Who can keep a secret? It’s these Redditors, who had good reason to keep their lips closed. Is three really company when it’s bride, groom, and maid-of-honor? Do we really need to know everything about our parents’ affairs? Find out with these shocking stories of people finally confessing their biggest secrets.
1. The Office is Less Charming IRL
My ex-fiancée cheated on me with a coworker. I kept it a secret for almost three years, but he did it again (I just found out this afternoon), so I'm about to tell the first coworker’s husband. They have two children BTW. I move out tomorrow.
2. A Hole in One
Not me but my sister. When we were like seven, we would always play hide and seek, and she had a hiding spot that nobody could ever find except her of course. It's been 10 years since, and she still hasn't told me. She claims she has a plan to tell me at some point but won't reveal when, so until then just I'm hoping neither of us die unexpectedly.
3. A Broken Branch of the Family Tree
It was actually my brother that broke my arm, not my cousin (by marriage, not blood). I didn’t want my brother to get in trouble or feel bad because I knew it was an accident and I hated my cousin anyway.
4. A Photo Is Worth a Thousand Words You Don’t Want Your Kids To Hear
I have a relative who took their life, and next to their note, they left a small stack of things they wanted to be buried with. Several days after the funeral, the director of the funeral home called my mom and let her know that sadly, the items my relative wanted to be buried with did not get put in the coffin. It happens sometimes, and he told mom that they try to contact the family member who seems least likely to lose their mind over it.
I'm paraphrasing of course, but my mom was the perfect person; the woman is unflappable. Mom went up to the funeral home and they returned the items to her. She told me the story once, and that nobody in the family knew, but that she wanted me to know where the items were in case she passed before she found an appropriate time to give the items to my relative's kids (it was some photographs of my relative with family and friends, and then a wedding ring).
The kids were very young, so it wasn't appropriate for her to give it to them at the time. It's been well over 20 years, and I don't think she has ever passed the things on. We have never discussed it again, and I haven't ever told anyone. One day I am sure I'll have to have that conversation with one or both of my relative's kids, but until then, this is the only time I've said anything about it.
5. Imagine the Late Fees
I loaned a bunch of books from the library in 2001 (as a seven-year-old). Found them in my room three years later. My 10-year-old mind was convinced the authorities would come looking for me because of it, so I neatly disposed of the books in a manner that will ensure they'll never be found again. Unless someone cleans up the basement...well, time to visit my parents.
6. Way to Be Humble About Fame
I was on Wipeout (the ABC show) and didn't tell anyone how well I did. There were 11 months between the filming and the air date. My mom only found out when the winner's check came in the mail.
7. When Will Microsoft Office Stop Wrecking Our Homes?
I was working on a paper for school and took a break for a few hours. When I got back to the computer, I opened Word and clicked on the most recent document, which for days on end had been my paper, but during my break my mom had gotten on the computer to work on a letter to her best friend from her school days. Right at the top, it talked about how she'd caught my dad cheating on her and all the pain she was going through, etc. They never said a word about it to me and I never told anyone that I knew.
Years later I overheard my dad on the phone and from his tone and the conversation, I just assumed he was talking to my mom. You know, there's a way he talked to everyone else and a way he talked to her. I walked in the room and he quickly ended the call, which I thought was odd. 30-45 minutes later, my mom called me, and from our conversation I knew she hadn't been the one he was talking to.
I highly suspected he was cheating again but remembering from that letter how much the incident she knew about had clearly hurt her, I didn't know what (if anything) to do about it. Ultimately, I did nothing.
8. Belly Up and Upgraded for Your Feelings
I killed my best friend’s fish while watching it for her while she was on vacation. Then I replaced it with a fish that looked nothing like it and told everyone that they were crazy for thinking that it wasn’t the same fish. It was accidental, and the fishes were the same type of fish but they just didn’t look the same. I also watched it for two weeks and it just happened to die on the last day. And to top it off, the fish that I bought to replace the other one perished a week later.
So, conclusion: RIP Jackie O’Conner (yes, she actually named her fish that).
9. That’s Not Even the Half of It
My “half-brother” isn’t actually related to me at all. Because my dad’s ex-wife cheated on him and got pregnant. Everyone knows but my half-brother.
10. Count on a Brother to Dump On You
My parents don't know that when I was much younger, when I was told to eat dinner while they were out shopping (I was a defiant eater), my brother quietly threw my food out for me and saved me from being grounded.
11. Better Late and Online Than Never
My parents have no idea that I didn't graduate college when I said I did. In the spring of my senior year, I overloaded and took 6 classes instead of 5, in order to graduate on time. My grandmother passed on that semester, and in the aftermath, I was so depressed that I barely passed 5 of the classes and failed the 6th entirely.
My parents aren't abusive, but I was living with them at the time and they would never have let me live it down. My school let me walk, so I just lied and told them I had finished. I already had a job lined up when I was supposed to have graduated, so I started working, and a year later I took an online course to finish my degree.
My parents just think my diploma got messed up by the school, and that's why it was late.
12. When The Second Time Isn’t the Charm
I was touring Australia for six months with my girlfriend Jan, whose twin sister had lost her son to cot death a few months before we left. Jan was devastated but still really wanted to go to Oz with me. Her twin sis had given birth to a second son about three months after the passing, and when we left for down under, the boy was about three months old and a big focus of love for everyone after the shocking loss.
Every week, Jan would ring home and talk to her mother. At the end of the second week, the mother asked to speak to me. This was unusual. We did not have much to say to each other normally, so I was surprised. It turns out she wanted me to know the second son had been diagnosed with leukemia, but whatever happened I should not tell Jan as it would spoil her holiday. She was right that it would devastate Jan and that she would want to leave at once, and to be honest there was nothing she could have done even had she returned.
So, I sat on this awful news for nearly six months. To make it worse, her mother told her on our return that I knew about the diagnosis from the start, so it was one of those circumstances where you can never win.
13. Don’t Let This Cat Out of the Bag
My sister's cat passed on during the night a couple days ago, and I'm the one who found her in the morning. I lied to my sister about how I found her. I said she was lying on the ground and possibly had a heart attack (which would explain her eyes being wide open, I couldn't close them). I actually found her trapped, under the dining table, hanging between two chairs with her front leg and her head back.
She must have fallen and couldn't free herself (she didn't have good control of her claws anymore). She looked like Jesus on the cross, completely stiff from rigor mortis. I was freaking horrified and still can't get the image out of my head. It hurts me so much to know that her last moments were of suffering. I now can't ever tell my sister how it really happened.
To slightly soften the story, she was a very old cat, about to turn 20 years old. What was unbelievable was that it was on the morning of the day we had booked a vet appointment to put her to sleep. My sister actually feels relief that she passed on "naturally" rather than being taken to a strange place she didn't know. I can't share the same sentiment, sadly, but I'm just relieved that she is relieved.
14. The Other Peg in The Love Triangle
That my Dad was cheating on my mom. I found out during middle school/beginning of high school but kept it between my sister and me. We weren’t sure what to do. Today, my mom found out while fighting with my dad. The secret just came out of me when he walked away, and she wanted to go after him. She was first upset that I had been dealing with that 4/5-ish years, but later on she started to turn her anger about it towards me.
Just lying in bed, not sure how to continue. My parents have always fought since I was little and always put me in the middle of it, so I shouldn’t be surprised.
15. Won’t Hear You Out
I am not deaf, but I am hearing impaired and use hearing aids. About a year ago, I temporarily moved to a town in the United States and went into a market where a far too excited employee greeted me, and I could tell she would never let up so I pretended to be deaf, so she'd let me be. I thought I'd move back home after a few months and only go there once or twice. It's been a year and they have the best fresh produce. I'm there all the time.
She's learning sign language to talk to me.
16. What Happens in Grade School, Stays in Grade School (and Your Nose)
My classmate in sixth grade wiped his boogers all over his desk. When I caught him one time, he pushes me to a corner and said in a light voice "Don't tell anyone." I'm now 20 years old and I kept his secret.
17. Let’s Hope All Dogs Go to Heaven
That my partner's childhood dog didn't go peacefully. He died muzzled, screaming his lungs off, with the vet's assistant lying on top of him. I took him in to be put down because his cancer had gotten so bad that he couldn't walk. He was so weak...there was no reason for her to pin him like she did. His last few moments were filled with the most bloodcurdling shrieks of pain and fear...I never told him.
When asked, I said that he slipped away peacefully. He thinks we don't go to that vet anymore because they were expensive. I think she was afraid of him. He was a big dog, obviously scared, and screaming in pain when she wrenched his hind leg out to get the needle in there. He had cancerous tumors all throughout his body and pulling his leg HURT. So, to keep him from struggling, she basically put her entire weight down on top of him as he took his last breaths.
His leg was turned out at a funny angle the entire time because he couldn't even straighten it with her weight on top of his body.
18. Too Little to Know the Power of Words
When I was about eight years old and in the process of getting diagnosed with ADHD, I had to go to a child psychologist to go through a screening process. After a while, the lady took me to another room and asked all these questions that all pretty much lead to whether or not my dad molested me. However, me being young and not knowing what she meant by “touching you in ways that I didn’t like,” I just assumed she meant when I would get hurt after wrestling, so I said yes.
Well, fast forward a couple weeks, and I’m being carted down to the local police station to give a statement to say that my dad wasn’t doing anything to me. My dad was so close to being charged, all because a child psychologist asked a kid a couple leading questions. To this day, they still have no idea that it was me.
So, it looks like my dad poisoned that families’ lawn as revenge for no reason.
19. You’re the Sequel, Baby
My cousins (who I was good friends with growing up) don't know they have two half-sisters, who are about ten years older than them. My uncle got his college girlfriend pregnant, then bailed on her. She had twin girls and married and built a life. My uncle signed away his rights, and she let him off with no support payments if the entire family cut contact.
The twins reached out to my grandparents once they turned 18 and built a solid relationship with them. I found out when I was in college because my grandparents saw them regularly and told my brother because they wanted to make sure someone would pass along the word if/when they passed on. My grandparents are gone now.
My cousins are in their 30s and their sisters are approaching 50. I've known for twenty years and never said a word.
20. From Matchmaker to Match-Lighter…
It's not really a secret, but it's not something I've ever really brought up before; my neighbor perished in her home because it was set on fire by her ex. I'd petsat for her tons; we didn't talk every week or anything, but we knew each other pretty well. Came over one day to get her keys for an upcoming petsitting job, and her ex was there. He seemed nice, I shook his hand, we all talked for a while and I left.
Next week after she got back, I was out at my barn feeding our horse and goats and I smell something burning. From the hayloft I could see it was her house, it was just a massive column of thick smoke and it stung to breathe. It was just me and my grandma at home, my parents were on vacation, so I had to grab the hose and wet down as much of our property as I could, including the roof of our house and barn because it was the dry season.
She was found in critical condition in her bathroom by firefighters, and later passed on in the hospital. I'd always thought if I met someone "evil" like her ex I'd know or something; like I'd get a weird feeling. But he was just a normal, polite dude. It completely blindsided me and it's been hard really trusting people ever since.
I'm always scared if I go over to a friend's house and I'm alone with them, they'll end up being like him, and I'll get attacked or something. Then I feel like garbage because you're supposed to trust your friends. Idk what to do about it if it's been this long and I'm still not over it. Before they tore down her house and built a new one, I went over to her property and got some lamb's ear to plant in our front garden since she loved that plant so much.
At first, it wilted because it was still the dry season but then exploded and about two years later it started flowering. I'd never seen lamb's ear flower before and to this day it's the only plant I've ever been able to keep alive.
21. Scratch That Score Off the Revenge Board
When I was 15 and my little sister was six, she erased my 100% save file on Smash Bros Brawl intentionally, and she played it religiously after that. I constantly heard the music every morning as a daily reminder that all the stuff I spent 250+ hours on was entirely gone. So, one day she was yelling at me. She wanted to play Smash, but I was playing Resident Evil 4. Turned into an entire family drama, had both parents and my other sisters screaming at me at the end of the argument.
That night, I snuck the disc out, carved a sizeable scratch out of it with a screwdriver (pretty much to its foil layer) and stashed it at the bottom of her toy chest. She eventually found it and cried. She continued to rage during gaming though, which gave me a motive against her. She continued to break an iPod touch and several Wii remotes. Three years later she put a hole in the wall with a Wii U gamepad.
Now we're seven years later...they all still think she's the one that broke the disc. Either by mishandling it and putting it into her toy chest herself or raging at the game and somehow carving into it herself. Only my current girlfriend knows of my immature, frustrated act back then. Even my little sister, 13 y/o now, says, "I didn’t know how to take care of discs back then! I’m sorry!" when I mention it... she's somehow believing my lie herself at this point.
22. My Mother, My Homewrecker
That the reason that my ex-girlfriend and I broke up wasn't that we drifted apart, or me moving to a different city for studying...actually, her mother asked me to stop this relationship because "we were from two different worlds." The crazy thing is that I understood it, and took it for granted. A decision which I still regret sometimes.
23. Domestic Bliss or Blight?
Someone I know has knocked up their girlfriend. They've only been dating for like six months. They are 19 and 20. She's already 4-5 months pregnant. Neither his parents or hers know, and he's never met her parents. Neither have stable employment. His parents are poor and would be financially ruined if they tried to help. She is an absolute freeloader.
And quite frankly, both are lazy idiots who try to offload any of their responsibilities onto others and would make terrible parents.
24. A Little Shoulder to Cry On
When I was five, my mum left my dad. I don't remember much other than shortly afterward, my Dad would get in my bed late at night, hold me, and cry. I would pretend to be asleep. I've never told anyone that. I'm 35 and I've never seen or heard my father cry since. He's never said a negative thing about my mother.
They've remained friends. I can tell he still loves her.
25. What Goes Around, Comes Down My Pants
When I was 12 my sister was being a jerk, took some of my stuff, and buried it somewhere on the 40 acres we lived on. So, I took a huge dump in her cat’s litter box that she had to scoop once a day. No one said anything, and I know that that poo was huuuuge and obviously not a cat poo. I know she noticed, but nothing was said.
She stopped stealing my stuff for about a year and then it started back up.
26. Spoiling Them One Vowel at a Time
I am the reason most of the kids under my care speak with a horrible Russian accent. Whenever I'm looking after kids, when their parents aren't around, I always use the worst impression of a Russian accent when addressing them. And the kids always wondered why I sounded weird when their parents were dropping them off and picking them up.
27. High School Sweethearts Last Until Heaven
I met this girl in the summer of 1985 while on a summer camping vacation. We got physical but no intercourse. Hung out for two or three days. I fell hard for her, but she only wanted to be pen pals. She lived an hour away, but when you’re 17 it might as well be eight hours away. We wrote a few times, and eventually, after her not responding to two letters, I let it go.
I've been with dozens of women since. Happily, on my second marriage. There's hardly a day that has gone by that I haven't thought about her in some way. I have looked for her for years, Google, LinkedIn, FB, you name it, no trace of her. She kind of dropped off the face of the earth in 1990, at least on paper. I'm ashamed of the obsession. I have never told anyone but a therapist a few years back.
I wonder what she would even think if I contacted her. The more I think about that, the more I'm a bit glad I can't find her; that would probably freak her out. Her mother was an Irish immigrant, so she has citizenship, she might have gone to Ireland and gotten married there? (I grew up in Chicago, this meeting happened in Wisconsin).
28. Now That’s What I Call Clean Eating
One time I was super stoned, and my roommate made some tortellini, and I wanted some of them. I got the impression that he didn't want to share so I waited for him to finish, hoping he'd leave his leftovers out for the peasants. Some time passes, and I go back to the kitchen to see what the tortellini situation was like. Lo and behold, there was some tortellini soup sitting on the counter.
"Oh, darn, he made tortellini soup," I thought to myself. "Nice." So, I fish some tortellini out of this soup and decided they tasted weird, so I stopped eating them. I was so stoned I wasn't 100% sure if they were weird or I was weird. Later on, my roommate comes downstairs and says something along the lines of, "Dudes I poured a bunch of dirty dishwater in the left-over tortellini, and I think someone ate some." Everyone in the room was like, "Hah gross." I never told anyone it was me.
In short, I ate dirty hot dog water tortellini stew.
29. Comedy Saves Lives
The only reason why I'm alive today is that I was high watching The Amanda Show at 2:00 am on a VHS in my basement. My ceiling crashed in around that time. I just said I was in the bathroom in the basement to my parents.
30. It Begins With A Broken Heart
My wife left me nine months ago. She broke my heart, and her sudden departure destroyed my life. I was nine months away from finishing college but instead I dropped out and I’m currently teaching in China. I'm drowning in student debt. I don't speak any Mandarin and I'm so desperately depressed I've become addicted to painkillers.
I seriously can't stop taking them. I don't know what to do with my life and I have no one to turn to.
31. Love Doesn’t Lock You Down
To punish me, my mother locked me in my room whenever I wasn't in school. It became my prison. She'd talk to me through my brother and refer to me as trash. I was completely cut off from the outside world for six months. She would tell me I was lucky to be inside the room because if she saw me, she'd kill me. If I had to use the restroom, I would hold it until I was at school or she would go to bed.
At first, being put in the room wasn't that bad because I had a lot of books, and I was at school for most of the day. But soon her husband threw away my books and then came summer vacation, when I spent the entire summer locked in that room, watching my family have fun in the pool. That was 15 years ago, and I still get panic attacks thinking about it. My girlfriend (who I live with) only recently found out about it when I slipped up and had an episode in front of her.
Ever since moving out of my mother's house, I always had a roommate or lived with a GF, so I didn't really know this was still haunting me. Recently my GF got a job the requires her to travel a lot. What she doesn't know is that every time she's gone, and I come home to an empty house, I feel like I'm in that room again. I start to panic and break down crying until I eventually pass out.
Now she's leaving for a month next week and I'm terrified about how I'll handle it. I tried telling her what's been going on, but she assumes I'm joking and to be honest I don't want her to really know. I'd hate her to think I'm weak and I know how much she loves this job and what it means for her future. I don't want her to give anything up for me or feel guilty for leaving.
So, I've decided I'm going to start streaming on Twitch while she's away. This way I can interact with people and keep myself distracted. I just hope it works.
32. The Real Bandit Doesn’t Come in a Bag
Back when I was in fourth grade, Frito Chips had these bandito (Mexican bandit head) shaped erasers inside the chip packages and it was very popular for kids to put them on top of their pencils at school. "I am the Frito bandito!" My family was poor so even if mom had bought a bag of the chips, there were six of us kids.
My brothers would have fought hard to get it. I was not a fighter. Apparently, I was a thief though. I was left alone in class for some reason and I saw a kid's yellow Bandido eraser on top of his desk. Not only did I take it, but I had the nerve to use it on my pencil the same day. He busted me on it too, but I denied, denied...denied. He never got it back.
33. Dad Needs to See Himself Represented
Maybe not a deep dark secret but outside of one other comment I have never spoken of this—not with my dad, not even with my brother. I have heard that everyone has a revelation at some point, where they realize their parents aren't superheroes, just people. This is mine. My mum and dad divorced when I was very young (four I think) and my mum verbally bashed my dad on the regular. He always took it, never said a bad word about her, ever. He was a big guy, strong, immovable and quiet; he would just hug myself and my brother and the world would put itself to rights. That kind of dad.
We would see him on the weekends early on. This would change as my mum became more vindictive, but for the first few years, this was the status-quo. I remember playing Doom with him, just sitting in his lap thinking this was the coolest stuff ever, then we would go to Blockbuster get a movie and a takeaway and chill on the sofa. My brother and I always ended up sitting on the floor by my dad’s feet (either side) just to be a little closer to the action.
Anyway, it was a usual weekend, bike ride, Duke Nukem and some wrestling on the sofa. My dad had already rented the movie, so we didn't know what it was, turned out it was Mrs. Doubtfire. Ok so we made it through most of the film without incident, then it came to the scene in the courtroom where Robin Williams begs for his kids, literally begs just to be in their life, watch them grow, be their father.
My dad gets up and goes to the toilet, I assume. For a few minutes I didn't notice, there were sounds coming from the kitchen, inconsistent breaths and pacing. I walked into the kitchen to my dad gripping both sides of the fridge, his forehead touching the cold metal; and he was just shuddering a full body shudder while tears fell freely.
I didn't know what to do. I started to cry as well, I was only eight and I didn't understand, I couldn't understand, and it scared me. I just whispered "Dad?" His head whipped around, and I thought for sure he was angry, but he just dropped to his knees and held me. He called for my brother and squished us together, he was still shaking, it was so powerful.
He held onto us like we were the only things rooted to the ground, like he was scared we would disappear. After a minute, he got up and held onto the fridge again, he opened it, pulled out some ice cream, smiled and said, "Come on" as he walked to the sofa. That is one of only two times I ever saw my dad cry. It was the day I realized he wasn't made of stone and metal, he wouldn't fly, and he couldn't save the world.
He was just a man who loved his kids and couldn't bear to see them go.
34. Just Impound the Whole Father
The "car accident" was my dad getting stopped by the authorities outside the city with his "friend" and a girl. She was underage. Everyone thinks the car was totaled, but it is in evidence for a trial that might happen sometime in a few months. I've always had a sneaking suspicion my dad was up to some slimy stuff, but never knew exactly how far it went.
Once, he had me clean out an apartment when I was 16. Got rid of everything, paid a guy at the dump to take it all for $200. I knew the whole thing was shady. I should've said something. But I told myself my dad was helping someone move in, which he was, just at a different apartment on the other side of the city. I used to think he just got call girls, but now I'm thinking there's more to it.
I hate him for his lies, they destroyed my life and they are going to destroy the rest of my family when it all comes to light. But I have no choice but to act like everything is alright.
35. Can’t Wash This Down With Water…
I went to a small Christian college and I lived in an on-campus apartment with five other guys. One day, I got back from chapel before everyone else and thought it would be funny to take a dump in the shower. A few hours, later I acted mad when I went to take a shower and found this massive dump. Naturally, all of the guys denied and thus began the Mystery of the Shower Pooper.
We had been leaving our front door unlocked and sorta had a grudge against one of the neighboring apartments. A bunch of smug mother-effers that we just couldn't stand. One of the guys I lived with suggested that it might've been one of them playing a prank. We started locking our door, but sometimes we would forget.
Anytime I came home and found the door unlocked I would poop in the shower; this happened about a half a dozen times. The guys started really getting mad and this escalated into a series of pranks for the rest of the year, most of which involved urine and fecal matter. I've never told anyone that it was me the whole time.
36. Booking for Three
Three person secret: So my fiancée and I were having a hard time setting up stuff for our wedding and reception. Her maid of honor was having similar hardships putting her wedding and reception together. We invited her over for drinks and to talk. Then we wake up the next day, all three of us undressed on the couch. We don’t speak about it since we don’t remember.
My secret: I wasn’t that tipsy, and that three-way is my fapping material for life.
37. Monsters Live Close to Home and They Have Wi-Fi
My house was raided for inappropriate child content. Agents came through, searched every room, collected every storage device and questioned me. I promptly said I would not talk without a lawyer. My wife was bawling, I told her to not talk without a lawyer. After about four hours, all of the agents left with every electronic device. Then they handed me the warrant.
Apparently, my IP address was detected distributing awful photos. After counseling and a lot of communication, my wife and I agreed to not tell anyone about this. Not family, not friends, no one. We moved from the house because it just made us uneasy being there. After THREE years of fighting with the agency, we finally got all of our devices back.
The devices they took were the only copies of all of our photos, so it was one of the happiest days ever. It turns out one of our neighbors was using our WiFi (which had an easy eight letter lowercase password). Once they didn’t find anything on our devices, they did a search of the neighbor. Use a good WiFi password or bad stuff can happen.
38. Wrong Foot Forward, 20 Years Later
While my older brother was in basic training (around 1990), he sustained an injury to one of his feet. In the weekly letter home, he told us how it was a minor thing and he was recovering well. He sent me a second letter letting me know that, due to the doctor not taking the injury seriously, he nearly lost the foot. Everything was OK at that point, but he wanted somebody at home to know what was going on, just in case.
Our mother would have freaked out, so he sent me the info and told me to keep it secret. Under no circumstances were our parents to find out. About fifteen or twenty years later, at a family Thanksgiving dinner, the subject of "things we got away with as kids" came up. I thought, "Surely he's come clean about this by now," and shared the story. Yeah, it was the first my mother had heard about it.
She was NOT happy. My brother and I are both adults with careers and families, and we still got bawled out for it.
39. Dial 1 for Hatred
I'm 99% sure I got my neighbor disowned from his family. His homophobic mother one day pretended to be him during our usual Skype conversation and told me, "I got a new phone, here's the number," and for me to call it. Call it and turns out it's her, and she starts interrogating me, asking me about the things I've done with her son. And little me is scared, so I answer truthfully.
Cut to a month later, he moves out of my neighborhood, hasn't spoken to me on anything (played a lot of games together before), and when I finally get in contact with him, he says his life is ruined and it's my fault. And that his family can't stand being around him. This was four years ago, and I still think about it daily.
40. Just Leave Immediately
A girl I dated a few years back had just graduated with her bachelors, so I took her out for a night on the town. Her and our friends got absolutely demolished and since this was before Uber, I volunteered to be DD.
So around 2 am she's tanked, we head out and she wants Krystal burgers. Very adamant about that, so I stop by Krystals and order a steamer pack so I can have some too and then have leftovers. She eats somewhere around 8, I get her home, get her into her bed and she immediately passes out. I am sitting next to her watching some TV when I smell something. I notice that she has just pooed herself.
She is one of those people who would be so ashamed of herself if anyone found out so I just... left. I called her the next day and told her I dropped her off, got her some water and headed home. Never mentioned her pooing herself or anything so to this day she thinks she did it in her sleep after I left. I could have stayed and helped her clean it up and I probably should have, but she would have cried over that and avoided me sporadically for weeks.
41. Too Little Too Late, But He Doesn’t Need to Know That
When my mother-in-law was in hospice and dying, we had gotten the call that her last rights were being read to her and we should come because it was very close. The family gathered in her room, my father-in-law (her husband of 42 years) had been by her side and hadn’t left for days. We were there for hours. My sisters-in-laws had to take their kids home at some point, so they had left and it was just my husband, me, and my FIL left.
The nurses were saying that they might have spoken too soon because she was still hanging on, it was awful to watch. My FIL looked ragged and tired and he said he was just going to go to the other floor for a cup of coffee, my husband went with him. I said I would call if something changed but he was only going to be gone for 15 minutes maybe.
About five minutes after they left, my MIL really started to have very labored breathing, I called the nurse to see what was happening and by the time she came to the room (maybe two minutes) my MIL had passed. I asked the nurse to wait for me to get my FIL and husband back to the room to pronounce her dead. They rushed back and my FIL held her and after a minute the nurse and doctor pronounced.
My FIL believes he made it back to the room and was holding her while she left this life, I have never told him or my husband. And I’ll never take that away from him.
42. Mother Dearest and Potentially Deadly
That my mother was abusive to me as a kid. I kept it for 22 years. I told my dad a few months back. I told him in anger because I blamed him for letting it happen. He truly didn’t know the extent, she kept it well hidden. He then explained to me that he tried to protect me from her, and he did when he was around. He told me he’d been in an abusive relationship with her.
She separated him from every friend and family member he had. She took his entire paycheck and wouldn’t let him have a card. She told him he couldn’t leave her because she’d never allow him to see me again. My dad’s not perfect and he left me in dangerous situations, but he tried at least. And now both of our 20+ year secrets are out to each other.
43. That’s a Story All Right
We are married. We have children. We share a bank account. When we were first married, we lived in an apartment in a converted garage attached to her parents' house. Her crackhead brother came in one night while we were asleep and took money from my wife's purse. Myself, his father, his mother, and my wife confronted him in his bedroom. He was in bed under the covers fully clothed but claimed he didn't do it.
We SAW him run out of our apartment. We had a fistfight and he ended up running out of the back door. I chased him, in my underwear, in January, in the freezing rain, barefoot, for almost a mile before my body gave out. You can't catch a crackhead. I returned to the house and told my wife to pack our stuff because we were moving out.
The next day, we moved into a single-wide trailer we rented from my grandparents. It was a dirty hole that I wouldn't have lived in if I had other options. It was cheap, and crackhead free. A few months later, he got apprehended for stealing cheques from his boss. He took $19,000 and when he was busted they found pills and coke in his car. He ended up with 109 charges and has been in prison ever since.
My wife's mother was his enabler. She always defended him whenever he did stuff. Fast forward 5 years. My father in-law contracted a serious infection from an airborne fungus. It infected his lungs, then his bloodstream, then his spinal column. His brain swelled and he almost died before they figured out what was wrong with him. He had no health insurance because they couldn't afford any. He lost his job. They lost their house and every dime they had.
Her mom always sent her brother money in prison. So did we. So did his aunt and grandmother. He milked everyone he knew for money. I assume he's still on substances in prison, or he's paying a protection fee. I was at her parents' house when his mother broke the news that she couldn't send him money anymore because they didn't have any. I could hear him yelling at her through the phone. This ticked me off beyond all measure. He didn't care that his father was dying. He only cared about his money.
I drove 2 hours to the prison on his next visitation day. I cursed him out and the guards made me leave. I'm not allowed back in, ever. That little payment we were sending him, I put a stop to. I told my wife he gets three meals and a cot to sleep on. He doesn't need money. She agreed we wouldn't send him any money.
Fast forward 1.5 years and I get the mail out of our box. There's a credit card bill in there that says open immediately. My wife was late on the payment. I breeze though and see the amount owed is around $2,200. The bill shows she made two payments to the prisoners' payment service. When she gets home, I confront her.
She spills her guts and says she's been sending her brother money because he called her begging and crying and all this bull. She used her credit card because she knew I'd be mad if I found out. We both have good jobs. She's a nurse, I work for the local government. We aren't hurting for money. TBH I don't care if she sends him money, it's the hiding it from me that really ticked me off. We had money in the bank she could have sent him, and she's running a credit card bill up and paying interest. She called in and made the $2,200 payoff and cancelled the card. I thought that was the end of it.
Fast forward almost 2 years, and I find the invoice in her car. It's a JC Penny card. She's been doing the same stuff, and judging by the $1,800 probably never stopped. I knew she had the card, but for some reason I wasn't thinking you could use it as a credit card, only in-store purchases.
I haven't confronted her about it yet. I've been putting it off. TBH I'm not even looking forward to it. I'm going to make her agree to work extra hours to pay off the $1,800 so it doesn't affect our money in our bank account. I'm also going to demand she cancel every credit account she has and offer her a chance to come clean if there are more cards I don't know about. It's not the money.
We are doing spectacularly well for people our age. We started with nothing. We both come from families that weren't exactly poor, but weren't anywhere close to rich. Nobody helped us get where we are. We both worked two jobs to put her through nursing school. We ate ramen noodles. We lived in a trailer. We now own our own home, we have bought land to either build a nicer home on or sell as an investment. We have plenty of money in the bank and we live well within our means.
Divorce isn't an option for me. I love her and I made a commitment for life, and intend to keep it. But this can't keep happening. I understand why she does it. It's her brother and she loves him. I don't blame her. If it were my brother I'd probably do the same. They were close growing up. They were born only a year apart. He had delayed speech problems and speech issues his entire life. Even though she was younger, she always stood up for him. When people made fun of him in school, she made it her fight. They have a strong bond. I can't change that.
I also can't change the fact that he is a terrible person that takes advantage of everyone who loves him. Ideally, I'd like her to come to realize he just uses her and if he cared he wouldn't ask her for money. Me preaching at her won't do much. She has to come to that realization herself. He gets out in a year. Right now, my plan is to attempt to restrain myself from beating him to a pulp. I predict he learned nothing in prison except how to be an even worse person. I'm going to sit back and see what happens. Maybe he will come out and be a productive member of society. Time will tell.
If he goes right back to doing illicit substances, I'll be there to point out to my wife that he will never change and she needs to distance herself. If that doesn't work, there's always the option to abduct him, put him in a crate with some MREs and a few bottles of water, and ship him to Mexico.
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