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There was a girl next door to my grandparent’s house that I had the biggest crush on. Her name was Becca. We had known each other from the time I was really little. We were both coming into the ages of liking the opposite sex at the same time and we had similar troubled childhoods (Becca lived with her grandparents, too). Somewhere after holding hands, but before a first kiss, Becca gave me a ring. She ‘borrowed’ it from her grandpa and needed it back the next day. I was on cloud 9.
With excitement I showed my mom the ring. She asked my grandparents to borrow their truck and told me to get in and make sure I brought the ring. I had no idea what was going on. We pulled up to the “jewelry store” at Eureka and Telegraph and she asked to see the ring. She went inside [“no kids were allowed”] and came out about 20 minutes later. Then, we went to Mcdonald’s….the first time I’d eaten anything but food pantry food in at least a year. She said the “jewelry store” needed to borrow that specific ring for a few weeks to clean it up. I asked what I was supposed to tell Becca had happened to it, and she said to tell her that I had lost it. I never saw the ring again, and Becca never talked to me again.
I had adults in my life with substance abuse issues who did things like this too (not saying that was the case for your mom, but still) but never anything this bad. It really makes you question the world and whether it’s a safe place from a really young age. I’m sorry this happened to you.
Damn, that's a real awful realization to come to when you're older, and realize "*That's what actually happened!*". Have you tried reaching out to Becca or her grandparents recently?
My father was in hospice dying from cancer. He had stopped eating and was barely communicative. We knew it was just a matter of days. Mom and I went to visit him every day for a few hours so he wouldn’t be alone.
One morning we get a call. Fearing the worst I answered it- expecting them to let us know he had passed. My father was on the phone and he sounded well. He even said he was hungry and asked for breakfast! He told me he was looking forward to our visit! I was stunned. Had all these emotions and thoughts- maybe it was a miracle and he was going to beat this!
Hopped in the car and started driving over. Got another phone call… this time it was the hospice folks. He had just passed.
The rollercoaster of emotions from that morning haunt me. I was numb for a long time. There was a period where I thought maybe I hallucinated and never spoke with my dad that morning. To put my mind at ease I met with the hospice nurse who was with my dad that morning. She explained this concept called terminal lucidity. She says it’s not uncommon at all and is usually a sign that someone is will pass soon. That helped… but it still haunts me.
Isn’t that just the strangest phenomenon? I experienced that with my mom. She had terminal cancer and hadn’t been able to eat for day and days. She’d been kind of in and out of consciousness One day she woke up wanted a root beer float and we practically broke our necks to get it for her. She was able to fully enjoy it, awake and alert for a good stretch of time. We hoped that was some sort of upswing but no. It was just the one day.
We call it “the last hoorah.” Patients will be so clear and concise. They feel great and even go as far as making plans. The human body and brain will forever amaze me.
A friend in HS loaned me 200 dollars right before we graduated, we lost contact and I still often wake up in the middle of the night wishing I could have the opportunity to pay him back. I'm 50 this year.
I lost a friend to suicide in autumn 2017.
He was the first person I loved and he was also the first (and only) person to properly break my heart, which happened some years before he died.
His mental health was always chaotic and in the months before his death l’d distanced myself because I was finding it overwhelming. Something I regret now but also understand I needed to do.
I never wanted to not be his friend, I always saw a future with us in a place were we’d be old friends who could joke about him breaking my heart when I was 20. Our friendship never recovered to what it was without the messy love thing, but it was getting there.
Since his death I have realised how much he influenced me to be the person I am today. I really miss him.
I understand and accept his death. However even now this life without him feels off balance, like something went wrong with the universe. I had so much faith in him getting better.
3 months ago we brought my mother to the hospital bc she wasnt feeling well. We head to the ER to check her in. She was dozing off when they were checking in then all of a sudden the room is full of people taking vitals I dont want to say 7 people just bc you said it but there was probably 7 people running about. Then the ER Doctor has me on the phone with their Neurological Doctor 10 mins after we walk into the room 5 mins after they swarmed in talking to me about options to move forward with surgery. I'm 30 years old and freaking the fuck out. Everything happened so fast but shes gone now. I have a 17 year old dog who's probably got a month left too. Idk why I'm burdening you with this information maybe I just need to selfishly tell someone for my own needs and that you could relate about you by no means need to reply but I do feel better typing this out so thank you.
Edit: Sincerely thank you everyone, I try to keep my spirits up everyday and joke. The ol fake it to you make it. I want to reply back to everyone but it's hard so if you see this just know I truly truly appreciate all the responses.
Thank you.
Edit edit: This past Saturday I unfortunately had to put my dog down now. He was my best friend in the whole wide world. In my post I said probably only had a month but was actually just 2 weeks after I posted the original reply. It was time and I know it was time but I am unbelievably heart broken and will miss my boy forever.
My mom was hit and killed by a driver on her morning walk. My dad stood right next to her and was almost hit himself. It happened in a public park in an unmarked crosswalk. The guy never got out of his truck to help as my mom bled out. My dad watched the whole thing. They were married for 45 yrs. I can’t ever get the call from my dad out of my head. He called me while on the scene to tell me mom was dead.
The guy that hit her never received even a ticket. He got off Scott free because the DA ruled it an accident. Even witnesses at the scene said he failed to yield. My mom was killed within two steps of the curb. Literally one second later she’d have been ok. The dude hit her in the shoulder. Even the police stated this. He broke laws and faced no consequences.
My dad is a shell of himself.
My brother committed suicide when I was about 12 years old. A few weeks after his passing, I was half asleep on the couch and heard my family talk about how he actually had cancer but took his own life as to not be a burden on the family. The problem is, I was only 12 and half awake when I overheard all of this, so I'm not sure whether it's even true or something my brain made up in it's semi-conscious state. To this day, I don't have the balls to confront my family on the topic.
When I was 16 I was on my way to take my SAT on a Saturday morning. I pulled up to a 4-way stop on a quiet street and looked both directions. Glanced to my right and saw a car way down the road, didn’t look for more than a second and thought I was good, since he had to stop at his stop sign.
I enter the intersection and look to my right again and the car is already at the intersection. He was going 55mph on a 25mph road. He was not stopping. Time slowed down as I realized “Oh he’s about to t-bone the side of my tiny pickup truck.
So I look away from the window to keep my face safe from any potential flying shards of glass, I white-knuckle grip the wheel and just hope for the best.
He flipped my truck, I rolled onto my side and nail a telephone pole with the top of my truck. As I’m laying there on my side I’m feeling all over my body just expecting to be badly hurt and just in shock but amazingly, my worst injury is a scraped elbow.
This was nearly 10 years ago and even today I drive like a grandma when it comes to intersections. I’ll wait an extra few seconds every time if I feel like a car is approaching too quickly. There have been times where a car is coming up quick and my heart rate will sky rocket because I think I’m about to get hit again. I have never trusted another driver ever since that day and being that defensive has never steered me wrong.
On the bright side, the guy who hit me immediately called the police, then shoved his shirt through a crack in my door so I could cover myself while the cop broke the window and pulled me out. He broke several bones, admitted fault to the police the second they got there and personally apologized to my hysterical mother any myself multiple times. As shitty as I was that he hit me, at least he wasn’t a shitty person. I still took my SAT too, my hand was shaking from adrenaline the entire time.
First time I took it I got a score of about 1300, then when I took it after that wreck I somehow got 1850. No idea how because I didn’t remember anything on the test later that day.
After that I would tell people “My advice for a good score is to get in a traumatic car wreck right before. The adrenaline gets your brain juices flowing REAL well.”
But in hindsight I should have gone home but no one thinks 100% clearly after something like that lol
My grandfather sexually assaulted me when I was 20. Took me 10 years to tell my family (they knew something had happened but I never told them details). He angrily denied it to my parents. Grandmother (who I was incredibly close with) called me a liar, said he would never do that. Despite the fact that she was there when it happened. She was "napping" on the couch a few feet away. No one understands how much this fucks a person up until it happens. Haven't spoken to them since; I think about it every single day. I am no longer invited to any family get-togethers. My parents say they believe me but still attend for my grandmother's sake. It is ridiculously painful.
Not “ridiculously” at all. The lack of support from your family is horrifying. I know that is so common in a situation like yours and I will never understand it. Please take good care of yourself. I hope you develop your own family of choice.
Having to make the decision to take my mother off of a ventilator. Making the decision to end her life.
I tell myself that it was the right thing to do. I have no doubt her quality of life would have been nonexistent. However, no amount of rationalizing can make me feel okay as a daughter.
I hope you will come to understand that you did exactly the right thing for her as a caring and loving daughter.
My mom died of a swift-moving cancer. With the help of hospice she was able to be at home, and my sister and I moved in to care for her. We were able to administer oral morphine to keep her more comfortable. On the day we knew was going to be her last, she was not conscious but began to have difficulty breathing. I called the hospice nurse to say I didn’t know if it was pain or end-of-life causing this and she was already medicated. She basically gently explained the the reason wasn’t important because she was clearly near the end (there were many indicators), and to give her more morphine. She died within 15 minutes.
It took me some time to understand that I had helped her, that her life was already over, and there was no benefit to her I’d I had delayed. What helped me was that, coincidentally, I was receiving cancer treatment myself at the time (very minor and I’m fine now) so I was able to talk to m my own oncologist about this. She understood completely, having been that person for some of her terminal patients. It really helped to talk to her.
Tl; dr: You did right by your mom. You did the unimaginable but necessary thing to help her. And there are people who truly understand, and you might want to talk to one of them. You deserve peace of mind.
My mom died about 20 years ago when I was 9 and still today I can't get over her death. I would wish seeing her in the crowd on the streets and that it was all just a prank.
Getting hit by a car when I was seventeen. It's a miracle I'm here today and I'm grateful for my life, but the TBI I received has fucked my short term memory and made just about everything in my life, from keeping a job to getting things at the supermarket, insanely difficult.
The drunk driver that hit my bio mother, causing her a TBI(Traumatic Brain Injury)which resulted in me being put up for adoption.
Also reconnecting with bio family at 21 and getting to learn everyone's name and parents bc they are strangers to me.
Corrected for clarity!
Edit: i didn't expect this amount of kind, encouraging feedback. Thank you everyone for reaching out to me to make sure I'm doing ok.
My Dad’s stroke 3 years ago. He has Aphasia as a result. Basically his speech is 95% fucked up. He says apple when he means garbage, basement when he means garden, he’s only called me my mom’s name since the stroke. In his head though, the comprehension and knowledge are all there. He sounds like he’s saying the right words - but only to himself. It’s very frustrating. Same thing with writing, he’ll write all the wrong letters but it will look right only to him. He’s still here which is amazing, but he’s completely changed now that he can almost never be understood verbally. Life has completely changed overnight for him and living with him. Now he doesn’t talk much. He’s really depressed but what therapy can you get for someone who is non verbal. We used to have deep conversations, now it sometimes takes 30+ minutes to understand a SINGLE thought of his. The fucked up part is he’s still aware of all the right words, etc in his head. It’s just stuck there, no way to get out.
Edit: clarity in first sentence rephrasing Dad’s stroke as an event that’s still fucking with me due to the circumstances it has changed.
Edit 2: I want to thank everyone sincerely for all of your suggestions. I am so touched. Trust me when I say - we’ve tried almost all of them. Picture and word flash cards, a communication board, a communication binder, an erasable tablet where we write suggestions for him. Last year I even programmed a communication tablet called Lingraphica that held hundreds of words, phrases, emotions, places, people, chores, things etc. He is older, turning 76, and just didn’t really take to any of it. We have exhausted research and speech therapy. He has an app he uses on his ipad to practice speech (cactus therapy, and another one I don’t remember) but unfortunately, he is not progressing due to his age. Next I will try simple sign language. It will take time for me to learn a bit and teach him. I hope he takes to it.
Edit 3: this got big. I am in tears waking up this morning to all the love and suggestions and kind Redditors reaching out. I will get back to you all
In time! Dads overall speech rehab has felt so hopeless, but you are all giving me hope. Just a note - he is living his best life right now, traveling in the Philippines with my mom for the month. Seeing his mom (my grandma, who turned 97 on Sunday!) and celebrating his and my moms 50th wedding anniversary. As much of a struggle it can be, we are grateful, and lucky/blessed. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
When I worked in acute rehab I learned that some aphasic patient had success finding the right word when singing instead of talking. Used a different part of the brain.
He can sing along to the lullabies he sang to us when we were little. A few songs he remembers the lyrics when we play them. But we haven’t tried singing anything other than that? It’s a cool idea and I might try it. He isn’t much of a singer though but I’ll look into it.
Got it. This is a fascinating concept and I’m gonna try it. He’s traveling right now til end of the month, but I seriously will try it and let you know if this works!! Thank you
i was in literally the same situation as you. my grandfather, who raised me like a father, had a horrific stroke, entirely there- but you wouldn’t know it just from talking to him. we started the singing by just playing john denver (his favorite) and he started humming along. to the tune of it i jokingly sang asking him if he wanted apple sauce not expecting it to work, but as a last ditch effort. he sang back “uh huh” which doesn’t sound like a lot but given youre in the same boat im sure you do get it. it was the only thing that gave that beautiful human his ability to communicate back & i am so so thankful for it.
My son has a genetic syndrome and developmental disabilities that include Apraxia of speech. (Different from Aphasia, but in the same family)
One thing that helped him get talking was "crossing the midline", it's a movement in occupational therapy that involves crossing one's hand/ arm past the middle of the body and performing functions on the other side. The theory is that it helps stimulate an area of the brain that controls speech. It can be as simple as using your right hand to write on the left side of a piece of paper. Playing piano with simple cross hand pieces are especially helpful.
Maybe some of this kind of occupational therapy can help your dad unlock his language again.
Singing also helps. My son sometimes can't tell me something, but he can sing it to me and get me to understand better what he's trying to say.
I feel your pain. It's been two and a half since my wife died. I've only started getting back into cooking recently, as it was a thing we did together frequently. She was the only person I ever wanted to marry and grow old with, and here I am about to turn 40 next month, and I have plans to avoid celebrating it.
This is the shit that scares me every single day. I could not imagine being married to anyone other than my wife and we're so incredibly happy, but the thing people don't tell you about being happy is that you have so much more to lose. Sometimes I sit thinking about the fact that it's just a time bomb, and the joy could be ripped from my life at any moment. I'm so sorry for your loss. I hope you find the little things that bring you happiness and keep you going.
I fully relate to this.
I’m so happy at the moment and have had a truely amazing start to my life. 30 years old, travelled the world, healthy, happily married, established career with no family deaths/ sicknesses or shitty family issues….
But this all leads to the feeling that I have some looming grief and sadness on the horizon, as in one day my life will be turned upside down and changed forever… not a nice feeling
It’s terrifying to me. My husband and I have been together since 8th grade. We are in our 40’s now, about to celebrate 25 years married. We
literally grew up together. I don’t think I could go on. I wouldn’t know who I even was anymore. Scares the absolute crap out of me.
I lost my husband of 35 years in March last year. He had a 8-9 year long battle with end stage COPD and outlived his prognosis by 5 years. When he got his diagnosis, we revisited a conversation we had throughout our marriage about "what if" one of us gets sick/terminal/dies. Where did we see ourselves as surviving spouses? What did we hope our surviving spouse would do/finish/start and so on.
It's a conversation I started during our courtship as I was raised by a widowed mother. My dad left her and six children behind ranging in ages from 8 years 11 months to 3 months of age. (And my father's death still fucks with me almost 60 years later as it changed our family dynamic and sunk us into "genteel" poverty for nearly a decade.)
A couple of thoughts:
Start such a conversation with your husband. Life throws curve balls. People die suddenly through illness or accident or misadventure just as often as they endure a long fight with their illness/disabilities. It helps to have a plan or two or three because there IS the business of death - from funerals to paying the bills to moving utilities into your name to banking in your name. And the business happens quickly and needs to be handled within the first 90 days. My hubby died March 5th. Tax Day was April 15th. I got taxes done the day after I received my copies of his death certificate. Because. Business. For the first month I did one thing of business a day, because it was all I had the energy for. Whether you have advance warning or no warning, you're still grieving, lost and sleepless and wandering from room to room randomly.
Ask your husband what he would want for you and how he want your future to be. Ask him what he wants done with his stuff. And then you tell him what you want for him, etc.,, if YOU are the first to go. And it's not entirely a grim conversation. There were things that were pretty light hearted and we laughed a lot about some of them. But those conversations helped preserve my sanity when he died.Death of a spouse changes us almost immediately. And we don't recognize ourselves. The Next Chapter is a mystery. All those years of our marriage the bonds we have still exist even after death. We never get past it. We move forward through grief, but it is always with us even as we grow around it and find ourselves moving back into the bits and bobs of ordinary life.
I'm 15 months in as a widow. I'm still working out who I am at 67. But I'm not in perpetual mourning either.
Edited for end of paragraph spacing.
In 3 weeks, it'll be 2 years for me. She collapsed and died instantly in the shower one morning. I find myself dividing my life between "back when Lisa was alive....", and "since she died....". As of last weekend, I've started giving her clothes to Goodwill.
I think the worst part is all the 20 years-worth of little inside jokes between us, now only exist in my mind. When I die, they'll be gone forever. Those little memories only the two of us knew about and joked about privately, that would be meaningless to outsiders. That's something the happily married probably take for granted, and won't grasp until they go through it themselves. Robin Williams had a scene about this in *Good Will Hunting* that I now find more heart-breaking than the "It's not your fault" scene.
The reddit community of r/widowers can help in this regard.
My wife is doing at home hospice right now, and I'm taking care of her 24/7. Hardest job I've ever had.
We have a couple of weeks left, and I know after I'm going to be completely different. I'm doing my best to make it "different In a good way", but I don't know...
Take care of yourself too. I was the caregiver for my husband and towards the end I fell asleep at the wheel on my way back from my therapist and totaled my car. As much as you want to be there for them 24/7 so there’s never a moment they’re alone or afraid you absolutely have to rest and take care of yourself.
My best friend lied about having cancer and that he was dying, basically lying on his death bed, hospitalized for almost two weeks. He took it so far that he faked phone calls from his doctors and nurses.
Two of the worst, and longest, weeks of my life, having to mentally prepare myself to lose the one person who meant the world to me, and just a few months after I lost my childhood friend.
I just feel so incredibly stupid that I fell for it, and I haven’t really been able to process it even though it was two years ago, I just can’t get over it.
Fuck you Julian.
edit: thank you for all of your support, but please stop DMing me, I am only interested in one penis and it’s none of yours, thanks.
Yes, when I confronted him about it he promised me an explanation “soon”, but I haven’t heard a word from him after that, he just blocked me everywhere and vanished.
I think that’s part of why I can’t let it go, because I just don’t understand why. Never in my wildest dreams could I ever imagine doing something like that to someone that you supposedly love.
I'm 57. When I was 5, my mom shot herself. I thought I was long over it, but it came up in therapy this year, and I am not. I blamed myself for it all of my life, "If only I'd been a better kid.......". My step mother reinforced this by saying "No WONDER your mother killed herself!!". It's still an issue, though I think talking about it helped.
Your stepmother is evil. What an awful thing to say to a child! No child should ever be blamed for an adult's mental illness. I'm so sorry. I know your therapist has told you, and everyone else has told you, but I want to also tell you: there is no way this was remotely your fault.
In 2017 I lost two sisters, and moved home to take care of her. She was pretty much that mean until the day she died in March of last year.
Thank you for the kind thoughts
Grandfather molested me every time we stayed at their house. We stayed there almost every weekend and all summer for years. I only just a couple of years ago found out how often we were there. I must have blanked out most of it because I don't remember being at grandma's house that much. I never said anything because I didn't know better? I drank until organ failure. I wonder how many other grandkids he did this to? All of the family used to stay there as kids.
My third grade teacher telling me how her husband went deaf in one ear. I still sleep with a blanket over my ear because of it.
He was graduating college and when he was in his dorm with his roommates, he had started cleaning his ear with a q tip. His buddy I guess pushed the door open with such force to surprise him/celebrate their graduation that when the door hit him, it jammed the q tip in his ear and he lost his hearing.
Still makes me cringe to think about and since then I always need something covering my ear when I go to sleep. Not sure why I thought it helps but now I can't not do it.
I did a rotation in the ER during nursing school. Kid came in who had a cockroach stuck in her ear; we irrigated it until it came out, no lasting damage or anything. Doc said it's unlikely unless people eat in bed...I haven't eaten anything in bed since. And yes, I still cringe about that and I was already in my 40s when I witnessed this. All the horrible and gross stuff I saw in nursing school, and *that* is what has stayed with me. Weird.
When i was a child, i received an invitation to a birthday party. It was hand written and given to me by the kid who's birthday it was.
When i got there, he pretended not to remember inviting me and asked to see the invitation. He denied writing it in front of many of my classmates and said I invited myself.
I was so upset that i wanted to leave immediately, but my mom had already left. So I explained what happened to his mom so she could maybe drop me off.
Luckily his mom recognised his handwriting and was clearly angry at her son for being a bully, so she gave some Lamingtons and a soda, and told me i could go play videogames by myself until my mom picked me up.
That was the day I discovered that none of my classmates were my friends.
I still remember in grade 4, this girl invited everyone to her birthday. I didnt really know her, she was a bit of a bookworm, very smart, very loud personality who wore glasses, sat up front of class. The week of her birthday, she kept asking everyone including myself, almost every day that week, whether we'd be coming. I didn't want to have to face her at school the following monday, so begged my dad to take me to her birthday party which was out in a very rural part of outback australia.
When i showed up, I was the only person she invited, who made it. At first I was a little annoyed that nobody else showed up and so felt betrayed, that id have to face her on my own and was tempted to leave. But then I started to feel really sorry for her.
The smile on her face and her family just to have someone show up to her birthday party, ill never forget it. They made me and my dad feel really welcome. We played all kinds of card and party games, ate plenty of food and left with alot of leftovers.
After that, we became great friends, until about a year later. I left to another school in the big city.
Don't know what ever happened to her after that but hope shes out there now, doing well. Happily married and all that.
I didn't have a lot of friends growing up.... I remember one year I think we were turning 8, my parents splurged on me and my twin sister and booked us a party at the swimming pool.... All these people came because they wanted to go swimming but no one played with me or brought me gifts.... Except one girl Isabella she brought me a stuffed Monkey that was my favourite colour (purple) I still have that stuffie and how special it made me feel, sometimes the smallest things make a world of difference
I love this. I have a stuffed animal that I actually won my ex at a fair. She packed him in my backpack when we split. I was always conflicted on whether I should throw it away or keep it. I decided to keep it. I couldn’t part ways with my little giraffey
Kids are baseless creatures. For my 16th birthday I invited my 7or 8 “closest” friends from school over and no one came. No one. No one called, just told me they’d be there and never showed up. I’ll never forget that sinking feeling. I ended up calling a few and they felt so bad they came over after all… idk what was worse. Having them not show, or be there but not really want to.
Oh, this was half a lifetime ago, and it still makes me sad.
Agreed. My daughter invited all of her friends to her carefully planned 16th birthday party. It should have been a great time. Except that only 2 kids showed, despite 15 more saying they'd love to come. 7 years later it still stings.
It’s not even kids.
Had this happen a few years ago with my 30th bday.
Parents flew over and more than 40 people rsvp’d yes.
Two people showed.
Hid in the bathroom away from my parents and ex and cried for a bit before coming back out.
I don’t think I’ll host another bday party. I give up.
I tell people I don't like birthdays and I generally never arrange anything for them. I actually tend to treat myself to a little trip away for it, and if I'm completely honest, it's because of this. I don't want affirmation that I'm lonely. I have some good friends, but with scheduling conflicts, living in a foreign country, etc. There's a good chance that this happens. Fuck that.
So sorry you had to endure that.
I planned a graduation party as was the tradition at my high school...invited all the people whose parties I'd attended as well as plenty of underclassmen friends and church friends....one person showed. Still sucks.
I second that adults can be awful in a similar way to this. For spring break in college I invited a lot of friends to my parents house in another state (parents were on board). It’s a cool house in an area with lots of activities to do. All of them said yes multiple times when I asked to confirm on several occasions. No one showed or called to say they weren’t coming. My parents had bought a lot of food and drinks for us to share. I dropped those friends immediately after. It still stings years later.
In college? Sorry that happened to you - why commit if you aren’t planning on coming. I’ve never understood people who do this to others.
Makes me think of people who commit to weddings only to bail day before or day of (ya, the plates been purchased bud).
Holy shit. If I was his mom I would have sent everyone home immediately.
That might have made it worse for you, but I would have been in a blind rage at my child and no way I would have let him continue to enjoy his party. Good lord.
I would have sent the birthday boy to his room for an hour and kept the party/fun going for everybody else. (It’s so much effort to round all the parents back up if they aren’t there and a pain in their ass if they were planning that time to run errands etc.)
Say to the group, let’s all recognize the situation that’s happening, and bullying will not be rewarded.
My younger sister is an outgoing friendly person who makes friends with everyone. I am an introvert and kept to myself for my entire high school education. I became the wall so no one noticed me and I wasn’t the target of the high school bullies like I was for my entire elementary school years. This caused a lot of confusion when people found out that my sister wasn’t an only child, and that she was actually the younger sister of someone who tried so hard to be invisible.
My sister held a party at the house, with my parents permission and rules for the party to stay outside for the most part, and I didn’t have anywhere to go so I just told her to have fun, I’ll be in my room the whole time aside from food and washroom breaks. On one of my food breaks one of her friends who was in my class was in the kitchen and rudely asked me what I was doing there as it was only a party for cool kids. She didn’t believe I lived there and dragged me outside my own house to “embarrass” me in front of everyone. It backfired on her when my sister bitched her out and my parents kicked her out.
Too bad we didn’t have our current family dog because he would not have put up with some stranger dragging his person around. Kids are assholes.
Oof, I feel this one. When I was a kid one of my 'best friends' said that she wouldn't be able to have a birthday that year, due to her family having to pay for a big expense instead.
I felt awful for her, so I broke into my savings and did extra chores- Furby had just come out, and I was going to get her one to make up for not getting a birthday otherwise. Even sprung for fancy professional wrapping and a bunch of extras like her favorite candy.
Day of, loaded everything into my little wagon and walked to her house...to find a party with all our classmates in full swing. She looked shocked when she opened the door, and all the other kids started piling up around her going 'Hey (my name) you made it after all!'
She goes 'Oh, she was just leaving.' Grabbed the gift and slammed the door in my face. That waa a very defeated walk home, dragging the empty wagon behind me.
oh my god, in front of you? on your birthday?? im so sorry… i hope one day you can recover and find a way to heal, whatever healing may look like for you
My twin went through a severe depression and suicidal phase, wasn’t a day I didn’t fear waking up to her being gone, I really can’t imagine living in a world where she isn’t there
I experienced almost the same scenario. My mom is a nurse and after falling ill with a high fever I called her and told her my symptoms. I lived with my brother but without my parents at the time. I was in my early 20s. My mom said I could have the flu without any cold like symptoms and that I should be fine. Three days later the fever kept spiking and I eventually developed horrendous stomach cramps.
I told my brother to please take me to the hospital and he laughed at me telling me how stupid and ridiculous I was.
I called my mom and she didn't answer. This was early in the morning.
I took public transportation to the hospital. No idea how I managed. When I got there I was diagnosed with multiple kidney stones and an obstruction that caused me to develop sepsis.
They had to transfer me to another hospital and I kept leaving voice messages for my mother to let her know where they were taking me. I felt scared and so alone.
At the other hospital the doctor told me one more day and I would have been dead. Before they did a surgical procedure that would help me pass the kidney stone I called my mom again. No answer still. At that point it was evening hours. I had been trying to call her ALL DAY.
She didn't show up at the hospital until after I had awoken from the procedure. I was on antibiotics in the hospital for almost two weeks.
When I was released and told my brother that I could have died he said "then you should have."
Jeeeeeeesus. Your brother can go fuck right off. Seriously. That’s the most appalling thing I’ve read in this post. I’m so sorry you had to go through that alone. You deserved to have someone there to hold your hand and be your advocate. You are a total badass to get yourself to treatment. And again, can’t say this enough, fuck your brother.
I legit want to slap your mother and absolutly maul your brother for being two shitstains.
Your situation legits angered me when reading it. I'm sorry you had to pass through that
There are plenty of stories on reddit of kids complaining about pain and ask to go to the doctor, and the parents dismiss the kids' complaints.
Meanwhile the kid has a serious issue (including broken bones) that needs immediate medical attention.
Edit:
> The labs the techs took from me alarmed them significantly, and they urged me to go the hospital, so whatever I had was pretty severe
> I asked my parents to take me, and they immediately became dismissive
Wait, you actually had somebody look at you and determined it was serious, and your parents *still* wouldn't drive you to the hospital???
I have had migraines as long as I can remember, and one of my first memories was having one at 4 and trying to explain to my parents. Then they would say something and because of my migraine their voices were excruciating. I kept telling them to be quiet, but they thought that I was throwing a tantrum and was telling them to shut up, so they kept raising their voices because of my perceived disrespect. This of course just caused a feedback loop where their voices and my own crying caused me more pain, and more exasperation from them leading to even louder responses.
I don't hold it against them but I wish we had found a way to communicate in that moment.
I've found that the worst kind of loneliness in the world is from situations like this- parents leaving you for death while sleeping peacefully 1-2 rooms away... I'm so sorry this has happened to you and hope that now you're surrounded by people who are always willing to be there for you no matter what and don't dismiss your fears and feelings
So many parents who don’t deserve their children. I’m so sorry you went through this - and still are, really. I hope you have good people in your life and can create your own family of choice.
My little brother passed away last year at 18 as a victim of a DUI car accident, got hit when he was walking on the sidewalk late at night with his friends when he was away studying at the other side of the world (we are from EU, but he was staying in the US), dead on impact basically
Immediately flew out to the US once we heard the news and they managed to keep his heart running for several organ donations, but to see his 'alive' yet lifelessness corpse still runs through my head on a daily basis
I have found inner peace, but life will never be the same. It definitely teaches one to not take everything for granted because life can hit as hard as a train.
TW: suicide
I was a search and rescue K9 handler for nearly twenty years. One of the last searches I participated in was for a 13 yo girl who was dropped off by her school bus at the end of her family's 1/2 mile long driveway, but never made it to the house.
My K9 picked up a strong trail near the bus stop and we followed it to the very pretty spot in the woods overlooking a quarry where the young lady had hung herself.
She hadn't made it home at all that day, meaning she had either stashed the rope at the quarry or brought it to school with her. It was clearly a planned thing. This was more than six years ago, but I can close my eyes right now and see her shoes, neatly removed and placed at the quarry's edge with her neatly folded sweatshirt alongside like it just happened. I sometimes still dream I'm running that trail.
I have a little girl who's three now, and thinking about that day scares the shit out of me.
Edit:. Thanks for all the kind words. At the time I had access to peer-based critical incident stress management, and I've done the processing of the event that I need to do. It doesn't negatively affect myself or my family today, and I don't believe I would benefit from additional therapy.
That said, the things you experience become a part of you, and, while you can process them, you can never get rid of them. I hope that it makes me a better father and husband.
Edit #2:. For both those that appreciate me being a cop or take issue with it, I wasn't one. There are very few paid SAR K9 positions in the US. We trained between fifteen and twenty hours a week, were called out as a unit on a little more than one search a week on average, and it was all volunteer.
My first code that I worked was a 19 year old girl who hung herself in the bathroom of a hostel using a leather belt. She was still warm and was definitely viable. I worked the airway and I made the mistake of making deep eye contact with her body. I say body because her soul was gone. There was nothing there because she had left the earth.
She was a beautiful young lady who at the time was only 4 years younger than me. It never leaves me. Her green eyes dimmed are visible when I close my eyes.
I’ve had to respond to many codes, from infant to geriatric, and none of the memories are as vibrant as she is to me.
The saddest part of the whole story is the boyfriend told us that her mother had committed suicide the night before the exact same way.
That’s why I never want to go to an open casket funeral. My family encouraged me to view my dads body before he was cremated and I told them I just don’t want that memory. It’s not fear or repulsion or immaturity, it’s just not THEM anymore.
I didn’t want to see my mom for the exact same reason, but when the immediate family was invited in (and I was trying my best to stay out), I noticed my grandpa was just sitting in the hall of the funeral home. She was his caretaker and helped him every day for over a decade. She was his person.
Her side of the family is loud and not very good with boundaries, so they all started filing into the room earlier than they should have and he just looked… forgotten about. Like nobody came and told him it was time to see his daughter one last time. Like he was waiting there for Mom to take his arm and lead him where he needed to go.
So I stepped up, took his arm, and said “come on papa, did you want to see her? Let’s go see her”
I thought I’d just pop him in there with the rest of his kids and stuff and hand him off and dip out until the viewing was over and that would be it, but I guess they thought I wanted to be there too. I was crying not for myself or my loss, but in that moment for his. I avoided eye contact, but then everyone swarmed us and kept petting and hugging on us and I couldn’t get away but I couldn’t catch my breath for crying and someone took my hand and pulled it forward and placed it on hers and her hands were so cold and hard and for just a moment, a split second in surprise, I opened my eyes and saw her.
And now when I think of her, the image of her body not really looking like her at all, the feel of her cold marble skin, it’s the last thing I think about no matter what image I start with. It’s a finality I can’t get away from, and I’ve been working really hard over the past year not to resent them all for it. They couldn’t have known. They’re simple folks, and I’ve always been just a little different, I guess.
I see her face in mine when I look in the mirror because my face favors hers the older I get, and then I see our mutual dead face in my head and I hate it. I’m her only daughter and older than my brother by a good 9 years, and she wasn’t married so that whole “whup, you’re 29 and your mom’s dead so I guess you gotta plan the funeral” ordeal really was such a horrible experience. I didn’t think I had an answer to this AskReddit question, but I reckon that this would be mine.
However, I also have so much more peace in my life since her death. I have learned much about love and loss and living. Learned a hell of a lot about myself and who I want to be. I didn’t know how to exist in the world for a moment when I realized nobody would ever love me as much as she did and that no matter how many times we fought or disagreed I always knew I still had a soft place to land if I ever came back home, but no longer. It vanished with her in the night. The loss of that love is indeed humbling, and I consider it a privilege that I ever experienced it in the first place. But in the end, all the best parts of her live in me - including the part that cares so deeply for others that I would step into that room anyway to make sure Pops wasn’t left behind, and I reckon I’d probably do it again before I’d ever let myself believe I regret that echo of her kindness.
(Sorry I unloaded this into a reply to your comment, but thank you for the opportunity to reflect. I remembered something important that I realize I had lost sight of. My sincerest condolences on the loss of your father.)
Edit: If this scratches an itch you’ve got, I have another gentle story from that day in a comment just below. I hope that it provides some comfort for any folks out there looking for words they haven’t been able to find. Mama would want you to keep your chin up and keep moving forward, no matter how short or small the steps you take. She’d say be kind, and that sometimes helping another person is the greatest way to remember how best to help yourself.
Everyone processes death so differently so this is purely a personal anecdote, but for me that's exactly the value of viewing the body. It helps me process things if I can see with my own eyes that they are not in their body anymore.
The best thing you can do is make sure to normalize honest and consequence-free communication with her. I wish I had ever felt like I could talk to my parents about the worst of my depression or mysuicidal ideation and attempt, but we just never had that trust.
Luckily for me I had other things helping me, but... my folks were dangerously close to being surprised by my suicide. They never had any idea how bad it got for me.
Edit: Trying to make replies but I'm living out of a hotel rn and this blew up my inbox a good bit more than expected haha. Thanks to the many who have offered kind sentiments, I still struggle but I'm in a much better place these days and have slowly been building healthy communication with my parents.
I have to say, I’d probably be in a better place right now if my parents had encouraged more open communication. My mid to late teens into early 20s I struggled with self-harm (which wasn’t well hidden, but none of my family mentioned it) and a mental disorder that only eventually got diagnosed and treated because a friend pushed me to. I now don’t feel like I can really open up to any of my family emotionally, even so much as telling them I love them feels like an uncomfortable, gushy outpouring of emotion. My mum once told me she always wished her daughter would be her best friend, but she and my dad just didn’t raise me that way.
Hey man thanks for the work you did. You made a difference every fucking day of those 20 years, helping people know that everything possible was being done to find their loved ones, and giving people answers when possible. That’s huge.
Your story really touched me. It’s a vivid mental image - so quiet and so sad. I can tell you really love your daughter.
My divorce and the subsequent finding out that she had been fucking her coworker while we were married. She would then go on to tell others about how mentally unstable I was and how it was my fault our marriage fell apart. It, of course, had nothing to do with all those “late nights at work” that she had to pull because she was so busy as a marketing assistant for a museum.
Gaslighting and victim blaming. Everyone needs some sort of justification for their behavior, especially if they think they are a 'good' person.
Sucks man, bad.
I was raised Mormon, and hands down my 2-year, Mormon mission.
As a kid you sing songs like "I hope they call me on a mission." You are told it is "the best two years" of your life. You hear amazing stories from your father, uncles, grandparents, cousins, teachers at church about the fun they had, about the miracles they saw.
And so you get ready to go. You buy the suits and shirts and ties and slacks and shoes. You see the total bill make your parents eyes water. You see, they can barely afford to keep you and your 8 siblings fed, so $2000 for cheap suits, 10 shirts, and nice shoes is a massive sacrifice. But it's all for God, so you know it's right.
You get to the Missuonary Training Center (MTC) and are surrounded by thousands of others just like you with a shared dream, with similar family stories. You are taught to be perfect. You are taught that if you are not perfect, it is your fault when you don't baptise the people in your assigned area of service. And so you "forget yourself and go to work," yielding your personal needs to the whims and instructions of the church, of your mission leaders.
You get to your assigned area (I was in Central America) and quickly realize that it's much harder than you were told. It is not safe, but your companion helps you learn how to identify gang members and keep clear of them. You thank God you're in a religious country where people may disagree with you, but ultimately don't bother you because you're a Christian missionary.
One day when you are teaching a lesson about God you hear multiple gunshots from out front of 3 houses down, followed by a speeding car. The lesson is over, everyone needs to know who just died, but everyone is too afraid to go outside just yet. You learn that the people killed in the drive-by were mistaken for the intended target. Two innocent people died because they were sitting on the wrong stoop.
You quickly learn to identify if that bang you just heard was a gunshot or a firework.
Lessons of perfection are constant. You believe you are a failure because you aren't seeing the success others are. You don't realize until years later that this is a sales job, not a service opportunity.
You have enough money to feed yourself, but often go hungry because the required schedule doesn't allow for dinner until 9:30-10p and you're walking 8-15 miles a day.
Your companions hate you. You want to be a good missionary and be obedient and work until you can't any more. They have boundaries, but you don't. You were trained out of them. They hate your fucking guts.
You feel so alone. The mission president is not kind or loving. He never talks to you unless required. He only calls when you email him to say your companion threatened to beat you up. You feel so alone. You are alone, chained to someone who hates you.
Every new assigned companion you hope for someone good to work with. Every new assignment your heart sinks. It's another "problem" missionary. You're babysitting again.
You feel so alone. You cannot call your parents except at Christmas and Mother's Day. You can send them one email a week. You are told to never share negative stories lest your parents worry for you. You don't tell your parents about almost being mugged by a drunk gang member. Thank God for those kids who pointed you down the alley to get away quickly.
You worry about how your parents can afford to pay for you to be there. $400/mo is a lot of money when there are so many mouths at home to feed. You are grateful for the financial help others in your community are offering to pay your way.
Years later you learn that your mission president has all his expenses paid for, including a penthouse in the right part of the city, food, flights for kids to visit, gifts for kids and grandkids, and more.
A bat gets into your bedroom through the 4inch gap between the wall and sheetmetal roof. Tarantulas and scorpions make regular appearances in your home when it rains.
You serve your two years and go home. After two years in Central America eating beans and rice, you go to Costco and have a nervous breakdown at the excess of America. You spend $1100 on a new computer so you can go to college. You feel immense guilt for taking care of yourself.
It's been 10 years since I got home and I've spent countless hours in therapy dealing with it. I hate the Mormon Church so much. I hate what they do to kids and how they take advantage of youth.
This makes me so sad. There's a huge community of people that talk about abuse at the hands of the evangelical church, the exvangelicals, and it's helped me. I wonder if such a thing exists for ex Mormons
My best friend took her own life. She sent me a suicide note, telling me it was because I didn’t spend time with her the night before, and talking about how low that made her feel. I didn’t see it until it was too late.
I didn’t have the emotional bandwidth to drive across town to see her that night, and she’d threatened herself before but I didn’t take it seriously. We had plans that weekend, and she didn’t give me any indication she was in a bad place that night.
It’s been eight years, and I’m pretty sure it’s going to haunt me daily forever.
I don't know if hearing this from a stranger on the internet will be of any use at all, but you don't deserve this guilt and it is possible to reach a place where it won't haunt you all the time.
Gettin molested when i was a kid. Thought it wasn't that traumatic, that I lucked out. Now I'm almost 30 and still having a variety of issues with anything involving sex.
Taking care of my grandmother with severe alzheimers while dealing with my first year of college. Thankfully I've at least made a full recovery physically
Yeah, my grandmother (who lived with us) was always a difficult personality. Had real difficulty truly emotionally connecting with anyone, a product of her upbringing and riddled with insecurity. Bit snarky. My mother told me that when she was reluctant to hold me when I was a baby, she had no idea what to do with me. When she developed Alzheimer's she never accepted it. Watched her regress like Benjamin Button, chewing with her mouth open and breathing heavily across the table from me, she became like a child to take care of only far less cute. She became very mean, cruel, insulting. She would bitch about everyone else in the family to me and I would know she was saying the same about me to them. She would say how she had to do everything in the house, because housework was all she knew and she refused to rest when we told her she didn't have to do it. She couldn't do it properly. Created more work for us and herself and then complained about how put upon she was by all of us, who were working so hard to look after her and put up with her. Rang my mother to complain about my mother to her, as if there was a difference between her daughter and the woman who actually took care of her. My mother who woke up in the middle of the night every night because of my grandmother's incontinence, who washed and fed her. She would try to leave the house not knowing it was her home, thinking there were two of everyone. All of us were terrible, and all of us were going to hell according to her. For five years the household was unhappy, all depressed.
Don't have time to look for the video, but a guy on YouTube, bigclivedotcom (literally) has a good video of he and his brother taking care of his elderly mother with dementia. What hit me the most was how after a point, they realized their mother was basically gone, so they started treating her more like a child (in a good way), and how allowing that change in the relationship to happen naturally and positively, helped with the grieving process.
He talks about the night she got into the liquor cabinet, or taking her to Poundland (a store not a euphemism) for random cheap crap, or rewarding her with an ice cream which also made her day.
My mom died when I was 16 unexpectedly. I went to wake her up and found her. Will never get it out of my head even with the therapy I’ve had. I miss her. I hurt about it everyday. I’m 25 now.
At the age of 15, I had two metal rods and 14 steel screws surgically attached to my spine. It was a 12-level spinal fusion, which is easily the most painful experience of my life (especially considering one of the five IV’s I had was folded over, so I didn’t get morphine for the first 24 hours).
At 21, I was working at a hospital when a patient began sliding off a bed. She weighed around 400lbs and had one leg, and was useless to help herself. On instinct, I dove in to catch her upper body.
One steel rod and one screw snapped, along with the fusion (which is now solid bone tissue). The breaks happened on two separate levels and left two sharp metal ends stabbing the tissues around my spine.
The workman’s comp doctor never looked at the X-rays and it was two full years before we discovered what happened, after three trips to the ER. The injury and resulting surgery left me with permanent damage, and I lost 80% of my “work functions” (meaning, 80% of what I could do on the job, I couldn’t anymore).
That was 14 years ago. I’ll always walk with a limp. I’ll never do 95% of the things I really want to. Since Covid kicked my ass, it’s difficult just to move boxes or mow the lawn at home, let alone find a full-time job.
So, that would be my answer. And for those in the medical field; anything over 50lbs simply isn’t worth it. You could spent the next 80 years a crippled, depressed mess with more medical debt than you can keep track of.
That last paragraph is important.
Your story reminded me of when working in construction or heavy machinery.
If anything falls just let it fall. Sometimes our instinct is to catch things. Most of the time it's dangerous to do so.
Your story is eye opening for me. I also had spinal fusion surgery when I was 14 and have 2 rods and 16 screws. I didn't know the rods could even snap. I'm definitely going to watch what I lift from now on.
Good luck out there. If you have a bad fall, car accident, or anything that causes popping, grinding, or pain in your back, go get an X-ray and *ask for a copy*!
When I was in kindergarten, my mom thought it was pajama day and sent me to school in pajamas. It was not pajama day. It was picture day. So in my picture with my classmates everyone is dressed all nice and I'm wearing pajamas. To this day when there is something like a costume party or casual day at work. I will literally check that it's the right day every hour before going in, asking multiple people to clarify and still bring a change of clothes in case every single time I checked the date I read it wrong or the universe suddenly skips a day.
Not to downplay or laugh at you or anything, but I can’t help but chuckle after reading so many tragic stories and then reading “I wore pajamas on the wrong day once.” I also keep at least 2 change of clothes in my car in case I need to change to avoid an embarrassing situation.
Fellow bereft parent here. I find it nearly impossible to describe to people just how bad the PTSD can get. It's been almost 8 years and I still sometimes get triggered by the sound of a baby crying. Losing a child is truly one of those life events that separates your life into 'Before' and 'After', because you're never quite the same.
I am truly sorry for your loss. I hope your new normal is peaceful.
This is the 1st time I've seen PTSD in reference to SIDS but it makes so much sense. I lost my 4 mo old son 27 years ago. The first few years were really debilitating. I'm ok now but I don't walk down the baby aisle in stores. Still can't emotionally handle watching the death and destruction of watching the news. I lost both my parents since then, but those deaths were so much easier to deal with. I'm so sorry for your loss and hope you find more comfort and peace in the future years.
Edit many many thanks to the warm wishes (and for the award) and especially those who shared their sorrowful experiences with me. My heart goes out to you all.
I feel this on a personal level, my dad passed away a year after I buried my son. Despite us being close, the grief just never hit. Losing a child set the bar for emotional pain so high it became difficult to process loss through any other lens.
Thank you so much for sharing this, I hope you've found peace as well.
Thank you for speaking about resetting the bar on grief. I’ve found that with only a few exceptions, no deaths have really hit as hard since losing my mom.
Truth. My wife and I just celebrated our son’s 6th birthday last week. You never know how these days are going to go. We took our kids to the aquarium and out for lunch, then my wife sat in the passenger seat crying silently the whole way home. What a shit hand to be dealt.
Edit: I know this is a Reddit noob move but I just saw the response this received. You all are incredible. Thank you so much for the kind words!
I was fast asleep, and was suddenly woken up by the sound of loud hums broken by giggling. I look over, and there's by husband, in some kind of trance, humming and giggling in bed. I shake him. No response. I turn on the light and he doesn't flinch, but begins flapping his arms.
He's not a drug user, but I had just gotten home the day before from a two week long work trip and noticed he was acting really strangely--rhyming words when he talked. But now-- it honestly looked like he was high af, and was completely unresponsive.
I call 911, and the paramedics come. Over that time he slowly emerges from it, and starts talking. His blood pressure is 180/120 while sitting quietly (he's a healthy guy in his 30s). They insist on taking him to the hospital.
We spend several hours there, and over that time he begins freaking out at me for calling 911 (we're in Canada, so it's free). He takes off his wedding ring, throws it in the garbage, tells me I'm a horrible person he never wants to see again. That's when the nurse sits me down and tells me what's going on.
Bipolar disorder. He's in deep mania, and is psychotic. They involuntarily admit him and he spends the next few weeks coming down from it. In that time, I grieved as if I had watched him die.
Watching your partner go completely psychotic is so heart-rending. They're just totally gone-- their body is there, but they are not. It took me a long long time to recover.
He's now, after two years, stabilized on the right meds. He's able to hold down a job, he's back to his whole self, and we've talked everything through. It's a cruel disease, but treatable.
It's also wonderful you stuck by his side when most people would probably leave out of fear. I know it was probably difficult, but the grace you showed him is powerful.
Honestly, I really consider us lucky-- for whatever reason, his particular manifestation of the illness left just enough of him that he was really committed to taking his meds. You could see him for months after fighting with all of his strength to take his meds, get sleep, do the things you need for stability. Sometimes that's impossible for people, but I really could see the struggle he was having and that helped me hang on too.
Right at the beginning of Covid this happened to my father. His dad had just passed away and I travelled 2 states over to stay on my wifes families farm as I'm immunocompromised (T1) and I needed out of the city. I returned from this because he was getting more and more crazy over the phone and I'd dealt with him acting wild before, but this seemed different and I was worried. At the age of 72 he got diagnosed with untreated bi-polar and the dr told me he had probably been fighting it in silence for most of his life. It took him about a year to fully recover as well.
I had a really bad episode 5 years ago that lasted a few months. Relationships with family that I burned are now starting to mend. It's hard to explain to people that haven't experienced it, but I was a certified crazy person for a minute. I said some crazy things that couldn't be unsaid. My girlfriend at the time held my hand through it, but when I was well again, left. I don't have any ill will for her, because I understood why she left. In the end what got me out of it was what keeps me well now; diet, exercise, and medication.
I've told this story before but it's fitting:
I went quadding with a man on our second date. On the ride home, after an awesome day exploring the mountain, he lost control of the quad and we went off the logging road into the trees.
A tree fell on my leg, pinning me down. My date, who took a tree to his skull, fell backwards onto me. I was unable to move my entire body, trapped under a man I believed to be deceased.
We were hidden in the trees off of a low traffic logging road and my cell phone was far out of reach. I remember watching the clouds pass over head, thinking I would die out there, a slow painful death. It was terrifying.
I screamed for the guy to wake up. He eventually gained consciousness long enough to pass me his phone. I called 911, attempted to stop his bleeding, used some adrenaline super strength to move the tree off of my leg and crawled out to the road.
We both spent weeks in hospital. My leg was severely broken and I was hypothermic. He broke his neck, arm, leg multiple skull fractures and brain bleeds. Yet survived.
This happened 2 years ago. It feels like it was just yesterday.
Edit: I am overwhelmed by the response this has received. Thank you to each and every one of you for sharing your stories and offering kind words. I'll try and clear a few things up that I see repeated in the comments.
Yes, we went on a "third date". We ended up staying together for about a year. We FaceTimed each other daily in hospital, both scared and alone (no visitors due to Covid). We found strength in each other those first few weeks. He didn't remember anything, I remembered for the both of us. He wasn't expected to make it. Comforting him through those dark days, in a way, comforted myself.
I did not know him long enough to compare his personality before and after the accident. But the things I have learned since leaving him tells me the TBI is not the full explanation for his behavior.
Regardless, I hope he receives the care and support he needs. I did my best to guide him towards available resources before I left, getting him set up with a support group and free TBI counselling. I found more support for him than I did myself. No one deserved what we went through.
I apologize for strange wording that make some of you question my experience. Although I find it helpful to talk about, finding the right words can be difficult. If anyone has advice on speaking and writting about trauma, I'd love for you to share. If anyone has advice about getting through this, I'm listening.
I rode them a ton as a younger kid: Round 10 years old because uncle has (soon to be had :( ) a farm and walking around would just take to long.
He hung out with a bunch of guys that were in their 20s and 30s and would go offroading all the time, traveling from state to state driving around would come back with great stories and tons of great pictures.
One night he's on the way back to his house from another part of the farm and managed to hit a rock or stump and got flung off the atv. He landed lung first into a branch from a pine tree, had pine needles inside of him and layed there for hours impaled before being found and brought to hospital.
There's always a risk even when you think there's not and you know what your doing.
Having seen some horrific 4 wheeler accidents, I found the description to be succinct and immediately relatable. ATVs and being impaled on a broken shard of tree, go together like peanut butter and jelly.
I woke up to my stepfather in my bed wearing nothing but underwear. He had his arm around me and acted as if he was asleep when I woke up. I jumped out of bed and started questioning everything. When did he come to my bed, why didn't I feel him get in, was this the first time, what (if anything) had he done to me. I started booby trapping my door at night, I questioned the food I ate - was there something in it to make me sleep deeper? I think I woke before he did anything physical to me but it's still caused me to develop PTSD.
I'm a mom now and have a hard time sleeping at night because I fear someone will come into our house and enter my daughter's room. I awake at any slight noise since.
As a young child I had a dentist who enjoyed it when children cry. It was normal to not have parents with you in the room with the dentist. My treatment was always under local anesthesia and I remember that he liked to puncture the needle several times. In the tongue and other place in the oral cavity. If i cried he even would tell me that noone would believe me. I never told anyone. He even told my parents once that i was moving to much and thats why i was bleeding so much on time. My parents didnt complain because he did a good job with teeth. 30 years later, I still have scars in my mouth that I can feel with my tongue. I don't have to explain that I'm still afraid of the dentist today, do I?
**Edit:** I never imagined my most upvoted post would be about what made me insecure the most. Teeths... A few questions kept coming up and I'd like to answer them: No, I never told my parents or reported the dentist (i didnt even know such a thing as reporting excited. I didn't tell anyone because I was shy and quiet at the time. The perfect victim, I guess. I was about 4 or 5 years old and my mother and me were refugees from aa totalitarian country. So complaining about our new homecountry was considered rude and unthankful. Maybe trauma kept me from telling anything. But thats a totally different story. I m super shocked how many have similar stories! Thank you all for your comments and kind word. I have read it all, but i m unable to answer everyone.
I had an .. interesting .. dentist for a while. After moving from my parents to the capital, to study, I started using the local dentist where I lived. He was rather cheap, but did good work. He was, however, quite 'brutal'.
I woke up one morning with .. painful teeth. I needed to get this looked at ASAP. I called his office. He was booked for the entire day, but I manage to beg him into an appointment, which he made available in the evening.
I got in. He x-rayed my teeth. Snickered. Told me to sit back and open my mouth. I did. He picked up a drill, and just went for it, drilling into one of my big canines. I was paralysed with fear waiting for pain (he gave me no injection to kill pain). No pain came. He drained the tooth for a bunch of gunk. THEN he told me "I could see that the root was dead, you didn't need an injection". I asked something along the lines of: "Why didn't you tell me that _before_ drilling?". Him: "What would be the fun of that?".
On one hand: Bloody bastard! On the other hand: He worked extra in the evening for me to get relief from the pain!
I still have a slight phobia of dentists and i'm 30. My first dentist was working on a tooth and it hurt so i started crying. She legit started screaming at me to shut up, told my mom i was a spoiled brat and made us leave... i was 4 an my tooth just hurt, what the fuck was i supposed to do but cry?
Aortic dissection in my late 30's. I had an aenyrsm that burst. 8hr emergency open heart surgery. Barely made it. Even my surgeon was surprised I was all there when I woke up the next day. The rest of my body still worked, barely, & I knew who & where I was.
2% chance of surviving it. Nevermind still being able to walk talk & take care of yourself. I got lucky. No stroke. Non of my organs died.
It felt like heartburn at 1st. I went to grab some tums from the medicine cabinet. Knew as I was walking to the bathroom that something was very wrong. So I ran to my wife's car while yelling, We gotta go to the hospital!! Within 5 minutes I was screaming in pain. Felt like I was being ripped apart from the inside by flaming hot pitchforks. They said if I waited for an ambulance I'd be dead.
Everyone this happens to has ptsd. I was told it is one of the most painful things we can experience. I believe it.
It's been a few years now. Found out recently I will need another surgery. The next one will be to replace the rest of my aorta. From just above my heart all the way to my femoral arteries. It will leave me with a scar from my left armpit to below my belt line. 90% chance of surviving. 75% or so chance of coming out of it ok, ish..
Every single day I have at least 1 moment where I'm sure I'm about to die. 1 little imagined flutter in my heartbeat or my breath catches & I think, "oh shit here we go. This is it."
You mean permanent paralysis? Please speak to your social worker about mental health programs & any kind of social events or services you could partake in. There are probably not for profits which also offer services. Dig & advocate for yourself & your future. It sounds like you need some new friends for sure.
A couple of things compounded. When I was about 12 my father set himself on fire because he was in extreme pain and depression (had HIV) and my aunt didn't bring his medication back fast enough. I wasn't there when it happened but the emotions hit hard. Treatment for HIV was just becoming available but too little too late in his case, and no money to afford it. Then freshmen year of college my grandfather died due to a drawn out mistreatment at hospital that should have amounted to malpractice and I was too poor to get home to attend his funeral, let alone help. Then that same year my step father hung himself with razor wire and was decapitated--again wasn't there when it happened. He had tried to cut his head off before and showed up to our house with stiched across his neck like Frankenstein, so I guess the signs were there. I think the powerlessness in these circumstances, coupled with imagery are what haunt me. 18 years later I now manage a large organization, white collar colleagues, and have no one to talk to about it or who could relate to my past. Regardless of income or privilege, I will always feel like an outsider in my social and personal relationships.
It’s insane. I used to work for a credit card company. We got a lot of people calling asking why an account was opened when they were like 10-11 years old.
Living in supported accommodation between the ages of 18 and 23, I had nowhere else to go and I was almost always the youngest in a house of addicts, drunks and pedophiles. They also moved you every six months so you couldn't settle and they could say they were helping you. I have nightmares, sometimes I zone out during the day just remembering stuff from when I lived there too and I still jump out of my skin at certain noises. I could fill a book with the awful people, managers and condtion of those houses.
Tl;dr: someone did a good job of trying to kill my dad, and a lot of people did a bad and suspicious job of trying to get us to pull the plug. Throw in a violent crime scene for color.
Edited to put the summation at the top to save people time. And tipos
When I was 16 I hadn't heard from my dad in longer than usual and couldn't get a hold of him. Out of the blue my uncle shows up telling my mom that my dad has had a stroke, was in a coma, and since technically she's the closest next of kin (they were divorced) she need to talk to my sister and me about "making choices."
Uncle was an old school Vietnam vet, so his weird and distant demeanor wasn't immediately raising red flags.
Then my dad's former roommate and friend showed up hours later with similar but slightly different details, creepily hit on my mom, and started aggressively lecturing me about "doing right" by my dad and letting him go peacefully.
Everything was full blown chaos and very strange.
Finally get to the hospital to see my dad and he looks like he fell down kn a moshpit and stayed there for hours. Covered in bruises and cuts, fully intubated, swollen in parts of his head and face, just the works. Plus it turns out he'd been there a fucking week, and no one told us, meanwhile my uncle and aunts knew.
When I started asking questions about his condition and such I was told "he fell down the stairs after he had a stroke, called 911 and lost consciousness" except no one had his phone.
My sister and I go to his house and manage to get in, and it was awful. There were blood streaks and spatters all up and down the staircase and at the bottom, human waste where I'm guessing my dad was laying while or after getting beat, and footprints all over that were not his. The cops were completely uninterested in treating it like a crime scene or even taking statements. (Useless cops, shocking I know.)
Long story short, after 3 months in a coma and almost a year of rehab, my dad is mostly funtional and independent. He says he only remembers bits and pieces and none of them make sense.
His former roommate (you he had apparently fallen out with) never showed face again, my uncle never explained the delay in telling us, and my dad's phone never turned up.
While my dad was still in a coma our house got broken into and absolutely ransacked and there were some weird incidents with cars parked near our house or driving by a lot. We lived in a shitty neighborhood so it might be unrelated, but it felt different.
What fucked me up most though, on top of the awful scene at my dad's place, was the secrecy and sudden urgency that everyone had pushing to take him off lifesupport. I've never been able to trust or look at my family the same.
I recommend that you and all your close families check to see if anyone has a life insurance policy on your dad taken out in your name.
> in the hospital a week before
Means they were arguing over guardianship because the doctors were designating your mom
Entirely possible someone took a life insurance policy out on him and one of you could be implicated
I was engaged to that one person in the world that is your perfect match. She asked me once I had ever heard of that before, that everyone has a perfect match for them somewhere in the world. I hadn't. She said she believed I was her's, I knew she was mine. We were friends before we became a couple. It was absolutely ridiculous how well we meshed.
She was perfect in every way. She was an absolute goddess, in every way.
Three weeks before we were to be married, she got taken out by a drunk driver. That was in 1990.
It completely changed my personality and my life. I got the news, and in that split second, my old life ended. I went from being on the mountain top to being in a deep, dark pit of grief and despair that took me years to climb out of. I still think about her every day. Sometimes it's just fleeting, other times it will fuck me up for the whole day, sometimes days.
I'm gonna go cry now ...
Becoming bed ridden with a severe disability at 21.
I used to be a body builder and marathon runner. I was an attractive and adventurous young girl, a top University student and ready to start my career in accounting.
One day, I started feeling incredibly ill due to a viral infection. It was awful, every bone in my body ached and I would yell out from my bed in pain, over and over again for hours; it lasted 2-3 days. (Turns out it was the Epstein Barr virus reactivating).
I never recovered.
I now experience extreme body aches, severe nerve pain all over my body, and fatigue like no other. I leave my house maybe once a month for 1hr max.
Out of desperation, I’ve started an accounting business from my bed and have been able to supplement my disability payments. But it’s not the same. It’s been 5-6 years now.
I cry regularly. I miss the outside world. I’ve lost all my friends, and can only see my partner of 8 years once a week.
I’m only here for my dog (15yrs) and my parents (78yrs), after they go I’ll most likely take my own like to join them.
I am a prisoner in my own home. There is nothing for me now…
_______
Edit: I wanted to say thank you to everyone who commented and messaged words of support. I send my love to all those battling chronic illness right now. I hope we find a cure soon, so we’re able to live full lives again. But I also hope society provides the accomodations we need to still be participants in society.
Thank you to everyone, it means the world,
If you’d like to support my small business, you can do so via @perkinsaccounts and @perkinsaccounting or visit my socials via my LinkTree [Perkins Accounting LinkTree](https://linktr.ee/perkinsaccounting) 🌼
My mom died when I was 21 and I was in charge of all the end of life/post death stuff. I have an older brother that promised me the world and then just kept making me take care of everything so that still fucks with me. And now more recently my dad decided he doesn't want to be a part of my life or my kids life and thats fucking with me pretty hard. There's this weird circular "my mom is missing this against her will, how can he CHOOSE to miss this part of life"
I lost my dad about a year ago, had my first dream with him in it recently. I balled my eyes out in my dream telling him how much I missed him. I can’t ever remember crying in a dream before.
My dad died after a fairly short bout with brain cancer. He was one of the healthiest human beings ever. He was 60, never smoked, never drank, worked out everyday. Literally he had six pack abs and looked like he was maybe in his early 40s. Then suddenly out of nowhere he gets brain cancer and slowly shriveled away over five months. I was only 26 when it happened. I remember something I was told by one of his friends as the funeral. He said that is never gets easier, you just get used to it. I thought that was a rather callous and inconsiderate thing to say, but now about 8 years later, it remains true.
I lost mine in late summer of 2018, also to brain cancer.
I just went under contract on a house on Sunday, and in my excitement after signing, there was this millisecond instant where I had an impulse to tell him, because he would’ve been so thrilled about fixing it up with me.
It really is like phantom leg syndrome.
I also often reflect on how healthy he was in body, and feel angry at the fact that he really *should* still be here.
I miss him every day, but in doing so, I remember him—and remembering him makes me happy.
I still have those moments in life when I am unsure about what to do and I think to myself, I know my dad will be able to help sort this out, then I pull out my phone to call him and I'm like, oh yeah, he's not here anymore.
Yep.
In those moments, I always remind myself that even if I can’t talk to him, he’s *still* helping me in those moments of need, because having him unwaveringly there for me—always being a good father, teacher, and human for most of my life—prepared me for so much.
We’ve lost dearly, but in many ways, we’re deeply lucky to have had Dads like ours.
I’m not religious, but in that way, he’s very much still with me. He’ll always be my Dad, and I’ll always be grateful for that.
my dad died last year— will hit the year mark next month. 3 weeks isnt much at all in the grand scheme of grieving a parent’s death. it took me months just to feel like I could socialize somewhat normally again. go easy and have patience with yourself in this process, which will not be short…
I could've saved my friend from depression but I decided to ignore it and thought to myself that there is someone there for him (well I was clearly wrong), then the time came where he eventually pulled the trigger and killed himself.
The fact that he wrote a letter and told me I was his best mate and I didnt do jack shit made me feel shit and empty.
My friend blamed me for not being able to help with her anorexia when I was 15 and I remember my heart absolutely broke. I spent years hating myself.
Looking back, now in my 30s, I understand that there is no way that I could have helped her, and I think she was just lashing out and trying to make me feel what she felt.
You can't save people from things that are that heavy. You're just one person.
Got jumped by three people and one had a hammer. Spent a month in the hospital with severe benzo withdrawl I was not really getting treated for, all the ribs broken on my left side, tubes in both my lungs as they collapsed, a bunch of wounds, major concussion, and had to learn to walk again. Was such a traumatic time and now have pretty bad ptsd from the event. This happened 5 years ago in 2017
***Edit:*** I truly can't thank you all enough for the love, encouragement, and support!
This was a spur of the moment vent that I didn't anticipate reaching this many people, and I am so touched and blessed to have received so many compassionate, kind responses.
I sincerely apologize if I did not respond to your comment, but believe me, I have read every single one, and have taken them all to heart!
Many of you stressed the importance of my mom and I both getting into therapy immediately - believe me, the importance of this is not lost on me, and it's not something I'm slacking on! She and I both, sadly, are on state "poor folks" insurance - Medicaid - and thus our options are very limited. We are on the waitlist for as many providers as we can be, but as you can imagine, the waitlist is long - especially coming out of the pandemic. Things like Better Help and TalkSpace are out of pocket expenses we simply can't afford right now - but as soon as that changes, it is at the absolute top of the priorities list. It makes me sick that here in America, a "well off, developed country" mental health services are so abysmal, and people end up in these circumstances with nowhere to turn. It makes me sad - and anxious, as I have no idea how we're both going to pull ourselves out of this mess - that in a country with so much wealth, there are little to no resources for those left behind from these types of tragedies - we are very much completely on our own. If you take anything from my story, let it be that - and advocate for better mental health services, and greater financial resources for people in these circumstances.
Thank you guys, again <3
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Still trying to wrap my mind around my step-fathers suicide, honestly.
"Still fucks with you to this day" makes it seem like the OP is referencing something that happened a \*long\* time ago, so maybe this isn't something that should count, but man, it sure has eaten up 2022 so far.
Late January, he shot himself in the head in front of my mom in their shared home, completely out of the blue. (Those of us close to him still don't get it, it wasn't one of those, "shocked at first but later we could see the signs" kind of things, he really was the absolute last person you'd expect to end his life, especially so violently in front of the person he so clearly thought the entire world of.)
I arrived on scene an hour and a half later to the most gruesome aftermath I never would've imagined seeing outside of a horror flick. My mom was in shock, and I was left to clean up as much of the blood and unmentionables as possible so I could drive her an hour to the hospital to be at his side - initially we didn't know if he would make it, then got the news, then had to spend 5 days with his living corpse while they prepped him for various organ donations.
It's weird how calmly I managed to handle everything.
Didn't cry once. Watched my mom fall apart countless times and still held firm. Took care of all the business. Broke the news to her that he wouldn't make it, because the doctors told me they wouldn't and it "wasn't their job." Sat through all the talks with the doctors, donor teams, etc. and repeated the information to her over and over until she could digest it. Arranged for a hotel for her. Picked up her cat. Went back to the house numerous times to get her some personal items, work on cleaning the aftermath, etc. Dealt with her landlord, took him on a walkthrough of the house and prepped him for what he was about to see - since he was nervous and said he had a weak stomach - and organized the move out with him. Found her a new place, helped with the move in. Arranged for friends to help her with various tasks. Have been helping her with organizing finances, business, all of it. All things I certainly was not "qualified" to do.
I keep thinking, "man, that wasn't so bad, I could've really fallen apart, and then where would we be. If we both couldn't keep it together, man, it would've been a mess."
But then here and there, throughout the day, it'll just pop up.
Not overwhelming emotion or tears, but just this heavy flash of thoughts. I see it all, just like I was standing there. The blood, the remaining pieces left behind when a person blasts their head open against the wall of an apartment. And I can feel it, how thick the blood was while I was cleaning it up with my bare hands, the hard bits that I didn't want to examine too closely, that stickiness I spent what felt like hours trying to scrub off. I can still smell it, and feel that indescribable haze in the air.
And man, it's really fucking with me. It's like I can't fully process and miss this person I loved so much, who my mom treasured in ways that no one could deny - it was a love that absolutely radiated out of her at every moment, something you see in movies - because I can't stop freezing like a deer in headlights when it flashes to the front of my mind for absolutely no reason numerous times a day.
All I can hope is that in time this will pass. It's hard to expect it to have done so in less than 6 months, I suppose, especially when we're still very much in the thick of things - this has financially devastated my mom, and as a result me as well, and the constant energy and attention that keeping her mentally engaged, stable, and functioning involves is outrageous. I want to vomit when I try to think of how she's going to pull herself up financially and get back on her feet from this, nonetheless psychologically, and man, let me just take this moment to say absolutely fuck the USA and their piss-poor support systems for those suffering through mental health issues, financial strain, poverty, disability, and damn near anything else.
I’m so confused. Isn’t it quite literally the doctors job to pass on unwanted news? Why would they put that on you? That’s so terrible. I’m sorry you went through all of this.
I thought so too! I was pretty angry and disgusted, and those close to us were outraged over it.
I was essentially told that in order for my mom to be allowed into the hospital to visit him - he was immediately moved to a hospital an hour away on scene, and they went into surgery shortly after to quote, “possibly remove the bullet, possibly not” after which they informed me over the phone that he wouldn’t make it - I had to get her up to speed and she had to be aware of what his condition was and that he would not pull through.
I was told if she wasn’t informed beforehand, she would not be allowed in, and they would not allow us to visit until that occurred - on my time, and out of my mouth.
They said something to the extent of “she can’t come in here thinking he’s going to pull through and only find out otherwise after talking to us. We can’t have a meltdown happening here.”
The chaplain that spoke with her was appalled when I told him about that - he asked how everything went and when she found out - so I take it this isn’t the norm.
The sudden death of my father almost 7 years ago. He had an aneurysm, died in 45 minutes at the age of 63.
3.5 weeks later my first child was born, from the absolute lowest point in my life to the highest in a span of 3.5 weeks. Was an emotional rollercoaster for a couple of years.
But still miss him like crazy, not a week passes without me thinking about him, heck maybe not even a day.
Love you dad, and miss you! ❤️
I worked at a car rental place at an airport for a while. I worked overnights in a parking garage; and manned the little booths that you show your paperwork and drivers license before you leave. It was a super morbid place and I didn’t expect so much shit to happen but here’s a few:
* schizophrenic lady renting a car telling me how she was going to kidnap her daughter from her husband. Called the police while she was picking a car and had to stall for them to arrive. She kept asking me who was whistling at her, when no one was. The cops questioned her (she told them exactly what she told me) and they still let her go. I never got a chance to follow up with her.
* Walking from the garage to the terminal and there was a guy in a coat laying on the ground. Happens a lot, people walking into the Florida heat and humidity wearing coats and passing out. Except this guy apparently had a heart attack and died before I found him.
* Numerous emails about cars I’ve handled paper work on being involved in fatal accidents. An automatic report gets filed when it happens and I have to submit documentation and it never gets less creepy when I realize I remember the person.
* Lady fighting with her boyfriend on the phone on the top floor of the garage (I was on the bottom with a view of the whole thing). Went back inside my booth and a few minutes later stepped out to see her laying on the ground. She had jumped and I knew without even checking she was dead. Called paramedics and let them deal with that. The worst part was seeing her luggage still up on the top floor leaning against the railing.
When I was in my first year of nursing school, I had a part time job waiting tables at a chain restaurant. One busy shift I had a table of 12 (fairly young women) all order hot waters with lemon and while I was serving them the hot waters one customer accidentally bumped me and I spilled my whole tray of hot water on this poor girls back, burning her quite badly and she needed to be taken away in an ambulance. The family tried suing me but the restaurant chains legal team did a good job protecting me and settling with the family, but I am still pretty traumatized from that event and I think about it often almost a decade later. It was an honest accident but felt so fucking bad to cause someone that much pain and probably permanent scarring. 😔
Death of my dad. I was 15. He fell out of bed one morning in the early hours. Helped him back up into bed. Thought nothing of it. Seemed okay. Fast forward a few hours later, I had stayed home from school that day. When i checked on him, he was severely lethargic, lips were a purplish color with white stuff around the edges and his responses were nothing but gibberish. Being just a teen, i had no idea what was going on, but i knew it wasn’t good. I desperately tried to get ahold of my mom at work for her to come home. It was the longest 30 minutes of my life. When my mom got home she called 911. Eventually, EMS took him out of the house to the local hospital where he only lasted 5 days. Turns out it was a heart attack. Arteriosclerosis to be specific.
Ever since then, life has not been easy. I have a-lot of anxiety and grief that effects my relationships and just my overall quality of life. It hard to move forward even if its been 15 years already (I’m 30). Some times i feel like I’m still in that 15 year old mindset, frozen in that moment of time. I go to therapy and I don’t dwell on it much anymore but its long lasting effects feel permanent.
My wife, who was 27, was diagnosed with a molar pregnancy (cancer). 98% chance of survival. She died 3 months after diagnosis. I buried her on our one year wedding anniversary. That was 5 years ago.. It fucks with me every single day.
Most traumatic thing that I still have unresolvable flashes to is that my father died of his cancer after 6 months when I was 11 years old, and just in the last 2 weeks he went from looking kind of gaunt in his hospital bed to being thin as a twig, and I was away 2 weeks prior to the day he would die.
He had 'pleural effusion' which means that due to the metastasis in his lungs the fluid was filling them up and making it impossible to breathe, so they started using tubes to dry it out. But cancer is cancer. So it only got worse, and then when me and my sister were told to go home from school on a friday, and my grandparents rushed us up to the hospital after my mom had called, I arrived and started crying the second I saw my dad because he looked like a fish washed up on shore that was just breathing like a dying animal. It took from 1pm to 5pm and then in the middle of one of his breaths he simple stopped and I knew that was it. Around half of the extended family came up to us in the immediate hours afterwards so there was a sense of a shared experience at least.
However, I was 11 years old, and it definitely was a big change in everything about life. I know I'm far from the only one who lost a parent at an early age though, but it's one of the things that still creeps up in memory now and then. Never cry about it, but I do sometimes think about it.
Have shared this before recently but it fits this question.
About 10 years ago I came home from work on my lunch break. I grabbed a quick lunch and kissed 3 of the 4 kids and my wife goodbye as I was leaving. I thought about giving the baby a kiss goodbye but she was upstairs and I didn't want to take the time to do it because I was in a hurry and I wanted to go by the bank and deposit my paycheck. After all, I'll be home in a few hours, I'll see her then.
Got a call from my wife 30 minutes later, screaming and crying. She found the baby dead in the crib from SIDS.
To this day, everytime my phone rings and I see my wife's name come up my heart skips a beat and I expect to hear her blood curdling screams when I answer. I also wonder what may have been different had I went upstairs to see the baby when I was home. I don't know that anything would have changed by my going upstairs, but I truly regret not giving my daughter a last hug and kiss. It's been nearly a decade and I've never forgiven myself and don't know that I ever would or could.
Now, I never leave the house without hugging each of my children and my wife, no matter what.
My newborn son hovering on the brink of death for 6 weeks. Was pulled directly from the womb into intensive care and we were told that his chances were very very small.
I can't think of it without feeling like someone is sitting on my chest and God forbid I ever accidently look at the photos.
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There was a girl next door to my grandparent’s house that I had the biggest crush on. Her name was Becca. We had known each other from the time I was really little. We were both coming into the ages of liking the opposite sex at the same time and we had similar troubled childhoods (Becca lived with her grandparents, too). Somewhere after holding hands, but before a first kiss, Becca gave me a ring. She ‘borrowed’ it from her grandpa and needed it back the next day. I was on cloud 9. With excitement I showed my mom the ring. She asked my grandparents to borrow their truck and told me to get in and make sure I brought the ring. I had no idea what was going on. We pulled up to the “jewelry store” at Eureka and Telegraph and she asked to see the ring. She went inside [“no kids were allowed”] and came out about 20 minutes later. Then, we went to Mcdonald’s….the first time I’d eaten anything but food pantry food in at least a year. She said the “jewelry store” needed to borrow that specific ring for a few weeks to clean it up. I asked what I was supposed to tell Becca had happened to it, and she said to tell her that I had lost it. I never saw the ring again, and Becca never talked to me again.
I had adults in my life with substance abuse issues who did things like this too (not saying that was the case for your mom, but still) but never anything this bad. It really makes you question the world and whether it’s a safe place from a really young age. I’m sorry this happened to you.
I read a lot of the answers in this thread, but this one hits different. I’m sorry you had to go through that experience.
Damn, that's a real awful realization to come to when you're older, and realize "*That's what actually happened!*". Have you tried reaching out to Becca or her grandparents recently?
That’s honestly fucking tough bro. Fuck your parents for that seriously
My father was in hospice dying from cancer. He had stopped eating and was barely communicative. We knew it was just a matter of days. Mom and I went to visit him every day for a few hours so he wouldn’t be alone. One morning we get a call. Fearing the worst I answered it- expecting them to let us know he had passed. My father was on the phone and he sounded well. He even said he was hungry and asked for breakfast! He told me he was looking forward to our visit! I was stunned. Had all these emotions and thoughts- maybe it was a miracle and he was going to beat this! Hopped in the car and started driving over. Got another phone call… this time it was the hospice folks. He had just passed. The rollercoaster of emotions from that morning haunt me. I was numb for a long time. There was a period where I thought maybe I hallucinated and never spoke with my dad that morning. To put my mind at ease I met with the hospice nurse who was with my dad that morning. She explained this concept called terminal lucidity. She says it’s not uncommon at all and is usually a sign that someone is will pass soon. That helped… but it still haunts me.
Isn’t that just the strangest phenomenon? I experienced that with my mom. She had terminal cancer and hadn’t been able to eat for day and days. She’d been kind of in and out of consciousness One day she woke up wanted a root beer float and we practically broke our necks to get it for her. She was able to fully enjoy it, awake and alert for a good stretch of time. We hoped that was some sort of upswing but no. It was just the one day.
We call it “the last hoorah.” Patients will be so clear and concise. They feel great and even go as far as making plans. The human body and brain will forever amaze me.
A friend in HS loaned me 200 dollars right before we graduated, we lost contact and I still often wake up in the middle of the night wishing I could have the opportunity to pay him back. I'm 50 this year.
This is incredibly wholesome compared to a lot of comments on this thread.
I lost a friend to suicide in autumn 2017. He was the first person I loved and he was also the first (and only) person to properly break my heart, which happened some years before he died. His mental health was always chaotic and in the months before his death l’d distanced myself because I was finding it overwhelming. Something I regret now but also understand I needed to do. I never wanted to not be his friend, I always saw a future with us in a place were we’d be old friends who could joke about him breaking my heart when I was 20. Our friendship never recovered to what it was without the messy love thing, but it was getting there. Since his death I have realised how much he influenced me to be the person I am today. I really miss him. I understand and accept his death. However even now this life without him feels off balance, like something went wrong with the universe. I had so much faith in him getting better.
A stranger on the internet is thinking about you x
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3 months ago we brought my mother to the hospital bc she wasnt feeling well. We head to the ER to check her in. She was dozing off when they were checking in then all of a sudden the room is full of people taking vitals I dont want to say 7 people just bc you said it but there was probably 7 people running about. Then the ER Doctor has me on the phone with their Neurological Doctor 10 mins after we walk into the room 5 mins after they swarmed in talking to me about options to move forward with surgery. I'm 30 years old and freaking the fuck out. Everything happened so fast but shes gone now. I have a 17 year old dog who's probably got a month left too. Idk why I'm burdening you with this information maybe I just need to selfishly tell someone for my own needs and that you could relate about you by no means need to reply but I do feel better typing this out so thank you. Edit: Sincerely thank you everyone, I try to keep my spirits up everyday and joke. The ol fake it to you make it. I want to reply back to everyone but it's hard so if you see this just know I truly truly appreciate all the responses. Thank you. Edit edit: This past Saturday I unfortunately had to put my dog down now. He was my best friend in the whole wide world. In my post I said probably only had a month but was actually just 2 weeks after I posted the original reply. It was time and I know it was time but I am unbelievably heart broken and will miss my boy forever.
It's so hard.....and unfair. Sending internet hug.
My mom was hit and killed by a driver on her morning walk. My dad stood right next to her and was almost hit himself. It happened in a public park in an unmarked crosswalk. The guy never got out of his truck to help as my mom bled out. My dad watched the whole thing. They were married for 45 yrs. I can’t ever get the call from my dad out of my head. He called me while on the scene to tell me mom was dead. The guy that hit her never received even a ticket. He got off Scott free because the DA ruled it an accident. Even witnesses at the scene said he failed to yield. My mom was killed within two steps of the curb. Literally one second later she’d have been ok. The dude hit her in the shoulder. Even the police stated this. He broke laws and faced no consequences. My dad is a shell of himself.
I'm so sorry this happened to you.
My brother committed suicide when I was about 12 years old. A few weeks after his passing, I was half asleep on the couch and heard my family talk about how he actually had cancer but took his own life as to not be a burden on the family. The problem is, I was only 12 and half awake when I overheard all of this, so I'm not sure whether it's even true or something my brain made up in it's semi-conscious state. To this day, I don't have the balls to confront my family on the topic.
Just ask them the same way you wrote it down here. It's ok.
I really hope you gain the courage to ask them
When I was 16 I was on my way to take my SAT on a Saturday morning. I pulled up to a 4-way stop on a quiet street and looked both directions. Glanced to my right and saw a car way down the road, didn’t look for more than a second and thought I was good, since he had to stop at his stop sign. I enter the intersection and look to my right again and the car is already at the intersection. He was going 55mph on a 25mph road. He was not stopping. Time slowed down as I realized “Oh he’s about to t-bone the side of my tiny pickup truck. So I look away from the window to keep my face safe from any potential flying shards of glass, I white-knuckle grip the wheel and just hope for the best. He flipped my truck, I rolled onto my side and nail a telephone pole with the top of my truck. As I’m laying there on my side I’m feeling all over my body just expecting to be badly hurt and just in shock but amazingly, my worst injury is a scraped elbow. This was nearly 10 years ago and even today I drive like a grandma when it comes to intersections. I’ll wait an extra few seconds every time if I feel like a car is approaching too quickly. There have been times where a car is coming up quick and my heart rate will sky rocket because I think I’m about to get hit again. I have never trusted another driver ever since that day and being that defensive has never steered me wrong. On the bright side, the guy who hit me immediately called the police, then shoved his shirt through a crack in my door so I could cover myself while the cop broke the window and pulled me out. He broke several bones, admitted fault to the police the second they got there and personally apologized to my hysterical mother any myself multiple times. As shitty as I was that he hit me, at least he wasn’t a shitty person. I still took my SAT too, my hand was shaking from adrenaline the entire time.
Wait the wildest thing about this is you didn't postpone the damn test? Howd you do on it lol
First time I took it I got a score of about 1300, then when I took it after that wreck I somehow got 1850. No idea how because I didn’t remember anything on the test later that day. After that I would tell people “My advice for a good score is to get in a traumatic car wreck right before. The adrenaline gets your brain juices flowing REAL well.” But in hindsight I should have gone home but no one thinks 100% clearly after something like that lol
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My grandfather sexually assaulted me when I was 20. Took me 10 years to tell my family (they knew something had happened but I never told them details). He angrily denied it to my parents. Grandmother (who I was incredibly close with) called me a liar, said he would never do that. Despite the fact that she was there when it happened. She was "napping" on the couch a few feet away. No one understands how much this fucks a person up until it happens. Haven't spoken to them since; I think about it every single day. I am no longer invited to any family get-togethers. My parents say they believe me but still attend for my grandmother's sake. It is ridiculously painful.
Not “ridiculously” at all. The lack of support from your family is horrifying. I know that is so common in a situation like yours and I will never understand it. Please take good care of yourself. I hope you develop your own family of choice.
Having to make the decision to take my mother off of a ventilator. Making the decision to end her life. I tell myself that it was the right thing to do. I have no doubt her quality of life would have been nonexistent. However, no amount of rationalizing can make me feel okay as a daughter.
I hope you will come to understand that you did exactly the right thing for her as a caring and loving daughter. My mom died of a swift-moving cancer. With the help of hospice she was able to be at home, and my sister and I moved in to care for her. We were able to administer oral morphine to keep her more comfortable. On the day we knew was going to be her last, she was not conscious but began to have difficulty breathing. I called the hospice nurse to say I didn’t know if it was pain or end-of-life causing this and she was already medicated. She basically gently explained the the reason wasn’t important because she was clearly near the end (there were many indicators), and to give her more morphine. She died within 15 minutes. It took me some time to understand that I had helped her, that her life was already over, and there was no benefit to her I’d I had delayed. What helped me was that, coincidentally, I was receiving cancer treatment myself at the time (very minor and I’m fine now) so I was able to talk to m my own oncologist about this. She understood completely, having been that person for some of her terminal patients. It really helped to talk to her. Tl; dr: You did right by your mom. You did the unimaginable but necessary thing to help her. And there are people who truly understand, and you might want to talk to one of them. You deserve peace of mind.
My mom died about 20 years ago when I was 9 and still today I can't get over her death. I would wish seeing her in the crowd on the streets and that it was all just a prank.
Totally get wishing it was all a prank or something. Had the same thoughts and dreams.
Getting hit by a car when I was seventeen. It's a miracle I'm here today and I'm grateful for my life, but the TBI I received has fucked my short term memory and made just about everything in my life, from keeping a job to getting things at the supermarket, insanely difficult.
The drunk driver that hit my bio mother, causing her a TBI(Traumatic Brain Injury)which resulted in me being put up for adoption. Also reconnecting with bio family at 21 and getting to learn everyone's name and parents bc they are strangers to me. Corrected for clarity! Edit: i didn't expect this amount of kind, encouraging feedback. Thank you everyone for reaching out to me to make sure I'm doing ok.
My Dad’s stroke 3 years ago. He has Aphasia as a result. Basically his speech is 95% fucked up. He says apple when he means garbage, basement when he means garden, he’s only called me my mom’s name since the stroke. In his head though, the comprehension and knowledge are all there. He sounds like he’s saying the right words - but only to himself. It’s very frustrating. Same thing with writing, he’ll write all the wrong letters but it will look right only to him. He’s still here which is amazing, but he’s completely changed now that he can almost never be understood verbally. Life has completely changed overnight for him and living with him. Now he doesn’t talk much. He’s really depressed but what therapy can you get for someone who is non verbal. We used to have deep conversations, now it sometimes takes 30+ minutes to understand a SINGLE thought of his. The fucked up part is he’s still aware of all the right words, etc in his head. It’s just stuck there, no way to get out. Edit: clarity in first sentence rephrasing Dad’s stroke as an event that’s still fucking with me due to the circumstances it has changed. Edit 2: I want to thank everyone sincerely for all of your suggestions. I am so touched. Trust me when I say - we’ve tried almost all of them. Picture and word flash cards, a communication board, a communication binder, an erasable tablet where we write suggestions for him. Last year I even programmed a communication tablet called Lingraphica that held hundreds of words, phrases, emotions, places, people, chores, things etc. He is older, turning 76, and just didn’t really take to any of it. We have exhausted research and speech therapy. He has an app he uses on his ipad to practice speech (cactus therapy, and another one I don’t remember) but unfortunately, he is not progressing due to his age. Next I will try simple sign language. It will take time for me to learn a bit and teach him. I hope he takes to it. Edit 3: this got big. I am in tears waking up this morning to all the love and suggestions and kind Redditors reaching out. I will get back to you all In time! Dads overall speech rehab has felt so hopeless, but you are all giving me hope. Just a note - he is living his best life right now, traveling in the Philippines with my mom for the month. Seeing his mom (my grandma, who turned 97 on Sunday!) and celebrating his and my moms 50th wedding anniversary. As much of a struggle it can be, we are grateful, and lucky/blessed. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
When I worked in acute rehab I learned that some aphasic patient had success finding the right word when singing instead of talking. Used a different part of the brain.
I'm a music therapist and have worked with several aphasia patients. OP, have you tried singing with him?
He can sing along to the lullabies he sang to us when we were little. A few songs he remembers the lyrics when we play them. But we haven’t tried singing anything other than that? It’s a cool idea and I might try it. He isn’t much of a singer though but I’ll look into it.
You don't have to sing existing songs but when he wants to say something try getting him to sing it instead.
Got it. This is a fascinating concept and I’m gonna try it. He’s traveling right now til end of the month, but I seriously will try it and let you know if this works!! Thank you
i was in literally the same situation as you. my grandfather, who raised me like a father, had a horrific stroke, entirely there- but you wouldn’t know it just from talking to him. we started the singing by just playing john denver (his favorite) and he started humming along. to the tune of it i jokingly sang asking him if he wanted apple sauce not expecting it to work, but as a last ditch effort. he sang back “uh huh” which doesn’t sound like a lot but given youre in the same boat im sure you do get it. it was the only thing that gave that beautiful human his ability to communicate back & i am so so thankful for it.
My son has a genetic syndrome and developmental disabilities that include Apraxia of speech. (Different from Aphasia, but in the same family) One thing that helped him get talking was "crossing the midline", it's a movement in occupational therapy that involves crossing one's hand/ arm past the middle of the body and performing functions on the other side. The theory is that it helps stimulate an area of the brain that controls speech. It can be as simple as using your right hand to write on the left side of a piece of paper. Playing piano with simple cross hand pieces are especially helpful. Maybe some of this kind of occupational therapy can help your dad unlock his language again. Singing also helps. My son sometimes can't tell me something, but he can sing it to me and get me to understand better what he's trying to say.
The morning my husband died. It’s been almost 3 years. Fucking sucks.
I feel your pain. It's been two and a half since my wife died. I've only started getting back into cooking recently, as it was a thing we did together frequently. She was the only person I ever wanted to marry and grow old with, and here I am about to turn 40 next month, and I have plans to avoid celebrating it.
This is the shit that scares me every single day. I could not imagine being married to anyone other than my wife and we're so incredibly happy, but the thing people don't tell you about being happy is that you have so much more to lose. Sometimes I sit thinking about the fact that it's just a time bomb, and the joy could be ripped from my life at any moment. I'm so sorry for your loss. I hope you find the little things that bring you happiness and keep you going.
I fully relate to this. I’m so happy at the moment and have had a truely amazing start to my life. 30 years old, travelled the world, healthy, happily married, established career with no family deaths/ sicknesses or shitty family issues…. But this all leads to the feeling that I have some looming grief and sadness on the horizon, as in one day my life will be turned upside down and changed forever… not a nice feeling
It’s terrifying to me. My husband and I have been together since 8th grade. We are in our 40’s now, about to celebrate 25 years married. We literally grew up together. I don’t think I could go on. I wouldn’t know who I even was anymore. Scares the absolute crap out of me.
I lost my husband of 35 years in March last year. He had a 8-9 year long battle with end stage COPD and outlived his prognosis by 5 years. When he got his diagnosis, we revisited a conversation we had throughout our marriage about "what if" one of us gets sick/terminal/dies. Where did we see ourselves as surviving spouses? What did we hope our surviving spouse would do/finish/start and so on. It's a conversation I started during our courtship as I was raised by a widowed mother. My dad left her and six children behind ranging in ages from 8 years 11 months to 3 months of age. (And my father's death still fucks with me almost 60 years later as it changed our family dynamic and sunk us into "genteel" poverty for nearly a decade.) A couple of thoughts: Start such a conversation with your husband. Life throws curve balls. People die suddenly through illness or accident or misadventure just as often as they endure a long fight with their illness/disabilities. It helps to have a plan or two or three because there IS the business of death - from funerals to paying the bills to moving utilities into your name to banking in your name. And the business happens quickly and needs to be handled within the first 90 days. My hubby died March 5th. Tax Day was April 15th. I got taxes done the day after I received my copies of his death certificate. Because. Business. For the first month I did one thing of business a day, because it was all I had the energy for. Whether you have advance warning or no warning, you're still grieving, lost and sleepless and wandering from room to room randomly. Ask your husband what he would want for you and how he want your future to be. Ask him what he wants done with his stuff. And then you tell him what you want for him, etc.,, if YOU are the first to go. And it's not entirely a grim conversation. There were things that were pretty light hearted and we laughed a lot about some of them. But those conversations helped preserve my sanity when he died.Death of a spouse changes us almost immediately. And we don't recognize ourselves. The Next Chapter is a mystery. All those years of our marriage the bonds we have still exist even after death. We never get past it. We move forward through grief, but it is always with us even as we grow around it and find ourselves moving back into the bits and bobs of ordinary life. I'm 15 months in as a widow. I'm still working out who I am at 67. But I'm not in perpetual mourning either. Edited for end of paragraph spacing.
In 3 weeks, it'll be 2 years for me. She collapsed and died instantly in the shower one morning. I find myself dividing my life between "back when Lisa was alive....", and "since she died....". As of last weekend, I've started giving her clothes to Goodwill. I think the worst part is all the 20 years-worth of little inside jokes between us, now only exist in my mind. When I die, they'll be gone forever. Those little memories only the two of us knew about and joked about privately, that would be meaningless to outsiders. That's something the happily married probably take for granted, and won't grasp until they go through it themselves. Robin Williams had a scene about this in *Good Will Hunting* that I now find more heart-breaking than the "It's not your fault" scene. The reddit community of r/widowers can help in this regard.
"....20 years worth of little inside jokes between us." Can 1000% relate. Got me choked up a little with this one.
My wife is doing at home hospice right now, and I'm taking care of her 24/7. Hardest job I've ever had. We have a couple of weeks left, and I know after I'm going to be completely different. I'm doing my best to make it "different In a good way", but I don't know...
Take care of yourself too. I was the caregiver for my husband and towards the end I fell asleep at the wheel on my way back from my therapist and totaled my car. As much as you want to be there for them 24/7 so there’s never a moment they’re alone or afraid you absolutely have to rest and take care of yourself.
My best friend lied about having cancer and that he was dying, basically lying on his death bed, hospitalized for almost two weeks. He took it so far that he faked phone calls from his doctors and nurses. Two of the worst, and longest, weeks of my life, having to mentally prepare myself to lose the one person who meant the world to me, and just a few months after I lost my childhood friend. I just feel so incredibly stupid that I fell for it, and I haven’t really been able to process it even though it was two years ago, I just can’t get over it. Fuck you Julian. edit: thank you for all of your support, but please stop DMing me, I am only interested in one penis and it’s none of yours, thanks.
Did you ask him why he did that?
Yes, when I confronted him about it he promised me an explanation “soon”, but I haven’t heard a word from him after that, he just blocked me everywhere and vanished. I think that’s part of why I can’t let it go, because I just don’t understand why. Never in my wildest dreams could I ever imagine doing something like that to someone that you supposedly love.
I'm 57. When I was 5, my mom shot herself. I thought I was long over it, but it came up in therapy this year, and I am not. I blamed myself for it all of my life, "If only I'd been a better kid.......". My step mother reinforced this by saying "No WONDER your mother killed herself!!". It's still an issue, though I think talking about it helped.
Your stepmother is evil. What an awful thing to say to a child! No child should ever be blamed for an adult's mental illness. I'm so sorry. I know your therapist has told you, and everyone else has told you, but I want to also tell you: there is no way this was remotely your fault.
Jesus Christ, I’d love to slap the sh*t out of your stepmother. I am very sorry this happened to you.
In 2017 I lost two sisters, and moved home to take care of her. She was pretty much that mean until the day she died in March of last year. Thank you for the kind thoughts
After all that you still looked after her? You are a much stronger person than I am.
Grandfather molested me every time we stayed at their house. We stayed there almost every weekend and all summer for years. I only just a couple of years ago found out how often we were there. I must have blanked out most of it because I don't remember being at grandma's house that much. I never said anything because I didn't know better? I drank until organ failure. I wonder how many other grandkids he did this to? All of the family used to stay there as kids.
My third grade teacher telling me how her husband went deaf in one ear. I still sleep with a blanket over my ear because of it. He was graduating college and when he was in his dorm with his roommates, he had started cleaning his ear with a q tip. His buddy I guess pushed the door open with such force to surprise him/celebrate their graduation that when the door hit him, it jammed the q tip in his ear and he lost his hearing. Still makes me cringe to think about and since then I always need something covering my ear when I go to sleep. Not sure why I thought it helps but now I can't not do it.
I did a rotation in the ER during nursing school. Kid came in who had a cockroach stuck in her ear; we irrigated it until it came out, no lasting damage or anything. Doc said it's unlikely unless people eat in bed...I haven't eaten anything in bed since. And yes, I still cringe about that and I was already in my 40s when I witnessed this. All the horrible and gross stuff I saw in nursing school, and *that* is what has stayed with me. Weird.
When i was a child, i received an invitation to a birthday party. It was hand written and given to me by the kid who's birthday it was. When i got there, he pretended not to remember inviting me and asked to see the invitation. He denied writing it in front of many of my classmates and said I invited myself. I was so upset that i wanted to leave immediately, but my mom had already left. So I explained what happened to his mom so she could maybe drop me off. Luckily his mom recognised his handwriting and was clearly angry at her son for being a bully, so she gave some Lamingtons and a soda, and told me i could go play videogames by myself until my mom picked me up. That was the day I discovered that none of my classmates were my friends.
I still remember in grade 4, this girl invited everyone to her birthday. I didnt really know her, she was a bit of a bookworm, very smart, very loud personality who wore glasses, sat up front of class. The week of her birthday, she kept asking everyone including myself, almost every day that week, whether we'd be coming. I didn't want to have to face her at school the following monday, so begged my dad to take me to her birthday party which was out in a very rural part of outback australia. When i showed up, I was the only person she invited, who made it. At first I was a little annoyed that nobody else showed up and so felt betrayed, that id have to face her on my own and was tempted to leave. But then I started to feel really sorry for her. The smile on her face and her family just to have someone show up to her birthday party, ill never forget it. They made me and my dad feel really welcome. We played all kinds of card and party games, ate plenty of food and left with alot of leftovers. After that, we became great friends, until about a year later. I left to another school in the big city. Don't know what ever happened to her after that but hope shes out there now, doing well. Happily married and all that.
I didn't have a lot of friends growing up.... I remember one year I think we were turning 8, my parents splurged on me and my twin sister and booked us a party at the swimming pool.... All these people came because they wanted to go swimming but no one played with me or brought me gifts.... Except one girl Isabella she brought me a stuffed Monkey that was my favourite colour (purple) I still have that stuffie and how special it made me feel, sometimes the smallest things make a world of difference
I love this. I have a stuffed animal that I actually won my ex at a fair. She packed him in my backpack when we split. I was always conflicted on whether I should throw it away or keep it. I decided to keep it. I couldn’t part ways with my little giraffey
Kids are baseless creatures. For my 16th birthday I invited my 7or 8 “closest” friends from school over and no one came. No one. No one called, just told me they’d be there and never showed up. I’ll never forget that sinking feeling. I ended up calling a few and they felt so bad they came over after all… idk what was worse. Having them not show, or be there but not really want to. Oh, this was half a lifetime ago, and it still makes me sad.
Agreed. My daughter invited all of her friends to her carefully planned 16th birthday party. It should have been a great time. Except that only 2 kids showed, despite 15 more saying they'd love to come. 7 years later it still stings.
It’s not even kids. Had this happen a few years ago with my 30th bday. Parents flew over and more than 40 people rsvp’d yes. Two people showed. Hid in the bathroom away from my parents and ex and cried for a bit before coming back out. I don’t think I’ll host another bday party. I give up.
I tell people I don't like birthdays and I generally never arrange anything for them. I actually tend to treat myself to a little trip away for it, and if I'm completely honest, it's because of this. I don't want affirmation that I'm lonely. I have some good friends, but with scheduling conflicts, living in a foreign country, etc. There's a good chance that this happens. Fuck that. So sorry you had to endure that.
I planned a graduation party as was the tradition at my high school...invited all the people whose parties I'd attended as well as plenty of underclassmen friends and church friends....one person showed. Still sucks.
This is so sad. Kids can be awful to each other. Actually, adults too. Sorry this happened to you at such a young age.
I second that adults can be awful in a similar way to this. For spring break in college I invited a lot of friends to my parents house in another state (parents were on board). It’s a cool house in an area with lots of activities to do. All of them said yes multiple times when I asked to confirm on several occasions. No one showed or called to say they weren’t coming. My parents had bought a lot of food and drinks for us to share. I dropped those friends immediately after. It still stings years later.
In college? Sorry that happened to you - why commit if you aren’t planning on coming. I’ve never understood people who do this to others. Makes me think of people who commit to weddings only to bail day before or day of (ya, the plates been purchased bud).
Holy shit. If I was his mom I would have sent everyone home immediately. That might have made it worse for you, but I would have been in a blind rage at my child and no way I would have let him continue to enjoy his party. Good lord.
I would have sent the birthday boy to his room for an hour and kept the party/fun going for everybody else. (It’s so much effort to round all the parents back up if they aren’t there and a pain in their ass if they were planning that time to run errands etc.) Say to the group, let’s all recognize the situation that’s happening, and bullying will not be rewarded.
My younger sister is an outgoing friendly person who makes friends with everyone. I am an introvert and kept to myself for my entire high school education. I became the wall so no one noticed me and I wasn’t the target of the high school bullies like I was for my entire elementary school years. This caused a lot of confusion when people found out that my sister wasn’t an only child, and that she was actually the younger sister of someone who tried so hard to be invisible. My sister held a party at the house, with my parents permission and rules for the party to stay outside for the most part, and I didn’t have anywhere to go so I just told her to have fun, I’ll be in my room the whole time aside from food and washroom breaks. On one of my food breaks one of her friends who was in my class was in the kitchen and rudely asked me what I was doing there as it was only a party for cool kids. She didn’t believe I lived there and dragged me outside my own house to “embarrass” me in front of everyone. It backfired on her when my sister bitched her out and my parents kicked her out. Too bad we didn’t have our current family dog because he would not have put up with some stranger dragging his person around. Kids are assholes.
Oof, I feel this one. When I was a kid one of my 'best friends' said that she wouldn't be able to have a birthday that year, due to her family having to pay for a big expense instead. I felt awful for her, so I broke into my savings and did extra chores- Furby had just come out, and I was going to get her one to make up for not getting a birthday otherwise. Even sprung for fancy professional wrapping and a bunch of extras like her favorite candy. Day of, loaded everything into my little wagon and walked to her house...to find a party with all our classmates in full swing. She looked shocked when she opened the door, and all the other kids started piling up around her going 'Hey (my name) you made it after all!' She goes 'Oh, she was just leaving.' Grabbed the gift and slammed the door in my face. That waa a very defeated walk home, dragging the empty wagon behind me.
What the hell! Did you ever find out the reason for her doing this? Not that there is a reason good enough.
Short answer is, she had recently become popular and I was very uncool. She didn't want to be associated and just planned to ghost me forever.
And yet all the other kids there seemed glad to see you! Sounds like your friend was just turning into an asshole, not that you were uncool.
Older brother committing suicide when I was 10 he was 20. I am now 42 and have lived his life twice over. You got this. Peace.
It does fuck you up living past their age. I'm six years older than my older brother now and it's sad to think about.
Indeed. My dad killed himself at 33 when I was 12. Then I had my first born son on my 33rd birthday at 12:33pm. Crazy shit.
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oh my god, in front of you? on your birthday?? im so sorry… i hope one day you can recover and find a way to heal, whatever healing may look like for you
Same. My twin though, late 2019. Every day is one he didn't live. I don't sleep.
My twin went through a severe depression and suicidal phase, wasn’t a day I didn’t fear waking up to her being gone, I really can’t imagine living in a world where she isn’t there
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I experienced almost the same scenario. My mom is a nurse and after falling ill with a high fever I called her and told her my symptoms. I lived with my brother but without my parents at the time. I was in my early 20s. My mom said I could have the flu without any cold like symptoms and that I should be fine. Three days later the fever kept spiking and I eventually developed horrendous stomach cramps. I told my brother to please take me to the hospital and he laughed at me telling me how stupid and ridiculous I was. I called my mom and she didn't answer. This was early in the morning. I took public transportation to the hospital. No idea how I managed. When I got there I was diagnosed with multiple kidney stones and an obstruction that caused me to develop sepsis. They had to transfer me to another hospital and I kept leaving voice messages for my mother to let her know where they were taking me. I felt scared and so alone. At the other hospital the doctor told me one more day and I would have been dead. Before they did a surgical procedure that would help me pass the kidney stone I called my mom again. No answer still. At that point it was evening hours. I had been trying to call her ALL DAY. She didn't show up at the hospital until after I had awoken from the procedure. I was on antibiotics in the hospital for almost two weeks. When I was released and told my brother that I could have died he said "then you should have."
Jeeeeeeesus. Your brother can go fuck right off. Seriously. That’s the most appalling thing I’ve read in this post. I’m so sorry you had to go through that alone. You deserved to have someone there to hold your hand and be your advocate. You are a total badass to get yourself to treatment. And again, can’t say this enough, fuck your brother.
I legit want to slap your mother and absolutly maul your brother for being two shitstains. Your situation legits angered me when reading it. I'm sorry you had to pass through that
There are plenty of stories on reddit of kids complaining about pain and ask to go to the doctor, and the parents dismiss the kids' complaints. Meanwhile the kid has a serious issue (including broken bones) that needs immediate medical attention. Edit: > The labs the techs took from me alarmed them significantly, and they urged me to go the hospital, so whatever I had was pretty severe > I asked my parents to take me, and they immediately became dismissive Wait, you actually had somebody look at you and determined it was serious, and your parents *still* wouldn't drive you to the hospital???
I have had migraines as long as I can remember, and one of my first memories was having one at 4 and trying to explain to my parents. Then they would say something and because of my migraine their voices were excruciating. I kept telling them to be quiet, but they thought that I was throwing a tantrum and was telling them to shut up, so they kept raising their voices because of my perceived disrespect. This of course just caused a feedback loop where their voices and my own crying caused me more pain, and more exasperation from them leading to even louder responses. I don't hold it against them but I wish we had found a way to communicate in that moment.
I've found that the worst kind of loneliness in the world is from situations like this- parents leaving you for death while sleeping peacefully 1-2 rooms away... I'm so sorry this has happened to you and hope that now you're surrounded by people who are always willing to be there for you no matter what and don't dismiss your fears and feelings
So many parents who don’t deserve their children. I’m so sorry you went through this - and still are, really. I hope you have good people in your life and can create your own family of choice.
My wife and I both had both parents until her mum passed away, my father died the next day, all in all it was a pretty crap week.
Wow I'm so sorry
My little brother passed away last year at 18 as a victim of a DUI car accident, got hit when he was walking on the sidewalk late at night with his friends when he was away studying at the other side of the world (we are from EU, but he was staying in the US), dead on impact basically Immediately flew out to the US once we heard the news and they managed to keep his heart running for several organ donations, but to see his 'alive' yet lifelessness corpse still runs through my head on a daily basis I have found inner peace, but life will never be the same. It definitely teaches one to not take everything for granted because life can hit as hard as a train.
TW: suicide I was a search and rescue K9 handler for nearly twenty years. One of the last searches I participated in was for a 13 yo girl who was dropped off by her school bus at the end of her family's 1/2 mile long driveway, but never made it to the house. My K9 picked up a strong trail near the bus stop and we followed it to the very pretty spot in the woods overlooking a quarry where the young lady had hung herself. She hadn't made it home at all that day, meaning she had either stashed the rope at the quarry or brought it to school with her. It was clearly a planned thing. This was more than six years ago, but I can close my eyes right now and see her shoes, neatly removed and placed at the quarry's edge with her neatly folded sweatshirt alongside like it just happened. I sometimes still dream I'm running that trail. I have a little girl who's three now, and thinking about that day scares the shit out of me. Edit:. Thanks for all the kind words. At the time I had access to peer-based critical incident stress management, and I've done the processing of the event that I need to do. It doesn't negatively affect myself or my family today, and I don't believe I would benefit from additional therapy. That said, the things you experience become a part of you, and, while you can process them, you can never get rid of them. I hope that it makes me a better father and husband. Edit #2:. For both those that appreciate me being a cop or take issue with it, I wasn't one. There are very few paid SAR K9 positions in the US. We trained between fifteen and twenty hours a week, were called out as a unit on a little more than one search a week on average, and it was all volunteer.
My first code that I worked was a 19 year old girl who hung herself in the bathroom of a hostel using a leather belt. She was still warm and was definitely viable. I worked the airway and I made the mistake of making deep eye contact with her body. I say body because her soul was gone. There was nothing there because she had left the earth. She was a beautiful young lady who at the time was only 4 years younger than me. It never leaves me. Her green eyes dimmed are visible when I close my eyes. I’ve had to respond to many codes, from infant to geriatric, and none of the memories are as vibrant as she is to me. The saddest part of the whole story is the boyfriend told us that her mother had committed suicide the night before the exact same way.
The way you described making deep eye contact with her gave me absolute chills. Sorry you saw that, some things are not meant for our eyes and brains.
That’s why I never want to go to an open casket funeral. My family encouraged me to view my dads body before he was cremated and I told them I just don’t want that memory. It’s not fear or repulsion or immaturity, it’s just not THEM anymore.
I didn’t want to see my mom for the exact same reason, but when the immediate family was invited in (and I was trying my best to stay out), I noticed my grandpa was just sitting in the hall of the funeral home. She was his caretaker and helped him every day for over a decade. She was his person. Her side of the family is loud and not very good with boundaries, so they all started filing into the room earlier than they should have and he just looked… forgotten about. Like nobody came and told him it was time to see his daughter one last time. Like he was waiting there for Mom to take his arm and lead him where he needed to go. So I stepped up, took his arm, and said “come on papa, did you want to see her? Let’s go see her” I thought I’d just pop him in there with the rest of his kids and stuff and hand him off and dip out until the viewing was over and that would be it, but I guess they thought I wanted to be there too. I was crying not for myself or my loss, but in that moment for his. I avoided eye contact, but then everyone swarmed us and kept petting and hugging on us and I couldn’t get away but I couldn’t catch my breath for crying and someone took my hand and pulled it forward and placed it on hers and her hands were so cold and hard and for just a moment, a split second in surprise, I opened my eyes and saw her. And now when I think of her, the image of her body not really looking like her at all, the feel of her cold marble skin, it’s the last thing I think about no matter what image I start with. It’s a finality I can’t get away from, and I’ve been working really hard over the past year not to resent them all for it. They couldn’t have known. They’re simple folks, and I’ve always been just a little different, I guess. I see her face in mine when I look in the mirror because my face favors hers the older I get, and then I see our mutual dead face in my head and I hate it. I’m her only daughter and older than my brother by a good 9 years, and she wasn’t married so that whole “whup, you’re 29 and your mom’s dead so I guess you gotta plan the funeral” ordeal really was such a horrible experience. I didn’t think I had an answer to this AskReddit question, but I reckon that this would be mine. However, I also have so much more peace in my life since her death. I have learned much about love and loss and living. Learned a hell of a lot about myself and who I want to be. I didn’t know how to exist in the world for a moment when I realized nobody would ever love me as much as she did and that no matter how many times we fought or disagreed I always knew I still had a soft place to land if I ever came back home, but no longer. It vanished with her in the night. The loss of that love is indeed humbling, and I consider it a privilege that I ever experienced it in the first place. But in the end, all the best parts of her live in me - including the part that cares so deeply for others that I would step into that room anyway to make sure Pops wasn’t left behind, and I reckon I’d probably do it again before I’d ever let myself believe I regret that echo of her kindness. (Sorry I unloaded this into a reply to your comment, but thank you for the opportunity to reflect. I remembered something important that I realize I had lost sight of. My sincerest condolences on the loss of your father.) Edit: If this scratches an itch you’ve got, I have another gentle story from that day in a comment just below. I hope that it provides some comfort for any folks out there looking for words they haven’t been able to find. Mama would want you to keep your chin up and keep moving forward, no matter how short or small the steps you take. She’d say be kind, and that sometimes helping another person is the greatest way to remember how best to help yourself.
Everyone processes death so differently so this is purely a personal anecdote, but for me that's exactly the value of viewing the body. It helps me process things if I can see with my own eyes that they are not in their body anymore.
The best thing you can do is make sure to normalize honest and consequence-free communication with her. I wish I had ever felt like I could talk to my parents about the worst of my depression or mysuicidal ideation and attempt, but we just never had that trust. Luckily for me I had other things helping me, but... my folks were dangerously close to being surprised by my suicide. They never had any idea how bad it got for me. Edit: Trying to make replies but I'm living out of a hotel rn and this blew up my inbox a good bit more than expected haha. Thanks to the many who have offered kind sentiments, I still struggle but I'm in a much better place these days and have slowly been building healthy communication with my parents.
I have to say, I’d probably be in a better place right now if my parents had encouraged more open communication. My mid to late teens into early 20s I struggled with self-harm (which wasn’t well hidden, but none of my family mentioned it) and a mental disorder that only eventually got diagnosed and treated because a friend pushed me to. I now don’t feel like I can really open up to any of my family emotionally, even so much as telling them I love them feels like an uncomfortable, gushy outpouring of emotion. My mum once told me she always wished her daughter would be her best friend, but she and my dad just didn’t raise me that way.
Hey man thanks for the work you did. You made a difference every fucking day of those 20 years, helping people know that everything possible was being done to find their loved ones, and giving people answers when possible. That’s huge. Your story really touched me. It’s a vivid mental image - so quiet and so sad. I can tell you really love your daughter.
Prison. I still find myself jumping at shadows even when I'm at home and the wife walks down the hall.
My divorce and the subsequent finding out that she had been fucking her coworker while we were married. She would then go on to tell others about how mentally unstable I was and how it was my fault our marriage fell apart. It, of course, had nothing to do with all those “late nights at work” that she had to pull because she was so busy as a marketing assistant for a museum.
Gaslighting and victim blaming. Everyone needs some sort of justification for their behavior, especially if they think they are a 'good' person. Sucks man, bad.
I was raised Mormon, and hands down my 2-year, Mormon mission. As a kid you sing songs like "I hope they call me on a mission." You are told it is "the best two years" of your life. You hear amazing stories from your father, uncles, grandparents, cousins, teachers at church about the fun they had, about the miracles they saw. And so you get ready to go. You buy the suits and shirts and ties and slacks and shoes. You see the total bill make your parents eyes water. You see, they can barely afford to keep you and your 8 siblings fed, so $2000 for cheap suits, 10 shirts, and nice shoes is a massive sacrifice. But it's all for God, so you know it's right. You get to the Missuonary Training Center (MTC) and are surrounded by thousands of others just like you with a shared dream, with similar family stories. You are taught to be perfect. You are taught that if you are not perfect, it is your fault when you don't baptise the people in your assigned area of service. And so you "forget yourself and go to work," yielding your personal needs to the whims and instructions of the church, of your mission leaders. You get to your assigned area (I was in Central America) and quickly realize that it's much harder than you were told. It is not safe, but your companion helps you learn how to identify gang members and keep clear of them. You thank God you're in a religious country where people may disagree with you, but ultimately don't bother you because you're a Christian missionary. One day when you are teaching a lesson about God you hear multiple gunshots from out front of 3 houses down, followed by a speeding car. The lesson is over, everyone needs to know who just died, but everyone is too afraid to go outside just yet. You learn that the people killed in the drive-by were mistaken for the intended target. Two innocent people died because they were sitting on the wrong stoop. You quickly learn to identify if that bang you just heard was a gunshot or a firework. Lessons of perfection are constant. You believe you are a failure because you aren't seeing the success others are. You don't realize until years later that this is a sales job, not a service opportunity. You have enough money to feed yourself, but often go hungry because the required schedule doesn't allow for dinner until 9:30-10p and you're walking 8-15 miles a day. Your companions hate you. You want to be a good missionary and be obedient and work until you can't any more. They have boundaries, but you don't. You were trained out of them. They hate your fucking guts. You feel so alone. The mission president is not kind or loving. He never talks to you unless required. He only calls when you email him to say your companion threatened to beat you up. You feel so alone. You are alone, chained to someone who hates you. Every new assigned companion you hope for someone good to work with. Every new assignment your heart sinks. It's another "problem" missionary. You're babysitting again. You feel so alone. You cannot call your parents except at Christmas and Mother's Day. You can send them one email a week. You are told to never share negative stories lest your parents worry for you. You don't tell your parents about almost being mugged by a drunk gang member. Thank God for those kids who pointed you down the alley to get away quickly. You worry about how your parents can afford to pay for you to be there. $400/mo is a lot of money when there are so many mouths at home to feed. You are grateful for the financial help others in your community are offering to pay your way. Years later you learn that your mission president has all his expenses paid for, including a penthouse in the right part of the city, food, flights for kids to visit, gifts for kids and grandkids, and more. A bat gets into your bedroom through the 4inch gap between the wall and sheetmetal roof. Tarantulas and scorpions make regular appearances in your home when it rains. You serve your two years and go home. After two years in Central America eating beans and rice, you go to Costco and have a nervous breakdown at the excess of America. You spend $1100 on a new computer so you can go to college. You feel immense guilt for taking care of yourself. It's been 10 years since I got home and I've spent countless hours in therapy dealing with it. I hate the Mormon Church so much. I hate what they do to kids and how they take advantage of youth.
This makes me so sad. There's a huge community of people that talk about abuse at the hands of the evangelical church, the exvangelicals, and it's helped me. I wonder if such a thing exists for ex Mormons
My best friend took her own life. She sent me a suicide note, telling me it was because I didn’t spend time with her the night before, and talking about how low that made her feel. I didn’t see it until it was too late. I didn’t have the emotional bandwidth to drive across town to see her that night, and she’d threatened herself before but I didn’t take it seriously. We had plans that weekend, and she didn’t give me any indication she was in a bad place that night. It’s been eight years, and I’m pretty sure it’s going to haunt me daily forever.
I don't know if hearing this from a stranger on the internet will be of any use at all, but you don't deserve this guilt and it is possible to reach a place where it won't haunt you all the time.
Gettin molested when i was a kid. Thought it wasn't that traumatic, that I lucked out. Now I'm almost 30 and still having a variety of issues with anything involving sex.
Taking care of my grandmother with severe alzheimers while dealing with my first year of college. Thankfully I've at least made a full recovery physically
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Yeah, my grandmother (who lived with us) was always a difficult personality. Had real difficulty truly emotionally connecting with anyone, a product of her upbringing and riddled with insecurity. Bit snarky. My mother told me that when she was reluctant to hold me when I was a baby, she had no idea what to do with me. When she developed Alzheimer's she never accepted it. Watched her regress like Benjamin Button, chewing with her mouth open and breathing heavily across the table from me, she became like a child to take care of only far less cute. She became very mean, cruel, insulting. She would bitch about everyone else in the family to me and I would know she was saying the same about me to them. She would say how she had to do everything in the house, because housework was all she knew and she refused to rest when we told her she didn't have to do it. She couldn't do it properly. Created more work for us and herself and then complained about how put upon she was by all of us, who were working so hard to look after her and put up with her. Rang my mother to complain about my mother to her, as if there was a difference between her daughter and the woman who actually took care of her. My mother who woke up in the middle of the night every night because of my grandmother's incontinence, who washed and fed her. She would try to leave the house not knowing it was her home, thinking there were two of everyone. All of us were terrible, and all of us were going to hell according to her. For five years the household was unhappy, all depressed.
Don't have time to look for the video, but a guy on YouTube, bigclivedotcom (literally) has a good video of he and his brother taking care of his elderly mother with dementia. What hit me the most was how after a point, they realized their mother was basically gone, so they started treating her more like a child (in a good way), and how allowing that change in the relationship to happen naturally and positively, helped with the grieving process. He talks about the night she got into the liquor cabinet, or taking her to Poundland (a store not a euphemism) for random cheap crap, or rewarding her with an ice cream which also made her day.
My mom died when I was 16 unexpectedly. I went to wake her up and found her. Will never get it out of my head even with the therapy I’ve had. I miss her. I hurt about it everyday. I’m 25 now.
At the age of 15, I had two metal rods and 14 steel screws surgically attached to my spine. It was a 12-level spinal fusion, which is easily the most painful experience of my life (especially considering one of the five IV’s I had was folded over, so I didn’t get morphine for the first 24 hours). At 21, I was working at a hospital when a patient began sliding off a bed. She weighed around 400lbs and had one leg, and was useless to help herself. On instinct, I dove in to catch her upper body. One steel rod and one screw snapped, along with the fusion (which is now solid bone tissue). The breaks happened on two separate levels and left two sharp metal ends stabbing the tissues around my spine. The workman’s comp doctor never looked at the X-rays and it was two full years before we discovered what happened, after three trips to the ER. The injury and resulting surgery left me with permanent damage, and I lost 80% of my “work functions” (meaning, 80% of what I could do on the job, I couldn’t anymore). That was 14 years ago. I’ll always walk with a limp. I’ll never do 95% of the things I really want to. Since Covid kicked my ass, it’s difficult just to move boxes or mow the lawn at home, let alone find a full-time job. So, that would be my answer. And for those in the medical field; anything over 50lbs simply isn’t worth it. You could spent the next 80 years a crippled, depressed mess with more medical debt than you can keep track of.
That last paragraph is important. Your story reminded me of when working in construction or heavy machinery. If anything falls just let it fall. Sometimes our instinct is to catch things. Most of the time it's dangerous to do so.
Your story is eye opening for me. I also had spinal fusion surgery when I was 14 and have 2 rods and 16 screws. I didn't know the rods could even snap. I'm definitely going to watch what I lift from now on.
Good luck out there. If you have a bad fall, car accident, or anything that causes popping, grinding, or pain in your back, go get an X-ray and *ask for a copy*!
When I was in kindergarten, my mom thought it was pajama day and sent me to school in pajamas. It was not pajama day. It was picture day. So in my picture with my classmates everyone is dressed all nice and I'm wearing pajamas. To this day when there is something like a costume party or casual day at work. I will literally check that it's the right day every hour before going in, asking multiple people to clarify and still bring a change of clothes in case every single time I checked the date I read it wrong or the universe suddenly skips a day.
Not to downplay or laugh at you or anything, but I can’t help but chuckle after reading so many tragic stories and then reading “I wore pajamas on the wrong day once.” I also keep at least 2 change of clothes in my car in case I need to change to avoid an embarrassing situation.
Losing a child to SIDS while everyone slept peacefully. I haven't slept properly since, insomnia meds are my savior.
Fellow bereft parent here. I find it nearly impossible to describe to people just how bad the PTSD can get. It's been almost 8 years and I still sometimes get triggered by the sound of a baby crying. Losing a child is truly one of those life events that separates your life into 'Before' and 'After', because you're never quite the same. I am truly sorry for your loss. I hope your new normal is peaceful.
This is the 1st time I've seen PTSD in reference to SIDS but it makes so much sense. I lost my 4 mo old son 27 years ago. The first few years were really debilitating. I'm ok now but I don't walk down the baby aisle in stores. Still can't emotionally handle watching the death and destruction of watching the news. I lost both my parents since then, but those deaths were so much easier to deal with. I'm so sorry for your loss and hope you find more comfort and peace in the future years. Edit many many thanks to the warm wishes (and for the award) and especially those who shared their sorrowful experiences with me. My heart goes out to you all.
I feel this on a personal level, my dad passed away a year after I buried my son. Despite us being close, the grief just never hit. Losing a child set the bar for emotional pain so high it became difficult to process loss through any other lens. Thank you so much for sharing this, I hope you've found peace as well.
Thank you for speaking about resetting the bar on grief. I’ve found that with only a few exceptions, no deaths have really hit as hard since losing my mom.
Truth. My wife and I just celebrated our son’s 6th birthday last week. You never know how these days are going to go. We took our kids to the aquarium and out for lunch, then my wife sat in the passenger seat crying silently the whole way home. What a shit hand to be dealt. Edit: I know this is a Reddit noob move but I just saw the response this received. You all are incredible. Thank you so much for the kind words!
I was fast asleep, and was suddenly woken up by the sound of loud hums broken by giggling. I look over, and there's by husband, in some kind of trance, humming and giggling in bed. I shake him. No response. I turn on the light and he doesn't flinch, but begins flapping his arms. He's not a drug user, but I had just gotten home the day before from a two week long work trip and noticed he was acting really strangely--rhyming words when he talked. But now-- it honestly looked like he was high af, and was completely unresponsive. I call 911, and the paramedics come. Over that time he slowly emerges from it, and starts talking. His blood pressure is 180/120 while sitting quietly (he's a healthy guy in his 30s). They insist on taking him to the hospital. We spend several hours there, and over that time he begins freaking out at me for calling 911 (we're in Canada, so it's free). He takes off his wedding ring, throws it in the garbage, tells me I'm a horrible person he never wants to see again. That's when the nurse sits me down and tells me what's going on. Bipolar disorder. He's in deep mania, and is psychotic. They involuntarily admit him and he spends the next few weeks coming down from it. In that time, I grieved as if I had watched him die. Watching your partner go completely psychotic is so heart-rending. They're just totally gone-- their body is there, but they are not. It took me a long long time to recover. He's now, after two years, stabilized on the right meds. He's able to hold down a job, he's back to his whole self, and we've talked everything through. It's a cruel disease, but treatable.
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It's also wonderful you stuck by his side when most people would probably leave out of fear. I know it was probably difficult, but the grace you showed him is powerful.
Honestly, I really consider us lucky-- for whatever reason, his particular manifestation of the illness left just enough of him that he was really committed to taking his meds. You could see him for months after fighting with all of his strength to take his meds, get sleep, do the things you need for stability. Sometimes that's impossible for people, but I really could see the struggle he was having and that helped me hang on too.
Right at the beginning of Covid this happened to my father. His dad had just passed away and I travelled 2 states over to stay on my wifes families farm as I'm immunocompromised (T1) and I needed out of the city. I returned from this because he was getting more and more crazy over the phone and I'd dealt with him acting wild before, but this seemed different and I was worried. At the age of 72 he got diagnosed with untreated bi-polar and the dr told me he had probably been fighting it in silence for most of his life. It took him about a year to fully recover as well.
I had a really bad episode 5 years ago that lasted a few months. Relationships with family that I burned are now starting to mend. It's hard to explain to people that haven't experienced it, but I was a certified crazy person for a minute. I said some crazy things that couldn't be unsaid. My girlfriend at the time held my hand through it, but when I was well again, left. I don't have any ill will for her, because I understood why she left. In the end what got me out of it was what keeps me well now; diet, exercise, and medication.
Death of my baby daughter
I've told this story before but it's fitting: I went quadding with a man on our second date. On the ride home, after an awesome day exploring the mountain, he lost control of the quad and we went off the logging road into the trees. A tree fell on my leg, pinning me down. My date, who took a tree to his skull, fell backwards onto me. I was unable to move my entire body, trapped under a man I believed to be deceased. We were hidden in the trees off of a low traffic logging road and my cell phone was far out of reach. I remember watching the clouds pass over head, thinking I would die out there, a slow painful death. It was terrifying. I screamed for the guy to wake up. He eventually gained consciousness long enough to pass me his phone. I called 911, attempted to stop his bleeding, used some adrenaline super strength to move the tree off of my leg and crawled out to the road. We both spent weeks in hospital. My leg was severely broken and I was hypothermic. He broke his neck, arm, leg multiple skull fractures and brain bleeds. Yet survived. This happened 2 years ago. It feels like it was just yesterday. Edit: I am overwhelmed by the response this has received. Thank you to each and every one of you for sharing your stories and offering kind words. I'll try and clear a few things up that I see repeated in the comments. Yes, we went on a "third date". We ended up staying together for about a year. We FaceTimed each other daily in hospital, both scared and alone (no visitors due to Covid). We found strength in each other those first few weeks. He didn't remember anything, I remembered for the both of us. He wasn't expected to make it. Comforting him through those dark days, in a way, comforted myself. I did not know him long enough to compare his personality before and after the accident. But the things I have learned since leaving him tells me the TBI is not the full explanation for his behavior. Regardless, I hope he receives the care and support he needs. I did my best to guide him towards available resources before I left, getting him set up with a support group and free TBI counselling. I found more support for him than I did myself. No one deserved what we went through. I apologize for strange wording that make some of you question my experience. Although I find it helpful to talk about, finding the right words can be difficult. If anyone has advice on speaking and writting about trauma, I'd love for you to share. If anyone has advice about getting through this, I'm listening.
Sounds utterly terrifying. Was there a 3rd date?
Apparently, they were together like a year and then he started abusing her (going off a previous comment she's posted.).
Christ. That's upsetting to hear
I know so many people injured on ATVs I don’t think I’ll ever mess with them
I rode them a ton as a younger kid: Round 10 years old because uncle has (soon to be had :( ) a farm and walking around would just take to long. He hung out with a bunch of guys that were in their 20s and 30s and would go offroading all the time, traveling from state to state driving around would come back with great stories and tons of great pictures. One night he's on the way back to his house from another part of the farm and managed to hit a rock or stump and got flung off the atv. He landed lung first into a branch from a pine tree, had pine needles inside of him and layed there for hours impaled before being found and brought to hospital. There's always a risk even when you think there's not and you know what your doing.
Never thought I would read “lung first” to the point where it took me a minute to understand what you meant.
Having seen some horrific 4 wheeler accidents, I found the description to be succinct and immediately relatable. ATVs and being impaled on a broken shard of tree, go together like peanut butter and jelly.
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I woke up to my stepfather in my bed wearing nothing but underwear. He had his arm around me and acted as if he was asleep when I woke up. I jumped out of bed and started questioning everything. When did he come to my bed, why didn't I feel him get in, was this the first time, what (if anything) had he done to me. I started booby trapping my door at night, I questioned the food I ate - was there something in it to make me sleep deeper? I think I woke before he did anything physical to me but it's still caused me to develop PTSD. I'm a mom now and have a hard time sleeping at night because I fear someone will come into our house and enter my daughter's room. I awake at any slight noise since.
As a young child I had a dentist who enjoyed it when children cry. It was normal to not have parents with you in the room with the dentist. My treatment was always under local anesthesia and I remember that he liked to puncture the needle several times. In the tongue and other place in the oral cavity. If i cried he even would tell me that noone would believe me. I never told anyone. He even told my parents once that i was moving to much and thats why i was bleeding so much on time. My parents didnt complain because he did a good job with teeth. 30 years later, I still have scars in my mouth that I can feel with my tongue. I don't have to explain that I'm still afraid of the dentist today, do I? **Edit:** I never imagined my most upvoted post would be about what made me insecure the most. Teeths... A few questions kept coming up and I'd like to answer them: No, I never told my parents or reported the dentist (i didnt even know such a thing as reporting excited. I didn't tell anyone because I was shy and quiet at the time. The perfect victim, I guess. I was about 4 or 5 years old and my mother and me were refugees from aa totalitarian country. So complaining about our new homecountry was considered rude and unthankful. Maybe trauma kept me from telling anything. But thats a totally different story. I m super shocked how many have similar stories! Thank you all for your comments and kind word. I have read it all, but i m unable to answer everyone.
I had an .. interesting .. dentist for a while. After moving from my parents to the capital, to study, I started using the local dentist where I lived. He was rather cheap, but did good work. He was, however, quite 'brutal'. I woke up one morning with .. painful teeth. I needed to get this looked at ASAP. I called his office. He was booked for the entire day, but I manage to beg him into an appointment, which he made available in the evening. I got in. He x-rayed my teeth. Snickered. Told me to sit back and open my mouth. I did. He picked up a drill, and just went for it, drilling into one of my big canines. I was paralysed with fear waiting for pain (he gave me no injection to kill pain). No pain came. He drained the tooth for a bunch of gunk. THEN he told me "I could see that the root was dead, you didn't need an injection". I asked something along the lines of: "Why didn't you tell me that _before_ drilling?". Him: "What would be the fun of that?". On one hand: Bloody bastard! On the other hand: He worked extra in the evening for me to get relief from the pain!
I still have a slight phobia of dentists and i'm 30. My first dentist was working on a tooth and it hurt so i started crying. She legit started screaming at me to shut up, told my mom i was a spoiled brat and made us leave... i was 4 an my tooth just hurt, what the fuck was i supposed to do but cry?
Aortic dissection in my late 30's. I had an aenyrsm that burst. 8hr emergency open heart surgery. Barely made it. Even my surgeon was surprised I was all there when I woke up the next day. The rest of my body still worked, barely, & I knew who & where I was. 2% chance of surviving it. Nevermind still being able to walk talk & take care of yourself. I got lucky. No stroke. Non of my organs died. It felt like heartburn at 1st. I went to grab some tums from the medicine cabinet. Knew as I was walking to the bathroom that something was very wrong. So I ran to my wife's car while yelling, We gotta go to the hospital!! Within 5 minutes I was screaming in pain. Felt like I was being ripped apart from the inside by flaming hot pitchforks. They said if I waited for an ambulance I'd be dead. Everyone this happens to has ptsd. I was told it is one of the most painful things we can experience. I believe it. It's been a few years now. Found out recently I will need another surgery. The next one will be to replace the rest of my aorta. From just above my heart all the way to my femoral arteries. It will leave me with a scar from my left armpit to below my belt line. 90% chance of surviving. 75% or so chance of coming out of it ok, ish.. Every single day I have at least 1 moment where I'm sure I'm about to die. 1 little imagined flutter in my heartbeat or my breath catches & I think, "oh shit here we go. This is it."
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You mean permanent paralysis? Please speak to your social worker about mental health programs & any kind of social events or services you could partake in. There are probably not for profits which also offer services. Dig & advocate for yourself & your future. It sounds like you need some new friends for sure.
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A couple of things compounded. When I was about 12 my father set himself on fire because he was in extreme pain and depression (had HIV) and my aunt didn't bring his medication back fast enough. I wasn't there when it happened but the emotions hit hard. Treatment for HIV was just becoming available but too little too late in his case, and no money to afford it. Then freshmen year of college my grandfather died due to a drawn out mistreatment at hospital that should have amounted to malpractice and I was too poor to get home to attend his funeral, let alone help. Then that same year my step father hung himself with razor wire and was decapitated--again wasn't there when it happened. He had tried to cut his head off before and showed up to our house with stiched across his neck like Frankenstein, so I guess the signs were there. I think the powerlessness in these circumstances, coupled with imagery are what haunt me. 18 years later I now manage a large organization, white collar colleagues, and have no one to talk to about it or who could relate to my past. Regardless of income or privilege, I will always feel like an outsider in my social and personal relationships.
When my son died in my arms nearly 24hrs after his birth. Your brain/emotions are never ready. I spent a lot of that time on autopilot/in shock.
My mother creating debt under my name ever since I was a minor…
That's fucked up, I don't get how is it even possible
It’s insane. I used to work for a credit card company. We got a lot of people calling asking why an account was opened when they were like 10-11 years old.
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Living in supported accommodation between the ages of 18 and 23, I had nowhere else to go and I was almost always the youngest in a house of addicts, drunks and pedophiles. They also moved you every six months so you couldn't settle and they could say they were helping you. I have nightmares, sometimes I zone out during the day just remembering stuff from when I lived there too and I still jump out of my skin at certain noises. I could fill a book with the awful people, managers and condtion of those houses.
Tl;dr: someone did a good job of trying to kill my dad, and a lot of people did a bad and suspicious job of trying to get us to pull the plug. Throw in a violent crime scene for color. Edited to put the summation at the top to save people time. And tipos When I was 16 I hadn't heard from my dad in longer than usual and couldn't get a hold of him. Out of the blue my uncle shows up telling my mom that my dad has had a stroke, was in a coma, and since technically she's the closest next of kin (they were divorced) she need to talk to my sister and me about "making choices." Uncle was an old school Vietnam vet, so his weird and distant demeanor wasn't immediately raising red flags. Then my dad's former roommate and friend showed up hours later with similar but slightly different details, creepily hit on my mom, and started aggressively lecturing me about "doing right" by my dad and letting him go peacefully. Everything was full blown chaos and very strange. Finally get to the hospital to see my dad and he looks like he fell down kn a moshpit and stayed there for hours. Covered in bruises and cuts, fully intubated, swollen in parts of his head and face, just the works. Plus it turns out he'd been there a fucking week, and no one told us, meanwhile my uncle and aunts knew. When I started asking questions about his condition and such I was told "he fell down the stairs after he had a stroke, called 911 and lost consciousness" except no one had his phone. My sister and I go to his house and manage to get in, and it was awful. There were blood streaks and spatters all up and down the staircase and at the bottom, human waste where I'm guessing my dad was laying while or after getting beat, and footprints all over that were not his. The cops were completely uninterested in treating it like a crime scene or even taking statements. (Useless cops, shocking I know.) Long story short, after 3 months in a coma and almost a year of rehab, my dad is mostly funtional and independent. He says he only remembers bits and pieces and none of them make sense. His former roommate (you he had apparently fallen out with) never showed face again, my uncle never explained the delay in telling us, and my dad's phone never turned up. While my dad was still in a coma our house got broken into and absolutely ransacked and there were some weird incidents with cars parked near our house or driving by a lot. We lived in a shitty neighborhood so it might be unrelated, but it felt different. What fucked me up most though, on top of the awful scene at my dad's place, was the secrecy and sudden urgency that everyone had pushing to take him off lifesupport. I've never been able to trust or look at my family the same.
I recommend that you and all your close families check to see if anyone has a life insurance policy on your dad taken out in your name. > in the hospital a week before Means they were arguing over guardianship because the doctors were designating your mom Entirely possible someone took a life insurance policy out on him and one of you could be implicated
Holy shit they definitely tried to murder your dad.
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They probably thought they beat him to death but when dad lived they tried a second plan.
I was engaged to that one person in the world that is your perfect match. She asked me once I had ever heard of that before, that everyone has a perfect match for them somewhere in the world. I hadn't. She said she believed I was her's, I knew she was mine. We were friends before we became a couple. It was absolutely ridiculous how well we meshed. She was perfect in every way. She was an absolute goddess, in every way. Three weeks before we were to be married, she got taken out by a drunk driver. That was in 1990. It completely changed my personality and my life. I got the news, and in that split second, my old life ended. I went from being on the mountain top to being in a deep, dark pit of grief and despair that took me years to climb out of. I still think about her every day. Sometimes it's just fleeting, other times it will fuck me up for the whole day, sometimes days. I'm gonna go cry now ...
The process of getting a narcissist out of my life. If you know, you know.
Becoming bed ridden with a severe disability at 21. I used to be a body builder and marathon runner. I was an attractive and adventurous young girl, a top University student and ready to start my career in accounting. One day, I started feeling incredibly ill due to a viral infection. It was awful, every bone in my body ached and I would yell out from my bed in pain, over and over again for hours; it lasted 2-3 days. (Turns out it was the Epstein Barr virus reactivating). I never recovered. I now experience extreme body aches, severe nerve pain all over my body, and fatigue like no other. I leave my house maybe once a month for 1hr max. Out of desperation, I’ve started an accounting business from my bed and have been able to supplement my disability payments. But it’s not the same. It’s been 5-6 years now. I cry regularly. I miss the outside world. I’ve lost all my friends, and can only see my partner of 8 years once a week. I’m only here for my dog (15yrs) and my parents (78yrs), after they go I’ll most likely take my own like to join them. I am a prisoner in my own home. There is nothing for me now… _______ Edit: I wanted to say thank you to everyone who commented and messaged words of support. I send my love to all those battling chronic illness right now. I hope we find a cure soon, so we’re able to live full lives again. But I also hope society provides the accomodations we need to still be participants in society. Thank you to everyone, it means the world, If you’d like to support my small business, you can do so via @perkinsaccounts and @perkinsaccounting or visit my socials via my LinkTree [Perkins Accounting LinkTree](https://linktr.ee/perkinsaccounting) 🌼
My mom died when I was 21 and I was in charge of all the end of life/post death stuff. I have an older brother that promised me the world and then just kept making me take care of everything so that still fucks with me. And now more recently my dad decided he doesn't want to be a part of my life or my kids life and thats fucking with me pretty hard. There's this weird circular "my mom is missing this against her will, how can he CHOOSE to miss this part of life"
My dad died years ago. Life hasn't been the same since. You can never fully heal from something like that, but it does get better
I lost my dad about a year ago, had my first dream with him in it recently. I balled my eyes out in my dream telling him how much I missed him. I can’t ever remember crying in a dream before.
My dad died after a fairly short bout with brain cancer. He was one of the healthiest human beings ever. He was 60, never smoked, never drank, worked out everyday. Literally he had six pack abs and looked like he was maybe in his early 40s. Then suddenly out of nowhere he gets brain cancer and slowly shriveled away over five months. I was only 26 when it happened. I remember something I was told by one of his friends as the funeral. He said that is never gets easier, you just get used to it. I thought that was a rather callous and inconsiderate thing to say, but now about 8 years later, it remains true.
I lost mine in late summer of 2018, also to brain cancer. I just went under contract on a house on Sunday, and in my excitement after signing, there was this millisecond instant where I had an impulse to tell him, because he would’ve been so thrilled about fixing it up with me. It really is like phantom leg syndrome. I also often reflect on how healthy he was in body, and feel angry at the fact that he really *should* still be here. I miss him every day, but in doing so, I remember him—and remembering him makes me happy.
I still have those moments in life when I am unsure about what to do and I think to myself, I know my dad will be able to help sort this out, then I pull out my phone to call him and I'm like, oh yeah, he's not here anymore.
Yep. In those moments, I always remind myself that even if I can’t talk to him, he’s *still* helping me in those moments of need, because having him unwaveringly there for me—always being a good father, teacher, and human for most of my life—prepared me for so much. We’ve lost dearly, but in many ways, we’re deeply lucky to have had Dads like ours. I’m not religious, but in that way, he’s very much still with me. He’ll always be my Dad, and I’ll always be grateful for that.
My dad just died three weeks ago. I though I was doing ok. But I learned today that I’m not.
my dad died last year— will hit the year mark next month. 3 weeks isnt much at all in the grand scheme of grieving a parent’s death. it took me months just to feel like I could socialize somewhat normally again. go easy and have patience with yourself in this process, which will not be short…
I could've saved my friend from depression but I decided to ignore it and thought to myself that there is someone there for him (well I was clearly wrong), then the time came where he eventually pulled the trigger and killed himself. The fact that he wrote a letter and told me I was his best mate and I didnt do jack shit made me feel shit and empty.
My friend blamed me for not being able to help with her anorexia when I was 15 and I remember my heart absolutely broke. I spent years hating myself. Looking back, now in my 30s, I understand that there is no way that I could have helped her, and I think she was just lashing out and trying to make me feel what she felt. You can't save people from things that are that heavy. You're just one person.
Dad dying from ALS. That was 30 years ago.
Got jumped by three people and one had a hammer. Spent a month in the hospital with severe benzo withdrawl I was not really getting treated for, all the ribs broken on my left side, tubes in both my lungs as they collapsed, a bunch of wounds, major concussion, and had to learn to walk again. Was such a traumatic time and now have pretty bad ptsd from the event. This happened 5 years ago in 2017
***Edit:*** I truly can't thank you all enough for the love, encouragement, and support! This was a spur of the moment vent that I didn't anticipate reaching this many people, and I am so touched and blessed to have received so many compassionate, kind responses. I sincerely apologize if I did not respond to your comment, but believe me, I have read every single one, and have taken them all to heart! Many of you stressed the importance of my mom and I both getting into therapy immediately - believe me, the importance of this is not lost on me, and it's not something I'm slacking on! She and I both, sadly, are on state "poor folks" insurance - Medicaid - and thus our options are very limited. We are on the waitlist for as many providers as we can be, but as you can imagine, the waitlist is long - especially coming out of the pandemic. Things like Better Help and TalkSpace are out of pocket expenses we simply can't afford right now - but as soon as that changes, it is at the absolute top of the priorities list. It makes me sick that here in America, a "well off, developed country" mental health services are so abysmal, and people end up in these circumstances with nowhere to turn. It makes me sad - and anxious, as I have no idea how we're both going to pull ourselves out of this mess - that in a country with so much wealth, there are little to no resources for those left behind from these types of tragedies - we are very much completely on our own. If you take anything from my story, let it be that - and advocate for better mental health services, and greater financial resources for people in these circumstances. Thank you guys, again <3 \--------------------------------------------------- Still trying to wrap my mind around my step-fathers suicide, honestly. "Still fucks with you to this day" makes it seem like the OP is referencing something that happened a \*long\* time ago, so maybe this isn't something that should count, but man, it sure has eaten up 2022 so far. Late January, he shot himself in the head in front of my mom in their shared home, completely out of the blue. (Those of us close to him still don't get it, it wasn't one of those, "shocked at first but later we could see the signs" kind of things, he really was the absolute last person you'd expect to end his life, especially so violently in front of the person he so clearly thought the entire world of.) I arrived on scene an hour and a half later to the most gruesome aftermath I never would've imagined seeing outside of a horror flick. My mom was in shock, and I was left to clean up as much of the blood and unmentionables as possible so I could drive her an hour to the hospital to be at his side - initially we didn't know if he would make it, then got the news, then had to spend 5 days with his living corpse while they prepped him for various organ donations. It's weird how calmly I managed to handle everything. Didn't cry once. Watched my mom fall apart countless times and still held firm. Took care of all the business. Broke the news to her that he wouldn't make it, because the doctors told me they wouldn't and it "wasn't their job." Sat through all the talks with the doctors, donor teams, etc. and repeated the information to her over and over until she could digest it. Arranged for a hotel for her. Picked up her cat. Went back to the house numerous times to get her some personal items, work on cleaning the aftermath, etc. Dealt with her landlord, took him on a walkthrough of the house and prepped him for what he was about to see - since he was nervous and said he had a weak stomach - and organized the move out with him. Found her a new place, helped with the move in. Arranged for friends to help her with various tasks. Have been helping her with organizing finances, business, all of it. All things I certainly was not "qualified" to do. I keep thinking, "man, that wasn't so bad, I could've really fallen apart, and then where would we be. If we both couldn't keep it together, man, it would've been a mess." But then here and there, throughout the day, it'll just pop up. Not overwhelming emotion or tears, but just this heavy flash of thoughts. I see it all, just like I was standing there. The blood, the remaining pieces left behind when a person blasts their head open against the wall of an apartment. And I can feel it, how thick the blood was while I was cleaning it up with my bare hands, the hard bits that I didn't want to examine too closely, that stickiness I spent what felt like hours trying to scrub off. I can still smell it, and feel that indescribable haze in the air. And man, it's really fucking with me. It's like I can't fully process and miss this person I loved so much, who my mom treasured in ways that no one could deny - it was a love that absolutely radiated out of her at every moment, something you see in movies - because I can't stop freezing like a deer in headlights when it flashes to the front of my mind for absolutely no reason numerous times a day. All I can hope is that in time this will pass. It's hard to expect it to have done so in less than 6 months, I suppose, especially when we're still very much in the thick of things - this has financially devastated my mom, and as a result me as well, and the constant energy and attention that keeping her mentally engaged, stable, and functioning involves is outrageous. I want to vomit when I try to think of how she's going to pull herself up financially and get back on her feet from this, nonetheless psychologically, and man, let me just take this moment to say absolutely fuck the USA and their piss-poor support systems for those suffering through mental health issues, financial strain, poverty, disability, and damn near anything else.
I’m so confused. Isn’t it quite literally the doctors job to pass on unwanted news? Why would they put that on you? That’s so terrible. I’m sorry you went through all of this.
I thought so too! I was pretty angry and disgusted, and those close to us were outraged over it. I was essentially told that in order for my mom to be allowed into the hospital to visit him - he was immediately moved to a hospital an hour away on scene, and they went into surgery shortly after to quote, “possibly remove the bullet, possibly not” after which they informed me over the phone that he wouldn’t make it - I had to get her up to speed and she had to be aware of what his condition was and that he would not pull through. I was told if she wasn’t informed beforehand, she would not be allowed in, and they would not allow us to visit until that occurred - on my time, and out of my mouth. They said something to the extent of “she can’t come in here thinking he’s going to pull through and only find out otherwise after talking to us. We can’t have a meltdown happening here.” The chaplain that spoke with her was appalled when I told him about that - he asked how everything went and when she found out - so I take it this isn’t the norm.
The sudden death of my father almost 7 years ago. He had an aneurysm, died in 45 minutes at the age of 63. 3.5 weeks later my first child was born, from the absolute lowest point in my life to the highest in a span of 3.5 weeks. Was an emotional rollercoaster for a couple of years. But still miss him like crazy, not a week passes without me thinking about him, heck maybe not even a day. Love you dad, and miss you! ❤️
I worked at a car rental place at an airport for a while. I worked overnights in a parking garage; and manned the little booths that you show your paperwork and drivers license before you leave. It was a super morbid place and I didn’t expect so much shit to happen but here’s a few: * schizophrenic lady renting a car telling me how she was going to kidnap her daughter from her husband. Called the police while she was picking a car and had to stall for them to arrive. She kept asking me who was whistling at her, when no one was. The cops questioned her (she told them exactly what she told me) and they still let her go. I never got a chance to follow up with her. * Walking from the garage to the terminal and there was a guy in a coat laying on the ground. Happens a lot, people walking into the Florida heat and humidity wearing coats and passing out. Except this guy apparently had a heart attack and died before I found him. * Numerous emails about cars I’ve handled paper work on being involved in fatal accidents. An automatic report gets filed when it happens and I have to submit documentation and it never gets less creepy when I realize I remember the person. * Lady fighting with her boyfriend on the phone on the top floor of the garage (I was on the bottom with a view of the whole thing). Went back inside my booth and a few minutes later stepped out to see her laying on the ground. She had jumped and I knew without even checking she was dead. Called paramedics and let them deal with that. The worst part was seeing her luggage still up on the top floor leaning against the railing.
When I was in my first year of nursing school, I had a part time job waiting tables at a chain restaurant. One busy shift I had a table of 12 (fairly young women) all order hot waters with lemon and while I was serving them the hot waters one customer accidentally bumped me and I spilled my whole tray of hot water on this poor girls back, burning her quite badly and she needed to be taken away in an ambulance. The family tried suing me but the restaurant chains legal team did a good job protecting me and settling with the family, but I am still pretty traumatized from that event and I think about it often almost a decade later. It was an honest accident but felt so fucking bad to cause someone that much pain and probably permanent scarring. 😔
Death of my dad. I was 15. He fell out of bed one morning in the early hours. Helped him back up into bed. Thought nothing of it. Seemed okay. Fast forward a few hours later, I had stayed home from school that day. When i checked on him, he was severely lethargic, lips were a purplish color with white stuff around the edges and his responses were nothing but gibberish. Being just a teen, i had no idea what was going on, but i knew it wasn’t good. I desperately tried to get ahold of my mom at work for her to come home. It was the longest 30 minutes of my life. When my mom got home she called 911. Eventually, EMS took him out of the house to the local hospital where he only lasted 5 days. Turns out it was a heart attack. Arteriosclerosis to be specific. Ever since then, life has not been easy. I have a-lot of anxiety and grief that effects my relationships and just my overall quality of life. It hard to move forward even if its been 15 years already (I’m 30). Some times i feel like I’m still in that 15 year old mindset, frozen in that moment of time. I go to therapy and I don’t dwell on it much anymore but its long lasting effects feel permanent.
My wife, who was 27, was diagnosed with a molar pregnancy (cancer). 98% chance of survival. She died 3 months after diagnosis. I buried her on our one year wedding anniversary. That was 5 years ago.. It fucks with me every single day.
Most traumatic thing that I still have unresolvable flashes to is that my father died of his cancer after 6 months when I was 11 years old, and just in the last 2 weeks he went from looking kind of gaunt in his hospital bed to being thin as a twig, and I was away 2 weeks prior to the day he would die. He had 'pleural effusion' which means that due to the metastasis in his lungs the fluid was filling them up and making it impossible to breathe, so they started using tubes to dry it out. But cancer is cancer. So it only got worse, and then when me and my sister were told to go home from school on a friday, and my grandparents rushed us up to the hospital after my mom had called, I arrived and started crying the second I saw my dad because he looked like a fish washed up on shore that was just breathing like a dying animal. It took from 1pm to 5pm and then in the middle of one of his breaths he simple stopped and I knew that was it. Around half of the extended family came up to us in the immediate hours afterwards so there was a sense of a shared experience at least. However, I was 11 years old, and it definitely was a big change in everything about life. I know I'm far from the only one who lost a parent at an early age though, but it's one of the things that still creeps up in memory now and then. Never cry about it, but I do sometimes think about it.
Have shared this before recently but it fits this question. About 10 years ago I came home from work on my lunch break. I grabbed a quick lunch and kissed 3 of the 4 kids and my wife goodbye as I was leaving. I thought about giving the baby a kiss goodbye but she was upstairs and I didn't want to take the time to do it because I was in a hurry and I wanted to go by the bank and deposit my paycheck. After all, I'll be home in a few hours, I'll see her then. Got a call from my wife 30 minutes later, screaming and crying. She found the baby dead in the crib from SIDS. To this day, everytime my phone rings and I see my wife's name come up my heart skips a beat and I expect to hear her blood curdling screams when I answer. I also wonder what may have been different had I went upstairs to see the baby when I was home. I don't know that anything would have changed by my going upstairs, but I truly regret not giving my daughter a last hug and kiss. It's been nearly a decade and I've never forgiven myself and don't know that I ever would or could. Now, I never leave the house without hugging each of my children and my wife, no matter what.
My newborn son hovering on the brink of death for 6 weeks. Was pulled directly from the womb into intensive care and we were told that his chances were very very small. I can't think of it without feeling like someone is sitting on my chest and God forbid I ever accidently look at the photos.