When I was 13 I helped the local burnout mow lawns. He was late 20’s and hung out with us teenagers from the same block. Got us weed, bought us beer. The 16yo guys I looked up to were friends (?) with him, he’d hang in the backyard fort of the lead 16yo, and he basically ran the local lawn mowing cartel of all us kids. I wanted money and it was easy and fun, hangin’ with the boys. We shoveled walks in the winter.
One snowstorm morning he wasn’t at the fort where we’d meet so I volunteered to run across the street to his house. Knock. Knock loud. Try the door, he didn’t mind if we came in his basement entrance to his parent’s house. It’s dark, light on in the bathroom. 13yo me saw his first dead body that day; full bathtub with slit wrists and neck.
E: oh, reason for suicide seemed to be that he had a DUI wreck a couple months prior where a young girl (like 7 or 8) didn’t die but wouldn’t ever be the same… like couldn’t walk or brain damage or something. He couldn’t handle what he did, I guess.
Damn. You understood the assignment. Also, I was sure that story was going somewhere else horrifying.
I spent a year as a videographer for a local news station. Do not work such jobs if you don’t want to see dead bodies because, as I found out, you’re literally an ambulance chaser. One of the many reasons I only worked there for a year. And probably why I am now too squeamish to watch gory movies.
I’m just glad I’ve never seen anyone actually die. At least not yet.
When I was a kid (18?), one night a friend of my friend called us to come give this drunken girl a ride. They said they were at a party and the guy took some time to babysit her and take her home but he couldn’t handle her anymore.
We went and picked her up and were going to take her wherever in the area she wanted to go as a solid for this guy. She got in the car and started berating us and trying to turn up the volume and complaining about the music. She said she had sucked dick and whatever other mess and wasn’t going to put up with our shit this evening. She was much more intoxicated than I thought she would be. She requested to be taken to her car and she started giving us directions. She said she was going to sleep it off in the car so her parents wouldn’t know. We planned to take her keys and come back later or something. We were honestly blindsided by how ridiculous everything got so quickly.
Turns out her car was parked at a local recycling center or something and when we pulled in there, there was a brand new Cadillac, lights came on car started. She said it was probably her grandpa. We let her out and started driving away so that they could figure it out, we wanted to be done. Grandpa didn’t even stop to let her in the car or get her in her own car or anything. He immediately started following us. He tailgated us all the way down the highway back to my friend’s house with his brights on. We drove normally but tried to concoct a plan. We pulled up the driveway at my friend’s place about 15 minutes later and he stops short a few car lengths into the driveway.
I kind of lost it at that point and walked down the driveway to ask him what the hell he was thinking and he steps out of the car standing behind the driver side door. As I come up to him to give him a piece of my mind he raises his hands and he has a pistol pointed right at me. I guess being young and full of adrenaline I absolutely went off on him yelling what the hell did he think he was doing pulling a gun on this we were just trying to give his granddaughter a ride we didn’t even really know her. I mean I got right up in his face. I can’t believe I did that in retrospect, I would never do that now. After I yelled at him he dropped his hands and looked confused. Said “What was I supposed to do?” I’ll never forget those words.He quickly got in his car and started to turn around. I tried to block his car so I could call the police but as I started to get on the phone he punched it and ran over my foot. Thankfully I moved to just enough to the side that it didn’t really do anything. Cops showed up later and the officer stood around for a while talking to us and getting statements. He said that we have to go down to the magistrate downtown to do anything about this.
We went there and the magistrate asked us a bunch of the same questions. He did some paperwork stuff and essentially concluded that the guy who pulled a gun on me had already come by and filed a report that we were threatening him and that the two conflicting statements would cancel each other out - nothing would happen to either of us. Come to find out later on that the man who pulled a gun on me was a retired police chief from the area, very well known, who owned a local car wash. He had a sketchy past and I guess this was just another day in the life of a police officer abusing power.
I look back and think what the hell was that girl doing? Was she actually being taking advantage of? Did the friend of a friend know that would happen so he set us up to take the fall for it? Was he the abuser? Was she just being sloppy and shitty and he didn’t want to get in trouble? How in the world did those things cancel each other out especially with no investigation into it. They couldn’t have. I’ll never forget that. I never talked to that idiot friend of a friend again and I never saw police officers the same either.
I’m aware your questions are rhetorical, but I’m going to answer them anyway. Your questions are just so spot on.
Was she actually being taking advantage of?
80/20
Did the friend of a friend know that would happen so he set us up to take the fall for it?
Maybe. It doesn’t have to be that Machiavellian. Maybe he didn’t know what to do and was just looking for an out. Not an excuse. Could be similar feelings whether he’s the abuser or relatively innocent.
How in the world did those things cancel each other out especially with no investigation into it.
Cops don’t like paperwork. Paperwork can mean accountability. If nothing’s written, they can’t get lectured for doing it wrong.
I half expected this to end with jumper cables. Quite a ride, though.
Nothing personal, kid. Alternator’s out.
Not ever having closure for shit like this is ridiculously frustrating. This drunk lady came to my door once and lied that she was a friend of a friend but she was really upset and may possibly have been hit by her boyfriend because she had a big red mark on her cheek and started crying about him. So I had her call her mother to pick her up. Then my wife came home and we hid in the bedroom with the door closed while she and her mom had a huge yelling match about the boyfriend. Eventually they left and we never saw or heard from them again.
You’d think they would have at least left a thank you note.
I’m, in fact, not a horse. I only pretend to be one on the Internet.
Nice try Ed.
Wow. How fucking dare you? I trusted you.
I happen to own this shirt and have worn it to a couple of IRL meetups:
Here’s mine (sorry it took so long, I’m shy)
I approve!
I have scars around and on my genitals. When I was young my mom told me that I had surgery just after I was born. Now as an adult, I think I may have been born with some sort of intersex condition but I am afraid to talk to my parents about it.
Probably not, from someone who worked in pediatric urology and endocrinology. They don’t tend to do surgery until you are older because you need to be old enough to determine what your gender identity is very clearly, which is not clear sometimes with intersex conditions. It’s a really bad decision to make too early. Probably what you had was an undescended testicle or hydrocele or something.
It’s a really bad decision to make too early.
You say that like parents wouldn’t make the decision and find a doctor to do it.
No haha. Did you read the book about the boy whose penis was burned off so the infamous Dr John Money told them to make him into a girl. They did and it was terrible.
haha?
Yeah that happened about the same time as OP’s story
Were the standards any different in the 80s? I’ve heard stories of people getting “corrective surgery” in infancy but the cases that I’ve heard are not from the US or are much older.
Outside of North America maybe, that I don’t know. But in North America they tell the parents they won’t know the gender for a while, to name and dress and groom the child as the parents choose, but they let them know it might change. It’s so rare though, I’ve seen one case in 20 years of hospital work.
That was a really hard won battle for the intersex community. I’m 30 and if my intersex condition had been caught at birth (it was very minor and hidden by foreskin), I’m pretty sure they’d’ve moved from pressuring my mom to circumcise to pressuring her to “fix” it.
Probably not as interesting, but I was woken up as a kid (teen?) by my mom screaming and running into my room/in my bed. Woke up to see my dad standing in the doorway with a steak knife. She had asked him to go to rehab. That was it. We’re good though 🤙🏾
They tried to make me go to rehab 🎶
and I said 🔪🔪🔪
I can’t own a gun because the call of the void is too strong.
Same.
The only reason I’m alive is because I can’t make my kids go through losing a parent that way.
Removed by mod
If anyone reading this feels suicidal, call 988 immediately. Or go to the website to chat.
Outside of North America, look up your country’s number here.
Out of all the shit I’ve seen on social media in the last 15 years, you might actually be the worst.
Something about a gun makes it easier, private. Less of an inconvenience.
(I thought your comment was funny)
Since I most likely won’t out live my wife, and she doesn’t want to live without me, we have agreed on a murder/suicide when we are getting up there
✔️ Scary
✔️ Unsettling
Dunno. I kinda think this is ok. They’re not cutting their lives short per se, it’s seems like a situation where they know their (or one individual’s) quality of life is going to be bad, so they’re doing a mutual suicide. Grown adults should have this choice. I think the only bad thing would be if one partner were reasonably healthy and felt obligated or pressured into it even if they didn’t really want to.
Well I don’t love hearing it, but I respect your choice. I just hope you do it somewhere easy to clean up. Put some plastic sheeting down.
I stole some bullets from my workplace once.
I was unloading a truck at work one day, many years ago. One of the items on my trailer was a pallet of rifle ammunition. Whoever loaded this trailer on the other side of the country did a shitty job of it; plastic wrap was shredded, several boxes were torn open, the cardboard “do not stack” cone was crushed under the weight of a car engine, among other things. When I managed to exhume this pallet from the trailer, the plastic gave way, spilling dozens of boxes and hundreds of loose bullets all over my trailer and loading dock. While I was cleaning up the mess, I impulsively pocketed a few bullets for myself. Nobody ever asked me about it. I don’t even own a gun. But I have a few bullets.
I gave a bullet to a friend in highschool while we were hanging out at the mall. Our lil dumb 9th grade brains thought they were sooooo cool. Well then friend brought it into school showing people and of course he gets expelled on the spot. But he never told the teachers where he got the bullet.
What a homie
Once put one of those plastic wrapped potatoes in my uniform apron to put back in produce at my first retail job (got abandoned in the mac and cheese section). I then completely forgot and took it home. Took it out of my apron and put it on my desk next to my car keys because “I’ll remember to take it back”. I did not. Lived with me for a week or something when I finally put it in my apron again because I wasn’t remembering. I took it to work. I completely forgot about it and never returned it. It made this trip several times. I put it back on my desk because this wasn’t working out, surely I’ll remember if I see it.
Then I forgot about it for like three months. One day I look over at my desk and it’s a shriveled potato with a new potato growing from its own husk…
In essence, potatoes are amazing and horrifying. Just like my short term memory lol.
Then you plant the potato, determined to pay it back with interest. Months later, you harvest 5 potatoes that make it back to work but end up forgotten and back at home again. You even remember them at work frequently, but never when you’re in the right section of the store.
You do remember to plant them the next year though. The first year, you just put them in a pot in your back yard, this year they get a small dedicated place in the ground. The 5 potatoes turn into 34 and no longer all fit in your apron pockets. But you do remember to return the 4 you have on you one day at work, and then forget to grab more before the other 30 are all sprouting the next year.
So the potato garden gets bigger year 3. You build a small shed to store the couple hundred you harvest. You’re getting good at growing potatoes.
You eat one, not because you think you deserve it, but to make sure the potatoes you still want to return to the produce section are up to the high standards your employer’s customers expect.
It’s pretty good.
No, not just good. Your potato is amazing, the best you’ve ever tried. Wait, no, your work’s potato is the best you’ve ever tried. You vow to repay that potato, hardening your resolve. You bring a whole bag in on your next day.
It only takes you three days to remember to drop off the bag of potatoes with the others (after a colleague asks about the bulge on your back where you were carrying them under your shirt). But then you realize with horror that the colour of the bag you made doesn’t match the others. They are beige while yours is a bright beige. You return home that day with your bag plus a work bag, just so you can match the colour properly.
It takes you two more years to finally master the potato bag making craft. It wasn’t just the colour that was off, you also had to match the font and placement of the text and then noticed that your stitching holding the bag closed was pretty different.
Your potato garden had taken over your entire back yard by then and you knew with dread that you wouldn’t have enough space to plant them all next season. But your neighbour lets you use some of their 50 acres in return for two potatoes a day. You feel a bit guilty because they aren’t your potatoes, but you justify it because it’s an investment.
You don’t forget about returning potatoes at work anymore. You can’t forget. Potatoes have all but taken over your life at this point. You bring in a bag and fill your pockets with them each day and take each chance you can get to casually pass through the produce section and leave some potatoes without anyone noticing (which is difficult because you’d been promoted to the deli counter).
You’ve grown strong from getting used to carrying a bag of potatoes while still walking normally, not to mention the slight of hand tricks you use to pull it out of its hiding spot and leave it with the other bags without anyone noticing.
But you’re still gaining potatoes overall, filling the shed and the storage building that replaced it. You consider high jacking the truck that delivers potato orders to your work, but you know Ed in receiving would notice something was up if there was an extra delivery they didn’t pay for. You had already heard some confusion about potato shrinkage being negative and worried you’d never be able to repay your debt.
Then a complaint came in and you thought it was all over. A customer bought a bag of potatoes and they were all trash compared to the last one. The store was going to trace the batch number, which you had just been making up and even having a bit of fun with.
You felt a confused relief when you heard that the trace had led to nothing unusual being discovered. Turns out the trash potatoes were from the usual source and you wondered if that earlier bag was the one from you.
And then one day your nightmare comes true. You had just stealthfully placed three potatoes with others–that were much smaller and didn’t look nearly as good (you were considering sending some anonymous tips to the producer so yours wouldn’t stand out so much)–and made eye contact with one of your colleagues who was standing by the carrots. She saw. It’s over. My whole potato empire is about to crumble to nothing and I’m going to prison for theft.
She looked dumbfounded. A little too dumbfounded, actually. You were wondering if this was a bigger deal than you had thought when you notice a bright orange object fall from her sleeve to the ground. It was a carrot. And it looked significantly better than most of the carrots your work had on display.
I see you’ve seen my Stardew Valley games lmao thanks for the laughs this was great!
Why didn’t you just eat the potato?
Honestly never occurred to me lol I was 17 and that was Work’s Potato, it needed to go home to Work.
So pure of heart
I’ve been sick at home for a few days. I blew my nose into some toilet paper, checked, then tossed it in the toilet. Saw myself in the bathroom mirror and had snot all over my mustache.
Then it hit me. This isn’t the first time I’ve blown my nose with a mustache — it’s just the first time I’ve immediately looked in a mirror afterward.
Oh my god
out of all the disturbing facts in this thread this is the one I like the most
i notice that when im sick, it takes longer for me to get better if i have a mustache. Not that i walk around with snot hanging to it, i hope not. But i guess something sits there, and i breath it all day and stay sick.
After taking a car door to the head during heavy winds, I experienced immediate and recurring night terrors/sleep paralysis for two years. They started out pretty extreme, with me waking up on my stomach with some kind of creature pinning me to the bed. I’d struggle enough to lift my head a few inches, only to find my pillow was filled with distorted, open-mouthed faces stretching out at me from the material.
As time went in the hallucinations gradually waned in extremity, though never becoming anything comfortable. I would open my eyes to see a phosphorescent grid encompassing my walls, or millions of flies on my bedroom ceiling. Once my cat was staring up at them too, and I believed what was happening was real, only to wake up a moment later facing a different direction, and my cat fast asleep at my feet.
Eventually it’s as though my soul became heavy or something. I slept on the top floor of a two-story home, with a very old colonial-era basement below it. I would constantly find myself one or two floors directly beneath my bed, all but glued to the ground and trying with all my might to crawl out of the damp, dark cellar toward the stairs, but too sluggish and/or paralyzed to do it. I felt terrified down there in the darkness. Eventually the adrenaline would wake me up safely in my bed.
Throughout the entire ordeal I would somewhat frequently open my eyes to see some sort of ghostly or transparent entity looming over my bed, leaning over or staring down at me. The last night I ever experienced an episode, I woke up to see that very entity, but I realized suddenly that the entity was me. It was me standing there, looking down at myself. I became angry. I felt like these episodes had ruined my life, and made sleeping something I no longer looked forward to. The rage came to a head. I activated every nerve in my body to try to break free of the paralysis. I gritted my teeth as I succeeded, groaning the words “FFFFRUUUUCKK YYRRROOOOUU!!!” as I bolted up from my bed and lunged through my own ghost. Then I never saw it again. In fact, I never had another night terror since. It’s been years now. A decade at least.
I love your story. I overcome attempted nightmares in a very similar way.
I rarely get anything close to a nightmare nowadays, but I used to get dreams where someone/something would chase me. Then one night, I felt it was about to happen, and thought, “I’m so tired of this. You know what? I’m done.” And… the thing disappeared.
Ever since then, if any scary shit starts happening in a dream, I just tell it to fuck off. Sometimes that moment leads to a small bit of lucidity, and I go, “Oh hey, I can fly away.” Run, jump, take off, and it’s pleasant dreams from then on out.
The power of the mind is incredible.
I actually just had a moment like that (sudden lucidity during a dream) in my last sleep. Probably would have lost that memory entirely if this comment hadn’t reminded me. Even still, I can’t remember the context, just that something was happening that was mildly annoying and I realized I was dreaming.
I just said, “wait a minute, this is my dream, I’m in control here” and then I think the dream shifted into something else or something because the memory fragment ends there.
It’s weird, as soon as I became aware of my sleep paralysis I became able to control it and I’ve never had another either
I still experienced it after I knew what it was, but not nearly as often. The last time I remember it happening, I dreamed I was at work. Laid down in a hallway to nap. Woke up from the dream nap with one of the execs standing next to me, looking down his nose. Couldn’t move. “Hell of a time for sleep paralysis,” dream-me thought.
Then real me woke up with sleep paralysis. At work, with my head down on a conference table at 3am.
I do not miss those sensations.
I grew up deeply religious. Mom used to cast demons out of the house when I was little, and that ain’t the half of it. Needless to say, I entered puberty with some fucked up perspectives. I started getting night terrors soon after I started masturbating, which was an accidental discovery of mine. The fact that I couldn’t stop freaked me out. I thought it was demonic and no way was I gonna talk to my parents about any of it.
Fortunately for me, I was always fascinated by science and sci-fi. I loved sharks, astronomy, history, and Star Trek. For middle school I attended private Christian school or home school, but for 9th grade I demanded to return to public school. My parents relented. The demonic night terrors still tormented me nearly every night, but one day I read an article about sleep paralysis in a science magazine in the school library. It explained everything I’d been going through for several awful years.
That same night I experienced another episode. I felt lucid enough to remember the article and realize what was happening. Instead of impotently begging Jesus again for help, this time I simply thought, “fascinating.” Then immediately woke up.
It has never happened to me since.
The people who fuck with libraries can all burn in hell. Libraries save lives, from exactly those same people.
That reminds me of the first time I did shrooms. I looked in the mirror and my head turned into a demon head. It made me laugh because I don’t believe in such things and I was aware I was on shrooms, but I bet it would have freaked a religious person out. I can definitely see why some religious people use psychedelics because they think it gets them in touch with the spirit world or whatever.
Sleep paralysis is so terrifying. I get episodes when I’m under incredibly severe stress, so I’ve only had about 4 episodes. When it first happened, my heart was thumping so quick and fast that I thought I’d for sure have a heart attack.
I had half of my face ripped off by a dog when I was a kid. Skin and flesh was just hanging off of my face and I almost lost my right eye.
Doctors did a great job patching me up and you can’t even tell that anything happened unless you know where the super subtle scars are.
Oh wow. They did great work then. My niece has her face attacked by a pit bull, has had several surgeries and some laser work, and you can still tell unfortunately. She kind of developed some transient anorexia about it unfortunately, which my asshole MIL went out of her way to aggravate. Glad you did well though.
I’m so sorry your niece went through that. I hope that she can find some peace and heal someday.
I think she’s much better now, thanks. Not thanks to the malignant narcissism of my MIL though. Ugh family.
Family can be the best and worst
I have the suicide disease. The worse, TN2 version. That is not a sly term for mental illness, it’s a nerve disorder that has pain so great that people kill themselves rather than face yet another day of it. I am rarely below 3 on the 1-10 pain scale (at 4 right now) and I’ve reached 10 more times than I can count. This is with medication keeping it at the level where I can function.
I am such a bad judge of pain that the trauma from my not realizing for half a week that I had kidney stones and not taking any painkillers and then being stuck first in a clinic and then the ER for 14 hours writing in agony until they finally decided I did, in fact, have kidney stones and gave me some fentanyl, caused severe trauma and gave me an eating disorder called ARFID, unrelated to body image issues, and I have not eaten solid food in a year and a half.
Explains a lot, doesn’t it?
https://arizonapain.com/trigeminal-neuralgia-suicide-disease/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avoidant/restrictive_food_intake_disorder
Hey, you asked.
P.S. If you try to give me medical advice over the internet, I may just block you. I am so fucking sick of that. And no, “I know you said you didn’t want medical advice, but…” does not count as a way around that. And I am fucking sick of having to say that and having people ignore it too.
Damn. You know flying squid, I’ve always looked up to you around here. I see you in a lot of posts and comments around and didn’t realize you are in agony for most of the time.
Yeah, gotta love it.
I wondered how things were for you. I’m so sorry. I do know of a new treatment for trigeminal nerve stuff simply because I work in neuro I can tell you about if you want but I most certainly won’t give you advice. I just know someone who is using it and it’s new.
I appreciate it, but I have good people I am working with.
Ok all good. Hope you get some relief soon.
Thanks.
Damn, so sorry you’re having to go through this. May the days be kind to you, friend.
Thank you.
I know you said no advice, but have you tried jerking off a bunch?
Blocked so I can go look at porn uninterrupted.
Damn, that blows. Thanks for sharing, I didn’t know that was a thing.
I’m here to try something different… Instead of recommending a medical thing, how about you go on https://loops.video/ and share it with the rest of the world?
Shit, that’s some crazy symptoms! Fight on!
I actually did make a video about it once which has helped others, so I’m glad of that. But I don’t want to doxx myself and link to it.
I am impressed with you.
Thank you.
That’s a raw deal. I always thought a 1-10 pain scale was a dumb Idea. Pain is pretty subjective and someone who hasn’t experienced severe pain doesn’t really have a way to understand what constitutes a 10. (I would answer differently before and after my cycling accident for example) Personally I think that setting the scale as 1-10 where breaking a leg is a 6 (or something) would be more diagnostically relevant. I trust your judgement, although what you call a 4 would probably be most people’s 8.
Sorry to read that. But in some way I am almost relieved that you seem to finally know what caused your insanely severe case of ARFID. I remember when you were posting about your time at the Mayo clinic and the awful mismanagement there and was very sad and disappointed (not by you) that you were bombarded with enough armchair diagnostics to stop updating about your case.
When did you get diagnosed with TN2? And how long was the gap between the kidney stones and your last bite, if I may ask?
Thanks. I don’t really feel relieved by it, mainly because it’s kind of irrelevant to the future, but it is what makes the most sense and it’s better than having no idea.
When did you get diagnosed with TN2?
I think about 10 years ago. Maybe 11 now. It might be genetic because my dad had TN1. But he got it in his 70s. It usually manifests itself at that age. I was in my late 30s.
And how long was the gap between the kidney stones and your last bite, if I may ask?
That’s kind of complicated. A few weeks after it happened (January 2023) I started dry heaving every morning. That has been almost daily for me. Occasionally more than once. Then that March, I had this issue for about six weeks and then I was fine again until August. And other than at the Mayo Clinic when they totally numbed my mouth with a lidocaine-based compound, when I was able to manage a couple of bites of egg salad, that was the last time I had truly solid food. I’m also the smelling equivalent of a supertaster. I can smell cleaning fluid inside stores from when the custodians mopped the day before.
Working with a psychiatrist and doing RO DBT therapy, I am at a place where I can eat pretty much anything if I don’t have to chew or use any utensils and I have conditioned myself to just deal with the smells even if they are awful. I’m even able to cook for my kid now.
So I am in a much better place than I was even six months ago.
That must be the toughest condition I read about in a long while. It’s amazing that you kept going. It’s also amazing that you decided to share this!
Thanks. I have definitely had my very, very low points, but you just try to keep going when you can until you have no reason to do it anymore…
Okay, so I have a mechanical heart valve. One time, while I was in the basement of my childhood home with one of my brothers, I was close to him as he was playing The Godfather PS2 (I’m pretty sure it was that game). It was pretty quiet, so he somehow heard the ticking of my valve and his mind went to some sort of explosive like a pipe bomb being close by.
If you don’t mind my asking, how do you deal with the ticking? I understand it can be very audible internally, and for some recipients can be incredibly difficult to deal with. I have a friend who has one too, and he says he doesn’t even notice it at all anymore. His brain tunes it out unless he thinks about it.
It’s just something that has become constant internal background noise over the years. I don’t know about anyone else with mechanical heart valves, but I’m constantly aware of mine and am so used to it that it doesn’t bother me. I assume my brain tunes it out, but I’m not sure because I don’t think about that.
Cool. Similar to my friend. Good luck, glad the tech could keep you going!
Constantly aware because of the noise or can you actually feel it? I had my gallbladder removed and it’s so weird to me that my body doesn’t feel different in any way I can tell. I’m not sure how internal organs work in terms of being able to feel stuff.
Doesn’t feel different, as far as I’m aware. It’s been long enough I wouldn’t remember if there’s any difference in how it feels. But I feel constantly aware because of the noise. The distinct internal clicking noise makes it hard for me not to be aware.
I was kidnapped (by a parent) as a kid.
Story? Don’t feel pressured if you don’t want to but since you brought it up I’m guessing you’re OK with talking about it
I was 7, my dad woke me up at like 10 pm, told me to come with to the neighbors across the street. I’m gonna stay the night with my friend. Get there, we hang for like 2 hours, it’s after midnight and he tells me we’re leaving.
“You said we were staying the night”
“it’s after midnight, we did stay the night”
My dad is a big fan of technically true statemelies like that.
He put us on a bus, and took us from Chesapeake, Virginia to Columbia, South Carolina, where we’re originally from. We were there for about 2 months. I was with family, and cared for, and not abused or anything. But it was still scary. I knew my phone number, but it was the late 90s, and you didn’t need to know the area code to call local, so I didn’t know it. My dad had instructed everyone not to tell me. I couldn’t talk to my mom or brother, and that scared me really badly. While I was there, my mom and brother both had a really terrible flu, no money (and by no money I mean none. They delivered papers for income, and my dad did tree work when he felt like it.). They couldn’t afford the gas to come get me, even after my cousin helped me figure out the area code to call them.
From my point of the view at the time, it was framed as like, a trip home to see Grandma, but being away from my mom and brother, and not being allowed to speak to them, was really scary. Not to mention frustrating. I knew I was being lied to, and having things kept from me, and I didn’t appreciate it. I started having panic attacks at night when it came to go to sleep, and they lasted until my late 20s. Like, almost every night. I had to learn breathing exercises and shit to deal with them in my teens. It’s wild the shit that can be traumatic. I was safe. I was with my father, and my grandma (although, she was whole other piece of work), and I got to hang out with my older cousin who was good to me, even though her sister was a complete bitch. But it seriously damaged for a long time. I still have unresolved issues about it, and pretty severe separation anxiety and shit. I’m like a shelter dog sometimes. Lmao When the panic attacks started my aunt told me it was because I ate chocolate, and no one would believe me that it wasn’t just, like, heartburn or something. They were real, and I didn’t learn what they were until I was like 16, because panic attacks aren’t, like, typical presentation. They’re weird. Everything feels the wrong size. Like my hands feel tiny, or my teeth feel enormous. The bed feels like it’s the size of an ocean, or the phone I’m using to distract myself feels like a matchbook in my hands. Just a whole bunch of shit. I guess I never really got past it.
But my mom got us a hamster when I got back, so that was cool. They found it in the driveway, and we named him Clyde. Later a neighbor rehomed theirs with us, and we renamed her Bonnie.
… Then Bonnie chewed through her enclosure and Bonnie ate Clyde, so altogether pretty shitty. Lmao
That sounds like a very strange experience. Thanks for sharing
No worries, thanks for letting me vent. Free therapy lol
I’m not surprised it traumatized you, even if you didn’t know the whole situation. Suddenly separating a 7 year old from their mom and brother for 2 months without explanation sounds exactly like the shit that would give long term issues
Everything feels the wrong size. Like my hands feel tiny, or my teeth feel enormous. The bed feels like it’s the size of an ocean, or the phone I’m using to distract myself feels like a matchbook in my hands
Sounds a lot like the Alice in Wonderland syndrome.
I used to have it when I was little, and my symptoms were very similar to yours, but mine kind of went away on their own. When I close my eyes and focus, though, I can still make myself feel like the dark side of my eyelids is getting impossibly far away from me, which is very weird.
Do you still get these symptoms?
Not as bad as I used to, but yeah, if I let myself think at night then I get it really badly. I have to put on sleep meditation videos on YouTube, and I got a Bluetooth sleep mask. If I try to sleep without some kind of distraction it’s pretty bad. Same for driving. Gotta have music or an audiobook or something or I end up having the pull the car over. Constant stimulus, basically.
No shrink has mentioned Alice in wonderland syndrome, I will look that up! I can also do the eyelid thing, but I don’t because it triggers panic attacks
Yeah, it used to trigger panic attacks in me too. That’s fascinating!
I didn’t know anyone else had that same experience, to be honest. Ive told shrinks and they all just say unusual presentation for anxiety/panic attacks
It honestly makes me wonder why my symptoms went away, but yours persist…
I’ve talked to a few people (like 3 or 4 i think) with the syndrome in the past, and it behaved differently for each person I spoke to, whether it’s the symptoms, the cause, or, as in our case, whether it goes away or not.
It’s a pretty unresearched syndrome, though the Wikipedia page for it has way more info than when I last checked.
EDIT: Another thing I’m curious about is that the symptoms also stopped causing panic attacks for me. I haven’t had the eyelid thing for a while, since it’s way easier for me to do that when I’m extremely tired, but the last time that happened I didn’t get an attack at all. If anything, I tried to actually focus on what I was perceiving, I tried to make something out. Again, very weird how it develops differently for every person.
The friend I was telling you about in another comment had to sleep with a blue light on for years because if he didn’t, he knew (even though he realized it was totally irrational) that he would be abducted by aliens. And I guarantee you that was from the trauma of being kidnapped.
Kids are just so easy to fuck up even when you’re actually doing everything the right way.
Oh wow, I just told a story above about my friend who was kidnapped by his dad.
https://lemmy.world/comment/14534609
Also I know you’re not him for anyone who asks. He’s not on Lemmy even though I keep telling him he’ll like it. He won’t get off Reddit. Drives me nuts.
That’s wild!
My story isn’t that crazy. I feel weird/kind of guilty talking about like sometimes, because I know how much worse situations like that are for most people who have been through it. But you can’t help the shit that fucked you up in childhood. Lol
Does your buddy still have contact with his dad?
Not as far as I know. But your story is important too!
