What should I do with my life?

January 3, 2019 4:58 AM

I am in desperate need of advice and/or help. What follows is an account of my sad predicament. It is perhaps a rather long account, for which I apologize. In truth, I am lost, and so I approach the Oracle, as our ancestors used to do. It’s what I’ve come to.

Let me just say that one reason is because I have loved and trusted this website for many years, have come to view it as a great treasure. I have never participated much here, but I have always been continually impressed and inspired by the wisdom, humanity and light shared here. I’m currently not big on wisdom or light, so pardon me.

Also… should you read this and then wish to offer me harsh words of reproof and condescension, please know that there is nothing you could say to me which I have not already beaten myself up with countless times. I accept responsibility for ruining my life, there’s absolutely no need to salt my wounds. What I am hoping and praying for is help and guidance.

I am now, incredibly, 57 years old. I am English, male, the unplanned third child of working-class parents. Indulged by my selfless mother as a child, I managed to grow up with almost no work ethic. It could even be said that for most of my life, I have had a child-like and imperfect understanding of the need to ‘get on in life’, and be a ‘provider’.

Without really knowing why or what for, I managed to get into university in the UK back in 1981. Although I am pretty bright and capable, I was not a really good student. I just didn’t know how to be, perhaps. Away from home for the first time in my life, away from the restrictions and influence of my parents, I went a bit crazy as many do. My first ever girlfriend became pregnant, (neither of us should have been allowed out unsupervised.) Raised Catholic, the idea of abortion appalled me. I told my girl we could just get married, have the child, start a family, even though we were just students at college. And so we did.

It soon became clear to both of us that ours was a relationship which would never have endured outside of this situation we had brought about. We created a little piece of hell for ourselves. I lost all focus on study and took it into my head that I could just drop out of school and still be some kind of success, but really I just didn’t know what I was doing. My professors and tutors advised me to just take the rest of the year off, return the next year and finish. (I had actually completed very nearly all of the course, I did everything except sit the final exams.) You could still do that easily in those days, this was long before the days of student loans and students not being eligible for welfare benefits during the holidays.

But then my wife (who had managed to finish her Maths degree whilst I took over most of the childcare etc.), was offered a good job in computing in another part of the country, and so we moved and I became a kind of stay-at-home father. It was not an easy time I’m afraid, as domestic life was generally not blissful (I have to take my share of the blame for that.) Life was lonely and I was usually depressed. Time passed by with my every effort to get a job failing, I slid into a feeling of hopelessness. I started a degree course with the Open University, but before I finished my wife had decided she wanted a divorce and to be with her old boyfriend. I was broken up by losing my home and my son, and the whole thing was just a terrible trauma. I had to move back to my parents’ home, I was just too messed up to know what to do, how to progress. It was another 3 years before I decided I needed to move out and do a 1 year course in newspaper journalism at the local college, a qualification which could have got me a job with a local newspaper or some such.

I had to get a student loan this time, financially it was tough. I regret to say I had still not learned my lesson about being a good student. I had got into the habit of smoking a lot of weed to try and feel happier, but of course I should have been spending my evenings practising shorthand and studying law. I managed to fail both exams at the end of the course.

But by then I had decided I was in love with a girl I had met. We moved in together and were generally very happy. Only thing was, I couldn’t get a job to save my life. Even after successfully completing a course in using QuarkXpress, Photoshop and Illustrator, I was turned down again and again when applying for suitable work, and after a while just kind of sank into a life of unemployment, drug use, and general negativity. No surprise of course that after 10 years, my girl had enough. She left me broken-hearted, but looking back I cannot of course blame her.

So it was 2003. I was living alone in the house I had shared for years with my partner, and quite honestly, I was in a terrible state. I was desperate for a change, a way to get away from the environment I was in, every day I felt terribly depressed and lost, heading for a nervous breakdown.

You may know how it goes at such times. One day I was on the internet, looking at the Friends Reunited website, (remember that?) And then I found myself in contact with an old friend from my university days, this person and I had shared some things, great conversations, ideas and ideals. She had gone into teaching and was now working abroad in China teaching ESL. Hearing about my problems, she suggested that working abroad for a while might be an answer, and I became consumed with the idea to do so. My friend told me that she could help me get a job in China, someone she knew was quitting a certain school and they needed a replacement. It seemed she was unaware that I had never actually finished my course and graduated, and I was too embarrassed to tell her the truth.

Without quite knowing what I was doing, I let her pass on my email address to the school. Almost at once I got an email from the school in China, which was actually a medical school attached to a small Chinese university. The HR chap there asked me to send him my CV, and scans of my ‘TEFL Certificate’ and university diploma. I sent a CV, on which I lied and said I had graduated in 1984. I downloaded images of a degree certificate and TEFL qualification and used my Photoshop skills to produce convincing-looking fake scans.

I did not really think this would fly. I can’t say for sure what I thought was likely to come out of it, but I had some idea of just getting away to a new place, treating it as a kind of working holiday… until such time as I got found out and put on a plane home. I mean I honestly didn’t believe that I was going to succeed in posing as a graduate, (even though I look and sound like one.) The HR guy basically asked me in an email if I was willing to come to China, told me to go to the Chinese embassy in the UK and get a tourist visa and just come. Once you’re here he said, we’ll just get you a working visa and a residency permit. And so… that’s exactly what I did. I think in some part of my mind, this was just another of my many futile attempts to do something good in my life, to make some kind of difference to the world. Every day I was expecting an email telling me that my CV and qualifications did not check out and that the deal was off. But it never came.

I went to China, giving up almost everything I owned. I went with good intentions. I had decided to quit smoking weed and focus on learning Chinese and figuring out how to be a good teacher. I decided to live a blameless life (except for the initial deceptions) and be a good citizen, until the inevitable discovery, and in my silly hapless way, I thought by then I would have accrued some valuable experience and perhaps even figured out what to do with it.

Of course it was tremendously tough for me at first. Culture shock is a very real thing, especially for someone who had never ventured further than Paris before. Also, although I had completed a 1 year teaching adult learners course at a local college, I had almost no actual teaching experience. The Chinese department heads and leaders at the school seemed disorganised, intellectually weak, ineffectual, incapable of providing effective guidance. My first 2 years on the job were very challenging. I was told privately that the school leaders were not impressed by my performance and were considering not renewing my contract.

Yet… all through this time, my bona fides were never questioned. Nor was I ever asked to show the original copies of my ‘qualifications’, (I had none of course.)

I found life to be desperately lonely and I was still in that period of my life when I believed I needed a woman in my life, that that would make me happy. So needless to say I allowed a relationship to form between myself and a Chinese woman. Let’s just say that I was hustled into marriage very quickly by a woman whose sole declared purpose was to have a child. She was nearly 30, had failed to develop any meaningful relationships with any men of her own country, and quite frankly was an abusive narcissist and a control freak with a fearsome temper. I ignored every warning sign through my usual weakness and fear of loneliness. Many times I actually tried to get away from her and finish the relationship, but she just would never actually let me go.

But at least in the third year at my job I started to break through. I read widely about how to improve my teaching and I spent many hours creating lesson plans and materials, for one of my courses I basically created my own syllabus from scratch. I designed extra-curricular tutorials and activities to give students more time to practise using English. Within a couple more years my stock at the school was soaring. I heard privately that the school leaders were delighted and wanted me to work there ‘for ever’. I was extremely popular with the students I taught and received lavish praise on anonymous survey and feedback materials I would once a year ask them to complete. Everyone liked and respected me… except my wife.

Home life was mostly miserable. If we went on a trip together somehow we always just ended up quarrelling and having a miserable time. And the desired pregnancy never happened until we resorted to visiting a private hospital in Hong Kong for fertility treatments. Finally in 2008, a son was born. Until I knew of his conception, I had already decided to return to the UK that year and not return, it was the only way I could think of to get away from my wife and the miserable loveless existence we shared.

Chinese men ‘friends’ whose advice and support I sought told me that once my wife had a child, she would calm down, straighten out, focus on motherhood and domestic bliss. Indeed during the pregnancy I was quite hopeful, as for the first time during the whole of our relationship, we seemed to go for months temper tantrum and abuse free. Unfortunately this did not last, probably could not. Shortly after the birth the old pattern started to reassert itself. I won’t go into details regarding the violent abusive behaviour I endured, let’s just say it included being attacked physically (sometimes with a large knife), frequently being reviled and wished dead (in front of my infant son), and generally being scorned, criticized and treated with blistering contempt. A lot of this would happen in front of the maid. On occasion even in public.

I am afraid I discovered how it was possible to purchase cannabis on the streets of Hong Kong and commenced monthly visits and old self-comforting ways, which of course enraged my ‘wife’. I began to be slightly stoned most of the time. It would have affected my work, except by then I had every single week and teaching session of both semesters running like clockwork from pre-prepared plans which had all worked well several times before. But at times I was indiscreet, and I’m afraid by now had a great opinion of myself, and couldn’t disguise the feeling, and for this of course you get resented and incur the jealousy and malice of small-minded power abusers connected to the spheres of influence.

Nevertheless, I might still be there now. Next comes the old fatal mistake. One day on the school bus I fell into conversation with a pretty young woman I’d never seen before, I assumed she was a new member of staff. She didn’t hide her interest in me and we exchanged phone numbers. I was for some reason quite beguiled, as I had not been for a very long time, and decided to invite her to a secret lunch at the weekend. She accepted happily, flirtatiously. I simply couldn’t resist. She was most unhappy to discover that I was married, but I told her how unhappy and meaningless my marriage was, and asked her if we could still be friends and meet from time to time. I truly had not resolved on seduction, a thing which I had no real experience in anyway. She seemed very glad with this idea.

I was surprised to discover that she was not a member of staff, but a post-graduate student. Now if she had been an undergraduate, I think I can say for sure that I would not have proceeded further. Not that I was really thinking rationally at this time. I had some idea that post-graduates were on quite a different level to the undergraduates, that they would be considered adult and independent. (I was basing this belief on the post-graduates I had encountered in my own college days.) I at no point considered how it would look to the world if such a liaison were to become public, I am afraid I quite lost my head and made myself believe that I could keep the whole thing under wraps until I was sure that this was all for real.

Well… I soon found myself having a full-blown affair. The one and only time in my life, for marital infidelity I mean. For a little while, I was secretly, deliriously happy. My wife must have known something was going on of course, she could not really avoid seeing my demeanour change from the usual oppressed misery to something recognizably joyful. At this time, although still living in the same apartment, days would pass without us even speaking to each other. It seemed clear to me that we were living in a sham that simply could not endure, and that she’d be glad when it was over.

One evening, after I went out for a 15 minute jog, I got back to the apartment to find her gone, my infant son sleeping in his cradle, no mother in attendance. Shocked and incredulous, I could only think some emergency had come up (she was always popping in and out for ‘business’ deals) and she had to go out, knowing I’d be back very soon. Then I realized my cell phone was missing. And then I realized that at that very moment my ‘wife’ would be reading every single intimate text message between myself and my girlfriend, because of course I hadn’t deleted a single one, they gave me such joy to read and re-read. Nor had I done so much as to password protect access to my phone, that is how naïve and clueless I was. So she got my girlfriend’s ‘real’ Chinese name, her phone number, found out that she was a ‘student’ at my own school, everything. And then she went to war. And I discovered just how little I mattered in the scheme of things.

Although I told my wife that I would be glad to immediately move out and agree to whatever divorce terms she wanted, just so long as I could see my son regularly, she was full of bitter resentment and seemed hell-bent on causing havoc. She wrote a long letter in Chinese to my employers. To this day I have no knowledge of the contents, but it was whispered to me privately that it was ‘dire’. My girlfriend (who was now receiving daily abusive and threatening text messages from my wife) was summoned by 2 of the ‘Deans’ and given a humiliating rail-roading, forbidden to even see me again on pain of expulsion. I myself was ignored, no one seemed to consider it necessary to hear my version of events, the question of respecting my privacy and right to arrange my own personal life never even entered into it. The only sympathetic member of the college brass told me, ‘it’s not personal or private as far as they are concerned, and your wife is using the system against you.’

I then discovered that my wife’s siblings were writing letters of complaint about me to the school, threatening to use their influence to blacken the school’s name. My girlfriend of course abandoned me. She went through hell actually. She told me that ‘no one will ever approve of our love.’ I think she must have endured the mockery and contempt of her peers and tutors. She even told me shortly after that her college tutor had taken to quietly inviting her to visit his apartment late in the evening, making suggestive remarks and so on. It still hurts me to even think about it.

Amazingly, I managed to keep the job for another year, (I can only think because I had been doing a good job and it was far from easy apparently for the school to attract foreign teachers who would or could put their heart into the work as I had.) But the writing was on the wall, and the whole thing took such a toll on my health and well-being that I took to smoking more, making no great attempt to hide my contempt for the college authorities, and generally refusing to go the extra mile for students and colleagues as I had always done before. I was also going mad with loneliness, grief and loss. I took for the first time ever to computer dating, trying pathetically to look for a little love and comfort, and finding none. But in doing so I had 3 ‘relationships’ with Chinese women. Being seen with a series of women soon got me the usual foreigner’s reputation of a dirty bed-hopper, and I soon discovered that my previous good name was gone. The following year my enemies made their move and I was fired, after 8 years of good service, my only real offence apparently being adultery. (I mean of course, the only offence other than my fakery.) I was crushed, to their delight. The only time in my life I ever made a difference, work-wise. “Haha! Did you think it would last for ever?” chortled the she-devil in charge of the ‘International Office’, (an acquaintance of my wife I believe.) “We’ll be glad to put you on the plane home.”

I have been on the skids ever since.

I haven’t said anything about how much I loved my little son. For his sake I took the only job I could find that would keep me in the same city, so I could still be near him and be there for him. It was teaching apathetic and typically extremely low ability teenagers in a local ‘vocational’ school. I endured three years of soul-destroying tedium and humiliation. Mentally handicapped kids being put into my classes because the parents didn’t wish to ‘lose face’ by having their child receive ‘special’ education. Kids from richer families who were basically good for nothing, just there to pass the time of day.

Then came the day I couldn’t keep that job. By this time the only thing that got me through the day was the thought of the spliff I would have when I could get out of the school, and seeing my son at the weekend. (I would never of course smoke when he was around.) And I just began to find it impossible to ‘teach’ in such a poxy little school, going through the motions, pretending that the kids were learning anything. After the experience of teaching bright and motivated doctors-to-be, it was really dining on ashes. I got so I just couldn’t cope with it I guess.

When I got finished up there it was a bitter blow however. No way to remain in the same city. I talked myself into a job at a business school in another city teaching IELTS reading and writing. I’d never done it before, but how hard could it be? I’m afraid I put less effort into it than I should have, but still did 2 years there and was considered a ‘great teacher’before the new wave of Chinese xenophobia caught up with me.

All through these years my whole life revolved around fortnightly visits to see my son, I would spend 18 to 24 hours travelling every fortnight just to see him for a day and a half. I’d given up on girlfriends, hell, I didn’t even really have any friends at all to speak of.

And then I took it into my head to try and get a job in an ‘international school’, I had started noticing more and more of these in China advertising for teachers, and I started building up this dream that I could get into one, start earning a lot more, and one day maybe my young son would be able to attend the school, that we might be together again for a while, and that I could give him this great gift, perhaps give him the chance of attending a western university one day.

At the time, I really didn’t understand the world of ‘international schools’. I had read about such schools in Europe and the US being very high class, providing an all-round English language education for children of mixed-race, children of expats, etc. I really had no idea then that ‘real’ international schools would never consider employing a teacher without a professional teaching qualification, (I didn’t have the guts to try faking that, and in any case rumors were going about the government of the new Chinese Stalin was planning to introduce a system that required the qualifications of all foreigners to be legally verified. I could sense that time was running out for me, I needed to find my ‘last job' in China before the window closed.)

So, in the early summertime of 2017, I was actually in need of a new job after I had rattled the cages of a few small-minded penpushers at the business school. I had applied for, and been offered 2 jobs already. One was teaching university level students, exactly the kind of work I had excelled at for 8 years. But the school was 2 hours outside Guangzhou, rural and remote. It would have added 4 hours at least to my fortnightly travel time to my son. The other offer was from a language school franchise, Wall Street English, teaching ‘VIP’ students in their homes. The job involved lots and lots of travel on the subway, usually working at the weekend and lots of late nights. I turned both jobs down, another great mistake.

I did so because I had responded to advertising from an ‘international school’ looking for new teachers. I had spoken on the phone to the recruiters and then the headmaster, a Harvard educated American who seemed utterly charming. I managed to convince him that I was worth “a seat on the bus” as he put it.

(I was actually worried to death the whole time that it would turn out that my fake qualifications would now need to be verified, and what the hell was I going to do then? But once again, and for the last time, I got away with it, and started working at the school in August 2017.)

I have really been going on and on, pardon me, I’m coming to the end.

It was pure folly on my part to join the ‘international school’. Had I done even a little research beforehand I would have discovered that the principal, deputy principal, and almost every single foreign member of staff were Mormons, recruited purposefully from the Mormon university in the US by a Chinese School Board member and his wife who were converts to that particular cult. In a private conversation with the Mormon games mistress I was told, ‘we’re not allowed to talk about our beliefs and our heavenly father… but that is our goal.’

Shortly after my appointment the school failed (again) to receive proper accreditation to even call itself an international school. Student behaviour and decorum quite frequently verged on the utterly appalling, and yet all the power was in the students’ hands. All of them being the pampered and indulged offspring of the new breed of Chinese parvenus, almost without exception they wore a sense of entitlement and privilege without the least constraint. They were allowed to carry laptops everywhere, into every lesson. Many students never took their eyes off their screens, in any lesson at any time.

I was expected to teach several courses without any textbooks or learning materials being provided by the school. Although many of the students English levels were low or non-existent, the school policy was English only in the classroom, completely unworkable, and ignored by almost every student daily. And virtually no support, teaching assistants, or directive guidance was ever offered to me. Students came to complaining if I didn’t give them an A grade for whatever they had done. ‘I get As in all my other classes,’ one girl told me. ‘My mother pays for my education and won’t be satisfied with these low grades you give me.’ I had never given her less than B+, but within days she and other students with similar views had complained to the principal about my ‘low grades’, and were moved out my class. The following week another of my classes were permitted to disband en masse. I was told privately by a Chinese colleague that the wife of the millionaire owner, (the true power really you see, the Mormon principal being just a nice white-face besuited puppet,) had privately promised a parent that I would not be kept on for another year. And so it proved, in fact the school took away all my duties 3 months before the end of my contract and refused to pay my salary, forced me to even pay all the remaining accommodation costs for the rest of my stay out of my previous earnings.

The end of this story is that throughout March to July 2018 I was desperately trying to find another job in China. Time was, I could take my pick, but many jobs didn’t materialise just because I was now over 55. And then, when I was actually holding 2 job offers, both the kind of work I had done before and excelled at, I discovered that now my phoney qualifications would fail the new verification and authenticity checks. So I was done, my ‘teaching career’ over, I had no option to leave behind my only family and the land that willy-nilly, had been my home for nearly 15 years.

Nearly done, I promise. I am back in the UK, where I feel like a refugee. I am unable to recognize the country I left behind in 2004, it feels like I have just happened upon some version of it in a parallel universe, a strange cold land where the language just happens to be English. Just being here, just existing, feels like I am wearing a hairshirt all the time. After nearly 15 years in the tropics, the cold, darkness and endless rain is slowly killing me. And I am effectively homeless, imposing on the charity of a Christian friend of my elder sister, (a real Christian, not like those Salt Lake City freaks.)

First thing I did when I got back was try to get on a 1 year course that would have given me a professional teaching qualification. I fessed up to not having a degree when I applied, and the course leaders were very doubtful, and would not of course let me do the version intended for university graduates. But after meeting the course leader and demonstrating my ability to teach and present to a group, the gut told me my experience and talent ‘shone through’, and assured me that I was just the sort of person he wanted on the course. BUT… in the UK now education is changing, intended just for the privileged. Because I had not been continuously in the country for the last 3 years, I was not eligible for financial assistance, and would have had to stump up £10,000 myself, money I simply don’t have.

Time for me to bring this torrent of words to a close, right?

I am appealing for advice, suggestions, help. I am currently lost and clueless I’m afraid. What I really want to do is find a way to continue teaching ESL in a warm country, preferably one where my head has a good chance of staying on my shoulders. I’d also like the chance to get properly qualified, I would do anything now to make up for the mistakes of my past. I am even prepared to consider low-paid or unpaid volunteer work, anything that will give me something to do with my life and abilities where I can be useful and honest and create some value in this world. My only remaining hope is that I can do something with the remainder of my life which will make my son proud of me one day. This is my story, and I am sincere, there is nothing else left in me now.

posted by Atom Collection to Education (9 answers total)

How's your Chinese? Freelance translating from Chinese to English could be a regular stream of income for you that you could do regardless of location, and often the only qualifications required are a series of tests to see if you're just straight up lying about fluency, if there's any at all. This is something you could do while taking teaching certification courses.
posted by Mizu at 5:11 AM on January 3, 2019

You need to get sober and stay sober. It seems to me that it will be impossible for you to do anything with your life unless you can get sober and stay sober. That will be easier if you do not think of yourself as a victim. None of those things are easy. But if you can do all three, your life will be much better. Good luck!
posted by Bella Donna at 5:13 AM on January 3, 2019 [4 favorites]

Seconding the advice above,

- get sober (get help, e.g. AA or similar, fast)
- look into using your Chinese (if you have that language)

also,

- *stop posting confessions on the web*, once it's out there, it's out there. Consider deleting the personal stuff from your post.

- focus on getting your (true) CV in order
- consider a not-so-warm country where you have better chances?
posted by KMH at 5:17 AM on January 3, 2019 [2 favorites]

It appears that you might have two sons? Yet you only reference one as being meaningful to you. In the paragraph when you describe yourself you priotitise your englishness, your gender, your age and your place in your parents family. The children in your life are not even mentioned in this description. I have heard the theory that your emotional growth ends when the substance abuse begins. You can do the math on that idea and see how much catching up you need to do. Stop getting high and grow up.
posted by InkaLomax at 5:28 AM on January 3, 2019

Surprised no one has mentioned therapy yet, but therapy. I wonder, at what point did you become so passive in your own life choices and existence and for what reason? I'm not a therapist, but it seems as though your life issues stem from not really knowing who you are or what you really want and just letting whatever happens happen much to everyone's detriment. Your only active choices have been to date women to fill the void and sometimes give them what they wanted just to placate them (i.e. children) despite being predominantly checked out. Again, I'm not going to assume I know why this is or if I'm even on the mark but it screams of someone lacking an identity, except, from what I can gather is to be someone who can give something to others. Maybe the first step is doing the difficult work of figuring out who you really are and what you really want for yourself. It's definitely not too late and you're in probably the best position to do so (I think this is what most people consider "rock bottom"). Shockingly, it will make you the person you want to be, i.e. someone who can do "good" for others.
posted by Young Kullervo at 5:39 AM on January 3, 2019

Response by poster: Yes I have two sons, but if I had tried here to say how meaningful they are to me, my exceedingly long post might have been twice as long.

Substance abuse, perhaps. I am not and have never been a drinker. And yes recently I have been using again, but not constantly. It's kind of feast or famine with me.
posted by Atom Collection at 5:42 AM on January 3, 2019

It sounds like you know what you need to do. Get sober, and do some service. I’d add a job, not necessarily a teaching job but just a survival job. Start small but show up - driver if it comes with training, cleaning, delivery, house painting. Start with asking your landlady’s network for odd jobs. Give her even just a few dollars, but something. Get known for being a reliable, hard worker. Undo this mythology that only a piece of paper stands between you and the jungle dreams, replete with women who lead you to the fall of man. (so colonial! I could write an essay on your post!)

As time permits, volunteer to teach/practice English with people. I know you’re 57 but if all you need is to establish residency, do that. You may find other paths open up but they won’t do so until you’re ready to get down on the ground with yourself and be a bit humble.
posted by warriorqueen at 5:47 AM on January 3, 2019 [1 favorite]

“Feast or famine” is pretty much textbook addict. Go to six weeks of AA or NA meetings. I’ll be surprised if you don’t recognize yourself in many of the stories told there.
posted by something something at 5:50 AM on January 3, 2019

Your actual question doesn't have much to do with the torrent of detail that preceded it. Which seems suggestive - are you spending too much time retelling yourself your own sad story, instead of focusing on a way out of it? That would be really understandable and really human, but it's not going to help you move forward unless you're doing that retelling in some sort of environment that's equipped to help you with that movement - therapy or a support group, maybe.

I would suggest working on stable situation first - any job you can get that will help you find a place to live and start saving up toward whatever your next step is going to be. Maybe that's schooling to get certified to teach, maybe you'll find something else altogether. That's a step that Future You can figure out, once Current You has a stable living situation, sobriety ("feast or famine" doesn't mean you don't have a problem), and a bit more distance from the events you're currently ruminating about.
posted by Stacey at 5:51 AM on January 3, 2019 [6 favorites]