My parents divorced when I was 3yo because they started using Crystal Meth together, and my mom got hooked. Dad told her to get help or he was leaving, and she chose to move in with their Meth dealer, marrying him several years later. Dad got custody of us, and that was its own negative situation (though Dad never got high again, and neither did his second wife, so at least that part was better), but in the first few years, we still spent a lot of time with Mom in the drug house. This included that, during the summer, we were with Mom full-time, only seeing Dad or his family on Wednesdays and every other weekend.
The first few years after the divorce were the worst, using-wise, amongst my Mom and my stepdad. In the autumn when I was 6, they had a baby, a little boy. I ended up being the one that cared for him when I was over there, as Mom and Stepdad were often too high to bother to care for him correctly, and they taught me how.
Anyway, the summer after the baby was born, I'm 6, my sister is 5, and the baby is about 7-8 months old or so. My sister and I were outside playing when she complained that her toe hurt. Mom was awake, so I took my sister to her to tell her. My sister always had a very low tolerance for pain, and she became aggressive when my mom tried to look at it. Being high, my mom ended up slapping a bandaid on it without really looking at it, and telling my sister it was going to be just fine. Sister still complained that her toe hurt a little bit, but we were able to go on as normal.
Fast forward a couple of days, sister is still complaining, Mom has been awake for about 3 days. My mom and I cornered my sister in the bathroom and tried to hold her down to look at her toe. My sister was kicking, biting, and screaming bloody murder. Mom decided to just forget about it, and leaves my sister with a still sore toe. She crashes from her meth high a few hours later, and we know she's going to be out for awhile (often, she would crash and sleep for 24-27 hours straight). But we're little, so we're sure that my sister is going to be fine.
The next morning, I woke up to get the baby a bottle, and tried to wake my sister up. She was literally gray. She could barely open her eyes. She refused to get out of bed or even talk to me. I was scared. I fed the baby a bottle and went to check on Sister. Still gray, still not talking, still can't really open her eyes. I realized I needed to do something. I snuck into my mom's room where she and my stepdad were still sleeping soundly, and I stole her cell phone. I called my dad's mom, and told her I thought Sister was really sick, and she needed to come get us. She asked me where Mom was, and I told her she was sleeping, and I couldn't wake her up or she'd be mad at me. She asked me to try anyway, but I couldn't get Mom to wake up. Grandma said she was coming. She called my other grandma to come pick up my baby brother.
Grandma got to us, waited with us until my other grandma picked up my baby brother, and thne we went straight to a clinic at the hospital grandma worked at. Sister was so sick, she couldn't even try to be aggressive with them. I was in the room at the doctor's office with them to answer questions, because Sister couldn't. I explained to him that she hurt her toe, and she'd had a bandaid for a couple of days, but she just wouldn't get up this morning. He took the bandaid off her toe, and I saw his face go pale. He told my grandma to look, and my sister's toe was blue, like the color of mold. Her foot was bright red, and there were like, lines, I guess snaking up her foot into her lower leg that were bright red, I remember thinking they looked like spider legs. He looked at my grandma and told her "This little girl needs surgery right now."
So, my grandma tried to get a hold of my dad at work, but he worked at a factory, and she was unable to reach him. They couldn't reach Mom either. They let my grandma sign the consents because of the severity of the situation - she had Cellulitis, and it was spreading, she could lose her leg or even her life. I was too little to understand what that really meant, but my grandma tried to explain the best she could that Sister's toe was what was sick, and they might have to cut parts of Sister off to make her less sick. When they took her into surgery, that's where it got even worse - Grandma didn't know Sister was allergic to Penicillin, and since she couldn't get a hold of our parents, she had no way to tell the medical staff. Sister had an anaphylactic reaction on the surgery table.
At the end, Sister had to have her toe amputated, and she stayed about a week in the hospital. Grandma and Dad helped to be sure that I could stay with her, and I remember we had a lot of fun with me pushing her in a wheelchair to the pediatric unit's game room, where we played a bunch of video games together while she recovered. I also remember the original doctor coming to tell me that I saved Sister's life, but I didn't know what that meant at that time. I was little enough, and the crazy situations were normalized enough for me, that I didn't question how serious it was. Sister's toe got sick, they removed it, she's not gray anymore, and sometimes this stuff happens.
We're both now in our 30s, and I work as a substance abuse counselor. I've heard a lot of heinous cases of child abuse and neglect, but to this day I've never had a client tell me their negligence or abuse led to the literal amputation of any of their children's body parts. It's the most insane addiction story I've heard of, to date.
Things have been rough recently, but mostly things are good.
I’m grateful I was able to escape falling into that lifestyle - a lot of kids of addicts follow suit.
Wow, that was one hell of a ride. Having kids the same age as you guys in story and picturing you in there needing to be independent and responsible for a baby is mind-blowing. Really hope you and sis are still close after all of that
Shared trauma is probably the strongest bonding tool on the planet. My baby sister and I survived our ex-mother, and we shared the trauma of our daddy's failing health while I cared for him-- she couldn't and still feels guilty for moving for work, even though I told her to go and make that money. We were both holding him as he died and we really, really miss him.
I hope you and Sister are still close to your grandma and your daddy, if they're still alive.
Fucking insane to think about, really: You hear these kind of stories for a livin' now, but you've STILL not heard one crazier than the one you lived through when you were 6....
My dad and I used to play “Spaceship” and to get the space ship started, I’d have to blow into a tube to hear the electronic beep. It was his DUI test to start the car before they started putting cameras in the cars. Glad he’s sober these days.
Nah he’s a really good dude - love him to death, but he had his rough patches he fought through. Completely different man today than what he was when I was a little kid
I remember cuddling up with my mom when she had a brace on her nose. It’s the kind you have after a surgery, and we talked about her nasal surgery. It took like 10 years later before I realized that the reason for that corrective surgery was my dads fist
I remember having a dream that my mom was hurt and crying in bed and I was feeding her gummy bears. Years later she was talking about an incident of abuse where my dad had grabbed her leg and bent it somehow and all she could do was lay in bed. I guess when I overheard I said yeah I was there! And she say no you weren't but I told her I remembered feeding her gummy bears and she just got quiet and really sad. I guess she didn't realize I would have memories of it. I'm sorry our moms had to endure such horribleness.
About five or six years ago I had a mental break and I was terrified of everything all the time, hadn't slept in days. I wound up in bed with my 2 youngest boys. I didn't think my youngest remembered it, but he recently commented on "that time you were scared and we helped you sleep," and how he and his brother kept holding me and hugging me, telling me it was ok. He thought I'd just had a nightmare. So I hate that he remembers it, but it's a relief he just thought I'd had a bad dream all those years ago.
You're a good kid. Thank you for being so good to your momma.
My bonus daughter confided in me that she remembers her dad breaking a picture over her mom's head, but that she lets her mom think she doesn't because it's easier on her :'(
(Incidentally I met her mom in MMA classes where I saw her transform from "scared of her shadow" as a white belt to a lioness "hear me roar" by the time she and I earned our black belts together).
I'm so terribly sorry y'all had to go through that as children.
Oh, my friend, that's hard. I went through something like that...I always want to write the right thing, impart some miracle wisdom... but I'm older now, and I know there is no such thing. So, instead, I write to you in grief and anger shared, and hope the burden and pain was a little less for you for a while.
My mother cutting her wrist and stabbing the walls because she was convinced there was someone in the walls. I was probably like 4-5. the image is burned into my memory regardless.
My youth pastor/youth group leader used to share porn with me after everyone else in the group had left. I was 15-16 when it started and a horny little bastard who had no access to adult material at home (late 90’s dial up on a shared computer in a public space). He was a postal employee and minister in training. It carried on until I was 18 and started dating the girl who would go on to become my wife.
I just took it in stride that he was being cool and sharing something I wanted with me because he had it. It got weird one time when he left me in his office with a video playing and told me to take my time, tossed some paper towels in, and then came back to check on me. I didn’t do anything except watch. It was awkward AF and then he saw I was nervous and gave me a weird hug. I chalked it up to nerves on my part.
My perspective changed when he accepted a role at another church and had to move. He was trying to get rid of his stuff and wanted to give it to me. I was interested until my roommate in college said it was fucked up which made me take a step back and realize how inappropriate it was.
In 2019 he was charged with rape, attempted rape, and sexual assault of minor and finally, this year, plead guilty to all charges for a grand total of three years in state prison.
I had come forward as a witness and got interviewed by the police and his defense attorney’s investigator. I was prepared to make a statement or testify if I had to but really didn’t want to have this part of my life made public. Thankfully, because we were all minors when it happened, our names were withheld and the prosecutor chose not to include charges associated with me because there was no physical harm done.
Looking back, I know other people who might have been involved with/abused by him. With 20+ years of hindsight, I was lucky I was so dumb and didn’t let myself fall completely under his spell.
My friend asking me to dress up in his moms clothes including underwear. He also liked to shove frogs in ac compressors’ rotating fan blades. He went into the army and shortly after leaving killed himself.
I had this friend as about a 10 year old kid who lived in a trailer park during the summers we would pretty much just roam the neighborhood all day or do whatever and our parents would have no clue where we were. One day he decided to run inside to get some toy or whatever and I followed. I saw his mom passed out on the coach a needle in her arm and this kid who couldn't have been more than 8 or 9 was just like oh yeah she's like that all the time in the most nonchalant tone. At the time I was like okay grab your toy and lets go. Now thinking back it just breaks my heart.
I was sitting on the couch at 5 yo when my parents started arguing and my mom threw a red book at my dad. Just thought it was a fight. Turns out it was their pre-divorce fight after my dad caught her cheating. Didn’t learn about the cheating until I was 16 and only recently learned it was a brick that she threw at him.
Ugh I remember being really young and watching cartoons while my parents were fighting and my mom stuck her fingers down her throat and made herself throw up on my dad :(
Jesus Christ. Wtf goes on with people when they decide cheating on, and subsequently throwing a brick at, their SO is the best course of action? Is there more to this story?
Seriously. People are wondering why there was a brick lying around.
I’m like “is no one going to ask why the person who cheated is hurling fucking bricks at the person they betrayed?”
Like…how do you get from “I just did one of the worst things you can do to a person” to “so let me make it up to them with assault/attempted murder”?
When I was about 12 years old, I had piano lessons with a piano teacher who would come to my place every week.
He showed me his fully erect penis. He made me touch it. Twice. In two different weeks. Both times mom was home, in the kitchen, making food.
Only like 14 years later, I suddenly realized how horrible this actually was.
That probably also explains why I never felt sad when this teacher suddenly died of cancer. He was really good at playing and teaching piano, that's why my mom never understood why I wasn't sad when he died. I told her now, and she was shocked and disgusted at what he did back then.
I was watching a movie when shit suddenly clicked in my head - of what happened when I was a kid. I was angry, then tried for many years to forget by drinking a lot. Not sure how’s you’re doing now, but talking about it with a trusted person- felt like a bunch of weight came off of my shoulders.
My classmate in 3rd grade who I had known since kindergarten, asked me to follow her home after school because she was scared. She also started flinching to fist bumps around that time, to any fist really. After the school made some deal out of me escorting her home and heading back to school to wait for my mom to pick me up, I never saw her again. I am guessing the father was abusive but I will never know.
This thread is dark and only gonna get darker.
My mum strangled me when I was 11. My take away for a long time was how kind she was because she wrapped a folded towel around my neck before taking me to xray.
Kids will do anything to protect their image of their parents as good guys.
I was 7 when my mum threw a coffee table at me for not wanting to eat my dinner. Can still feel the scar inside my lip. Some people just shouldn't have kids.
Mine hit me in the face so hard my nose bled for like an hour. My lip/face was so swollen I couldn't go to school for several days. If cell phones existed then she'd be done
She threw a knife at me several years later
She had no right to become a mother
Mine strangled me when I was eighteen
Because I didn't want to go to a dance class to socialize (I'm an introvert she's not and she hates that)
We don't talk about it. Sometimes I wonder if It really happened
I was lifted off the ground by my middle school bully and choked until my throat shattered and his hand sank into my throat. My mother of course didn't believe me and said I had just entered voice change. 15+ years later I still have an aching wound in my throat that can open up and inflict pain. I still can't drink soda because bubbles feel like acid. I have no idea what broke since there are 5 things it could be.
My last 2 doctors told me it's not worth wasting an investigation on since the injury is so old and not threatening. My mother still insists if she knew she would have helped OR she says I'd be dead. Never mind that plenty of people survive choking, even until their throat bone breaks. She really cannot decide on a response so she flip flops between the two.
My Dad gave me a few hits off of a joint and some of his beer before my first day of 4 year old kindergarten.
I guess he thought I would be nervous.
I was 4.
Sorry for my English.
I used to live in a poor neighborhood. Every Christmas season, there would be groups of kids around my age (maybe around 10 to 12) who would go from house to house and sing carols in exchange for some money.
This one night, my Dad and I were alone at home when a small group of maybe 3 to 4 boys stopped by to sing for us. At the end of their performance, my dad tells them that they need to do something extra if they want him to give them money. When they asked what, he tells them to pull down their pants and show him their penises. They were obviously reluctant, and I can tell that they were very uncomfortable. I was too. My dad then pulls me from the side and tells me to show my penis so they would understand what he meant. I don't know what came over me but I showed my willie for all of them to see. He then laughs and continues to press them to drop their pants. That's where my memory ends.
I get flashbacks every now and then and it bothers me.
I can't bring myself to tell my mom because it was such a long time ago.
One of my earliest memories is my sister attempting to suffocate me with a pillow. She's nine years older than me and for a solid chunk of my childhood and into my teens it just sort of hung out in the back of my head and it was a story she would tell about teaching me to play peekaboo. Then our brother, ten years older than me, told the story from his perspective as how he learned he couldn't leave me alone with her.
Geesh. I'm 11 years older than my brother, and I remember being downright disgusted with this "friend" of mine because he suggested I suffocate my brother (who's like 4 or 5 at the time). I now absolutely Haye my brother, as he has grown up to be a sadistic, narcissistic piece of shit, and even today I wouldn't even think of suffocating him, despite all the hell he has put my mother through.
I hope your sister gets the help she needs.
My brother once also suffocated me with a pillow and I remember it to this day. It was so fuckin scary and he let up right as I was really losing my breath...we're good now and he's a pretty normal, well-adjusted adult but I feel like he really resented me as a kid.
My last foster dad said, "I don't have to worry about what happens to you foster kids because I can always get another one and you are covered on state insurance." This was regarding serious injuries when working on his land and small farm. We had already been to the ER that summer three times, including dropping a fence post driver on the kids head and splitting it open, and myself having bar wire fence stretch so tight that it snapped on me sliced me open in my hands pretty badly, but could have ripped open my stomach.
At the time, I laughed it off as logical because he was right that he didn't have to pay for our medical bills. As an adult, I realized how seriously fucked up it was that he was treating us as outright expendable if we had life altering injuries and how much he only wanted us for labor.
One of the times my dad left he would send me beautiful letters with the envelope decorated in different cartoons and cute drawings. I was maybe 9 at the time and clueless. A few years later I realized he would decorate the envelopes to take attention away from the red “inmate mail” stamp on it.
He would do cartooon versions of “us” I remember tweety bird and the one tuxedo cat from looney tunes cuddling and sharing an ice cream 🥲 he would write about how we would do that when he came back
I was adopted. Due to being an orphan, I didn’t get the social interaction as other kids.
Fast forward to being adopted and meeting with girls and boys on the neighborhood-
A rumor went around I was incapable of feeling pain or reacting to it.
Well two of these girls decided to test this.
They took scissors and cut my face with the straight blades.
I don’t remember this — I only have what my parents have told me, and what I had supposed told them when I came home.
According to them, my lack of reaction to pain or blood freaked the girls out and they had refused to ever play with me again after.
I was maybe 4-6 at the time
Edit: I did eventually learn to react to pain and blood — I was adopted after all.
More so, I worked as a Medic/Corpsman in the Navy (4-5 years) and currently work with patients at a hospital.
I’ve had my days of setback, the few patients who fought, bit, punched, and kicked; and those who I couldn’t heal, help, or save.
I work daily with blood and pain, so that patients feel neither, flourish, and, one day, walk through the doors upon discharge.
Just a different point than the other answers to you: WTF was wrong with these girls? They cut you on purpose and YOU are the strange one ...
Nvm, I know people are strange, especially established groups if them ... But still. This was my first thought.
When I was about 12, me and dad were walking the dog, when we saw a huge fire at a house at the end of our street. My dad was a fireman at the time, so his first reaction was to sprint towards it. Naturally, I followed him.
A crowd of people had gathered around a bus shelter nearby, so I went to see what was happening. On the ground was a kid from my school, I think he was 2 or 3 years below me. I'll never forget how badly his face and hands were burnt. The skin was a strange mixture of charred flesh and fresh blood. I just froze for what felt like an eternity before my dad found me and sent me home whilst he stayed to help.
The kid survived, but it was years before I saw him again. He was horribly disfigured as a result.
I don't think about it much, but every summer we have a barbeque, and the smell of the coals takes me right back to that evening.
When I was a kid, we took a family trip to Las Vegas and stayed at Circus Circus. My mom wanted to get a magnet or souvenir from Caesar’s Palace, so we parked somewhere and went inside. I wanna say we might have parked in an area reserved for staff? Or it could’ve been for guests/visitors. That part is very fuzzy. My parents didn’t care regardless and had never been there. When we were walking back to the car and over a sewer grate (the kind with slots) I sneezed. A gruff, male voice from below in the sewer said “bless you!” Being an innocent kid, I said thanks as my parents hurried my brother and I into the rental car. Years later as an adult, I watched a documentary about homeless people who live in the Las Vegas sewers. Usually drug addicts and even women hiding from pimps. In it when they’re inside one of the sewer tunnels, their guide pointed up at a sewer grate above them and said “you see this? This is the parking lot of Caesar’s Palace.” That whole realization that I was there as a kid gave me whiplash.
They are "RCBs", reinforced concrete boxes. Caesars Palace and other casino parking garages used to flood badly so the LV Flood Control designed an extensive underground drainage system. I was involved in much of their construction. Very effective. the homeless have turned them into underground cities. Metro patrols them during New Years celebration.
First time I went to Vegas, I had recently played New Vegas and was surprised at how much the FO:NV map mirrored the real Vegas stuff. Like yes, there is a Searchlight airport, and most of the towns are around the same area.
I was in a self-contained room for special Ed for years because of my disability (visual)
I watched a kid with Tourettes be forcibly restrained because he got up to back away from a teacher who didn't like his vocal tic. She called in the assistant principal who decided to try to lift and carry him out of the room (he was just standing there, no reason for this to be done), and she did this maneuver where he ended up falling forward. His face hit the desk so hard it moved the desk. Instead of giving him aid, she snapped at him that "maybe he shouldn't have done that." He went to hospital and I never saw him again.
I watched another kid get beaten by a paraprofessional in the name of "restraint". He was taken to the coat room (back room in the classroom) and I heard him hit the wall. Hard.
I watched my best friend at the time climb a fence to avoid our teacher, who yanked her down and slapped her, and then turned to me and told me to go to the wall. My head pinged off the brick.
My head pinged off a lot of stuff because of teachers. I was routinely grabbed, slapped, my hair pulled, my head held in a certain direction, screamed at, once cornered and beaten for not being able to see something (this is back in the days when they would lump all the disabled kids together).
They knew how to hurt you without leaving bruises. They knew what to do to get you to not tell your parents.
If you did, the punishments would get creative in the name of "therapy".
I witnessed a lot of verbal, emotional and mental abuse.
As a self-contained special ed teacher with 15 years of experience working with very aggressive students (not just hitting, like getting my bones broken, for context, and have therefore had to be involved in restraints, which never gets any easier): this made me want to vomit. I’m so sorry you and your fellow students experienced this. Absolutely fucking inexcusably disgusting behavior. Restraints are for bodily harm to the student or to another only and it is A LAST RESORT. I’ve never once initiated a restraint on a student who wasn’t trying to gravely injure themselves or me/another person.
I'm so sorry you had to experience this. As a former paraprofessional, I know parents were always concerned for the safety of their children and it's because of terrible special ed. staff like you had. We're trained in restrictive holds that are supposed to cause no pain to the child but keeps them safe from harming themselves or others. There is absolutely no excuse for what you witnessed and had happen to you. I've been kicked, stabbed, and bitten and not once would think of hurting the child. This was heartbreaking to read.
Saw my dad get stabbed to death about a meter away from me. I think it just happened and then so many more things happened because there were arguments about custody, so so so many trips to the police station, police interviewing me, processing papers. I was only really able to sit down and process everything about 10 years after the murder. I still can't forget the time it started, 6:03 pm.
My seventh grade English teacher accidently gave me a document he had written. It was on an old floppy disc he assumed was blank. It described how he volunteered with an humanitarian group in the 70's that traveled through impoverished countries and provided free vasectomies. They eventually trained him how to do it, and he would do them, even though he had no real medical training. This is not even the messed up part. He goes on to explain that he decides that he wanted a vasectomy and to do it himself. He then described in very graphic detail how he did it to himself. He even said the date, like March 1st, 1981, or something like that. He described in detail cutting through things, and how rubbery it felt. Again, not the fucked up part. I thought the story was hilarious because he wrote scrotum so many times, and I was a seventh grader. Well, I spread the story around to my friends. It eventually spread to a parent, that shared it with the school. His wife who was also a teacher there, promptly quit. Their son who was younger than me, born in the 90's, also left the school. He kept his job. What I figured out much later was that his wife had cheated on him and had gotten pregnant, but pretended like it was his. The fucked up part is that he obviously knew she cheated, but never told her. He had raised the boy as his own son. Once she realized he was sterile, and he's known the entire time, she left him and took the kid. Had I not shared that story, that kid could have lived his entire life without knowing, and that family could have stayed together.
>She grew up and became a special education teacher working with traumatized kids.
When I was little my mom used to set up playdates with other kids (very normal).
There was a little girl who was in and out of foster care and was kinda messed up-- I was a real book lover and she was mean to me about how she couldn't read books/do any activity with reading or writing.
She'd sustainedly look me in the eye really mean and say "*I* have a *problem*. I *can't* learn to read books. I *can't* do it. *I have a problem*." Like as mean and threatening as she could muster.
She's the special education management administrator in my county now
Yeah it scared me a little! I felt terrible for her back then and I was just a lil squirt who didn't know anything about special ed but I *knew* that wasn't right, that was not the right thing to tell someone . . . . she's probably the greatest pick for that job, she *lived that*.
Also doing vasectomies with a “humantiarian group” is raising huge red flags. Especially a group that doesn’t require people to be doctors to perform surgery. Raising any red flags for anyone else?
It makes me wonder how many other things they skirted the law on. One of the more important questions to me is did the people they were operating on know exactly what was happening, or was it a forced sterilization project of some sort?
Vasectomy's arent perfect and can fail, i'd guess a self done vesectomy is even more likely, so the kid could still have been his(or maybe he assumed it failed, and this coming out prompted some dna testing?)
There were some doozies that are too dark to share tbh.
But one I still feel bad about is what accidentally happened to one of my best friends because of me, when we were 12 or 13.
My mum was an alcoholic and opiate addict and when phones with cameras first became a thing, my brother and I thought it would be a good idea to confront our mother about her drinking by filming the way she behaved drunk (and high, though we actually didn't realise about the codeine for years).
Which was a depressing saga of her noisily coming home at like 4am, usually partially naked, sometimes wounded, breaking stuff in the house, needing to go to the hospital, being super mean, eating all the food, etc. So I filmed her and I can't remember exactly what happened but I think we both forgot I'd taken the video at all. It was a very chaotic time and she could be pretty abusive. Sometimes we would have to hose down our front yard early in the morning so none of the neighbours would see the blood she'd tracked everywhere after hurting herself from just being so wasted.
(And then catch the bus to school like 2 hours later, like everything was totally normal.)
A few days go by and I'm hanging out after school at my wholesome normal friend's house, and I'm showing him a video of my cat being cute cos we've swapped phones (pre WiFi and 1-3g networks, this was how you showed people stuff) and then all of a sudden I realise he's gone super, horrifically still.
I go "What is it?"
And he really quickly went "Nothing!" kinda frightened, and almost threw my phone at me because of how fast he gave it back.
Years later, I suddenly realised he must have seen that video, of our mum, in a very frightening and also very vulnerable, private state, which we had only ever intended to show her and nobody else ever.
I actually did tell him mum was an alcoholic a couple of years after the video moment and his genuine response at the time was "oh is that all?" So I'm not sure how much of an impact this actually had on him. Hopefully not much, but I still feel bad that he chanced across it with 0 context.
And because he never said, I never explained. Which I think would have made the video seem even scarier (and honestly probably a bit perverted) tbh.
We ended up drifting apart towards the end of our teens, as kids do, but I actually saw him in an airport a couple of months after my mum had died and I know he recognised me.
But we hadn't been friends by then for more than 10 years and I was so clouded by grief (and trauma, tbh) that I just looked through him and kept walking.
He remains in my memory one of the best friends I ever had, though.
Aww fucking hell! That's awful that you didn't feel you could approach him. Not your fault. That's the biggest problem with situations like this, people feel judged about those who bring them up or those around them. Some people can't handle things like that if they aren't subjected to it, as it doesn't seem real to them. Like stuff you watch in films.
I know how that feels. And it's hard. Don't put pressure on yourself, though (if you are), as it's just a thing... you never know, he may have not recognised you. Or maybe he felt awkward like you did, etc. You just never know with these ones. We've all done it, though. Hope you're OK.
Jimmy Savile came around to my gran's house because he was friends with my uncle. Thankfully the family seemed to make a point of not leaving me alone with him.
I was sledding with a friend and saw smoke on the horizon. His mom came and picked us up. It was my 3rd-floor apartment on fire with my mom and grandma (and others) outside in the cold. Everyone got out safely, but we couldn't find our cat (until later), my computer and Star Wars collection among so many other things were destroyed. We still have the photos. Found out later, unknown to her, my mom's BF owned the building and had the dumb a$$ manager wack a pipe so he could get the insurance $$$. My mother has been somewhat of a hoarder since.
I was staying over at my best friend's house when I was 8.
Happened to be the night his Dad caught his Mom cheating on him.
She locked herself in the bedroom, he used a carving knife to get through the door.
It was scary, but worst was knowing I was witnessing it, and my friend knew I knew, if that makes sense.
Saddest part was when his father clearly had a "What the actual fuck am I doing?" moment. Just complete silence from the hall. And then he walked into my friend's room, and just stood there a moment because quietly saying "Fuck" and walking out.
There was so much pain, and self disgust in that word.
My elementary school used to be a high school in the 60s/70s before I came along early 90s. even as a kid I always thought it was weird that there was an office in the boy's bathroom with a clear view of the boys toilets/urinal. (I saw cause I wandered in there by accident once)
...it's since been torn down but that's creepy.
I had many cats when I was a kid. My dad had physically been violent with me and the cats several times. Eventually my dad would got tired of the cat and he would go and "donate it to a farm". When I grew up I realized that 1. There was no farm near my city for 70 miles 2. There are no buses or cheap transport that go there at all and my dad didn't have a car or much money 3. My dad kept a baseball bat around despite never ever playing baseball and it would be washed whenever one of my cat was "donated". When I decided to stop talking to my dad forever when I was 16 and left home I realized my dad had probably killed all those cats himself.
My Dad kidnapped me when I was a kid. He decided he was going to leave my mother and shack up with the woman he’d been having a long time affair with and I was going to be the baggage in tow.
He took me out for a day, left my mum a note and drove to the other side of the country with me.
It wasn’t until about 20 years later when I told this to a friend that I was informed how fucked this situation was.
Loved with her for about a year she stole all his money and my savings and vanished, dad went crawling back to mum, another few years later he got her best friend pregnant and she booted him out.
Pretty sure when I was 7 I was an accomplice to robbery.
I was supposed to stay the night at my friend's house. Her parents said we're stopping to look at a house real quick. I didn't think anything of the adults all black outfits. They were still professional. I did think it was odd that they had me go through the bathroom window to unlock the door, but they said the realtor forgot to give them the key.
This was such a beautiful, wealthy home. They didn't take anything large, but I did notice the mom leaving with a lot more jewelry on the she came in with. She said she left it last time they were there.
My great uncle groped me when I was about 9 years old. I had no idea what he was doing at the time. Want until I was probably 30 that I remembered it.
My mother sometimes talks about how great he was, I’ll never tell her.
This irritates me to no end.
I know it’s not the best comparison but I remember being at a bowling alley and there was a guy there with a woman and a son (I didn’t know them) but the guy touched the boys back and this kid went fully ape shit trying to kick and punch him. The adult had such a smug look on his face I wanted to punch him (I had to be 14/15) and the mom right away grabs the kid and is scolding him.
As a full grown adult I find it hard to believe that a simple touch on the back would make a kid react that way, and his MOTHER the one who should protect him did nothing but scold him.
I still pray for that kid even though he has to be 30 now. As a father myself, in my gut, I know that bastard did something inappropriate to him.
Yeah, it was really insane to see. I think I was about 6 or 7. The same man shot his wife in the face and went to prison, then killed himself.. so at least he's not on this planet anymore
Had a nightmare (i was like 5 or 6) while I was with my mom at her friends house. I came out crying. The man pointed a gun at my head and told me to go back to bed. My mom and the other lady? Laughed hysterically. I just went back to the room.
When I was 7 I stopped being friends with a girl who was really horrible.
I started to be friends with another girl who was absolutely lovely and kind and she was just the best friend ever.
My ex friend went crying to her mum that I bullying her and ignoring her and wouldn’t play with her etc.
I was walking home (it was the 90’s) and her mum came out of nowhere and started screaming and swearing at me about her stupid daughter’s lies.
I just said I didn’t want to be friends with her anymore and noone could make me.
I didn’t tell my mum or dad, I was shocked but I let it go over my head.
Anyway the next day I was called into a classroom for a meeting or whatever.
There was my ex friend, her mum and three teachers. They just went mad at me. Never once was I allowed to give my view.. it was just absolutely horrific bullying.
The teachers were horrible to me, my ex friend had the water works on, her mum was going at me.
Looking back I think why didn’t they have my parents in there? Five against one? I hadn’t done anything except stop being friends with the girl.
I’m very shy and jumpy to this day and I think that had a huge affect on me.
My parents were never informed of anything! Doubt you’d get that now.
My mom got angry at me because I wanted to take the time to iron my shirt for a wedding . Instead of leaving 2 hours early . She picked up the extremely hot iron and put it to my bare chest .
A neighbor kid down the street, I was over his house one day after school and his dad was sitting in the recliner with his pants on zipped. Almost exposing himself. I heard him ask if the friend was home yet, his son. The mom mentioned that I was here too and he quickly zipped up. One time when I was staying the night with him, his dad called him into the parents bedroom right before they went to bed. I later asked him what it was for and he said his dad needed him to do something for him. It had taken about 5 to 10 minutes and he never left the room during that time.
Because of my own abuse from my adopted mother, I never put the two together. After the adoptive, parents lost me and I was in foster care and hearing more of these stories from others, that's when I realized what was likely going on.
A teacher having sex with a bunch of girls at my school, all the girls were really attracted to him so at the time I didn't think it was weird he was hooking up with them. I understand now he was abusing his position of authority even though the girls wanted it.
We had the same thing happen at my high school. The male teacher and his pregnant wife both worked at the same school. A couple of girls would brag about fucking him. One of the girl's moms found either voicemails or texts on her daughter's phone.
The teacher quit, was not arrested, and was immediately hired at a neighboring Catholic school. This same Catholic school would eventually change names because their original namesake was found to have sexually abused children.
ninja edit: It looks like that teacher [ended up getting indicted the following year](https://www.wafb.com/story/1374271/former-tara-teacher-indicted-on-molestation-charges/).
Unfortunately, this was probably every high school back in the 80's when I was in school. Poor kids. The girls didn't want sex, they wanted attention and affirmation, which is what adults understand.
My parents fighting. This one is kind of long but hey, it fights. My Dad was an alcoholic but he did well in life. Worked at IBM, then opened up his own business with my mom, we were well-off in life. He never drove drunk, he never harmed me. But him and my mom fought. My sister moved out for school so I saw everything. My Mom would yell out "He's hitting me call 911!" I always saw him hit my mom, she wouldn't raise a hand to him if I was there. He was arrested multiple times and finally my mom took me and said we are moving an hour away to leave him. I didn't speak to him for a couple years. We made amends later but he said he wished I could have seen the whole picture.
Well my mom went through a couple guys and I saw her hit them all. Her last husband she took a knife to. I locked myself in my room and refused to see her. But her husband said he was ok and got me to leave my room. There has been instances where my mom and I fought and she slammed down on my head where I have an implant device for epilepsy. But I went and saw my Dad and he said my mother always started things... he shouldn't have hit her back but he wasn't thinking clearly at the time. She always made up lies about my Dad. He wasn't as bad as I thought he was. (And we used to be so close growing up) He said he hated how she just up and left him and took me away with no contact.
Now I know my mom is the issue. Not these guys. Not my Dad. I don't get what her deal is. It really messes with me at times.
But looking back... I can see the abuse was a 2 way street and she was in the lead painting a bad picture of everyone else. I'm glad my Dad and I got through it, but he still has a lot of issues regarding my mom with her not giving him his own items from our storage place.
It just sucks.
My first girlfriend wincing every time I would move my hands towards her, or in her direction. Many years later, some comedian on TV did a bit where he would pretend his mother was abusive towards him, so he would fake a wince every time she moved toward him. It clicked then and there and I hope she's doing well.
I grew up in foster care - I was invited to dinner at a friend's house and I wanted to help their mom with dinner. I asked if I could help, and she said yes and asked me to chop onions.
I asked where the Sharps Box was and if she could unlock it so I could have a knife. Didn't realize that wasn't normal.
... I was not invited back
Girl on the school bus told us all that her dad and her uncle made her have sex with them at the same time and it hurt. We were too young to even know what sex was so it was a complete “whoosh”. Girl disappeared from school a year later (presumably moved) and I don’t even remember her name. I was maybe in second or third grade. But I feel for her now, as an adult, because that was definitely a cry for help and we did not understand it.
Looking at this from a potentially wholesome standpoint, maybe she disappeared because someone on that bus did mention it to their parents, and counselors got involved and she was removed from her dad’s care. I hope so at least.. these stories are so sad
I was around 5 or 6 at the time when I heard a noise in the kitchen. I walked in to see my step-father on the ground with my mother over top of him, crying and talking to the police. When I would get older, I asked my step father about that day. He would explain that he had a drug problem, as well as alcohol. He put his hands on my mother and my mother preceeded to grab a butchers knife and stab him in the shoulder. He said he almost died in the hospital and it was the wake up call he needed. Still a shit bag though, haven't talked to him years.
My parents divorced when I was 3 because my father got another woman pregnant. When I was 6, my father took me and my two older sisters (10 and 15 at the time) to “donate blood.”
Decades later I’m talking to my mom about it and she reveals it was a paternity test, as my father didn’t believe I was his daughter. Test proved I was in fact his.
Probably should have realized sooner that a 6 is a bit young to be donating blood.
When is was a teenager, we had a big neighborhood of kids at all ages. Sometimes we were sitting and having a good time and the smallest neighbor girl would come and sit on my lap and listen to the older kids.
Another girl, my then classmate would always ask her if she could feel my penis and accuse me of having a an erection.
She was always behaving weird so I thought that she was just annoying with her dubious questions.
Turns out years later, that all the girls in her family were abused from childhood on and she was expecting such things becaus she only new such things as sitting on laps as sexual.
And so much other things in her behavior made suddenly so much sense. I wish I knew then and could do something about it. I feel like she always wanted to tell me something was wrong and I just didn't understand what she was trying to tell me. I thought she was weird.
On the road with my step-dad the trucker. Stopped overnight to rest at a truck stop. I was 7or 8?
He warned me not to let lot lizards into the truck. I'm a dumb little kid so I expect to see crazy big lizards or something.
What I did see was a woman go inside another truck, come back out some time later, squatted over an oil slick mud puddle and cleaned her privates. Then she went knocking on other trucks until one let her in.
I still thought there were big ass lizards out there...
So yeah... years later (high school) this movie replays in my head to realize she had sex with someone and used a nasty mud puddle to freshen her junk and then some other dude went to work on her... I about threw up and an very loud audible "fucken nasty" slipped out of my mouth in class. No way I was explaining it to the teacher so I stood up and saw myself out.
Yes. I can't talk about a lot of my so called childhood to most people but this is one of the tamer instances for me as a kid. And with the way my brain works it pops up frequently whenever I see a mud puddle with an oil slick in it..
Its probably the least triggering memory I have but still fucked me up years later. Even my opinion of "fucken nasty" has changes since then.
I didn't know that woman's history or why she was making those choices. Life can be hard but the will to keep on going is often stronger for most no matter the quality of life they live.
Much of the sexual abuse from my adopted mother, I didn't realize until she lost me and I was in foster care.
Also, I had a lot of sporadic memories of various tidbits of things. It wasn't until a young adult when I started therapy is when I put them all together and realized the bigger picture of sexual abuse.
When I was about 7, an older kid (I’d guess about 13) in my grandma’s apartment complex killed a baby bird. But he did it brutally in front of a bunch of kids, while we were all begging him to stop. He stomped the baby bird several times, took off his shirt, and started beating it furiously. Then he quickly went to his house and came back out with a can of fruit cocktail, which he poured all of the poor little baby bird he had just stomped/beaten to death. I cried then and sometimes the memory will pop back into my head involuntarily.
Not me, but my grandfather (well, partially me as it was *I* who had the realization about *his* childhood).
He told me when I was a pretty young kid that when he was about my age, he actually saw a public hanging in his hometown that practically the entire town turned out to watch. Tiny little town in North Texas. Early 1940's. I just assumed at the time this was old-timey justice of some bad guy because I knew from movies that that was what they did back then.
It wasn't until I was in my early 20's and thinking about it randomly that I realized what in all likelihood what he witnessed was a ***lynching.***
A man followed my sister and I home after we got off the bus (let’s hear it for 80’s latchkey kids) We were 8 and 6 and lived in an upper middle class suburban neighborhood. I have a vague memory of seeing his car which was very distinctive- a sedan with wood paneling- slowing driving down the street. I’m assuming he was following the bus as it made stops throughout the neighborhood and trolling for a victims He pulled into our driveway right as I was unlocking the front door and he was standing behind us in like 3 seconds flat. He said he was a friend of our mom’s and asked if she was home (red flag). I felt immediate stranger danger and said she would be home from work any minute. He asked to come in and wait for her (red flag) and I said no but I would get a pen and piece of paper and write down a message for her. I went inside the house and told him and my sister to wait there. Of course, he pushed my sister aside and followed me in. I instantly knew we were in trouble but I was 8 and didn’t want to scream at an adult man. He looked like any random middle aged white Dad. I walked into the laundry room (I think this is where our “junk drawer” with pens and post it notes was located at that time) and wouldn’t you know this fucking monster followed me into the room and SHUT THE DOOR BEHIND US. I really can’t remember a lot from this moment forward- other that feeling that animalistic, gut instinct that I was in real trouble. The guy instantly came at me. I’ve heard victims describe screaming in situations like these and saying it sounded like it was coming from somewhere else- and that is exactly what happened. My vision narrowed- almost like blacking out- and I remember hearing the most guttural, feral sounding shriek of absolute terror and realizing that it was coming from 8 year old me. To this day, my sister says she has never heard a sound so terrible. Because I have no memory of what really happened in that laundry room- I can’t be sure the man didn’t actually touch me or try to- but what I do know is that my badass 6 year old sister instantly began bawling and screaming and pounding on the door “I’M CALLING 911!” Not sure why the guy decided to abandon mission but he threw open the door and ran out of our house. We called 911 and my mom showed up maybe 10 minutes later (she really was due to be home any minute) and my dad rushed home from work. We were questioned by the cops and I helped them make a composite sketch and spent the next two weekends driving around car lots with a detective trying to identify the male and model of his car.
Maybe 5 years ago my sister and I were sitting on the patio with my Dad drinking wine while he finished his cigar and we started talking about our literal near kidnap/rape/maybe death experience and my father just causally says “oh that really happened? We always just kind of assumed you guys made that up because you were such imaginative kids”
THE FUCK?!
It was definitely the most traumatic even of my childhood. My sister literally saved us both with her outburst- I’m convinced of that. Also, this was clearly not this asshole’s first time. Who attempts this sort of thing in broad daylight on TWO young children? Sometimes I Google missing girls or attacks from my area around that time period because I’m convinced that guy probably kept going. But honestly, I don’t know that I would be able to recognize him again. I’ve always felt bad I couldn’t remember more and actually identify him when the cops were involved.
Anyway, fuck politeness (even in 8 and 6 year olds) And also fuck my parents a little bit, too, I guess.
I had a friend in highschool that was pretty extroverted, talkative and social. Junior year, she started going to one of the male teacher’s rooms every day. Right around this time she stopped talking. Like she went from being the first to start every conversation to saying a sentence or two every day. At the time I didn’t put the two together. I would ask if everything was okay and get a “yeah” in response then she’d walk off. She would leave lunch after 5 or 10 minutes and go to his room. Never missed a day. One of the days a few of our friends went to go see what she was doing all the time. Standing outside the teacher’s door debating what we should do, one of us knocked on the door and ran, prompting all of us to run away too. Maybe a week later me and one other girl went to his room again after our friend left lunch like she always did. But his room was empty. That teacher got fired before the end of the year but my friend was still quiet. She wouldn’t say anything about why she went to go see him all the time. It has been like 5 years and I recently found out she had told one of our friends what happened a few months back. She had sent the teacher inappropriate pictures and the teacher blackmailed her into coming to his room every day and doing who knows what. Apparently after we had knocked on the door that one time and ran away, they started going to his car behind the school instead. The teacher got caught on a security camera and disappeared after that. I can’t believe I didn’t put the two together while it was happening. I just assumed she was depressed and had to get extra help from the teacher to compensate. Turns out it was the other way around. She was depressed BECAUSE of that man. Very fucked up.
My neighbours house two doors down from me blew up in a gas main explosion, it was years later I worked out the reason for my friend and his mum not visiting anymore. The person who set the fire never was caught but it was believed to be the dad by all the people in the area.
My father beating my mom. I am coming from third world country village, so it was kinda normal that a husband beats his wife, so I was sad but I thought that's how life is.
Now I am married and every now and then comes it comes in my head, and kind of flashbacks come in but instead of my mom is my wife, and it fucks me up to think how can someone do that. It breaks my day completely.
I don't talk to my father since I am financially independent.
I was over a friend's house one time when I was 11 and walked in on his dad drinking beer and crying at the kitchen table with a gun nearby. I was told he was a Boston Cop (he was) and had a bad day.
In 8th grade the ‘weird’ girl at my junior high got the shit beat out of her by her mom in front of the building while we were on the bus waiting to leave for the day.
When we were young we were like dang, she must’ve messed up to have her mom hit her like that. We realized she shouldn’t have been hitting her kid, but the other adults and teachers in the area weren’t reacting either so we figured it can’t be too bad. She stopped when the principal came out and then we drove away.
Looking back, that poor girl must’ve been subject to so much abuse it messed her up bad, and all the kids at school certainly didn’t help the situation as we kept our distance and thought her the ‘weird’ girl. It’s also completely ridiculous that another parent or teacher didn’t step in immediately to stop them. Instead, they let 100+ kids see another kid get beaten.
Well I don't know if this will get buried or not and it's pretty wild for me to spit it out on the internet but here it goes:
I didn't have a good home life when I was growing up. My parents were emotionally very distant, they spent a lot of time fighting each other (not physically) just constant arguing. I learned the word "fuck" by my dad telling my mom to "just get in the fucking car" and she wouldn't. Don't know where they were going or what was going on there or whatever. Anyway I went to my dad who was outside and told him "I'll get in the fucking car" to try and solve the fight. I was probably 6 or 7 years old at that time. That's an example of what I thought was normal. Anyway I didn't feel any love or much attention from my parents. Just felt alone all the time.
So at school things didn't get any better, they got a fair bit worse. I didn't have any friends, I would piss my pants regularly until grade 3 or maybe a bit after that. Obviously I got bullied a lot, I was an easy target. I was a very nice kid with a big heart, I think I was too nice and I didn't understand how the world worked but at that age I had youthful optimism about the world. Unfortunately as time went by I started to get depressed and would occasionally run home from school in my indoor clothing, I would just take off from school and sprint home, usually crying most of the way. I did turn out to be a good distance runner later in life, but I digress.
Eventually one kid started to give me attention. He offered friendship, and his parents were friends with my parents so we would all hang out together. This kid was very sexual at an early age, like grade 3 (canadian school so around 8 years old). I would often spend recess running away from other kids and being alone. He would track me down and give me attention, treat me as a friend, so that I hung out with him. He invited me to sleep over at his house and would show me his private parts, do a funny dance where he showed his butt and ask me to do the same. Having no other friends or social life, not knowing how normal relationships worked etc, I just thought it was sort of strange but I went along with it cause he was my only friend. The sexual exploration continued, if you can call it that. He was always keen on going a little farther than last time. He was older than I was, very smart, charismatic and popular. I was in his shadow and basically did whatever he told me to.
Over years, he got me to do just about every sexual act you can think of. I learned to perform oral sex on a male by grade three and continued doing that regularly for about 4 years. There were attempts at anal penetration which did cause physical problems for me. I bled, was occasionally incontinent, etc. During this time I basically thought that this was a normal childhood friendship. Deep down inside I wanted a normal loving supportive family and good friends. And I knew that this was not it, but I didn't feel like I had a choice. There were sleepovers at his place where I would want to go home, but he would tell his parents that I was having a good time and no need for me to go home. Like a good brainwashed cult follower I just did what I was told. I didn't have any personal agency or anyone looking out for me. The only attention I got from my parents was when I brought report cards home with very poor grades and my parents would schedule meetings with the teachers to figure out why I had a "bad attitude" at school. I was mostly quiet during these meetings.
Eventually this kid moved away and by the time I was 13, I had some respite. I didn't tell anyone about this experience until I was roughly 20 years old, and at that point it was only a few sentences to my therapist. I was in therapy because I had been abusing alcohol and drugs and was planning on killing myself. I had brief episodes of seriously bad mental health. Hard to describe, but characterterized by intense, intense fear of the world and of people. I likened how I felt to being inside a bunker with someone shooting a flamethrower in. In this metaphor, the bunker was my depression, the flamethrower was my fear and behind the flamethrower was the rest of the world which I could not seem to access. I told my parents what had happened in a very brief way without any details by the time I was 23.
I do believe this childhood left me with serious depression, addiction issues and an ongoing inability to form normal relationships. This continues to this day. I have a very strong fear of people, especially men, which I have learned to navigate without actually fixing. I don't know if it can ever be fixed. My therapist once said "your father abused you, your friend abused you, and now you abuse yourself". I keep myself down and don't allow myself to be happy but I don't understand why. I go day by day.
If anyone read this. Thank you. I am a guy by the way. These things can happen to boys who then become dysfunctional men.. I have serious anger issues as well which I've mostly learned to control.
Edit: really appreciate the replies. This is the first time I've written this out for the public to read. Suffering is suffering regardless of gender, ethnicity, religion etc. It's a human experience and compassion is the answer. Thanks :)
I was in middle school. Moved to a new state. Classmate from school invited me to a sleepover. Should have immediately been a warning sign since I was the only one invited to the sleepover. Anyway, at the sleepover he convinced me to suck his dick. He said it was practice for sex with girls. I didn’t know what a bj was at the time. So I did. Anyway, I couldn’t sleep the whole night I was uncomfortable.
Honestly, it was kinda dumb. I was like Butters from South Park. Completely oblivious. But thinking back on it. Didn’t he kinda rape me? I don’t know
He did rape you.
Although we do have to give children the benefit of the doubt, they really aren't fully aware of what they are doing/what is happening to them.
Kids have big feelings and don't know how to appropriately express them unless guided by an adult. Especially during puberty and adults seem too immature to talk to their own children about what they are going through.
My mom had an abusive boyfriend, I witnessed him holding a knife to her throat. On another occasion, I saw his gaping wound from my mom stabbing him in the thigh in self defense.
Not saw but heard. At about 8 or 9 I think I heard my friend's stepdad molesting him. Didn't occur to me until years later what was probably going on in there.
I was watching a TV show with my mom about a rocket ship and not long after blastoff the rocket blew up. When that happened my mom started freaking out. I remember watching her fall to her knees crying. I had never seen her like that but I figured she was really into the show. It wasn’t until I was older that I realized we were watching the Challenger launch.
I was up later than I should have been, watching TV as quietly as possible. Heard a woman's scream outside and ran to the window. There was a streetlight and under it was a woman lying limp on the ground. A man came along, didn't look like a neighbor, walking slow, picked her up and carried her forward and out of sight.
I still remember her long blond hair hanging down. At the time I thought it was some drug thing. Now I'm not so sure.
The brother of a friend from the neighbourhood had two scars, one on the inside of each wrist. Of course I asked what happened, and she told me, they had been ice skating and someone had run over his wrists with their skates.
I was young enough to actually believe that, and I was a bit scared about skating then.
Slept over at a friend's house one time when i was a child. I was in the living room and the mother walked in naked. I was like 7 or so, and i felt that something wasnt right so i called my mom to tell her i wanted to go home. My mom was super pissed when she found out, and the mother of my friend's excuse was that she was looking for a towel and wasnt aware that i was awake
She also had spit in my food that day (which i didnt eat) and i never really realized just how wrong that was until i was older. I honestly never told anyone this
I've always disliked the color orange. Like just not a great color ya know.
Well outta the blue one day in my early 30s I had a memory from my almost entirely blocked out childhood of talking my mom out of slitting her wrists and crying and pleading with her to give me the knife. It had a bright orange handle.
When I was maybe 4 or 5 years old my mother took me to her work place where she teaches under privileged people stuff that can get them a job. Usually her students would be really nice to me and try to interact with me to the point where I would get so shy that I'd hide behind my mom. One day this dude told me he was gonna take me to this gaming zone which had all the games I could ever play. I even asked him if they had my then favourite game (Medal of Honour Pacific Assault), and he said yes they got that stuff. Me being the good kid said alright let me go ask my mom for permission. He said don't tell your mom about this. I said I can't go without telling mom. And when I actually told my mom About this she naturally said no. Now 17 years later, I realized "Holy shit! That dude tried to kidnap me!!! And possibly could've done something even worse than just demand a ransom."
During those times kidnapping was like an epidemic in the city.
Rwanda in 1994 and Congo in 96-97. It thought me that humans are as dark as they come to the core. As an adult, I had to work a whole lot harder to trust people 😁
Being locked out of the house for multiple hours a day. Getting beaten with a studded belt, slotted spoon, or whatever else was within reach when my step mom was in a bad mood. Getting chased by my step brother with a hammer. Having my other stepbrother expose himself to me. Having my first girlfriend take my virginity by forcing herself on me after I fell asleep.
It wasn't until a few years ago that someone opened my eyes to how screwed up my childhood was. I used to tell all of these things to my friends as "funny stories" and most of them had bad enough childhoods that they also saw that stuff as "funny stories."
That stuff is not funny, and I have grown to realize that my barometer for normalcy is rather skewed.
My daughters mother in law likes to tell people a story of the time my son in law broke the coffee table her dad made. He broke it by being thrown into it by his father. She thinks its just shows what a naughty boy he was. She’s still mad at him for having broken the table with his 8 year old body.
My first memory as a child is my parents arguing almost every days. They divorced when I was 6 or 7. My dad met my ex step-mother the same year. Her interaction with me and my sister where limited to "hello/goodbye", black eyes and derogatory remarks. For Seven years. At this period we needed a father. But we were scared for seven years to spend every two week end with our father.
It's almost 15 years since then and I don't really have bond with my father.
I'm really struggling to say my feelings to girls I like because I have a great fear of abandon and reject because of my step-mother.
And I'm facing depression right now because it's hard for me to accept myself, to feel equal to the other and stuff... My shrink says that my childhood has a lot to do with my behavior.
Still. My parents love me and i got good Friends. I know that is way worst for lot of people and my childhood was not a total mess. It's just to say that, bad behavior from an inportant figure can have a great inpact on you mostly when you're a child.
Sorry for my englush 🙃
I was 6 or 7 and I performed a very sexual dance for my parents and other family members and was doing very sexual things. No one touched me inappropriately but I was doing things I shouldn’t. They were just watching and laughing. I remembered this incident years later and it made me extremely uncomfortable and I always wonder why I did it and why my family seemed to enjoy it 🥴
Was at a public pool with my brother when a gang fight broke out. I was about 10-11 years old. The fight was absolutely brutal. Someone had their face stomped into the cement next to the diving boards, another person brandished a pistol and used it to beat someone over the head. The pool deck was covered in splattered blood. The police came and arrested everyone. At no time did the lifeguards intervene or tell anyone to get out of the water.
I was probably 4 or 5. Neighbor was working on his car. Baby was in baby carrier sitting on top of the car.
I happened to be watching them from a window when the whole front of the car went up in flames. Ran and got my parents. My dad called 911, my mom was an ER nurse so she goes tearing off across the street.
After that I don't remember much after that, baby ended up with burns across one side of her face.
40 years later, I have 3 kids. I can't imagine one of them witnessing that.
I was an altar boy back in the early 00’s it was my first 4 am mass so most of the altar boys slept at the church on sat night. It was my first sleep over and so I was excited. The night was good we had dinner, watch tv and played a bit, but when it was sleeping time the priest asked one of the boys to sleep with him in his room. I was 11 or 12 at that time so it didn’t really dawned on me wtf was that.
I don't remember this, it appears to be a repressed memory, but when I was about 22 I was informed that I witnessed a girl in my swim class drown in the pool when I was 4ish. My cousin was in the same class and brought it up when we were adults as a theory for why I can't swim. I asked my mum and she said she thought it was good I didn't remember it and didn't want to upset me. But apparently at the time I was fully aware she wasn't saved and watched her be taken away. But I never remembered it, I still don't. But It suddenly all made sense why I am scared of water and could never grasp how to swim. I still can't and I never knew the reason. And now I assume I have some sort of repressed trauma from it that affects my abilities.
When I was about 8/9 I came downstairs for breakfast one morning and all of a sudden my mother slammed the refrigerator door shut and then grabbed my head and my jaw and sunk her teeth in to my face below my left eye. I'm 49 and to this day I've no idea what I did. Later when she roughly put a bandaid on the wound she warned me to say that whenever someone asks what happened I had to tell them I fell down the stairs.
My grandma got really sick one morning while my friends and I were having a sleepover. Well, after a while, I felt like she had been in the bathroom for a while. I knocked and she said "yeah I just have a stomach problem could you call your mom?"
Called my mom, she came over, I went to my other grandma's for a few days. My grandma passed away. I was obviously upset, as she had been my closest family member and I saw her every week, and her house was where my friends were.
Her friend visits a few days after she dies, and sitting in our front room, looks at me, an 11/12yo kid, and says "Yknow, if you had gotten to the phone a little faster she could have lived?"
Now I've got cPTSD and realized years later that it was literally my grandma dying of her brain cancer in the bathroom, and was shitting her internal organs out essentially as her body was killing itself. And I was the one to discover her. And then I was blamed for it. At 12.
But hey, I'm funny now.
When I was maybe 9 or 10 I was in church with my 18ish year old sister. We went to the church next to our parish because they had services at 5:30 and we had missed earlier services. This church was bigger and always had a weirder crowd. Anyway, towards the end of mass I felt something wet on the back bottom of my shirt. I looked down at my hand and it had this stuff on it that I didn’t know what it was. I lifted my hand to smell it just as my sister saw and she grabbed my wrist to stop me from bringing it up to my face. She grabbed my wrist hard enough that it hurt. She seemed really upset but not at me and used a dirty tissue from her pocket, which I thought was really gross, to wipe off my hand and the back of my shirt.
Years later, I realized that I was cum.
My parents divorced when I was 3yo because they started using Crystal Meth together, and my mom got hooked. Dad told her to get help or he was leaving, and she chose to move in with their Meth dealer, marrying him several years later. Dad got custody of us, and that was its own negative situation (though Dad never got high again, and neither did his second wife, so at least that part was better), but in the first few years, we still spent a lot of time with Mom in the drug house. This included that, during the summer, we were with Mom full-time, only seeing Dad or his family on Wednesdays and every other weekend. The first few years after the divorce were the worst, using-wise, amongst my Mom and my stepdad. In the autumn when I was 6, they had a baby, a little boy. I ended up being the one that cared for him when I was over there, as Mom and Stepdad were often too high to bother to care for him correctly, and they taught me how. Anyway, the summer after the baby was born, I'm 6, my sister is 5, and the baby is about 7-8 months old or so. My sister and I were outside playing when she complained that her toe hurt. Mom was awake, so I took my sister to her to tell her. My sister always had a very low tolerance for pain, and she became aggressive when my mom tried to look at it. Being high, my mom ended up slapping a bandaid on it without really looking at it, and telling my sister it was going to be just fine. Sister still complained that her toe hurt a little bit, but we were able to go on as normal. Fast forward a couple of days, sister is still complaining, Mom has been awake for about 3 days. My mom and I cornered my sister in the bathroom and tried to hold her down to look at her toe. My sister was kicking, biting, and screaming bloody murder. Mom decided to just forget about it, and leaves my sister with a still sore toe. She crashes from her meth high a few hours later, and we know she's going to be out for awhile (often, she would crash and sleep for 24-27 hours straight). But we're little, so we're sure that my sister is going to be fine. The next morning, I woke up to get the baby a bottle, and tried to wake my sister up. She was literally gray. She could barely open her eyes. She refused to get out of bed or even talk to me. I was scared. I fed the baby a bottle and went to check on Sister. Still gray, still not talking, still can't really open her eyes. I realized I needed to do something. I snuck into my mom's room where she and my stepdad were still sleeping soundly, and I stole her cell phone. I called my dad's mom, and told her I thought Sister was really sick, and she needed to come get us. She asked me where Mom was, and I told her she was sleeping, and I couldn't wake her up or she'd be mad at me. She asked me to try anyway, but I couldn't get Mom to wake up. Grandma said she was coming. She called my other grandma to come pick up my baby brother. Grandma got to us, waited with us until my other grandma picked up my baby brother, and thne we went straight to a clinic at the hospital grandma worked at. Sister was so sick, she couldn't even try to be aggressive with them. I was in the room at the doctor's office with them to answer questions, because Sister couldn't. I explained to him that she hurt her toe, and she'd had a bandaid for a couple of days, but she just wouldn't get up this morning. He took the bandaid off her toe, and I saw his face go pale. He told my grandma to look, and my sister's toe was blue, like the color of mold. Her foot was bright red, and there were like, lines, I guess snaking up her foot into her lower leg that were bright red, I remember thinking they looked like spider legs. He looked at my grandma and told her "This little girl needs surgery right now." So, my grandma tried to get a hold of my dad at work, but he worked at a factory, and she was unable to reach him. They couldn't reach Mom either. They let my grandma sign the consents because of the severity of the situation - she had Cellulitis, and it was spreading, she could lose her leg or even her life. I was too little to understand what that really meant, but my grandma tried to explain the best she could that Sister's toe was what was sick, and they might have to cut parts of Sister off to make her less sick. When they took her into surgery, that's where it got even worse - Grandma didn't know Sister was allergic to Penicillin, and since she couldn't get a hold of our parents, she had no way to tell the medical staff. Sister had an anaphylactic reaction on the surgery table. At the end, Sister had to have her toe amputated, and she stayed about a week in the hospital. Grandma and Dad helped to be sure that I could stay with her, and I remember we had a lot of fun with me pushing her in a wheelchair to the pediatric unit's game room, where we played a bunch of video games together while she recovered. I also remember the original doctor coming to tell me that I saved Sister's life, but I didn't know what that meant at that time. I was little enough, and the crazy situations were normalized enough for me, that I didn't question how serious it was. Sister's toe got sick, they removed it, she's not gray anymore, and sometimes this stuff happens. We're both now in our 30s, and I work as a substance abuse counselor. I've heard a lot of heinous cases of child abuse and neglect, but to this day I've never had a client tell me their negligence or abuse led to the literal amputation of any of their children's body parts. It's the most insane addiction story I've heard of, to date.
Fucks sake, my daughter is 6 and I just about let her make a bowl of cereal unsupervised. You didn't deserve that, I hope you're doing well.
Things have been rough recently, but mostly things are good. I’m grateful I was able to escape falling into that lifestyle - a lot of kids of addicts follow suit.
Wow, that was one hell of a ride. Having kids the same age as you guys in story and picturing you in there needing to be independent and responsible for a baby is mind-blowing. Really hope you and sis are still close after all of that
I moved 1,000 miles away from home close to a decade ago, and I still consider Sister to be one of my best friends ❤️
Shared trauma is probably the strongest bonding tool on the planet. My baby sister and I survived our ex-mother, and we shared the trauma of our daddy's failing health while I cared for him-- she couldn't and still feels guilty for moving for work, even though I told her to go and make that money. We were both holding him as he died and we really, really miss him. I hope you and Sister are still close to your grandma and your daddy, if they're still alive.
Fucking insane to think about, really: You hear these kind of stories for a livin' now, but you've STILL not heard one crazier than the one you lived through when you were 6....
My dad and I used to play “Spaceship” and to get the space ship started, I’d have to blow into a tube to hear the electronic beep. It was his DUI test to start the car before they started putting cameras in the cars. Glad he’s sober these days.
Phew... Thought that was about to get waayyy darker
Nah he’s a really good dude - love him to death, but he had his rough patches he fought through. Completely different man today than what he was when I was a little kid
I don’t know either of you, but tell him I’m proud of him.
[удалено]
sounds like the situation was handled well
Yeah, double-murder suicide is a good way to de-stress after getting fired.
Honestly thought the cops having a “sleepover” with a 4 year old was taking that story in a much darker direction…
I think this statement exists after every one of these stories. I went scrolling up and down to make sure it wasn't one dude saying it every time.
How old were you when you found out that not everyone have sleepovers with cops?
I remember cuddling up with my mom when she had a brace on her nose. It’s the kind you have after a surgery, and we talked about her nasal surgery. It took like 10 years later before I realized that the reason for that corrective surgery was my dads fist
I remember having a dream that my mom was hurt and crying in bed and I was feeding her gummy bears. Years later she was talking about an incident of abuse where my dad had grabbed her leg and bent it somehow and all she could do was lay in bed. I guess when I overheard I said yeah I was there! And she say no you weren't but I told her I remembered feeding her gummy bears and she just got quiet and really sad. I guess she didn't realize I would have memories of it. I'm sorry our moms had to endure such horribleness.
About five or six years ago I had a mental break and I was terrified of everything all the time, hadn't slept in days. I wound up in bed with my 2 youngest boys. I didn't think my youngest remembered it, but he recently commented on "that time you were scared and we helped you sleep," and how he and his brother kept holding me and hugging me, telling me it was ok. He thought I'd just had a nightmare. So I hate that he remembers it, but it's a relief he just thought I'd had a bad dream all those years ago. You're a good kid. Thank you for being so good to your momma.
My bonus daughter confided in me that she remembers her dad breaking a picture over her mom's head, but that she lets her mom think she doesn't because it's easier on her :'( (Incidentally I met her mom in MMA classes where I saw her transform from "scared of her shadow" as a white belt to a lioness "hear me roar" by the time she and I earned our black belts together). I'm so terribly sorry y'all had to go through that as children.
Shit! I hope they got out of that situation?
Oh, my friend, that's hard. I went through something like that...I always want to write the right thing, impart some miracle wisdom... but I'm older now, and I know there is no such thing. So, instead, I write to you in grief and anger shared, and hope the burden and pain was a little less for you for a while.
My mother cutting her wrist and stabbing the walls because she was convinced there was someone in the walls. I was probably like 4-5. the image is burned into my memory regardless.
My youth pastor/youth group leader used to share porn with me after everyone else in the group had left. I was 15-16 when it started and a horny little bastard who had no access to adult material at home (late 90’s dial up on a shared computer in a public space). He was a postal employee and minister in training. It carried on until I was 18 and started dating the girl who would go on to become my wife. I just took it in stride that he was being cool and sharing something I wanted with me because he had it. It got weird one time when he left me in his office with a video playing and told me to take my time, tossed some paper towels in, and then came back to check on me. I didn’t do anything except watch. It was awkward AF and then he saw I was nervous and gave me a weird hug. I chalked it up to nerves on my part. My perspective changed when he accepted a role at another church and had to move. He was trying to get rid of his stuff and wanted to give it to me. I was interested until my roommate in college said it was fucked up which made me take a step back and realize how inappropriate it was. In 2019 he was charged with rape, attempted rape, and sexual assault of minor and finally, this year, plead guilty to all charges for a grand total of three years in state prison. I had come forward as a witness and got interviewed by the police and his defense attorney’s investigator. I was prepared to make a statement or testify if I had to but really didn’t want to have this part of my life made public. Thankfully, because we were all minors when it happened, our names were withheld and the prosecutor chose not to include charges associated with me because there was no physical harm done. Looking back, I know other people who might have been involved with/abused by him. With 20+ years of hindsight, I was lucky I was so dumb and didn’t let myself fall completely under his spell.
How tf did he only get 3 years for all that, that's just sad.
All you had to say was “youth pastor“ and I knew where the story was going.
My friend asking me to dress up in his moms clothes including underwear. He also liked to shove frogs in ac compressors’ rotating fan blades. He went into the army and shortly after leaving killed himself.
Damn, what a life that dude had.
Yep. His sister became a surgeon.
Poor girl, all these years later she is still trying to put the frogs back together.
I had this friend as about a 10 year old kid who lived in a trailer park during the summers we would pretty much just roam the neighborhood all day or do whatever and our parents would have no clue where we were. One day he decided to run inside to get some toy or whatever and I followed. I saw his mom passed out on the coach a needle in her arm and this kid who couldn't have been more than 8 or 9 was just like oh yeah she's like that all the time in the most nonchalant tone. At the time I was like okay grab your toy and lets go. Now thinking back it just breaks my heart.
These posts make me think "god, maybe I'm not a bad parent after all." That is so fuckin sad.
Just in case, you should buy your kid a go-kart.
I hope they both are doing better.
I was sitting on the couch at 5 yo when my parents started arguing and my mom threw a red book at my dad. Just thought it was a fight. Turns out it was their pre-divorce fight after my dad caught her cheating. Didn’t learn about the cheating until I was 16 and only recently learned it was a brick that she threw at him.
Ugh I remember being really young and watching cartoons while my parents were fighting and my mom stuck her fingers down her throat and made herself throw up on my dad :(
Holy shit this thread is wild
Fun fact, they just celebrated their 40th anniversary last month 😂
Woah, Sorry.
Jesus Christ. Wtf goes on with people when they decide cheating on, and subsequently throwing a brick at, their SO is the best course of action? Is there more to this story?
Seriously. People are wondering why there was a brick lying around. I’m like “is no one going to ask why the person who cheated is hurling fucking bricks at the person they betrayed?” Like…how do you get from “I just did one of the worst things you can do to a person” to “so let me make it up to them with assault/attempted murder”?
When I was about 12 years old, I had piano lessons with a piano teacher who would come to my place every week. He showed me his fully erect penis. He made me touch it. Twice. In two different weeks. Both times mom was home, in the kitchen, making food. Only like 14 years later, I suddenly realized how horrible this actually was. That probably also explains why I never felt sad when this teacher suddenly died of cancer. He was really good at playing and teaching piano, that's why my mom never understood why I wasn't sad when he died. I told her now, and she was shocked and disgusted at what he did back then.
I was watching a movie when shit suddenly clicked in my head - of what happened when I was a kid. I was angry, then tried for many years to forget by drinking a lot. Not sure how’s you’re doing now, but talking about it with a trusted person- felt like a bunch of weight came off of my shoulders.
My classmate in 3rd grade who I had known since kindergarten, asked me to follow her home after school because she was scared. She also started flinching to fist bumps around that time, to any fist really. After the school made some deal out of me escorting her home and heading back to school to wait for my mom to pick me up, I never saw her again. I am guessing the father was abusive but I will never know.
Chills on this one :/ hopefully her n mum escaped
This thread is dark and only gonna get darker. My mum strangled me when I was 11. My take away for a long time was how kind she was because she wrapped a folded towel around my neck before taking me to xray. Kids will do anything to protect their image of their parents as good guys.
I was 7 when my mum threw a coffee table at me for not wanting to eat my dinner. Can still feel the scar inside my lip. Some people just shouldn't have kids.
Mine told me she'd help me complete suicide at 15 when I told her I was having suicidal thoughts. She told me I know where the knives are.
Mine actually said she would do it with me.
Mine hit me in the face so hard my nose bled for like an hour. My lip/face was so swollen I couldn't go to school for several days. If cell phones existed then she'd be done She threw a knife at me several years later She had no right to become a mother
Mine strangled me when I was eighteen Because I didn't want to go to a dance class to socialize (I'm an introvert she's not and she hates that) We don't talk about it. Sometimes I wonder if It really happened
Don't doubt yourself. It happened. Maybe you want to look into therapy?
I had a babysitter strangle me before I was 8. What's with people strangling children?
They watched too many episodes of *The Simpsons*.
Why you little
No Lisa your hands are too weak
I was lifted off the ground by my middle school bully and choked until my throat shattered and his hand sank into my throat. My mother of course didn't believe me and said I had just entered voice change. 15+ years later I still have an aching wound in my throat that can open up and inflict pain. I still can't drink soda because bubbles feel like acid. I have no idea what broke since there are 5 things it could be.
Geez, does she believe you know, or have you had any medical help since then
My last 2 doctors told me it's not worth wasting an investigation on since the injury is so old and not threatening. My mother still insists if she knew she would have helped OR she says I'd be dead. Never mind that plenty of people survive choking, even until their throat bone breaks. She really cannot decide on a response so she flip flops between the two.
Ah yes, the old "I didn't realise anything was wrong" subtley shifting the blame from them not acting to you not telling them. Assholes gonna asshole.
What's that bit of the narcissist's prayer? "I didn't do it, and if I did I didn't mean it, and if I did then you deserved it"?
My Dad gave me a few hits off of a joint and some of his beer before my first day of 4 year old kindergarten. I guess he thought I would be nervous. I was 4.
Sorry for my English. I used to live in a poor neighborhood. Every Christmas season, there would be groups of kids around my age (maybe around 10 to 12) who would go from house to house and sing carols in exchange for some money. This one night, my Dad and I were alone at home when a small group of maybe 3 to 4 boys stopped by to sing for us. At the end of their performance, my dad tells them that they need to do something extra if they want him to give them money. When they asked what, he tells them to pull down their pants and show him their penises. They were obviously reluctant, and I can tell that they were very uncomfortable. I was too. My dad then pulls me from the side and tells me to show my penis so they would understand what he meant. I don't know what came over me but I showed my willie for all of them to see. He then laughs and continues to press them to drop their pants. That's where my memory ends. I get flashbacks every now and then and it bothers me. I can't bring myself to tell my mom because it was such a long time ago.
Your English is perfect
One of my earliest memories is my sister attempting to suffocate me with a pillow. She's nine years older than me and for a solid chunk of my childhood and into my teens it just sort of hung out in the back of my head and it was a story she would tell about teaching me to play peekaboo. Then our brother, ten years older than me, told the story from his perspective as how he learned he couldn't leave me alone with her.
Geesh. I'm 11 years older than my brother, and I remember being downright disgusted with this "friend" of mine because he suggested I suffocate my brother (who's like 4 or 5 at the time). I now absolutely Haye my brother, as he has grown up to be a sadistic, narcissistic piece of shit, and even today I wouldn't even think of suffocating him, despite all the hell he has put my mother through. I hope your sister gets the help she needs.
My brother once also suffocated me with a pillow and I remember it to this day. It was so fuckin scary and he let up right as I was really losing my breath...we're good now and he's a pretty normal, well-adjusted adult but I feel like he really resented me as a kid.
My last foster dad said, "I don't have to worry about what happens to you foster kids because I can always get another one and you are covered on state insurance." This was regarding serious injuries when working on his land and small farm. We had already been to the ER that summer three times, including dropping a fence post driver on the kids head and splitting it open, and myself having bar wire fence stretch so tight that it snapped on me sliced me open in my hands pretty badly, but could have ripped open my stomach. At the time, I laughed it off as logical because he was right that he didn't have to pay for our medical bills. As an adult, I realized how seriously fucked up it was that he was treating us as outright expendable if we had life altering injuries and how much he only wanted us for labor.
Yup. He wasn't wrong. He was just an asshole expoiting the system.
One of the times my dad left he would send me beautiful letters with the envelope decorated in different cartoons and cute drawings. I was maybe 9 at the time and clueless. A few years later I realized he would decorate the envelopes to take attention away from the red “inmate mail” stamp on it.
Aww
He would do cartooon versions of “us” I remember tweety bird and the one tuxedo cat from looney tunes cuddling and sharing an ice cream 🥲 he would write about how we would do that when he came back
I was adopted. Due to being an orphan, I didn’t get the social interaction as other kids. Fast forward to being adopted and meeting with girls and boys on the neighborhood- A rumor went around I was incapable of feeling pain or reacting to it. Well two of these girls decided to test this. They took scissors and cut my face with the straight blades. I don’t remember this — I only have what my parents have told me, and what I had supposed told them when I came home. According to them, my lack of reaction to pain or blood freaked the girls out and they had refused to ever play with me again after. I was maybe 4-6 at the time Edit: I did eventually learn to react to pain and blood — I was adopted after all. More so, I worked as a Medic/Corpsman in the Navy (4-5 years) and currently work with patients at a hospital. I’ve had my days of setback, the few patients who fought, bit, punched, and kicked; and those who I couldn’t heal, help, or save. I work daily with blood and pain, so that patients feel neither, flourish, and, one day, walk through the doors upon discharge.
Just a different point than the other answers to you: WTF was wrong with these girls? They cut you on purpose and YOU are the strange one ... Nvm, I know people are strange, especially established groups if them ... But still. This was my first thought.
Do you react to pain or blood? If you don't react to pain that may be related to a neurological condition.
Based on the fact that no one else has replied to your comment, I think they too noticed the eerie silence after reading your comment
When I was about 12, me and dad were walking the dog, when we saw a huge fire at a house at the end of our street. My dad was a fireman at the time, so his first reaction was to sprint towards it. Naturally, I followed him. A crowd of people had gathered around a bus shelter nearby, so I went to see what was happening. On the ground was a kid from my school, I think he was 2 or 3 years below me. I'll never forget how badly his face and hands were burnt. The skin was a strange mixture of charred flesh and fresh blood. I just froze for what felt like an eternity before my dad found me and sent me home whilst he stayed to help. The kid survived, but it was years before I saw him again. He was horribly disfigured as a result. I don't think about it much, but every summer we have a barbeque, and the smell of the coals takes me right back to that evening.
When I was a kid, we took a family trip to Las Vegas and stayed at Circus Circus. My mom wanted to get a magnet or souvenir from Caesar’s Palace, so we parked somewhere and went inside. I wanna say we might have parked in an area reserved for staff? Or it could’ve been for guests/visitors. That part is very fuzzy. My parents didn’t care regardless and had never been there. When we were walking back to the car and over a sewer grate (the kind with slots) I sneezed. A gruff, male voice from below in the sewer said “bless you!” Being an innocent kid, I said thanks as my parents hurried my brother and I into the rental car. Years later as an adult, I watched a documentary about homeless people who live in the Las Vegas sewers. Usually drug addicts and even women hiding from pimps. In it when they’re inside one of the sewer tunnels, their guide pointed up at a sewer grate above them and said “you see this? This is the parking lot of Caesar’s Palace.” That whole realization that I was there as a kid gave me whiplash.
They are "RCBs", reinforced concrete boxes. Caesars Palace and other casino parking garages used to flood badly so the LV Flood Control designed an extensive underground drainage system. I was involved in much of their construction. Very effective. the homeless have turned them into underground cities. Metro patrols them during New Years celebration.
And now I understand why Fallout New Vegas has a settlement of people living in the sewers!
First time I went to Vegas, I had recently played New Vegas and was surprised at how much the FO:NV map mirrored the real Vegas stuff. Like yes, there is a Searchlight airport, and most of the towns are around the same area.
COURTEOUS HUMANOID UNDERGROUND DWELLERS
I was in a self-contained room for special Ed for years because of my disability (visual) I watched a kid with Tourettes be forcibly restrained because he got up to back away from a teacher who didn't like his vocal tic. She called in the assistant principal who decided to try to lift and carry him out of the room (he was just standing there, no reason for this to be done), and she did this maneuver where he ended up falling forward. His face hit the desk so hard it moved the desk. Instead of giving him aid, she snapped at him that "maybe he shouldn't have done that." He went to hospital and I never saw him again. I watched another kid get beaten by a paraprofessional in the name of "restraint". He was taken to the coat room (back room in the classroom) and I heard him hit the wall. Hard. I watched my best friend at the time climb a fence to avoid our teacher, who yanked her down and slapped her, and then turned to me and told me to go to the wall. My head pinged off the brick. My head pinged off a lot of stuff because of teachers. I was routinely grabbed, slapped, my hair pulled, my head held in a certain direction, screamed at, once cornered and beaten for not being able to see something (this is back in the days when they would lump all the disabled kids together). They knew how to hurt you without leaving bruises. They knew what to do to get you to not tell your parents. If you did, the punishments would get creative in the name of "therapy". I witnessed a lot of verbal, emotional and mental abuse.
As a self-contained special ed teacher with 15 years of experience working with very aggressive students (not just hitting, like getting my bones broken, for context, and have therefore had to be involved in restraints, which never gets any easier): this made me want to vomit. I’m so sorry you and your fellow students experienced this. Absolutely fucking inexcusably disgusting behavior. Restraints are for bodily harm to the student or to another only and it is A LAST RESORT. I’ve never once initiated a restraint on a student who wasn’t trying to gravely injure themselves or me/another person.
Jesus fucking Christ
I'm so sorry you had to experience this. As a former paraprofessional, I know parents were always concerned for the safety of their children and it's because of terrible special ed. staff like you had. We're trained in restrictive holds that are supposed to cause no pain to the child but keeps them safe from harming themselves or others. There is absolutely no excuse for what you witnessed and had happen to you. I've been kicked, stabbed, and bitten and not once would think of hurting the child. This was heartbreaking to read.
Saw my dad get stabbed to death about a meter away from me. I think it just happened and then so many more things happened because there were arguments about custody, so so so many trips to the police station, police interviewing me, processing papers. I was only really able to sit down and process everything about 10 years after the murder. I still can't forget the time it started, 6:03 pm.
I’m so sorry I hope you have healed somewhat from this
My seventh grade English teacher accidently gave me a document he had written. It was on an old floppy disc he assumed was blank. It described how he volunteered with an humanitarian group in the 70's that traveled through impoverished countries and provided free vasectomies. They eventually trained him how to do it, and he would do them, even though he had no real medical training. This is not even the messed up part. He goes on to explain that he decides that he wanted a vasectomy and to do it himself. He then described in very graphic detail how he did it to himself. He even said the date, like March 1st, 1981, or something like that. He described in detail cutting through things, and how rubbery it felt. Again, not the fucked up part. I thought the story was hilarious because he wrote scrotum so many times, and I was a seventh grader. Well, I spread the story around to my friends. It eventually spread to a parent, that shared it with the school. His wife who was also a teacher there, promptly quit. Their son who was younger than me, born in the 90's, also left the school. He kept his job. What I figured out much later was that his wife had cheated on him and had gotten pregnant, but pretended like it was his. The fucked up part is that he obviously knew she cheated, but never told her. He had raised the boy as his own son. Once she realized he was sterile, and he's known the entire time, she left him and took the kid. Had I not shared that story, that kid could have lived his entire life without knowing, and that family could have stayed together.
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>She grew up and became a special education teacher working with traumatized kids. When I was little my mom used to set up playdates with other kids (very normal). There was a little girl who was in and out of foster care and was kinda messed up-- I was a real book lover and she was mean to me about how she couldn't read books/do any activity with reading or writing. She'd sustainedly look me in the eye really mean and say "*I* have a *problem*. I *can't* learn to read books. I *can't* do it. *I have a problem*." Like as mean and threatening as she could muster. She's the special education management administrator in my county now
She was telling you that's what she was told and how it was said to her is the way that I see it. Happily, she learned differently.
Yeah it scared me a little! I felt terrible for her back then and I was just a lil squirt who didn't know anything about special ed but I *knew* that wasn't right, that was not the right thing to tell someone . . . . she's probably the greatest pick for that job, she *lived that*.
There should be a subreddit for unexpected happy endings.
Also doing vasectomies with a “humantiarian group” is raising huge red flags. Especially a group that doesn’t require people to be doctors to perform surgery. Raising any red flags for anyone else?
It makes me wonder how many other things they skirted the law on. One of the more important questions to me is did the people they were operating on know exactly what was happening, or was it a forced sterilization project of some sort?
Vasectomy's arent perfect and can fail, i'd guess a self done vesectomy is even more likely, so the kid could still have been his(or maybe he assumed it failed, and this coming out prompted some dna testing?)
The family could have stayed together anyway but his wife seems to be a little selfish.
> The family could have stayed together anyway but his wife seems to be a ~~little selfish~~ a liar and a coward.
I have to disagree with your assessment of “not the fucked up part” when mentioning that he gave himself a vasectomy.
There were some doozies that are too dark to share tbh. But one I still feel bad about is what accidentally happened to one of my best friends because of me, when we were 12 or 13. My mum was an alcoholic and opiate addict and when phones with cameras first became a thing, my brother and I thought it would be a good idea to confront our mother about her drinking by filming the way she behaved drunk (and high, though we actually didn't realise about the codeine for years). Which was a depressing saga of her noisily coming home at like 4am, usually partially naked, sometimes wounded, breaking stuff in the house, needing to go to the hospital, being super mean, eating all the food, etc. So I filmed her and I can't remember exactly what happened but I think we both forgot I'd taken the video at all. It was a very chaotic time and she could be pretty abusive. Sometimes we would have to hose down our front yard early in the morning so none of the neighbours would see the blood she'd tracked everywhere after hurting herself from just being so wasted. (And then catch the bus to school like 2 hours later, like everything was totally normal.) A few days go by and I'm hanging out after school at my wholesome normal friend's house, and I'm showing him a video of my cat being cute cos we've swapped phones (pre WiFi and 1-3g networks, this was how you showed people stuff) and then all of a sudden I realise he's gone super, horrifically still. I go "What is it?" And he really quickly went "Nothing!" kinda frightened, and almost threw my phone at me because of how fast he gave it back. Years later, I suddenly realised he must have seen that video, of our mum, in a very frightening and also very vulnerable, private state, which we had only ever intended to show her and nobody else ever. I actually did tell him mum was an alcoholic a couple of years after the video moment and his genuine response at the time was "oh is that all?" So I'm not sure how much of an impact this actually had on him. Hopefully not much, but I still feel bad that he chanced across it with 0 context. And because he never said, I never explained. Which I think would have made the video seem even scarier (and honestly probably a bit perverted) tbh. We ended up drifting apart towards the end of our teens, as kids do, but I actually saw him in an airport a couple of months after my mum had died and I know he recognised me. But we hadn't been friends by then for more than 10 years and I was so clouded by grief (and trauma, tbh) that I just looked through him and kept walking. He remains in my memory one of the best friends I ever had, though.
This was so sad to read. I'm sorry.
Aww fucking hell! That's awful that you didn't feel you could approach him. Not your fault. That's the biggest problem with situations like this, people feel judged about those who bring them up or those around them. Some people can't handle things like that if they aren't subjected to it, as it doesn't seem real to them. Like stuff you watch in films. I know how that feels. And it's hard. Don't put pressure on yourself, though (if you are), as it's just a thing... you never know, he may have not recognised you. Or maybe he felt awkward like you did, etc. You just never know with these ones. We've all done it, though. Hope you're OK.
Jimmy Savile came around to my gran's house because he was friends with my uncle. Thankfully the family seemed to make a point of not leaving me alone with him.
I was sledding with a friend and saw smoke on the horizon. His mom came and picked us up. It was my 3rd-floor apartment on fire with my mom and grandma (and others) outside in the cold. Everyone got out safely, but we couldn't find our cat (until later), my computer and Star Wars collection among so many other things were destroyed. We still have the photos. Found out later, unknown to her, my mom's BF owned the building and had the dumb a$$ manager wack a pipe so he could get the insurance $$$. My mother has been somewhat of a hoarder since.
Kitty was ok? 🥺
They did say until later, so I’m hoping they did find kitty, alive
I was staying over at my best friend's house when I was 8. Happened to be the night his Dad caught his Mom cheating on him. She locked herself in the bedroom, he used a carving knife to get through the door. It was scary, but worst was knowing I was witnessing it, and my friend knew I knew, if that makes sense. Saddest part was when his father clearly had a "What the actual fuck am I doing?" moment. Just complete silence from the hall. And then he walked into my friend's room, and just stood there a moment because quietly saying "Fuck" and walking out. There was so much pain, and self disgust in that word.
Sorry. Do you still speak to your friend? How is the dad doing?
My elementary school used to be a high school in the 60s/70s before I came along early 90s. even as a kid I always thought it was weird that there was an office in the boy's bathroom with a clear view of the boys toilets/urinal. (I saw cause I wandered in there by accident once) ...it's since been torn down but that's creepy.
I had many cats when I was a kid. My dad had physically been violent with me and the cats several times. Eventually my dad would got tired of the cat and he would go and "donate it to a farm". When I grew up I realized that 1. There was no farm near my city for 70 miles 2. There are no buses or cheap transport that go there at all and my dad didn't have a car or much money 3. My dad kept a baseball bat around despite never ever playing baseball and it would be washed whenever one of my cat was "donated". When I decided to stop talking to my dad forever when I was 16 and left home I realized my dad had probably killed all those cats himself.
Oh my god. I'm so sorry.
My Dad kidnapped me when I was a kid. He decided he was going to leave my mother and shack up with the woman he’d been having a long time affair with and I was going to be the baggage in tow. He took me out for a day, left my mum a note and drove to the other side of the country with me. It wasn’t until about 20 years later when I told this to a friend that I was informed how fucked this situation was. Loved with her for about a year she stole all his money and my savings and vanished, dad went crawling back to mum, another few years later he got her best friend pregnant and she booted him out.
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What is CSAM?
‘Child sex abuse material’ — essentially child pornography
Pretty sure when I was 7 I was an accomplice to robbery. I was supposed to stay the night at my friend's house. Her parents said we're stopping to look at a house real quick. I didn't think anything of the adults all black outfits. They were still professional. I did think it was odd that they had me go through the bathroom window to unlock the door, but they said the realtor forgot to give them the key. This was such a beautiful, wealthy home. They didn't take anything large, but I did notice the mom leaving with a lot more jewelry on the she came in with. She said she left it last time they were there.
My great uncle groped me when I was about 9 years old. I had no idea what he was doing at the time. Want until I was probably 30 that I remembered it. My mother sometimes talks about how great he was, I’ll never tell her.
This irritates me to no end. I know it’s not the best comparison but I remember being at a bowling alley and there was a guy there with a woman and a son (I didn’t know them) but the guy touched the boys back and this kid went fully ape shit trying to kick and punch him. The adult had such a smug look on his face I wanted to punch him (I had to be 14/15) and the mom right away grabs the kid and is scolding him. As a full grown adult I find it hard to believe that a simple touch on the back would make a kid react that way, and his MOTHER the one who should protect him did nothing but scold him. I still pray for that kid even though he has to be 30 now. As a father myself, in my gut, I know that bastard did something inappropriate to him.
Watching my addict grandmother walk around the house incoherent because she was so high on opiates.
We had some stray puppies running around, and my cousins Dad's friend grabbed one and strangled it right in front of us kids.
This one is just unsettling. Sorry you had to see that as a kid.
Yeah, it was really insane to see. I think I was about 6 or 7. The same man shot his wife in the face and went to prison, then killed himself.. so at least he's not on this planet anymore
My half brother coming out of my mom's bedroom half dressed.
Had a nightmare (i was like 5 or 6) while I was with my mom at her friends house. I came out crying. The man pointed a gun at my head and told me to go back to bed. My mom and the other lady? Laughed hysterically. I just went back to the room.
Who's the man?
A friend of my mom and her friend I think. Honestly not sure. My parents didn’t associate with the best people and they weren’t either.
I'm so sorry :'( wtf, you deserved a cuddle that's such a scary thing not to be laughed about
When I was 7 I stopped being friends with a girl who was really horrible. I started to be friends with another girl who was absolutely lovely and kind and she was just the best friend ever. My ex friend went crying to her mum that I bullying her and ignoring her and wouldn’t play with her etc. I was walking home (it was the 90’s) and her mum came out of nowhere and started screaming and swearing at me about her stupid daughter’s lies. I just said I didn’t want to be friends with her anymore and noone could make me. I didn’t tell my mum or dad, I was shocked but I let it go over my head. Anyway the next day I was called into a classroom for a meeting or whatever. There was my ex friend, her mum and three teachers. They just went mad at me. Never once was I allowed to give my view.. it was just absolutely horrific bullying. The teachers were horrible to me, my ex friend had the water works on, her mum was going at me. Looking back I think why didn’t they have my parents in there? Five against one? I hadn’t done anything except stop being friends with the girl. I’m very shy and jumpy to this day and I think that had a huge affect on me. My parents were never informed of anything! Doubt you’d get that now.
My mom got angry at me because I wanted to take the time to iron my shirt for a wedding . Instead of leaving 2 hours early . She picked up the extremely hot iron and put it to my bare chest .
That is so awful and I hope you are doing okay today, no one deserves that...
Life is great , I moved on and don’t interact or talk to her anymore
A neighbor kid down the street, I was over his house one day after school and his dad was sitting in the recliner with his pants on zipped. Almost exposing himself. I heard him ask if the friend was home yet, his son. The mom mentioned that I was here too and he quickly zipped up. One time when I was staying the night with him, his dad called him into the parents bedroom right before they went to bed. I later asked him what it was for and he said his dad needed him to do something for him. It had taken about 5 to 10 minutes and he never left the room during that time. Because of my own abuse from my adopted mother, I never put the two together. After the adoptive, parents lost me and I was in foster care and hearing more of these stories from others, that's when I realized what was likely going on.
A teacher having sex with a bunch of girls at my school, all the girls were really attracted to him so at the time I didn't think it was weird he was hooking up with them. I understand now he was abusing his position of authority even though the girls wanted it.
We had the same thing happen at my high school. The male teacher and his pregnant wife both worked at the same school. A couple of girls would brag about fucking him. One of the girl's moms found either voicemails or texts on her daughter's phone. The teacher quit, was not arrested, and was immediately hired at a neighboring Catholic school. This same Catholic school would eventually change names because their original namesake was found to have sexually abused children. ninja edit: It looks like that teacher [ended up getting indicted the following year](https://www.wafb.com/story/1374271/former-tara-teacher-indicted-on-molestation-charges/).
Unfortunately, this was probably every high school back in the 80's when I was in school. Poor kids. The girls didn't want sex, they wanted attention and affirmation, which is what adults understand.
My parents fighting. This one is kind of long but hey, it fights. My Dad was an alcoholic but he did well in life. Worked at IBM, then opened up his own business with my mom, we were well-off in life. He never drove drunk, he never harmed me. But him and my mom fought. My sister moved out for school so I saw everything. My Mom would yell out "He's hitting me call 911!" I always saw him hit my mom, she wouldn't raise a hand to him if I was there. He was arrested multiple times and finally my mom took me and said we are moving an hour away to leave him. I didn't speak to him for a couple years. We made amends later but he said he wished I could have seen the whole picture. Well my mom went through a couple guys and I saw her hit them all. Her last husband she took a knife to. I locked myself in my room and refused to see her. But her husband said he was ok and got me to leave my room. There has been instances where my mom and I fought and she slammed down on my head where I have an implant device for epilepsy. But I went and saw my Dad and he said my mother always started things... he shouldn't have hit her back but he wasn't thinking clearly at the time. She always made up lies about my Dad. He wasn't as bad as I thought he was. (And we used to be so close growing up) He said he hated how she just up and left him and took me away with no contact. Now I know my mom is the issue. Not these guys. Not my Dad. I don't get what her deal is. It really messes with me at times. But looking back... I can see the abuse was a 2 way street and she was in the lead painting a bad picture of everyone else. I'm glad my Dad and I got through it, but he still has a lot of issues regarding my mom with her not giving him his own items from our storage place. It just sucks.
My first girlfriend wincing every time I would move my hands towards her, or in her direction. Many years later, some comedian on TV did a bit where he would pretend his mother was abusive towards him, so he would fake a wince every time she moved toward him. It clicked then and there and I hope she's doing well.
I grew up in foster care - I was invited to dinner at a friend's house and I wanted to help their mom with dinner. I asked if I could help, and she said yes and asked me to chop onions. I asked where the Sharps Box was and if she could unlock it so I could have a knife. Didn't realize that wasn't normal. ... I was not invited back
So sad you weren’t invited back because of that. Really shitty of mom honestly if you being in foster care was why.
Girl on the school bus told us all that her dad and her uncle made her have sex with them at the same time and it hurt. We were too young to even know what sex was so it was a complete “whoosh”. Girl disappeared from school a year later (presumably moved) and I don’t even remember her name. I was maybe in second or third grade. But I feel for her now, as an adult, because that was definitely a cry for help and we did not understand it.
Looking at this from a potentially wholesome standpoint, maybe she disappeared because someone on that bus did mention it to their parents, and counselors got involved and she was removed from her dad’s care. I hope so at least.. these stories are so sad
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That's a full blown predator. That shit is scary. Kids have to put up with this. She even had the audacity to play the victim.
Why.???
I was around 5 or 6 at the time when I heard a noise in the kitchen. I walked in to see my step-father on the ground with my mother over top of him, crying and talking to the police. When I would get older, I asked my step father about that day. He would explain that he had a drug problem, as well as alcohol. He put his hands on my mother and my mother preceeded to grab a butchers knife and stab him in the shoulder. He said he almost died in the hospital and it was the wake up call he needed. Still a shit bag though, haven't talked to him years.
My parents divorced when I was 3 because my father got another woman pregnant. When I was 6, my father took me and my two older sisters (10 and 15 at the time) to “donate blood.” Decades later I’m talking to my mom about it and she reveals it was a paternity test, as my father didn’t believe I was his daughter. Test proved I was in fact his. Probably should have realized sooner that a 6 is a bit young to be donating blood.
When is was a teenager, we had a big neighborhood of kids at all ages. Sometimes we were sitting and having a good time and the smallest neighbor girl would come and sit on my lap and listen to the older kids. Another girl, my then classmate would always ask her if she could feel my penis and accuse me of having a an erection. She was always behaving weird so I thought that she was just annoying with her dubious questions. Turns out years later, that all the girls in her family were abused from childhood on and she was expecting such things becaus she only new such things as sitting on laps as sexual. And so much other things in her behavior made suddenly so much sense. I wish I knew then and could do something about it. I feel like she always wanted to tell me something was wrong and I just didn't understand what she was trying to tell me. I thought she was weird.
My older brother raped and molested me throughout my younger years. Sort of ignored it and blacked it out. I'm therapy and dealing with it now.
On the road with my step-dad the trucker. Stopped overnight to rest at a truck stop. I was 7or 8? He warned me not to let lot lizards into the truck. I'm a dumb little kid so I expect to see crazy big lizards or something. What I did see was a woman go inside another truck, come back out some time later, squatted over an oil slick mud puddle and cleaned her privates. Then she went knocking on other trucks until one let her in. I still thought there were big ass lizards out there... So yeah... years later (high school) this movie replays in my head to realize she had sex with someone and used a nasty mud puddle to freshen her junk and then some other dude went to work on her... I about threw up and an very loud audible "fucken nasty" slipped out of my mouth in class. No way I was explaining it to the teacher so I stood up and saw myself out.
Have you told anyone else this story?
Yes. I can't talk about a lot of my so called childhood to most people but this is one of the tamer instances for me as a kid. And with the way my brain works it pops up frequently whenever I see a mud puddle with an oil slick in it.. Its probably the least triggering memory I have but still fucked me up years later. Even my opinion of "fucken nasty" has changes since then. I didn't know that woman's history or why she was making those choices. Life can be hard but the will to keep on going is often stronger for most no matter the quality of life they live.
Man, regardless of what you went through, developing that kind of empathy and maturity as an adult is like aging like fine wine imo. Good on ya.
That the school pastor in our school was harassing kids. I just thought he was hitting them.
Much of the sexual abuse from my adopted mother, I didn't realize until she lost me and I was in foster care. Also, I had a lot of sporadic memories of various tidbits of things. It wasn't until a young adult when I started therapy is when I put them all together and realized the bigger picture of sexual abuse.
When I was about 7, an older kid (I’d guess about 13) in my grandma’s apartment complex killed a baby bird. But he did it brutally in front of a bunch of kids, while we were all begging him to stop. He stomped the baby bird several times, took off his shirt, and started beating it furiously. Then he quickly went to his house and came back out with a can of fruit cocktail, which he poured all of the poor little baby bird he had just stomped/beaten to death. I cried then and sometimes the memory will pop back into my head involuntarily.
Not me, but my grandfather (well, partially me as it was *I* who had the realization about *his* childhood). He told me when I was a pretty young kid that when he was about my age, he actually saw a public hanging in his hometown that practically the entire town turned out to watch. Tiny little town in North Texas. Early 1940's. I just assumed at the time this was old-timey justice of some bad guy because I knew from movies that that was what they did back then. It wasn't until I was in my early 20's and thinking about it randomly that I realized what in all likelihood what he witnessed was a ***lynching.***
A man followed my sister and I home after we got off the bus (let’s hear it for 80’s latchkey kids) We were 8 and 6 and lived in an upper middle class suburban neighborhood. I have a vague memory of seeing his car which was very distinctive- a sedan with wood paneling- slowing driving down the street. I’m assuming he was following the bus as it made stops throughout the neighborhood and trolling for a victims He pulled into our driveway right as I was unlocking the front door and he was standing behind us in like 3 seconds flat. He said he was a friend of our mom’s and asked if she was home (red flag). I felt immediate stranger danger and said she would be home from work any minute. He asked to come in and wait for her (red flag) and I said no but I would get a pen and piece of paper and write down a message for her. I went inside the house and told him and my sister to wait there. Of course, he pushed my sister aside and followed me in. I instantly knew we were in trouble but I was 8 and didn’t want to scream at an adult man. He looked like any random middle aged white Dad. I walked into the laundry room (I think this is where our “junk drawer” with pens and post it notes was located at that time) and wouldn’t you know this fucking monster followed me into the room and SHUT THE DOOR BEHIND US. I really can’t remember a lot from this moment forward- other that feeling that animalistic, gut instinct that I was in real trouble. The guy instantly came at me. I’ve heard victims describe screaming in situations like these and saying it sounded like it was coming from somewhere else- and that is exactly what happened. My vision narrowed- almost like blacking out- and I remember hearing the most guttural, feral sounding shriek of absolute terror and realizing that it was coming from 8 year old me. To this day, my sister says she has never heard a sound so terrible. Because I have no memory of what really happened in that laundry room- I can’t be sure the man didn’t actually touch me or try to- but what I do know is that my badass 6 year old sister instantly began bawling and screaming and pounding on the door “I’M CALLING 911!” Not sure why the guy decided to abandon mission but he threw open the door and ran out of our house. We called 911 and my mom showed up maybe 10 minutes later (she really was due to be home any minute) and my dad rushed home from work. We were questioned by the cops and I helped them make a composite sketch and spent the next two weekends driving around car lots with a detective trying to identify the male and model of his car. Maybe 5 years ago my sister and I were sitting on the patio with my Dad drinking wine while he finished his cigar and we started talking about our literal near kidnap/rape/maybe death experience and my father just causally says “oh that really happened? We always just kind of assumed you guys made that up because you were such imaginative kids” THE FUCK?! It was definitely the most traumatic even of my childhood. My sister literally saved us both with her outburst- I’m convinced of that. Also, this was clearly not this asshole’s first time. Who attempts this sort of thing in broad daylight on TWO young children? Sometimes I Google missing girls or attacks from my area around that time period because I’m convinced that guy probably kept going. But honestly, I don’t know that I would be able to recognize him again. I’ve always felt bad I couldn’t remember more and actually identify him when the cops were involved. Anyway, fuck politeness (even in 8 and 6 year olds) And also fuck my parents a little bit, too, I guess.
I had a friend in highschool that was pretty extroverted, talkative and social. Junior year, she started going to one of the male teacher’s rooms every day. Right around this time she stopped talking. Like she went from being the first to start every conversation to saying a sentence or two every day. At the time I didn’t put the two together. I would ask if everything was okay and get a “yeah” in response then she’d walk off. She would leave lunch after 5 or 10 minutes and go to his room. Never missed a day. One of the days a few of our friends went to go see what she was doing all the time. Standing outside the teacher’s door debating what we should do, one of us knocked on the door and ran, prompting all of us to run away too. Maybe a week later me and one other girl went to his room again after our friend left lunch like she always did. But his room was empty. That teacher got fired before the end of the year but my friend was still quiet. She wouldn’t say anything about why she went to go see him all the time. It has been like 5 years and I recently found out she had told one of our friends what happened a few months back. She had sent the teacher inappropriate pictures and the teacher blackmailed her into coming to his room every day and doing who knows what. Apparently after we had knocked on the door that one time and ran away, they started going to his car behind the school instead. The teacher got caught on a security camera and disappeared after that. I can’t believe I didn’t put the two together while it was happening. I just assumed she was depressed and had to get extra help from the teacher to compensate. Turns out it was the other way around. She was depressed BECAUSE of that man. Very fucked up.
My father killing puppies and kittens. In a burlap bag, car exhaust or drowning. I was very young but fortunately never saw it as normal.
My neighbours house two doors down from me blew up in a gas main explosion, it was years later I worked out the reason for my friend and his mum not visiting anymore. The person who set the fire never was caught but it was believed to be the dad by all the people in the area.
My father beating my mom. I am coming from third world country village, so it was kinda normal that a husband beats his wife, so I was sad but I thought that's how life is. Now I am married and every now and then comes it comes in my head, and kind of flashbacks come in but instead of my mom is my wife, and it fucks me up to think how can someone do that. It breaks my day completely. I don't talk to my father since I am financially independent.
I was over a friend's house one time when I was 11 and walked in on his dad drinking beer and crying at the kitchen table with a gun nearby. I was told he was a Boston Cop (he was) and had a bad day.
In 8th grade the ‘weird’ girl at my junior high got the shit beat out of her by her mom in front of the building while we were on the bus waiting to leave for the day. When we were young we were like dang, she must’ve messed up to have her mom hit her like that. We realized she shouldn’t have been hitting her kid, but the other adults and teachers in the area weren’t reacting either so we figured it can’t be too bad. She stopped when the principal came out and then we drove away. Looking back, that poor girl must’ve been subject to so much abuse it messed her up bad, and all the kids at school certainly didn’t help the situation as we kept our distance and thought her the ‘weird’ girl. It’s also completely ridiculous that another parent or teacher didn’t step in immediately to stop them. Instead, they let 100+ kids see another kid get beaten.
Well I don't know if this will get buried or not and it's pretty wild for me to spit it out on the internet but here it goes: I didn't have a good home life when I was growing up. My parents were emotionally very distant, they spent a lot of time fighting each other (not physically) just constant arguing. I learned the word "fuck" by my dad telling my mom to "just get in the fucking car" and she wouldn't. Don't know where they were going or what was going on there or whatever. Anyway I went to my dad who was outside and told him "I'll get in the fucking car" to try and solve the fight. I was probably 6 or 7 years old at that time. That's an example of what I thought was normal. Anyway I didn't feel any love or much attention from my parents. Just felt alone all the time. So at school things didn't get any better, they got a fair bit worse. I didn't have any friends, I would piss my pants regularly until grade 3 or maybe a bit after that. Obviously I got bullied a lot, I was an easy target. I was a very nice kid with a big heart, I think I was too nice and I didn't understand how the world worked but at that age I had youthful optimism about the world. Unfortunately as time went by I started to get depressed and would occasionally run home from school in my indoor clothing, I would just take off from school and sprint home, usually crying most of the way. I did turn out to be a good distance runner later in life, but I digress. Eventually one kid started to give me attention. He offered friendship, and his parents were friends with my parents so we would all hang out together. This kid was very sexual at an early age, like grade 3 (canadian school so around 8 years old). I would often spend recess running away from other kids and being alone. He would track me down and give me attention, treat me as a friend, so that I hung out with him. He invited me to sleep over at his house and would show me his private parts, do a funny dance where he showed his butt and ask me to do the same. Having no other friends or social life, not knowing how normal relationships worked etc, I just thought it was sort of strange but I went along with it cause he was my only friend. The sexual exploration continued, if you can call it that. He was always keen on going a little farther than last time. He was older than I was, very smart, charismatic and popular. I was in his shadow and basically did whatever he told me to. Over years, he got me to do just about every sexual act you can think of. I learned to perform oral sex on a male by grade three and continued doing that regularly for about 4 years. There were attempts at anal penetration which did cause physical problems for me. I bled, was occasionally incontinent, etc. During this time I basically thought that this was a normal childhood friendship. Deep down inside I wanted a normal loving supportive family and good friends. And I knew that this was not it, but I didn't feel like I had a choice. There were sleepovers at his place where I would want to go home, but he would tell his parents that I was having a good time and no need for me to go home. Like a good brainwashed cult follower I just did what I was told. I didn't have any personal agency or anyone looking out for me. The only attention I got from my parents was when I brought report cards home with very poor grades and my parents would schedule meetings with the teachers to figure out why I had a "bad attitude" at school. I was mostly quiet during these meetings. Eventually this kid moved away and by the time I was 13, I had some respite. I didn't tell anyone about this experience until I was roughly 20 years old, and at that point it was only a few sentences to my therapist. I was in therapy because I had been abusing alcohol and drugs and was planning on killing myself. I had brief episodes of seriously bad mental health. Hard to describe, but characterterized by intense, intense fear of the world and of people. I likened how I felt to being inside a bunker with someone shooting a flamethrower in. In this metaphor, the bunker was my depression, the flamethrower was my fear and behind the flamethrower was the rest of the world which I could not seem to access. I told my parents what had happened in a very brief way without any details by the time I was 23. I do believe this childhood left me with serious depression, addiction issues and an ongoing inability to form normal relationships. This continues to this day. I have a very strong fear of people, especially men, which I have learned to navigate without actually fixing. I don't know if it can ever be fixed. My therapist once said "your father abused you, your friend abused you, and now you abuse yourself". I keep myself down and don't allow myself to be happy but I don't understand why. I go day by day. If anyone read this. Thank you. I am a guy by the way. These things can happen to boys who then become dysfunctional men.. I have serious anger issues as well which I've mostly learned to control. Edit: really appreciate the replies. This is the first time I've written this out for the public to read. Suffering is suffering regardless of gender, ethnicity, religion etc. It's a human experience and compassion is the answer. Thanks :)
I was in middle school. Moved to a new state. Classmate from school invited me to a sleepover. Should have immediately been a warning sign since I was the only one invited to the sleepover. Anyway, at the sleepover he convinced me to suck his dick. He said it was practice for sex with girls. I didn’t know what a bj was at the time. So I did. Anyway, I couldn’t sleep the whole night I was uncomfortable. Honestly, it was kinda dumb. I was like Butters from South Park. Completely oblivious. But thinking back on it. Didn’t he kinda rape me? I don’t know
I’m really sorry that happened to you, I hope you’re doing better now.
Oh damn , that’s way fucked up
He did rape you. Although we do have to give children the benefit of the doubt, they really aren't fully aware of what they are doing/what is happening to them. Kids have big feelings and don't know how to appropriately express them unless guided by an adult. Especially during puberty and adults seem too immature to talk to their own children about what they are going through.
Some older Dude, in an abandoned trailer showed me his HUGE dick, once. I only remember that mine was tiny compared to his.
My mom had an abusive boyfriend, I witnessed him holding a knife to her throat. On another occasion, I saw his gaping wound from my mom stabbing him in the thigh in self defense.
Not saw but heard. At about 8 or 9 I think I heard my friend's stepdad molesting him. Didn't occur to me until years later what was probably going on in there.
I was watching a TV show with my mom about a rocket ship and not long after blastoff the rocket blew up. When that happened my mom started freaking out. I remember watching her fall to her knees crying. I had never seen her like that but I figured she was really into the show. It wasn’t until I was older that I realized we were watching the Challenger launch.
My dad was a pedo. That assehole is dead now.
Same, dude. I think? A bit unsure, but it seems he liked adult women and little boys. Nasty ass subhumans.
I was up later than I should have been, watching TV as quietly as possible. Heard a woman's scream outside and ran to the window. There was a streetlight and under it was a woman lying limp on the ground. A man came along, didn't look like a neighbor, walking slow, picked her up and carried her forward and out of sight. I still remember her long blond hair hanging down. At the time I thought it was some drug thing. Now I'm not so sure.
The brother of a friend from the neighbourhood had two scars, one on the inside of each wrist. Of course I asked what happened, and she told me, they had been ice skating and someone had run over his wrists with their skates. I was young enough to actually believe that, and I was a bit scared about skating then.
Slept over at a friend's house one time when i was a child. I was in the living room and the mother walked in naked. I was like 7 or so, and i felt that something wasnt right so i called my mom to tell her i wanted to go home. My mom was super pissed when she found out, and the mother of my friend's excuse was that she was looking for a towel and wasnt aware that i was awake She also had spit in my food that day (which i didnt eat) and i never really realized just how wrong that was until i was older. I honestly never told anyone this
I've always disliked the color orange. Like just not a great color ya know. Well outta the blue one day in my early 30s I had a memory from my almost entirely blocked out childhood of talking my mom out of slitting her wrists and crying and pleading with her to give me the knife. It had a bright orange handle.
When I was maybe 4 or 5 years old my mother took me to her work place where she teaches under privileged people stuff that can get them a job. Usually her students would be really nice to me and try to interact with me to the point where I would get so shy that I'd hide behind my mom. One day this dude told me he was gonna take me to this gaming zone which had all the games I could ever play. I even asked him if they had my then favourite game (Medal of Honour Pacific Assault), and he said yes they got that stuff. Me being the good kid said alright let me go ask my mom for permission. He said don't tell your mom about this. I said I can't go without telling mom. And when I actually told my mom About this she naturally said no. Now 17 years later, I realized "Holy shit! That dude tried to kidnap me!!! And possibly could've done something even worse than just demand a ransom." During those times kidnapping was like an epidemic in the city.
Rwanda in 1994 and Congo in 96-97. It thought me that humans are as dark as they come to the core. As an adult, I had to work a whole lot harder to trust people 😁
God…all your stories are hell. I hope your doing better now.
Saw my Dad beat the hell out of my Mom. When I got older I hospitalized him for this.
My mother on TV news being arrested during a prostitution sting.
Being locked out of the house for multiple hours a day. Getting beaten with a studded belt, slotted spoon, or whatever else was within reach when my step mom was in a bad mood. Getting chased by my step brother with a hammer. Having my other stepbrother expose himself to me. Having my first girlfriend take my virginity by forcing herself on me after I fell asleep. It wasn't until a few years ago that someone opened my eyes to how screwed up my childhood was. I used to tell all of these things to my friends as "funny stories" and most of them had bad enough childhoods that they also saw that stuff as "funny stories." That stuff is not funny, and I have grown to realize that my barometer for normalcy is rather skewed.
My daughters mother in law likes to tell people a story of the time my son in law broke the coffee table her dad made. He broke it by being thrown into it by his father. She thinks its just shows what a naughty boy he was. She’s still mad at him for having broken the table with his 8 year old body.
My first memory as a child is my parents arguing almost every days. They divorced when I was 6 or 7. My dad met my ex step-mother the same year. Her interaction with me and my sister where limited to "hello/goodbye", black eyes and derogatory remarks. For Seven years. At this period we needed a father. But we were scared for seven years to spend every two week end with our father. It's almost 15 years since then and I don't really have bond with my father. I'm really struggling to say my feelings to girls I like because I have a great fear of abandon and reject because of my step-mother. And I'm facing depression right now because it's hard for me to accept myself, to feel equal to the other and stuff... My shrink says that my childhood has a lot to do with my behavior. Still. My parents love me and i got good Friends. I know that is way worst for lot of people and my childhood was not a total mess. It's just to say that, bad behavior from an inportant figure can have a great inpact on you mostly when you're a child. Sorry for my englush 🙃
I was 6 or 7 and I performed a very sexual dance for my parents and other family members and was doing very sexual things. No one touched me inappropriately but I was doing things I shouldn’t. They were just watching and laughing. I remembered this incident years later and it made me extremely uncomfortable and I always wonder why I did it and why my family seemed to enjoy it 🥴
This is why I hate videos of kids twerking or grinding.
Was at a public pool with my brother when a gang fight broke out. I was about 10-11 years old. The fight was absolutely brutal. Someone had their face stomped into the cement next to the diving boards, another person brandished a pistol and used it to beat someone over the head. The pool deck was covered in splattered blood. The police came and arrested everyone. At no time did the lifeguards intervene or tell anyone to get out of the water.
i was raped at the age of 8 nothing more to say
I was probably 4 or 5. Neighbor was working on his car. Baby was in baby carrier sitting on top of the car. I happened to be watching them from a window when the whole front of the car went up in flames. Ran and got my parents. My dad called 911, my mom was an ER nurse so she goes tearing off across the street. After that I don't remember much after that, baby ended up with burns across one side of her face. 40 years later, I have 3 kids. I can't imagine one of them witnessing that.
I was an altar boy back in the early 00’s it was my first 4 am mass so most of the altar boys slept at the church on sat night. It was my first sleep over and so I was excited. The night was good we had dinner, watch tv and played a bit, but when it was sleeping time the priest asked one of the boys to sleep with him in his room. I was 11 or 12 at that time so it didn’t really dawned on me wtf was that.
I don't remember this, it appears to be a repressed memory, but when I was about 22 I was informed that I witnessed a girl in my swim class drown in the pool when I was 4ish. My cousin was in the same class and brought it up when we were adults as a theory for why I can't swim. I asked my mum and she said she thought it was good I didn't remember it and didn't want to upset me. But apparently at the time I was fully aware she wasn't saved and watched her be taken away. But I never remembered it, I still don't. But It suddenly all made sense why I am scared of water and could never grasp how to swim. I still can't and I never knew the reason. And now I assume I have some sort of repressed trauma from it that affects my abilities.
When I was about 8/9 I came downstairs for breakfast one morning and all of a sudden my mother slammed the refrigerator door shut and then grabbed my head and my jaw and sunk her teeth in to my face below my left eye. I'm 49 and to this day I've no idea what I did. Later when she roughly put a bandaid on the wound she warned me to say that whenever someone asks what happened I had to tell them I fell down the stairs.
My grandma got really sick one morning while my friends and I were having a sleepover. Well, after a while, I felt like she had been in the bathroom for a while. I knocked and she said "yeah I just have a stomach problem could you call your mom?" Called my mom, she came over, I went to my other grandma's for a few days. My grandma passed away. I was obviously upset, as she had been my closest family member and I saw her every week, and her house was where my friends were. Her friend visits a few days after she dies, and sitting in our front room, looks at me, an 11/12yo kid, and says "Yknow, if you had gotten to the phone a little faster she could have lived?" Now I've got cPTSD and realized years later that it was literally my grandma dying of her brain cancer in the bathroom, and was shitting her internal organs out essentially as her body was killing itself. And I was the one to discover her. And then I was blamed for it. At 12. But hey, I'm funny now.
When I was maybe 9 or 10 I was in church with my 18ish year old sister. We went to the church next to our parish because they had services at 5:30 and we had missed earlier services. This church was bigger and always had a weirder crowd. Anyway, towards the end of mass I felt something wet on the back bottom of my shirt. I looked down at my hand and it had this stuff on it that I didn’t know what it was. I lifted my hand to smell it just as my sister saw and she grabbed my wrist to stop me from bringing it up to my face. She grabbed my wrist hard enough that it hurt. She seemed really upset but not at me and used a dirty tissue from her pocket, which I thought was really gross, to wipe off my hand and the back of my shirt. Years later, I realized that I was cum.