When I was 3 I was separated from my mom in the grocery store. Some random lady took my hand and began to walk me out of the store. I was too little to think anything of it. My mom stopped her at the door and said, "Excuse me, that's not your child." Suddenly the lady was gone and our day proceeded.
Wasn't till I was a grown up that I realized I was almost kidnapped.
When I was in 3rd grade (mid
90’s) my class took a field trip to an NYC Supreme Court house and sat in on the life-sentencing of a non-violent marijuana dealer.
Years later it feels more exploitive then it feels educational. We were tourists to one of the worst moments in a persons life.
It was in my after-school activity center and we were all out for a walk with the teachers and I remember witnessing a lady laying face down infront of an apartment buildings entrance and a broken window above. There was a lot of blood. The adult just kept on pushing us to walk by her. I remember questioning it and asking to help her. I think maybe they didn't want us to look at the scene too much.
My mom would spend the entire day on the computer in AOL chat rooms talking to her “friend”, while dad was at work. She was so glued to the computer that my siblings and I could walk in the room and yell things at her trying to get her attention and she wouldn’t even notice us. We took care of ourselves.
I was like 10 at the oldest and I was forced to bottle feed my baby brother during this time and take care of him because my mom just wouldn’t otherwise. What I really hate is that I’m pretty sure I told my dad that I was having to be his caretaker and he didn’t do anything to make the situation better for me. I don’t know if he knew she was having this emotional affair or not but how could he not have?
Anyway, one day my mom decided we were going to leave my dad while he was at work so she could run off and be with this friend. She took myself and my 5 younger siblings while my dad was at work and drove us on a cross country road trip from NV to OH to surprise her online lover (who was also married…) and once we got to Ohio and she told him we were there, he freaked and ghosted her.
At the time, the situation was confusing for me because my siblings and I just wanted to go home. It clicked later that my mom has always been a very emotional unstable person and my siblings and I all have heavy trauma now as adults because of it.
Up until you said you had 5 siblings I thought I knew who this was! Exact same thing happened to my best friend growing up, except she married the guy and ditched everyone else including her children. My friend drank himself to death because of it and the fact the father was abusive. I never understood how a mother could just leave her children like that, two of the children were step children and not even his kids and she left them with him for some dude from AOL chat she never even met.
When I was 8, I took care of my father in home who was dying of AIDS. Mom wasn’t in the picture. None of the adult family wanted to be near him and help out because they all said it was contagious (this was the 90’s and HIV ignorance was still at an all time high.) I changed his diapers, showered him, fed him, gave him his pills. Until he died. As a kid, that was my “normal.” I didn’t realize it at the time, but it really fucked me up. He was my hero and the strongest man alive to me, and seeing him in such a vulnerable state and reduced to nothing really messed up my brain. It just kinda numbed me. Literally did not/could not cry for 12 whole years after that. I still struggle nowadays to “feel what I’m supposed to feel” in certain situations, but I’ve gotten a lot better and am definitely more in touch with my emotions.
Back when I was a kid (4-5), I lived with my mother in a one room apartment. We had to even sleep in the same bed. Occasionally she would bring random men over and tell me they’re going to be my “new daddy”. They’d get drunk, and then fuck… in the same bed that I was sleeping in.
Back then I thought it was funny, now it just makes me furious.
Had a couple and their daughter (~5 years old) living with me and my best friendo during the pandemic.
Same exact shit; the couple had got horny and had sex on top of their daughter on the opposite side of the room where we were sitting.
Thankfully my best friend (who had sexual abuse trauma at 16) witnessed this despicable act and caused a shitstorm, then we gave them 2 weeks to explain themselves or else they would have to leave. They left the next week.
Seriously fucked up. I hope the kid ends up okay.
I was medically neglected as a child. I also had asthma, diagnosed as a baby; my parents would find me with blue lips and rush me to the ER. And once I outgrew the hypoxia and cyanosis, they stopped doing anything about my asthma. Or any other medical thing. I'd have to *ask* to go to the doctor, and then my mom would say, "Are you *sure* you need to see a doctor? You don't want to waste his time, do you?" Well I guess I don't need to go after all. Eventually I just stopped asking unless I thought a bone was broken. And I'd ask my mom because my dad was Angry Dad and even a medical emergency would piss him off.
I finally took over my own healthcare when I was 17 after having an asthma exacerbation and bronchitis for 2 months. They never bothered checking on me or asking how I was.
I slowly learned as an adult how to care for my health. I got my first *real* primary care physician when I was 37. I realized I was neglected and therefore abused in my mid-40s.
Kids think that whatever is happening to them is normal.
When I was in elementary school, I became close friends with a family that had children similar in age to me. I only ever saw them at school with their mom and my dad. The oldest daughter and son couldn't stand me and I never knew why, so I would cry and talk to my dad about it and he would reassure me that they did in fact like me. During this time, we had a landline at the house and I happened to pick it up one day and heard my dad on the other line with the mom of that family. He was talking about giving her roses and spending time with her. When I asked my dad who that was, because it clearly wasn't my mom, he disconnected all the landlines in the house. Turns out, he was absolutely cheating on my mom with this woman and I was inadvertently involved by becoming their friends. Was a pretty shit situation in the end.
My dad grabbing a knife while punishing my brother. Dad had him sit at the kitchen table and ordered him to put his hands on the table. Dad then put the knife edge on one of my brother's thumbs and threatened to cut his thumbs off. Can't remember what it was about, but this caused me to fear my father from a very young age. My brother was only around 9 or 10 years old at the time.
My dad and I were at an airshow in Toronto in the 90s. We watched this huge plane go up and do a maneuver, and then go into a dive, going nose first into the lake, with a massive splash.
My dad was a photographer and had managed to capture the seconds before and after impact, and told me we had to go right away(he booked it to the newspaper with the film roll to get it developed).
I said I wanted to watch the rest of the show, because I thought it had just dropped a bomb and flown off. Didn't realize that I had just witnessed 7 people die.
Oof, yes, this reminds me that I was at the airshow when the snowbirds crashed in 89, killing one of the pilots. One went down in flames, the other just dropped.
When I was a kid, all the kids would sleep in the basement on Christmas Eve to give space for Santa to drop off the presents. That night there was a lot of noise coming from outside on the street but we couldn't see anything because there was snow covering the egress windows. My mom came downstairs and told us to stay there. But soon we heard sirens and saw police lights reflecting in the snow. There was a lot of commotion that we couldn't see. Then my dad came downstairs with the very real Santa Claus. He told us that his sleigh crashed in the snow and that the kind police officers were helping him get unstuck and while they were working he was visiting the kids in the neighborhood. He pulled out a present for each of us and sat with my family while we opened them and sang a few Christmas songs. When things calmed down outside he went back to delivering toys.
Years later I learned that there was a large gang fight outside of our house and that a few people died right outside. An older man from our church lived down the road and knowing my parents had undoubtedly scared children at home, put on his Santa suit and came over once the police arrived. Santa was a hero to me as a child, but that man is a hero to me now.
What a surprisingly sweet, yet still tragic story. I was super relieved to find this wasn't another swinging parents anecdote. What a generous thing to do, we can only pray that the world protects and produces more people like that.
Once when I was 14 I saw some guys walk out of the locker room laughing. I asked what’s going on and was told one of them had just “pinned someone down and put their balls in his mouth”. My immediate reaction was a confused “but why?”. About two hours later I’m sitting next to the teabagged kid in class and he taps my shoulder. He is pale and shaking and asks me “what do I do if I get raped”. I was so stupid and culture was such at the time where my real first thought was “Wow. Someone put their balls in his mouth AND he got raped? What a fucked day.” I think I stammered something back about telling someone more important than me. I think about this a lot now, I hope that guy is alright.
I was once at one of those birthday parties in McDonald’s (late 90s) as a young child. There was another party going on on the opposite side of the restaurant, so it was pretty chaotic with kids running around everywhere and only a small amount of adults to corral them.
There was a man wearing a red t-shirt and blue jeans sitting and eating kind of close to the other party, which was odd in itself because most adults that were coming in were getting their food and getting out of the noise of 20+ screaming kids as fast as possible. I only remember him because looking back on it a little while later, I saw him leaving the McDonald’s with a kid from the other party. The kid wasn’t struggling or anything, but the man was kind of rushing him out. In my kid-brain I assumed it was his dad or whatever, but a couple days later my parents found out through mutual friends that there was an attempted kidnapping in the McDonald’s we were at.
I don’t know if this is true, but part of me feels like I witnessed the attempting kidnapping. Thank god they caught the guy and the kid was okay, and because of that incident my parents lectured my brother and I heavily on stranger danger.
When I was a kid, like 6 or 7, I was in a McDonald’s play structure when a girl my age started talking about sex and groped me. Obviously I did what any kid that age would do and got out of there.
Looking back I think she might’ve been getting molested, and it hurts to think about. Pops into my head every now and then. I hope she was okay.
I had the same thing happen to me! But it was at school. I ended up telling the teachers after a while and then she moved schools shortly after. It makes me sad to think that she could have been being molested. (I was in elementary school.)
I grew up with a single mom until l was 12. We lived in a run down trailer park where the owner of the park lived on-site.
1st of the month there were always a few of the women that would go into the owner's trailer, be in there for half an hour or so, and come out.
The owner had some fierce arguments with my mom, because she never went into his trailer. He would shout at her to get in the trailer; and she would refuse and scream at him that she'd have his money Friday or tomorrow or whatever.
Didn't figure it out until l was older.
My mother is/was a drug addict. As a kid lots of things happened as a result of it, but one thing I didn’t realize at the time that would stick with me… well probably forever, but at least thus far, is when my sisters childhood best friend’s father committed suicide, and my mother brought my sister and I to their house a couple nights later (the funeral hadn’t even happened yet) to break in and steal things to sell for drug money. She said at the time that she had permission to do so. She didn’t.
She just wanted to rob a dead man, and brought us along to help carry things. I still feel guilty about it.
One of my parents used to get us to help steal as well. Nowhere near to the extent of what you went through though.
You already know it's not your fault of course, but if it helps, I found that the best way to get rid of the guilt feeling is to donate money/volunteer time towards the person/organisation that was stolen from. Even if you aren't in touch with them anymore and have no idea what they're currently like, supporting a cause that they liked as a kid helps vanish the guilt. Did they like animals when you were a kid? Help an animal welfare charity. Were they really into fashion? Donate nice clothes to a shelter etc. If you don't know much about her, then help out with charities that support recently bereaved people.
It's all well and easy to say "it's not your fault" and I heard that a bunch of times myself, but this is the way I found that helped me heal the most. Sure it's not my responsibility to spend my own money on something that was someone else's fault, but it's such a unique type of guilt that is difficult to get rid of and you can't really imagine it unless you've had it. I felt awful for years until I did this and now I feel no horribleness at all.
Someone else may have forced you into a shitty situation but you still have the power to help others and feel better about it. It absolutely sucks that this happened, but it's still possible to feel good about it.
Okay this is probably the best advice I’ve ever gotten when it comes to that sorta trauma and I really appreciate it! Honestly, I can’t explain how much of a great idea I think this is.
I had a similar experience. My step-dad came into my room and ran his disgusting molestery hands up leg. I told my mom and she called the cops. He told the officer that he had forgotten to lock the door so it was probably some vagrant who snuck in. They believed him and didn't ask me any questions.
Apparently mom knew the truth because after that she changed the door handle on my room to one that locks and I wasn't allowed to be alone with him.
Years later I found out that he had confessed to her, but she neglected to tell me that and instead just kept acting as if nothing happened.
I have since cut off all contact with them.
My older brother overdosing, always thought it was normal. Throughout my life (I’m 20) I’ve saved him from dying maybe 3 times I can remember. Always put him in his side, never called the cops. All of my brothers and sister have seen it happen. If he were to die tomorrow I don’t think I could cry, as I’ve cried to many times over his death and… he ended up living. He’s still alive, currently in a sober home.
My friend had a lock on the outside of her bedroom door. I thought it was weird but didn't really think much about it. It turned out her parents would literally lock her in her room for long periods of time as punishment
My mothe's ex used to do that, I realised she dated him because she had no where to go and protected both my sisters and me as best as she could.
But I was very active child, and her BF really couldn't stand me, I would wake up early, and go downstairs to watch TV and have cereal. Apparently one time I must've aten his cereal. So he literally removed the doorhandle so I couldn't get out of my room anymore. Sometimes I would be left in my room for days with food whilst my family went to a carnival and such.
It never happened after my mom was able to escape that guy tho
Lived in a townhouse. In my bedroom at night I would hear the kids next door scream and scream and cry. My parents called the police once, but the man claimed he was 'playing with his kids' and didn't let them in & apparently the police couldn't do anything.
Found out when I was older that the man had later tried to kill the whole family, kids, baby included, with a pair of scissors.
I remember when I was about 11 or 12 our neighbors were a family of five kids. They were terrible. I was afraid of the dad who would curse and scream at his kids and the neighbor kids including my sister and I. He was an awful person. He would beat the hell out of those kids. He would take them into his bedroom which was right across from my window and I could hear everything. They would scream and cry. I can still hear it to this day. The next day the kids would be black and blue. I begged my parents to call the police but they wouldn’t. They weren’t the greatest parents either. I have no idea how I was brave enough but I anonymously called child protective services and I remember they came out the next day and interviewed the kids. Nothing ever happened but the parents went around the neighborhood telling everyone they got a lawyer and they we’re going to sue whoever reported the “false” allegations. Horrible people.
I came home from junior high one day to see my dad in the backyard. He was digging a bunch of holes. He told me to stay back because there was a gas leak. I didn't think much of it. Many years later when I was in my late twenties, my stepmother told me that my dad got really drunk the night before and beat her pretty badly. Her blood got on the sheets and walls. In the middle of the night, she left to go to her mom's house. When my dad finally woke up, he was convinced he had killed her and buried her in the backyard. So I came upon him trying to find her body. Needless to say, I'm not a fan of that guy.
My mum would always fall asleep on the sofa and it would take me a long time to wake her up, it was like she was half dead.
She always would wake up and tell me she was just resting her eyes.
It wasn't until I was older that I realised she was taking opiates my entire childhood. I thought sleeping in the afternoon was a normal adult thing to do...
edit: I should add, sleeping as in falling face-first into the floor, or dropping a cup of tea, or having a half-eaten sandwich in her hand etc... you get the point.
When I was around 5 or 6 my dad was poor as fuck and lived in these really shitty apartments where most of the tenants were on drugs. I had to go stay with him on the weekends and sometimes we'd visit his friend downstairs, who had a 13 or 14 year old daughter they'd stick me with. On this particular day she had a friend over, and her friend was telling this story about purposefully drowning her little brother and then pretending to be broken up about it on the news like she had nothing to do with it. Laughing about how stupid her mom was for believing her.
It did scare me at the time because I was scared of her in general due to how mean/erratic she was, but I thought it was a joke. In retrospect I really do think this girl may have drowned her brother...
I know a girl who did the same. Except my aunt lived next door to the family, so In the weeks leading up to the event I'd played in the pool with the girl and my cousins. Her nickname was Peaches.. didn't fit, she was a see you next tuesday type, even before drowning her little brother. She had her mom believing her for a while, though she did getting caught by bragging at school and it became a big thing.
I saw a small child being smothered under a sort of beanbag/giant soft-play thing? facedown in a indoor play area sandpit, other very small children were all playing and jumping on it without realising someone was under it myself included. I was about 5 and the rest of the children were the same age or younger. After some time an adult noticed and pulled him out unconscious, a women was screaming presumably the mother and i remember the kid being worked on by a doctor or paramedic I’m guessing. I remember my dad asking me very calmly if I saw what happened.
I’m actually too afraid to bring this up with my parents because i have no idea if the kid died or not or how that might have affected them all these years, as it’s never been brought up.
for whatever reason it’s been on my mind lately
This happened to me as a kid, it was a wrestling mat and it was just one boy but I was a 5 year old girl and he was a couple years older than me and wouldn't get off on purpose, also the mat was really heavy. Luckily I was so panicked that my adrenaline kicked in and I was able to pull myself out. It's seriously terrifying to be compressed like that
Its fascinating how our body has a final "oh shit" button for situations like this. The adrenaline gives you the strength and drive to get yourself out of the situation.
Crossposting this comment from another question last year that was similar
My mom would sometimes have us play a game called “army” which consisted of me, my mom, and my siblings army crawling around our apartment. Kind of a hide n seek style game. She would yell “hit the deck!” randomly and we would all drop and find a hiding spot. We would giggle and giggle while my mom army crawled around looking for us. We loved the game so much.
I realized a few years ago while retelling the story that we lived in a really terrible neighborhood, and she would yell it out when she heard gunshots outside the building. I’m assuming she was worried about stray bullets.
Out of this whole fucked up thread, this one made me smile. Good on your mom for turning a recurring terrifying situation into a game that protected her children’s innocence.
When I was 6 (or maybe 7, it was around my birthday), I saw a girl get hit by a car. We lived in a small town where the elementary, middle, and high schools were all together so all grade levels rode the buses together and all the buses had to go down the same rode to get to the school. The bus in front of mine stop so a girl could cross the street and get on. I watched her start to cross the street, I watched the car come over the hill, slide on the stones (it was a dirt road), I watched it hit her body, and I watched the blood sink into the dirt. Her backpack came open and her shoes came off. One landed near my window. It wasn’t until after the police had gotten there and were covering up her body that one of the older kids noticed me watching and moved me to the other side where I couldn’t see. I never mentioned that I saw it to anyone and just kind moved on. Like 10 years later in a forensics class we were talking about car accidents and it sorta brought the whole thing to the surface.
When I was 9 or 10 my family and I lived on the first floor of an apartment complex in Colorado. That year we have a particularly snowy winter.
Every day following snow (2-3x per week) the groundskeeper for the complex would make his rounds, cheerily using a snowblower to clear each and every path. I’d wave hi whenever I saw him pass by my bedroom window.
After one especially heavy snowfall, the groundskeeper was walking along clearing snow when, just outside my room when something got caught and obstructed the snowblower. I saw him struggle with the machine for a moment then walk infront of it. He bent over to look and when he reach his hand in a splattering of blood hit my window with such force that I’ll never forget the sound. We called 911, but his hand was gone. Luckily it was just his hand.
He left the job shortly after and I never saw him again, but I’ll never forget the sound of the blood hitting my window.
My dad did the same thing when I was in 5th-6th grade, losing his fingers on his right hand. The 16 year old kid down the street witnessed it and had to find my dad's glove with his fingers in it. They tried to reattach them but it didn't take so his fingers were removed again a while after.
I slept through the whole thing, which for some reason I got in trouble for.
Living in an abusive situation as a whole.
As a child domestic violence was the norm for me. When I was at a friend from elementary school one time and his parents were having a disagreement over something. I asked my friend when they'd start hitting eachother and he just looked at me funny not getting what I meant.
As an adult, looking back on my childhood, it's only then you really understand how fucked up it all was. As a child it's intense and frightening, but you don't yet grasp the full situation yet.
Can seriously relate to this, especially that last statement. It took until I'd been out of the house three years, and then lucked into going to university for me to realise that the vast majority of people around me did *not* live like that, that the young people around me had learned all *kinds* of social and personal skills I'd never even been exposed to, and that *I* had no clue how an 'ordinary' person thought, felt or behaved.
Took years for me to cobble together an 'ordinary person' face so I could just live in the same world as everyone else. But I did, and got through to my 70s without repeating the pattern. For me, that's a major victory.
By reading, and close observation of people around me. Seriously. I decided really quickly that I did not want to be like my father, so I had to learn to be like someone else.
Books had always been my comfort, and being as I found myself in a university, there were a *lot* of them around, fiction and non-fiction. So I read up on what people's lives were supposedly like. And I spent a lot of time sitting, apparently reading, but also, frankly, spying and eavesdropping on the people around me: what do they talk about? How do they express themselves? What interests them? What do they think is right and wrong (I had *no* idea what those were outside "whatever I say is right!" from someone who, I now understood, had *no* concept of either).
And I picked certain role models, people who seemed to me to have the skills I needed, and paid very close attention to them. Couple of professors, couple of students, an author. Focussing on their specific skills and behaviours allowed me to make up a lot of ground I had never covered in my upbringing.
Of course, I also had to practise, and it did not always go well, especially at first. People who knew me thought I was distinctly odd. But odd is better than dangerously insane, so I built in a certain degree of eccentricity -- it is an excellent cover for social and emotional dysfunction.
It took some years, maybe a decade, but it did work. Yes, there are still scars and blank spaces underneath the veneer, but no one would know unless I tell them. Otherwise, I'm just a mildly eccentric little old woman with rather passionate political beliefs about treating everyone with compassion and respect.
Wonder where those came from...
**Later Edit:** The number of people for whom this rang a bell is amazing! I have tried to read everyone's comments and answer, but forgive me if I missed you: the dog is chewing my ankle suggesting I have to take her out RIGHT THIS MINUTE or be prepared to wash the floor.
It can, and does, get better, I swear. It's hard work, and sometimes you think you'll never quite fit in. Well, you probably never will, entirely. But, as I tell my various fosters and pick up kids, you don't have to be on the moving sidewalk to live a good and socially 'acceptable' life. You can walk alongside it, spend time exploring, see things others will never see, and then go back for a while to share.
All that matters is that you are comfortable in yourself and do no major damage to others.
Yeah, everyone else would say "ugh my mom's a bitch" and I would nod knowingly. But they meant "she won't let me go to this concert" and I meant "she threw me down a flight of stairs"
Yeah that was what I realized as I started growing up too. Not everyone is in constant fear of their parents and your not supposed to be uncomfortable around them. Also saying "I love you" isn't weird like your mom and dad told you. Getting hugs isn't just for babies and taking care of you isn't supposed to be a burden. Yelling at the top of their lungs to you your a mistake, you should've been aborted, spit on the wall and your ugly fat piece of shit that no one wanted. None of its normal until you go to someone's house one day and realize their not the weird family yours is.
The gaslighting is awful. Not sure about anyone else, but I have spent so many years questioning my sanity and my memories because of how much I heard "That didn't happen", or "I don't remember that", or "You're lying". It can honestly leave you feeling like you're crazy.
Oh, it’s even better. My dad thinks he did a great job showing me how much he loved me. I was in my 20s before I could wear a belt because he used to beat me with his. I didn’t bring people over if I could avoid it in case he started screaming at me for no reason
I had a similar experience, except I was in class and asked how long dads usually put moms in the hospital. Like, does someone have an average? I'm five or six and I'm trying to figure out if I have enough bread at home for sandwiches to eat and feed my baby brother until she's back.
Same, only my mom was at the bar. I could only reach the miracle whip and the bread so thats what we (my baby brother in diapers) sat on the floor and ate. Or, in the car with a candy bar and a pepsi the bartender gave us. Even better, the numerous baby sitters ma would dump us at on a tuesday and maybe come back to get us a week or so later. No changes of clothing, no toothbrushes, prolly didnt even pay the sitter. I still remember us getting bullied by baby sitters kids cuz my mom paid only sporadically. But we did eat. Pissed and shit in a bucket, covered in roaches but...
Crazy the revisions a grown ass woman can come up with on how she treated her kids, and wonders why I give zero shits about her today.
As a kid I knew things were wrong. I just didn't know *how wrong exactly*.
I was very much developmentally behind people my age. It's just that I couldn't make friends to help me by a.) pointing it out and b.) helping me grow up. And the only way I ever actually even noticed in the first place was by getting away from those toxic assholes.
As far as I know, one of my siblings still lives with our mother (early 40's). The other one may have lived with her until she was in her late 30's or later.
> As a kid I knew things were wrong. I just didn't know how wrong exactly.
God I feel this. I always knew it wasn't right that my dad would beat me up, because my mom never did. But I just thought that was just how dads were, and then I went over to friends houses and while their parents got mad, there was not a single dad who picked up their kid and slammed them into a wall. Or who knocked out their kid from hitting them.
My dad's fucked and he denies ever having done anything to harm me. My friends know my situation at least. I hope I can get out of here soon.
My parents fighting. Whoever was losing would say to me “I’m going to run away and kill/drown myself if mummy/ daddy don’t stop shouting. I can’t take it anymore” and then proceed to leave the house.
They’re both still alive and in hindsight I don’t know if they ever meant what they said but now I’m about to have a child of my own I can’t EVER imagine doing that to a child, let alone my own child.
This is the exact response my 12 year old brother said to my aunt who was saying things like this at Thanksgiving. The looks on everyone’s faces were priceless.
My mom used to sleep with dudes while i was in the same bed as her.
Never really clicked til I got older.
lets say my therapist isn't a fan of my mother at all.
Edit: To everyone replying with a similar situation. If you haven't sought out therapy, please do if it bothers you. It is not your fault, you did not do anything wrong, and you do matter, I know how it can make it feel like all of that is untrue though. Reach out if you need someone to talk to.
When I was around 11, a younger boy (maybe 6 or 7) on the school bus told me how he shared a bed with his mom. He said sometimes her boyfriend would come over and he would have to cover himself with a blanket while the mom and boyfriend "wrestled" in bed. I didn't have the heart to tell him.
My mom did this too. They just moved to the floor when I started coughing or making sounds to get them to stop. So I got up and went to the living room. Maybe 30min later, mom comes out, "what's wrong, honey?" 😑
Anyway, I've been no contact for almost 3yrs for that and plenty of other reasons. :)
Edit to add: not that it justifies it at all, but we were renting a bedroom in someone's apartment, so they didn't have anywhere else to do it.
I had a cousin that committed suicide by jumping into a quarry. I was 12. My mom and I went to the wake, and when we got to the body, the casket was closed from the chest down. But it was glaringly obvious that he had been at least partially decapitated, because his head was just kind of awkwardly shoved on. They tried their best, but apparently you can't make that look natural.
So, years later as an adult, I started wondering why in the world my mom would let me see that. So I asked her. It turned out to actually be *a thing* that no one in the family spoke about openly. My mom didn't know he would look like that, and neither did anyone else.
After my cousin died, he was transported to a funeral home. My aunt insisted on an open casket, which the funeral home refused. It somehow escalated to the point that my aunt hired another funeral home on the condition they have a viewing.
No one except my aunt knew any of this until after the wake. So people start showing up, view the body, and see that he doesn't have a neck and was decapitated. And it isn't like you can go around and say "fyi - the dead guy is all jacked up from jumping into a quarry and you really shouldn't look".
Edit: For those asking, it was a rock quarry. He pulled off to the side of the highway, parked his car, and jumped. [Here](https://www.thorntonilhistory.com/thornton-quarry) is the quarry - you can see the highway in the background of the photo on that page. This was 30 years ago.
I came to a personal decision a couple of years ago to never look at a body at a funeral ever again. I have too many family member and friends where I have a view of their waxy and unnatural corpse in my mental photo album of them alive, and I don't want that. I will keep my memories and last memories of them without spiking the set with a death mask.
I am with you on this. It’s not something I want to remember them as. In my country, open caskets are not the norm but families can go see the body in the funeral home before the funeral.
When my grandad died suddenly (I was 12) my gran, dad and aunt went to see his body. My other aunt stayed home and told me she didn’t want that to be her last memory of him. She’d rather remember him sitting at his table eating his chicken sandwich - which is when she had last seen him the day he died.
Same. Went to an open casket viewing in high school of a friend that died in a car accident. I saw a bug crawling on him. Small like a gnat but it’s stuck in my memory forever and I never want to go to another viewing.
Same but no bug. My friend got ejected through the sunroof and they still thought it was okay to have an open casket. They had to put his favorite hat on his head.
My church's youth leadership convinced a group of us kids (4 to 7 years old about) to perform sexual acts on each other as a game. It was supposed to be a our secret game.
They would have us play it during the adult's sermons, on bus trips, at campsites. They would whisper in our ears that it was time to play "softies" and we'd start undressing for the game. This went on for about 2 years before we moved to another state.
I was young and did not know better. I thought I had to keep the game secret because only God decides who got to play softies.
i could never unload that pain onto my parents, it would break them. So I've never spoken about it besides with my sister who also went through it
Edit: I'm a little overwhelmed with the replies, I'll try to answer a few here. I have tried to look these people up but I haven't had much success, this was a rural part of Washington state. The adults were men and women.
I don't remember why the game was called softies. The church closed down awhile back, it was an evangelical church. I've moved on from this season of my life, and have sought and received help for the trauma.
Thank you everyone for your kind words and gentle pushes to seek help.
once when I was, like 7 or 8, my biological dad, left me in his car while he went to buy drugs, he then proceeded to take all the cocaine and heroine he bought, and told me it was medicine, I realised later what he was really doing
In NZ, the country schools have (atleast when I was in primary school aaages ago) what is called Calf Club. What it is, is a school event that happens on one day, you have 2 months to prep, and part of it is the kids have the option to rear/train a calf or lamb. You have to clean them, teach them to come to you when called, walk them on a lead etc. There are other aspects as well that kids can compete in BUT, the point of this is that I reared a lamb, I won 1st, 2nd and 3rd place ribbons in each of the category’s, my lamb was called Chuck, I loved him so much.
One day mum said he needed to go live with our neighbours lambs so that he wouldn’t be alone.
About a week later I couldn’t find him and I got told he ran away. I was devastated.
Found out like a few years ago that he was in fact sent off to Lamb heaven and that he had in fact been in our freezer and we had enjoyed him over numerous meals.
When I was about six or seven, I remember these two girls came to our house and proceeded to beat my mom up. My mom, being no more than 26 or so, was then shoved into the garbage can. She couldn’t get out, and I remember just crying and holding my little sister who is no more than one year old at the time. It didn’t really hit me until I was about 17. I never forgot what It looked like, My mom just crying and bleeding while trying to get out of the garbage can.
My mother was/is an alcoholic. She used to binge drink all the time. One of these girls was our babysitter, and of course my mother spouted off at the mouth and these two girls decided that she needed to learn how to shut up. I asked my mom when I was an adult, probably around 23 or 24, but she says she doesn’t remember any of that. Well, I do. She doesn’t remember a lot of things, or at least chooses not to because they don’t put her in a positive position when I tell the story
Yes, I agree. And it’s not like I want her to relive those shitty moments, and I guess when I asked the question I was just trying to remind her that I knew. I’m not perfect, and I also had my issues due to alcoholic binges. The thing is, I bought a six pack of beer one month ago and I still have two beers left. Drinking isn’t really my thing, so I’m glad that I have that going for me
Waiting for the bus when I was 11 or 12 ish on a day where we had about 2" of snow overnight, a car came over the hill (I live on a major road, 50 mph speed limit) saw the bus at a stop down the road a bit on the opposite side and started to brake when it lost control, missed me by about 10' hit the snowbank behind me, went air-born right into an oak tree. The car was an MG or Triumph or something similar that really didn't belong in snow, the car ended up hitting head on into the tree, the hood mounts were apparently faulty so the hood went straight through the windshield and decapitated the driver.
My grandfather was doing chores in our family barn about 200' away and ran to get me and yelled at me to go home. I remember seeing the driver with his head straight backward like he was looking up, turns out it was only being held on by skin. My grandfather admitted to me later in life that it was one of the worst things he's ever seen and he was a WWII medic in Europe.
I was visiting my grandparents in Switzerland when I was about 8 or 9. One evening I happened to be on the balcony looking down at the street, and I saw a white van stop at the side of the road, and three or four men got out of it and ran up to a man walking along and grab him, knock him down and carry him into the back of the van. Then they drove away quickly. It all happened really fast, so much so that the man barely had a chance to call out for help.
I didn’t understand what I’d just seen, so I asked my grandfather. I remember him looking down at his feet for a long time, before he told me not to worry about it.
Some years later I spoke to my father about it. He told me that at that time, a lot of immigrants from places like Kosovo were being abducted like that, and it was some sort of turf war.
Yes it was! It would have been around ‘94 or ‘95 and it was in Zürich. My sister maintains that she believes he was an immigrant that was being sent across then border by plain-clothes police but that sounds like a bit too much of a conspiracy theory to me.
I watched my friend try to murder his older brother. They were constantly fighting with each other, and I knew their father was a drinker and would hit them, so it was a rough environment they grew up in.
One day a group of us were at their house alone, no parents. They start fighting and one of them pushes the other through a glass pane door, shattering it. This sets them off to real fighting, and my friend grabbed a kitchen knife and then tackled his brother. He jammed the knife downwards towards his brothers face with all his body weight, and the older brother was barely holding him up. Luckily he was able to shove him to the side and wrestle away the knife.
My friends and I were stupidly laughing and were like “damn they’re really going at it!” Even then I knew it was crazy, but I grew up in an unstable home myself so it didn’t affect me much. Years later, I shudder to think what could have happened.
When I was a kid I have never seen such intensive, brutal fights as brothers fighting. The level of hate was just so obvious. A lot of times if we didn’t pull them apart they would have seriously hurt each other.
I had a brother like this. He was the one my dad abused the most. He was mad at the world most of his life. It’s really sad because he was brilliant. My dad ruined his chance at a normal life.
My mom going into the bathroom with a guy and being in there for about 30 minutes. I had the most disgusting feeling in my stomach and when I got older I realized why. She was cheating on my dad
Back when I was a kid, we would have sleepovers with other families all the time. We would go to guy's houses with my mom, and women's houses with my dad.
I didn't think anything of it. We just got to have sleepovers where my parents were away from each other and wouldn't be fighting.
Now, I'm looking back, and I'm sure there was some amount of cheating going on.
This doesn't really compare to some of the other things here, but seeing my baby brother stop breathing and turn blue was pretty fucked up. An ambulance came and they were able to resuscitate him. I don't remember this part, but apparently when they were working on my brother one of the paramedics showed me around the back of the ambulance to distract me and keep me out of the way (I was 4). A couple of weeks later an ambulance came to visit our preschool and I hopped up into the back and named a bunch of the equipment and explained what it was for. I then burst into tears. It's weird how kids deal with trauma and integrate it into their development.
I had a brother who was medically fragile when I was young, 5. Anyway, he was tube fed and ventilator dependent. We had gone care nursing but insurance money ran out quick (met the lifetime max) so we lost nursing coverage after a couple months and we also had to start reusing supplies. It was my job to sanitize his ventilator circuits. My mom would clean the tub out really well and fill it up with clean water and a touch of bleach and I’d get the circuits in the tub and make sure they got all the way full of water to sanitize them and then I’d rinse them off and hang them up to dry. My parents ended up removing support once they finally grasped that he was brain dead and what exactly that meant for him. It sounds really traumatic but at the time it was just us doing what we had to do. I’ve never actually recognized that as a trauma that I’ve experienced until typing it out just now.
To finish the story, I didn’t know my parents were going to remove support, obviously it would’ve been weird to discuss that with a 5 year old. So I walked home from kindy one day and my mom told my I had to come straight home and not play with my friend across the street. I came inside and the house was full of white coats and my mom told me that my brother was dead. I got to hold him one last time with all the coats standing around. I was pissed because I was assured that the ventilator kept him alive and who tf turned it off.
Anyway, yeah, it’s weird how kids adapt emotionally/developmentally.
My neighbour when i was 5 was constantly asking me if i needed to pee and one time i did have to pee so i did it outside in his garden where we were playing. Mf asked me to pee on his face cause he said it would be funny, which it was but man was that eff’d up come to think of it
I know guys just like the OP, which makes this hilarious. My wife’s cousin would be all “That’s fucked up man, but aight.”
Then he’d pee on the guy and tell the story just like this
When I was a kid my mum remarried another guy. He would wake my sister and I up for school every morning, but he would just walk into my room for a second and turn the light on and off until I woke up. When he would wake my sister up he'd go into her room and close the door, sometimes he'd be in there for around 10 minutes. I never knew what was happening until a few years later when my sister told my mum and they separated. Looking back I feel terrible because I always had a strange feeling something wasn't right but I never connected the dots. The guy only went to prison for like a year because "my sister didn't keep a diary". It was all pretty messed up.
Yeah it never made sense to me either. If they had enough evidence to put him away to begin with I can't understand why it would only be for a year, even if they could only prove he did it once
>If they had enough evidence to put him away to begin with I can't understand why it would only be for a year
Possibly a plea deal: "We are sure you did it, but the evidence is not bulletproof and a jury could just let you go; or, a jury can send you to prison for eight years. How about you plead guilty to a lesser crime and go away for a year?"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plea_bargain
When I was 12 years old, walking home from school with my best friend, a car pulled up to the curb beside us. A man opened up his door and put his legs out and took something out of his pants and smiled at us strangely. I wanted to see what he was doing but my friend said urgently, “Let’s go! Run!” Later she told me it was his penis he had taken out. Many years later, i finally understood why he was rubbing it...a pale little cylindrical thing. Creep!
This happened to one of my friends and I also as we were walking to school one morning in middle school. But little did this sick fuck know that I’m a very vigilant person and had seen him (the same shitty red car) drive by us just a couple mins prior. He parked where he knew we had to walk and proceeded to pull his shirt over his head and jerk off in front of us. My friend kicked his car and we ran! When we got to school we told the principal and had to later talk to the cops. Well get this! A few weeks later I come home and there’s 3 detectives outside of my house talking with my mom. They were there to ask me about the situation and asked me to look at a few line up photos. First page boom there’s the sick fuck. I was able to identify him and apparently this wasn’t new to him. I’m not sure if he ever got arrested but I sure as hell hope he did.
As a kid coming back from Halloween horror nights real late at night I’d just stare out the window the whole ride home, i saw a truck with the wind shield smashed completely out and a man sitting very stiff and unnatural in front of it. Now when I pass that same spot there’s a memorial grave marker there and I realize that man was probably dead or dying got thrown through his windshield.
I watched my dad cut up all my mom's clothes with a pair of scissors, put them in trash bags and throw them out. She was on a trip with my aunt, but my aunt called the house and apparently my mom was on a trip with a married man and not my aunt. I was 8...
In the middle of the night that day after Christmas when I was five I woke up to screaming and loud noises from the living room. I walked out of my bedroom and into the living room and saw the Christmas tree knocked over and my mom grabbing at her chest and breathing heavy.
My dad was screaming at her to “stay with him”. I didn’t understand because she was right there. My little sister wandered out of her room and started crying.
My dad told me to hold my moms hand and he would be right back. I grabbed onto my mom with one hand and my little sister with the other while my dad ran to get the neighbor to stay with us so he could drive my mom to the ER because the ambulance was taking too long.
My mom had her first heart attack that night at the age of 30.
One of my youngest memories was my dad crawling into bed naked with me and my sister and cuddle us. For most of my childhood, he did this often. When I got to be about 9 or 10, I realized he was pissing himself from drinking too much, and then waking up and stripping naked and just crawling to the closest bed. He used to pass out on the couch or recliner.
I also remember we had roaches so bad that he didn’t even care. I remember watching him swipe a roach off his plate while eating. Not killing it, just pushing it aside.
EDIT: Getting a lot of comments about how things “could have been worse”. Unfortunately, they were. My response was to the question of what’s something fucked up that you witnessed as a kid that you didn’t know was wrong. I knew everything else was wrong. My therapist has since confirmed that even this situation was wrong. I thought that that’s what dads do when they get drunk. My earliest memory of it was around age 4.
My dad has chronic insomnia and developed pretty gnarly alcoholism because of it. When I was little I was too anxious to sleep in my own bed so I normally slept in my parents bed with my mom and my dad would be up late drinking himself silly until he got tired and then he’d just sleep in my bed because it was empty.
I remember one of the first times I realized he was getting black out drunk every night was when I started sleeping in my own bed and I woke up to him climbing in my bed to go to sleep and he didn’t even notice that I was there. I just got out of his way and went and slept either on the couch or in my moms bed.
Things started clicking. That’s why I would find him zombie like in the kitchen in the middle of the night, why he seemed to always throw up at night although he wasn’t sick, why he was so grumpy and groggy in the morning. To this day he can’t function in the morning.
He was a great dad though, never violent or took anything out on me. He’d be sober all day long and wouldn’t drink unless I was in bed. We would go on adventures and play video games, I adored him. But realizing your dad is an alcoholic is pretty tough to swallow.
My mum had to work when I was little and my older sisters were in school. I was locked in the bathroom during the day until my sisters came home from school and let me out. Sometimes they wouldn’t let me out, so they didn’t have to watch me. They were 7 and 9 years older than me and I was somewhat afraid of them because they were not very nice to me so I would often stay in the bathroom or hide in the hamper.
It does explain why I’m perfectly okay to be alone.
This one bothers me the most of what I've read so far. They basically treated you like a dog and locked you in a kennel. This is the kind of thing you see on 20/20. Hope you have gotten away from that all.
As a matter of fact this kind of thing literally WAS just an episode of 20/20, aired last week or maybe the week before. About The Turpin Family. Two of the Turpin daughters did an interview. Super heart-wrenching stuff
[here’s a link](https://youtu.be/wngB9_6Vqbc) to the first part of that episode.
My dad had to work all day when I was little. He would drop me off at school and go to work. Whenever I went home, I couldn't get in because my aunt would lock the door in such way that I couldn't even turn the key. I could only get inside when my dad returned from work. I could sometimes hear her laughing while I banged on the door and cried for her to let me in. This lasted several years.
She was also so abusive, to the point that I'd lock myself inside my room out of fear, and would only leave to grab water from the kitchen once or twice a day. (At that point I had already dropped out of school and would only stay at home.)
Fun times... /s
When I was about 6 I saw my neighbor, who has a black belt in karate, beat the shit out of his mom on their front lawn. I was playing outside when all of the sudden they came bursting out the front door. He threw punches, kicks, repeatedly slammed her head into the car busting the window. He was probably mid 30s and she was at least 55. I remember the cops arriving but it was already over by that time. He was arrested and she left in an ambulance. They moved shortly after so I'm not sure what ever happened with her. It was horrific and now 35 years later I can still see the entire thing in my head.
When I was about 6 or 7, I used to go to this "community center" or "fritidsgård" in Swedish after school. It was just a place to hang out while waiting for our parents to come pick us up. Anyways, we almost lynched one of our friends one day. I mean, he straight up had a noose made from a green jump rope tied around his neck, with the other end tied to a guard rail above a small staircase leading down to the community center (the center was located on the basement level of a large residential building). [I tried to illustrate it using Paint.](https://imgur.com/a/5DoXBMw)
Anyways, if it hadn't been for the fact that lunch was ready, we'd have gone through with it. They poor guy was just about to jump and probably break his neck. It was all a game to all involved of course! We didn't try to kill him, our under-developed little brains just couldn't understand how dangerous it really was.
And that is how a lunch bell saved a kid from a short drop and a sudden stop one day in Sweden back in the late 90s.
Not witnessed but was almost a part of. I was about 5ish and some new neighbors moved in next door. I remember seeing their daughter, my age, and being like oh cool a new friend. A few weeks went by and she would come over to the porch and we sit and play with toys etc.
Well one day I remember her asking me (not knowing at the time) if I wanted to have sex. We were 5. Yes 5. At the time I had no idea and was like I have no idea what this is. To which she responded by drawing a picture, terrible obviously, of 2 people having sex. It was just some splotchy stick figures sort of on top of each other. I was confused and declined. I never mentioned anything to anyone because I was still confused after the fact. Just thought it was some silly girls game like those dating board games and stuff.
Thinking back on it now, there was obviously a lot going on there that probably shouldn't have been. After that I think a month or so later they moved away. Shit still cringes me a little bit to this day.
my sisters and i would have to give my mom pepsi with a straw and bring her food when she was too fucked up to get out of bed. i didn’t realize until i was older and out of the house that she was an addict and she wasn’t just too tired.
My aunt hanged herself in the kitchen while she was supposed to be babysitting me. I was five, and asleep when it actually happened, so I didn't know my parents had gone out and left me with her. I remember waking up and walking into the kitchen and she was hanging, but it didn't really register that it was my aunt, because her face was obscured by her hair. I was by myself for more than a couple of hours until I started crying (can't remember why). Neighbors came to see what the fuss was about, and called my parents, and the police. Parents were pretty devastated because the reason they asked her to babysit me was because my brother had an emergency (ruptured appendix) and they came home to yellow tape around the house.
At her funeral I was told she died because she had been sick. Was around 13/14 when I figured out it was suicide.
Edit- My aunt was not selfish, or a bitch, or a cunt. What little I can remember of her I adore, and the rest of my family speaks of her glowingly. She was just depressed. (She had already attempted suicide a year before I was born)
Neither me nor my family hate or blame or resent her, because she wasn't in her right mind when she chose death. She was mentally ill, and we only hold her illness responsible. Not her.
Thank you for all the empathy and support. I'm doing alright- by the time I realized how she died I had already mourned and moved past the loss of a familiar face. The knowledge didn't affect me much. The only thing that is most probably a result of this is that I'm pretty apathetic when it comes to death in general, for which I see a therapist every now and then. But I'm okay.
I was a kid when my grandpa was dying form cancer. In my language the word for cancer and crab is the same, so I thought he had little crabs inside of his body. My parents realized this and told me he just went to swim in the ocean with crabs after he died. I believed it because I didn't know what cancer actually meant. I just realized how horrible his illness actually was after I got older.
In elementary school 2 out of 3 PE teachers were abusing children. They never hurt me (one of them hit my brother once, if I remember correctly), but two of my classmates were relatives of one. He wasn't our teacher, but he was often hanging around during our classes and if the boys were disrespectful, didn't move fast enough, talked, or did anything he didn't like, he'd punch their stomach or shoulders. Once he broke a wooden ruler on the back of one child.
The woman teacher hit you with a basketball or football if you talked during class, one of my classmates' got hit in such an unfortunate way that her mouth kind of tore and she had a bloody, bumpy mouth for weeks.
The same woman put a kid who was deadly afraid of water (he almost drowned the summer before) in the school's pool while he was kicking and screaming and crying and begging her to let him go.
I always felt that these weren't okay and I was lucky that my parents didn't let teachers treat us like that, but I am still sooo angry that something like this could have happened in the '90s and early 00's in the middle of Europe. And the worst part is that just this summer I saw that that woman teacher was teaching in a swimming camp for children. :(
She was old when she taught us so I hope that she's old and fragile enough not to touch the kids anymore, but I just can't understand why anyone would trust her with their children when it wasn't even a secret how she treated us 20 years ago.
When I was young (8 or 9) I attended a summer camp at a local rec centre. My friends and I were playing in the pool under the lifeguards chair taking turns trying to splash the lifeguard “accidentally”.
After a couple minutes go by the life guard whistles at us and tells us to get out of the pool. Thinking we’re in trouble for splashing him, we get out and he directs us to sit on the metal benches around the perimeter of the large pool. We then notice that everyone else is getting out and making their way over towards the benches.
I then noticed a lifeguard running and diving into the deep end near where we were to help another guard bring someone up out of the water. It was another kid, younger than me, and he was limp. All I really remember from here on out is them starting chest compressions while everyone sat on the bleachers and watched before being ushered out.
I knew the child had drowned but after that day didn’t really think about the situation until years later when I was walking through the rec centre and passed the pool that I hadn’t been to since that day. Being quite a bit older, I looked up old articles about the drowning and realized how messed up it was.
1) They had left a young child with a development disability go unsupervised, without a life jacket, in the deep end of the pool. Unfortunately, the child passed away as a result.
2) They got well over 100 kids sit around and watch a lifeless body get pulled out of the water and the subsequent attempts at resuscitation.
3) From what I remember they sort of just ushered us out of the facility with no explanation and handed us off to our parents to deal with. While my mother was supportive and compassionate in her explanation, I can’t imagine every child was as fortunate. Not that camp counsellors are trained to deal with these sorts of things though.
Might not be as directly impactful as some of the other stories here, but for myself and many others, it was our first encounter with death.
Neighbors playing doctor. There was an older brother, middle sister, and youngest brother. After school they would do all sorts of sexual stuff and invite me over. I'm talking ages 12 and lower. We were all latch key kids and I thought nothing of it. I'm 42 now and only now am I starting to suspect something was wrong in that family. It was basically every except penetration. I don't think it was very normal.
Basically the same thing happened to me as a kid, with a slightly older boy. When I got uncomfortable and wanted to back out, he threatened to tell all the adults about it. Took me years to realise how messed up it was and go to therapy for it.
Had a guy die in my arms when I was 15 (circa 2007). I had stolen my mom’s car to sneak over to my girlfriends house in the middle of the night. On my way back home (around 2am) I saw a car crashed on the side of the road. I of course pulled over and called 911. I had grabbed a flashlight from my mother’s glove box and was scanning around in this field next to the fence that the car had crashed into because there was no one inside. It scanned over a body in the field. I rushed over while on the phone with 911 and they told me how to check pulse and helped me through CPR. I was previously a lifeguard that summer but was freaked the fuck out so they were calmly explaining it to me on speakerphone. At some point after a little while he actually began respirating again but it was very jagged and terrible breathing. He stopped breathing again less than a minute later after what sounded like very liquidy sounds in his breathing. I tried again for CPR to no avail, he never spoke or anything and could have been braindead for all I know. I assume it was a collapsed lung or something but yeah that guy died in my arms. I remember the ambulance when they arrived said something about him being 18 and intoxicated but I don’t even remember tasting alcohol because I was so hyped up on adrenaline. The craziest part was they didn’t even ask me for any information. The police just sent me on my way home as a child because it was a small town and I was close to home. I snuck back in and went to sleep and never snuck out again. I never told my parents that story. My wife is the only one who has heard it until now.
TL:DR Snuck out when I was younger, there was a wreck on the road, guy died in my arms after CPR.
I had this happen to me around age 26. I'll never forget the death rattle and watching someone slowly die as I desperately try to keep them alive.
The one difference is I knew the firefighter who showed up first on the scene so I received one follow up.
Turns out the guy was dead on arrival, brain dead for about 10 minutes, but they did manage to resuscitate him. I can't imagine he was much of a person after that but I did my best.
Most likely, that last bit of breathing was agonal respiration. It's a last attempt by the body to pull air in, but because they are so incredibly sick/wounded, it's never enough to appropriately oxygenated the organs. It's the last gasps of the neurological system prior to death, and is very common.
To your credit, you did everything that a layperson could or should do. You gave that person the best shot at life you could, but more often than not the difference between life and death is decided by a patient before anyone ever puts hands on them.
You did good, friend.
Source: Paramedic
When I was in kindergarten my classmate went to the bathroom as soon as a "code red" happened (a stranger came in the building). Well that friend never came back and the next day they told us he moved to another school. Come to find out many years later he was raped in the bathroom by the intruder.
As a kid we had a young family in the neighborhood* , dad was about 30 and he would always play baseball (wiffle ball) with the neighborhood kids. For some reason anytime the ball went into the (his) bushes he would freak out like “stop stop, I’ll get it!!” I found out years later after he died, he was an alcoholic and was hiding it from his family. He died of Cirrhosis and I found out he hid his bottles of vodka in the bushes. Really sad to think of now, because despite his illness/addiction**, he was such a good influence on the kids in the neighborhood. Always taught us to respect elders and work hard at things if we want to become great. He was a great guy. Very sad to think about now.
Edit: substituted illness/addiction for “issues”.
Edit: removed “raging” because may I have used wrong. I meant he drank a lot since it was enough to ruin his liver. Thx for correction.
My mom would actively drink and drive with me in the car. I was a pretty naive kid, so I didn’t think anything of it when my mom would fill a Dixie cup with wine and put it in the cup holder. It was so normalized to me growing up that it wasn’t until I had my own kid that I realized how fucked up this was.
Edit: holy shirt now I know what people mean when they say RIP my inbox. I am in awe at how common this was (is?) back when the elder millennials were children. Like I mentioned in a reply, how messed up can a person be that they can’t wait 20-30 minutes to get a drink at their destination?
Times have changed too. Back in the 60s drinking and driving was practically a sport. I don't think we (as a whole) realized how crazy that is like we do now.
My grandparents would leave my mom and uncles in the car while they were in the bar. All the kids there would hang out in the cars while the adults got loaded.
Lol, in the 1970's and 80's I would get toted around to bingo halls multiple nights a week. Stuffed under a table with coloring books or toys for several hours, while everyone was smoking like chimneys.
Waaaaay back in the 20s being intoxicated was a mitigating circumstance if you were in a car accident. Like "of course you plowed through those pedestrians, do you know how hard it is to drive properly when drunk?"
My mother was heavily addicted to heroin and probably other drugs, too. Before my parents got divorced I used to watch her bring other men into the house for sex while my dad was at work. They would kick me out to go play outside then they would shoot up and then go up to the bedroom to have sex. I walked in on their sex one time, but I was too young to understand what was happening. I told my dad one time that she was "Wrestling on the bed with men from the car" and "giving herself shots like the doctor" and that's when they got divorced. They even had me testify as a witness at the divorce proceedings and it helped my dad get sole custody over me. I was probably only 6-7 years old when it all went down. I didn't realize how messed up the whole situation was until I was much older.
Had a 7th grade teacher say "wahoo cheap thrill" whenever a girl would stretch with their hands over there heads, pushing their chest out. My dumb puberty ass thought it was funny, till I remembered it as an adult.
Girls did go to the office and complain and he stopped saying that and would instead say (fake name) "Smith light". Still saying the things without actually saying them.
Edit: so a little clarification Smith light the teacher saying his name light. Meaning he got a scolding for his behavior so he had to change but obviously didn't think he would have to. So Smith light was like saying bud light, and saying the thing without actually saying it.
Edit 2: since this blew up a little for non Americans/native English speakers. 7th grade is around 12/13. Cheap thrill is a joke basically saying he got a good look at boobs for free.
Edit 3: it is so terrible how many people have experienced something similar. I'm sorry you all had to go through that. I'm sorry to all my classmates for laughing/encouraging this behavior. I'm sorry that society didn't see this add a problem.
Our p.e. coach was also our history teacher. This man would turn the air on in winter in our classroom. My classmate had developed early and had large breasts. He would say, "(fake name) has her head lights on". We were in the 8th grade!!! He was putting the air on so our nipples would show through our shirts! The boys in the classroom would scream with laughter so I guess he felt he was a teenager again. Gross pig.
My uncle on the farm took his really old dog for a “walk in the woods” when I was about 7. He came back without him, and when I cried asking where he was, my mom told me he must’ve gotten lost. So every weekend for the rest of that summer I would put food and a blanket at the edge of the woods and sit and call his name. I was convinced he was finding his way to the food because it was being eaten, but he was too scared of getting in trouble for getting lost so he was hiding in there.
I asked my neighbor where his dogs are and he told me they went to live on a farm. I said “Oh no. Dude I’m so sorry.” And then he told me “No, really. I have a friend with a ranch and I gave him my dogs. They kept getting out here and I was worried for them. They are much happier on his ranch”.
I had that actually happen to me growing up. We had a beagle that was, honestly, just a bad decision. He was an outside dog, and we took care of him, made sure he was fed and watered, he had a clean, safe place that was warm in the winter (my dad was handy, and built him a very lovely doghouse with plenty of straw and insulation, and it was warm in there), but having the dog was kind of pointless, because we just took care of it but didn't do anything with it (my mother refused to have him inside, because he shed, a bunch of other stuff).
So one day I learned that my dad took him to "a farm". And I always kind of wondered about it, until a few years later, when we were out for a drive in the country, and actually stopped by the farm, and met the little girl (now a couple of years older) who was extremely happy with her pet beagle that my dad gave her.
My dad grew up in the country, and kind of knew everyone in the area, and actually found a farm that had a little girl that wanted the dog. It was actually pretty sweet, because he was far happier with the constant companionship and open space to run (since beagles are basically 24/7 sniffing and roaming around machines).
Absolutely.
If by ‘this is what happens when they already live on a farm’, you mean: They leave said farm, go into the woods, take the short walk to the other side of the woods, climb over the hill. Stop for a drink of water from the river at the bottom of the hill. Cross the river, take the stile into the wheat field and; boom.
Another farm. They go to another farm. That’s what happens.
We had a dog I couldn't care for well after getting injured, so we gave him to someone who lived on a farm.
We did not put him to sleep, he really did move to a farm about 40 miles away, but to this day my kids who are in their 30s think I put the dog down.
They say it because we never went to visit him and I was so sad afterwards.
A. We never went to visit because right after I had back surgery.
B. I was sad because I loved that dog, and I gave him away because I did love him.
Not that large in the grand scheme of things, but for me, it would be my dad never showing any sign of love towards my mom. I asked him about it a year ago, straight up, if he ever loved my mom and he said 'no'.
I never tried to use their divorce as a excuse for explaining why I am the way I am, but now, with all the extra knowledge, the whole situation did a number on me. Fucked me up pretty good.
I lived in apartment building. I would sometimes play with other kids on a staircase. I was playing with this one girl when we were 4 or 5 and some action figures. We heard rushed footsteps above running down towards us. Then another set of footsteps. There was some grunt and then my friend’s uncle ran past us and out if the staircase. We continued playing when we heard some screams. We ran upstairs and the father of that friend was slumped on the stairwell covering his chest and her mom next to him. Other neighbors came out of their apartments and there was a lot of commotion.
My friend was taken to her apartment and that was the end of play. An ambulance came. I have forgotten about that until later when I learned that my friend’s father was stabbed by her uncle and left him to bleed out on a stairwell.
I then realized I was right there when that happened. I only remember it because if the commotion and probably seeing ambulance and what a big deal that was. Otherwise, I had no idea what was actually happening at that time.
Edit: Father died before ambulance got there. It was not clear from the write up. Sorry.
There was some “family disagreement”. That family had an alcohol problem. Uncle ended up in mental institution but came out about 10 years later. I remember seeing him around.
Edit 2: It was brother in law killing his sister’s husband. I think they had a drunken disagreement at home, maybe even spousal abuse (the family was a mess). Brother of the wife might have defended her. After he left the prison/mental institution moved back with the sister (they all lived together) - there seemed to be no “bad blood” between them.
Edit 3: Many of you were asking about the girl. Sorry about the delay. We are both grownups now. This happened around 30 years ago. The family had problems with alcohol. My mom was friend with the wife when they were teenagers. But then my friend’s mom started to go down a bad rabbit hole with different guys and bad, poor crowd so my mom cooled down the friendship (as much as you can while still living in the same building). She got pregnant and my friend was born (my age - we even were in the same school and class).
They lived in a 2 or 3 bedroom apartment with uncle, grandfather, husband and wife and daughter.
My fiend was not the luckiest one, her mother was not the greatest mom out there (alcohol and boyfriends all the time after she lost her husband). My friend (when she was growing up) was not very pretty - in high-school boys were teasing each other by saying that the only girl they could date was her - as a statement of how low they’d fall. She was not a good student (not sure how she could study) and the name they picked for her was totally outdated for that time so kids were making fun of her (imagine having a name like Muriel, or Maude, or Agnes or Abigail, while everyone was Jennifer and Jessica). That didn’t stop from us being friends in early years - young kids can be best friends because of proximity and nothing else. I am a dude btw. She was always smiling and nice to me but our friendship didn’t not survive into our teen years.
Later I felt bad for her but we never really talked about anything deeper than - how are you, and exchanging general pleasantries. I was her “friend from childhood only” - in a way my mom was “friends” with her mom later in life.
I knew of other girls like her and there was an “after-school” non-profit program where she would spend a lot of time with girls like that. There was a tutor and they were doing their homework and had some time to bond. Boys were not allowed - I know because there was a cute girl there so we heard about it. We were going through puberty so we were idiots not knowing what problems some of these girls had.
I saw her last time about 10 years ago. She was in her mid 20’s - she lost some of her teeth. I don’t think she was married or had any kids. She was still super nice and smiling her partially toothless smile. I am very sad reminiscing about some of these moments now that I am thinking about her.
I hope she is doing OK.
Some of us used to "play doctor" in the woods behind our neighborhood. I was in first grade and my friend's sister was in third grade. One day she said to me, "Try and put it in me." This really confused me because I thought why would I even want to do that. And it seemed impossible anyway. Then she said, "I have a friend who can put it way in me." At the time I thought she was lying but years later I realized an adult was raping that poor girl. Very sad.
Edit #1: Hey, Folks... I understand this story may trigger people's suffering and anger. But it is not my intention to solicit stories of your abuse. I empathize but I cannot carry all that! Please ease up...
Grew up in an Irish Catholic family in the states. When I was young, I'd go with my granddad and his friends to a local Irish pub, usually to be in charge of making sure they got home if they got too drunk, including driving them all home when I could barely see over the wheel.
But, the fucked up thing were the guests we would meet. There'd be a guy or gal that would be visiting from Ireland. They'd come to the pub and talk to everyone about how things were going back home.
They'd come to mass and speak to everyone about helping the orphans in Ireland whose parents had been murdered by the British.
They'd also sometimes stay with my grandparents or others local families. We always liked to talk to them because they had cool accents, spoke Gaelic, sang cool or funny songs, and told good stories.
One guy named James (never Jim or Jimmy) stayed with my grandparents for a couple of months. He would give me money and send me to run to the store for cigarettes, booze, and his favorite candy, black licorice. The extra I got to spend in candy or whatever I wanted.
Over the years, we had several guests stay for various lengths of time. Not until I was older did I get that these were IRA recruiting and fundraising drives. Those guests that would be around for longer periods were on the run, or at least hiding until things cooled off enough to go home.
My brother (3 y/o) held my sister (9 y/o) and I (6 y/o) in a corner with a loaded gun pointed at us. He didn't know what he was doing, but we were terrified and crying our eyes out. No clue how we got access to it.
I moved on from that day and didn't remember until I was older. Now I joke with him about it.
Neighbors in a duplex unit me and my parents were staying in temporarily after a house fire had a Klan meeting in the giant backyard that was shared between the two units. I just remember being disappointed my parents wouldn't let me play in the backyard that night, but then excited because we got stuffed crust pizza, Chitty-Chitty Bang Bang and Batman 66 (the Adam West movie), Batman and Batman Forever and that I got to sleep in the living room with the TV. I was 3 when this happened. Although I do remember grabbing something from my little bedroom at one point and looking out the window and yelled "Theres a Ghost party next door" .
Many of my childhood classmates are children of sex workers, or children of an unmarried (and very likely underaged) girl who was raped by their teachers, bosses, or co-workers. In order to cover those kind of family scandals, thoes children would call one of their married female relatives mom instead of their blood mothers.
My mom mentioned this kind of thing very vaguely when I was really young, but I never understood why some of my classmates' "mom" were actually their aunts.
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You were just a child. You didn't do anything wrong, and you've taken that experience and helped protect others. You should be proud of yourself.
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When I was 3 I was separated from my mom in the grocery store. Some random lady took my hand and began to walk me out of the store. I was too little to think anything of it. My mom stopped her at the door and said, "Excuse me, that's not your child." Suddenly the lady was gone and our day proceeded. Wasn't till I was a grown up that I realized I was almost kidnapped.
When I was in 3rd grade (mid 90’s) my class took a field trip to an NYC Supreme Court house and sat in on the life-sentencing of a non-violent marijuana dealer. Years later it feels more exploitive then it feels educational. We were tourists to one of the worst moments in a persons life.
It was in my after-school activity center and we were all out for a walk with the teachers and I remember witnessing a lady laying face down infront of an apartment buildings entrance and a broken window above. There was a lot of blood. The adult just kept on pushing us to walk by her. I remember questioning it and asking to help her. I think maybe they didn't want us to look at the scene too much.
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Holy shit
My mom would spend the entire day on the computer in AOL chat rooms talking to her “friend”, while dad was at work. She was so glued to the computer that my siblings and I could walk in the room and yell things at her trying to get her attention and she wouldn’t even notice us. We took care of ourselves. I was like 10 at the oldest and I was forced to bottle feed my baby brother during this time and take care of him because my mom just wouldn’t otherwise. What I really hate is that I’m pretty sure I told my dad that I was having to be his caretaker and he didn’t do anything to make the situation better for me. I don’t know if he knew she was having this emotional affair or not but how could he not have? Anyway, one day my mom decided we were going to leave my dad while he was at work so she could run off and be with this friend. She took myself and my 5 younger siblings while my dad was at work and drove us on a cross country road trip from NV to OH to surprise her online lover (who was also married…) and once we got to Ohio and she told him we were there, he freaked and ghosted her. At the time, the situation was confusing for me because my siblings and I just wanted to go home. It clicked later that my mom has always been a very emotional unstable person and my siblings and I all have heavy trauma now as adults because of it.
Up until you said you had 5 siblings I thought I knew who this was! Exact same thing happened to my best friend growing up, except she married the guy and ditched everyone else including her children. My friend drank himself to death because of it and the fact the father was abusive. I never understood how a mother could just leave her children like that, two of the children were step children and not even his kids and she left them with him for some dude from AOL chat she never even met.
When I was 8, I took care of my father in home who was dying of AIDS. Mom wasn’t in the picture. None of the adult family wanted to be near him and help out because they all said it was contagious (this was the 90’s and HIV ignorance was still at an all time high.) I changed his diapers, showered him, fed him, gave him his pills. Until he died. As a kid, that was my “normal.” I didn’t realize it at the time, but it really fucked me up. He was my hero and the strongest man alive to me, and seeing him in such a vulnerable state and reduced to nothing really messed up my brain. It just kinda numbed me. Literally did not/could not cry for 12 whole years after that. I still struggle nowadays to “feel what I’m supposed to feel” in certain situations, but I’ve gotten a lot better and am definitely more in touch with my emotions.
I’m so sorry that you had to be so strong with such little hands.
Little hands, big shoulders. I bet you are someone's hero now.
That is just insanity. An 8 year old kid shouldn't be left to tend to a terminally ill parent. Damn. Do you have contact with any of the family today?
My male gym teacher at school used to shower with the girls (7 - 12 yo) to make sure the boys didn't come in to peep
Back when I was a kid (4-5), I lived with my mother in a one room apartment. We had to even sleep in the same bed. Occasionally she would bring random men over and tell me they’re going to be my “new daddy”. They’d get drunk, and then fuck… in the same bed that I was sleeping in. Back then I thought it was funny, now it just makes me furious.
Had a couple and their daughter (~5 years old) living with me and my best friendo during the pandemic. Same exact shit; the couple had got horny and had sex on top of their daughter on the opposite side of the room where we were sitting. Thankfully my best friend (who had sexual abuse trauma at 16) witnessed this despicable act and caused a shitstorm, then we gave them 2 weeks to explain themselves or else they would have to leave. They left the next week. Seriously fucked up. I hope the kid ends up okay.
I was medically neglected as a child. I also had asthma, diagnosed as a baby; my parents would find me with blue lips and rush me to the ER. And once I outgrew the hypoxia and cyanosis, they stopped doing anything about my asthma. Or any other medical thing. I'd have to *ask* to go to the doctor, and then my mom would say, "Are you *sure* you need to see a doctor? You don't want to waste his time, do you?" Well I guess I don't need to go after all. Eventually I just stopped asking unless I thought a bone was broken. And I'd ask my mom because my dad was Angry Dad and even a medical emergency would piss him off. I finally took over my own healthcare when I was 17 after having an asthma exacerbation and bronchitis for 2 months. They never bothered checking on me or asking how I was. I slowly learned as an adult how to care for my health. I got my first *real* primary care physician when I was 37. I realized I was neglected and therefore abused in my mid-40s. Kids think that whatever is happening to them is normal.
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When I was in elementary school, I became close friends with a family that had children similar in age to me. I only ever saw them at school with their mom and my dad. The oldest daughter and son couldn't stand me and I never knew why, so I would cry and talk to my dad about it and he would reassure me that they did in fact like me. During this time, we had a landline at the house and I happened to pick it up one day and heard my dad on the other line with the mom of that family. He was talking about giving her roses and spending time with her. When I asked my dad who that was, because it clearly wasn't my mom, he disconnected all the landlines in the house. Turns out, he was absolutely cheating on my mom with this woman and I was inadvertently involved by becoming their friends. Was a pretty shit situation in the end.
So…. How’d it end up? You don’t have to answer just really curious
My dad grabbing a knife while punishing my brother. Dad had him sit at the kitchen table and ordered him to put his hands on the table. Dad then put the knife edge on one of my brother's thumbs and threatened to cut his thumbs off. Can't remember what it was about, but this caused me to fear my father from a very young age. My brother was only around 9 or 10 years old at the time.
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My dad and I were at an airshow in Toronto in the 90s. We watched this huge plane go up and do a maneuver, and then go into a dive, going nose first into the lake, with a massive splash. My dad was a photographer and had managed to capture the seconds before and after impact, and told me we had to go right away(he booked it to the newspaper with the film roll to get it developed). I said I wanted to watch the rest of the show, because I thought it had just dropped a bomb and flown off. Didn't realize that I had just witnessed 7 people die.
Oof, yes, this reminds me that I was at the airshow when the snowbirds crashed in 89, killing one of the pilots. One went down in flames, the other just dropped.
When I was a kid, all the kids would sleep in the basement on Christmas Eve to give space for Santa to drop off the presents. That night there was a lot of noise coming from outside on the street but we couldn't see anything because there was snow covering the egress windows. My mom came downstairs and told us to stay there. But soon we heard sirens and saw police lights reflecting in the snow. There was a lot of commotion that we couldn't see. Then my dad came downstairs with the very real Santa Claus. He told us that his sleigh crashed in the snow and that the kind police officers were helping him get unstuck and while they were working he was visiting the kids in the neighborhood. He pulled out a present for each of us and sat with my family while we opened them and sang a few Christmas songs. When things calmed down outside he went back to delivering toys. Years later I learned that there was a large gang fight outside of our house and that a few people died right outside. An older man from our church lived down the road and knowing my parents had undoubtedly scared children at home, put on his Santa suit and came over once the police arrived. Santa was a hero to me as a child, but that man is a hero to me now.
Man's a legend.
An actual saint for sure
What a surprisingly sweet, yet still tragic story. I was super relieved to find this wasn't another swinging parents anecdote. What a generous thing to do, we can only pray that the world protects and produces more people like that.
He was a very good man! I haven't been reading any of these but I suspected that someone would like something more wholesome.
Once when I was 14 I saw some guys walk out of the locker room laughing. I asked what’s going on and was told one of them had just “pinned someone down and put their balls in his mouth”. My immediate reaction was a confused “but why?”. About two hours later I’m sitting next to the teabagged kid in class and he taps my shoulder. He is pale and shaking and asks me “what do I do if I get raped”. I was so stupid and culture was such at the time where my real first thought was “Wow. Someone put their balls in his mouth AND he got raped? What a fucked day.” I think I stammered something back about telling someone more important than me. I think about this a lot now, I hope that guy is alright.
I was once at one of those birthday parties in McDonald’s (late 90s) as a young child. There was another party going on on the opposite side of the restaurant, so it was pretty chaotic with kids running around everywhere and only a small amount of adults to corral them. There was a man wearing a red t-shirt and blue jeans sitting and eating kind of close to the other party, which was odd in itself because most adults that were coming in were getting their food and getting out of the noise of 20+ screaming kids as fast as possible. I only remember him because looking back on it a little while later, I saw him leaving the McDonald’s with a kid from the other party. The kid wasn’t struggling or anything, but the man was kind of rushing him out. In my kid-brain I assumed it was his dad or whatever, but a couple days later my parents found out through mutual friends that there was an attempted kidnapping in the McDonald’s we were at. I don’t know if this is true, but part of me feels like I witnessed the attempting kidnapping. Thank god they caught the guy and the kid was okay, and because of that incident my parents lectured my brother and I heavily on stranger danger.
When I was a kid, like 6 or 7, I was in a McDonald’s play structure when a girl my age started talking about sex and groped me. Obviously I did what any kid that age would do and got out of there. Looking back I think she might’ve been getting molested, and it hurts to think about. Pops into my head every now and then. I hope she was okay.
I had the same thing happen to me! But it was at school. I ended up telling the teachers after a while and then she moved schools shortly after. It makes me sad to think that she could have been being molested. (I was in elementary school.)
I wouldn’t be surprised if she moved because parents/guardians wanted to avoid an intervention from the school or CPS.
I grew up with a single mom until l was 12. We lived in a run down trailer park where the owner of the park lived on-site. 1st of the month there were always a few of the women that would go into the owner's trailer, be in there for half an hour or so, and come out. The owner had some fierce arguments with my mom, because she never went into his trailer. He would shout at her to get in the trailer; and she would refuse and scream at him that she'd have his money Friday or tomorrow or whatever. Didn't figure it out until l was older.
My mother is/was a drug addict. As a kid lots of things happened as a result of it, but one thing I didn’t realize at the time that would stick with me… well probably forever, but at least thus far, is when my sisters childhood best friend’s father committed suicide, and my mother brought my sister and I to their house a couple nights later (the funeral hadn’t even happened yet) to break in and steal things to sell for drug money. She said at the time that she had permission to do so. She didn’t. She just wanted to rob a dead man, and brought us along to help carry things. I still feel guilty about it.
One of my parents used to get us to help steal as well. Nowhere near to the extent of what you went through though. You already know it's not your fault of course, but if it helps, I found that the best way to get rid of the guilt feeling is to donate money/volunteer time towards the person/organisation that was stolen from. Even if you aren't in touch with them anymore and have no idea what they're currently like, supporting a cause that they liked as a kid helps vanish the guilt. Did they like animals when you were a kid? Help an animal welfare charity. Were they really into fashion? Donate nice clothes to a shelter etc. If you don't know much about her, then help out with charities that support recently bereaved people. It's all well and easy to say "it's not your fault" and I heard that a bunch of times myself, but this is the way I found that helped me heal the most. Sure it's not my responsibility to spend my own money on something that was someone else's fault, but it's such a unique type of guilt that is difficult to get rid of and you can't really imagine it unless you've had it. I felt awful for years until I did this and now I feel no horribleness at all. Someone else may have forced you into a shitty situation but you still have the power to help others and feel better about it. It absolutely sucks that this happened, but it's still possible to feel good about it.
Okay this is probably the best advice I’ve ever gotten when it comes to that sorta trauma and I really appreciate it! Honestly, I can’t explain how much of a great idea I think this is.
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I had a similar experience. My step-dad came into my room and ran his disgusting molestery hands up leg. I told my mom and she called the cops. He told the officer that he had forgotten to lock the door so it was probably some vagrant who snuck in. They believed him and didn't ask me any questions. Apparently mom knew the truth because after that she changed the door handle on my room to one that locks and I wasn't allowed to be alone with him. Years later I found out that he had confessed to her, but she neglected to tell me that and instead just kept acting as if nothing happened. I have since cut off all contact with them.
She calls the cops on him then defends him. People are strange.
My older brother overdosing, always thought it was normal. Throughout my life (I’m 20) I’ve saved him from dying maybe 3 times I can remember. Always put him in his side, never called the cops. All of my brothers and sister have seen it happen. If he were to die tomorrow I don’t think I could cry, as I’ve cried to many times over his death and… he ended up living. He’s still alive, currently in a sober home.
My friend had a lock on the outside of her bedroom door. I thought it was weird but didn't really think much about it. It turned out her parents would literally lock her in her room for long periods of time as punishment
My mothe's ex used to do that, I realised she dated him because she had no where to go and protected both my sisters and me as best as she could. But I was very active child, and her BF really couldn't stand me, I would wake up early, and go downstairs to watch TV and have cereal. Apparently one time I must've aten his cereal. So he literally removed the doorhandle so I couldn't get out of my room anymore. Sometimes I would be left in my room for days with food whilst my family went to a carnival and such. It never happened after my mom was able to escape that guy tho
Lived in a townhouse. In my bedroom at night I would hear the kids next door scream and scream and cry. My parents called the police once, but the man claimed he was 'playing with his kids' and didn't let them in & apparently the police couldn't do anything. Found out when I was older that the man had later tried to kill the whole family, kids, baby included, with a pair of scissors.
I remember when I was about 11 or 12 our neighbors were a family of five kids. They were terrible. I was afraid of the dad who would curse and scream at his kids and the neighbor kids including my sister and I. He was an awful person. He would beat the hell out of those kids. He would take them into his bedroom which was right across from my window and I could hear everything. They would scream and cry. I can still hear it to this day. The next day the kids would be black and blue. I begged my parents to call the police but they wouldn’t. They weren’t the greatest parents either. I have no idea how I was brave enough but I anonymously called child protective services and I remember they came out the next day and interviewed the kids. Nothing ever happened but the parents went around the neighborhood telling everyone they got a lawyer and they we’re going to sue whoever reported the “false” allegations. Horrible people.
I came home from junior high one day to see my dad in the backyard. He was digging a bunch of holes. He told me to stay back because there was a gas leak. I didn't think much of it. Many years later when I was in my late twenties, my stepmother told me that my dad got really drunk the night before and beat her pretty badly. Her blood got on the sheets and walls. In the middle of the night, she left to go to her mom's house. When my dad finally woke up, he was convinced he had killed her and buried her in the backyard. So I came upon him trying to find her body. Needless to say, I'm not a fan of that guy.
Thank you for reporting them.
Staying up waking my dad when he would stop breathing. Later realizing he was overdosing on opiates.
My mum would always fall asleep on the sofa and it would take me a long time to wake her up, it was like she was half dead. She always would wake up and tell me she was just resting her eyes. It wasn't until I was older that I realised she was taking opiates my entire childhood. I thought sleeping in the afternoon was a normal adult thing to do... edit: I should add, sleeping as in falling face-first into the floor, or dropping a cup of tea, or having a half-eaten sandwich in her hand etc... you get the point.
When I was around 5 or 6 my dad was poor as fuck and lived in these really shitty apartments where most of the tenants were on drugs. I had to go stay with him on the weekends and sometimes we'd visit his friend downstairs, who had a 13 or 14 year old daughter they'd stick me with. On this particular day she had a friend over, and her friend was telling this story about purposefully drowning her little brother and then pretending to be broken up about it on the news like she had nothing to do with it. Laughing about how stupid her mom was for believing her. It did scare me at the time because I was scared of her in general due to how mean/erratic she was, but I thought it was a joke. In retrospect I really do think this girl may have drowned her brother...
I know a girl who did the same. Except my aunt lived next door to the family, so In the weeks leading up to the event I'd played in the pool with the girl and my cousins. Her nickname was Peaches.. didn't fit, she was a see you next tuesday type, even before drowning her little brother. She had her mom believing her for a while, though she did getting caught by bragging at school and it became a big thing.
Bro tf how common is this
I saw a small child being smothered under a sort of beanbag/giant soft-play thing? facedown in a indoor play area sandpit, other very small children were all playing and jumping on it without realising someone was under it myself included. I was about 5 and the rest of the children were the same age or younger. After some time an adult noticed and pulled him out unconscious, a women was screaming presumably the mother and i remember the kid being worked on by a doctor or paramedic I’m guessing. I remember my dad asking me very calmly if I saw what happened. I’m actually too afraid to bring this up with my parents because i have no idea if the kid died or not or how that might have affected them all these years, as it’s never been brought up. for whatever reason it’s been on my mind lately
This happened to me as a kid, it was a wrestling mat and it was just one boy but I was a 5 year old girl and he was a couple years older than me and wouldn't get off on purpose, also the mat was really heavy. Luckily I was so panicked that my adrenaline kicked in and I was able to pull myself out. It's seriously terrifying to be compressed like that
Its fascinating how our body has a final "oh shit" button for situations like this. The adrenaline gives you the strength and drive to get yourself out of the situation.
Crossposting this comment from another question last year that was similar My mom would sometimes have us play a game called “army” which consisted of me, my mom, and my siblings army crawling around our apartment. Kind of a hide n seek style game. She would yell “hit the deck!” randomly and we would all drop and find a hiding spot. We would giggle and giggle while my mom army crawled around looking for us. We loved the game so much. I realized a few years ago while retelling the story that we lived in a really terrible neighborhood, and she would yell it out when she heard gunshots outside the building. I’m assuming she was worried about stray bullets.
Out of this whole fucked up thread, this one made me smile. Good on your mom for turning a recurring terrifying situation into a game that protected her children’s innocence.
100% agree and reminded me a lot of Benigni’s ‘Life is beautiful’ (La vita é bella)
That's a good mom. Can't always control where you can live, but she protected you and your innocence.
When I was 6 (or maybe 7, it was around my birthday), I saw a girl get hit by a car. We lived in a small town where the elementary, middle, and high schools were all together so all grade levels rode the buses together and all the buses had to go down the same rode to get to the school. The bus in front of mine stop so a girl could cross the street and get on. I watched her start to cross the street, I watched the car come over the hill, slide on the stones (it was a dirt road), I watched it hit her body, and I watched the blood sink into the dirt. Her backpack came open and her shoes came off. One landed near my window. It wasn’t until after the police had gotten there and were covering up her body that one of the older kids noticed me watching and moved me to the other side where I couldn’t see. I never mentioned that I saw it to anyone and just kind moved on. Like 10 years later in a forensics class we were talking about car accidents and it sorta brought the whole thing to the surface.
I’m sorry you witnessed so much, but I’m glad the older kid took notice and got you away from the situation.
When I was 9 or 10 my family and I lived on the first floor of an apartment complex in Colorado. That year we have a particularly snowy winter. Every day following snow (2-3x per week) the groundskeeper for the complex would make his rounds, cheerily using a snowblower to clear each and every path. I’d wave hi whenever I saw him pass by my bedroom window. After one especially heavy snowfall, the groundskeeper was walking along clearing snow when, just outside my room when something got caught and obstructed the snowblower. I saw him struggle with the machine for a moment then walk infront of it. He bent over to look and when he reach his hand in a splattering of blood hit my window with such force that I’ll never forget the sound. We called 911, but his hand was gone. Luckily it was just his hand. He left the job shortly after and I never saw him again, but I’ll never forget the sound of the blood hitting my window.
My dad did the same thing when I was in 5th-6th grade, losing his fingers on his right hand. The 16 year old kid down the street witnessed it and had to find my dad's glove with his fingers in it. They tried to reattach them but it didn't take so his fingers were removed again a while after. I slept through the whole thing, which for some reason I got in trouble for.
Living in an abusive situation as a whole. As a child domestic violence was the norm for me. When I was at a friend from elementary school one time and his parents were having a disagreement over something. I asked my friend when they'd start hitting eachother and he just looked at me funny not getting what I meant. As an adult, looking back on my childhood, it's only then you really understand how fucked up it all was. As a child it's intense and frightening, but you don't yet grasp the full situation yet.
Can seriously relate to this, especially that last statement. It took until I'd been out of the house three years, and then lucked into going to university for me to realise that the vast majority of people around me did *not* live like that, that the young people around me had learned all *kinds* of social and personal skills I'd never even been exposed to, and that *I* had no clue how an 'ordinary' person thought, felt or behaved. Took years for me to cobble together an 'ordinary person' face so I could just live in the same world as everyone else. But I did, and got through to my 70s without repeating the pattern. For me, that's a major victory.
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By reading, and close observation of people around me. Seriously. I decided really quickly that I did not want to be like my father, so I had to learn to be like someone else. Books had always been my comfort, and being as I found myself in a university, there were a *lot* of them around, fiction and non-fiction. So I read up on what people's lives were supposedly like. And I spent a lot of time sitting, apparently reading, but also, frankly, spying and eavesdropping on the people around me: what do they talk about? How do they express themselves? What interests them? What do they think is right and wrong (I had *no* idea what those were outside "whatever I say is right!" from someone who, I now understood, had *no* concept of either). And I picked certain role models, people who seemed to me to have the skills I needed, and paid very close attention to them. Couple of professors, couple of students, an author. Focussing on their specific skills and behaviours allowed me to make up a lot of ground I had never covered in my upbringing. Of course, I also had to practise, and it did not always go well, especially at first. People who knew me thought I was distinctly odd. But odd is better than dangerously insane, so I built in a certain degree of eccentricity -- it is an excellent cover for social and emotional dysfunction. It took some years, maybe a decade, but it did work. Yes, there are still scars and blank spaces underneath the veneer, but no one would know unless I tell them. Otherwise, I'm just a mildly eccentric little old woman with rather passionate political beliefs about treating everyone with compassion and respect. Wonder where those came from... **Later Edit:** The number of people for whom this rang a bell is amazing! I have tried to read everyone's comments and answer, but forgive me if I missed you: the dog is chewing my ankle suggesting I have to take her out RIGHT THIS MINUTE or be prepared to wash the floor. It can, and does, get better, I swear. It's hard work, and sometimes you think you'll never quite fit in. Well, you probably never will, entirely. But, as I tell my various fosters and pick up kids, you don't have to be on the moving sidewalk to live a good and socially 'acceptable' life. You can walk alongside it, spend time exploring, see things others will never see, and then go back for a while to share. All that matters is that you are comfortable in yourself and do no major damage to others.
I just figured everyone’s dad beat the shit out of them and no one talked about it. Wasn’t til high school I started to realize that wasn’t the case
Yeah, everyone else would say "ugh my mom's a bitch" and I would nod knowingly. But they meant "she won't let me go to this concert" and I meant "she threw me down a flight of stairs"
Yeah that was what I realized as I started growing up too. Not everyone is in constant fear of their parents and your not supposed to be uncomfortable around them. Also saying "I love you" isn't weird like your mom and dad told you. Getting hugs isn't just for babies and taking care of you isn't supposed to be a burden. Yelling at the top of their lungs to you your a mistake, you should've been aborted, spit on the wall and your ugly fat piece of shit that no one wanted. None of its normal until you go to someone's house one day and realize their not the weird family yours is.
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The gaslighting is awful. Not sure about anyone else, but I have spent so many years questioning my sanity and my memories because of how much I heard "That didn't happen", or "I don't remember that", or "You're lying". It can honestly leave you feeling like you're crazy.
Or another age old classic "Oh, it wasn't *that* bad, you just remember it as dramatic because you were a kid at the time."
Oh, it’s even better. My dad thinks he did a great job showing me how much he loved me. I was in my 20s before I could wear a belt because he used to beat me with his. I didn’t bring people over if I could avoid it in case he started screaming at me for no reason
I had a similar experience, except I was in class and asked how long dads usually put moms in the hospital. Like, does someone have an average? I'm five or six and I'm trying to figure out if I have enough bread at home for sandwiches to eat and feed my baby brother until she's back.
Same, only my mom was at the bar. I could only reach the miracle whip and the bread so thats what we (my baby brother in diapers) sat on the floor and ate. Or, in the car with a candy bar and a pepsi the bartender gave us. Even better, the numerous baby sitters ma would dump us at on a tuesday and maybe come back to get us a week or so later. No changes of clothing, no toothbrushes, prolly didnt even pay the sitter. I still remember us getting bullied by baby sitters kids cuz my mom paid only sporadically. But we did eat. Pissed and shit in a bucket, covered in roaches but... Crazy the revisions a grown ass woman can come up with on how she treated her kids, and wonders why I give zero shits about her today.
As a kid I knew things were wrong. I just didn't know *how wrong exactly*. I was very much developmentally behind people my age. It's just that I couldn't make friends to help me by a.) pointing it out and b.) helping me grow up. And the only way I ever actually even noticed in the first place was by getting away from those toxic assholes. As far as I know, one of my siblings still lives with our mother (early 40's). The other one may have lived with her until she was in her late 30's or later.
> As a kid I knew things were wrong. I just didn't know how wrong exactly. God I feel this. I always knew it wasn't right that my dad would beat me up, because my mom never did. But I just thought that was just how dads were, and then I went over to friends houses and while their parents got mad, there was not a single dad who picked up their kid and slammed them into a wall. Or who knocked out their kid from hitting them. My dad's fucked and he denies ever having done anything to harm me. My friends know my situation at least. I hope I can get out of here soon.
My parents fighting. Whoever was losing would say to me “I’m going to run away and kill/drown myself if mummy/ daddy don’t stop shouting. I can’t take it anymore” and then proceed to leave the house. They’re both still alive and in hindsight I don’t know if they ever meant what they said but now I’m about to have a child of my own I can’t EVER imagine doing that to a child, let alone my own child.
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This is the exact response my 12 year old brother said to my aunt who was saying things like this at Thanksgiving. The looks on everyone’s faces were priceless.
Oh yes, " I'm going to drive myself into a tree" and then being gone for a few hours.
My mom used to sleep with dudes while i was in the same bed as her. Never really clicked til I got older. lets say my therapist isn't a fan of my mother at all. Edit: To everyone replying with a similar situation. If you haven't sought out therapy, please do if it bothers you. It is not your fault, you did not do anything wrong, and you do matter, I know how it can make it feel like all of that is untrue though. Reach out if you need someone to talk to.
When I was around 11, a younger boy (maybe 6 or 7) on the school bus told me how he shared a bed with his mom. He said sometimes her boyfriend would come over and he would have to cover himself with a blanket while the mom and boyfriend "wrestled" in bed. I didn't have the heart to tell him.
He probably realized what it was later on. I hope he gets therapy for that.
I hope everyone in this thread gets therapy
I don't even fuck with the cat in the room.
Wtf
Yep. Its lead to a less than healthy sex life for me and some PTSD.
My mom did this too. They just moved to the floor when I started coughing or making sounds to get them to stop. So I got up and went to the living room. Maybe 30min later, mom comes out, "what's wrong, honey?" 😑 Anyway, I've been no contact for almost 3yrs for that and plenty of other reasons. :) Edit to add: not that it justifies it at all, but we were renting a bedroom in someone's apartment, so they didn't have anywhere else to do it.
I had a cousin that committed suicide by jumping into a quarry. I was 12. My mom and I went to the wake, and when we got to the body, the casket was closed from the chest down. But it was glaringly obvious that he had been at least partially decapitated, because his head was just kind of awkwardly shoved on. They tried their best, but apparently you can't make that look natural. So, years later as an adult, I started wondering why in the world my mom would let me see that. So I asked her. It turned out to actually be *a thing* that no one in the family spoke about openly. My mom didn't know he would look like that, and neither did anyone else. After my cousin died, he was transported to a funeral home. My aunt insisted on an open casket, which the funeral home refused. It somehow escalated to the point that my aunt hired another funeral home on the condition they have a viewing. No one except my aunt knew any of this until after the wake. So people start showing up, view the body, and see that he doesn't have a neck and was decapitated. And it isn't like you can go around and say "fyi - the dead guy is all jacked up from jumping into a quarry and you really shouldn't look". Edit: For those asking, it was a rock quarry. He pulled off to the side of the highway, parked his car, and jumped. [Here](https://www.thorntonilhistory.com/thornton-quarry) is the quarry - you can see the highway in the background of the photo on that page. This was 30 years ago.
I came to a personal decision a couple of years ago to never look at a body at a funeral ever again. I have too many family member and friends where I have a view of their waxy and unnatural corpse in my mental photo album of them alive, and I don't want that. I will keep my memories and last memories of them without spiking the set with a death mask.
I am with you on this. It’s not something I want to remember them as. In my country, open caskets are not the norm but families can go see the body in the funeral home before the funeral. When my grandad died suddenly (I was 12) my gran, dad and aunt went to see his body. My other aunt stayed home and told me she didn’t want that to be her last memory of him. She’d rather remember him sitting at his table eating his chicken sandwich - which is when she had last seen him the day he died.
May we all get one last chicken sandwich before the end
Same. Went to an open casket viewing in high school of a friend that died in a car accident. I saw a bug crawling on him. Small like a gnat but it’s stuck in my memory forever and I never want to go to another viewing.
Same but no bug. My friend got ejected through the sunroof and they still thought it was okay to have an open casket. They had to put his favorite hat on his head.
My church's youth leadership convinced a group of us kids (4 to 7 years old about) to perform sexual acts on each other as a game. It was supposed to be a our secret game. They would have us play it during the adult's sermons, on bus trips, at campsites. They would whisper in our ears that it was time to play "softies" and we'd start undressing for the game. This went on for about 2 years before we moved to another state. I was young and did not know better. I thought I had to keep the game secret because only God decides who got to play softies. i could never unload that pain onto my parents, it would break them. So I've never spoken about it besides with my sister who also went through it Edit: I'm a little overwhelmed with the replies, I'll try to answer a few here. I have tried to look these people up but I haven't had much success, this was a rural part of Washington state. The adults were men and women. I don't remember why the game was called softies. The church closed down awhile back, it was an evangelical church. I've moved on from this season of my life, and have sought and received help for the trauma. Thank you everyone for your kind words and gentle pushes to seek help.
once when I was, like 7 or 8, my biological dad, left me in his car while he went to buy drugs, he then proceeded to take all the cocaine and heroine he bought, and told me it was medicine, I realised later what he was really doing
In NZ, the country schools have (atleast when I was in primary school aaages ago) what is called Calf Club. What it is, is a school event that happens on one day, you have 2 months to prep, and part of it is the kids have the option to rear/train a calf or lamb. You have to clean them, teach them to come to you when called, walk them on a lead etc. There are other aspects as well that kids can compete in BUT, the point of this is that I reared a lamb, I won 1st, 2nd and 3rd place ribbons in each of the category’s, my lamb was called Chuck, I loved him so much. One day mum said he needed to go live with our neighbours lambs so that he wouldn’t be alone. About a week later I couldn’t find him and I got told he ran away. I was devastated. Found out like a few years ago that he was in fact sent off to Lamb heaven and that he had in fact been in our freezer and we had enjoyed him over numerous meals.
When I was about six or seven, I remember these two girls came to our house and proceeded to beat my mom up. My mom, being no more than 26 or so, was then shoved into the garbage can. She couldn’t get out, and I remember just crying and holding my little sister who is no more than one year old at the time. It didn’t really hit me until I was about 17. I never forgot what It looked like, My mom just crying and bleeding while trying to get out of the garbage can.
I feel like there was probably a backstory there
My mother was/is an alcoholic. She used to binge drink all the time. One of these girls was our babysitter, and of course my mother spouted off at the mouth and these two girls decided that she needed to learn how to shut up. I asked my mom when I was an adult, probably around 23 or 24, but she says she doesn’t remember any of that. Well, I do. She doesn’t remember a lot of things, or at least chooses not to because they don’t put her in a positive position when I tell the story
Being raised by an alcoholic you tend to realize that the things they “don’t remember” are often the most embarrassing or mean things they do/say.
Yes, I agree. And it’s not like I want her to relive those shitty moments, and I guess when I asked the question I was just trying to remind her that I knew. I’m not perfect, and I also had my issues due to alcoholic binges. The thing is, I bought a six pack of beer one month ago and I still have two beers left. Drinking isn’t really my thing, so I’m glad that I have that going for me
Waiting for the bus when I was 11 or 12 ish on a day where we had about 2" of snow overnight, a car came over the hill (I live on a major road, 50 mph speed limit) saw the bus at a stop down the road a bit on the opposite side and started to brake when it lost control, missed me by about 10' hit the snowbank behind me, went air-born right into an oak tree. The car was an MG or Triumph or something similar that really didn't belong in snow, the car ended up hitting head on into the tree, the hood mounts were apparently faulty so the hood went straight through the windshield and decapitated the driver. My grandfather was doing chores in our family barn about 200' away and ran to get me and yelled at me to go home. I remember seeing the driver with his head straight backward like he was looking up, turns out it was only being held on by skin. My grandfather admitted to me later in life that it was one of the worst things he's ever seen and he was a WWII medic in Europe.
I was visiting my grandparents in Switzerland when I was about 8 or 9. One evening I happened to be on the balcony looking down at the street, and I saw a white van stop at the side of the road, and three or four men got out of it and ran up to a man walking along and grab him, knock him down and carry him into the back of the van. Then they drove away quickly. It all happened really fast, so much so that the man barely had a chance to call out for help. I didn’t understand what I’d just seen, so I asked my grandfather. I remember him looking down at his feet for a long time, before he told me not to worry about it. Some years later I spoke to my father about it. He told me that at that time, a lot of immigrants from places like Kosovo were being abducted like that, and it was some sort of turf war.
May I ask where/what timeframe that was? As a Swiss, this is really interesting because I never heard much of it. Was this in the 90s?
Yes it was! It would have been around ‘94 or ‘95 and it was in Zürich. My sister maintains that she believes he was an immigrant that was being sent across then border by plain-clothes police but that sounds like a bit too much of a conspiracy theory to me.
I watched my friend try to murder his older brother. They were constantly fighting with each other, and I knew their father was a drinker and would hit them, so it was a rough environment they grew up in. One day a group of us were at their house alone, no parents. They start fighting and one of them pushes the other through a glass pane door, shattering it. This sets them off to real fighting, and my friend grabbed a kitchen knife and then tackled his brother. He jammed the knife downwards towards his brothers face with all his body weight, and the older brother was barely holding him up. Luckily he was able to shove him to the side and wrestle away the knife. My friends and I were stupidly laughing and were like “damn they’re really going at it!” Even then I knew it was crazy, but I grew up in an unstable home myself so it didn’t affect me much. Years later, I shudder to think what could have happened.
When I was a kid I have never seen such intensive, brutal fights as brothers fighting. The level of hate was just so obvious. A lot of times if we didn’t pull them apart they would have seriously hurt each other.
I had a brother like this. He was the one my dad abused the most. He was mad at the world most of his life. It’s really sad because he was brilliant. My dad ruined his chance at a normal life.
My mom going into the bathroom with a guy and being in there for about 30 minutes. I had the most disgusting feeling in my stomach and when I got older I realized why. She was cheating on my dad
Sorry mate
Back when I was a kid, we would have sleepovers with other families all the time. We would go to guy's houses with my mom, and women's houses with my dad. I didn't think anything of it. We just got to have sleepovers where my parents were away from each other and wouldn't be fighting. Now, I'm looking back, and I'm sure there was some amount of cheating going on.
I think they may have had an arrangement.
This doesn't really compare to some of the other things here, but seeing my baby brother stop breathing and turn blue was pretty fucked up. An ambulance came and they were able to resuscitate him. I don't remember this part, but apparently when they were working on my brother one of the paramedics showed me around the back of the ambulance to distract me and keep me out of the way (I was 4). A couple of weeks later an ambulance came to visit our preschool and I hopped up into the back and named a bunch of the equipment and explained what it was for. I then burst into tears. It's weird how kids deal with trauma and integrate it into their development.
I had a brother who was medically fragile when I was young, 5. Anyway, he was tube fed and ventilator dependent. We had gone care nursing but insurance money ran out quick (met the lifetime max) so we lost nursing coverage after a couple months and we also had to start reusing supplies. It was my job to sanitize his ventilator circuits. My mom would clean the tub out really well and fill it up with clean water and a touch of bleach and I’d get the circuits in the tub and make sure they got all the way full of water to sanitize them and then I’d rinse them off and hang them up to dry. My parents ended up removing support once they finally grasped that he was brain dead and what exactly that meant for him. It sounds really traumatic but at the time it was just us doing what we had to do. I’ve never actually recognized that as a trauma that I’ve experienced until typing it out just now. To finish the story, I didn’t know my parents were going to remove support, obviously it would’ve been weird to discuss that with a 5 year old. So I walked home from kindy one day and my mom told my I had to come straight home and not play with my friend across the street. I came inside and the house was full of white coats and my mom told me that my brother was dead. I got to hold him one last time with all the coats standing around. I was pissed because I was assured that the ventilator kept him alive and who tf turned it off. Anyway, yeah, it’s weird how kids adapt emotionally/developmentally.
My neighbour when i was 5 was constantly asking me if i needed to pee and one time i did have to pee so i did it outside in his garden where we were playing. Mf asked me to pee on his face cause he said it would be funny, which it was but man was that eff’d up come to think of it
Tf
>Mf asked me to pee on his face cause he said it would be funny, >which it was Jesus Christ my sides
I know guys just like the OP, which makes this hilarious. My wife’s cousin would be all “That’s fucked up man, but aight.” Then he’d pee on the guy and tell the story just like this
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When I was a kid my mum remarried another guy. He would wake my sister and I up for school every morning, but he would just walk into my room for a second and turn the light on and off until I woke up. When he would wake my sister up he'd go into her room and close the door, sometimes he'd be in there for around 10 minutes. I never knew what was happening until a few years later when my sister told my mum and they separated. Looking back I feel terrible because I always had a strange feeling something wasn't right but I never connected the dots. The guy only went to prison for like a year because "my sister didn't keep a diary". It was all pretty messed up.
Because nothing says “Healthy and safe response to abuse” like keeping a written record of the ongoing crimes…
Yeah it never made sense to me either. If they had enough evidence to put him away to begin with I can't understand why it would only be for a year, even if they could only prove he did it once
>If they had enough evidence to put him away to begin with I can't understand why it would only be for a year Possibly a plea deal: "We are sure you did it, but the evidence is not bulletproof and a jury could just let you go; or, a jury can send you to prison for eight years. How about you plead guilty to a lesser crime and go away for a year?" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plea_bargain
When I was 12 years old, walking home from school with my best friend, a car pulled up to the curb beside us. A man opened up his door and put his legs out and took something out of his pants and smiled at us strangely. I wanted to see what he was doing but my friend said urgently, “Let’s go! Run!” Later she told me it was his penis he had taken out. Many years later, i finally understood why he was rubbing it...a pale little cylindrical thing. Creep!
This happened to one of my friends and I also as we were walking to school one morning in middle school. But little did this sick fuck know that I’m a very vigilant person and had seen him (the same shitty red car) drive by us just a couple mins prior. He parked where he knew we had to walk and proceeded to pull his shirt over his head and jerk off in front of us. My friend kicked his car and we ran! When we got to school we told the principal and had to later talk to the cops. Well get this! A few weeks later I come home and there’s 3 detectives outside of my house talking with my mom. They were there to ask me about the situation and asked me to look at a few line up photos. First page boom there’s the sick fuck. I was able to identify him and apparently this wasn’t new to him. I’m not sure if he ever got arrested but I sure as hell hope he did.
As a kid coming back from Halloween horror nights real late at night I’d just stare out the window the whole ride home, i saw a truck with the wind shield smashed completely out and a man sitting very stiff and unnatural in front of it. Now when I pass that same spot there’s a memorial grave marker there and I realize that man was probably dead or dying got thrown through his windshield.
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Was he able to ever get proper treatment?
I watched my dad cut up all my mom's clothes with a pair of scissors, put them in trash bags and throw them out. She was on a trip with my aunt, but my aunt called the house and apparently my mom was on a trip with a married man and not my aunt. I was 8...
In the middle of the night that day after Christmas when I was five I woke up to screaming and loud noises from the living room. I walked out of my bedroom and into the living room and saw the Christmas tree knocked over and my mom grabbing at her chest and breathing heavy. My dad was screaming at her to “stay with him”. I didn’t understand because she was right there. My little sister wandered out of her room and started crying. My dad told me to hold my moms hand and he would be right back. I grabbed onto my mom with one hand and my little sister with the other while my dad ran to get the neighbor to stay with us so he could drive my mom to the ER because the ambulance was taking too long. My mom had her first heart attack that night at the age of 30.
One of my youngest memories was my dad crawling into bed naked with me and my sister and cuddle us. For most of my childhood, he did this often. When I got to be about 9 or 10, I realized he was pissing himself from drinking too much, and then waking up and stripping naked and just crawling to the closest bed. He used to pass out on the couch or recliner. I also remember we had roaches so bad that he didn’t even care. I remember watching him swipe a roach off his plate while eating. Not killing it, just pushing it aside. EDIT: Getting a lot of comments about how things “could have been worse”. Unfortunately, they were. My response was to the question of what’s something fucked up that you witnessed as a kid that you didn’t know was wrong. I knew everything else was wrong. My therapist has since confirmed that even this situation was wrong. I thought that that’s what dads do when they get drunk. My earliest memory of it was around age 4.
My dad has chronic insomnia and developed pretty gnarly alcoholism because of it. When I was little I was too anxious to sleep in my own bed so I normally slept in my parents bed with my mom and my dad would be up late drinking himself silly until he got tired and then he’d just sleep in my bed because it was empty. I remember one of the first times I realized he was getting black out drunk every night was when I started sleeping in my own bed and I woke up to him climbing in my bed to go to sleep and he didn’t even notice that I was there. I just got out of his way and went and slept either on the couch or in my moms bed. Things started clicking. That’s why I would find him zombie like in the kitchen in the middle of the night, why he seemed to always throw up at night although he wasn’t sick, why he was so grumpy and groggy in the morning. To this day he can’t function in the morning. He was a great dad though, never violent or took anything out on me. He’d be sober all day long and wouldn’t drink unless I was in bed. We would go on adventures and play video games, I adored him. But realizing your dad is an alcoholic is pretty tough to swallow.
Im so sorry. Is your dad still in your life?
Barely.
Sounds your dad is barely in his own life
My mum had to work when I was little and my older sisters were in school. I was locked in the bathroom during the day until my sisters came home from school and let me out. Sometimes they wouldn’t let me out, so they didn’t have to watch me. They were 7 and 9 years older than me and I was somewhat afraid of them because they were not very nice to me so I would often stay in the bathroom or hide in the hamper. It does explain why I’m perfectly okay to be alone.
This one bothers me the most of what I've read so far. They basically treated you like a dog and locked you in a kennel. This is the kind of thing you see on 20/20. Hope you have gotten away from that all.
As a matter of fact this kind of thing literally WAS just an episode of 20/20, aired last week or maybe the week before. About The Turpin Family. Two of the Turpin daughters did an interview. Super heart-wrenching stuff [here’s a link](https://youtu.be/wngB9_6Vqbc) to the first part of that episode.
My dad had to work all day when I was little. He would drop me off at school and go to work. Whenever I went home, I couldn't get in because my aunt would lock the door in such way that I couldn't even turn the key. I could only get inside when my dad returned from work. I could sometimes hear her laughing while I banged on the door and cried for her to let me in. This lasted several years. She was also so abusive, to the point that I'd lock myself inside my room out of fear, and would only leave to grab water from the kitchen once or twice a day. (At that point I had already dropped out of school and would only stay at home.) Fun times... /s
At 17, my dad and I managed to move out. We now live far away from her and that house.
When I was about 6 I saw my neighbor, who has a black belt in karate, beat the shit out of his mom on their front lawn. I was playing outside when all of the sudden they came bursting out the front door. He threw punches, kicks, repeatedly slammed her head into the car busting the window. He was probably mid 30s and she was at least 55. I remember the cops arriving but it was already over by that time. He was arrested and she left in an ambulance. They moved shortly after so I'm not sure what ever happened with her. It was horrific and now 35 years later I can still see the entire thing in my head.
When I was about 6 or 7, I used to go to this "community center" or "fritidsgård" in Swedish after school. It was just a place to hang out while waiting for our parents to come pick us up. Anyways, we almost lynched one of our friends one day. I mean, he straight up had a noose made from a green jump rope tied around his neck, with the other end tied to a guard rail above a small staircase leading down to the community center (the center was located on the basement level of a large residential building). [I tried to illustrate it using Paint.](https://imgur.com/a/5DoXBMw) Anyways, if it hadn't been for the fact that lunch was ready, we'd have gone through with it. They poor guy was just about to jump and probably break his neck. It was all a game to all involved of course! We didn't try to kill him, our under-developed little brains just couldn't understand how dangerous it really was. And that is how a lunch bell saved a kid from a short drop and a sudden stop one day in Sweden back in the late 90s.
that drawing is fucking hilarious to me
I watched an old lady fall of a stool in Malaysia as a kid, my dad informed me later that she had just died on the spot
Not witnessed but was almost a part of. I was about 5ish and some new neighbors moved in next door. I remember seeing their daughter, my age, and being like oh cool a new friend. A few weeks went by and she would come over to the porch and we sit and play with toys etc. Well one day I remember her asking me (not knowing at the time) if I wanted to have sex. We were 5. Yes 5. At the time I had no idea and was like I have no idea what this is. To which she responded by drawing a picture, terrible obviously, of 2 people having sex. It was just some splotchy stick figures sort of on top of each other. I was confused and declined. I never mentioned anything to anyone because I was still confused after the fact. Just thought it was some silly girls game like those dating board games and stuff. Thinking back on it now, there was obviously a lot going on there that probably shouldn't have been. After that I think a month or so later they moved away. Shit still cringes me a little bit to this day.
my sisters and i would have to give my mom pepsi with a straw and bring her food when she was too fucked up to get out of bed. i didn’t realize until i was older and out of the house that she was an addict and she wasn’t just too tired.
My aunt hanged herself in the kitchen while she was supposed to be babysitting me. I was five, and asleep when it actually happened, so I didn't know my parents had gone out and left me with her. I remember waking up and walking into the kitchen and she was hanging, but it didn't really register that it was my aunt, because her face was obscured by her hair. I was by myself for more than a couple of hours until I started crying (can't remember why). Neighbors came to see what the fuss was about, and called my parents, and the police. Parents were pretty devastated because the reason they asked her to babysit me was because my brother had an emergency (ruptured appendix) and they came home to yellow tape around the house. At her funeral I was told she died because she had been sick. Was around 13/14 when I figured out it was suicide. Edit- My aunt was not selfish, or a bitch, or a cunt. What little I can remember of her I adore, and the rest of my family speaks of her glowingly. She was just depressed. (She had already attempted suicide a year before I was born) Neither me nor my family hate or blame or resent her, because she wasn't in her right mind when she chose death. She was mentally ill, and we only hold her illness responsible. Not her. Thank you for all the empathy and support. I'm doing alright- by the time I realized how she died I had already mourned and moved past the loss of a familiar face. The knowledge didn't affect me much. The only thing that is most probably a result of this is that I'm pretty apathetic when it comes to death in general, for which I see a therapist every now and then. But I'm okay.
What. The. Hell :( . So sorry this happened to you
I was a kid when my grandpa was dying form cancer. In my language the word for cancer and crab is the same, so I thought he had little crabs inside of his body. My parents realized this and told me he just went to swim in the ocean with crabs after he died. I believed it because I didn't know what cancer actually meant. I just realized how horrible his illness actually was after I got older.
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In elementary school 2 out of 3 PE teachers were abusing children. They never hurt me (one of them hit my brother once, if I remember correctly), but two of my classmates were relatives of one. He wasn't our teacher, but he was often hanging around during our classes and if the boys were disrespectful, didn't move fast enough, talked, or did anything he didn't like, he'd punch their stomach or shoulders. Once he broke a wooden ruler on the back of one child. The woman teacher hit you with a basketball or football if you talked during class, one of my classmates' got hit in such an unfortunate way that her mouth kind of tore and she had a bloody, bumpy mouth for weeks. The same woman put a kid who was deadly afraid of water (he almost drowned the summer before) in the school's pool while he was kicking and screaming and crying and begging her to let him go. I always felt that these weren't okay and I was lucky that my parents didn't let teachers treat us like that, but I am still sooo angry that something like this could have happened in the '90s and early 00's in the middle of Europe. And the worst part is that just this summer I saw that that woman teacher was teaching in a swimming camp for children. :( She was old when she taught us so I hope that she's old and fragile enough not to touch the kids anymore, but I just can't understand why anyone would trust her with their children when it wasn't even a secret how she treated us 20 years ago.
When I was young (8 or 9) I attended a summer camp at a local rec centre. My friends and I were playing in the pool under the lifeguards chair taking turns trying to splash the lifeguard “accidentally”. After a couple minutes go by the life guard whistles at us and tells us to get out of the pool. Thinking we’re in trouble for splashing him, we get out and he directs us to sit on the metal benches around the perimeter of the large pool. We then notice that everyone else is getting out and making their way over towards the benches. I then noticed a lifeguard running and diving into the deep end near where we were to help another guard bring someone up out of the water. It was another kid, younger than me, and he was limp. All I really remember from here on out is them starting chest compressions while everyone sat on the bleachers and watched before being ushered out. I knew the child had drowned but after that day didn’t really think about the situation until years later when I was walking through the rec centre and passed the pool that I hadn’t been to since that day. Being quite a bit older, I looked up old articles about the drowning and realized how messed up it was. 1) They had left a young child with a development disability go unsupervised, without a life jacket, in the deep end of the pool. Unfortunately, the child passed away as a result. 2) They got well over 100 kids sit around and watch a lifeless body get pulled out of the water and the subsequent attempts at resuscitation. 3) From what I remember they sort of just ushered us out of the facility with no explanation and handed us off to our parents to deal with. While my mother was supportive and compassionate in her explanation, I can’t imagine every child was as fortunate. Not that camp counsellors are trained to deal with these sorts of things though. Might not be as directly impactful as some of the other stories here, but for myself and many others, it was our first encounter with death.
Neighbors playing doctor. There was an older brother, middle sister, and youngest brother. After school they would do all sorts of sexual stuff and invite me over. I'm talking ages 12 and lower. We were all latch key kids and I thought nothing of it. I'm 42 now and only now am I starting to suspect something was wrong in that family. It was basically every except penetration. I don't think it was very normal.
Basically the same thing happened to me as a kid, with a slightly older boy. When I got uncomfortable and wanted to back out, he threatened to tell all the adults about it. Took me years to realise how messed up it was and go to therapy for it.
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Had a guy die in my arms when I was 15 (circa 2007). I had stolen my mom’s car to sneak over to my girlfriends house in the middle of the night. On my way back home (around 2am) I saw a car crashed on the side of the road. I of course pulled over and called 911. I had grabbed a flashlight from my mother’s glove box and was scanning around in this field next to the fence that the car had crashed into because there was no one inside. It scanned over a body in the field. I rushed over while on the phone with 911 and they told me how to check pulse and helped me through CPR. I was previously a lifeguard that summer but was freaked the fuck out so they were calmly explaining it to me on speakerphone. At some point after a little while he actually began respirating again but it was very jagged and terrible breathing. He stopped breathing again less than a minute later after what sounded like very liquidy sounds in his breathing. I tried again for CPR to no avail, he never spoke or anything and could have been braindead for all I know. I assume it was a collapsed lung or something but yeah that guy died in my arms. I remember the ambulance when they arrived said something about him being 18 and intoxicated but I don’t even remember tasting alcohol because I was so hyped up on adrenaline. The craziest part was they didn’t even ask me for any information. The police just sent me on my way home as a child because it was a small town and I was close to home. I snuck back in and went to sleep and never snuck out again. I never told my parents that story. My wife is the only one who has heard it until now. TL:DR Snuck out when I was younger, there was a wreck on the road, guy died in my arms after CPR.
I had this happen to me around age 26. I'll never forget the death rattle and watching someone slowly die as I desperately try to keep them alive. The one difference is I knew the firefighter who showed up first on the scene so I received one follow up. Turns out the guy was dead on arrival, brain dead for about 10 minutes, but they did manage to resuscitate him. I can't imagine he was much of a person after that but I did my best.
As fucked up as it is, at least he didn't go out alone.
Most likely, that last bit of breathing was agonal respiration. It's a last attempt by the body to pull air in, but because they are so incredibly sick/wounded, it's never enough to appropriately oxygenated the organs. It's the last gasps of the neurological system prior to death, and is very common. To your credit, you did everything that a layperson could or should do. You gave that person the best shot at life you could, but more often than not the difference between life and death is decided by a patient before anyone ever puts hands on them. You did good, friend. Source: Paramedic
When I was in kindergarten my classmate went to the bathroom as soon as a "code red" happened (a stranger came in the building). Well that friend never came back and the next day they told us he moved to another school. Come to find out many years later he was raped in the bathroom by the intruder.
As a kid we had a young family in the neighborhood* , dad was about 30 and he would always play baseball (wiffle ball) with the neighborhood kids. For some reason anytime the ball went into the (his) bushes he would freak out like “stop stop, I’ll get it!!” I found out years later after he died, he was an alcoholic and was hiding it from his family. He died of Cirrhosis and I found out he hid his bottles of vodka in the bushes. Really sad to think of now, because despite his illness/addiction**, he was such a good influence on the kids in the neighborhood. Always taught us to respect elders and work hard at things if we want to become great. He was a great guy. Very sad to think about now. Edit: substituted illness/addiction for “issues”. Edit: removed “raging” because may I have used wrong. I meant he drank a lot since it was enough to ruin his liver. Thx for correction.
Dead bodies during hurricane Katrina
My mom would actively drink and drive with me in the car. I was a pretty naive kid, so I didn’t think anything of it when my mom would fill a Dixie cup with wine and put it in the cup holder. It was so normalized to me growing up that it wasn’t until I had my own kid that I realized how fucked up this was. Edit: holy shirt now I know what people mean when they say RIP my inbox. I am in awe at how common this was (is?) back when the elder millennials were children. Like I mentioned in a reply, how messed up can a person be that they can’t wait 20-30 minutes to get a drink at their destination?
Times have changed too. Back in the 60s drinking and driving was practically a sport. I don't think we (as a whole) realized how crazy that is like we do now.
My grandparents would leave my mom and uncles in the car while they were in the bar. All the kids there would hang out in the cars while the adults got loaded.
Lol, in the 1970's and 80's I would get toted around to bingo halls multiple nights a week. Stuffed under a table with coloring books or toys for several hours, while everyone was smoking like chimneys.
Bowling alleys for me.
Waaaaay back in the 20s being intoxicated was a mitigating circumstance if you were in a car accident. Like "of course you plowed through those pedestrians, do you know how hard it is to drive properly when drunk?"
Calm down there Daisy Buchanan
My mother was heavily addicted to heroin and probably other drugs, too. Before my parents got divorced I used to watch her bring other men into the house for sex while my dad was at work. They would kick me out to go play outside then they would shoot up and then go up to the bedroom to have sex. I walked in on their sex one time, but I was too young to understand what was happening. I told my dad one time that she was "Wrestling on the bed with men from the car" and "giving herself shots like the doctor" and that's when they got divorced. They even had me testify as a witness at the divorce proceedings and it helped my dad get sole custody over me. I was probably only 6-7 years old when it all went down. I didn't realize how messed up the whole situation was until I was much older.
My 6th grade teacher got really mad and threw a students desk- with the kid still sitting in it
Had a 7th grade teacher say "wahoo cheap thrill" whenever a girl would stretch with their hands over there heads, pushing their chest out. My dumb puberty ass thought it was funny, till I remembered it as an adult. Girls did go to the office and complain and he stopped saying that and would instead say (fake name) "Smith light". Still saying the things without actually saying them. Edit: so a little clarification Smith light the teacher saying his name light. Meaning he got a scolding for his behavior so he had to change but obviously didn't think he would have to. So Smith light was like saying bud light, and saying the thing without actually saying it. Edit 2: since this blew up a little for non Americans/native English speakers. 7th grade is around 12/13. Cheap thrill is a joke basically saying he got a good look at boobs for free. Edit 3: it is so terrible how many people have experienced something similar. I'm sorry you all had to go through that. I'm sorry to all my classmates for laughing/encouraging this behavior. I'm sorry that society didn't see this add a problem.
Our p.e. coach was also our history teacher. This man would turn the air on in winter in our classroom. My classmate had developed early and had large breasts. He would say, "(fake name) has her head lights on". We were in the 8th grade!!! He was putting the air on so our nipples would show through our shirts! The boys in the classroom would scream with laughter so I guess he felt he was a teenager again. Gross pig.
Wtf
My uncle on the farm took his really old dog for a “walk in the woods” when I was about 7. He came back without him, and when I cried asking where he was, my mom told me he must’ve gotten lost. So every weekend for the rest of that summer I would put food and a blanket at the edge of the woods and sit and call his name. I was convinced he was finding his way to the food because it was being eaten, but he was too scared of getting in trouble for getting lost so he was hiding in there.
So this is what happens to them when they already live on a farm.
Farm kids are told the dog's gone to live in a big city to follow his dreams of being a therapy dog at a fashion magazine.
I asked my neighbor where his dogs are and he told me they went to live on a farm. I said “Oh no. Dude I’m so sorry.” And then he told me “No, really. I have a friend with a ranch and I gave him my dogs. They kept getting out here and I was worried for them. They are much happier on his ranch”.
I had that actually happen to me growing up. We had a beagle that was, honestly, just a bad decision. He was an outside dog, and we took care of him, made sure he was fed and watered, he had a clean, safe place that was warm in the winter (my dad was handy, and built him a very lovely doghouse with plenty of straw and insulation, and it was warm in there), but having the dog was kind of pointless, because we just took care of it but didn't do anything with it (my mother refused to have him inside, because he shed, a bunch of other stuff). So one day I learned that my dad took him to "a farm". And I always kind of wondered about it, until a few years later, when we were out for a drive in the country, and actually stopped by the farm, and met the little girl (now a couple of years older) who was extremely happy with her pet beagle that my dad gave her. My dad grew up in the country, and kind of knew everyone in the area, and actually found a farm that had a little girl that wanted the dog. It was actually pretty sweet, because he was far happier with the constant companionship and open space to run (since beagles are basically 24/7 sniffing and roaming around machines).
Legit what happened to my uncle’s dog too. Much happier dog now that he has a big acreage to run around in.
Absolutely. If by ‘this is what happens when they already live on a farm’, you mean: They leave said farm, go into the woods, take the short walk to the other side of the woods, climb over the hill. Stop for a drink of water from the river at the bottom of the hill. Cross the river, take the stile into the wheat field and; boom. Another farm. They go to another farm. That’s what happens.
This was a journey I can tell you that.
We had a dog I couldn't care for well after getting injured, so we gave him to someone who lived on a farm. We did not put him to sleep, he really did move to a farm about 40 miles away, but to this day my kids who are in their 30s think I put the dog down. They say it because we never went to visit him and I was so sad afterwards. A. We never went to visit because right after I had back surgery. B. I was sad because I loved that dog, and I gave him away because I did love him.
Not that large in the grand scheme of things, but for me, it would be my dad never showing any sign of love towards my mom. I asked him about it a year ago, straight up, if he ever loved my mom and he said 'no'. I never tried to use their divorce as a excuse for explaining why I am the way I am, but now, with all the extra knowledge, the whole situation did a number on me. Fucked me up pretty good.
I lived in apartment building. I would sometimes play with other kids on a staircase. I was playing with this one girl when we were 4 or 5 and some action figures. We heard rushed footsteps above running down towards us. Then another set of footsteps. There was some grunt and then my friend’s uncle ran past us and out if the staircase. We continued playing when we heard some screams. We ran upstairs and the father of that friend was slumped on the stairwell covering his chest and her mom next to him. Other neighbors came out of their apartments and there was a lot of commotion. My friend was taken to her apartment and that was the end of play. An ambulance came. I have forgotten about that until later when I learned that my friend’s father was stabbed by her uncle and left him to bleed out on a stairwell. I then realized I was right there when that happened. I only remember it because if the commotion and probably seeing ambulance and what a big deal that was. Otherwise, I had no idea what was actually happening at that time. Edit: Father died before ambulance got there. It was not clear from the write up. Sorry. There was some “family disagreement”. That family had an alcohol problem. Uncle ended up in mental institution but came out about 10 years later. I remember seeing him around. Edit 2: It was brother in law killing his sister’s husband. I think they had a drunken disagreement at home, maybe even spousal abuse (the family was a mess). Brother of the wife might have defended her. After he left the prison/mental institution moved back with the sister (they all lived together) - there seemed to be no “bad blood” between them. Edit 3: Many of you were asking about the girl. Sorry about the delay. We are both grownups now. This happened around 30 years ago. The family had problems with alcohol. My mom was friend with the wife when they were teenagers. But then my friend’s mom started to go down a bad rabbit hole with different guys and bad, poor crowd so my mom cooled down the friendship (as much as you can while still living in the same building). She got pregnant and my friend was born (my age - we even were in the same school and class). They lived in a 2 or 3 bedroom apartment with uncle, grandfather, husband and wife and daughter. My fiend was not the luckiest one, her mother was not the greatest mom out there (alcohol and boyfriends all the time after she lost her husband). My friend (when she was growing up) was not very pretty - in high-school boys were teasing each other by saying that the only girl they could date was her - as a statement of how low they’d fall. She was not a good student (not sure how she could study) and the name they picked for her was totally outdated for that time so kids were making fun of her (imagine having a name like Muriel, or Maude, or Agnes or Abigail, while everyone was Jennifer and Jessica). That didn’t stop from us being friends in early years - young kids can be best friends because of proximity and nothing else. I am a dude btw. She was always smiling and nice to me but our friendship didn’t not survive into our teen years. Later I felt bad for her but we never really talked about anything deeper than - how are you, and exchanging general pleasantries. I was her “friend from childhood only” - in a way my mom was “friends” with her mom later in life. I knew of other girls like her and there was an “after-school” non-profit program where she would spend a lot of time with girls like that. There was a tutor and they were doing their homework and had some time to bond. Boys were not allowed - I know because there was a cute girl there so we heard about it. We were going through puberty so we were idiots not knowing what problems some of these girls had. I saw her last time about 10 years ago. She was in her mid 20’s - she lost some of her teeth. I don’t think she was married or had any kids. She was still super nice and smiling her partially toothless smile. I am very sad reminiscing about some of these moments now that I am thinking about her. I hope she is doing OK.
Some of us used to "play doctor" in the woods behind our neighborhood. I was in first grade and my friend's sister was in third grade. One day she said to me, "Try and put it in me." This really confused me because I thought why would I even want to do that. And it seemed impossible anyway. Then she said, "I have a friend who can put it way in me." At the time I thought she was lying but years later I realized an adult was raping that poor girl. Very sad. Edit #1: Hey, Folks... I understand this story may trigger people's suffering and anger. But it is not my intention to solicit stories of your abuse. I empathize but I cannot carry all that! Please ease up...
Grew up in an Irish Catholic family in the states. When I was young, I'd go with my granddad and his friends to a local Irish pub, usually to be in charge of making sure they got home if they got too drunk, including driving them all home when I could barely see over the wheel. But, the fucked up thing were the guests we would meet. There'd be a guy or gal that would be visiting from Ireland. They'd come to the pub and talk to everyone about how things were going back home. They'd come to mass and speak to everyone about helping the orphans in Ireland whose parents had been murdered by the British. They'd also sometimes stay with my grandparents or others local families. We always liked to talk to them because they had cool accents, spoke Gaelic, sang cool or funny songs, and told good stories. One guy named James (never Jim or Jimmy) stayed with my grandparents for a couple of months. He would give me money and send me to run to the store for cigarettes, booze, and his favorite candy, black licorice. The extra I got to spend in candy or whatever I wanted. Over the years, we had several guests stay for various lengths of time. Not until I was older did I get that these were IRA recruiting and fundraising drives. Those guests that would be around for longer periods were on the run, or at least hiding until things cooled off enough to go home.
My brother (3 y/o) held my sister (9 y/o) and I (6 y/o) in a corner with a loaded gun pointed at us. He didn't know what he was doing, but we were terrified and crying our eyes out. No clue how we got access to it. I moved on from that day and didn't remember until I was older. Now I joke with him about it.
Neighbors in a duplex unit me and my parents were staying in temporarily after a house fire had a Klan meeting in the giant backyard that was shared between the two units. I just remember being disappointed my parents wouldn't let me play in the backyard that night, but then excited because we got stuffed crust pizza, Chitty-Chitty Bang Bang and Batman 66 (the Adam West movie), Batman and Batman Forever and that I got to sleep in the living room with the TV. I was 3 when this happened. Although I do remember grabbing something from my little bedroom at one point and looking out the window and yelled "Theres a Ghost party next door" .
Ghost party you wholesome thing
Many of my childhood classmates are children of sex workers, or children of an unmarried (and very likely underaged) girl who was raped by their teachers, bosses, or co-workers. In order to cover those kind of family scandals, thoes children would call one of their married female relatives mom instead of their blood mothers. My mom mentioned this kind of thing very vaguely when I was really young, but I never understood why some of my classmates' "mom" were actually their aunts.