There is a line between acknowledging the horrible reality, and being completely submerged in that and can’t see the flowers next to the dirt road, and can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. I have a similar tendency as you described, but with my partner I’m able to notice that a bit of positivity I lack is essential to survive every day. A lot of people have traumatic pasts but move forward by seeing the hope in the hopeless, enjoying the simple things in life when they have the means to do so. I would say becoming positive and hopeful should be a prerequisite to getting into a relationship, otherwise you only have a shaky foundation and both of you will fall over.

“You asked for a plague when you said no to vaccines, now here we are!”

This is more of an indication that the USSR had a functional public education system, and the dictatorship style, top down style education is indeed good at hammering (STEM based) academic skills into young brains. Arguably, most other non third world countries are doing a better job at the public school system than the US

Agreed with DistressedDad@lemmy.ca, you can see the long distance as opportunity to focus on yourself and people around you more, and enjoy the last few years at school, it’s a time you can learn so much from so many people. I had similar challenges, but the socializing efforts I made to make a few friends save my ass at a few critical times.

meet someone who is thoroughly fucked up (as am I), but who is keeping it in check? Because, yes, I am attracted to the existential grit brought about by hardships. I like someone with dirty hands, someone who has good reasons to not be optimistic or generally cheerful, someone who has seen the things beneath the flesh and is now knee-deep in the abyss.

I would say yes, this increases your chances of finding toxic partners by a lot. A lot of people can have hardships and have the “grit” but some of them stay positive and move forward while others keep the pessimism and the trauma unhealed. And as people with past trauma know, it’s gonna take a long time to properly heal, and having a positive life attitude and outlook is essential in that process. I am one of those with past trauma so I am not trying to be against them, but there is a reason that a lot of terrible criminals had terrible childhoods. Of course, others can become overachievers or great people too, but the correlation is there. If you want to find relatable partners, there are things beyond life hardships you can try to relate to.

That’s too bad, thanks for sharing. For now I’m using Boost’s built in Lemmy search but it’s not as smart as querying reddit results from Google or even reddit’s search itself. Hopefully someone will rewrite & revive this project.

It seems like the search engine is not working anymore, redirects to a personal portfolio page. Any updates?

Jessica Aber is dead.