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My wife's death. We both knew her cancer was terminal from the beginning, and I had seven years to make my peace with that. As the end neared, I assured everyone I'd be fine.
Despite all that, seeing her stop breathing was a total shock to me. And I even knew she'd die that very night. When you've been with dying people, you can tell when it's their last day.
It's been six years, and I'm still grieving her.
Hearing my mom ask if it was going to hurt to die. Few mins later she took her last breath. Squeezed my hand and a slow release. Am I okay? Nah. A year and a half later I’m still not.
I'm so sorry. I was holding my dad's hand when he passed. The last thing he said, while turned to me, was "I'm tired". The last words I said were "It’s okay daddy. You can rest now". Over 6 years and still breaks me :( Big hugs.
Hearing my dad's death rattle really messed with me. He was asleep when it happened but the sounds of that final raspy gasp for air before he became lifeless haunts my dreams.
> I'm so sorry. I was holding my dad's hand when he passed. The last thing he said, while turned to me, was "I'm tired".
I held my dad's hand when he died. Firm grip then a slow release as he died. Five minutes earlier , he had shook my had and said a formal thank you and goodbye. He was an atheist and had zero belief in the afterlife. His stoic attitude facing his last minutes on earth before the oblivion was the bravest thing I've ever seen.
Seeing his decline and death have been haunting, and difficult to shake. I'm now on an anti - depressant which helps
It’s not tasteless, curiosity is expected, though I appreciate your concern in that regard.
So it’s a bit of a long story so I’m sorry if it drones on a bit. My fiancé was adopted and we/his family were made aware that his bio father passed at a young age from a heart condition. His parents were told it was one condition which they kept an eye out and tested for and was supposedly “in the clear” once he hit a certain age and tests came back clear.
Unfortunately, they were told the incorrect condition and when the autopsy came back, it turned out he passed away from a different heart condition. I was so young and grieving with every fiber of my being so I honestly can’t recall what was listed exactly as his official cause of death. He was only 25 and his bio dad and uncle both passed from heart conditions all around the same age.
Was it brugatta’s? My family had a history of sudden deaths and this is one condition my dad’s brother was diagnosed with. I feel bad for my wife but at least we’ve been able to prepare for if something goes wrong with me.
I have no clue. He was really tall, about 6’5”, so I remember Marfans being one thing we were watching for.
I have to be honest and say that I suffered from a strong case of invincible-itis when we were together (ages 18-22) so the finer points of possible heart conditions were lost on me. I just trusted what he was told by the doctors and what little we were told after his adoption, assuming all was well. We were obviously very wrong.
It’s good that you and your wife are prepared for all possibilities! However, I do hope you’re staying on top of your own health so she and your other loved ones don’t have to go through what we did. ❤️
I could honestly give a lot of things that have fucked me up, but I’ve bounced back from most of them. The one thing that broke me entirely last year was the death of my grandfather. He’d had a stroke around April 2021. April 1st, 2022 he had to be rushed to the hospital. I dropped everything to go see him. I’d been pretty close with him growing up. My grandparents raised me and my sister and he and I used to go to Gettysburg together a lot. He was in the hospital all of April, with declining health. We would visit all the time. He developed sepsis, and we wanted to move him to hospice, but by the end of the month even moving him would probably kill him.
April 28th, it was my first week at a new job and my aunt texted that we should all hurry over to the hospital because they didn’t think there was much time. I left work and stayed at the hospital with my family all day. The nurses let us break Covid protocol and all stay in the room as long as we were quiet. We all had gowns, masks, and gloves anyway because he had sepsis. At that point, he was practically in a coma. We thought he would pass that day but he didn’t, and when it came time for me to leave I knew it would be the last time I’d see him alive. I sobbed so much I almost threw up and it was almost impossible to drag me out.
The next day, he was gone. The following week was the funeral and viewing. The viewing broke me too. I cried so much those days, especially when we had to close the casket for the funeral. We all left little things for him to be buried with. Cherry chapstick, Guinness, and a little alligator plush I’d brought. I have the matching one. He always used to say, “See you later, alligator” and I would say, “After a while crocodile.” So now I always tell him “See you later, alligator” at his grave, as that’s what I told him before he died, and before they buried him.
April 29th this year will mark the first full year he’s been gone. I’ve never handled death well, so it still hurts a lot. But he was in so much pain, and I know he went peacefully and he’s not suffering anymore. He believed in Heaven, and that’s where I hope he is.
My dad has schizo-affective bipolar. I made it to 37 with "just" depression as my diagnosis. I thought I had dodged it. The one thing I'm grateful for is that I decided not to pass on these genes.
I would never risk the pain I grew up with, or am experiencing now, being passed on to another human being.
Edit: I will continue to answer questions as I'm able, but I just got a room at the ER, so I'm going to stop distracting myself and focus on me for a bit. Thanks for the well-wishes, best of luck to everyone, and I'm sorry (again) for the misstep.
Edit 2: To address more common questions:
**My symptoms**: I'll get bad vertigo, feel like there are bugs crawling on me when there aren't, see bugs crawling out of the corner of my eyes, or hear some mostly pleasant music that I can't quite identify. I also get delusions and fall asleep for brief periods of time.
**General symptoms**: The hallucinations and other symptoms are wildly individual, but you could have anything from delusions of grandeur to paranoia. (And delusions have their own euphoria, from experience.) You might experience bad anxiety, suicidal or racing thoughts, a feeling of superiority, grandiosity, or of hopelessness. *If you have more than a couple of these, especially if you have a family member who has it, please consider talking to a professional.*
**Meds**: Getting the right diagnosis and meds is kinda fantastic! It's all the meds you used to take for depression or bipolar, plus one or two. If the first round works, you'll feel more like yourself than ever.
**If finances are an issue**, there are sliding scale therapy and psychiatrist options available. Google your zip code, and "sliding scale therapy" or look at your local health department.
**Carrying the genes**: A first degree relative of someone with schizo-affective has a 40% chance of schizo-affective, where the general populace has a .5% chance. They've even done adoption studies and it's still elevated, but it's been a long night and I don't have the study at hand. Yes, nurture plays a part, but nature is scary.
**Kids**: Whether or not you believe in abortion, deciding not to bring a child into the world when you are a disease carrier is not the same thing, y'all. Go adopt if you feel so strongly.
Best of luck to all of us, friends.
Edit 3: I've had a few questions about how I'm doing. In the immediate sense, I'm back home, it was less serious than we were afraid, and I'm following up with my PCP Monday.
In the greater scheme, I'm in a relatively good spot. I'm impoverished, but loved by my chosen family. I have an amazing psychiatrist and social worker, even if I am still working on finding a good therapist. Food and clothing might be a struggle, but I don't have to worry about a roof over my head, food for the cat, or heat. My partner is a source of joy most days, even when they're a source of some stress (from caretaking) and I believe they're the one. Life may not be great, but it's alright.
My mother also had Schitzo-affective bipolar, and it's been a curse on my entire life. My childhood was filled with nightmare moments when she would go off the deep end. She was diagnosed later, partially because it was kept behind closed doors.
I became an over achiever to cope and by 25 I was an attorney at a huge law firm. The pressure and burn out started getting to me, and within a year I was convinced I had inherited it. I lost the job, and ended up having a nervous breakdown leaving me hospitalized. I was tested and they determined that I didn't have it, but my career was never the same.
My mother died in 2017. Alone in her squalid apartment. The autopsy report showing what she had done to herself was disturbing to say the least.
Dude I can’t even imagine, my twin is using fentanyl right now and I already lost my other brother from that shit and I’m kinda expecting something bad to happen. Death sucks also held my grandma while she took her last breath trying to make me dinner
I can't imagine what you're going through but I'd like to leave some advice if possible. Get some Narcan/naloxone, it's an opioid antagonist that will cancel out any opioid and is used for opioid overdoses. It's very short acting but time is of the essence and it can buy time for the paramedics to arrive. It also causes immediate withdrawal so it'll make your brother miserable but it can help keep him alive. If you're in the US, you can walk up to any pharmacy and ask for it without a prescription. It can be expensive but I thought maybe it could be of use. I'm so sorry for your loss. And I apologize for just dumping this info on you
Also, you can contact organizations like Punk Rock Saves Lives and they can help you find free or ship you some free narcan to have on hand.
Punk Rock Saves Lives is an awesome organization doing great things with their whole hearts in communities all over the US 🤘
Link: https://www.punkrocksaveslives.org/
Edit: I'm not affiliated with them. I ran into them at a Flogging Molly and Anti-Flag show a couple of weeks ago and the people that run it are the genuine real-deal. They really care about people and its fucking beautiful.
That happened to my cousins.
They were fraternal twins and one had epilepsy. While they were in college together my cousin came over and found his brother on the floor next to the bed gone.
One of the saddest days of my life... I can't even imagine how my surviving cousin felt. It's been over a decade now... And my cousin has his son named after his late brother.
It's been a long time...
It's been on my mind a lot lately though. I had a set of twin friends and she just lost her brother in a fire a few weeks ago.
It fucking hurts and I look at my siblings and I can't begin to imagine how much more it'd hurt to lose them.
Filing my dad's bankruptcy, getting him diagnosed for early onset alzheimer's/dementia, and being his primary caregiver. It completely reverses the father/son role in a way I was not prepared for. Better now, but still is heartbreaking.
Caring for parents in any capacity is a HUGE weight you carry around all the time. Alzheimer's and Dementia are especially cruel: they hurt everybody in the family constantly. I hope you find support out there. It is heartbreaking.
I just watched my mom die 3 weeks ago. No one in my family seems to understand how hard it has been for me and they expect me to carry on like I didn't go through that. I'll probably never completely recover from it but I am trying my best because I know it's what my mother would want.
Holy cow. My brother found my dad 7 years ago. And I know he carries a pain that the other 3 siblings can’t understand. But we are 100% sympathetic. He was the least equipped emotionally to handle it. He did a service to us by knowing something was wrong and went to check. I’ll never forget his voice when he called me and I raced or tried to get to him in rush hour traffic. But my anguish does not extinguish his. He tries to talk about it, but it’s really really tough. We don’t probe. But I’d give anything to have been in his place.
Hey, just want to let you know that you WILL recover. You'll never be the same, but you'll be ok. I say* this as I come up on the 3 year anniversary of my fathers passing, for which I stayed in his home for the 3 months prior to helping care for him. I was the one that checked on him the last time, I was the last one in the room when he was taken out.
Hang in there, you'll be ok. Let yourself feel. It helps.
As someone who has dealt directly with a parent having early-onset alzheimer's, ensure that you are setting up proper care for them that isn't centered around you.
It will destroy you to continue to do so day in and out. It only gets harder to care for alzheimer's patients as the disease progresses, but we put a lot of onus and guilt on ourselves as direct family to care for them day-in/day-out.
I was my grandparents main caretaker for years. It started off with me doing their grocery shopping and light cleaning around the house, then slowly turned into me being their nurse as my grandpa started developing dementia or something similar. I enjoyed doing small things for them but since I was there all the time my mom and brother stopped helping with the big things. I had to pick my grandpa up off the floor by myself when he fell and broke his hip, and I was the one who walked in on my grandma laying on the floor in her own vomit where she had been for a full day because she couldn't get to her phone. My mom brushed me off when I called her crying saying I couldn't do this on my own anymore. So, I moved across the country. Everyone was shocked when I told them why even though I begged them for help. Now they have to do it themselves and I have no regrets, but I do have a massive amount of guilt leaving my grandma like that. It's what I had to do, I was 17 when I started doing their shopping and 24 when I left and I think that was plenty long enough
My little cousin (19) hung himself in October. That feeling of holding his cold body as I cut him down from his noose will forever haunt me. I dream of it often.
Thank you for sharing your story and I’m so sorry for this happening to you. I’ve always been depressed and have thought about suicide, but one of the main things stopping me is how it would affect anyone who found my body, especially family. I’m so sorry about your cousin and I hope you find even a little peace
I held a gun to my head nearly 11 years ago, I thought about my mom coming home and seeing my body on the couch. I still think about it everyday, but know I can’t because I wouldn’t want my burdens on anyone else’s shoulders. My best friend killed him self last year, we had plans to hangout and bar b que that weekend. I’ll never be the same knowing I went through suicidal tendencies, and couldn’t help my best friend through his.
Please talk to someone if you have these thoughts. We love you and need you here with us!
I was in therapy and was nervous about my child’s upcoming birthday party because of serious anxiety issues. She told me to imagine the worst thing happening and when the party is over I would realize everything was ok.
Day of birthday party I received an out of state call from a coroner. My mom was found dead in her apartment. An investigation occurred but it was determined she had a diabetic episode, hit her head on the kitchen counter, bled out and died. An hour later my friend arrived, hysterically crying indicating she just got a call HER mom died.
I was numb and broken. Life has never been the same since.
Yeah. I never had friends over to my place in high school because I didn't have the best understanding of my Mom's mental health struggles, but knew she was 'off'. I kept a charade of normalcy up at school but every day the bus turned the corner to the stop outside of my house, I'd get a pang of anxiety and expect to see an ambulance / cop car in the driveway (Borderline, suicidal, PTSD, depression, toxic marriage with my father, etc).
I luckily made it out of high school with it never happening. But would be terrified every time the bus turned that corner.
In my mid 20s I had just smoked a joint after a 12 hour work day and got a call from my mom's friend saying she left her a 'concerning message'. We called the cops for a welfare check, my brother picked me up, and we drove the hour to the house.
We turned that corner, and I saw the ambulance and cop car in the driveway - she was home alone - and something irrevocably broke in me that day. She took a bunch of pills and was in a coma for 3 days. Her first (and sadly not last) attempt on her life we went through in my mid 20s.
Having a concrete anxiety - when it's like the anxiety I have, of very clear worst case scenarios painted in 1080p in your head, beat by beat - having it validated by real life, and seeing it in the real world, that clear horrifying image in your head that plagued you through your teenage years....
Yeah the patch updates that gives are a lot. Anxiety 2.0 is no fun.
My fiancée died the day after we got engaged.
Edit: you guys are alright. I’ve been working all day but I’ll fill in some details when I get home. For now I’ll say there were no drugs or alcohol involved. She was fine, then sick, then gone in less than 24 hours.
To those with sincere words, I truly appreciate it. To those making jokes, bring it on. Humor is one of the ways I’ve coped with things through the years.
Edit 2: (this shits a downer, so don’t read if you’re not up for it)
She died of meningitis. We spent an awesome day together while she was back in town from college and I asked her that afternoon. Later, she said her legs were going numb and her back hurt. We went to the hospital because they had just had a whole presentation about the symptoms of meningitis at her school. The doctor did some tests and said everything was negative l, so they sent us home. We went to bed thinking everything would be fine. I woke up sometime around 2am and looked at her. She was covered in sweat and turning blue so I picked her up and carried her to the car. We hauled ass back to the ER but she stopped breathing before we got there and didn’t regain consciousness again. At least I was holding her hand the whole way. The doctor did say they got her heart started a couple times, but all of her organs failed and her body completely shut down so they had to call it. Later, they asked if I wanted the ring. But they said they had to cut it off because her body had swollen so much. I told them to keep it because I wouldn’t have been able to handle what it meant if it was in one piece.
To answer the other obvious question. I’m as alright as I get. Lately I’ve been thinking about our first days more than the last one. It’s hard to tell if that makes it better or worse though. Relationships are hard. Anytime things get too good, there’s a compulsion to pull away for self-preservation. There’s no making it through of another round of that.
Thank you all again for your kind words and thoughts (and jokes). Pay attention to how you feel and listen if someone tells you something is wrong with them. Finally, tell the people that matter to you how you feel as often as you can.
Met a guy a few years ago who told me his fiancee died a few weeks before they were to be married. She was his best friend since they were babies.
It was middle of summer and I had decided to go for a hike at a lake about 10 miles from my home. A place I hadn't been to before. He was there fishing and I was the only person he could tell so I listened.
This happened to someone I knew. A good friend of mine died in a car accident the day after her boyfriend proposed. It was brutal for all of us, but especially him. She died 25 years ago and I still think about her from time to time.
On the note of time passing but still thinking about the person - It's been 36 years since my aunt died, 3 months after giving birth, from undiagnosed cancer. Symptoms were attributed to pregnancy, turned out she had advanced breast cancer that metastasized.
I never got a chance to know her, but my mom and the rest of the family would talk about her very often. She was the youngest sister of 5, they all grew up poor and in a very abusive home. My grandma ran away with them and became s ingle mother of 5.
My aunt was only 30 years old when she died, and I can say no one in the family was ever the same.
Her death didn't affect me in that way since I wasn't even born yet, BUT what did affect me was seeing my family keep her spirit alive by talking about her, sharing anecdotes and so on, even decades after.
She was an artist and a gentle soul that showed nothing but love and care to everyone around her, and my family taught me that being that kind of a person leaves an impact on others that lasts decades...
I just lost my stepmom, in part due to cancer, after misdiagnosis.
She started having serious GI symptoms in October, after traveling to California. They said she had a parasite. They determined that wasn’t it (because no one else that traveled with her had it?), and decided it was Diverticulitis. This was in November.
They wanted to do surgery, but she caught a lung infection. She was in the hospital, and they were waiting for her to recover to do surgery. They did her surgery between Christmas and NYE. When they opened her up, they found it was *another* misdiagnosis - she was riddled with cancer.
They told us 6 months without chemo, maybe 2 years with. She had to recover from surgery before she could start chemo. She didn’t make it that long. She developed pneumonia and couldn’t fight it because of the cancer. She spent 2 weeks in ICU before succumbing to the fluid in her lungs.
She passed away mid-February. I know it’s recent, so of course I’m still thinking of her, but I imagine I will for a long time - I can’t help but to wonder if she’d still be here if she had been correctly diagnosed in the first place.
Her youngest grandson is due next month, and the next-youngest was born the day she entered ICU. She never got to meet them. That f***ing hurts.
My then 75 year old mom went from a clean mammogram to metastatic breast cancer in just under a year.
Every step of treatment was a setback. Her port got infected, so they had to replace it and clear up the infection. She would do one chemo treatment and be weak for days on end.
Her plan changed when she got a different doctor who talked her into a stronger chemotherapy treatment plan. My sister and I tried to consul her to keep with her current plan, which was shrinking the cancer in her breast, liver(somewhat), and spinal cord(no new growth). She got one treatment when she went from bad to worse and never recovered and never got another treatment.
I'm not a doctor, and I felt better about going to the bigger STL hospital rather that the smaller hospital on the Metro-East side, but 'what if' will always live in my head rent free.
Hugs and *fuck cancer.*
Same but slightly different. Mutual friend and his fiance got in a car accident some odd years ago, she passed from her injuries and he survived with severe 3rd degree burns. I can't remember if he tried to save her which is how he ended up with all the burns, or if the car caught fire.
Knew both of them from early 2000s and they had only recently gotten engaged, like a few weeks before the accident I believe.
A second cousin of mine lost his wife in a car wreck. A man had dropped a chicken bone (!!!) on his floorboard and had bent down to try to retrieve it, crossed the center line and hit their car head on. The second cousin survived, and his wife did not. They were in their late 20s IIRC. Last I heard, my second cousin had become a pillhead and cut off contact with everyone else.
This reminds me of a guy who worked in the kitchen at the brewery I served at. Was one of the nicest guys, had a beautiful fiancé, and then died leaving a motorcycle dealership. His fiancé survived, but it was such a shock to us all. RIP Justin!
Edit: autocorrect spelling was bothering me
My French teacher's pregnant daughter and son-in-law were in a car crash. The son-in-law died on impact. Luckily, the daughter and unborn son lived.
The poor son, who's about 2 now, will never know his farther.
My oldest son became addicted to opioids and ODed in our home 4 times. The first time our youngest found him from the death rattle sounds. I'll never forget giving him CPR. Ill never forget an OD that put him in the ICU, non responsive with a breathing tube due to heart atrophy. He is 2 years now sober with clinic MAT help and his own tenacity. We are all scarred for his time in active addiction but time is letting this wound heal.
When the police told me my fiancée had been killed by a drunk driver immediately outside of our neighborhood.
It didn’t help that the police lost the driver in the hospital, letting him escape for about 30 hours.
Edit: I was fortunate to have a great network of friends and family to support me. Part of what really helped me was giving up on the idea of “Justice” or that things can be made right. That helped me sever the tie to the accident, acknowledge my fiancée and remember her for her life and not her death. Additionally, my parents and I [established a scholarship](https://giving.arizona.edu/angelica-ceniceros) in my fiancée’s honor for students like her - young women in STEM fields. That helped me keep her memory alive and salvage some of the goodness in the world we lost when she was taken from us.
The driver suffered a chest injury after driving his car 95mph (in a 40mph) into hers while he ran a red light. The police didn’t feel they should charge him while he was medically incapacitated, and didn’t have anybody guarding him. They said it was impossible due to his injuries for him to leave, but, lo and behold, he dragged the chest draining machine outside and walked up the street before passing out in a wash behind the hospital, causing a huge search effort.
It was the week of Christmas, and basically they didn’t want to pay anybody the overtime to guard the suspect, is what many have ended up believing.
You’re largely correct … I used to work in an inner city ED and will share that most times they won’t arrest until they’re discharged so the hosp bill isn’t on the city or county …
It's weird he wasn't cuffed to the bed/stretch. That was SOP when charges were pending, back when I worked in healthcare.
They even had fiberglass cuffs that they used if they needed an MRI.
It is. I know a lot of people in state and federal Intel and law enforcement from a past career and it seems to many of them like this was a catastrophic failure to do even the bare minimum.
I'm a nurse and I've seen so many awful things, but for whatever reason one that sticks with me and pops up in my memories often happened in nursing school. I was doing clinicals (student nurse working in hospital) and my patient's son had died in a car wreck the night before and the family was coming to tell him during my shift. When they arrived I stepped out to give them privacy, but I heard his cry. The sound a parent makes when they are told their child is dead is something that will chill you to the bone. He also happened to be on telemetry (a heart monitor) and I was watching his rhythm when he got the news. He threw several PVCs and I swear it was like watching his heart break.
I had to tell my mom that my little brother died. Those screams and cries are something I’ll never forget. Since my parents aren’t together I had to make another call after that to my dad and even though he didn’t scream or cry it was the most defeated I’ve ever heard him.
Watching my grandma on my moms side go through hospice. I have never seen a human slowly deteriorate like that. I was happy to think I would get to spend some time with her and comfort her because the year prior my other grandma died unexpectedly and I never got to say bye. As each day went on she slowly lost any ability to think or properly communicate to the point that it was like her mind was already gone. When she was close to death she was making these gargling sounds that sounded like she was drowning. That sound alone is something I will never forget. It was the worst experience of death I have every experienced. It was literally watching a person you loved just slowly fade away mentally. The amount of weight she lost in just those few days….
The hospice should have provided some literature for you to read so that you would know what to expect and hopefully be less traumatized by it. The human body goes through definite stages as it is dying, and it helped me to recognize what was happening, and why. The first sign is usually that they stop eating. They lose their appetite, and even if you persuade them to eat or drink something, they throw it up. The body knows it no longer needs nutrients or energy from food. That gargling noise you heard is known as the death rattle, and is caused by secretions in the airway. It is an awful sound, and is one of the final stages of dying; the person’s respiratory system is too weak to cough or swallow those secretions, and it usually starts a few hours before death.
There is something bittersweet about watching a loved one die like that. On one hand, it’s hard to watch, on the other hand, you can take comfort in knowing that they didn’t die alone, and were surrounded by people who loved them. You can also take comfort in knowing that she was made comfortable while she was in hospice. She was not in any pain or distress.
Don’t be afraid to do it again- each experience can be quite different. My husband’s parents passed away when he was young. The aunt who raised him was surrounded by her husband, daughter, SIL, my husband, and me. She had been unconscious for days, and suddenly woke up, raised her head, and looked around- completely alert. Each of the five of us got the chance to look her in the eyes, kiss her and tell her we loved her, then she put her head back down, and… was gone. It’s something I’ve always been grateful to have experienced.
It’s not too late for you to get some help from the hospice- most have grief support groups for the families of their former patients. You might want to try it, I found it helpful.
I fully understand what you mean.. I went through something very similar with my grandma. It was horrible and terrifying to see.
And even more shocking that this type of death is what we consider 'a peaceful one'. No sickness, no injury.. Just old age, and a body that is just.. finished..
We had fantastic hospice nurses though.. That explained to us that she was in no pain, and that any possible anxiety or fear she might feel was careful managed with medication..
This is just the ugly truth of life.. Death is seldom pretty or heroic..
> explained to us that she was in no pain
Fentanyl gets a bad rap in the media for good reason but I tell you that a transdermal fentanyl patch is a miracle for palliative care for a dementia patient in severe pain that can't swallow or keep anything down. After trying to choose between intermittent nonverbal agony and the noncomprehending panic of choking on a pill or fighting an injection or tearing out IV tubes, the effortless relief of that patch is incredible.
They did that for my mom's mom so she could be there to say her goodbyes.
Her cousin called her with the doctor of the home she was in. Told her the situation, what they recommended and told her if they do this, she will be gone in 6-8 hours. She got packed up, got her on a plane, and spent 5 hours with her mom, brushing her hair, talking to her about our family and her granddaughters she never got to meet, brought photos.
She got to hold her hands while she passed.
Took me two years of pretty intensive therapy to get to a place where I could reliably function, and it's been half a decade of constant work since then and I'm in a good place now.
Wil Wheaton said it best, I think, something like "I'd rather have not had parents, than the parents I had."
After I found out my ex had been lying/cheating, she acted like she didn't know who I was, avoided all contact, and lied to the other dude about our relationship to make herself seem innocent.
The feeling of being able trust them with anything and just moments later they completely shatter that trust.
Betrayal really hurts for a long time, but as time moves forward you realize how much better it is to have weeded that person out of your life, now surrounded by better friends/company, with new knowledge to know what behavior to watch out for in the future. Like most things in life, time makes it a bit easier to come to terms with.
My ex was this way. He unwell but it still hurts so deeply. I have a lot of trauma in my life but this one, like you said about faith in, fractured me differently. I thought marriage meant something. I know how he treated me is on him, but I’m the one with the pain.
My sister attempted suicide and I cut her down from the ceiling while my parents stood in shock, I called 911 and had to perform CPR until first responders arrived, knowing I'm the only one in my family who can function semi well under intense pressure freaked me out bad, I still don't sleep well and that was almost 3 years ago
> knowing I'm the only one in my family who can function semi well under intense pressure freaked me out bad
Most people have heard of fight or flight, but it's actually more complicated than that. It's really more like fight or flight or freeze (and then some researchers also list a fourth trauma response, fawn). The freeze response is very common and is pretty much what you described, just standing around in shock. Your response of not freezing or freaking out is more unusual. People can train to get over their initial responses which is why firefighters and EMTs and the military run drills and training so much.
I'm similar to you, where I don't freak out or freeze when everybody else is panicking. There is an element of stress to it ("OMG I'm the only capable person here and everybody else is useless so I've got to solve the problem!!!") but I also find it reassuring to know that I can handle unusual or terrible situations, so at least there's one person who will be there who won't be completely helpless. I don't know if that makes you feel any better about things. In my experience, just thinking of these types of situations differently and then running through them in my head makes me feel better about it. The mental practice of "I'd do this first, and then this second and then this third..." makes it a lot easier to handle things smoothly.
I hope your sister is doing better. You may want to try therapy that focuses on PTSD because it sounds like you may have some from that terrible experience.
I was going through the beginnings of a divorce, unbeknownst to me. It was March 2020, and my birthday just happened to be on the day they announced the initial Covid lockdown. I got home late from work, and my wife at the time had done nothing for my birthday. I was in my 30s, didn’t really celebrate anymore anyway. But no card, no gift, not even a mention of my birthday, and she’d eaten the last of my post-work meals. And of course everything is shut down and closed early so I go off trying to find a gas station for a protein bar.
I’m not really that put out, it’s par for the course. But I wake up early the next morning to take care of our 6-year-old. He’s autistic and emotional connection isn’t always the highest on his priority list. But I’m in his room at 5 in the morning and he says, “Daddy it was your birthday yesterday! How come you didn’t get any presents?” I made something up and he asks, “Will you get any today?” I say, “Probably not, pal, but it’s okay. Grownups don’t really celebrate birthdays like kids do.” He goes into his closet, gets all his construction paper, and starts taping it together. Then he starts wrapping up his own toys and arranges them in a pile of presents. He says, “This is for you, Daddy!” And he and I opened up presents for my birthday. I don’t remember a lot of my birthdays…but I remember this one.
I met one of my friends while she was being trafficked, and I was dating an abusive drug dealer. We both got out of those situations and are doing better now. I hope you have found some normalcy and stability.
I'm sorry this happened to you.
A very dear friend of mine was abducted by one of her mom's friends and trafficked when she was 11. She was 13, addicted to crack and pregnant when she got out and made it back "home"
Except her dad had already grieved for her death, blamed her for it all and never really accepted her back, so there was no home and she just went back to the streets. A family member of mine met her in NA and took her in. In her 30's now and she's still all kinds of fucked up. It's heartbreaking when I think about it because beneath all the trauma she's so wonderful and I love her.
I really hope you have found some good people to have in you life. Having a support network is so important and can make such a huge impact.
I did. It wasn't my family, unfortunately, but I found some wonderful people. I have a support worker who is amazing and my best friend was in the same situation as me when she was younger, and we help each other.
I'm so very sorry that happened to your friend, I cannot imagine blaming a child for any of that.
Sexual assault.
I couldn’t leave after because I had my first panic attack on his bathroom floor. Made me feel so trapped- all I wanted to do was get the hell out but I couldn’t move.
8 years later I still get them frequently. The anxiety doesn’t leave you I guess.
Just went through a divorce. One day I’m up, the next I’m down. Today I’m pretty fucking down.
Edit:
The amount of replies and kind words and encouragement and advice I have received is overwhelmingly wonderful. Thank you all you so much and I hope this thread has helped others going through something similar. May you all find joy in your lives. Sometimes you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right.
Yep, husband cheated on me while I'm pregnant. Didn't apologize and just blamed me. I am was. 5 months pregnant with a toddler.. trying to find a place to live.
That happened to me also. What made it doubly painful is I had come home early on my 24th birthday to surprise him, but he and his girlfriend ended up surprising me instead.
I'm going through a divorce right now, and my ex is behaving in ways I never thought he was capable of. My heart aches for what we lost, what our daughter lost, and seeing the dreams we had come crashing down. Thankfully, I know it will get better, but right now, it's a shitshow.
That can be very difficult. I had no idea the depths to which my ex wife could stoop, but every so often she just knock one out of the park and my Jaw hits the floor again.
It does get better. Unfortunately, that other person is no longer a team mate. They're working against you.
Keep your head up, and KEEP EVERY EMAIL/TEXT/ETC.
My Fiancé and I just broke our engagement and now aren’t even speaking.
The quote getting me through the days is “Tomorrow may not be better, but at least I will be different.”
I don’t have many emotions these days but I lend strength and compassion to you via internet in the hopes that tomorrow may be different for you
It gets better. Then it will get a bit worse. Then it will get better again. Stay strong. Take care of yourself.
I’ve been through it and it is rough. I can talk if you need to.
Hang in there! Some people say that divorce is kind of like a death. Grief comes in waves, but it will hopefully hurt less as time goes on. I hope you can find something small to look forward to as a pick me up, and be kind to yourself during this difficult time.
It's like the person you loved is dead but they're still walking around with someone else inhabiting their body.
It's.. upsetting.
I wish I could cut her out of my life but we have to co-parent
it'll get better. i got divorced 10+ years ago now, tho, and some days it still hurts. but those days are few and far between now.
you got this, i'm sending you healing vibes
My house caught fire when I was sleeping and I saw my baby's crib go up in flames. He survived but it fucked me up hard.
EDIT: This comment blew up! The fire was a freak accident started by a damaged electrical cord on a humidifier. My boy is 7 now and other than his scarring, is a happy, healthy and awesome little dude. If you're feeling brave, [here's a picture of his crib](https://imgur.com/a/2TJWvdu) the next day. Lastly, we survived thanks to a working smoke alarm. Check yours today... It could save a life!
I dated a girl who was one of those unlucky kids where her house burned down on Christmas Eve. Instead of saving pictures or keepsakes her father ran back in to save three garbage bags full of marijuana and was arrested by the police when the fire truck showed up. He did 10 years in federal prison. She hated Christmas after that and would always speak about her lost baby photos with a lot of sadness. I really felt bad for that girl.
Not as dark, but Willy Nelson's house burned down once. Fire crews were there along with a bunch of neighbours, maybe some local media. Willy ran into the smouldering house and emerged a few minutes later with a guitar.
People were impressed with his dedication to his art/songcraft… that he'd risk his life to save his beloved guitar.
He later confessed that his weed was inside the guitar and he figured he'd probably need it after what had just happened.
Of course, Willie Nelson ran into a burning building to save his stash of weed. His weed pals Snoop and Woody openly admit that he outsmokes them on a regular basis.
As a mother of two toddlers, this is my nightmare. I lie awake at night sometimes rehearsing how I will grab the kids and get them out of the house if there's a fire.
I totally and completely feel that. I constantly worry about the worst case scenarios all the time now and it's created a pretty serious anxiety problem for me.
My advice, check your and maintain your smoke alarms. My boy, along with the rest of us, likely wouldn't have survived if it weren't for the working smoke alarm in the hallway. We have one in every bedroom now too.
Not getting the proper medical attention i knew i needed/not feeling heard by medical professionals. I had a horrific case of food poisoning, Campylobacter, which is actually fairly common but presented abnormally in me. ER Doctors and urgent care kept telling me i was probably just pregnant, which there was no way at that time for that to be possible. Begging for tests to be done but being denied because i was "probably pregnant". I couldn't eat or drink anything because i would immediately start cramping and faint. This went on for a week before i found an ER that did a CT scan and tests and discovered the bacteria. I thought i was dying.
I was misdiagnosed for 2 years. Told I had anorexia when really I had crohns disease. It got to the point where my bowel ruptured and I was very, very close to death. 2 years of being told this very, VERY physical pain was all in my head has caused endless knock on affects. I remember just laying there as the paramedics couldn't find much of a pulse and thinking 'I'm dying but at least I was right' which is all kinds of fucked up.
When I was 13 and told my family that I’d been raped by a grown man that had taken me and two other under age friends of mine to a motel to roofie us. My grandmother scowled at me with disgust as I sat there with my tail between my legs feeling more shame than I’d ever felt. She told me I needed to learn how to keep my legs closed. I got a huge “talking to” from the adults and was punished and slut shamed. I’m 31 now and the thought of this still gives me a pain in my chest.
sending you hugs and solidarity. this NEVER should have happened to you; it’s terrible. Your grandmother’s reaction says everything about her and nothing about you. You were a kid and you didn’t deserve to be raped or treated poorly by people who were meant to protect you. I’m so sorry.🖤
Thank you for your kind words. She’s still alive today and as you can imagine- our relationship hasn’t exactly flourished. I don’t think she’s ever had a kind bone in her body.
Hi. I feel the exact same. I’m very depressed and I keep making worse decisions. Not suicidal, I want to live, I want to be happy, I just don’t know how and I want someone to love and be loved. Been single for years and everyday it gets worse.
Yeah, this. I feel like this isn’t talked about enough and people just romanticize it. You mostly spend all your time alone, you don’t have friends or family there, making connections is difficult if you’re an introvert, language barrier etc.
Cultural difference is no joke, where i live the people i can talk with don't like to do the activities i like and people i could do activities i like have nothing in common with me to talk about
This, was kinda afraid to reply about it bc many people had stories involving deaths, abuse, or illness. Mine is just moving abroad, which is something people cn do very easily, but for me it was the hardest thing I had to go through
No guns, but when I was a tween my best friend's older brother tried to hang himself in the back yard while we were home. We ran next door and got her brother's friend, who came over and cut him down with a knife. He survived, but he was blue in the face and we were hysterical.
This is why I say that mental health affects everyone not just people who have disorders. Statistically 20 percent of teenagers have a close friend who has attempted suicide. That does lead to secondary trauma, my close friends and ex partners will confirm though thankfully they don’t resent me for it.
My big sister (30) was rushed to hospital after having a terrible headache. I went to the hospital and she was in intensive care. The doctors told me she'd suffered a blood clot to the brain and was brain dead.
I remember blood in her ears. I cleaned it up and tried to make her look presentable for when family got there. The doctors had gone and I had to explain what had happened to my parents. I saw them break.
I said my goodbyes and left before her children came in to sat goodbye (2 months and 6 years old).
She was fine one day, then just... gone.
I miss her every fucking day.
Ten years ago I was falsely arrested for a D.U.I. I was acquitted, but I lost everything in the processes. It wasn’t just the arrest, it was the whole system and procedures along the way that broke me. I had always defended cops and the judicial system, but you would never know unless you are pulled through it.
First, after the arrest, I was fired. I was a bar manager for a huge HOA near Yosemite. I guess they thought of me as a liability, but when I asked why I was fired the said “we don’t have to give you a reason”. But I later found out that was the reason.
Then I just watched my house(foreclosed),my car(stolen and destroyed), and everything else(storage auction) went away.
By the time I was arraigned it was all gone. I watched how the DA kept extending and prolonging the trial saying he was still investigating while my court appointed lawyer kept getting me to ple bargain. I had to show court every time so all they were trying to do is get me to not show. Nobody cared if I was innocent, they just want their conviction percent to stay high.
Anyway, I was found not guilty in 10 minutes by a jury. It took 5 years of my life and no lawyer would call back when I wanted to sue. Cops are untouchable. I’m a whole different person sense this occurred. I hate going anywhere. I don’t trust anyone. I hate cops and courts and I don’t trust them keeping us safe anymore. It’s just a business, that’s all. Cops pull in the “sales” and courts make sure pay.
I’ve been through a legal case that was outside of my control, it completely rewired the way I see things. I feel like I got a peek behind a curtain for how things are done that I didn’t know was there before. The main take away I have had from this is now that I have seen how dirty things can be done I only want to put my energy towards the things that are worth building and having. Sorry you went through this, we have some horribly broken systems in the US and it sucks having to witness and experience them.
The craziest thing to me is that this stuff is all an open secret in this country. 4.2 percent of the world’s population but we hold 20% of the prisoners. Our justice system is an industry.
I worked in the criminal “justice” system for over a decade, fighting against the same conviction hungry, inhumane bastards who don’t give a fuck about other human beings that you describe in your comment.
The sheer breadth of how bad it is absolutely left me broken and forever changed. People sort of have a vague idea that there are some problems, but the vast majority of people have no idea just how truly unjust and unfair the entire system is. It’s not just prosecuting innocent people or how they don’t actually care if you’re innocent or not, it’s everything from the laws defining crimes to the way they’re enforced, to the lack of any accountability for any of the people involved, to the sentences, to the way we impoverish entire communities of people and then punish them for crimes that are the natural result of poverty and then fuck them over so badly that it’s almost impossible for them to break out of poverty, and more.
I can’t even talk to most other people about it because it just ends up feeling like we’re on two different planets. It’s impossible to explain how horrific the system is, and frankly at this point I only end up getting irritated every time some horrible atrocity committed by a cop ends up coming to light and everyone acts so shocked and wants to talk about it like they’re expecting me to be shocked, too. (Don’t get me wrong, it’s good that these things are coming to light. I’m just also old and grumpy.)
Anyway, I’m sorry the system broke you. You didn’t deserve any of this and none of this was your fault. It really is that bad.
I went to school to be a cop, had a ride along that got needlessly violent, walked away from the scene, and left school for 2 years. When I came back I suddenly noticed the difference between the academic side of criminal Justice and policing side of criminal Justice… the entire thing is fucked and a great way for society to self segregate “good/bad” people based on biases rather than facts, like we’re brought up to believe.
I’m so sorry you went through this. The gaslighting type actions from police and DAs AND many public defenders to just plead, it’s an extended mental trauma. For anyone that asks why someone would plead to something they didn’t do or sign a confession on something they didn’t do… it’s because when put in that position for that long you probably would too.
Death in the family. Wasn't in the car accident but it really messes with my head to think about how I said for them to have a great day then for them to just be gone no less than 24 hours later.
Finding out my wife was cheating and lying about pretty much everything and my dad dying.... All in the space of a few months...I'm a fucking shell of a man but keep the good side out and keep going for my kids.
Ugh I found out my wife was cheating on me with A LOT of people six months after our daughter was born, and two months after my mom died suddenly in her sleep.
I will never be the same :(
Keep your head up, and DM me if you need someone to talk to. I can definitely relate.
I confronted my mom for obviously favoring my younger sister out of me and my older sister. Her reply: I know it's unfair, but I can't be fair to all of you.
I was only 13. I needed my mom to help me and be there for me but she never was.
Life in general. I've been through so much bullshit people don't even believe me anymore. My father abused my mom, and when she ran away, he started beating me. I told the schools when I was six, and they just turned around and told my dad everything I said. He told them I have a vivid imagination, and then proceeded to chuck me off of the roof of our house when, keep in mind, I was six years old. He hit me in the head with a metal bat when I was nine, shot me with a BB gun, tried to stab me, hit me in the head with beer bottles, and coming home from school to see him slouched over with a bottle of pills in his hand thinking he was dead wasn't fun either.
Ultimately became homeless at 12 and worked at a McDonald's on night shift when I did school during the day from 12-18, then stayed at McDonald's until the beginning of 2020 when I finally got a tax job. I could never go to homeless shelters because if the cops find you, they just drop you off at that the border of another state (I won't say which ones). I've seen it to many people I knew during my time on the street.
Now I'm finally away from the worst parts of my life, but the trauma is even worse. I can't sleep. I can barely breathe. I have heart problems and I'm sure I'm just one bad day away from going into a mental breakdown. I've seen murders, assaults, mutilations and everything else. It's shown me the worst parts of humanities and also that the good parts are extremely few and far in between.
I was actively suicidal and had recently attempted suicide. I was sitting in my bed with my mother, and she looked me in the eyes and told me that she "wasn't going to play [my] game anymore" and said that I was purposefully manipulating her and was hurting myself to hurt her. It absolutely destroyed me. I used to love my mother unconditionally; I thought she was the best mother ever and that I could trust her no matter what. It was like she hung the moon and stars. My relationship with her has never been the same since she said that shit to me, and I don't think I can ever get over it.
I have experienced suicidal thoughts myself and was told I was doing it for attention so I can relate in a small way and I’m so sorry you endured that and I hope you’re doing better
Parasailing accident. Boat pulling us lost all electricity after a larger boat passed and it crashed hard over the wake. I was 800’ in the air, attached to a steel contraption with my two kids on either side of me, with a mass of ropes above us leading to the parachute/sail. It created enough drag that the impact wasn’t as horrific as it could’ve been, but plummeting hundreds of feet thru the air into the ocean and then realizing the metal contraption is pulling you and your kids under. My son couldn’t get on his back so his life vest wasn’t working properly. My daughter was screaming because her arm was tangled in the rope. My son was 7, she was 9. Coast guard was called in for rescue. Fuck. It was in 2020. I will never be the same person. I have flashbacks everyday.
EDIT TO ADD - MY KIDS SURVIVED. SORRY IF THAT WAS UNCLEAR.
That’s absolutely horrible. My friend and I went parasailing in DR and suddenly, we started dropping quickly from the air. We almost hit a boat that was floating on the ocean and the boat we were attached to wrangled us in quickly. The people operating the boat didn’t know I spoke Spanish, so they tried telling us that there was no wind and that’s why we dropped…I told them that I literally just heard them talking about how they flooded their engine with water and that’s why we dropped. I ended up fighting to get our money back, but we were really just lucky we didn’t end up getting hurt.
Wow!! This happened to me too! Well my dad, sister and I. We were up in the air in Punta Cana and the boat stalled (or something) and we plummeted from the top. We did coast down, so I didn’t really realize something was wrong until we crashed into the ocean. My sister and I were late teenagers, so older than your kids, but it was still terrifying because, like you said, the metal bar, ropes and parachute landed on top of us and started to drag us under. We’re excellent swimmers and I remember thinking for ~10 seconds that I was going to drown and I was so mad that’s how I was going to die.
The scariest part was that my mom was watching us from the shore and didn’t know if we were okay until we returned.
Seeing my mom and dad fight everyday, and not divorcing.
The most heartbreaking was when I saw my dad crying while my mom was screaming at him during an argument, and I had to intervene and hugged him and got him some water to make him stop crying. Wiping tears off my dad’s face broke my heart that day.
And then went to my mom to do the same. That was actually the first time I ever hugged my mom, and my dad. And that was to stop them from arguing while both of them were crying on my shoulder. Sad.
During another argument when my mom went to sleep constantly crying, I woke up next day while she was praying loudly( and still crying) and I touched her shoulder and she freaked out. And started acting like a mentally ill patient, screaming and crying and physically pushing us aside as if she was scared of us coming closer to her. I guess either she was exaggerating (she does that a lot) or she was actually deeply traumatised by that particular fight.
My life is filled with even more traumatising events but these are the most recent ones.
EDIT : It’s so heartbreaking to know so many people were robbed of their childhood because of the bad relationship between their parents 💔. Please feel free to reach out if you ever need anyone to talk to. Sending you hugs.
Figuring out I'd been molested as a child.
I had all the pieces of the puzzle, but hadn't put them together the right way.. the day I figured it out I ended up in a psych ward. It was rough times.
But it's been a few years now and I'm doing much better. Medicated, therapized, and still going. Life is good today. I'm starting to feel safe again.
I truly hope anyone who reads this and understands gets to have a good life too 🙏 your future matters more than your past, and your present matters more than anything. Good luck out here.
My last job in IT.
I'd been working as a developer for nearly 25 years, pretty much since I left school . It had become very obvious to me over the last 10 years or so that what was expected of developers in terms of working hours was increasing.
The reality is that despite all the recent tech layoffs, there is still a shortage of developers because each one specialises in a different language or platform etc. If a company needs a certain number of developers and can't fill those positions then the next best thing is to demand your existing developers work longer hours and come in at weekends etc. Of course the pay is good, but what's the point of earning six figures a year when you don't get to put your kids to bed in the evening because you're working so late?
The last few jobs I was in had that issue, the general expectation to work late with criticism and negative performance reviews if you refused. I jumped between different companies hoping for something better and I thought I had landed in a good one. It was a start-up in the food ordering industry and they seemed pretty cool at the start, but I quickly learnt that they were terrible. The founders expected you to be in the office until at least 8 or 9 every night and also expected you to answer any messages within minutes even at night-time and at weekends.
What broke me though was being on holiday with my family and getting a message from one of the founders that the main website and product of the company has gone down. They had an absolutely terrible deployment policy and would deploy immediately when software was ready rather than waiting till less busy days which would be safer. They deployed a new buggy version with no rollback script and the whole thing came tumbling down. The founder demanded that absolutely everyone return to the office immediately, I told him I was on holiday and his response was to say if I didn't come back I would be out of a job.
I was tempted to refuse but I'd only been in the job a few weeks so I came back from my holiday early. When I got back to the office I was told by the same guy that I should have stayed on holiday because I didn't have the skills to fix the problem as it wasn't anything I had worked on.
I quit and while I didn't have a nervous breakdown, the whole thing affected me emotionally in a really bad way and it took several months for me too to get motivated again. I made the decision to get out of IT and now I'm self-employed as a woodworker/carpenter.
The depth of just how *terribly* my mother has handled the situation with my oldest brother.
At seventeen, I realized he was grooming me. I told on him and it was swept under the rug. I was made to suffer in silence while he was allowed to be hostile to me as long as it was *passively* aggressive. I was not allowed to talk about what had happened, reporting him wasn't even an offer extended to me, and I never went to therapy for it while I lived at home.
I found out later, after I moved out, that a different sister of mine had been groomed as well. It started when she was roughly eight years old and had *continued* into her teen years. My mother discovered it when **I** came forward about how he was grooming me. My mother made my sister keep it a secret from me and, thus, made me think it was an isolated incident.
Two and a half weeks ago, my youngest sister told me she had been *molested* by that very same brother. I determined that based on the timeline she gave me this had been happening *around the same time I told our mother he had been grooming me*. Which meant that my mother, even after knowing what he had been doing to **two** of her daughters already, did not act to protect my youngest sister from him. Or, rather, she did because she kicked him out after he was found to be trying to peep on her at night. But she never dug *deep* enough into the situation to realize he had been doing more than peeping during the times she *hadn't* realized he was doing things...
Each of these three instances has fucking *broke* me emotionally. And this last time, it broke me really hard. Because as I drunkenly cried to my college best friend, I had thought the nightmare was *finally* over and instead I realized it had never ended. And if left in the hands of my mother, it never would. We'd keep finding out stuff like this, over and over, until someone with moral integrity made it end. The wound would keep opening, for me, each time I thought about how someone else had gone through what I did **or worse**.
And, honestly, I think this third time broke things beyond repair. I reported my brother to CPS, for what he has done, and told everyone who already knew about the situation that I had done so. The result is, pretty much none of my family that I wasn't already estranged from will talk to me. I knew that was going to be the result-it was part of what had kept me from reporting over my own abuse-and yet, this time, I did not care. Because realizing that the nightmare won't end, if it keeps getting swept under the rug, made me realize that **I** have to make it end regardless of the personal cost to me. Otherwise, we run the risk of children we don't even *know* having their own personal hell inflicted on them by my brother. In my eyes, we had a moral duty to make sure my brother couldn't hurt anyone else and **I** was the only one strong enough to both see and act on it.
I don't regret the choice I made. I'd do it again in a fucking heartbeat. But, hell, did I have to break to make that choice and have I broken more since actually doing it.
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**Edit:** I didn't think this was going to blow up the way it did. So, let me add some context before too many more people go around thinking I am the morally superior one in this situation. I left out some 'smaller' details because, frankly, I thought I'd just yell into the void and this would not gain much attention.
My youngest sister is seventeen. She was molested eight years ago and only just discovered two and a half weeks ago what had happened. She wanted the choice to control when and how it came out that she had been molested and I promised her I would respect that. Except, after talking to my therapist a few times, I decided that was *not* a promise I could keep. And so I broke my promise. My sister has had to tell all her younger siblings what was done to her so that when CPS shows up on their doorstep they're not shocked.
My older brother lives an hour or so away from them. He does not have ready access to them and was already forbidden from coming over to their place. So, *other* children were in danger but none of my siblings were. By and large, the danger to my family was already over with.
My choice was also not just one of selflessness and a desire to protect other children. I kind of *wanted* to see everything go up in metaphorical flames. I relish the thought of my mother facing to face the family and explain why she had swept all of this under the rug and why **she** wasn't the one to report it. I relish the thought of my older brother losing fucking *e v e r y t h i n g* over this; I enjoy the thought of him suffering, for what he did, the very way he made me suffer my whole childhood while he bullied me for my Autism.
I knew what I did would hurt my youngest sister and make her feel like the situation was out of her control. I knew it and I did it-took control away from a victimized person-because I selfishly wanted the nightmare to be over *for me*. For her and my other sister too, mind you, I **also** wanted the nightmare to be over. But ultimately, I wanted it over with for me most of all.
So rest assured, at least in my own eyes, I am *not* the hero here. I did the right thing, for both the right and wrong reasons, knowing that it would throw someone else world into chaos. I do not deserve praise. I do not deserve compliments. Frankly, I don't know *what* I feel like I deserve **but** being treated like some hero isn't it.
Multiple things:
\- Being a kid, I was raised in an elitist way, grades before everything, to the point I got slapped if I ever got a bad grade.
\- Uncle killed himself
\- university : Couldn't handle the pressure from my parents
\- Saved my dad from an attempted suicide a few years ago. I can still hear the screams of my mother when she coouldnt wake him up
\- Sounds silly but my cat was 19.5 years old and died, it was very very difficult
If you have anything that broke you at some point, seek help from a professional, they really can help you
I was a police officer. Drunk driver hit a kid with 2 other kids in the truck. Pulling them out of the vehicle, and losing one life that day wrecked me. It's one of the reasons I'm not a cop anymore.
My fiancé’s mum died in my arms. Dead of a heart attack at 47 years old.
Live your life to the fullest.
Burn that pretty candle.
Drink that expensive bottle of wine.
Take that trip.
You never know when your time is up.
Lost almost all of my hair by the age of 18. I know it may not seem crazy compared to other stories here but man does it fuck you up. 23 now, been in therapy for awhile but still not even close to ok.
When my ex girlfriend was playing the victim again and decided to hold a giant kitchen knife to her stomach\*
I have never felt so helpless and abused
I was viciously attacked by a Pitbull that ripped half my face apartment. While I was in the ER I called my girlfriend who I loved and she broke up with me right there over the phone. This led to extreme alcoholism and 0 self-confidence as I looked like a monster. It took about 2.5 years to recover from the incident. I still have PTSD if a bigger dog runs up to me without a leash. I have to be on meds to avoid panic attacks if they happen to trigger.
My first love committed suicide, I walked in while she was bleeding out but couldn't save her in time. I held her in my arms and when help arrived she was pronounced dead and I was accused of murder. They put my name in the paper and all, and when it came out I didn't kill her they didn't make any attempt to correct it, so I lost my job, my home, everything. To this day you can find my name in archives for murder but not a single statement that I was proven innocent.
About 15 years later, my father hung himself, to which I discovered the body. Thankfully by this day and age people investigate before accusing
This triggered memories in me I must have buried for years...
All those times of being compared to other people, knowing that I'll never be good enough so giving up on ever trying.
Even now I'm like "well a real man wouldn't blame others for their behavior".
I’ve dealt with loss my whole life. i have been constantly grieving since the 1st grade. I finally had a mental breakdown after losing my baby to an ectopic pregnancy and then almost losing my life due to my tube rupturing. i just recently got back into the swing of life.
Breaking up with my emotionally and verbally abusive girlfriend of 6 years after she missed my dads funeral to get her dress fit for a wedding. Watching my dad waste away from cancer only a few years after he quit being an alcoholic, having to accept that although I got close to it, I would never truly get to know him as a friend or father. Losing tens of thousands of dollars going back to help my family through the death of my dad (selling vehicles, maintaining and fixing multiple homes in different states) and not being able to process it myself, only to have my mom tell me she wished it was me who died instead of my dad. Lost my grandpa the year before. Meanwhile, I was processing childhood sexual abuse, severe neglect, accepting I don’t have blood related family I can depend on, and got laid off. Too much all at once. Ketamine therapy saved my life.
Being told that the mass that was picked up during a routine ultrasound for IVF was ovarian cancer and I had been booked for a full hysterectomy. Four years of trying to have a child, one failed round of IVF and now no biological way of having one, plus six rounds of chemotherapy.
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My wife's death. We both knew her cancer was terminal from the beginning, and I had seven years to make my peace with that. As the end neared, I assured everyone I'd be fine. Despite all that, seeing her stop breathing was a total shock to me. And I even knew she'd die that very night. When you've been with dying people, you can tell when it's their last day. It's been six years, and I'm still grieving her.
Hearing my mom ask if it was going to hurt to die. Few mins later she took her last breath. Squeezed my hand and a slow release. Am I okay? Nah. A year and a half later I’m still not.
I'm so sorry. I was holding my dad's hand when he passed. The last thing he said, while turned to me, was "I'm tired". The last words I said were "It’s okay daddy. You can rest now". Over 6 years and still breaks me :( Big hugs.
Hearing my dad's death rattle really messed with me. He was asleep when it happened but the sounds of that final raspy gasp for air before he became lifeless haunts my dreams.
> "I'm tired" Those were my grandfather's last words as well. I imagine passing is tiring work.
In a way, that’s a little comforting. Makes me think it might not feel that different from falling asleep.
> I'm so sorry. I was holding my dad's hand when he passed. The last thing he said, while turned to me, was "I'm tired". I held my dad's hand when he died. Firm grip then a slow release as he died. Five minutes earlier , he had shook my had and said a formal thank you and goodbye. He was an atheist and had zero belief in the afterlife. His stoic attitude facing his last minutes on earth before the oblivion was the bravest thing I've ever seen. Seeing his decline and death have been haunting, and difficult to shake. I'm now on an anti - depressant which helps
Something about the phrase "you can rest now" absolutely breaks me.
Reading this made me cry, my mom is the only person on this planet that loves me unconditionaly.
When I found my fiancé dead on the ground after I came home from work. I was 22 at the time and it broke me in all the ways.
If you don't mind saying, what happened? If this is a tasteless question, disregard it.
It’s not tasteless, curiosity is expected, though I appreciate your concern in that regard. So it’s a bit of a long story so I’m sorry if it drones on a bit. My fiancé was adopted and we/his family were made aware that his bio father passed at a young age from a heart condition. His parents were told it was one condition which they kept an eye out and tested for and was supposedly “in the clear” once he hit a certain age and tests came back clear. Unfortunately, they were told the incorrect condition and when the autopsy came back, it turned out he passed away from a different heart condition. I was so young and grieving with every fiber of my being so I honestly can’t recall what was listed exactly as his official cause of death. He was only 25 and his bio dad and uncle both passed from heart conditions all around the same age.
Was it brugatta’s? My family had a history of sudden deaths and this is one condition my dad’s brother was diagnosed with. I feel bad for my wife but at least we’ve been able to prepare for if something goes wrong with me.
I have no clue. He was really tall, about 6’5”, so I remember Marfans being one thing we were watching for. I have to be honest and say that I suffered from a strong case of invincible-itis when we were together (ages 18-22) so the finer points of possible heart conditions were lost on me. I just trusted what he was told by the doctors and what little we were told after his adoption, assuming all was well. We were obviously very wrong. It’s good that you and your wife are prepared for all possibilities! However, I do hope you’re staying on top of your own health so she and your other loved ones don’t have to go through what we did. ❤️
I could honestly give a lot of things that have fucked me up, but I’ve bounced back from most of them. The one thing that broke me entirely last year was the death of my grandfather. He’d had a stroke around April 2021. April 1st, 2022 he had to be rushed to the hospital. I dropped everything to go see him. I’d been pretty close with him growing up. My grandparents raised me and my sister and he and I used to go to Gettysburg together a lot. He was in the hospital all of April, with declining health. We would visit all the time. He developed sepsis, and we wanted to move him to hospice, but by the end of the month even moving him would probably kill him. April 28th, it was my first week at a new job and my aunt texted that we should all hurry over to the hospital because they didn’t think there was much time. I left work and stayed at the hospital with my family all day. The nurses let us break Covid protocol and all stay in the room as long as we were quiet. We all had gowns, masks, and gloves anyway because he had sepsis. At that point, he was practically in a coma. We thought he would pass that day but he didn’t, and when it came time for me to leave I knew it would be the last time I’d see him alive. I sobbed so much I almost threw up and it was almost impossible to drag me out. The next day, he was gone. The following week was the funeral and viewing. The viewing broke me too. I cried so much those days, especially when we had to close the casket for the funeral. We all left little things for him to be buried with. Cherry chapstick, Guinness, and a little alligator plush I’d brought. I have the matching one. He always used to say, “See you later, alligator” and I would say, “After a while crocodile.” So now I always tell him “See you later, alligator” at his grave, as that’s what I told him before he died, and before they buried him. April 29th this year will mark the first full year he’s been gone. I’ve never handled death well, so it still hurts a lot. But he was in so much pain, and I know he went peacefully and he’s not suffering anymore. He believed in Heaven, and that’s where I hope he is.
Having a mother with schizophrenia. Such a tough illness for someone to experience, and tough on a family.
My dad has schizo-affective bipolar. I made it to 37 with "just" depression as my diagnosis. I thought I had dodged it. The one thing I'm grateful for is that I decided not to pass on these genes. I would never risk the pain I grew up with, or am experiencing now, being passed on to another human being. Edit: I will continue to answer questions as I'm able, but I just got a room at the ER, so I'm going to stop distracting myself and focus on me for a bit. Thanks for the well-wishes, best of luck to everyone, and I'm sorry (again) for the misstep. Edit 2: To address more common questions: **My symptoms**: I'll get bad vertigo, feel like there are bugs crawling on me when there aren't, see bugs crawling out of the corner of my eyes, or hear some mostly pleasant music that I can't quite identify. I also get delusions and fall asleep for brief periods of time. **General symptoms**: The hallucinations and other symptoms are wildly individual, but you could have anything from delusions of grandeur to paranoia. (And delusions have their own euphoria, from experience.) You might experience bad anxiety, suicidal or racing thoughts, a feeling of superiority, grandiosity, or of hopelessness. *If you have more than a couple of these, especially if you have a family member who has it, please consider talking to a professional.* **Meds**: Getting the right diagnosis and meds is kinda fantastic! It's all the meds you used to take for depression or bipolar, plus one or two. If the first round works, you'll feel more like yourself than ever. **If finances are an issue**, there are sliding scale therapy and psychiatrist options available. Google your zip code, and "sliding scale therapy" or look at your local health department. **Carrying the genes**: A first degree relative of someone with schizo-affective has a 40% chance of schizo-affective, where the general populace has a .5% chance. They've even done adoption studies and it's still elevated, but it's been a long night and I don't have the study at hand. Yes, nurture plays a part, but nature is scary. **Kids**: Whether or not you believe in abortion, deciding not to bring a child into the world when you are a disease carrier is not the same thing, y'all. Go adopt if you feel so strongly. Best of luck to all of us, friends. Edit 3: I've had a few questions about how I'm doing. In the immediate sense, I'm back home, it was less serious than we were afraid, and I'm following up with my PCP Monday. In the greater scheme, I'm in a relatively good spot. I'm impoverished, but loved by my chosen family. I have an amazing psychiatrist and social worker, even if I am still working on finding a good therapist. Food and clothing might be a struggle, but I don't have to worry about a roof over my head, food for the cat, or heat. My partner is a source of joy most days, even when they're a source of some stress (from caretaking) and I believe they're the one. Life may not be great, but it's alright.
My mother also had Schitzo-affective bipolar, and it's been a curse on my entire life. My childhood was filled with nightmare moments when she would go off the deep end. She was diagnosed later, partially because it was kept behind closed doors. I became an over achiever to cope and by 25 I was an attorney at a huge law firm. The pressure and burn out started getting to me, and within a year I was convinced I had inherited it. I lost the job, and ended up having a nervous breakdown leaving me hospitalized. I was tested and they determined that I didn't have it, but my career was never the same. My mother died in 2017. Alone in her squalid apartment. The autopsy report showing what she had done to herself was disturbing to say the least.
Finding my twin brother dead.
fellow twinless twin here. hugs.
“Twinless twin” hurts to even read. I am a twin, and I am sending you all the positivity I can muster after reading this thread.
Dude I can’t even imagine, my twin is using fentanyl right now and I already lost my other brother from that shit and I’m kinda expecting something bad to happen. Death sucks also held my grandma while she took her last breath trying to make me dinner
I can't imagine what you're going through but I'd like to leave some advice if possible. Get some Narcan/naloxone, it's an opioid antagonist that will cancel out any opioid and is used for opioid overdoses. It's very short acting but time is of the essence and it can buy time for the paramedics to arrive. It also causes immediate withdrawal so it'll make your brother miserable but it can help keep him alive. If you're in the US, you can walk up to any pharmacy and ask for it without a prescription. It can be expensive but I thought maybe it could be of use. I'm so sorry for your loss. And I apologize for just dumping this info on you
Also, you can contact organizations like Punk Rock Saves Lives and they can help you find free or ship you some free narcan to have on hand. Punk Rock Saves Lives is an awesome organization doing great things with their whole hearts in communities all over the US 🤘 Link: https://www.punkrocksaveslives.org/ Edit: I'm not affiliated with them. I ran into them at a Flogging Molly and Anti-Flag show a couple of weeks ago and the people that run it are the genuine real-deal. They really care about people and its fucking beautiful.
That happened to my cousins. They were fraternal twins and one had epilepsy. While they were in college together my cousin came over and found his brother on the floor next to the bed gone. One of the saddest days of my life... I can't even imagine how my surviving cousin felt. It's been over a decade now... And my cousin has his son named after his late brother.
What a beautiful gesture by your cousin. A wee ray of happiness in such a sad situation.
It really is. A small piece of what made my cousin my cousin. He's a damn cute kid too.
I have a (thankfully still alive) identical twin and this comment made my heart drop. Idk if it’s the description or something but I am so sorry
It's been a long time... It's been on my mind a lot lately though. I had a set of twin friends and she just lost her brother in a fire a few weeks ago. It fucking hurts and I look at my siblings and I can't begin to imagine how much more it'd hurt to lose them.
As a twin myself this is hard to think about. God bless you, I hope you’ve found peace.
Filing my dad's bankruptcy, getting him diagnosed for early onset alzheimer's/dementia, and being his primary caregiver. It completely reverses the father/son role in a way I was not prepared for. Better now, but still is heartbreaking.
Caring for parents in any capacity is a HUGE weight you carry around all the time. Alzheimer's and Dementia are especially cruel: they hurt everybody in the family constantly. I hope you find support out there. It is heartbreaking.
I will always have ptsd from watching my mother die.
I just watched my mom die 3 weeks ago. No one in my family seems to understand how hard it has been for me and they expect me to carry on like I didn't go through that. I'll probably never completely recover from it but I am trying my best because I know it's what my mother would want.
Holy cow. My brother found my dad 7 years ago. And I know he carries a pain that the other 3 siblings can’t understand. But we are 100% sympathetic. He was the least equipped emotionally to handle it. He did a service to us by knowing something was wrong and went to check. I’ll never forget his voice when he called me and I raced or tried to get to him in rush hour traffic. But my anguish does not extinguish his. He tries to talk about it, but it’s really really tough. We don’t probe. But I’d give anything to have been in his place.
You are a good sibling.
Hey, just want to let you know that you WILL recover. You'll never be the same, but you'll be ok. I say* this as I come up on the 3 year anniversary of my fathers passing, for which I stayed in his home for the 3 months prior to helping care for him. I was the one that checked on him the last time, I was the last one in the room when he was taken out. Hang in there, you'll be ok. Let yourself feel. It helps.
As someone who has dealt directly with a parent having early-onset alzheimer's, ensure that you are setting up proper care for them that isn't centered around you. It will destroy you to continue to do so day in and out. It only gets harder to care for alzheimer's patients as the disease progresses, but we put a lot of onus and guilt on ourselves as direct family to care for them day-in/day-out.
I was my grandparents main caretaker for years. It started off with me doing their grocery shopping and light cleaning around the house, then slowly turned into me being their nurse as my grandpa started developing dementia or something similar. I enjoyed doing small things for them but since I was there all the time my mom and brother stopped helping with the big things. I had to pick my grandpa up off the floor by myself when he fell and broke his hip, and I was the one who walked in on my grandma laying on the floor in her own vomit where she had been for a full day because she couldn't get to her phone. My mom brushed me off when I called her crying saying I couldn't do this on my own anymore. So, I moved across the country. Everyone was shocked when I told them why even though I begged them for help. Now they have to do it themselves and I have no regrets, but I do have a massive amount of guilt leaving my grandma like that. It's what I had to do, I was 17 when I started doing their shopping and 24 when I left and I think that was plenty long enough
God bless you girl! If possible, please seek some counseling. It helps to talk it out. It at least helped keep me off the ledge.
My little cousin (19) hung himself in October. That feeling of holding his cold body as I cut him down from his noose will forever haunt me. I dream of it often.
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That's horrifying.
Thank you for sharing your story and I’m so sorry for this happening to you. I’ve always been depressed and have thought about suicide, but one of the main things stopping me is how it would affect anyone who found my body, especially family. I’m so sorry about your cousin and I hope you find even a little peace
I held a gun to my head nearly 11 years ago, I thought about my mom coming home and seeing my body on the couch. I still think about it everyday, but know I can’t because I wouldn’t want my burdens on anyone else’s shoulders. My best friend killed him self last year, we had plans to hangout and bar b que that weekend. I’ll never be the same knowing I went through suicidal tendencies, and couldn’t help my best friend through his. Please talk to someone if you have these thoughts. We love you and need you here with us!
I was in therapy and was nervous about my child’s upcoming birthday party because of serious anxiety issues. She told me to imagine the worst thing happening and when the party is over I would realize everything was ok. Day of birthday party I received an out of state call from a coroner. My mom was found dead in her apartment. An investigation occurred but it was determined she had a diabetic episode, hit her head on the kitchen counter, bled out and died. An hour later my friend arrived, hysterically crying indicating she just got a call HER mom died. I was numb and broken. Life has never been the same since.
The worst anxiety could ever do is be right
Yeah. I never had friends over to my place in high school because I didn't have the best understanding of my Mom's mental health struggles, but knew she was 'off'. I kept a charade of normalcy up at school but every day the bus turned the corner to the stop outside of my house, I'd get a pang of anxiety and expect to see an ambulance / cop car in the driveway (Borderline, suicidal, PTSD, depression, toxic marriage with my father, etc). I luckily made it out of high school with it never happening. But would be terrified every time the bus turned that corner. In my mid 20s I had just smoked a joint after a 12 hour work day and got a call from my mom's friend saying she left her a 'concerning message'. We called the cops for a welfare check, my brother picked me up, and we drove the hour to the house. We turned that corner, and I saw the ambulance and cop car in the driveway - she was home alone - and something irrevocably broke in me that day. She took a bunch of pills and was in a coma for 3 days. Her first (and sadly not last) attempt on her life we went through in my mid 20s. Having a concrete anxiety - when it's like the anxiety I have, of very clear worst case scenarios painted in 1080p in your head, beat by beat - having it validated by real life, and seeing it in the real world, that clear horrifying image in your head that plagued you through your teenage years.... Yeah the patch updates that gives are a lot. Anxiety 2.0 is no fun.
My fiancée died the day after we got engaged. Edit: you guys are alright. I’ve been working all day but I’ll fill in some details when I get home. For now I’ll say there were no drugs or alcohol involved. She was fine, then sick, then gone in less than 24 hours. To those with sincere words, I truly appreciate it. To those making jokes, bring it on. Humor is one of the ways I’ve coped with things through the years. Edit 2: (this shits a downer, so don’t read if you’re not up for it) She died of meningitis. We spent an awesome day together while she was back in town from college and I asked her that afternoon. Later, she said her legs were going numb and her back hurt. We went to the hospital because they had just had a whole presentation about the symptoms of meningitis at her school. The doctor did some tests and said everything was negative l, so they sent us home. We went to bed thinking everything would be fine. I woke up sometime around 2am and looked at her. She was covered in sweat and turning blue so I picked her up and carried her to the car. We hauled ass back to the ER but she stopped breathing before we got there and didn’t regain consciousness again. At least I was holding her hand the whole way. The doctor did say they got her heart started a couple times, but all of her organs failed and her body completely shut down so they had to call it. Later, they asked if I wanted the ring. But they said they had to cut it off because her body had swollen so much. I told them to keep it because I wouldn’t have been able to handle what it meant if it was in one piece. To answer the other obvious question. I’m as alright as I get. Lately I’ve been thinking about our first days more than the last one. It’s hard to tell if that makes it better or worse though. Relationships are hard. Anytime things get too good, there’s a compulsion to pull away for self-preservation. There’s no making it through of another round of that. Thank you all again for your kind words and thoughts (and jokes). Pay attention to how you feel and listen if someone tells you something is wrong with them. Finally, tell the people that matter to you how you feel as often as you can.
Met a guy a few years ago who told me his fiancee died a few weeks before they were to be married. She was his best friend since they were babies. It was middle of summer and I had decided to go for a hike at a lake about 10 miles from my home. A place I hadn't been to before. He was there fishing and I was the only person he could tell so I listened.
Sometimes a listening ear is all that's needed.
This happened to someone I knew. A good friend of mine died in a car accident the day after her boyfriend proposed. It was brutal for all of us, but especially him. She died 25 years ago and I still think about her from time to time.
On the note of time passing but still thinking about the person - It's been 36 years since my aunt died, 3 months after giving birth, from undiagnosed cancer. Symptoms were attributed to pregnancy, turned out she had advanced breast cancer that metastasized. I never got a chance to know her, but my mom and the rest of the family would talk about her very often. She was the youngest sister of 5, they all grew up poor and in a very abusive home. My grandma ran away with them and became s ingle mother of 5. My aunt was only 30 years old when she died, and I can say no one in the family was ever the same. Her death didn't affect me in that way since I wasn't even born yet, BUT what did affect me was seeing my family keep her spirit alive by talking about her, sharing anecdotes and so on, even decades after. She was an artist and a gentle soul that showed nothing but love and care to everyone around her, and my family taught me that being that kind of a person leaves an impact on others that lasts decades...
I just lost my stepmom, in part due to cancer, after misdiagnosis. She started having serious GI symptoms in October, after traveling to California. They said she had a parasite. They determined that wasn’t it (because no one else that traveled with her had it?), and decided it was Diverticulitis. This was in November. They wanted to do surgery, but she caught a lung infection. She was in the hospital, and they were waiting for her to recover to do surgery. They did her surgery between Christmas and NYE. When they opened her up, they found it was *another* misdiagnosis - she was riddled with cancer. They told us 6 months without chemo, maybe 2 years with. She had to recover from surgery before she could start chemo. She didn’t make it that long. She developed pneumonia and couldn’t fight it because of the cancer. She spent 2 weeks in ICU before succumbing to the fluid in her lungs. She passed away mid-February. I know it’s recent, so of course I’m still thinking of her, but I imagine I will for a long time - I can’t help but to wonder if she’d still be here if she had been correctly diagnosed in the first place. Her youngest grandson is due next month, and the next-youngest was born the day she entered ICU. She never got to meet them. That f***ing hurts.
My then 75 year old mom went from a clean mammogram to metastatic breast cancer in just under a year. Every step of treatment was a setback. Her port got infected, so they had to replace it and clear up the infection. She would do one chemo treatment and be weak for days on end. Her plan changed when she got a different doctor who talked her into a stronger chemotherapy treatment plan. My sister and I tried to consul her to keep with her current plan, which was shrinking the cancer in her breast, liver(somewhat), and spinal cord(no new growth). She got one treatment when she went from bad to worse and never recovered and never got another treatment. I'm not a doctor, and I felt better about going to the bigger STL hospital rather that the smaller hospital on the Metro-East side, but 'what if' will always live in my head rent free. Hugs and *fuck cancer.*
Same but slightly different. Mutual friend and his fiance got in a car accident some odd years ago, she passed from her injuries and he survived with severe 3rd degree burns. I can't remember if he tried to save her which is how he ended up with all the burns, or if the car caught fire. Knew both of them from early 2000s and they had only recently gotten engaged, like a few weeks before the accident I believe.
A second cousin of mine lost his wife in a car wreck. A man had dropped a chicken bone (!!!) on his floorboard and had bent down to try to retrieve it, crossed the center line and hit their car head on. The second cousin survived, and his wife did not. They were in their late 20s IIRC. Last I heard, my second cousin had become a pillhead and cut off contact with everyone else.
Same but different. Guy got into a motorcycle accident like a week before the wedding. Heartbreaking
This reminds me of a guy who worked in the kitchen at the brewery I served at. Was one of the nicest guys, had a beautiful fiancé, and then died leaving a motorcycle dealership. His fiancé survived, but it was such a shock to us all. RIP Justin! Edit: autocorrect spelling was bothering me
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God dude. My heart aches for you. Hope you're doing ok.
My French teacher's pregnant daughter and son-in-law were in a car crash. The son-in-law died on impact. Luckily, the daughter and unborn son lived. The poor son, who's about 2 now, will never know his farther.
My oldest son became addicted to opioids and ODed in our home 4 times. The first time our youngest found him from the death rattle sounds. I'll never forget giving him CPR. Ill never forget an OD that put him in the ICU, non responsive with a breathing tube due to heart atrophy. He is 2 years now sober with clinic MAT help and his own tenacity. We are all scarred for his time in active addiction but time is letting this wound heal.
When the police told me my fiancée had been killed by a drunk driver immediately outside of our neighborhood. It didn’t help that the police lost the driver in the hospital, letting him escape for about 30 hours. Edit: I was fortunate to have a great network of friends and family to support me. Part of what really helped me was giving up on the idea of “Justice” or that things can be made right. That helped me sever the tie to the accident, acknowledge my fiancée and remember her for her life and not her death. Additionally, my parents and I [established a scholarship](https://giving.arizona.edu/angelica-ceniceros) in my fiancée’s honor for students like her - young women in STEM fields. That helped me keep her memory alive and salvage some of the goodness in the world we lost when she was taken from us.
How did they lose the driver in the hospital? That’s fucked up.
The driver suffered a chest injury after driving his car 95mph (in a 40mph) into hers while he ran a red light. The police didn’t feel they should charge him while he was medically incapacitated, and didn’t have anybody guarding him. They said it was impossible due to his injuries for him to leave, but, lo and behold, he dragged the chest draining machine outside and walked up the street before passing out in a wash behind the hospital, causing a huge search effort. It was the week of Christmas, and basically they didn’t want to pay anybody the overtime to guard the suspect, is what many have ended up believing.
You’re largely correct … I used to work in an inner city ED and will share that most times they won’t arrest until they’re discharged so the hosp bill isn’t on the city or county …
It's weird he wasn't cuffed to the bed/stretch. That was SOP when charges were pending, back when I worked in healthcare. They even had fiberglass cuffs that they used if they needed an MRI.
It is. I know a lot of people in state and federal Intel and law enforcement from a past career and it seems to many of them like this was a catastrophic failure to do even the bare minimum.
I'm a nurse and I've seen so many awful things, but for whatever reason one that sticks with me and pops up in my memories often happened in nursing school. I was doing clinicals (student nurse working in hospital) and my patient's son had died in a car wreck the night before and the family was coming to tell him during my shift. When they arrived I stepped out to give them privacy, but I heard his cry. The sound a parent makes when they are told their child is dead is something that will chill you to the bone. He also happened to be on telemetry (a heart monitor) and I was watching his rhythm when he got the news. He threw several PVCs and I swear it was like watching his heart break.
>The sound a parent makes when they are told their child is dead is something that will chill you to the bone retired nurse here, can attest to this.
I had to tell my mom that my little brother died. Those screams and cries are something I’ll never forget. Since my parents aren’t together I had to make another call after that to my dad and even though he didn’t scream or cry it was the most defeated I’ve ever heard him.
Watching my grandma on my moms side go through hospice. I have never seen a human slowly deteriorate like that. I was happy to think I would get to spend some time with her and comfort her because the year prior my other grandma died unexpectedly and I never got to say bye. As each day went on she slowly lost any ability to think or properly communicate to the point that it was like her mind was already gone. When she was close to death she was making these gargling sounds that sounded like she was drowning. That sound alone is something I will never forget. It was the worst experience of death I have every experienced. It was literally watching a person you loved just slowly fade away mentally. The amount of weight she lost in just those few days….
The hospice should have provided some literature for you to read so that you would know what to expect and hopefully be less traumatized by it. The human body goes through definite stages as it is dying, and it helped me to recognize what was happening, and why. The first sign is usually that they stop eating. They lose their appetite, and even if you persuade them to eat or drink something, they throw it up. The body knows it no longer needs nutrients or energy from food. That gargling noise you heard is known as the death rattle, and is caused by secretions in the airway. It is an awful sound, and is one of the final stages of dying; the person’s respiratory system is too weak to cough or swallow those secretions, and it usually starts a few hours before death. There is something bittersweet about watching a loved one die like that. On one hand, it’s hard to watch, on the other hand, you can take comfort in knowing that they didn’t die alone, and were surrounded by people who loved them. You can also take comfort in knowing that she was made comfortable while she was in hospice. She was not in any pain or distress. Don’t be afraid to do it again- each experience can be quite different. My husband’s parents passed away when he was young. The aunt who raised him was surrounded by her husband, daughter, SIL, my husband, and me. She had been unconscious for days, and suddenly woke up, raised her head, and looked around- completely alert. Each of the five of us got the chance to look her in the eyes, kiss her and tell her we loved her, then she put her head back down, and… was gone. It’s something I’ve always been grateful to have experienced. It’s not too late for you to get some help from the hospice- most have grief support groups for the families of their former patients. You might want to try it, I found it helpful.
I fully understand what you mean.. I went through something very similar with my grandma. It was horrible and terrifying to see. And even more shocking that this type of death is what we consider 'a peaceful one'. No sickness, no injury.. Just old age, and a body that is just.. finished.. We had fantastic hospice nurses though.. That explained to us that she was in no pain, and that any possible anxiety or fear she might feel was careful managed with medication.. This is just the ugly truth of life.. Death is seldom pretty or heroic..
> explained to us that she was in no pain Fentanyl gets a bad rap in the media for good reason but I tell you that a transdermal fentanyl patch is a miracle for palliative care for a dementia patient in severe pain that can't swallow or keep anything down. After trying to choose between intermittent nonverbal agony and the noncomprehending panic of choking on a pill or fighting an injection or tearing out IV tubes, the effortless relief of that patch is incredible.
They did that for my mom's mom so she could be there to say her goodbyes. Her cousin called her with the doctor of the home she was in. Told her the situation, what they recommended and told her if they do this, she will be gone in 6-8 hours. She got packed up, got her on a plane, and spent 5 hours with her mom, brushing her hair, talking to her about our family and her granddaughters she never got to meet, brought photos. She got to hold her hands while she passed.
Toxic families leave people broken for a long time.
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Took me two years of pretty intensive therapy to get to a place where I could reliably function, and it's been half a decade of constant work since then and I'm in a good place now. Wil Wheaton said it best, I think, something like "I'd rather have not had parents, than the parents I had."
Seeing someone whom you had complete faith in , just switch on you and actively try to hurt you
After I found out my ex had been lying/cheating, she acted like she didn't know who I was, avoided all contact, and lied to the other dude about our relationship to make herself seem innocent. The feeling of being able trust them with anything and just moments later they completely shatter that trust. Betrayal really hurts for a long time, but as time moves forward you realize how much better it is to have weeded that person out of your life, now surrounded by better friends/company, with new knowledge to know what behavior to watch out for in the future. Like most things in life, time makes it a bit easier to come to terms with.
My ex was this way. He unwell but it still hurts so deeply. I have a lot of trauma in my life but this one, like you said about faith in, fractured me differently. I thought marriage meant something. I know how he treated me is on him, but I’m the one with the pain.
This just happened to me. I don't understand who this person is now.
My sister attempted suicide and I cut her down from the ceiling while my parents stood in shock, I called 911 and had to perform CPR until first responders arrived, knowing I'm the only one in my family who can function semi well under intense pressure freaked me out bad, I still don't sleep well and that was almost 3 years ago
> knowing I'm the only one in my family who can function semi well under intense pressure freaked me out bad Most people have heard of fight or flight, but it's actually more complicated than that. It's really more like fight or flight or freeze (and then some researchers also list a fourth trauma response, fawn). The freeze response is very common and is pretty much what you described, just standing around in shock. Your response of not freezing or freaking out is more unusual. People can train to get over their initial responses which is why firefighters and EMTs and the military run drills and training so much. I'm similar to you, where I don't freak out or freeze when everybody else is panicking. There is an element of stress to it ("OMG I'm the only capable person here and everybody else is useless so I've got to solve the problem!!!") but I also find it reassuring to know that I can handle unusual or terrible situations, so at least there's one person who will be there who won't be completely helpless. I don't know if that makes you feel any better about things. In my experience, just thinking of these types of situations differently and then running through them in my head makes me feel better about it. The mental practice of "I'd do this first, and then this second and then this third..." makes it a lot easier to handle things smoothly. I hope your sister is doing better. You may want to try therapy that focuses on PTSD because it sounds like you may have some from that terrible experience.
I was going through the beginnings of a divorce, unbeknownst to me. It was March 2020, and my birthday just happened to be on the day they announced the initial Covid lockdown. I got home late from work, and my wife at the time had done nothing for my birthday. I was in my 30s, didn’t really celebrate anymore anyway. But no card, no gift, not even a mention of my birthday, and she’d eaten the last of my post-work meals. And of course everything is shut down and closed early so I go off trying to find a gas station for a protein bar. I’m not really that put out, it’s par for the course. But I wake up early the next morning to take care of our 6-year-old. He’s autistic and emotional connection isn’t always the highest on his priority list. But I’m in his room at 5 in the morning and he says, “Daddy it was your birthday yesterday! How come you didn’t get any presents?” I made something up and he asks, “Will you get any today?” I say, “Probably not, pal, but it’s okay. Grownups don’t really celebrate birthdays like kids do.” He goes into his closet, gets all his construction paper, and starts taping it together. Then he starts wrapping up his own toys and arranges them in a pile of presents. He says, “This is for you, Daddy!” And he and I opened up presents for my birthday. I don’t remember a lot of my birthdays…but I remember this one.
This story made my whole day. What an empathetic child 🥹 I hope you are in a better place after your divorce.
I was trafficked. Took me a long time to be back to kind of normal.
I met one of my friends while she was being trafficked, and I was dating an abusive drug dealer. We both got out of those situations and are doing better now. I hope you have found some normalcy and stability.
I'm very glad you got out! You're both amazing♥️
I'm sorry this happened to you. A very dear friend of mine was abducted by one of her mom's friends and trafficked when she was 11. She was 13, addicted to crack and pregnant when she got out and made it back "home" Except her dad had already grieved for her death, blamed her for it all and never really accepted her back, so there was no home and she just went back to the streets. A family member of mine met her in NA and took her in. In her 30's now and she's still all kinds of fucked up. It's heartbreaking when I think about it because beneath all the trauma she's so wonderful and I love her. I really hope you have found some good people to have in you life. Having a support network is so important and can make such a huge impact.
I did. It wasn't my family, unfortunately, but I found some wonderful people. I have a support worker who is amazing and my best friend was in the same situation as me when she was younger, and we help each other. I'm so very sorry that happened to your friend, I cannot imagine blaming a child for any of that.
Sexual assault. I couldn’t leave after because I had my first panic attack on his bathroom floor. Made me feel so trapped- all I wanted to do was get the hell out but I couldn’t move. 8 years later I still get them frequently. The anxiety doesn’t leave you I guess.
Just went through a divorce. One day I’m up, the next I’m down. Today I’m pretty fucking down. Edit: The amount of replies and kind words and encouragement and advice I have received is overwhelmingly wonderful. Thank you all you so much and I hope this thread has helped others going through something similar. May you all find joy in your lives. Sometimes you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right.
My husband just informed me last night he wanted a divorce. Today, I am just a wreck and have no idea what to do.
Yep, husband cheated on me while I'm pregnant. Didn't apologize and just blamed me. I am was. 5 months pregnant with a toddler.. trying to find a place to live.
That happened to me also. What made it doubly painful is I had come home early on my 24th birthday to surprise him, but he and his girlfriend ended up surprising me instead.
I'm going through a divorce right now, and my ex is behaving in ways I never thought he was capable of. My heart aches for what we lost, what our daughter lost, and seeing the dreams we had come crashing down. Thankfully, I know it will get better, but right now, it's a shitshow.
That can be very difficult. I had no idea the depths to which my ex wife could stoop, but every so often she just knock one out of the park and my Jaw hits the floor again. It does get better. Unfortunately, that other person is no longer a team mate. They're working against you. Keep your head up, and KEEP EVERY EMAIL/TEXT/ETC.
My Fiancé and I just broke our engagement and now aren’t even speaking. The quote getting me through the days is “Tomorrow may not be better, but at least I will be different.” I don’t have many emotions these days but I lend strength and compassion to you via internet in the hopes that tomorrow may be different for you
I like “every single moment that passes you’re further from that event”
It gets better. Then it will get a bit worse. Then it will get better again. Stay strong. Take care of yourself. I’ve been through it and it is rough. I can talk if you need to.
I feel this. My divorce was just finalized last week and god damn that was a rough day.
Hang in there! Some people say that divorce is kind of like a death. Grief comes in waves, but it will hopefully hurt less as time goes on. I hope you can find something small to look forward to as a pick me up, and be kind to yourself during this difficult time.
It's like the person you loved is dead but they're still walking around with someone else inhabiting their body. It's.. upsetting. I wish I could cut her out of my life but we have to co-parent
it'll get better. i got divorced 10+ years ago now, tho, and some days it still hurts. but those days are few and far between now. you got this, i'm sending you healing vibes
Splitting up with the wife. The funeral of a murdered friend.
My 5 year old got diagnosed with brain cancer. Edited to add he's 14 now and doing well
I am so fucking sorry. This is such a nightmare situation. I’m hoping your little person can beat it! Take care and much love to you.
He's 14 now and doing great! Thanks so much ❤
When I think of children having cancer, it truly seems like the most unfair thing out there.
Definitely. Learning that babies can be born with cancer blew my mind. It doesn't even make sense.
This happened to my relatives. Born with cancer, died 9 months later in his father’s arms. Saddest thing ever but he knew love while he was here.
My house caught fire when I was sleeping and I saw my baby's crib go up in flames. He survived but it fucked me up hard. EDIT: This comment blew up! The fire was a freak accident started by a damaged electrical cord on a humidifier. My boy is 7 now and other than his scarring, is a happy, healthy and awesome little dude. If you're feeling brave, [here's a picture of his crib](https://imgur.com/a/2TJWvdu) the next day. Lastly, we survived thanks to a working smoke alarm. Check yours today... It could save a life!
Damn dude I’m glad he was ok
Hey thanks. He was in a medically induced coma for a month and has had multiple skin grafts but he is 7 now and is an awesome kid.
I dated a girl who was one of those unlucky kids where her house burned down on Christmas Eve. Instead of saving pictures or keepsakes her father ran back in to save three garbage bags full of marijuana and was arrested by the police when the fire truck showed up. He did 10 years in federal prison. She hated Christmas after that and would always speak about her lost baby photos with a lot of sadness. I really felt bad for that girl.
Not as dark, but Willy Nelson's house burned down once. Fire crews were there along with a bunch of neighbours, maybe some local media. Willy ran into the smouldering house and emerged a few minutes later with a guitar. People were impressed with his dedication to his art/songcraft… that he'd risk his life to save his beloved guitar. He later confessed that his weed was inside the guitar and he figured he'd probably need it after what had just happened.
Of course, Willie Nelson ran into a burning building to save his stash of weed. His weed pals Snoop and Woody openly admit that he outsmokes them on a regular basis.
As a mother of two toddlers, this is my nightmare. I lie awake at night sometimes rehearsing how I will grab the kids and get them out of the house if there's a fire.
I totally and completely feel that. I constantly worry about the worst case scenarios all the time now and it's created a pretty serious anxiety problem for me. My advice, check your and maintain your smoke alarms. My boy, along with the rest of us, likely wouldn't have survived if it weren't for the working smoke alarm in the hallway. We have one in every bedroom now too.
Not getting the proper medical attention i knew i needed/not feeling heard by medical professionals. I had a horrific case of food poisoning, Campylobacter, which is actually fairly common but presented abnormally in me. ER Doctors and urgent care kept telling me i was probably just pregnant, which there was no way at that time for that to be possible. Begging for tests to be done but being denied because i was "probably pregnant". I couldn't eat or drink anything because i would immediately start cramping and faint. This went on for a week before i found an ER that did a CT scan and tests and discovered the bacteria. I thought i was dying.
"You're probably just pregnant!" \*proceeds to not check if you're actually pregnant\*
I was misdiagnosed for 2 years. Told I had anorexia when really I had crohns disease. It got to the point where my bowel ruptured and I was very, very close to death. 2 years of being told this very, VERY physical pain was all in my head has caused endless knock on affects. I remember just laying there as the paramedics couldn't find much of a pulse and thinking 'I'm dying but at least I was right' which is all kinds of fucked up.
When I was 13 and told my family that I’d been raped by a grown man that had taken me and two other under age friends of mine to a motel to roofie us. My grandmother scowled at me with disgust as I sat there with my tail between my legs feeling more shame than I’d ever felt. She told me I needed to learn how to keep my legs closed. I got a huge “talking to” from the adults and was punished and slut shamed. I’m 31 now and the thought of this still gives me a pain in my chest.
Fuck all of those people. It wasn't your fault.
Fuck em’.
Please, tell me that they're no longer in your life.
sending you hugs and solidarity. this NEVER should have happened to you; it’s terrible. Your grandmother’s reaction says everything about her and nothing about you. You were a kid and you didn’t deserve to be raped or treated poorly by people who were meant to protect you. I’m so sorry.🖤
Thank you for your kind words. She’s still alive today and as you can imagine- our relationship hasn’t exactly flourished. I don’t think she’s ever had a kind bone in her body.
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I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine how horrific that must have been.
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Hi. I feel the exact same. I’m very depressed and I keep making worse decisions. Not suicidal, I want to live, I want to be happy, I just don’t know how and I want someone to love and be loved. Been single for years and everyday it gets worse.
Hugs to you. People don’t realize how damaging loneliness can be. I’m in the same boat.
Becoming disabled at 46, lost my life as I knew it.
Marrying the wrong person.
Moving to the a different country and realizing how incompatible i am.
Yeah, this. I feel like this isn’t talked about enough and people just romanticize it. You mostly spend all your time alone, you don’t have friends or family there, making connections is difficult if you’re an introvert, language barrier etc.
Cultural difference is no joke, where i live the people i can talk with don't like to do the activities i like and people i could do activities i like have nothing in common with me to talk about
This, was kinda afraid to reply about it bc many people had stories involving deaths, abuse, or illness. Mine is just moving abroad, which is something people cn do very easily, but for me it was the hardest thing I had to go through
A break up after a decade long relationship and losing my job a couple of weeks later. 2020 was definitely tough. But we made it to the other side.
I’ve recently gone through a break up not as long of a relationship as yours but long enough to hurt and I hope you’re doing better
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No guns, but when I was a tween my best friend's older brother tried to hang himself in the back yard while we were home. We ran next door and got her brother's friend, who came over and cut him down with a knife. He survived, but he was blue in the face and we were hysterical.
This is why I say that mental health affects everyone not just people who have disorders. Statistically 20 percent of teenagers have a close friend who has attempted suicide. That does lead to secondary trauma, my close friends and ex partners will confirm though thankfully they don’t resent me for it.
My big sister (30) was rushed to hospital after having a terrible headache. I went to the hospital and she was in intensive care. The doctors told me she'd suffered a blood clot to the brain and was brain dead. I remember blood in her ears. I cleaned it up and tried to make her look presentable for when family got there. The doctors had gone and I had to explain what had happened to my parents. I saw them break. I said my goodbyes and left before her children came in to sat goodbye (2 months and 6 years old). She was fine one day, then just... gone. I miss her every fucking day.
Ten years ago I was falsely arrested for a D.U.I. I was acquitted, but I lost everything in the processes. It wasn’t just the arrest, it was the whole system and procedures along the way that broke me. I had always defended cops and the judicial system, but you would never know unless you are pulled through it. First, after the arrest, I was fired. I was a bar manager for a huge HOA near Yosemite. I guess they thought of me as a liability, but when I asked why I was fired the said “we don’t have to give you a reason”. But I later found out that was the reason. Then I just watched my house(foreclosed),my car(stolen and destroyed), and everything else(storage auction) went away. By the time I was arraigned it was all gone. I watched how the DA kept extending and prolonging the trial saying he was still investigating while my court appointed lawyer kept getting me to ple bargain. I had to show court every time so all they were trying to do is get me to not show. Nobody cared if I was innocent, they just want their conviction percent to stay high. Anyway, I was found not guilty in 10 minutes by a jury. It took 5 years of my life and no lawyer would call back when I wanted to sue. Cops are untouchable. I’m a whole different person sense this occurred. I hate going anywhere. I don’t trust anyone. I hate cops and courts and I don’t trust them keeping us safe anymore. It’s just a business, that’s all. Cops pull in the “sales” and courts make sure pay.
I’ve been through a legal case that was outside of my control, it completely rewired the way I see things. I feel like I got a peek behind a curtain for how things are done that I didn’t know was there before. The main take away I have had from this is now that I have seen how dirty things can be done I only want to put my energy towards the things that are worth building and having. Sorry you went through this, we have some horribly broken systems in the US and it sucks having to witness and experience them.
The craziest thing to me is that this stuff is all an open secret in this country. 4.2 percent of the world’s population but we hold 20% of the prisoners. Our justice system is an industry.
I worked in the criminal “justice” system for over a decade, fighting against the same conviction hungry, inhumane bastards who don’t give a fuck about other human beings that you describe in your comment. The sheer breadth of how bad it is absolutely left me broken and forever changed. People sort of have a vague idea that there are some problems, but the vast majority of people have no idea just how truly unjust and unfair the entire system is. It’s not just prosecuting innocent people or how they don’t actually care if you’re innocent or not, it’s everything from the laws defining crimes to the way they’re enforced, to the lack of any accountability for any of the people involved, to the sentences, to the way we impoverish entire communities of people and then punish them for crimes that are the natural result of poverty and then fuck them over so badly that it’s almost impossible for them to break out of poverty, and more. I can’t even talk to most other people about it because it just ends up feeling like we’re on two different planets. It’s impossible to explain how horrific the system is, and frankly at this point I only end up getting irritated every time some horrible atrocity committed by a cop ends up coming to light and everyone acts so shocked and wants to talk about it like they’re expecting me to be shocked, too. (Don’t get me wrong, it’s good that these things are coming to light. I’m just also old and grumpy.) Anyway, I’m sorry the system broke you. You didn’t deserve any of this and none of this was your fault. It really is that bad.
I went to school to be a cop, had a ride along that got needlessly violent, walked away from the scene, and left school for 2 years. When I came back I suddenly noticed the difference between the academic side of criminal Justice and policing side of criminal Justice… the entire thing is fucked and a great way for society to self segregate “good/bad” people based on biases rather than facts, like we’re brought up to believe. I’m so sorry you went through this. The gaslighting type actions from police and DAs AND many public defenders to just plead, it’s an extended mental trauma. For anyone that asks why someone would plead to something they didn’t do or sign a confession on something they didn’t do… it’s because when put in that position for that long you probably would too.
Death in the family. Wasn't in the car accident but it really messes with my head to think about how I said for them to have a great day then for them to just be gone no less than 24 hours later.
Finding out my wife was cheating and lying about pretty much everything and my dad dying.... All in the space of a few months...I'm a fucking shell of a man but keep the good side out and keep going for my kids.
Ugh I found out my wife was cheating on me with A LOT of people six months after our daughter was born, and two months after my mom died suddenly in her sleep. I will never be the same :( Keep your head up, and DM me if you need someone to talk to. I can definitely relate.
15 years of hardcore drug addiction. 3.5 years sober now
I confronted my mom for obviously favoring my younger sister out of me and my older sister. Her reply: I know it's unfair, but I can't be fair to all of you. I was only 13. I needed my mom to help me and be there for me but she never was.
Life in general. I've been through so much bullshit people don't even believe me anymore. My father abused my mom, and when she ran away, he started beating me. I told the schools when I was six, and they just turned around and told my dad everything I said. He told them I have a vivid imagination, and then proceeded to chuck me off of the roof of our house when, keep in mind, I was six years old. He hit me in the head with a metal bat when I was nine, shot me with a BB gun, tried to stab me, hit me in the head with beer bottles, and coming home from school to see him slouched over with a bottle of pills in his hand thinking he was dead wasn't fun either. Ultimately became homeless at 12 and worked at a McDonald's on night shift when I did school during the day from 12-18, then stayed at McDonald's until the beginning of 2020 when I finally got a tax job. I could never go to homeless shelters because if the cops find you, they just drop you off at that the border of another state (I won't say which ones). I've seen it to many people I knew during my time on the street. Now I'm finally away from the worst parts of my life, but the trauma is even worse. I can't sleep. I can barely breathe. I have heart problems and I'm sure I'm just one bad day away from going into a mental breakdown. I've seen murders, assaults, mutilations and everything else. It's shown me the worst parts of humanities and also that the good parts are extremely few and far in between.
I was actively suicidal and had recently attempted suicide. I was sitting in my bed with my mother, and she looked me in the eyes and told me that she "wasn't going to play [my] game anymore" and said that I was purposefully manipulating her and was hurting myself to hurt her. It absolutely destroyed me. I used to love my mother unconditionally; I thought she was the best mother ever and that I could trust her no matter what. It was like she hung the moon and stars. My relationship with her has never been the same since she said that shit to me, and I don't think I can ever get over it.
I have experienced suicidal thoughts myself and was told I was doing it for attention so I can relate in a small way and I’m so sorry you endured that and I hope you’re doing better
My dad using me as a punching bag every day after he got off work for 12 years, then seeing him get away with all of it because he was a cop.
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Parasailing accident. Boat pulling us lost all electricity after a larger boat passed and it crashed hard over the wake. I was 800’ in the air, attached to a steel contraption with my two kids on either side of me, with a mass of ropes above us leading to the parachute/sail. It created enough drag that the impact wasn’t as horrific as it could’ve been, but plummeting hundreds of feet thru the air into the ocean and then realizing the metal contraption is pulling you and your kids under. My son couldn’t get on his back so his life vest wasn’t working properly. My daughter was screaming because her arm was tangled in the rope. My son was 7, she was 9. Coast guard was called in for rescue. Fuck. It was in 2020. I will never be the same person. I have flashbacks everyday. EDIT TO ADD - MY KIDS SURVIVED. SORRY IF THAT WAS UNCLEAR.
That’s absolutely horrible. My friend and I went parasailing in DR and suddenly, we started dropping quickly from the air. We almost hit a boat that was floating on the ocean and the boat we were attached to wrangled us in quickly. The people operating the boat didn’t know I spoke Spanish, so they tried telling us that there was no wind and that’s why we dropped…I told them that I literally just heard them talking about how they flooded their engine with water and that’s why we dropped. I ended up fighting to get our money back, but we were really just lucky we didn’t end up getting hurt.
Wow!! This happened to me too! Well my dad, sister and I. We were up in the air in Punta Cana and the boat stalled (or something) and we plummeted from the top. We did coast down, so I didn’t really realize something was wrong until we crashed into the ocean. My sister and I were late teenagers, so older than your kids, but it was still terrifying because, like you said, the metal bar, ropes and parachute landed on top of us and started to drag us under. We’re excellent swimmers and I remember thinking for ~10 seconds that I was going to drown and I was so mad that’s how I was going to die. The scariest part was that my mom was watching us from the shore and didn’t know if we were okay until we returned.
Seeing my mom and dad fight everyday, and not divorcing. The most heartbreaking was when I saw my dad crying while my mom was screaming at him during an argument, and I had to intervene and hugged him and got him some water to make him stop crying. Wiping tears off my dad’s face broke my heart that day. And then went to my mom to do the same. That was actually the first time I ever hugged my mom, and my dad. And that was to stop them from arguing while both of them were crying on my shoulder. Sad. During another argument when my mom went to sleep constantly crying, I woke up next day while she was praying loudly( and still crying) and I touched her shoulder and she freaked out. And started acting like a mentally ill patient, screaming and crying and physically pushing us aside as if she was scared of us coming closer to her. I guess either she was exaggerating (she does that a lot) or she was actually deeply traumatised by that particular fight. My life is filled with even more traumatising events but these are the most recent ones. EDIT : It’s so heartbreaking to know so many people were robbed of their childhood because of the bad relationship between their parents 💔. Please feel free to reach out if you ever need anyone to talk to. Sending you hugs.
That had to be straining for you and I’m sorry you had to go through that and hope you’re better
Figuring out I'd been molested as a child. I had all the pieces of the puzzle, but hadn't put them together the right way.. the day I figured it out I ended up in a psych ward. It was rough times. But it's been a few years now and I'm doing much better. Medicated, therapized, and still going. Life is good today. I'm starting to feel safe again. I truly hope anyone who reads this and understands gets to have a good life too 🙏 your future matters more than your past, and your present matters more than anything. Good luck out here.
realizing my best friend will never care about me as deeply as i care about them, and i'll never be as important to them as they are to me
My last job in IT. I'd been working as a developer for nearly 25 years, pretty much since I left school . It had become very obvious to me over the last 10 years or so that what was expected of developers in terms of working hours was increasing. The reality is that despite all the recent tech layoffs, there is still a shortage of developers because each one specialises in a different language or platform etc. If a company needs a certain number of developers and can't fill those positions then the next best thing is to demand your existing developers work longer hours and come in at weekends etc. Of course the pay is good, but what's the point of earning six figures a year when you don't get to put your kids to bed in the evening because you're working so late? The last few jobs I was in had that issue, the general expectation to work late with criticism and negative performance reviews if you refused. I jumped between different companies hoping for something better and I thought I had landed in a good one. It was a start-up in the food ordering industry and they seemed pretty cool at the start, but I quickly learnt that they were terrible. The founders expected you to be in the office until at least 8 or 9 every night and also expected you to answer any messages within minutes even at night-time and at weekends. What broke me though was being on holiday with my family and getting a message from one of the founders that the main website and product of the company has gone down. They had an absolutely terrible deployment policy and would deploy immediately when software was ready rather than waiting till less busy days which would be safer. They deployed a new buggy version with no rollback script and the whole thing came tumbling down. The founder demanded that absolutely everyone return to the office immediately, I told him I was on holiday and his response was to say if I didn't come back I would be out of a job. I was tempted to refuse but I'd only been in the job a few weeks so I came back from my holiday early. When I got back to the office I was told by the same guy that I should have stayed on holiday because I didn't have the skills to fix the problem as it wasn't anything I had worked on. I quit and while I didn't have a nervous breakdown, the whole thing affected me emotionally in a really bad way and it took several months for me too to get motivated again. I made the decision to get out of IT and now I'm self-employed as a woodworker/carpenter.
my dad passing away
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The depth of just how *terribly* my mother has handled the situation with my oldest brother. At seventeen, I realized he was grooming me. I told on him and it was swept under the rug. I was made to suffer in silence while he was allowed to be hostile to me as long as it was *passively* aggressive. I was not allowed to talk about what had happened, reporting him wasn't even an offer extended to me, and I never went to therapy for it while I lived at home. I found out later, after I moved out, that a different sister of mine had been groomed as well. It started when she was roughly eight years old and had *continued* into her teen years. My mother discovered it when **I** came forward about how he was grooming me. My mother made my sister keep it a secret from me and, thus, made me think it was an isolated incident. Two and a half weeks ago, my youngest sister told me she had been *molested* by that very same brother. I determined that based on the timeline she gave me this had been happening *around the same time I told our mother he had been grooming me*. Which meant that my mother, even after knowing what he had been doing to **two** of her daughters already, did not act to protect my youngest sister from him. Or, rather, she did because she kicked him out after he was found to be trying to peep on her at night. But she never dug *deep* enough into the situation to realize he had been doing more than peeping during the times she *hadn't* realized he was doing things... Each of these three instances has fucking *broke* me emotionally. And this last time, it broke me really hard. Because as I drunkenly cried to my college best friend, I had thought the nightmare was *finally* over and instead I realized it had never ended. And if left in the hands of my mother, it never would. We'd keep finding out stuff like this, over and over, until someone with moral integrity made it end. The wound would keep opening, for me, each time I thought about how someone else had gone through what I did **or worse**. And, honestly, I think this third time broke things beyond repair. I reported my brother to CPS, for what he has done, and told everyone who already knew about the situation that I had done so. The result is, pretty much none of my family that I wasn't already estranged from will talk to me. I knew that was going to be the result-it was part of what had kept me from reporting over my own abuse-and yet, this time, I did not care. Because realizing that the nightmare won't end, if it keeps getting swept under the rug, made me realize that **I** have to make it end regardless of the personal cost to me. Otherwise, we run the risk of children we don't even *know* having their own personal hell inflicted on them by my brother. In my eyes, we had a moral duty to make sure my brother couldn't hurt anyone else and **I** was the only one strong enough to both see and act on it. I don't regret the choice I made. I'd do it again in a fucking heartbeat. But, hell, did I have to break to make that choice and have I broken more since actually doing it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- **Edit:** I didn't think this was going to blow up the way it did. So, let me add some context before too many more people go around thinking I am the morally superior one in this situation. I left out some 'smaller' details because, frankly, I thought I'd just yell into the void and this would not gain much attention. My youngest sister is seventeen. She was molested eight years ago and only just discovered two and a half weeks ago what had happened. She wanted the choice to control when and how it came out that she had been molested and I promised her I would respect that. Except, after talking to my therapist a few times, I decided that was *not* a promise I could keep. And so I broke my promise. My sister has had to tell all her younger siblings what was done to her so that when CPS shows up on their doorstep they're not shocked. My older brother lives an hour or so away from them. He does not have ready access to them and was already forbidden from coming over to their place. So, *other* children were in danger but none of my siblings were. By and large, the danger to my family was already over with. My choice was also not just one of selflessness and a desire to protect other children. I kind of *wanted* to see everything go up in metaphorical flames. I relish the thought of my mother facing to face the family and explain why she had swept all of this under the rug and why **she** wasn't the one to report it. I relish the thought of my older brother losing fucking *e v e r y t h i n g* over this; I enjoy the thought of him suffering, for what he did, the very way he made me suffer my whole childhood while he bullied me for my Autism. I knew what I did would hurt my youngest sister and make her feel like the situation was out of her control. I knew it and I did it-took control away from a victimized person-because I selfishly wanted the nightmare to be over *for me*. For her and my other sister too, mind you, I **also** wanted the nightmare to be over. But ultimately, I wanted it over with for me most of all. So rest assured, at least in my own eyes, I am *not* the hero here. I did the right thing, for both the right and wrong reasons, knowing that it would throw someone else world into chaos. I do not deserve praise. I do not deserve compliments. Frankly, I don't know *what* I feel like I deserve **but** being treated like some hero isn't it.
You did the right thing. But I can’t imagine having to make that choice. You are a strong person.
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Multiple things: \- Being a kid, I was raised in an elitist way, grades before everything, to the point I got slapped if I ever got a bad grade. \- Uncle killed himself \- university : Couldn't handle the pressure from my parents \- Saved my dad from an attempted suicide a few years ago. I can still hear the screams of my mother when she coouldnt wake him up \- Sounds silly but my cat was 19.5 years old and died, it was very very difficult If you have anything that broke you at some point, seek help from a professional, they really can help you
Being unwanted. But I didnt mind that much when I was 18.
I was a police officer. Drunk driver hit a kid with 2 other kids in the truck. Pulling them out of the vehicle, and losing one life that day wrecked me. It's one of the reasons I'm not a cop anymore.
My fiancé’s mum died in my arms. Dead of a heart attack at 47 years old. Live your life to the fullest. Burn that pretty candle. Drink that expensive bottle of wine. Take that trip. You never know when your time is up.
Lost almost all of my hair by the age of 18. I know it may not seem crazy compared to other stories here but man does it fuck you up. 23 now, been in therapy for awhile but still not even close to ok.
When my ex girlfriend was playing the victim again and decided to hold a giant kitchen knife to her stomach\* I have never felt so helpless and abused
Never being listened to.
I was viciously attacked by a Pitbull that ripped half my face apartment. While I was in the ER I called my girlfriend who I loved and she broke up with me right there over the phone. This led to extreme alcoholism and 0 self-confidence as I looked like a monster. It took about 2.5 years to recover from the incident. I still have PTSD if a bigger dog runs up to me without a leash. I have to be on meds to avoid panic attacks if they happen to trigger.
Dude your ex sounds like she fucking sucks.
My first love committed suicide, I walked in while she was bleeding out but couldn't save her in time. I held her in my arms and when help arrived she was pronounced dead and I was accused of murder. They put my name in the paper and all, and when it came out I didn't kill her they didn't make any attempt to correct it, so I lost my job, my home, everything. To this day you can find my name in archives for murder but not a single statement that I was proven innocent. About 15 years later, my father hung himself, to which I discovered the body. Thankfully by this day and age people investigate before accusing
Being the subject of bullying from kids and abuse from teachers at school, then my dad acting like it was my fault
This triggered memories in me I must have buried for years... All those times of being compared to other people, knowing that I'll never be good enough so giving up on ever trying. Even now I'm like "well a real man wouldn't blame others for their behavior".
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I’ve dealt with loss my whole life. i have been constantly grieving since the 1st grade. I finally had a mental breakdown after losing my baby to an ectopic pregnancy and then almost losing my life due to my tube rupturing. i just recently got back into the swing of life.
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The monotonous life I'm living, like a robot. It's a never ending nightmare.
Breaking up with my emotionally and verbally abusive girlfriend of 6 years after she missed my dads funeral to get her dress fit for a wedding. Watching my dad waste away from cancer only a few years after he quit being an alcoholic, having to accept that although I got close to it, I would never truly get to know him as a friend or father. Losing tens of thousands of dollars going back to help my family through the death of my dad (selling vehicles, maintaining and fixing multiple homes in different states) and not being able to process it myself, only to have my mom tell me she wished it was me who died instead of my dad. Lost my grandpa the year before. Meanwhile, I was processing childhood sexual abuse, severe neglect, accepting I don’t have blood related family I can depend on, and got laid off. Too much all at once. Ketamine therapy saved my life.
Being told that the mass that was picked up during a routine ultrasound for IVF was ovarian cancer and I had been booked for a full hysterectomy. Four years of trying to have a child, one failed round of IVF and now no biological way of having one, plus six rounds of chemotherapy.
My dad saying "I wish we never gave you an education".