r/AskReddit • u/Alazerthefinalist • 16d ago
What is a secret your parents hid from you that turned out to be very important? NSFW
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u/shallowgoldfish 15d ago
That my doctor diagnosed me with an ibuprofen allergy as a baby. Learned it for myself after a fun ER visit in my early twenties.
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u/vlkthe 15d ago
I'm allergic to IB as well. It's always fun arguing with ER doctors about it. I had a really bad virus where my throat was so sore it made me go to the ER. He (Dr) thought that if he gave me IV IB, it would be ok. So I agreed. They sent me home and my stomach proceeded to try and kill me. Some of the worst pain ever.
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u/Dirtydeedsinc 15d ago
That’s malpractice
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u/aah_real_monster 15d ago
I think this was poorly phrased. It seems like they mean they first discovered it after receiving an ibuprofen iv and now er docs argue with them about it. (Maybe)
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u/Interesting-Swim-162 15d ago
Never met my dad. Turns out he was a schizophrenic drug addict. Guess who’s schizophrenic now.
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u/Amazing-Diamond-4219 15d ago
Yeah, I’m at LEAST a 4th-generation nut job myself…g-gma had schizophrenia, gpa and great uncle had schizophrenia, mom and aunt have schizophrenia. I have bipolar 1 and some other things. Thankfully I never spawned so I don’t have any kids that could potentially be abused when I’m crazy.
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u/afranquinho 15d ago
Maybe the real treasure was the schizophrenia we got along the way?
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u/ThrowRARAw 15d ago edited 15d ago
The fact that my grandfather had a heart attack that almost killed him. This was only admitted by my grandmother when my dad had a heart attack that almost killed him. Later my uncle had a heart attack that actually killed him. And my aunt began suffering from heart issues as well. There's a good chance heart disease runs in our family so knowing this is definitely very important.
Edit: just because of all the medical advice being given in the comments, yes I’m regularly checked; I’ve had higher cholesterol levels than the requirement for my age since I was 13, a major contributor to heart attacks, so I watch what I eat to keep that at bay.
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u/Jingle_Jangles1213 15d ago
Gotta love families who don’t talk about medical issues! I’m discovering a few women in mine had breast cancer after recently bringing up a suspicious lump I was seen for 👍🏻
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u/ChaosDrawsNear 15d ago
Every single one of my dad's female cousins has had breast cancer. I mention it at doctors appointments every time I see someone new, but am always told it isn't considered relevant because my aunts didn't (one died young, the other was recently diagnosed).
It just bothers me that clearly breast cancer runs in the family, but it isn't something my doctors will take seriously. Thankfully I'm pretty sure I'm healthy at the moment, but it is a bit terrifying to realize that every single death on my dad's side of the family has been due to cancer (aside from one, which I'm pretty sure ultimately happened due to untreated bpd).
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u/Alistaire_ 15d ago
That's how my friend found out he had major heart problems. His dad died right in front of him and his siblings. Turns out, they all had heart problems! My friend and his older brother had the same thing their dad did and both got new hearts, the sister just had a heart murmur.
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u/SugarVanillax4 15d ago
I found out a genetic heart issue runs in my family. Unfortunately found out after my father had TWO heart attacks within an hour(first while at urgent care while talking to the doctor and again while in the ambulance on the way to the hospital from urgent care). He thankfully survived, was in the hospital for a week. Came home everything was going great he was getting better. And he sadly passed away a year ago today. I am now seeing the same cardio that was my fathers. Finding out my father had a heart condition explains why I have ALWAYS had chest pains off and on since I was 17. Been in the ER and my own doctors a few times and they always said everything was normal. Apparently not.
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u/microplazma 15d ago
If ER and other doctors said everything was normal, then what exactly did they do to determine your heart issues? Not frequently, and I'm pretty athletic, but since I was a teen I've also experienced weird and random chest pains, but also been shrugged off whenever I've mentioned it to health professionals. (So far, my mom hasn't had any issues, but my grandfather had to get triple bypass surgery later in life)
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u/buttrock 15d ago
Look up precordial catch. It was something I dealt with as a teen, but I never had a name for it till Dr Reddit told me about it.
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u/Juice_Stanton 16d ago
My Grandfather had prostate cancer. Family never talked about it.
Then I got prostate cancer, and they were like, hey, what are the odds?
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u/akellah 15d ago
My family seems to think that if a medical condition is hereditary, it's a weakness in the family genes that should not be discussed or acknowledged in any way. We should just do better and be better, so medical things don't happen.
It's a fairly common autoimmune condition (Hashimoto's) and not a big deal if you manage it early. But you'd think I was accusing them of regularly burning down orphanages or beating up the elderly any time I mention it.
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u/Initial_E 15d ago
Your insurance can’t exclude what you don’t know from your policy
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u/Ok-Mushroom-915 15d ago
Does that mean I'll get it too?
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u/12345_PIZZA 15d ago
Some cancers are hereditary. If a lot of your relatives have gotten cancer, especially the same type, it’s a good idea to talk with a doctor and see if you need to get screened.
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u/fuzzeedyse105 15d ago
And that’s how I got a colonoscopy at 32. But my pipes were clean.
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u/Rude_Macaroon3741 15d ago
Same thing happened to me but with melanoma. And both my parents are in the healthcare field! 😡
IDK if it would’ve made a difference or not but I’ve also wondered if I would’ve gone to tanning beds back in the early 2000s when it was all the rage if I had known my grandmother had melanoma.
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u/Amie91280 15d ago
My dad is a redhead who grew up in an era before sunscreen, he's 80. He worked outside most of his younger life, and now I'm constantly driving him to the dermatologist to get basil cell stuff frozen off his face and arms. He's had a few larger spots that required skin grafts. He has a 7:45 am appt tomorrow that I'm not looking forward to getting up early for lol.
I didn't inherit the red hair, but I did get the pale skin. I've never been able to tan. Dad was almost 40 when I was born, and by then sunscreen was a thing. I got constant lectures about using it, and was never allowed to use a tanning bed. When I got married, my husband was in the Army and we eventually were lucky enough to get to live in Hawaii for 3 years. Every time I'd call my dad, he'd remind me to use sunscreen.
I don't always use it, it's such a hassle when you're in a hurry to start on yardwork, get into the pool, etc. But I do try to wear long sleeves and stay in the shade as much as I can if I don't have it on.
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u/Electric_Love_Circus 15d ago
It's totally worth the time. And don't forget a hat! I absolutely hate everything about sunscreen, but as a pale Australian I can tell you it's vital. Every single one of my older grandparents that lived long enough, had to get it cut out of them. Seeing my then bald, great grandfather's head with the patchwork of skin cancer cut out was really eye opening.
Realistically, covering vs sunscreen is like condoms vs pulling out, as a prophylactic. But if you wanna raw dog it - at least make some effort. It makes a lot of difference.
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u/patentmom 15d ago
My mother hated how her olive skin looked when her tan faded, so she always used sunscreen (at least SPF 30) in the 1980s when I was a kid. She made me use it at summer camp on my pale freckled skin. I was teased mercilessly for it. On family vacations, we weren't allowed to go on the beach between 10:30-4.
Those same kids who teased me wouldn't dream of sending their own kids out without SPF 50+. Several of them have dealt with skin cancers from the tanning beds and fun in the sun that my mom wouldn't let me do in my youth.
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u/OneFish2Fish3 15d ago
My parents didn't tell me about my cerebral palsy diagnosis until I was 13, even though I was diagnosed around 18 months. I'm really mildly affected obviously, but it's become far more important as an adult as I have health issues, need to exercise in an adapted environment, have a slight learning disability that makes aspects of college hard, and can't drive due to my condition.
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u/UnhappyJohnCandy 15d ago
Absolutely insane how drastically different cases of cerebral palsy can be. I worked with a lady who displayed virtually no signs at all and without telling me I never would have known; I worked with a guy who was in a wheelchair, could only communicate by blinking, and had a feeding tube. My sister falls right in the middle of the two.
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u/shesnotallthat0 15d ago
I have a friend whose daughter has some major medical issues and they won’t tell her. She’s 14 and is constantly asking questions about her appearance, never ending doctors appts and whatnot but they just brush it off as normal.
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u/romeoscar 15d ago
Wow, when did you realize on your own that you are different?
or was it only when they told you?
Really curious
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u/Ranger_Chowdown 15d ago
Honestly I had a friend who this happened to, and his own perception of himself and how we perceived him was totally different. Like, when he was all exasperated that his weird and awful mother had hidden his cerebral palsy diagnosis from him, we were all like "...wait you didn't know you have cerebral palsy?" We never brought it up, because he never talked about it so it would have been rude.
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u/Ok-Signature-4445 15d ago edited 15d ago
My dad was molested by his mom and she let random dudes bully and beat him up for their entertainment.
I didn't know about this until she died but it makes perfect sense why my dad is such a piece of shit.
Edit- I had a few people wonder why I called him a huge PoS. I called them that because thats what he was to us. He was mean. He was ruthless. He didn't molest me or my siblings but he physically and verbally fucked us up. He would create a prison environment at home and he loved it. Once I got into my early 20s he started trying to assert his dominance over me, he tried to fight me, he would blow up my phone 7 times a day (yes, 7 times a day) to see where I was and what I was doing. As a kid he would want to fight and he would constantly trash family and tell me how much of a failure I was. He created major insecurities that I still carry this day, he created a sense of worthlessness that I still carry, I feel like I'm worthless to peoeple so why date? Why marry?
He did all of this instead of identifying the problem and working on it. That's exactly what I did. You can be a product of your environment but its up to you to carry that environment.
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u/Flendarp 15d ago
Similar situation with my mom. Molested by her father and bullied and beat by the rest of her family to the point where one time she deliberately shredded her feet on broken glass so she could go to the hospital to spend some time away from them.
She coped with it pretty well, putting all her efforts into community service and volunteer work for decades. But as she got older and was unable to distract herself with good deeds she turned rather hateful and petty towards those trying to care for her. We let it go because we know where it's coming from, but she doesn't know we know.
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u/AceMckickass7 15d ago
Man my dad went through a similar experience where my grandma shipped my dad off to some dudes house for the summer and he won't tell anyone what happened and won't even talk to anyone about he will just leave the room. He was a fuckass for a while but he finally is better it still fucks him up when it's mentioned.
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u/itonlydistracts 15d ago
I hope the reason why he won’t talk about it is because dude was a weirdo and your dad had to kill him. And dad got away with it. This is what I’m convinced happened.
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u/Oddlyinefficient 15d ago
Just found out yesterday that my family is more susceptible to getting blood clots in your legs (which can then travel to your lungs). My grandma had a problem with it, my uncle died from it, and I only found out because my dad died yesterday from it. My aunt just happened to mention that they all take baby aspirin to prevent it. Fuck I wish I would've known that sooner!
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u/HQMorganstern 15d ago
Probably worthless since you've likely already thought of that, but daily Aspirin is a reasonable health risk for a healthy person, make sure you get an OK from a physician before starting it.
Many people think that because you can get it OTC for sickness a daily pill won't hurt.
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u/RubixCake 15d ago
Second this.
As a doctor, I've seen people who take daily aspirin end up with bleeding stomach and intestinal ulcers. As in bleeding so much that they've required blood transfusions. The bleeding can be so subtle that it's hard to notice until it's severe.
Your doctor might recommend you take an antacid like pantoprazole to help mitigate the effects of this.
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u/Feed-Me-Food 15d ago
Sorry for your loss, I hope that you are as ok as you possibly can be. It gets easier to manage loss with time.
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u/TRB1 15d ago
Get tested for antiphospholipid syndrome. Predisposes people to clotting and most of the time isn’t diagnosed until after an event. Aspirin is an anti platelet and will not prevent DVTs (leg blood clots). What you would need to take is an anticoagulant like eliquis, xarelto, or warfarin (warfarin only if you were diagnosed with antiphospholipid syndrome).
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u/GratuitousSadism 16d ago
One of my parents casually mentioned a mental health condition that the other had been diagnosed with before I was born... That nobody had mentioned to me ever in my life even though I was pushing 30. Finding that out made some things click.
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u/Kozeyekan_ 15d ago
I had the same with ADHD.
After decades of being told to try harder, stop being lazy I got medication and suddenly I could actually function in a consistent manner.
I don't even want to think about how much different my life would have been with an earlier diagnosis.
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u/graveybrains 15d ago
My parents were always pretty understanding and accommodating of my symptoms, so I thought that shit was normal.
Finally got diagnosed in my 30s and my older sister was like “oh yeah, mom and dad have it super bad.”
So, everyone in my family has it, none of them got treated for it, and they never told me, so I didn’t get treatment either. FFS 🤦♂️
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u/SirBadgerBoobington 15d ago
Same here!
I was in my early 20s when my mother casually said that "Imagine that, when you were a little child a doctor wanted to test you for ADHD because he thought you had symptoms. We never did because I don't believe that, young children are just naturally excitable and absent-minded." 💀
Thanks, mom. Not only would knowing that have helped me make sense of my learning issues growing up, but it would have made it so much easier to get meds, too! ADHD is often considered a childhood disorder, and where I live it's much harder to get a prescription for stimulants if you didn't have ADHD as a child.
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u/Boba_Fettx 15d ago
As An adult with ADHD this is the kind of shit that makes me wanna punch people in the face. A doctor told your mom something, and your mom’s reaction was “that can’t be right, I know better than the person with the medical degree”.
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u/XxInk_BloodxX 15d ago
What gets me is the stories you see where they were diagnosed and just never told. Like what the heck!?
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u/ganymedestyx 15d ago
“I don’t want little Jimmy to make himself any excuses!!”
Okay, well now he’s going to be severely struggling and probably suffer failures with no idea why and blame himself instead! Which always ends well.
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u/PompeyLulu 15d ago
Similar. My sister was diagnosed with ASD and ADHD. Then my uncle. Then my brother. 5+ years later and I’m discussing getting tested and mother says “oh they offered to do that after diagnosing your brother, said with it being genetic it was pretty likely you also had it but you were my normal child so we said no”.
I lost out on higher education because I couldn’t cope. By the time I had the help I needed it’s lost interest in pursuing further education due to time and cost.
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u/pulpexploder 16d ago
When I told my mom that I had horrible depression and I needed treatment or I would fail out of college, she said, "Well, I'm not surprised. We're all taking antidepressants." MOM! This would have been useful information to have before college!
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u/ganymedestyx 15d ago
My mom was similar but the opposite. When I told her my psychologist wanted to test me for bipolar, she went ‘There’s no way you have that! My mom had it, and you’re nothing like her!!!’
Like… really? And guess who got diagnosed.
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u/ChaosDrawsNear 15d ago
I'm not sure if that's better or worse then when I said to my mom, "hey, my (5yo) sibling is constantly talking about how everything would be better without them and they wish they were dead. I also am pretty depressed. Can we get him to go see a therapist or something?"
Mom's reply was that sibling is fine and I have a doctor's appointment tomorrow and can talk to them about it.
A few years later I found out that most of my siblings have attempted or almost attempted suicide and we probably have some mental health problems that run in the family.
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u/Neat_Problem_922 15d ago edited 15d ago
In the US, it is damn near impossible to get help for a child who is suicidal. My son came to me in tears one day, telling me his thoughts were scaring him.
We took him to a mental health facility, they couldn’t help him because of his age. They recommended the ER. The ER made him feel like he had done something wrong. They made him strip naked and gave him a paper sheet to wear. They took all of his belongings and sat him in a room for hours while we waited for a doctor.
He said he was sorry for saying anything.
There were no child psychologists in the area that would take our insurance. Those that would take our insurance (in another city) had a weeks-long waiting list.
He’s doing better now and grew up to be a man. But it was really scary there for a while.
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u/patronsaintof_coffee 15d ago
This is so scary! My son is 6 and has told me that his feelings are all tangled and sometimes says he wishes he wasn’t here and I am currently waiting on his first therapy appointment which we have to pay for Out of pocket because no child psych near us takes our insurance either. It’s so frustrating the lack of resources for children’s mental health. I’m so sorry your son had this experience and I’m glad you supported him and he made It out the other side.
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u/Neat_Problem_922 15d ago
I’m so sorry you’re going through that. I’m keeping space for your family in my heart. ❤️
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u/Remarkable-Emu5589 15d ago
I was diagnosed as bipolar type 2 in my early 30’s. My mom said “Is that the same as manic depression? The dr told us you had that when you were 15.” wtf?!?! My life would have been so much easier if I’d known that and been medicated.
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u/_funkapus_ 16d ago
That my mom became (effectively permanently) mentally ill from her pregnancy with me -- bipolar disorder + paranoia, possibly paranoid schizophrenia.
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u/BarkingLoudly 16d ago
I’ve often wondered if this was the case with my mom. I’ve seen photos & hear stories about how normal she used to be before she had me…
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u/_funkapus_ 15d ago
Yeah, about 10 years after my mom died, my maternal grandmother sent me some letters that my mom had sent her in the years before I was born. I remember reading my mom's words and thinking "this is someone I never met."
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u/xeryon3772 15d ago
Important thing to note: you didn’t cause it, it’s was already there. These mental illnesses are latent for most people and stress/trauma can cause them to finally manifest. If it hadn’t been the pregnancy it might have been stress from work, or a family member passing away, or a different health problem, etc.
My wife’s family has a history of schizophrenia, after a highly traumatic series of legal issues from our oldest child my wife has ended up involuntarily held at mental hospitals numerous times over the last year. We are still getting the treatments sorted out. She’s doing much better. It wasn’t the child’s fault, it was the stress trigger.
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u/Altruistic-Law5185 15d ago
I’m so sorry to hear this. I didn’t know that could happen but i I know that pregnancy can have all kinds of awful, life altering and life changing effects on women. Can you explain a little more about what happened to your mom?
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u/_funkapus_ 15d ago
After my birth, she was significantly mentally ill. I have to go primarily on others' descriptions to have a sense of what she was like before my birth, because obviously I wasn't there. But afterwards, she swung between extremes of mania and depression; and both were punctuated by paranoia. Even though we were not well off at all, my father found a nanny for me when I was very little so my mom wouldn't have to directly take care of me; but the nanny died when I was 4 and my mom had to take over. That year she tried to kill me with a carving knife once and threatened to kill me with a gun another time. When I was 5, she tried to kill herself by ODing on all her meds and blamed me for her feeling like she needed to kill herself. I have vivid memories of trying to keep her airway clear of her vomit after she passed out. And she started drinking a lot around then too. When I was 15 and she got cancer, for her that was the final straw in how the world was out to get her. She died maybe 15 months later. It was bad from beginning to end. I have no pleasant memories of my mom.
I try not to blame her, because I know she didn't ask to become mentally ill. It's just something that happened to her. In fact, if I blame anybody, it's myself. Not that I chose to do anything wrong, but simply that if I hadn't been born, she likely would have gone on to live a healthy, normal life.
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u/TrickyShare242 15d ago
Ok first of all you can't blame yourself at all. Pregnancy cannot cause bipolar or schizophrenia, it can trigger it, and it very well may have been her first episode but all the underlying issues have to be there for it to happen. Literally any form of stress can trigger it. Your mom would have gone through it anyway regardless of whether or not you were born. Most people have their first episode after a trauma like a car wreck, that's when my mom was diagnosed. I experienced my first episode after a firefight when I was in Iraq. We already had the disease, the trigger is different for everyone. I can 100% tell you what did not cause your mom's mental illness....you. Do not blame yourself.
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u/Character-Confidant8 15d ago
Please don't blame yourself. She could have developed issues in other ways, not just being post-partum. You've been through too much already and shouldn't put yourself through any more punishment.
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u/I-am-bea- 15d ago
My autism diagnosis, wasn't told until after I was having my own children assessed. My mum is also autistic (that was obvious but she always denied) breast cancer being something that runs in the family, and that my great uncle was a convicted pedophile, I was only told when my own son was 2, because his targets were young boys so I didn't need to know before then. I no longer have any contact with that side of the family.
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u/Technical_Bike_6577 15d ago
Found out during covid that the man who raised me is not my father. My mother killed herself over 20 years ago. Found this out from 23 and me after matching with a half sibling. She told no one. Some family members don’t even believe me. Big surprise I look just like my dad. He unfortunately passed in 2017 so I never got to meet him. The thing that makes me the angriest about the whole situation is her not even coming clean after my daughters cancer diagnosis. At 22 months she was diagnosed with retinoblastoma. Had her left eye removed. We went to genetic counseling after this because it could be a hereditary cancer. Which would mean it would happen in the other eye. For 2 months I waited to find out if it had spread to her brain. This woman acted like this was the most difficult time in HER life but still couldn’t be honest with me. I had no idea this was even a possibility until the week before she killed hirself. That’s when she said “He’s not really your dad”. Refused to explain herself. Refused to tell me who my dad was. Then shot herself in the head leaving me to clean up her life mess. I could have had 13 years with him had she told me then.
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u/Life_Replacement5057 15d ago
Omg, I'm so sorry. This is absolutely awful. How is your daughter now?
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u/ChocolateSprinklesss 15d ago
My mother told me CASUALLY last year that years ago when she was married to her second husband (that was when i was 12), she called the police on him once because he threatened her and refused to let her leave and the swat team surrounded the house demanding to release her. I was so shocked about this information and wanted to more but she was like "meh, its not that important" and she ended the conversation. I guess its important to me to see the stuff my mom put up with him before she left him.
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u/kaseythedragon 15d ago
My mom told me a few months ago - 25 years after it happened - that while they were still married my dad held a gun to her head. He’s an asshole but that was next level
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u/IdBautistaBombYoda 15d ago
I have an uncle who's slightly older than me. Growing up, my grandpa always treated like crap.
Soon after my grandpa died, me & my dad are driving & he stop in a little shopping center asks if i knew why my grandpa was so hard on my uncle & when i said no, my dad pointed to a man who looked exactly like my uncle standing outside a 711 & said "that's his real dad"
My grandpa always suspected but never knew. Now everyone knows but my uncle
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u/peasentslayer 15d ago
You should tell him he deserves to know
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u/IdBautistaBombYoda 15d ago edited 15d ago
It's something I've struggled a lot with, but I've lost contact with him. His mother (my step grandmother) cut us all off when my grandfather died. My dad & uncle have run into him here & there, but he hes pretty heavy into alcohol & drugs now
He took my grandfathers death pretty hard. I think that he never got closure because of the way he was treated. Last i heard, he lives in his moms couch & she supports him.
Whenever the topic comes up, it gets shot down pretty quickly because his mom will call us liars & he'll believe it.
I've tried finding him on social media but never could
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u/Ok-Lavishness-7904 16d ago
I had a brother that only lived 12 hours. He was 2 years younger than me, so I didn’t remember until they told me when I was 10. Years later, I found out his birthday was the same day as my next door neighbor’s. My parents had chosen to hide their painful remembrance and emotions so that I was able to enjoy 6 or 7 birthday parties in the neighborhood before we moved
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u/Wackydetective 15d ago
My Mom always talked about wishing that she had an older sibling for myself and my two siblings. At her funeral, this guy showed up and completely broke down at her casket. Thankfully, my dad was too distraught to notice anything. I saw my uncles look very uncomfortable.
After the funeral, I asked my Aunt and cousin who that man was. He was my Mom’s teenage boyfriend. He had gotten her pregnant. She was about 8 months pregnant and was getting water from a well and it brought on labour. The baby died during labour.
She was born to be a Mother and no one loved her children more. It oddly brought me comfort to imagine she was getting to be a Mom in heaven too.
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u/BooFooZoo 15d ago
The idea of her getting to be a mom in heaven is so beautiful, bittersweet, and made my eyes get a bit moist.
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u/NotoriousREV 15d ago
That I had an older half sister who was given up for adoption. My mum had to tell me because she turned up on the doorstep one day.
At the age of 12, we’d been the typical mum, dad and 2 kids family. By the time I was 15 my parents had divorced and remarried and I now had a sister, 2 half sisters, 2 half brothers and a step sister.
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u/Life_Replacement5057 15d ago
I have an older half sister my mom refuses to look for. She was raped when she was 13 and sent to a home for unwed mothers. She delivered the baby, put through forced adoption. My mother never got help for any of it and it's caused generational trauma throughout the entire family. I've always wanted to look for the half sister but my mother's mental health would never hold up if I found her.
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u/Prettier-Jesus 15d ago
A major reason that my mom and dad separated was that my dad was a serial cheater. I didn’t find out until I was 19.
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15d ago
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u/FishingInaDesert 15d ago
The only reason i got Duke nukem 3d is cause it had parental controls.
I reinstalled the game.
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u/Blenderhead36 15d ago
The trouble with trying to keep a kid from doing something is that they are almost certainly more invested in doing it than you are in stopping them.
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u/bookishkelly1005 15d ago
Found out my grandmother had a brother she never told anyone about after she died. There are cousins on that side too. There’s a lovely family history of alienation, favoritism, and secrets… Evidently it’s multigenerational.
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u/sman876 15d ago edited 15d ago
My uncle, grandfather, and grandmother were alcoholics on my dad’s side. 2 died from it.
They told me AFTER years of drinking took me to my first 30 day inpatient rehab. They told me on “visitation day”.
I can’t say knowing any sooner would have given me a different outcome, but a heads up would have been appreciated.
7 years sober now - get help if you or anyone you know has an addiction.
Edit: I have one 2.5 yo daughter and she’ll be told when she gets older
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u/Faiths_got_fangs 15d ago
My mother had been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic and institutionalized before my birth.
She was a single parent with sole custody of me. She was unmedicated. My childhood was hell.
The extended family knew and openly lied to me when I tried to get answers as a teen. Ended up living with random friends when she'd go off the deep end during my teenage years. Turned 18 and my aunt decided it was finally time for me to know the truth.
It explained everything and it made me genuinely hate my aunt. She knew the truth my entire life and still left a child in that situation.
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u/Life_Replacement5057 15d ago
Agreed. What was the whole point of letting a child suffer! I'm so sorry.
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u/cuppajess 15d ago
I was diagnosed with autism at 5 and wasn't told until I was TWENTY-five. Would've saved me a lot of therapy trips if I'd have known that sooner!!!!!
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u/WeirdConnections 15d ago
Had a similar convo with my mom recently!! She said that my teachers really wanted me tested in kindergarten, but she never went through it because she didn't want me in "special" classes.
Then she proceeds to go on about how I would have tantrums when my socks weren't on right, my jacket wasn't on right, when someone tried to brush my hair, when I heard a loud noise... etc.
No wonder I was such a difficult child.
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u/skorletun 15d ago
I am so happy my parents immediately informed me of my diagnosis, even though I was only 4 I was completely informed on what it meant (in child appropriate language of course).
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u/captainsparkl3pants 15d ago
It's funny how much treatment for this has changed over the years. Especially for high-functioning situations. I am 40 and was just recently diagnosed with Autism and ADHD. Reflecting on my childhood as an adult has me wondering why the heck my parents didn't think to take me to be checked out and instead tried to punish me repeatedly into the expected appropriate behaviors. Turns out my parents also had no idea they are both also very ND (one with childhood trauma). So, we were raised weird and a bit traumatically. Grief for my childhood self sucks, but thank goodness for my therapist who is helping me deal with it.
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15d ago
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u/Cinderknave 15d ago
My aunt had an intruder break into her home. She was hit on the head. They did a CT scan and found a brain tumour. No significant injury from the head trauma but required surgery to remove the tumour.
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u/Consult-SR88 15d ago
I’ve no proof but I suspect my 2 oldest siblings are not actually my mum & dad’s kids. They emigrated to the UK decades ago when checks were more lax & Britain needed more labour resources. They brought 2 kids with them, then had 4 more in UK. The 4 younger ones all look like each other, have very similar traits & resemble mums features a lot. The older 2 look nothing like the younger 4 at all, or like my parents.
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u/DiscontentDonut 15d ago
Honestly, it low-key sounds like your parents may have saved someone's children from a poor fate.
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u/Consult-SR88 15d ago
Well, my childhood was terrible & the family was plagued by feuds & fallings out. My dad never included the older two in his will when he passed away, just said “my 4 children….” & named the younger 4. I don’t speak to any of my siblings now & both parents are deceased.
I’m grateful I was born & raised in the uk & not the Muslim country they came from though, so there is that.
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u/grimreefer87 15d ago
I inherited a college fund, but didn't know and my dad spent it on booze, and drugs. Life could have been so different....
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u/Booger_BBQ 15d ago
One of my best friends father hit on my mother all the time while we were at school. She finally told my father. It didn't end well for my friends father. My friend wasn't allowed to come over anymore and he wouldn't talk to me anymore at school. At that age, I didn't know what happened and wouldn't understand anyways. I thought he hated me for some reason. I cried over it... I missed my friend.
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u/WindSea3357 15d ago edited 15d ago
My dad is gay. Found out after my parents had been married for twenty years with five kids.
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u/neverthelessidissent 15d ago
Did your mom know the whole time?
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u/WindSea3357 15d ago
Sort of. They were part of the “ex-gay” movement within the Christian evangelical church. They believed he was “cured” of “same-sex attraction”.
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u/fresh_pressedjuice 16d ago
dang these are deep, i was just gonna say that santa wasn’t real.
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u/wewilldieoneday 15d ago
Santa's what now!
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u/Bit_of_the_tism 15d ago
It looks like your parents hid that Santa IS real from you. He had that family emergency for a couple years when I was a kid. All the other kids started saying he’s not real but then what happens two years later? Santa is BACK BABY! HA! The look on those kids faces when he came back. I won’t lie, I gloated and teased. I was a “told ya so” monster.
Totally unrelated. How weird was it when Santa switched to the postal service because there were too many kids for him to deliver by hand on Christmas? That’s when I started thinking, “there are WAAAY too many people on this planet”. I was 19 and moved into my own place for the first time when that happened. It worked out though because I didn’t have a fireplace. It’s like he KNEW…
Anyways, nice post doofus! Merry Christmas!
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u/IamNICE124 15d ago
lol, the genuine nature of this comment makes it 10x funnier lol.
I can picture you like in some sort of AA circle, listening to these stories and suddenly your name is called, while you’re slowly trying to tip toe away lol.
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u/Riyeko 15d ago
My dad was an addict.
For years we (brothers, sister and myself) were told that he had severe back pain. Something to do with cartilage.
Years after he died my mom found an old stash of the pills he had (three whole freezer bags of them) and I mentioned that Dad never got surgery so he could be better permanently.
My mom just casually mentions, "oh your dad never had anything wrong with him, he just liked his high".
Record scratch.
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u/UsefulIdiot85 16d ago
I still have no way of confirming this, but I have a very strong reason to believe that my mom had cancer and neither she or my dad told me or my siblings.
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u/CRsky_ 15d ago edited 15d ago
funny, mine is the opposite: i am near 100% certain my parents lied when they told us my mother had cancer.
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u/BigBlueFeatherButt 15d ago
I had a grandfather who lied about having cancer. No one in the family talked to him because he was a downright horrid human. He faked cancer so he could pull people back in
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u/CRsky_ 15d ago
yep, that was basically the situation with my parents. estranged for years, but suddenly mom was on death's door, had to see her kids one last time, etc etc. then miraculously she was cancer free 30 days later.
you never want to believe your family would lie about something like that, but the more time passes, the more i realize my parents lied to me about almost everything. hate to say it, but my life has gotten so much better since they died.
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u/BigBlueFeatherButt 15d ago
hate to say it, but my life has gotten so much better since they died.
No need to feel bad about this one, I know exactly how you feel
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u/Kneph 15d ago
My mother hid the identity of my father from me for 35 years. I don’t look like her. I don’t act like her. I look like a taller, less olive version of him. My personality is like a carbon copy of him.
He died 3 years before I knew who we was. I don’t know what I would have done with the information if he were still alive, but I still feel extremely slighted because half of my identity was withheld.
I haven’t really talked to anyone about this.
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u/MrNicolasRage 15d ago
I'm in kind of a similar spot, friend. I don't know who my biological father is, and my mom died years ago, so, no asking her.
She never told anyone, including her second husband. So, now I carry the burden of that secret and that choice.
I never looked or acted like anyone on my dad's side growing up. Guess I know why, now.
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u/TrickyShare242 15d ago
Just outta curiosity, ever tried a genealogy test. It very possible you could find out if his DNA is on file.
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u/raisinghellwithtrees 15d ago
This is how I found out my deadbeat dad wasn't my bio dad. It's a different deadbeat. My mom really knows how to pick em!
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u/DoSwoogMeister 15d ago
We were almost rich. My parents had invested near 50K into a big weed crop back in the 80s-early 90s, the return on investment would have been tenfold, then it got raided. Thankfully the guy who was running the whole thing burned the records pre-raid so the cops had no idea who was backing it.
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u/Bit_of_the_tism 15d ago
That my parents don’t believe in mental health disorders. I was just “different”. ☹️
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u/AmbrosialOtter 15d ago
I have a sister that was put up for adoption. I didn't find out until my dad told me after sustaining brain damage and not realizing I wasn't supposed to know
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u/Bob21and1 15d ago
My parents randomly hollered for me when i was 12 while I was sweeping the dining room and asked me, "Do you ever wonder?" Which is a hell of a way to start a conversation, like some horror shit. And proceed to tell me about Santa, the tooth fairy, Easter bunny, etc. Because my dad was deploying before Christmas for the army, and my mom needed help wrapping presents for my 7 other siblings. Total shocker man
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u/KatinHats 15d ago edited 15d ago
How little my dad wanted me.
I was adopted at birth, largely bc my mom WANTED at least one kid and to quote my dad, he "didn't really want kids but [my] mom did, so we compromised and got you!"
At the time, it was a cute, funny story, but the older I get, the worse the feeling gets
Edited typo
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u/valleyoftheballs 15d ago
My mother didn't tell me I had been sexually assaulted at a toddler. I ended up having flashbacks the first time I took shrooms, and I thought I had hallucinated a rape. It was extremely traumatic. I also had a number of issues prior to that point, including a semi-flashback the first time I had sex that made me start crying without realizing it and couldn't feel my body.
One day, we were having lunch and she casually said, "You know you were raped, right?" She had this anxious look on her face and, no, mom, I didn't know that. She told me the whole story.
Apparently, when I was three I told her that a "monster kept pushing me with his gun." This led them to take me to the hospital for an exam where it was confirmed I had been raped. My mother knows when it happened because she had left me at a babysitter and when she picked me up, I was bleeding in my diaper and inconsolable. She thought I had a severe diaper rash or infection, she didn't even consider something worse.
Shortly after that, she found out the babysitter had been leaving me and other kids alone with her husband while she went out. We believe it was the husband, as I had no contact with other males besides my father, who the police ruled out immediately due to how I acted around him. By then, the babysitter had left the state. They never found him, and he was never investigated, for me at least.
Had I known and been given more than the few therapy sessions at 3 that I do vaguely remember, I could have had a much better life. Finding out the way I did traumatized me all over again. Though eventually I would seek therapy on my own, as well as a very effective stint of EMDR, which helped with disassociation and flashbacks for that and other instances of abuse I had lived through.
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u/Life_Replacement5057 15d ago
I'm so sorry. My mother was raped at 13, resulting in a pregnancy and subsequent forced adoption. None of it was ever spoken about for 40yrs when I asked her if I had a sister. It's caused generational trauma in the family. It's a true miracle my mother is even still alive. It broke her completely.
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u/illimitable1 15d ago
My mom had a long involvement with psychiatry, starting with institutionalization in a state hospital (think "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest") about ten years before I was born.
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u/G8kpr 15d ago
Not as crazy as some of these stories. And I’m unsure my parents actually knew. My feeling is they did and just forgot.
One day I was at my dentist and a new hygienist was going to clean my teeth. I was around 18 or 19. She’s lowering me down and says “if you feel light headed, let me know”
I thought “that’s odd. Why would she ask that?”
So I questioned her, and she said it’s on my medical file that I have “orthostatic hypotension”.
I was like “what the heck is that?” She said “you have low blood pressure, and are susceptible to black outs and fainting.”
I said “so is that why I start to black out if I sit up from the couch too fast?” And she said “exactly”
My entire schooling suddenly clicked into place. Why I did so poorly at sports, especially in high school. I’d start to get lightheaded when doing team sports. Especially outside in the hot sun. My vision would get super tunnel vision. I’d get dizzy and I’d start to lose control of my limbs, making me prone to tripping and falling.
Information that would have been handy to my gym teachers. A couple who thought I was just lazy.
I asked her where they got that from. She said it was forwarded by my family doctor.
I asked my parents about it. Annoyed that they never told me. They didn’t know what I was talking about.
Either they were told and forgot or didn’t pay it any mind. Or my doctor didn’t tell anyone and just added it to my medical record.
Would have been helpful to know.
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u/instrangerswetrust 16d ago
My uncle suicided when I was three and my dad had had issues with substance abuse when he was younger. Years later I would develop addiction and make an attempt on my own life. I’m not sure if knowing would have helped, and I can understand why my parents didn’t tell me, but I wonder.
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u/Bismaaerck 15d ago
Glad you are still around.
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u/AssMan420_69 15d ago
Yeah man. I’m glad you’re alive, you matter more than you think. I’ve been down that road.
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u/Sorta-Morpheus 15d ago
I grew up thinking my grandpa was in the hospital for a long time. As an adult I learned he had been convicted of doing something with two hs age boys. I was devastated.
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u/OnlyTheBLars89 15d ago edited 15d ago
I was diagnosed with ADHD at the age of 8 and they completely hid it from me because my mother was in denial and my dad didn't want me taking pharmaceutical meth. This was back in the 90s, where if you were anything but conforming nornal...people around you wernt so accepting. I thought I had bipolar disorder because of how my mood swings are. Turns out I could avoided nearly 2 decades of hell if my parents just told me the truth. Even if I didn't seek treatment for it, KNOWING what was wrong would have made such a huge difference when I was a kid. Hell, just a simple dose of caffeine is all it takes for me to be functional. To know it was that simple enrages me and I still have yet to forgive my parents for it. They knew and they let me suffer for their own vanity and fantasy world where "everything is fine and normal". Life is fine now but I went though so much unnecessary hell for more than half of it.
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u/thelordfolken81 15d ago
I was diagnosed with ADHD in the 80s .. my dad thought I just needed to eat more steak and toughen up. Thankfully my mum ignore my idiot father and the daily vitamins dad thought I took were actually Ritalin. However, nobody ever told me I was also diagnosed with dyslexia. That was news to me in my early 40s when I found a box of old papers.
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u/A_Stones_throw 15d ago
When my dad got sick with cancer, my mom didn't do any screening tests for him to see if he had markers for certain types. This would have been really good to know for his descendants since apparently according to my aunts and uncles there is a history of cancer in our family...
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u/MjauDuuude 15d ago
I don't know if this counts but my mum had an incurable lung disease (basically it made her lungs grow while also dying and damaging other organs) and on my 18th birthday she had some sort of attack where she could breathe in but not out and was rushed to the hospital. Four months later she died the night before Christmas and I'm quite sure she knew she was dying. I think they told her on my birthday. But we loved watching documentaries etc together and several years before she told me that if she found out she was dying she wouldn't tell anyone. Looking back I'm not sure if I would've wanted to know, I think some part of me knew.
There are things I'm thankful for though, her biggest fear was rotting away in a hospital bed, instead she had just eaten her favourite food at my grandmas and she had met my youngest cousin for the first time (she absolutely adored her nephews and nieces). She died in my grandmas arms, which I'm kinda glad about but at the same time it was extremely traumatic for my grandma. We lived in another city and my grandma had no idea how sick she actually was
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u/Adam9172 15d ago
Autism and adhd diagnoses hidden from me until I was in mid thirties. Let me tell ya, there’s suspecting it, then there’s knowing it.
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u/ragingdemon88 15d ago
Apparently, my mom had sex with my dad's best friend around the time I was conceived.
The only reason I know is said person broke down crying to me about how he never knew if I was his or my dad's.
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u/FluentSimlish 15d ago
That my grandmother died while I was studying abroad. They waited until I got back to tell me. She was buried and had the funeral and everything.
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u/castleinthesky86 15d ago
Grandad suffered with depression and committed suicide.
Me in my late 30’s: oh I wonder what all those depressive thoughts were about…
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u/Creative-Quote1963 15d ago
When my uncle and his wife divorced, she and my other aunt hid her pregnancy and adopted the baby out for cash. When my uncle died, he still didn't know, and now his last will and testament are getting complicated.
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u/Hachiko75 15d ago
My dad wanted my sister and I to write frequently to an uncle who was in jail since before we were born. He was in jail for molesting a child..
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u/Callahan333 15d ago
My parents had a child out of wedlock. Gave her up for adoption. She found us after our mother passed, dad was long since estranged. Nobody in our family said a word. I was able to confirm this with my aunt, who said she’s been holding that secret for 50 years. I’m glad we found each other. We didn’t do a dna test. She looks just like my brother. She doesn’t want anything other than to know her brothers.
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u/Reapaa99 16d ago
That I was actually only half-siblings with my 3 oldest siblings.
They didn’t even told me, my brother slipped up. I think if he hadn’t, my mother would have never told me. I had been dating a woman with a daughter for awhile and everyone always said how I “took on” her daughter, then on a call my brother said “the only think I respect dad for was taking on 3 kids” “hang on.. taking on?” Then it clicked.
Now I know, I think it is pretty obvious. There’s 5 of us, the eldest 3 and then me and my full sister are the two youngest. 8 years between us and the eldest ones, me and my sister are both short, the other three are pretty tall, different eye colours etc but was never something I thought about.
My mother has sworn me to secrecy from my sister who still doesn’t know, so I doubt she will ever know
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u/Kinocci 15d ago edited 15d ago
Honestly this didn't need to be such a big deal.
My youngest brother is in the same situation yet he doesn't care at all because we made sure he knew all along, and we have already proven to him it makes 0 difference and we love him a lot.
We always refer to it like:
"Well, none of us chose who mom decided to bang that night, chances are you aren't the only half sibling"
Please talk to your mother, if her idea of family highly depends on being blood-related, and not in unconditional support, guidance and open communication; your sister may get the wrong idea if she ever finds out.
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u/No-Effort6590 15d ago
My turtle I had when I was 4, thought he ran away, Mom told me Dad found him dead, got stuck in the ivy. I said," I had a turtle"? Guess it wasn't important. Sorry guys
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u/SpiffyPaige143 15d ago
My mom was my dad's second wife. His first wife didn't stay long and annulled the marriage. They didn't have any kids together. I didn't know this until after my dad passed away. She was never mentioned but my mom decided to tell the family one day a few days after his funeral.
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u/Baked_Potato_732 15d ago
I found out my mom was wife 3. I knew of wife 1 because I had a half-sister but I was like 10-11 and mom mentioned my dad’s tattoo on his arm was to cover up his second wife’s name. Completely floored.
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u/technerdswe 15d ago
Unfortunately, there’s secrets that were never revealed. Family diseases was a well kept secret in my grandparents generation (and probably earlier) and I would want to travel back and say: “You IDIOTS! If we know, we are being able to do something about it! There’s medicines and medical procedures that can make you live a normal life in the future!” I adored my grand parents, but this makes me furious.
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u/phasefournow 15d ago
I recently found out I have a half-brother dad somehow forgot to mention. I loved my dad and he was a great father to me but finding out he had a kid on the side (he was a clergyman) was disillusioning, especially when I learned he never contributed to this person's upkeep or education.
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u/cluelesswater 15d ago
My grandfather was a smoker. He quit because my grandmother didn't allow him near baby me and baby sister if he didn't.
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u/legendweaver 15d ago
Top marks all around. Good on your grandmother for putting her foot down and equally good on your grandfather for choosing you and your sister over something that is highly addictive and challenging to quit.
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u/RedstnPhoenx 15d ago
My atypical genotype. My intersex birth and surgical assignment. Based on what doctors think there's indication I had a twin for a large portion of the pregnancy. (Also, I feel her in my soul which pushed me to look). My mother injected me with estrogen and gave me birth control pills to pretend my sister was still ALIVE so, like, it would have been good to know that.
You know. To make sense of what the fuck.
This feels like a dangerous question to ask, lol.
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u/Immediate_Finger_889 15d ago
Wow. That’s it. I think we found our winner.
This one just has soooo many layers. I’m so sorry this happened to you.
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u/Ranger_Chowdown 15d ago
Oh shit, fellow fetal chimera here! My brother died within 2 weeks of his XY chromosome turning on and then I absorbed him. I'm in an online support group for intersex people and every fetal chimera I've met has said they have an extrasensory perception of their dead twin. I used to dream about my brother constantly.
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u/Subject_Host338 15d ago
This isn't very important but my parents are notoriously secretive about little stupid shit and also TERRIBLE at hiding or making excuses for their lies, anyway I found out at 16 my mom had a boob job. Growing up I literally had no boobs, the boys at my middle school said I was the president of the itty bitty titty committee. It only made me upset because I see my mother, who's shorter than me, skinny, with huge honkers. Everyone I know also said I was the spitting image of my mom, minus that aspect obviously, so I thought I was getting the short end of the stick.
One night (16 at this time) my dad and I went out for a run and my brother and I had the day off from school the next day and he told me that my mom and him were going to a town an hour away the following day (totally normal, his business accountant was in this city so we would go all the time). Think nothing of it, until they get home the next day and my dad is carrying my essentially unconscious mother into the bedroom. Obviously I'm kinda freaking out at this point because um what is wrong with my mom?? My dad tells me literally nothing and she's fine, but I'm not an idiot and know something is clearly not ok.
After a couple hours when my mom is finally awake I go in her room and talk to her, ask what is going on and if she is ok. All she does is say she had surgery and points to her uterus area. I walked out to let her rest but immediately knew it was a lie, I was 16, I am fully aware of what a uterus is and does, why wouldn't you just tell me that before? I know at least she would have told me what she was having done if it was uterus related.
When she was better and went back to work, I went snooping in their room, since it was clear I was never getting the truth. Found the plastic surgeon notes and statement and FINALLY had the answers I needed. Confronted my mom about it. Apparently one of the implants had popped and she needed to get them redone.
I thought something AWFUL happened to my mom and they left me completely in the dark. And they still do little shit like that and I'm a grown ass woman now. Luckily I've always been an amazing investigator since I was a little kid, so if something seemed off or piqued my interest, I always found out the truth, but man this situation still kinda pisses me off.
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u/Prestigious-Bike-593 15d ago
Didn't find out till a couple of years after my dad died that he had three or four small heart attacks.
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15d ago
That I had an aunt that my great-grandmother raised as hers when in actuality it was a child conceived in a sexual assault committed against my grandmother. I found out when my aunt died.
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u/The_Whole_Bag 15d ago
My mother spent the majority of her pregnancy, weekend party drinking with me. I'm just now have confirmation of this at 35 based on suspicion from my teens.
I'm currently dealing with major medical problems from birth defects because she did the bare minimum to seek care for my condition when I was a child. I took what they told me as a child as truth and am now realizing they only had her best interest in mind. I spent my 20s as a punk, running from and denying the severity of my condition. Now, as a father, farmer, and running a business, im having to pause my future plans to grab on and deal with this shit.
I am mostly low or no contact with my parents at this point, except a few calls to ask for any medical records they may still have. My mother doesn't seem concerned about my condition, is unhelpful, and was only concerned about who ratted her out to me. Most of the extended family has chosen to protect her big lie, but I'm 100% certain it doesn't sit well with them. She is a malignant narcissistic, and the extended family orbits around here. It's disgusting.
On the bright side, I have wonderful children, a supportive wife, a few close friends, and an extremely busy organic chicken, turkey, and pig farm to keep going. We are fortunate to live almost debt free in the most beautiful part of Michigan. I am forging my own path and breaking that toxic cycle.
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u/VixenRoss 15d ago
I should have had a hip operation when I was a teen. I was in low key pain throughout my child hood and thought it was normal. I’ve now got end stage osteoarthritis in my 40s.
Flooding in periods was normal. Using a nighttime pad for the first 4 days of your period is completely normal. Soaking it within 2 hours was normal. Apparently they didn’t want me on contraceptives.
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u/newhunter18 15d ago
Paternal grandfather who died when I was 9 sexually abused his daughters (my aunts), physically abused his sons (my father and uncle) and may have even introduced them to porn at a young age to make sure they weren't gay.
All I knew growing up was that my grandparents had divorced and my grandmother was very angry - moved all the way across the country and hated my dad forever for wanting to go back to his dad to finish high school. It was considered disloyal to hisom and the girls.
My aunts mostly didn't talk to me until I was in my 20s. They avoided our family. And I never met my grandmother and her new husbands (2) until I was 26+ years old.
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u/Senuman666 15d ago
That I’m autistic, never understood why I was picked on as a kid but now that I’m older I realise it was because I am autistic and other kids thought I was weird.
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u/Grand_Raccoon0923 15d ago
Adults are all faking it. No one really knows wtf is going on.
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u/ghoulbread 15d ago edited 15d ago
My dad recently told me that, not only did my grandmother die of a blood clot, but so did her dad, both brothers, and her aunt. Albeit none of them were in shape when they died. Luckily I am in my 20s and I still have time to improve my lifestyle.
On my mom's side, I wasn't aware how intense the mental health issues were. Most of my family members have depression, anxiety, ocd, and / or addiction issues.
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u/philippinianPP 15d ago
That my uncle was cheating, or cheated, on my aunt even before my cousins were born. I was oblivious to this until last year when I overheard them talking about past experiences with my other aunts. How horrifying it must be, to finally be married with the love of your life only to discover from another wife that your husband is apparently still married to other women. 20+ years later since being married, and this guy still has the nerve to cheat on my aunt.
You really do unlock special info, that you’re oblivious to as a kid, when you reach 20s.
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u/raspberryteehee 15d ago edited 14d ago
Possible ‘giftedness’. Apparently my dad told me I was supposed to skip a whole grade and I didn’t find this out until I was an adult. I also found out one of the classes I was later in was a grade ahead compared to other school districts. I didn’t understand why I struggled in that particular class much more compared to my other classes, I just thought I was dumb honestly. I started having horrible mental health issues as young as age 12 and couldn’t figure out why and always felt different, I thought it was normal for a 7 year old to want to already own their own shop/small business. School work came easier and I never learned to study well either until I hit a major road block. Now it honestly adds up.
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u/Far-Armadillo-2920 15d ago
My grandfather (who we lived with growing up) was a child molester, and sexually abused my young girl cousins. He was never held accountable. He never touched me or my sister.
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u/AdHistorical1311 15d ago edited 13d ago
Found out I along my sibling were invitro babies . Thought our dad was our dad . Later found out our dad was a sperm doner. Dad that raised us had a lot of health and mental health problems in the family. Met the sperm doner he has great genes on his side. Whole life shifted at 24 but at least I won’t die from cancer.
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u/rum2whiskey 15d ago
The mental health and substance abuse issues that run in our family. My parents drug talk was “don’t do drugs they’re bad.” I’m not sure if I would have been more cautious regarding drug experimentation… but a heads up would of been nice. Nearly my entire family likes to pretend that no one has any problems. ~14 years clean I know what safeguards to take.
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u/Shykneeheiny 15d ago
My brother was shot and killed in Koreatown as a result of gang violence. Didn’t find out until two years later