofing off with your friend in class day before summer break we are aligned we are so aligned yeah um but this walk this walk so like basically like people were saying that it's like it's a very heavy footed walk that like and everyone in the comments was like oh me a tall bitch with flat feet did that already do this naturally and that's what my and that's what my walk like that's you know what it is big stomp energy i the other day i was driving with my top down as in my car not my tits out um but a man was driving beside me hooting and hollering and i mean literal and i was like the fuck is going on i thought maybe there was something wrong with my car yeah like maybe the trunk is open i would have been able

to see that but i thought yeah but something something's wrong something no i look over and he is full of lust and i just like glared at him and then sped off good what kind of car was he in fuck a truck no i so he could see right down to my car that's the part that i find like so when i had the bug i'm like no you when your car could eat my car alive you need to you you need to assume the personality of your car like you need to know that like i'm in something that is could literally drive over this person i'm not gonna be like hey little lady i i'm taking that as a threat yep i'm taking that as a fucking threat except i know my transformer would be so much nicer than your transformer okay all right we're gonna take a break and we get back

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Conditions apply. Visit ScotiaBank.com slash H-I-S-A to learn more. ScotiaBank. You're richer than you think. we are back from our break i guess i should give you the lowdown if you want to call in for an upcoming episode and then you can give us an update maybe we'll do a whole other update episode of people like this um but you can give us a call at 310-694-0976 international listeners uh send an audio message to meganpodcast.gmail.com anybody can also just email type out what you want to say

keep it under 300 words that email address you can fill out the form that is listed in the show notes it's also listed in our bio on all of our social and for all of it you have to be 18 or over let us know your age it's all anonymous and write the circumstance situation you found yourself in that you want our advice on we give you advice and hey you might be someone who also can give us an update or you can be someone who's given us multiple updates and we've like built a saga of understanding your life yeah first update hi i'm the one with a quote-unquote friend who loves sending voice memos and I'm here with an update. So when I wrote to you, I was already responding like once a week to her. She would send me eight. Oh my God. She would send me eight voice messages

and I would respond with like one or two. So when I saw that this doesn't work, I just responded with a text to her voice message and lied and said that my baby is now very sensitive. And if I talk, she'll wake up from her nap. And so I only respond when she naps. I love lies. And she never responded to me crying laughing we saw each other at our mutual friends and her husband's housewarming party she even brought a fruit pouch for my baby oh and she hasn't texted me or sent a voice message since so i think i'm in the clear thanks for your advice and help so the episode that this was in was called nude beach fomo and it aired on april 24th 2025 also the way i was like nude beach fomo like people tell us about ourselves that i don't even remember constantly that they

remember this and i go what are you talking about i don't remember at all that's why i gave that little precursor at the top because sometimes i forget and i have a pretty good memory but we do so many of these it's hard to keep up with all of them when someone i will the one that will always be like a reoccurring hilarious one to me is like the fried cum and i and we were disgusted people said that they go bitch we're referencing you you both did that we're both like us and then we had the same exact conversation allegedly i don't we were aghast and proceeded to have the exact same conversation that they were referencing they go yeah that's what happened afterwards maybe i was like okay well i guess it does kind of sound like me this because we we actually just

did that okay i don't want to like make more problems for you but bringing a baby a fruit pouch that's like really sweet maybe it was like a an olive branch was it an olive flavored fruit pouch like a charcuterie board themed fruit pouch and it was like a it was a representative of an olive branch of like i'm gonna stop sending you voice memos maybe but it's a fruit pouch that's true i mean if i brought someone a fruit pouch i'd have to like go buy one yeah make a singular one for that except i actually don't because i do drink them i was gonna say i i love a fucking fruit pouch there are some like kid and toddler snacks that i'm like great when my nephew was into puffs which were these i don't know what they are slightly

slightly peanut buttery ish but mostly look like packing peanuts and seemingly tasted like them you can eat packing peanuts i know you can't is it just cornstarch or something i forgot but i know that in a science class my teacher he once a year he would get some shipment in and then would do a science lesson around packing peanuts because it was a specific thing that he needed to order once a year and then he would do the lesson and then we would all eat them and honestly disgusting I don't know who's

touched that I don't know what's been crawling on and also like we know that like they're porous they absorb things so whatever people are touching it it's soaking up all those juices yuck because it's not only to cushion but also

to keep moisture off yeah like those little silica pouches which honestly the amount of times they said don't eat those i was like okay i was never thinking about eating them but like now i kind of want to eat a pop rock instead i love pop rocks what about baby bottle pops did you like those baby bottle pop baby bottle pop because it got too sticky because you had to dip it and then lick it and too sticky yeah i was one of those kids who just like pour the stuff in the mix yeah but then at that point you might as well just have a pixie

stick no i mean i don't think i think i was mostly doing the for some reason baby bottle pops were like cool and it was like oh my god like look at it's like having a smoothie at school like you're like it's a it's a prop um i don't think i was doing much of the dipping the only thing i liked pouring in my mouth was uh if it could be pop rocks i wasn't a lot of pop rocks so instead i would do emergencies i would drive not the same thing emergencies that's disgusting it also needs to be activated with water so it wasn't even like you weren't getting the what you needed from it no what i needed from it was a tasty fizzy delight in my mouth like it was nothing health related it was just that was what i had access to yeah don't be too

everyone or your kids something will they they won't it's not good the kids are not all right they're just not no i did love a pixie stick uh like fun dip that's what i was trying i was like what's it called with the dip and the stick yeah that's like an old one that they i remember they brought it back and like all the parents were like oh my god fun dip and i was like what the fuck is this shit yeah fun dip was cool what else that this probably wasn't allowed for you and i think it might have got banned by the time you were eating it but it was like shredded gum that they would call tobacco chewing tobacco yeah we had a really old so like in my town we didn't have any like chain stores so we had sherman's general store which was like

they had like games and kids stuff and some like i spy books and whatever and candy and i swear to god they had not placed an order for candy since 1978 so like there were like mars bars that when you like any of the chocolate had that like white dusty stuff on the top which is just like the blooming of it it's still fine to eat but like it's old but it just we also had that gum which you couldn't even blow but like it was so old fresh you couldn't blow because it wasn't actually it was just chewy and it pretty much disintegrated in your mouth yeah i remember i was just i never liked bubble i wasn't like a bubble gum flavored person i liked what's that i liked big red big red hit yeah but we also like that one gum that was like a zebra and like

yeah the tattoos yeah i like that one i liked anything with an activity yeah that was that was a good time it was what about the um uh the like like the squeezy jelly candy that's like in a tube hated that disgusting never ate it i don't like jello and that was just a softer jello but i love jelly oh wow we're so different i love jello i'm not a huge jelly fan love a good strawberry jello i mean jelly hate jello makes my head hurt that's so unique i know huh i wonder if it's a gelatin thing i mean i eat a lot of other things that contain gelatin but maybe it's like more highly concentrated maybe all right uh we're gonna take a break when we get back we'll get to the next one

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one thing that hasn't is that fuzzy feeling you get when WestJet welcomes you on board. Here's to WestJetting since 96. Travel back in time with us and actually travel with us at WestJet.com slash 30 years. All right, shall we get back into it? We, yes. You sure? Yes. The thing is, I was going to finish what I said, but then you asked a question.

so then I had to answer the question that you asked and it just tripped up in my brain for a second. That's fair. All right. So now we have an update to that person that didn't want to go to the theme parks for their friend's birthday. And they start out by saying,

Melissa, my queen, I'm so sorry for spelling your name wrong. Please forgive me. I'll take it into consideration. I'm currently listening to the episode and going to provide more insight as requested one we live in maryland so august is peak heat and peak humidity and i believe what has now been declared a tropical environment at 90 humidity oh no it was like 88 here so quite literally a miserable environment to be outside and for longer than you need summers here are grueling also you can't breathe in that yeah

you need nebulizer you're like wet and can't breathe no thank you if i'm gonna be wet and can barely breathe might as well be fucking i just look i'm gonna skate past that one i just looked at the maryland weather on the apple app this saturday it will be 90 degrees and just raining all day that's too much yeah like it has lower humidity than la right now that's a big misconception everyone thinks la is dry heat and dry cold no it's medium it is it's for it's a medium humidity some days it will get like humid here but our winters are wet winters i'm not talking about the rain i'm saying that everything feels damp yeah all right and then two the park of six flags america what sorry no i just i'm picturing maryland at 90 degrees raining at

six flags america which is actually shutting down after this summer they're all shutting down i wonder how that old dancing man is gonna do like what's he gonna do now 40s and now they're 70 they're doing backflips i don't think they were 40 yeah just like martha stewart in that that commercial no yeah because that was without definitely hurt yeah i saw it i saw her blonde hair flipping yep i actually saw the man that did it on tiktok uh where was i because i got interrupted again shutting down this summer because of low attendance which have to be honest does not make me feel great about the condition and care of the rides themselves the food is not great

The staff is not fabulous. It is just not an ideal situation. She's doing it for the nostalgia because she grew up going, but when we were kids, there were two groups, Six Flags Kids and Hershey Park Kids. I was a Hershey Park Kid because my mom knew I didn't like rides, and similar to Disneyland, Hershey has other activities for people who aren't into rides. I also, when I lived in Pennsylvania, was going to hershey a lot too and that chocolate i have also been i don't think i went on any rides though no i don't think i did either i went for the food yeah i went for the little tour i went for the chocolate i loved watching the videos of them making the kisses i love that three i ended up doing exactly as you said and was honest with her i'm scared of roller coasters so would love

to take you out for dinner instead she was super understanding thank you ladies for responding to my submission and yes that is my email signature i used to work in event production and it just became a phrase i was known for so eventually it became my email signature thank you so much again do you remember what it was no half-ass full-ass or something like yeah it was something that i was like um adopting that into my lexicon like that's like what a great phrase catchphrase to have whole ass and not half assing i'd flopped it but that's so good it is like so so so good um yeah this this sounds like my personal hell also as someone who has only time i have ever been to Hershey Park was the middle of summer it would have been like the same time it would have been

like early August or like end of July probably around early August I was usually there from in Pittsburgh for my birthday like that was the weather is like so crazy I remember I I almost died and I didn't know it and my cousin saved my life we were in the community pool splashing around and then it started thundering and I was like crazy and then everybody started and it started raining everyone just started hopping out of the pool and i was like i don't know like seven and like didn't really think much of it and i might have been younger like five and my cousin grabbed like saw that i was still in the pool and i probably only kid in the pool at that time and i wasn't rushing to get out and he just like grabbed me and like pulled me out and he was a big kid

pulled me out as fast as possible two seconds later lightning hit the pool and i was like oh what okay and it was like it just like that pivot and i would not want to be on a metal ride during that kind of unpredictable weather like yeah had no idea it was going to rain let alone thunder and lightning yeah and i don't want to die at six flags well six flags isn't there i'm assuming you have the same weather i don't know how close they are together if you're going to hershey and they're pretty close we used to pop over i know dc isn't maryland but it's basically over there maryland's like the one of the only baltimore we go to baltimore yeah we when we lived in pennsylvania we would just hop in the car and we're popping

over to places all the time new york baltimore but it wasn't that it was just that everything just seemed so close and we'd just go it was easy to get to a lot of different places i mean i drove we would drive all the way we would drive from connecticut to pittsburgh yeah it was kind of long though i mean we would be we had this big conversion van i think i've showed you a picture of it before and so it had big comfortable seats you could lay the back out like a bed which i think is illegal now um and it had a tv and a vcr yeah not like up it was like in the middle so you could just look straight on so get in goof watch the goofy movie take a nap and then we're there no when i am reincarnated i want to be reincarnated as one of your sisters like that

sounds so fucking fun like that was my i had i like finally again as a theme like a little bit older than i always wanted them but i finally got like a handheld portable dvd player that like if you went over a bump it skipped and i was like oh my god but i used to like look at like on tv shows or whatever of like those families had like a lot of kids and they pile into like one of those big old play and i was like looks like we're going on a tour like that's so fun it was fun it really was they also had and this was you know before ipods and things it also had like individual at each seat you could put your own like cassette player and then put headphones in and listen it was the best van like it was perfect get we need to get that van i know we need to go on tour

in that van well i mean but we need to get a version a version of that van yes that's like the van from like my like decom dreams like that is like oh my god that's so cool damn damn all right uh we're gonna take a break when we get back we'll get into the next one We'll be right back. Bank dot com slash H.I.S.A. to learn more. Scotiabank. You're richer than you think. We are back and it is time for our final one. This is an update on wanting to elope. this is an update to someone who had called in about breaking up with their boyfriend permanently it's been on off broke up got back together and he had cheated and had been very

toxic and they had been together like really first relationship ever like been together for a long time should i just handle this and settle for these things in this behavior that he says now he's really going to put in the work and change should i take him back even though i'm finally done with it but he's saying this he's going to change and i'm worried that i'm not going to find anybody anyone better when i talk to my friends about it they're saying i should forgive him and that like you know nobody's perfect and reminder this is a serial cheater so this is their update thanks for the advice some thoughts i don't believe that those friends have bad intentions but they can't necessarily give good relationship advice and i'm keeping

that in mind i'm closer to the friends saying breakup but i worry about being annoying such overbearing i have very few close friends only one in my city and i don't want to put too much burden on my only friendships i've tried winning clubs but generally struggle to find people i could such want to be close with i also just graduated so it's an awkward spot and i and fear potentially moving somewhere new and having to start over making friends which has constantly been which has consistently been really difficult for me my parents are an active problem but due to trauma i'm not comfortable leaning on them besides for financial support i know they'd want to help if i ask but we also don't have a relationship where their comfort support is

necessarily helpful the feelings that i'm difficult a lot to handle annoying overbearing etc are my own feelings insecurities worries not things he said to me since breaking up he has shown some improvement and stated his desire to change for both myself both for himself and us he wants me to be with someone better for me but he thinks he can be that person but i agree he should want what's best for me with or without him i've tried several antidepressants over the past three and a half years i'm concerned about trying new ones because i've had side effects of the others the idea of moving and having more life to live is difficult because my depression is so severe i can't necessarily look ahead and feel hopeful or excited at what else is down the road i think

it's time for a genetic test for what antidepressants will metabolize best in your body like you're the perfect candidate for that and that is like readily or much more readily available than it has been in the past um and i will say i am not a doctor uh but learning that like side effects have like essentially like a shelf life like for a lot of time like getting used to a medication like for three months you might have like shitty fucking side effects and like some are like adverse reactions not side effects but like you should eventually not have any of those side effects anymore so like giving something like the shot that it needs to see if it works in that and then be like okay these side effects aren't going this is helping this is not helping

but i think the mental health still needs to be your number one priority and i will not lie i am worried that it sounds like you're going to get back together with this guy please don't yeah don't because and you're even saying like i you know these insecurities of mine are on me they're not him but i'm telling you right now him cheating on you does not help that you know i mean like his behavior it is a non-verbal way of confirming the negative feelings you have about yourself someone who treats you poorly and who you let treat poorly who let treat you poorly it that is a reflection of your own value of yourself not how much you are valued but how much you view your value and i also want to say like you said you don't believe that those friends have bad intentions

those aren't your close friends so they don't actually know you so don't i i firmly believe you shouldn't be talking about your relationship to everybody because they don't truly know you and you're saying that you're close the friends that you're closer to are saying to break up to them so why why are we listening to people that barely know you yeah and also like this sounds like you do have friends like what are we not we're saying that this is not like you don't have very many friends but like i guess like what are we considering that but now you're saying that you're recently just graduated i could understand if like you're you're kind of like in the your peers or like you're used to like big social groups of people have like that people have like

that's not really what people have into like adulthood like to me it sounds like you have friends but you are really just getting in your own way you're getting in your own way of your friendships you're getting in your own way of you're breaking up with it like you're getting in your own way of all of this and like i understand being at a place where you're like you know i met an impasse like i don't want to do this but i also don't want to do this but i don't want to do this you have to make a choice and making no choice is still making a choice yeah and it requires the same amount of thought the same amount of effort as making a choice and like you have to deal with the consequences and i think like in this situation this is one of those things

where it's like okay i can feel exhausted about the you know like the side effects that i've experienced for this but ultimately i also think that like when we talk about like the thing that helped me was because i was nervous about side effects for birth control which is obviously different but like i realized that like my period was the condition i was dealing with and the side effects were cramps that were so immobilizing cysts rupturing like tanking mental like all of these things that i'm like oh okay now i'm picturing that this is a medication that i am taking that's making me feel like this i need to try something else to not have these feelings and these like life side effects of this where it's like as opposed to being like this is like my

constant and if i introduce anything else into this that's going to be like a new side effect but like depression has side effects you know i mean like depression has side effects of other things too and it there are things that are a trade-off but like i think sometimes we can get comfortable with like the state that we we already know we recognize like it's like the devil you know versus the devil you don't and that kind of a thing but ultimately the something exists out there to help and like the thing that's I've always found helpful is like when doctors are like in general there's like a handful of people who are like so medically complex but like not like just because you haven't found success for that does not mean even in medical standards it's

a medically complex thing and even if it is medically complex there are other alternatives and different treatments and all that stuff but i think it's going to be really hard to put yourself first and even like make friendships and you're saying like having a hard time with like you know if you're gonna have to move and like start over and all of these things i think until you start putting yourself first you're not going to be able to do anything that requires you to put yourself first and moving and you're saying you're like in an awkward spot because you fear that moving somewhere new having to start over making friends has been difficult for you like me and megan both moved to la it was i knew my cousin that was here and that was it and

he worked a lot and we and honestly him and i we've seen each other more in the last few years than we've seen each other our whole lives and because we didn't grow up he was here in california he was in santa barbara and i was in arkansas we i remember like visiting him a few times and seeing him a few times during my childhood but we weren't friends by any means and then like the friends i mean i've been here for 14 years now like the friends that i initially met that i had for a minute were like from an internship but i would just go places the thing is is like when you move somewhere you have to like go places and going places where where you meet new people join an activity if you're alumni group i met a lot of people through like my

alumni group that's how i met katherine is that they were having a watch party for alumni to come to and like just you it's making new friends i feel is difficult only if you don't go places yeah if you don't put yourself out there yeah um but you can also make friends online yeah but like if you you want in-person friends you just have to put yourself out there and go and it is scary but like i think it's scarier not to have friends yeah i think so too and like if i think about this way like i forget how old this person was what 20 i think 22 22 because i was gonna say 21 yeah melissa and i didn't even know each other when i was 21 like i think there's like like depression has a way of like narrowing your your worldview and like you have a really hard

time putting things in a bigger picture perspective which like is very normal and very typical and because of that you can then end up settling for things because it feels like well this is all i have at this point i'm having a hard time looking forward into the future and to that like a therapist will help a psychiatrist therapist all those things will help make that so you can widen your scope of like how you view you know the world and life and all of these things so you can make decisions that are centering you and your happiness forward but i think when you're not happy and you're like just like really miserable it's like really easy to like let other people contribute to you feeling miserable and like being shitty to you or whatever just because like at a

certain point like and and i i'm not a believer in like until you love yourself like how are you gonna love anybody else but like i think you don't have to necessarily like have like so much self love to love someone else i think the healthiest way to love someone is to have a lot of self-love but i think that you're you have a hard time accepting love from people when you don't when you're not caring for yourself there's there's so many options and so many things to try and like it can be exhausting totally but like to be super honest with you all of this sounds exhausting like these shitty friends aren't exhausting this fucking ex-boyfriend sounds exhausting and like you can hop back on that train, do the old rigmarole again, but I think you're going to

end up exactly where you are right now again. And you might be even more tired about like figuring out what medication works for you and doing genetic testing and all of that. And all it takes is like one day of having the energy and the capacity to like make the doctor's appointment and then waiting however long until that. And then you need one day of the energy to do the appointment and like it it can be a day-by-day sort of a thing agree all right that's it what an episode what an update hags have a good summer have a kick-ass summer is that what you signed in your books i forgot about that till you said right now i don't want to find my old yearbooks i mean i don't have them i'm sure mine have been

thrown away. How much were your yearbooks? I don't remember. Probably like $70. I don't know. Seems right. Yeah. I think we had one that was like, if you were late buying them, of course I was, it ended up being like $120. They just

kept increasing the price. And I was like, well, I'm the only one in our class who hasn't bought one. So this feels targeted. Because I forget. We hope you all enjoyed this little update episode. we hope you have a kick-ass summer had so much fun getting to know you this year hope we're in the same homeroom next year thanks for letting me cheat off of you and what else do you say to your

book i'm writing on your crack does it tickle whoa did you ever do that one no you wrote on the inseam of the winds open and then i'm right i'm writing on your crack oh my god that is so funny we used to always like say sex we i think we literally had one like stay sexy i think we literally did like stay sexy stay golden pony boy there was some acronym but i can't remember i don't know but the the crack one that one really yeah it's a good one and you and the thing is you want it to be the first one because you couldn't do it once somebody already did totally it doesn't tickle you're not closing up the crack now that's so funny still my favorite is and i didn't realize this until like way later when i was going through

and reading my yearbook stuff um was a guy that i hooked up with in high in high school he wrote in my yearbook megan it was good getting to know you in quotations getting to know you this year and i was like the biblical sense why did you write thanks for the fuck like had fun fucking you essentially in my yearbook like that is fucking crazy and because he's like i gotta write in your yearbook and i was like okay we're friends for sure go for it and when i get it back a month later i looked and i was like are you kidding me i have to show i eventually if i show my future children i was like what does that mean well he was inside mommy he's not your daddy but he was inside mom oh all right uh yeah that's we're gonna be playing um repeat episodes for

the next week if you have anything that you would specifically like us to hear i can't guarantee that i'll be able to find it but we'll get diane on the case our resident researcher keep in touch yeah k stay cool i think it would be k-i-t we put like kit oh keep in touch what about this one lilas love you like a sis well yeah but that was just how we would sign notes that we were passing oh my god i'm on reddit and i asked like yearbook signups and someone i didn't realize it was on the ask old people subreddit because someone said be a good girl lead a good life but don't be a mother before you're a wife and then someone said catholic school and they said rural midwest like okay yeah that was not yeah somebody okay

oh don't ever change yeah that was a good one that was a good one did you go to the like gym and everybody had time to sign that was only senior year that we were able to do that yeah we had like senior night but like people would they bring their yearbooks like everywhere i'm sure we did that but like i did have a habit of not getting my yearbook on i routinely have never gotten my yearbook on time quite literally ever um there was one time in middle school my eighth grade yearbook i did not get until after school uh the day after school was over and so then i just wrote in me my friend wrote in my yearbook as other like as people at our school pretending so there was we had an aide in our PE class named Mark and he used to wear these he's where these

really really tight shirts and so I literally wrote a whole thing and then signed it Mark the ill-fitting PE the ill-fitting tanked up PE guy. Yikes I did do now remember though like there were only certain teachers that I wanted to write in my yearbook yes and then like the emotions that would overcome me when i would read their message and i'm just like they're probably sick as fuck of writing this shit and trying to come up with something original but some of them were very like my cheer coaches would always write like very long heartfelt ones and then like my english teacher i feel like yeah like there was just a lot of the ones that i wanted were sweet my physics teacher Mr. Jinx. So cool. I loved him. I love that. All right. Well, bye. Okay. Bye.

This is a Sister Sign production hosted by me, Megan Rinks. And me, Melissa D. Montz, plus Diamond Imprint Productions. Post-production by Coco Lorenz. Production assistance by Melanie D. Watson. And music by Ryan Hunter and Giacomo Picasso. Thank you.