Giving and hearing confessions is cathartic. Nobody wants to keep their secrets bottled up inside, never to see the light of day—no matter how dark, disturbing, or bizarre they might be. So sit down, grab a glass of something good, and be prepared to experience some instant relief as these Redditors spill all the things they’ve never admitted until now.
1. Closer And Less Comfortable
I don't really know how to get into this but I'll start by laying out a few details. So I've been dating this girl for about four months now and she is amazing (up until I found out about this). Like seriously amazing, we’ve both fallen hard for each other, I've met her family and she's met my limited family and it's been going great.
She stays over a couple of times a week and I love her company and I'm very much in love with her. So finding out about this hit me quite hard and I've felt really weird since. I don't want to get into too much detail because it's overall a pretty bizarre situation, but basically at the start of the week she was at my place and we were chilling and she goes off to take a shower, which is normal after a day of work.
So I'm chilling in my room when I realize I need to pee. I go to the bathroom and walk into a room where I'm engulfed in the smell of poop and also it's steamy as heck in there. I'm taken aback and trying to make sense of it because the toilet lid is down but the smell is so strong. I ask my girlfriend if she's okay, she says she's great and she's nearly done she's just trying to get rid of “this.”
At this point, I'm horrified and as I approach the shower curtain (it's a black curtain so I can't see anything) I kind of realize what she's done. I pull back the curtain and she faces me to smile at me and I look down and there's about half a poop clogging up the drain and she's clearly been trying to stomp it down. I had a lot of emotions running through my head all at once.
Horror, disgust, and surprise. Mainly at her normal reaction of me walking in on her trying to waffle stomp a poop down the freaking drain. I just couldn't get my head around how cool and collected she was. I basically just said what the heck are you doing, and to be honest her reply was more of surprise at my reaction of seeing what she was doing, as in she didn't see the big deal about it and didn't get why I was so horrified.
It was so weird. I left the bathroom, obviously, and we had a talk about it and she thought it was a normal thing to do. She needed a poop and just went for it. Apparently, she was raised in a household where that was a normal thing to do and I just couldn't comprehend it. After a while talking, she reassured me she didn't do it all the time but just whenever she needed a poop while in the shower.
I tried explaining that this was definitely not a normal or a cool thing to do whatsoever and she kind of flipped it back on me as if I was shaming her and got upset. Like I said, I love this girl but this has properly rocked me and I don't know what to do. I had to get this off my chest as I don't feel like telling anyone else and embarrassing her further.
2. A Golden Oldie
The most important thing to remember in this story is that this was my first girlfriend, and I was quite sheltered growing up. So about four years ago, I had just started dating a girl (we were both seniors in high school) and, as dumb teenagers do, we found ourselves making out in her car. It was pretty hot and heavy, although all our clothes were on and we were slow to get handsy.
After about 10-15 minutes of this, I moved my hands on her jeaned thigh and started to move it up her leg. As I got closer to her crotch, I started to feel something wet. Like, really wet. I got confused for a second. Then she said, "Oh my god, you made me so wet babe!!" AND I BELIEVED HER. Her pants were SOAKED around the crotch.
Being the dumb 17-year-old that I was, I actually thought that it was possible—and even more far-reaching, that I was capable—of making a girl do this so much that her jeans could soak through. We ended up just laughing about it, and I took her home so she could change with no further action that night. Well, the relationship ran its course with no similar incidents, and we broke up.
However, over the years I kept the story to myself to save her any embarrassment, but in my mind, that story was one of my greatest achievements. The absolute GOD that I am was able to turn a girl into a darn waterfall with nothing but kissing. I was a legend. Fast forward to tonight, I'm recently married and haven't seen my ex in years.
A couple of my friends, one in particular, was close to her for a while after we broke up but ultimately their friendship fizzled out as well. I happen to be hanging out with this friend and a few others tonight, and we heard the song “WAP” come on in the background. We made some jokes about how weird the song was, and I was reminded of my story.
I decided, since it had been some years since anyone had talked to her, I could safely share the story with my friends for a laugh. About halfway through the story, the friend that used to be close to my ex BUSTED out laughing. Between laughs, he breathed out: "I've heard this story before." You know where this is going. Apparently, my ex REALLY had to pee before she got in the car, didn't tell me she needed to, and then when we started kissing, she lost all bladder control but was too scared to admit what happened. My ego hurts tonight, man.
3. Gotta Catch 'Em All
I have a five-year-old son. He's the light of my life, and means the world to me. I got divorced from his mother two years ago, and have a little less than 50% custody; it hurts me every day I don't have him, but I make do. I do my best to always "do what's right" when raising him. But lately, I've been lying to my son, regularly and often.
Pretty much every day I have him. You see, recently he has taken a shining to Pokemon. We watch the old ones on Netflix, he has a Cubone Pokeball made out of legos I bought him, and he loves Pikachu. I want to get him an old Nintendo 2DS or, ideally, a Switch, but can't afford one right now. Because of this, I downloaded Pokemon Go.
He. Loves. It. I set him up with an account on my phone, and when he got sad about not having any friends, I made an account on my work phone so we can trade gifts. He has asked me to catch Pokemon he doesn't have when I'm at work or when he's at his mom's house. I did for the first couple days, but seeing his face light up when he catches a new one made me stop.
So now I tell him I look for new ones but don't find any, when in reality I just catch at least one he already has once a day to keep his streak going. I can't stand to miss seeing his reaction when he gets a new one he hasn't seen yet. It absolutely makes my day. I also sometimes catch multiple ones he already has just so he can get more candies and level his Pokemon up.
He thinks they just give him more because he's a good trainer. I do not dispute this, and say that they must know how much he cares about his Pokemon and how he takes good care of them. I also told him that even though we don't have a Pikachu, I'll catch one if I ever see one. But I lied. I have one on my account, and purposefully didn't get it on his.
You should see the way he lights up at catching a weedle, or a swablu, or a nosepass, or some other minor one. I don't want to miss what his reaction will be when we finally get his Pikachu. I want to have him there to celebrate instead of just catch him one. I can't wait until we get that little yellow guy. So I lie, every day, to my son. About Pokemon.
Wikimedia Commons, Eduardo Woo
4. Keeping It Hush-Hush
I have cancer. I was recently brought up to speed on my condition and what the survival rate looks like for someone in my position (stage IV cancer, spread throughout). It's next to 0, and I'm a realist so my days are numbered to just a handful of years at most in some of the best-case scenarios.
I've been in a relationship with a woman who's been through a tremendous amount of painful losses and setbacks recently in her life. She's made it clear that I've gotten her through some very rough patches and that imagining a life with me has made it easier for her to move past those events and consider a future for herself. She still doesn’t know.
I don't have many regrets in life and I consider myself very privileged to have seen the things I've seen, visited the places I've been, and loved the people I've loved. It sounds strange, but I'm kind of ready. The only thing that is breaking my heart is that I have no idea how to break this to the person who has attached her orbit to a dying star unknowingly.
5. A Moment Of Weakness
This has been bothering me for a while, and I just need to say it I think. I know this was very poor judgment and I have felt completely awful since this happened. I am divorced from my husband of 36 years. Our divorce was finalized in November of 2018, and he immediately had a girlfriend who was about 15 years younger than me.
After the divorce, I got very depressed and had zero self-confidence. I used it as motivation and got in shape. I lost 20 pounds and decided to get breast implants, and I got them last June. After I got them, I basically hid from the world for about a month until I was confident enough to go out again and had recovered. Anyway, my daughter and son-in-law have a pool in their backyard.
Since it was summer, I was at the pool sometimes with them and the grandkids. In late July, my son-in-law made a comment about my breasts. I was totally mortified even though I knew it was obvious to them. I’ve been swimming with them for years, so there’s no real way to hide my breasts. Later that night, he sent me a text apologizing for saying anything and said he was happy for me.
I texted back…and eventually sent him a selfie without any shirt. He was very supportive and told me I looked amazing, etc. I was at a very low place and had been drinking. I asked him if he wanted to come over and he did. We ended up sleeping together. I had not had intimacy in about three years and I think just the attention and being told I’m beautiful made me do it.
I’ve sent him pictures a couple times since when he’s asked but we have not done anything since. We’ve talked about it since and both agree it was a bad idea. We both swore we won’t ever tell my daughter. I have not told anyone about this. I feel so guilty and can’t stand that I’m hiding something this big from my daughter, but I can’t bring myself to tell her.
6. Food For Thought
My friends and colleagues would always ask me why I don't cook, and I conceived two excuses I would deploy often: I don't have time, and my cat sheds all over the kitchen. It's better than telling them the truth and making it awkward. One time, I told someone off for nagging me about not cooking, and boy, was it uncomfortable and awkward for them.
I don't like spending time in the kitchen or won't buy dining room furniture because they trigger my PTSD. Before I start, I worked out most of these memories in therapy, but I still relive them from time to time. Last time was yesterday, in April of this year and before that, in 2017. When I was a little kid, I used to make forts and play under tables a lot and pretend I was in a cave.
I was seven years old and my mom had her friend over. She was fixing food in the kitchen, which is adjacent to the dining table where my dad was talking to my mom's friend. I was playing underneath the table. It was one of those clear glass tables. Anyway...My dad was always busy and never really spent quality time with me, ever.
My mom was, for a lack of a better word, psychotic. She was the opposite of nurturing. She treated me like trash. So, naturally, I wanted attention. I don't remember what I was trying to get my dad's attention for, but remember everything that happened after that. I was annoying him so much that he flew off the handle. I wasn't expecting this, but he punched me in the face.
It was so hard that my face was numb and all I felt was a heavy stream of something warm coming out of my nose. I looked down and it was blood. My mom's friend shrieked and instead of tending to me, my mom was trying to calm her down. My dad was yelling at me not to bother him as blood splattered all over the floor. I remember we had beige and brown tiles.
My blood splatter nearly covered a whole square. I ran quickly upstairs as if my life depended on it and locked myself in my room and hid behind the curtains. I remember being in that room for two days because it was a Saturday and I could retreat there until I had to go to school. I was there without eating or going to the bathroom.
That is a useful and neat survival skill I learned as I grew up. During the first day, they both scolded me from outside the door, saying it was my fault that I scared my mom's friend away. Then, the next day they felt bad and tried to get me to eat and leave the room by giving me promises of new toys, but I refused. I spent those two days hating life and wondering why they keep doing stuff like that to us.
I don't remember much after that except that my mom never cleaned up the dried-up blood stains underneath the table for weeks, and I could see the blood splatter every day from the glass table. To this day, I wonder what ticked my dad off so much that day that he would punch his seven-year-old, who was smaller than all the other seven-year-olds and was literally the size of a five-year-old. But there’s also more.
My mom was a clinically depressed housewife and spent most of her time in the kitchen cooking. As I grew up, my mom would randomly belittle me in the kitchen when I needed to grab something to eat, and told me things like how I was ugly and that she wished I was never born. My dad has had a history of unprovoked violent outbursts and anger issues all my life, but after that punching incident, I don't remember any other similar events until I was in my teens when he got remarried.
On a few occasions, when I tried to cook something and he smelled smoke, he said I would burn the house down or something, so he would throw the food I was cooking at me. Or if he had a bad day and it had nothing to do with me, food would be flying my way anyway. This went on until I was able to work and buy food and avoid the kitchen or eating dinner with them.
I'd buy non-perishable food and hide it in my room so I wouldn't have to go to the kitchen. Or, I'd eat only one meal a day. I started intermittent fasting without knowing it at school because I was working three jobs after school to save up to get emancipated. Working three jobs didn't allow for a lot of breaks. From that time until now, I never cooked.
I developed a complex where I didn't want to. I even have a pet peeve of seeing pieces of food strewn out on the table or on the floor, because it triggers memories of food thrown at me. Now, the only thing that bears semblance to cooking is me using the toaster oven. I'm very grateful to have been able to get out of that situation. I changed a sad story into a better one.
Since then, I've eaten at exclusive restaurants and been fed at movie premieres that people are desperate to get into. And the irony is that I have been supporting my dad and paying for his food for almost a decade now. I share this story because I'm sure there were a lot of people out there that suffer from PTSD stemming from stuff like this. I can say from experience that things can and will get better.
7. My Salty Seventeen
I have been with my partner for 11 years, since his daughter was six. In that time, he has never missed a visitation (1/3 custody) or a child support payment, and we have done our best as non-custodial and step-parents. Her mother (his ex) has always been cruel and demanding to my partner. No matter what he gives or does, she treats him like garbage, makes threats, and demands more.
It has been like this since their divorce 10 years ago. Still, we had a good relationship with his daughter (now 17) until about nine months ago, when the car we GAVE her needed repairs, and he told her the car needed to be (at least partially) her responsibility and he wouldn't just cut a check every time it needed work. Note that we gave her the car for free, got repairs done before giving it to her, still pay registration and insurance for the car, etc.
She was extremely rude and disrespectful in their text exchange, saying things like "This 'free' car you gave me sure is costing me a lot of money" and "You don't want your child to be safe just because it costs money?" before she stopped responding entirely and her mother took over the conversation, threatening to abandon the car in a tow zone (it's still registered to my husband and I) if he did not pay for the repairs.
Since that disagreement, his daughter has not spoken to us at all. Please note my husband DID end up paying for those car repairs, after his ex made the towing threats. Calls and texts, no response, birthday and holiday gifts (from us and my family), nothing, send her cash through an app and she won't even say thanks. Recently, my husband sent a heartfelt message, saying he knows she is hurt and that he will always love her and will be there if she ever wants to talk.
No response. This is causing my husband so much pain. He is terribly depressed and grieving the loss of his daughter, even though she isn't gone, she's just a little witch. She's always gotten everything she wanted—iPhones, computers, trips. She's better traveled than most adults, has taken many vacations with us, her mom, or school trips, which are often funded by my husband.
And now that she was told "no" one time, she is "punishing" my husband and me by cutting off all contact. Her mom supports this decision, of course. But karma was coming for her. Enter: the pandemic. Though we now have no contact with the daughter, I know her school is closed and all the fun Senior stuff I know she was anticipating is gone.
No spring break trip, senior prom, graduation, senior trip, etc. I hope her mom and her are cooped up in their house driving each other crazy. Her mom has always made tons of money (under the table, so never able to be included in child support calculations) with a party planning side gig, and obviously, all those jobs are canceled too, so now they can actually be as "poor" as they always claimed they were.
I hope they are both miserable right now because they have made him miserable, and I love him and there's nothing I can do to make it better for him. She's not a child anymore, she's almost an adult, and she is making these choices to hurt others. She deserves to feel some pain, too.
8. The Breakup Cat
Today I found my partner’s plan for breaking up with me—in a dot point list. I called him and he came over and we talked. He said the spark is gone and I haven't done anything wrong, but he's been planning it for months. Part of his break-up plan was getting me a cat so that when he's gone I won't be lonely. I didn't know this when we got the cat.
I thought we were making a commitment. Now every time I look at the poor thing, I feel sick in my stomach. I love the cat to bits but having him around hurts so darn much. I feel used. He's been telling me he loves me for months but hasn't meant it. In the meantime, I've cooked and cleaned and tried my best for him. I even cooked his entire family Christmas dinner.
He's dropped this on me two weeks into my postgraduate degree and I feel like my world is crumbling. In a day I've gone from happy to financially unstable, unable to eat, drink, sleep, and concentrate, and questioning every friendship I have because if he's lied to me for so long, who else has? I'm considering dropping my postgraduate degree, I feel worthless and useless and I can't focus anymore.
I'm so tired of running as fast as I can to stay in the same place. The reason I mention my studies is because in the past I was really unwell and hospitalized for a long period, which affected university. I feel like I've just gotten better and then been hit in the face with this. I wouldn't drop my degree solely because of a guy, I'm just at my wit’s end with life at the moment.
My...ex...isn't a bad guy, he's just planned this in such a bad way. I'm not sure what will happen with the cat yet. He follows me everywhere but I feel sick every time I see him. The poor thing didn't ask for this and we only got him a few weeks ago.
9. You Have The Right To Remain Silent
I am a really shy, quiet, and anxious guy. I have an avoidant personality disorder, which means I want above all else to connect with people, but I struggle because of my anxiety. As you can probably guess, someone like this doesn't get much attention from anyone at all. At my college, there used to be a lot of members of staff called campus officers.
Their job was to basically enforce the rules of the college and discipline people, etc. They would all wear these uniforms with black coats and sunglasses. It was pretty hot. I remember fancying them because they represented authority, which I find really attractive. I wasn't the sort to ever misbehave so would never interact with these people.
I wanted to, but was so shy that I didn't want to get actually disciplined to do it. So I ended up figuring out a much different plan. I began emailing the campus officers’ offices anonymously. I would report myself and say I was another student but wanted to stay anonymous. I'd say things like "_____ is carrying weed on him," etc.
Well, this wouldn't be ignored. A campus officer would show up to class and call my name. I would just follow them very submissively, but I knew I wasn't in any real trouble. I was so shy, but I loved every minute of the process. I loved the submission of being collected from class, being marched to their office, being sat down and talked to in a sort of authoritative way.
I loved that I was in their office surrounded by staff in uniforms. I liked that they'd search my bag and really enjoyed when they searched me. As someone who was a virgin and really fancied these people, it was a lot of fun to get searched by them. It was an amazing thrill. I reported myself this way multiple times during my time at the college.
They never found anything on me so I was never in any real trouble. After like the third time, my course manager spoke to me and explained that they thought someone might have it in for me, but it was college policy to take reports seriously. At that point I knew I could just keep doing this whenever I wanted. Sure I got pulled out of class, but it was worth it.
It was a lot of fun for me regardless. I pretended I was uncomfortable and would behave very defensively, like I had something to hide. I think how shy and passive I was added to their suspicion to be honest. This is definitely a secret I wouldn't share with anyone else. It makes me laugh a lot thinking back to it. Figured I'd share the story because nobody else has probably done anything like this before.
10. Cheaters Never Prosper
I know my girlfriend is cheating. I've been with this girl for over a year, and she is the first girl I've ever had unprotected intimacy with because I “trusted” her. But around June, I found a condom wrapper in the baseboard of my bed. I brought it up to her and she instantly had an excuse and didn't seem to be nervous and she is terrible at lying on the spot.
So we moved on and forgot about it. Then in July, I found a receipt for the cinema in my car. I didn't say anything though because I thought I'd wait until something else comes up so I have enough to confront her with. Mid to late June comes around, and I was cleaning my car to go visit some family. I keep my car quite clean, but this time there were a few papers and water bottles and such, just general rubbish.
When I was vacuuming the back floor, I found two pieces of the corners of condom wrappers. Now, I am a very reasonable guy. I don't get angry easily and I take all information on board before I get angry. But she had been using my car every few days because the car that “I bought” for her with my own savings was in the shop.
So while I was paying for it to be fixed, I was lending her my car. Still, rather than explode at her, I just put the pieces with the tickets and went about my day. Then, my mom won two tickets to go to New Zealand and she gave them to me because she wasn't well enough to go by the expiration date. I couldn't go because of work, so I gave them to my girlfriend to take a friend. But I had a diabolical motive for this.
I figured it would be the perfect opportunity to set something up to catch her in the act. Once she left, I bought a bunch of cameras and microphones and had my friend (a techie) put them around the house and in my car. When she got back, I had to go on a "work trip" for a few days. I actually went down the street at my techie friend’s house, waiting for her to act up.
Nothing happened for two days and the microphones in my car stopped working, so all we had was the house. Then all of a sudden, the camera in my room turned on. When I looked at the footage, I couldn’t believe my eyes. She was there with my childhood best friend. I hadn't spoken to him for over a year, and the last time I saw him I drove him for eight hours to go to his dad’s funeral.
I didn't ask for fuel money or expect anything in return. I even drove him back to Sydney for free. So me and my techie friend went back to my house that night and broke into his car by forcing the window down (it was a 1990s Ford with hand roll windows). We then pushed it up the block and hid it behind an industrial building. We weren’t finished, either.
Then we went back to his place and called her. We watched her pick up the phone while she was next to him. I pretended to be checking in on her and she sounded "normal" and lied straight to me. It was obvious that she was nervous and it just made me even angrier. We left her for the night and waited for this morning. Officers were talking to my ex-best friend about his car and she had to drive him home.
It was over an hour to his house, so when they left I had the locksmith change my front and back door locks and we dumped all her stuff in my ex-best friend’s car. I even sold the car I bought her to the shop that was supposed to fix it. She'll be home any minute now.
11. A Plot Hole
I was about eight or so and sitting on the couch watching TV with my hamster. I stopped paying attention, and before I knew it he had wandered off and had crawled between the cushions into the interior of the couch. I could hear him in there and had to get him out. He was my best bro and wasn’t going to go out like that. I got scared and didn’t want to get in trouble, so my childhood head thought the best idea was to cut into the back of the couch right by the frame to get him out.
To my surprise, I was able to lure him out through the hole fairly quickly with some crumbled cheeze-its, but was left with a 6” square hole entirely cut into the couch back. Not being a child seamstress with the ability to repair this, my only option was to push the couch back against the wall and deal with it when my dad wanted to rearrange the furniture.
Fast forward to a couple of years ago (I’m 30 now), and my dad is downsizing and selling off furniture he no longer needs, what with all the kids out of the house. The hole was finally found...20 years later. He is in Texas and I’m in California, so when he told me on the phone, even now in adulthood, “I went to donate the couch, and there’s a massive hole in the back” my childhood memories and panic came flooding back.
Before the adult reason in me thought it through, I muttered, “Oh so weird...wonder how that happened.” No one knows that I did this, and I kind of love it.
12. Just Desserts
When I was around 10, my mom started dating this complete jerk, let's call him Gary. Gary adored my younger sister and my mom. He would take them out for dinners, and buy my sister new toys and stuff. I was fine with that, since I honestly loved being alone, and got more time with my books. I don't know if he noticed and decided to escalate, or if he didn't even notice, but he began cornering me when I was alone.
He’d call me fat, ugly, stupid. I was wearing clothes for 12-year-olds, but I had “hit puberty like a brick wall” as mom put it. Literally boobs and butt nearly overnight, and I hated it. I don't think I'm ugly and looking at pictures now I think I was a pretty cute kid. Also, I was top in all of my classes. So screw you, Gary. But like I said I was 10, and at that age, you're just beginning to build your own self-esteem and all that, and I was also being teased at school.
You get the picture; I had nowhere “safe.” Now, at this point I know I should have told my mom, but she had been going through a rough patch on her own and even if he was a complete jerk to me, my mom was smiling again. So I just took it. Well, I didn't tell her anyway. Instead, I would put stuff in his coffee as I made it. I would put salt and vinegar in, I'd spit, particularly when I had tonsillitis, I'd sprinkle washing powder in.
Basically, if I could get it to dissolve, in it went. Also, at 10, my mom had started letting me cook dinner on my own. Nothing fancy, pasta, frozen food. It made me feel grown-up. So I'd put stuff in there too. Once I'd dished it up, I'd spit, sneeze, and I even mixed 1/2 a teaspoon of bleach in once. Basically, once in a while he'd get ill, and I felt better knowing that he was eating/drinking my spit or whatever.
Anyway, just after my 11th birthday, he and my mom broke up and he seemed to vanish. I didn't want to upset my mom, but I found out that he was doing substances in our house in secret, and that was a no-no. So I told my mom about him calling me names and all that. She cried and said she was sorry and made me swear that if anyone ever does that again I had to tell her.
She'd rather I be safe than have me insulted at home. When he tried to get back with her about a month later, she told him to screw off and threatened him.
13. Work Smart, Not Hard
I have LITERALLY done nothing at work for a decade. I have a great job in Canada doing data entry and analytics. I would prefer not to give the field of work as it’s fairly specific. 70k a year, benefits, whole nine yards. Really awesome. The confession is that all of my information is pulled from standard excel files made by other people.
In my first month, I made a macro that pulls from 50+ places on our shared drive and compiles a five-page report daily. The email sends itself at random times around 2:30 every day Monday-Friday. Everyone thinks I’m amazing at my job. I’m the laziest guy you’ll ever meet. I’m almost done getting a VPN function approved that will allow me to work from home.
As for what I do with my time, I’ve actually done a program through work that allows me to get my education for free. I have my masters now and am working on some other things. I did it the "old" way for two weeks before I realized what I could do. Took another week of doing the report while working on the macro. Then a week of troubleshooting. So about a month after I started, it became automated.
As for vacations and sick days, I have a work laptop so sick days are not an issue (although I think I’ve called in twice in 10 years). Vacations, I just disable it. Simple. Small funny story on this topic; when we had our first child, he came three weeks early. I was so caught up that I completely forgot about the email, otherwise I would have disabled it. It sent out and I received accolades for being so dedicated to my job.
14. All Downhill From Here
I tried climbing a small mountain with my girlfriend as sort of a fun date activity. Not even 100 yards from the summit, she sits down and refuses to go to the top, which was an easy stroll away, so I ended up going alone. It made something in me snap. This has now become a metaphor for our relationship in a way. I want to start something, she goes along with it but never commits, and expects me to finish everything without her.
In addition, she refuses to get a real job. She claims she has a job, but makes less than $400 a month. We don't plan on having kids (I don't want any), but she seems to think she'll still be able to sit around at home all day with her computer and leave me to work my butt off and support her dreams, but at the same time, she won't push her limits.
She also refuses to drive, and I act as her taxi service. I also do most of the cooking, cleaning, and shopping. She mostly wants to watch movies, play games, screw, and go out. For some people, an active bedroom life and shared interests are all they want in a relationship, but I can't afford to support her, nor do I want to. We've been dating for two years now.
We get along well as far as interests and hobbies, but it's becoming clear that if I take things to the next step, she'll be more of a hindrance than a help, so I haven't been able to bring myself to commit to marriage. I don't think she'll ever change her ways, and I'm tired of being alone on top of the mountain. My confession is: I’ve lost all respect for my girlfriend.
15. Four’s Company
I fathered a child for my high school sweetheart and her lesbian wife. Nobody but us three knows. I am a 40-year-old male. My ex-girlfriend from high school has been married for years to her wife, and they approached me about being a sperm donor. I had just broken up with my girlfriend and really gave it some deep thought.
I've been close to her since high school and we even thought about giving it another try about five years ago, but it didn't pan out. We tried on two different occasions to inseminate at home with an at-home kit they had purchased. I had read that this isn’t lawful in some states but we tried it anyway and, well, it worked. Her wife was pregnant with a boy and she gave birth a year ago today.
He looks like me and her wife obviously, but I guess it just feels different now that I know he's out there. They have offered for me to see him in person. They said I'd be considered an "uncle" to the child until he asks more about his father in the future. My family would be so angry and so would a lot of people on both sides if they knew, but I just have a good feeling about it and he seems to be very happy.
16. Catch Me If You Can
When I was in high school, I created a meme page that made fun of every teacher, student, and faculty there. Some of them were extremely offensive and were basically attacks on individuals, and I just kept doing them because I was a bitter high school student. Once the administration got a hold of it, they hired a private investigator to find the culprit.
Luckily I wasn't that stupid so I made and uploaded all my memes from the library computer. I then started making memes making fun out of the administration and the investigation, which then escalated into a whole chase for me with the authorities involved. They threatened court action but since they couldn't find me, I just kept memeing my way through high school.
During my graduation day, I posted one final meme that said that I just graduated and that the search teams sucked. I think at that point, they had an idea it was me but they never proved it. It feels good to finally let it out. I never told anyone out of fear for snitches.
17. Goodbye To A Real One
This is a confession to me from my mother. So....many years ago I was sat round the dinner table with my mom and she broke down in laughter, tears and all, and told me she had something to tell me, and she couldn’t live with the lie anymore. When I was a little girl, I used to have a child-sized bear, originally named Big Bear, who lived under my bed to protect me from monsters.
I loved this bear. He was my protector and my best friend. My mom, however, HATED this bear. In her mind, he was one of those cheap bears you can win at the fairground stuffed full of straw, but to me he was perfect. When I was eight years old we moved house, and during this move, Big Bear went missing...believed to have been stolen.
My parents assured me that they had contacted the authorities and they were on the case. Eventually time passed and I forgot about Big Bear and life moved on. Coincidentally, at the same time of Big Bear’s mysterious disappearances, I was in my school play Teddy Bears’ Tea Party, and my role was “teddy bear number two.” My costume was amazing. It was a hand-made, full zip-up teddy bear costume, complete with a cute little bonnet with pink bow.
I was the cutest teddy bear in the whole show, confirmed by my grandparents. Now you’ve probably guessed the terrible secret that my mother has carried with her all these years. My amazingly cute teddy bear costume WAS BIG BEAR. She had destroyed him, pulled out his insides, and cut off his head. She then cut off his face, attached a bow to his head and made me wear his cold...very cute and fluffy teddy bear skin.
I think she finally caved and confessed because she could no longer live with the guilt. I was and still am traumatized. RIP Big Bear. RIP.
18. Room And Board
After I graduated college in June 2018, I moved back home with my parents. I had no job prospects upon graduation, nor did I have any relevant experience or decent connections. All I had was an Economics degree and a 2.8 GPA, which, considering I wanted to go into finance, meant I was pretty screwed. Eventually two months later, after hundreds of rejected applications and five failed interviews, I got an offer.
It was for an accounts payable role paying $15.87/hour at a big company. The office was in a city 45 miles from my home in a place with a very high cost of living. Despite the commute and low salary, I took the job. I didn't really have much of a choice. I had student loans to pay off and I was naive and desperate. And I figured since it was a big firm, if I worked hard and got to know the right people, I could land myself a better position later on. I was so wrong.
The commute was terrible. I started work at 9 am and was done at 6 pm. If I left my house at 6-7 am, it still took me two hours to get to the office. Going home was just as bad. If I got home earlier than 8 pm, I considered that a good day. I spent about 4+ hours each day in my car. I was also driving a small SUV, so gas was rough on me.
After six months, I was ready to crack. I would come to work already drained, and coming home I just didn't have the energy or time for any hobbies. All I would do is watch TV or play video games. Worst of all, the job was going nowhere; what I was mostly doing was data entry, and I hadn't learned anything of value to me professionally.
Also, a large portion of my salary was going to gas, and I was gaining weight from eating fast food after work. Moving to the city was not an option due to the area I worked in being very expensive. Then one day I was having lunch with my co-worker and we were discussing his upcoming vacation plans. His plan was he was going to drive to the office the next week, work the whole day, and then Uber to the airport from the office.
I was confused at this point, because what about his car? My co-worker was surprised and he told me as we were employees, we were allowed to leave our cars overnight in our office parking structure for as long as we wanted. All we had to do was sign a document saying if anything happened to our car, the company wasn't responsible.
It was a common thing since the office was close to the airport and it was more convenient to just Uber. And right there, everything changed. At that point for the next six months, this was my routine: Every Sunday I would pack my clothes and meal prep for the week and drive down to my office that night since traffic was much lighter.
My office was accessible 24/7, so I would come in and store all food in the refrigerators. My office also had a 24/7 onsite gym with showers so I would go there, shower and brush my teeth. I would then go to my car parked all the way at the top of the structure. I'd roll down the windows slightly for air and then put up my windshield cover. My car had very dark tints so I never had a need to cover my windows.
I then would go to sleep. Luckily with an SUV, I had plenty of leg room. Monday morning, I would wake up at 7 am, go to the gym, and get a workout in. I'd brush my teeth and shower and get into the office by 8:30. I was never, ever late again. I'd work until 6 pm and then eat my dinner I stocked in the fridge. Once I was done with work, I would stay at the office (it was common for people to work late so no one ever batted an eye at me) and look up tutorials on certain skills I wanted to gain.
I learned advance excel, financial modeling, certain softwares, etc. Then at around 9-10 pm, I would go back to the gym, shower and brush my teeth and go sleep in my car. I would repeat this the rest of the week until Friday when I drove home. I improved significantly. Meal prepping healthy food and working out allowed me to get back into shape.
I was getting around 8-9 hours of sleep per night, so I was much better rested and more productive during the day. I was able to learn skills that were relevant to me and I had a slightly better social life in the city I was in since I no longer worried about my commute. I was also driving less, so I was spending less on gas. I also managed to pay off my loans and help my parents out since I was able to save so much.
Nobody knew about this. I would tell my parents I was staying with a friend who charged me cheap rent for staying the week. Since I worked for a big company in a minor role, no one really knew or cared who I was. Not once was my car ever ticketed or towed, nor did anyone ever investigate my car at night. This went on until I resigned two months ago.
I had interviewed and accepted a job offer out of state for role I specifically wanted and had been developing myself for. My new firm offered to help pay for relocation and my salary went from $18 to $35 an hour. The job is fantastic, and with the money I saved I was able to buy a "newer" used car and get my own studio close to my job.
My commute is now 15 minutes max. For anyone who is wondering, I was living in Thousand Oaks and my job was in LA. Let's just leave it at that. For anybody here still in college, the reality is your Bachelors alone is not enough. You're also going to need experience or you have to know someone. Internships, connections, clubs, even a high GPA (yes, some places did check my grades and I got screwed because of that) does help.
Hit up alumni or go to networking events and try to learn practical skills. It's a highly competitive world out there and the world doesn't owe you a thing. And yes, I considered myself very lucky to work for a company with all those perks. And that was one of the reasons why I really thought I could move up there and took the job despite the commute.
But instead, I was basically a clerk and pretty much everyone outranked and made more than me and treated me as such. What was worse was most of the people there were my age, so the environment was really cliquey and toxic.
19. Red Flags Aplenty
My little brother has tried to kill my little sister twice, and I look forward to any excuse to never have to talk to him again. I hate him. He's seven years old. Every single thing about him is repulsive to me. I'm 26, so we have a bit of an age difference. I've spent a lot of time around children and I've never met one to whine and complain and scream about anything and everything as much as he does.
Once he held my three-year-old sister’s head under the water in the kiddie pool until someone caught him. The second time, he held a pillow on her face until my mom caught him because she heard a ruckus in the living room. My mom tried the, "he's seven, he doesn't know better" defense, but I would argue that because he's taken and finished swimming lessons, he knows what it means to drown.
He has manipulative tendencies that take too much text to get into, but he's said things to me that hurt me in a way that I can't forgive, whether he meant them or not. If we find animal corpses under his bed or he gets caught with a body one day, I'm fully prepared to tell my entire family "I told you so," and let them be mad at me, because this kid is nuts and I want nothing to do with him.
20. Home Is Where The Hurt Is
So this is a story all about how my life got flipped, turned upside down, so I worked hard and bought my parents’ house. Now, I will admit this right from the start: I'm not a good person for doing what I did. I'll have to give a little bit of back story to explain this whole thing. First, my parents married young, I wasn't planned, and when they were growing up, it was the standard thing that when you have a baby, you get your own place.
It didn't matter if you rented or bought a place. So with my parents being young and with a baby on the way, they rented from this lovely fellow from Osaka, Japan who we'll call Uncle Kiryu. Now, Uncle Kiryu was a wealthy man who made a lot of money from Oil and Property, but he started from nothing. Because of this, he knew that being young, you needed a helping hand to get started.
So he would rent out apartments and houses at lower than market rates for people who wanted a roof over their heads. He still made a profit and because he had so many properties, he always had steady income, whether there was a recession, floods, etc. Now, Uncle Kiryu was always generous to me and my family, helped where he could, and we even had him over for birthdays and New Years.
He once brought me to the dentist when I fell and broke a tooth at age 11, and he paid it without question. Over time, as my parents got older, finished college, and got better jobs, he helped them move from a one-bedroom apartment with no garden to a nice townhouse, to a three-bedroom house right outside the city center in Dublin. All of which he owned and rented out to them.
However, if Kiryu has a fault, it’s that he always tries to see the best in people, even if their flaws are staring him in the face. The reason I'm telling you so much about Uncle Kiryu is because he is very important in this story, and because I literally owe him my life. About 12 years after they had me, my parents unfortunately were in a car accident, and had numerous injuries.
My dad cracked his ribs, tore a muscle in his back, and dislocated both shoulders, while my mom broke her leg in two places and shattered her right foot. Thanks to these injuries, they sadly lost their jobs—this was back when you could get away with making people redundant for long-term medical injuries. After that, they were stuck at home all day, and could do very little except take pain medication and watch TV.
I spent a lot of time with family, babysitters, or just hanging out with friends outside for at least a year while they recovered and went through rehab and surgeries. There is a part of long-term injuries that isn't always brought up: Pain management. Between broken bones, torn muscles, and not being able to work, mom and dad were taking a lot of pills and injections just to function, and well, pain medication can be quite addictive and can change you as a person.
This was only too clear to see as my parents changed from proud, hard working, loving people to addicts who cared about getting a fix. Once they recovered from their injuries, they couldn't get pain pills anymore, so they switched to different substances. That’s when it all came crashing down for me. Because once that started, the mistreatment followed.
They teased me about everything: Making me feel bad about getting 92 on a test, taking money I was making at a part-time job I had as a waitress in a hotel, complaining about having to pay for new bras and clothes when I outgrew them (which I unfortunately did a lot), culminating in me learning to sew and make my own bra extenders and repair tears in my clothes and school uniform.
To this day, I still have an emergency clothes fund as a just in case. They also guilted me into slowly doing more and more housework, to the point that my days literally consisted of “get up, make their breakfast, go to school, occasionally go to work, come home, do the housework, make dinner, do homework, shower, bed.” The moment that broke me was when I was 17.
We had been fighting over something stupid. To this day, I still can't remember what, but I do remember what they said to me: Dad: You're just a lazy good-for-nothing. All you do is rip your clothes and complain, even though we keep this roof over your head and food in the fridge. Mom: So shut up, you're worthless, you're just going to be a waitress all your life anyway.
This was followed by a slap from dad and my mom spitting on me. Have you ever heard the expression “You can’t see the forest for the trees?” Well, that day lit a fire under me and I got ready to burn the forest down. What followed was me putting all my time into school and work. This part will sound like I'm bragging. I don’t mean to, I'll try to make it more factual and to the point.
The next five years seemed to fly by in a month. I don’t know how or why, but I turned into a machine and made something of myself: I finished my schooling and got into culinary college. I passed with flying colors (and a very sticky Croquembouche that fell on my teacher) and got a job as a prep chef in the hotel I was working at.
I moved out of my parents’ house and into an apartment, thank you Uncle Kiryu! Busted my butt and got promoted to Commis Chef, then Line Chef, and after about three years, Sous Chef. I wasn't the best chef there, far from it, but until I made Sous Chef, I was paid hourly, so I worked every hour they would give, and that earned me a lot of respect, plus I would always clear the oil and water drains in the kitchens.
I also saved up a lot of money for a rainy day. All the while, my parents fell deeper into their addictions. We kept our distance mostly. We saw each other on birthdays, Christmas, etc. Occasionally I'd get a call to borrow money for food. Here’s a tip: If someone asks for food money, offer to bring them shopping. If they're genuine, they'll jump at the chance. If not, they'll run.
Whenever I visit, their house has fallen into disrepair. Broken windows, torn wallpaper, burn marks everywhere, mold in the ceiling, broken plumbing. Seriously, I had to turn the water off to stop the second floor from being destroyed. Uncle Kiryu notices but they wont let him in to fix the place up. Then comes the moment that made my attitude turn into “I will destroy you.”
It was last Christmas. We went to a family get-together, and it was the usual party: Big turkey, tons of presents, the old song about Auld Lang Syne, and everyone watching Mrs. Brown’s Boys, which is a popular show with our family. My lovely aunt was telling anyone who would listen how I helped save her daughter’s wedding by catering the whole thing.
For what it’s worth, I didn't, I just put her in contact with a friend of mine who specializes in wedding meals. At that point, my dad in his stupor decided to rant about my career. “A Caterer? A caterer? Oh no, I'm sorry, you're some big poncy chef! Why didn't you go into construction like me? Do something useful with your life, not some worthless career where all you do is peel potatoes all day.”
My mom, of course, decides to chime in and essentially mumbles some inordinate teasing, calling my work “not a proper job, anyone can do it. A cow like you isn't worth a fiver.” Now, this is where they touched a nerve. I will admit, I'm a woman who has an ego when it comes to my work. I'm not at the level of Michelin star chefs, but I’m darn good at what I do.
I worked hard to get there and I know I'm worth something. Skipping forward a couple of weeks and I'm at my Uncle Kiryu's house for his New Years Party; he always celebrates it in mid-January for some reason. He's talking about work and how it’s a good time to sell some of his properties that are vacant, and it hits me: What if I buy my parents’ house?
So Uncle Kiryu and I get to talking, and he realizes that with the house in such a state of disrepair, it would cost a lot to repair, so he agrees to sell it to me at a cheaper price rather than having it fixed up first. I'm not proud of this, but I convinced (read: outright lied to) him that I wanted to buy the place to ensure my parents would always have a roof over their heads.
Well, it took nearly six months, but soon enough, I got the confirmation from my lawyer and estate agent that I now own my parents’ three-bedroom house and I'm their new landlord. As part of the sale, I asked Uncle Kiryu to organize the transfer of rent payments to a new bank account that I set up, and I've had him work as my intermediary with them, so they haven’t had to meet their new landlord yet.
I can't evict them yet, but when I can they’ll have three months to get the heck out. Then I can fix the damage they've done and move into my own home. Meanwhile, they're on benefits and can barely afford a meal, never mind somewhere to live. I'm watching the calendar, waiting for my day to visit and serve an eviction notice. I'm not the good girl or the hero of this story, but I'm worth more than a fiver.
Also, while it’s true that some of this is for revenge, the main motivation is that place was my home, and I want to continue my life there and move on from that part of my history. Plus I'm getting a three-bedroom house in Ireland, it will be mine, I will live there and have my home. And after all that, there was a little update in the mix too.
At some point, I finally got a chance to meet with Uncle Kiryu and come clean. I invited him to taste some of our new dishes at work and admitted to him why I REALLY wanted to buy the house. His response surprised me. He nodded and said very simply: “I know. I am not happy about this. But I know why you're doing this.”
Once I convinced him that I wasn’t planning on burning the house down (he was very concerned about it for some reason), he gave me some advice, and gave me the name of a management company, saying that he no longer wanted to be the intermediary. He asked if I realized they would have no home after this and that he cannot save them, I explained that I did.
After that, he asked me to cook his favorite dish as “punishment” and made me promise to give him plenty of notice when the eviction proceedings go forward so he could be miles away.
21. Arrive Alive
I'm a mechanic. I had a woman come into my shop today, and she drove me to do something I have never done in my life. I was talking with my service advisor at his desk since it was a slow day and I was waiting for our appointment to finally show up for her alignment. This woman was claiming her vehicle pulls and she constantly needs to correct it to stay on the road.
She shows up three hours late. OK, that's fine, no big deal. She stumbles out of her car and opens her back door, and a little boy who wasn't even two years old gets out. No car seat in sight, and the seat belt was buried under her clothes, so he was literally just sitting back there. I held my tongue with her but went and said something to my boss, who told me he'll call CPS.
I thought that was the end of it. It wasn’t The advisor pulls the car into my bay to look over the vehicle, and he has a look on his face and he's shaking his head. I look inside and see a roach still burning, a tall can of Mike's hard lemonade with condensation pouring down the side, an empty bottle of something else and more empty cans on the passenger-side floor.
I started shaking with anger. I test drove the car. Lo and behold, it drives perfectly straight. I pull back into the shop to fill out my paperwork and then proceed to get into the car, still shaking with fear for the kid. I couldn't wait for CPS to eventually show up at her door. Remembering I saw an officer posted up by the traffic light right outside the shop, I saw a glimpse of hope and got an idea.
I pulled the car around, but before I made it back up front I stopped where cameras could not see, then opened the trunk and quickly disconnected the woman's right side taillight. I pulled the car up, handed over the paperwork, and told him not to bill her for the alignment check. I walked outside to have a smoke where I could see the intersection.
She got stuck at the red light. I look over and see the officer start pulling out; he turns his lights on and pulls her over. 15 minutes later, two more officers show up along with a tow truck. I feel like I did the right thing, even though it felt wrong.
22. Kitty Love
So, I got a cat like three months ago. She is the purest, fluffiest baby in the world, but the most important part of this story is this: Every night since I got her, around 9 pm, she will jump into my lap (no matter where I am sitting), climb up to my face, and give me nose kisses and then proceed to curl up and purr herself to sleep. And then I just sit there, and look at this little loaf of fluff, and I cry.
Every time. I just can't handle how cute she is and how much I love her, I guess.
23. Sing Your Heart Out
It was my first night in Tokyo with my boyfriend. We’re both good drinkers, and experts on holiday. We had late dinner and became friends with the chef, sous chef, and waiter so we decide to go and do karaoke together. I am super shy and a notoriously bad singer, so when I hear my voice amplified I almost throw the mic away immediately.
My boyfriend encourages me to sing all night, choosing the songs he knows I know by heart (such a sweetheart) and handing me the microphone. I always start the song and then give away the microphone, embarrassed. I feel like I'm ruining what could be an amazing night, since everyone else is happy and enjoying themselves. After a while I can't take it anymore.
I head to the bathroom and start crying, looking at myself in the mirror and thinking what a complete failure I am, apparently also at karaoke now. I cry a lot, not bothering or trying to keep it down since the karaoke rooms are soundproofed. But, well, my logic isn't really in mint condition. I exit the bathroom and see that the chef has been there all this time.
He writes something on his phone and then hands it to me. His Google translator says: "Everything is going to be ok."
24. Bait And Switch
My wife gave birth to identical twins one and a half years ago, and they were born with not even a three minute difference from each other. Even this young, they are the definition of identical twins because they look exactly the same, same height, same features, same everything because they shared the same placenta. It should be noted that me and my wife had decided the names already when we were told we would have twins.
For the sake of this post, the firstborn baby would be named “Clone 1” and the second “Clone 2.” However, there’s something that my wife doesn’t know to this day and probably never will. When my wife was still hospitalized for the routine 24-48 “rest” after the uncomplicated delivery, I had a few moments to sit and watch my babies as my wife was resting or sleeping.
When the babies were delivered, one of the nurses put a small pink bracelet on their wrists with their initials written on it to differentiate them and also for obvious reasons. Not gonna lie, during the final hours after my wife had checked out with the doctor for a possible discharge and she was cleared, I had a few Lion King moments with my babies with the proud feeling of “I made this” after they brought them to our room.
Here’s the catch. For a moment, I thought it would be funny to switch the birth bracelets and when we got home, I thought it would be priceless to watch my wife’s reaction when she would find out that she had mixed the babies all along. And so I did it. When she was resting, knowing that my parents and my in-laws were coming for a visit, I switched the bracelets, knowing well that they wouldn’t allow me to do it.
Long story short, when we were all sitting in the room and admiring the babies, I had to leave the room to answer a congratulatory call from one of my best friends because I didn’t want to disrupt my wife’s sleep, only to find out when I walked back in, the bracelets had fallen off from their wrists on the bed and my parents and in-laws were basically playing hot potato with the babies, passing them from one to another, having no clue which baby is Clone 1 and Clone 2.
Now, I know that these bracelets are meant to be cut and not to just pop open, kind of like the festival bracelets, but it opened relatively easily and I suppose when I did it, I broke its “lock mechanism” so they fell off with the slightest movement. In the end, I picked up the bracelets without anyone noticing it, put them around their wrists again (for some reason they stayed intact this time), packed our things, and left.
Even to this day, their identifications might be switched and we call Clone 1 Clone 2 and Clone 2 Clone 1. Or maybe not and everything is how it’s supposed to and was meant to be, I just don’t know and there’s no way to find out. That 50-50 chance and not knowing is kind of irritating and funny at the same time. So yeah, even a year and half later.....that’s how I played myself.
25. Ants In My Pants
My older brother is 30. He has no job, doesn't go to school, and lives with my parents still. All he does is make messes and game all night. He games to the point that I can hear him yelling and screaming all night long, and it’s been a battle because I cannot sleep with the amount of noise he has put out. Oh, also, I'm 17 and a female and will be moving out to my own apartment next Saturday for university.
Anyway, it started like any other night last night. Around 12 am he started to game, turned his volume on his speakers all the way up, and was yelling and screaming into whatever he was playing. When I asked him to turn it down, it escalated and it turned into a yelling match between us. Needless to say, he got angry and destroyed my bedroom door by punching it.
I was at my breaking point. My parents don't care, I haven't slept properly for about a month, and so I devised my plan of vengeance. My brother went out early today with my aunt and left his door unlocked. So, sure, I could have messed with his computer and speakers, but I decided to do something more…interesting. See, his room is dusty (not really messy, just dusty) and so, I sprinkled Nesquick powder all over the dark dusty crevices of his room, and under his sheets, his shoes, and just pretty much anywhere that won't bring up too much suspicion.
Well, the summer ant infestation that seems to come every year in our house has moved from the usual battlegrounds of the kitchen and bathroom, into his room. When my brother got home, he absolutely freaked out. There were ants everywhere from what I heard in his tantrum. Ants in his bed, ants in his keyboard, ants in the computer.
The ants were even having a frenzy in his closet. To further complicate this ordeal, I hid the ant spray, and since he can't drive, there was no way to really clear out the ants, and my parents don't get home until later tonight. So right now he's having a man baby tantrum because he can't play his game, while I enjoy my ant-free environment in my bedroom.
Piqsels
26. A Means To An End
A couple of years ago, when I was 24, I was in Egypt and I got into a cab to go home. The driver was on the higher end of 40. I was looking at my phone when he swirled, taking a sharp left, and then drove straight again. I thought there was a pothole or something so I ignored it. A minute later, same thing. Now I started paying attention.
I looked at the road and apparently, he was trying to hit the street cats. He swirled again and this time the car made a little hum. I heard a screeching noise and the cab driver started laughing. I told him to stop for a minute, very calmly got out, and looked back. Yes, there it was, a half squished cat. I went back to the cab, this time to the driver’s side.
I didn't say a word. Just opened the door, pulled out the driver, and proceeded to beat him like a maniac. He was already bleeding everywhere when finally some pedestrians pulled me off him. I managed to get a final kick out before I got dragged away. Since I speak the language, I was able to tell them what happened and they told me to get away fast before officers came. To this day I don't regret what I did, but I’ve never told anyone.
27. Spick And Span
This morning my stomach was a little unsettled. My boyfriend was in the shower, and I was going down to the basement to grab his work clothes from the dryer. I got to the main floor and felt the urge to toot. I ended up having diarrhea all down my leg and onto the hallway floor. I really quickly wiped my legs down, cleaned up the floor, and figured I’d shower once he left.
I then grabbed my boyfriend’s clothes to bring up to him. He gets dressed and we walk downstairs so he can leave. He walks down the hall to grab a bottle of water from the kitchen, stops and says, “What’s that?” I look over and there’s a brown blob of poop on the floor. It must have dropped down my leg when I went to clean up.
My sister lives with me, so I said maybe she was eating something and spilled it. He grabs a paper towel and unknowingly wiped it up off the floor for me. He looked at it and said “Gross. I wonder what she ate.” Bless his heart.
28. Sister Act
A few years ago, I was very ill and in the hospital, but my school wouldn't give me any exemptions regarding schoolwork. I was hanging on a very loose thread and if I was to fail any classes that term, the school said I would be held back a year. My sister knew that this would absolutely devastate me, so because I could hardly lift my head and I was attached to countless drips at the time, she took it upon herself to write and submit the assignment for me.
About a month later, my teacher excitedly showed me that she had submitted "my" piece to a magazine because of how well it was written and they had chosen to publish it. My name and picture were under the article. They mentioned it at my graduation, they gave me a medal for the subject, and they even put an additional copy of the article in the school’s magazine.
The whole time, my sister just played along and still does whenever someone brings it up. She is an absolute legend and I can never thank her enough for saving my butt.
29. A Game Of Telephone
Last night, I texted my boyfriend saying I needed him to come upstairs to help me find something. I was trying to surprise him with a quickie since everyone was playing games and dinner was over. The door opens and there I am in a sexy outfit, spread eagle, and I make eye contact with....his mom. How do I eat breakfast with the family this morning?
30. Getting Clean, Feeling Dirty
I’m a woman, and I haven’t been intimately active for almost a year now. To my surprise, I was extremely turned on by my dental hygienist just now. The way he was talking to me throughout it, he’d softly ask if I was doing okay. He’d gently (almost sensually) wipe the sides of my mouth and lips, down close to my neck anytime water came out.
He wouldn’t tell me to move my head, he’d confidently use just his finger and push my chin (with the top part of his finger not the tip) so my head would move a little bit. Also, when he’d stand above me with my mouth wide open while still asking if I’m doing okay..turned me on. Not to mention, his cologne smelled amazing. I feel like a weirdo, but hey, that’s what confessions are for, right?
31. Double And Triple Check
This happened just a few hours ago. I was out to dinner with my boyfriend and a co-worker of ours, and we had just gotten off of work. This couple sat next to us shortly after we got sat. Throughout the meal, something seemed off about them. Out of the corner of my eye, the husband would motion his head towards us and mumble something to his wife.
The wife would look at us and say something back to her husband. The wife would also constantly make long eye contact with me. I would eavesdrop on their conversation here and there and they would say stuff like, “I’m gonna say something to them” and “what should we do?” I thought maybe we were too loud and they were annoyed with us.
It was extremely awkward because it was obvious that they were uncomfortable with us. My boyfriend is from Sicily, and he speaks Italian, English, and Spanish. Our co-worker is Spanish, and for half of the meal they would be speaking Spanish to each other. I noticed whenever they spoke Spanish, the couple would just look at each other in fear.
I got up to go to the bathroom, and that’s when the lady got up and went too. In the bathroom, she stopped me and said, “Can I ask you something?” “Yes.” “This is going to sound weird.” “Ok.” There was a long pause. Then she said, “Are you safe?” “What?” “Are you ok?” “Uhh yes.” “Do you know those guys you are with?” “Uhh yeah, that’s my boyfriend and our co-worker.”
She didn’t say anything and looked at me as if she wasn’t convinced. “I swear. We just got off of work and came here to eat.” “You sure?” “Yes I promise.” “Ok. Just with all the trafficking going on today, I didn’t want to risk anything. You looked uncomfortable and stiff and I wanted to see if that was the case.” “No, I swear I’m ok.” “You sure?”
“Yes look.” I pulled out my phone and showed her my wallpaper of me and my boyfriend. “That’s my boyfriend.” “Ok. You still don’t want my number in case something happens?” “No, nothing is going to happen because I’m safe! That’s my boyfriend!” “Ok. I’m a nurse and I look out for these things. And if something were to happen I would never be able to forgive myself.”
“I understand. Especially in this day and age. Thank you for caring.” She then continued asking me if I was sure if I was safe. I answered a million times yes. Even though it seemed like I couldn’t convince her I was okay, I’m glad she was concerned. Because what if this was actually the case? I’m glad someone looked out for me even though I was completely fine.
It gave me faith in humanity. I was confused, though, why she even thought that in the first place. We weren’t doing anything out of the ordinary, just talking.
32. Opposites Attract
My wife is an introvert. Quiet solace, a good book, and a comfy couch is all she needs to keep her happy. She's educated, intelligent, and has a very good job with the Feds as an analyst. Me on the other hand, I'm outgoing, volunteer at our kid's high school all the time, and am comfortable striking up conversations with total strangers.
We're opposites socially. Here's what I must confess. In my single days, I was wild. I'd try just about anything in the bedroom, thought nothing of it, was very open to whatever turns you on, let's give it a go. My wife knows this and it intimidated her for the longest time. Recently, she decided to break away from her quiet self and told me she wanted to "play around" some.
She wanted to talk dirty to me; she wants me to be happy in the bedroom and is going to open up a bit. I was curious, so I said ok. When she talks dirty, I smile and fight not to laugh because it's not her at all, but I love her and appreciate her attempt so much. If I say anything, she'll be disappointed and become withdrawn. I know her, this is a huge step for her, so I won't crush it.
This is how I know she loves me dearly. I tell her it's not necessary to act like it, but she thinks I'm just saying this. She doesn't do it all the time, maybe a few times a month, but it makes me smile knowing she's doing it to please me. Love her dearly, so I fake that it turns me on. Just a note, it's not all serious with the "dirty talk." We do laugh at times with it.
I'll respond with an over-the-top type of "Oh yeah baby, give it to me!" In an Austin Powers or James Bond voice. Lighten the mood to make it more open and fun.
33. Evacuation Plan
When I was in school, I was in a very small classroom that had only a few tiny windows. I suddenly dropped a silent-but-violent type toot in the middle of the classroom. Suddenly one of the guys in the class started complaining about some foul stench. My teacher, who had at one point been in the army, compared it to one time when he was locked in a tent with tear gas.
At that point, he ordered everyone to evacuate the classroom due to the foul smell. I am still very embarrassed about this because one of the girls in that room was my crush.
34. Confess Your Sins
I grew up Catholic, and I am no longer a believer. I went to an all-girls Catholic high school. They used to assemble us in the gym for mass confessions. Beforehand, we would receive a pamphlet on all of the things we should confess. This "official" list of items was handed out to children of ALL ages, even in the elementary and middle schools.
It included items like impure thoughts, “self love,” and a breakdown of bedroom activities. As a collective, the church and its constituents think it is entirely appropriate for minors to go into a room alone or meet privately with a priest and tell them that they touch their boyfriend or whatever. It’s bonkers. So the older I got, the more repulsed I became with the knowledge that if you stripped away titles, this is the institutional grooming of kids to tell adult men about their bedroom experiences.
So as a 16-year-old, I’m so angry, and I started a private revolt. I took every confession as an opportunity to make priests as uncomfortable as possible. I would confess every detail of my “extra” activities. And every time I walked away and left a stunned, red-faced, sometimes sweaty-palmed priest in my wake, I felt so much better for sticking it to the Man.
This probably makes me a certain shade of crazy, but even now as a fully functional, semi-normal adult, I wish I could commend my 16-year-old self. For as wrong as it sounds, I can't help but feel that my little vigilante self was on the side of the right.
35. Parents Just Don’t Understand
My parents came home to me losing my virginity, wasted out of my mind, and puking. They never found out. See, my parents weren't going to be home, so I picked my boyfriend up and brought him to my house. We had limited time alone, as my parents were only supposed to be gone an hour or two. I was nervous and ended up getting super tipsy.
We messed around for a while, and then he stopped and asked me if I was okay. I didn't respond and he ended up carrying me to the bathroom as I puked my brains out. My boyfriend, the great guy he is, made sure to get me over the toilet and held my hair back. The original plan had been that I would drive him home. Apparently, I was insisting I would drive him home even in the state I was in.
He wasn’t going to let me, so he frantically called all his friends. No one picked up. Before we knew it, my parents were pulling into the drive. My bedroom is right in the front of the house, WITH A HUGE window, so they saw him up in my room for sure. Following this, I puked some more out of anxiety and dread. The floor of my bedroom was pretty much covered in puke.
My boyfriend carried me back to my bed, tucked me in, and hid the evidence quickly. I pretty much passed out at this point, but according to him he basically went downstairs, lied, and told my parents I got sick after we went out to eat. AND THEY BELIEVED HIM. My parents even offered to drive him home. One of his friends finally came (luckily) to save him.
This all happened about four days ago. My mom likes him even more now because she thinks he was taking care of me sick. Anyways, it’s nice to get that off my chest.
36. I Wash My Hands Of You
I finally understand why my aunt and uncle stopped caring when we were kids. Back then, I viewed my aunt and uncle as potential saviors who could swoop in and fix our messed-up family situation. The fact that they didn't made me indifferent to them, as if they were no more than people you pass through in life. Flash forward, I'm an adult. The bane of my existence has been my sister, who won't get her life together.
She just won't. No job, no sense of independence, no concern for how her lifestyle affects her kids, etc. She's a 15-year-old trapped in a 30-something adult's body. My sister was staying with baby daddy #2 and it was a toxic, messed-up relationship. I always tried to be Uncle Savior by doing grocery shopping and Christmas even when things were tight on my end.
They ended up getting evicted and then my sister had a medical crisis that required months of bed rest. I allowed her to stay with me. She seemed like she had a moment of clarity that her lifestyle can't continue or it will ruin her. Last week, however, she announced she was moving back into the house she, her kids, and her baby daddy are being evicted from.
She said she couldn't get her life together at my place and could only do it at her place for some reason. I reminded her she was being evicted and she has never had her life together. All she said was that she was tired of people telling her what to do. At that moment, it hit me. She's a lost cause. I had a close call with my job and the first thing I thought about was my sister and not being able to help her with $400 a month.
Then I realized that if she won the lottery, she probably wouldn't give me anything. So I have to cut the strings, emotionally and financially. I feel bad for my niece and nephew, but I can't do it anymore. I no longer think my aunt and uncle are jerks because this is what they dealt with when dealing with my mother. My niece missed so many days of eighth grade last year that she wasn't going to graduate.
She ended up getting lucky and they let her. Her absences were due to just not wanting to go to school and not being forced to go by my sister. I was embarrassed for my niece yet I still gave her a gift card because no one else "celebrated" or recognized her "graduation." She could have graduated with honors and still wouldn't have been recognized by her mom or father.
Meanwhile, my nephew should have been in pre-school but, again, my sister is too lazy to sign him up so he too is starting at a disadvantage. My point is that investing $400 a month into their education when clearly education is not important to them is stupid. Their educational setbacks aren't due to money—it's due to my sister not wanting to get them to school.
I worked my BUTT off to put myself through college and graduate school. No one gave me a dime and that required a work ethic that clearly my niece (and sister) lacks. It's not my niece's fault, but it's obvious what direction she's going in and I can't change that. People will say "try this or that" and all I have to say is "been there, done that."
37. Coming Clean
I’m 16 and pregnant. I can't believe this is happening. My boyfriend and I were so careful and used protection, and it was only our second time together. But after taking two different home pregnancy tests and getting the same result, I decided to skip school today and go to a doctor to confirm it. Turns out this is for real. I'm actually pregnant.
I plan on telling my parents tonight. We're going out for dinner, so I think that may be the best time. I figure there's less of a chance of them completely losing their minds if I do it in a public place. My parents weren't even aware that I'd been intimately active. Why did this have to be the way they find out? I'm so scared and confused right now, but I know one thing for sure.
I'm not having an abortion. I messed up big time by getting myself into this mess, but I'm not going to make another mistake. I want to have this baby. I know I'm not ready to be a mother, so I'll give him/her up for adoption. I just hope my parents will support my decision. Please wish me luck for tonight.
38. My Secret Life
My father was not the nicest man. He was always putting me down and pretty much expected me to amount to nothing my whole childhood. I was 25 when I discovered an employment recruiter who could get my feet in the door at my local municipal government offices. I never said a word to my parents about the opportunity.
That same year, I finished my degree. Fast forward to this last month, and I was promoted to the second-highest position in the department. Still not a word, and I'm now 29. Now I just see how they treat my younger sister. She's always been the golden child; she could never do any wrong. She got married young to a wealthy family and she does not have to work but chooses to.
My father loves that about her, though my dad also constantly “borrows” money from her and never returns it. She complains to me about this all the time. My sister and her husband never went on a honeymoon because they gave the savings to my dad for a new roof when he spent the insurance money on my mother's brand new car.
For this reason, I have not told my parents what I do for work, not that they ask either. I don't boast about how much I make or how I am the only one sitting at the dinner table with a degree when I come over. I just feel like I get the last laugh when they express their overly opinionated thoughts about me. They do not even have a clue.
They think I edit books, or do social media gigs for money, it's hilarious. My friends are my family and they support everything I do. We all push each other to do better and I couldn't ask for anything more. We travel to reward ourselves for our successes, and we have been to some pretty amazing places. So, my father sees this on my social media and drafts the narrative for the rest of my family that I’m just sort of loafing.
I don't bother to correct him due to his lack of, let's just say....understanding. And, I don't want to explain why I refuse to contribute to his frivolous spending habits.
39. A Tiger Can’t Change Its Stripes
As a kid, I was quite a bit more feminine than the other boys my age. I always wanted highlights in my hair, painted my nails, wore form-fitting clothing, and spoke with a girlish tone. My dad was a very radical Christian and kept me from kids that weren't by only letting me hang out with kids from church and making me go to a Christian private school with less than 15 other kids from kindergarten through fifth grade.
I didn't know what being gay was, and definitely didn't know anything about gender. I was told and shown that to be masculine was to be powerful. I hated the feminine parts of myself but they were simply a part of who I was and still am. My dad took notice and said that he was going to give me these testosterone shots so that I could be stronger and do better in sports.
He took them himself after being prescribed them for low energy and depression after being told by his doctor that he had low testosterone. As a result, I gained a significant amount of muscle and became much more aggressive as a kid. He also made me work out in the basement almost every day before I could do anything else that I wanted.
I had no TV, no Internet, and no interaction with the outside world for years and didn't even consider that this could have been messed up until it came up in therapy. When I said it out loud, I realized how messed up it was. Big surprise, I still turned out gay. I still turned out non-binary. I still paint my nails, and even do my makeup from time to time.
I'm not sure if this affected my process of puberty or anything like that, but I wanted to get it off my chest because I've been thinking about it a lot recently.
40. Childhood: Ruined
I've always wanted a pet duck as a kid and my mom "caved in" and bought me three. She hoped that I would get tired of them so she could teach me a lesson about how animals are worthless and without a use, but I guess I was very stupid and I didn't get it. I named them and used to play with them all the time. I would let them play in the kiddie pool and I imagined myself as the person who taught them how to swim.
Yeah, I was so stupid. This was because of how I first "taught" them how to swim; I kind of threw them into the water. See, I'm such an idiot! Well, one of the ducks, Bubbles, became scared of swimming (wonder why) so I had now a duck that I had to teach to overcome a phobia that idiot me had induced. And then this all came to a screeching, horrific halt.
It all ended when my mother wrung their necks to cook them for dinner, as she had planned from the moment she bought them. At first she lied that it was chicken meat, but then admitted it and just forced me to eat the duck soup and then their fried meat. There were three ducks, so I had to continue eating them for the next week. I kept crying and got beaten every time I've cried.
41. You Want What You Can’t Have
My confession is: I texted my ex. I couldn’t get him out of my head for my entire four-year relationship with my other ex. He was amazing, and I was super bratty, jealous, and immature. I asked for a break and expected to pick things back up a week later like nothing happened. Instead, he put his foot down. Said no, and that was it. We were done.
I was devastated. It was the most serious relationship I had ever had before my most recent ex. I texted him almost five years later (today) and told him I was sorry for being the way that I was, that he was amazing, and that he didn’t deserve to be treated poorly. I told him that I hoped he was happy and doing well, despite how horrible the year has been.
I told him I didn’t expect a reply at all. He responded back pretty quickly, and told me that he was sorry as well and that he should have paid more attention to me and he wasn’t all that great. It broke my heart when he said that. Now, we’ve been talking all day and catching up. We pretty much just fell into such a comfortable place, talking like we used to, and it’s so insanely heart-warming.
So far I’m glad I finally texted him. I’m pretty sure I still love him, and I’m ok with just staying friends because he was literally my best friend for so long. I’m happy.
42. Up-Selling The Client
I'm gonna be honest, I like chubby girls, even really big women. When I was 19, I got a job at a company that sold diet products. I worked as a traveling salesman, and they'd have me take the products and go to clients’ houses and demonstrate the products to get them to buy them. However, I didn't actually "sell" anything, because I had other things on my mind.
I'd start off pitching the products, but then I’d turn it around and start flirting with them. It worked out, most of the time. They basically paid me to hit on plus-size women.
43. Diversity Dupe
I lied about being gay in a job interview—I casually mentioned my "boyfriend"—and I truly believe it got me the job. I've had a lot of anxiety lately, searching for jobs, getting interviews that I feel went super well only to be ghosted, and I think being a straight white male just makes me undesirable in a place like Toronto, where I am.
The entire tone of the interview switched as soon as I said it. It was stale and almost confrontational prior to that, then....just light-hearted, easy-going, and casual. I was called brave.
44. Sick Day Surprise
I've been cursed with bubble gut for a few weeks now. While I was at work, I gambled on a toot—and lost big time. I ran to the bathroom, hoping it wasn't that bad. It was that bad. Brown town in every nook and cranny of my pants. So I texted my boss that I was heading home early because of a migraine. I couldn't reveal to him what had really happened.
45. Caught Red-Handed
My girlfriend gets really emotional on her period, and I am the DM of a D&D game that includes just her and me. I try to plan sad parts of the story around her period in order to make the scenes more effective. She ends up being more attached to the characters and the story, and I find she ends up enjoying the session more. I feel bad about it, but it works.
46. When You Gotta Go, You Gotta Go
I just pooped my pants while driving my car. I am a grown woman, and my son was asleep in the car. We were stuck in traffic, almost home, and I couldn’t stop anywhere because said child was asleep. I shoved some wipes in there and it just exploded. This is the worst day and I’m so embarrassed and can’t tell anyone, so I decided to tell you.
47. Evil Stepmother
This is pretty hard for me to post. I’ve never talked to anyone about this, even my wife doesn’t know the full extent of it.. but here we go...In 2000, my mother was diagnosed with lung cancer. She was a two-pack-a-day smoker for about 25 years. She fought hard and was able to extend the short life expectancy the doctors gave her.
I’m not sure how long they gave her, I was 10 and they spared me the details. Anyways, she survived for over a year and ended up passing in February of 2001. I remember it as if it was yesterday. Her best friend came over the very next day as we were in mourning to pay respects and say goodbye to her friend, which is normal and fine.
The thing I felt weird about, though, was that same night, the day after my mother’s passing…she spent the night with my dad and me. She slept on the couch. At the time, I didn’t think too much of it. I had other things on my mind, obviously. Plus we had numerous family and friends coming by and sleeping over before her passing as well, so I grew semi-used to it.
Time goes by, though, and it seems every other night she’s sleeping over now. Within the first month of my mother’s passing, she’s finally sleeping in my dad’s room with him. During this time, she was respectful and nice. She brought her two youngest kids a lot as well, which was nice at the time. Fast forward three months, we ended up moving and she and her two kids end up coming with us.
By this time, they are already talking about marriage. I strongly protested, along with EVERY SINGLE FAMILY MEMBER OF MINE as well. They decide to ignore me and everyone else and get married. The same year my mother passed. At first, things were the same as they were, but as time went on the friend began to show favoritism to her own kids.
I guess this is understandable, but it was to the extent that it was disturbing. She'd let her kids get away with horrible things. They would taunt me, make fun of my mom, and threw ashtrays at me, yelling, "Your mom wants a hug." She was cremated, so pretty much anything with ash was fair game to use to mess with me. A year goes by in the new house and me being a skater kid, I frequented the skate park a lot.
On my way back home one day, I fell. BAD. I hit a crack in the road on a very steep and large hill. The board stopped, my body flew, then rolled a few more feet. I was barely able to move but managed to hobble back, cradling my arm like a baby and screaming at the top of my lungs the entire way home. As I’m walking up, my stepmom intercepts me in the garage and accuses me of overreacting.
She tells me to “stop being a wimp.” I knew there was something wrong with my arm, considering I was physically unable to move it at all. But she wouldn’t listen to me and my dad wasn’t home from work yet. For hours, I waited for him to show up and when he does, it turned out my stepmom had already talked to him. So he wouldn’t listen either.
The next day was a school day. I remember this because I was awoken by my stepmom’s little cretin of a son throwing my full backpack onto my chest to wake me up. I woke up screaming. She comes running to the room and promptly tells me to "shut up, you’re not hurt. Stop faking cause you’re still going to school." Well...I couldn’t stop.
I was in agony. I was still holding my arm like a baby, so she punched my bicep and said, "I’m taking you to the hospital just to make you feel stupid when they tell you nothing is wrong!" Well, upon seeing the doctor, he almost immediately says, "Yup, your shoulder is broken. I can tell by the way you’re instinctively supporting your arm." My stepmom was silent.
The doctor set up X-rays, and it turns out my collar bone was completely shattered too. This proved her wrong, but it only fueled her rage more. She became spiteful and took away all my skateboards, bikes, anything that I could ride. My arm was in a sling anyways, so it wasn’t like I could use them, but she didn’t ever intend on giving them back to me.
In fact, she gave them to her own son. Even my own dad said it was for the best because "I’ve shown to be irresponsible with them and can’t use them correctly." The only thing I was able to do was play video games. Barely. Another few months go by and my arm is healing up, and we all go on an easy hike in the desert. We find and pick some wild cactus apples.
Excited and eager, I start eating one with the help of my dad. Well, turns out there were little mites in the fruit, and I contracted scabies. Half of my face swells up in the most morbid of ways. Couldn’t talk right, couldn’t open one of my eyes. I was messed up. Around this time, my older sister came to visit me with my two nephews. She drove three hours just to hang out with me and see how I’m doing.
As soon as she sees my gruesome, swollen face she screams in terror, grabs her kids, and leaves. Needless to say, it made me feel more awful, but I understand. She calls my dad, urging him to take me to the hospital. But my stepmom again refuses. She says it’s not that bad and that all I need is a nice warm wash cloth. Well, two weeks go by.
The swelling is reduced, but not completely gone. My sister threatens to call the authorities if they don’t do something. So stepmom AGAIN tries to shut it down, saying, "She’s gonna feel dumb when it turns out to be nothing!" This time doctors say that at this point, they can’t tell what it is, though they guess Scabies, which is what I assume now.
They said that I should have been there two weeks prior when I couldn’t open my eye. My stepmom takes this as a win. More time goes by. More stuff happens with her. CPS is called and I’m interviewed. Nothing happens with that. The holidays were ruined by her kids, yet I was to blame. I ended up basically being the Cinderella of my house at this point.
My bed was even moved into the laundry room. One year, the pipe burst and my room flooded up to eight inches. Nothing was done about it. Eventually when I was about 14 years old, I worked up the courage to tell my dad what I thought about her and how she treats me. I guess by this time, he was so tainted by her that he began talking just like her.
He said to "Get over it. She’s not mean, you’re just trying to antagonize for the sake of drama!" I told him if that’s how he feels, then I’m moving out to live with my sister. Sister agrees and I move out, and life was good for a bit until I started missing my dad. I felt like I failed him, so after two years of living with my sister, I decided to move back in with my dad.
Almost on arrival, stepmom starts all over again. Comments like "Great, more unneeded doctor visits." Or "No skateboarding, we don’t want your sister calling the CPS again." On the day before my 17th birthday, I will never forget the words that came out of her mouth. I was getting breakfast and made a comment on how the house was starting to reek with smoke.
I’ll admit at this point I was a bit snarky, but I said it to myself. My stepmom wasn’t in the room, but she heard me all right. She storms in and tells me "If you don’t like it, go back to your sister’s house. Or did she kick your whiny butt out and that’s why you’re back?" I snapped. I told her to screw off and kill herself. She walked up to me and looked down at me.
She says, "You do it. I dare you." I stare at her in disbelief and she starts laughing. “Wimp. You’re weak, just like your mom." At this point I have a hard grip on my fork, with every intention of sticking it in her throat...But I don’t. I keep quiet and continue eating my breakfast. That was the first of many comments about my mom.
It seems she took a page from her own kids, who used to say very similar insults. Only thing is, she was supposedly my mom’s "best friend.” I call her out on this and she tells me to screw off. Because of the years of mental torment, I become depressed. Suicide was on my mind a lot, and she knew it. She egged me on a lot, telling me to say hi to my mom when I get to hell. Somehow, it got even darker.
I did make an attempt on my life, but when I survived, my brain took an even more drastic route. I took it as a sign that maybe I wasn’t the one who needed to be hurt. Eventually, I end up finding my dad’s colt after a few days of snooping in his room when no one was home. I hid it in my room and kept telling myself on repeat "Next time she’s drinking…”
One night, a friend came over and we began talking a bit. I told him I was fed up and that I had a plan. I didn’t go into details, but he’s a smart person. He was able to figure out what I was planning pretty easily, and he began crying to me. He pled for me not to go through with anything and to move back into my sister’s house. This went on for quite a bit, but eventually, he talked me out of it.
I showed him the colt and he snatched it so fast and took off out of my house and down the road to the lake. He tossed that thing as hard as he could into the water. Somehow seeing that made me feel better. I did end up moving back with my sister. No one in the family has any contact with my dad or his wife anymore and at this point, I think that’s his choice.
It’s been over 10 years since then. I’ve moved across the country to numerous different states, I’ve made a career and name for myself. I got married to my dream girl and we have the best little girl together. Things could not be better. Last I heard, my stepmother’s two youngest are in rehab centers, and she had a massive heart attack that almost destroyed her.
It surprised me that she even has a heart, karma I’m guessing?
48. Remember Me Fondly
My nan passed two years ago. I was there when she went, and it was just us, late at night. I told my mom and our whole family that she had drifted to sleep when the heart monitor flat-lined. She hadn't. She was in pain, confused, and wanting her mother. Her last words were asking for her mother. All I could do was hold her hand and tell her I was here.
I can't bear to tell them how afraid she was. They don't need that pain. But I had to tell someone. So here I am. She had cancer and was really weak towards the end. We knew it was coming, but she went downhill quickly. I'm going to continue as is. I think my older cousin likely knows that what I said wasn't the full story, but she's never asked. It's better this way for all of us. We're a small but tight-knit family unit.
49. Spite Saves The Day
I’m a 31-year-old man. I have been wiping my butt with bath towels for months to spite my ex, and it seems to have actually saved our relationship. Now, before you read too far, it's not as bad as it might sound right out the gate. It's not like I'm trying to give anyone Pink Eye—I've been using my own, separate towels in a separate bathroom and washing them immediately.
This is, however, by far the most petty, ridiculous, and stupid thing I will ever do in my life. I feel like I need to get all of this off my chest. I met this girl towards the end of college. She was amazing. We dated for almost five years, moved to a new city together, the works. Unfortunately, things took a bit of a downhill spin and we didn't work out.
It's been difficult, but more or less mutual. There are things neither of us liked about each other, and there were some things said in heated moments that I ultimately know deep down I will never be able to let go of. There is definitely no hope of getting back together. The kicker is we have eight months left of our original 12 on the lease for a two-bedroom, two-bath apartment.
We still have to live together and still argue about the most asinine things all the time. A few months back, my ex and I have this blow-out argument over household expenses. We were trying to be civil and still split some of the groceries, cleaning supplies, pet stuff, etc. I'm a pretty frugal guy so I casually point out that I have always felt like she wastes too much of everything.
Too much detergent in the washing machine, grape-sized globs of toothpaste, you get the idea. She's just wasteful in my eyes. A few days later, I start to notice occasional rolls of toilet paper seem to be missing from my bathroom. I must be crazy, I think to myself, so I start stacking the spare rolls in weird patterns, snapping pictures of them, and sure enough...the witch is full-on Grand Theft Poo Paper.
How the heck does one even go through a full roll of toilet paper every day? Are you digging up Ancient Egyptian corpses with your butt just to re-embalm them? I confront her about it and she acts like I'm insane, that she would never do something like that, and so on. Now, keep in mind we dated for years. I've witnessed the catastrophe that is her wiping her butt in high definition, and it is NOT graceful.
She basically just shoves a bunch of toilet paper into her hand, clenches her fist a few times, and swings for the fences. I had truthfully never thought much of it up until this point. We have another blowout over this. Fine, she exclaims, we'll compare who uses the most toilet paper over the next few weeks and if she's really as wasteful as I make her out to be, she'll start shelling out 75% of our household costs instead of 50%.
Lord did she underestimate the pent-up spitefulness I had been holding onto from those arguments that broke us apart. I'm sure she was rationing as well, but I'm not one to enjoy losing. I started only opening the log factory for business while at work. I would hold the kids in the pool all evening but if I absolutely couldn't hold it, I would find an excuse to go to the grocery store or closest McDonald's or something and drop them off there.
This should have been enough. Should have. At this point, I truthfully wasn't handling the breakup as well as I'd have liked. I had quit working out, didn't cook anymore, didn't hang out with my friends, and basically just Netflixed and ordered delivery from this neat little "Korean Fusion Soul Food" place around the corner every single night.
So after what I can only interpret as deep reparations for years of white privilege, my colon betrayed me. Sure, riding the Oregon Trail was immensely unpleasant, but what concerned me even more was the speed at which I was blowing through my stash of Quilted Northern...and then I was suddenly almost down to my last roll.
Not to be outdone, I spent what felt like hours perched upon the porcelain throne considering the logistics of a sustainable way for me to win this little metaphorical jousting match. I almost opted to simply crank my shower on full blast and pressure wash the brown paint off. That's kind of what people do in other countries, right?
I'm not really sure, I've just heard stories. The idea weirded me out, but did ultimately lead me to realize how many darkly colored brown and black towels I have. Boom. Lightbulb. Not only that, but my bathroom is mere steps away from the washing machine. It's not like they have to dry or stank up anything for days. I could go on like this forever!
Of course, I was careful about which towels I used. And I would NEVER dry off after showering with any of the poop towels. I took every precaution, including using large towels and folding them every which way. However, it wasn't long before my ex caught on to how often I was using the washing machine. Thinking quickly, I made some silly excuse about being ashamed of myself for letting my whole life become a mess and "really wanting to try to do better...for me and me alone."
So I started having to do additional laundry so as not to arouse suspicion. I had to fake showering by running the water in my bathtub twice a day so she would think I was washing super regularly. Pretty soon, I was keeping my room clean as well. I won the TP measuring competition by a landslide (or should I say mudslide?), and my ex happily stepped up her contributions.
By this point, I'm more than committed. Somehow being overly petty and wiping my butt with my own towels to prove a stupid little point and win this irrelevant competition evolved into actually taking care of myself again. I've been trying to taper down my towel usage slowly enough so as to not arouse suspicion. Doing my laundry all the time to wash the poop out of my towels became doing all the laundry all the time.
This was in exchange for my ex cooking, vacuuming, and dusting. I even do all the dishes now too. We don't fight over chores, or really anything anymore—even money. We're actually getting along really well again and I'm starting to remember why even I liked her so much in the first place. Life is weird. And awful. And apparently...if you can lie and spite your way through the bad parts, everything gets better. Who knew?
I feel like I've learned the wrong lesson here.
50. The Life Of Brian
I used to have this friend, we'll call him Brian. He and I "dated" when we were in 7th and 8th grades. It wasn't a serious relationship, we were way too young for that, but we "dated." We kind of drifted apart after middle school. One week during senior year of high school, he just sort of disappeared. Gone without a trace. Nobody seemed to know what happened.
He just dropped off the face of the Earth. His best friend had no idea and couldn't get in touch with him. He even jilted his would-be prom date. As you can imagine, there were lots of rumors, everything from him passing to him going behind bars, etc. But the big rumor that got passed around the most was that his dad caught him and his mom in bed together.
I thought it was just a dumb rumor, because it's obvious to see why that sort of rumor would be popular even if it isn't true. Plus, I knew Brian and his mom and it just didn't seem likely. They were very normal, upper-middle class, not like toothless rednecks or anything. Oh, yeah, and who does that? Going behind bars seemed wayyy more likely than that.
Anyway, after college I moved to a really tiny city in a rural area halfway across the country, literally thousands of miles from where I grew up, because I love mountains and also nobody can afford to live where I grew up anymore. This weekend I went to a Target in a different town that I don't usually go to. Guess who I saw there? Yep.
And they were acting...you know. Familiar. They didn't kiss or anything, but it was unmistakable. Wayyyy too much touching, hand-holding, that sort of thing. I stalked them around the store a bit, just because I was so intensely curious, and even out into the parking lot to get a look at them. It was definitely them. Thankfully, they didn't notice me.
I look a lot different now, which helps, plus I was wearing sunglasses. Really weird! Just like... I'm in shock. I don't know, I've been needing to tell someone, but I'm not close to many people from high school anymore. The only friend I still talk to is really dramatic and I know she can't keep a secret, and even though I would sooner expire than sleep with my mom or dad, I don't necessarily want to ruin Brian's life.
Or rather, ruin it any more than it already has been. I was thinking about telling my roommate, but to be honest I don't like her that much. So...I'm telling you all this piece of juicy gossip instead.
Sources: Reddit
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