14 People Recall Disturbing Events They Still Can’t Shake Off

When it comes to handling challenging situations, we often hear advice about staying calm and composed. However, the reality is that some circumstances are just downright annoying or upsetting, making it difficult to keep your cool. People in this article found themselves in precisely those kinds of scenarios, and even reflecting on them brings back those feelings.

• I was cleaning up the kitchen, waiting for my kid’s bus. I saw it pull up and saw him get off. He didn’t come in. I walked out, and he wasn’t there. I called his name and looked around the house, thinking he was hiding from me, but I couldn’t find him. I circled the house calling for him, and the panic set in. Then his bus pulled up, and he got off. © LookForTheWhiteLight / Reddit

• I was on my honeymoon with my husband, and we let his dad stay at our house, but we told him he had to be out by the time we got back. We informed him when we were on our way home and expected him to be gone.
  When we arrived, he was gone but had not taken his stuff out of the house. On top of that, he had trashed the place like a group of teenagers, with empty pizza boxes and trash scattered around. He returned, stayed around for a while, and asked me if I was mad at him. Like, of course, I’m mad!! What do you expect? © Unknown user / Reddit

• My dad was planning on taking a trip across the country to California. He was very excited about it. The day of his trip, he calls me and tells me he decided last minute not to go. That night, I saw on the news that the plane my dad was supposed to be on crashed.
  My dad finally confessed that the night before he was supposed to leave, he had an extremely vivid dream that he died in a fiery plane crash. So vivid that it scared him out of flying that day. My dad is a Marine Corps veteran. I can only imagine how vivid the dream must have been to scare him out of getting on that plane that morning. © SoloHarveyBirdman / Reddit

• My mother-in-law, sister-in-law, and father-in-law all argued with my wife because we wouldn’t drop everything and go visit them for Mother’s Day when we had plans. It’s a 2-hour visit to them, and they got mad because we said that 2 hours of time and gas was too much, and it interfered with what we were doing that day.
  Apparently, us not wanting to make a 2-hour trip is unreasonable, but when they don’t want to, they just can’t afford it, and we should understand.
  In the same argument, they blatantly said that if we don’t have the money to come see them, I should get off my “lazy self” and get a job.
  My wife and I both have jobs. NONE of the three of them do. © Mistah-Jay / Reddit

• My aunt came to visit for what was supposed to be a week or two and didn’t leave for almost a year when I was a kid. She redecorated my room and even put up pictures of herself.
  Now, the running joke in my family is to randomly leave pictures of yourself around the house when we visit people. © slams-head-on-desk / Reddit

• A high school teacher of mine misspelled the word “college” as “collage” on an assignment, and I jokingly said, “Whoever wrote this must not have gone to ’collage.’” She made a huge scene in front of the class for fifteen or so minutes about how I didn’t know anything about her, and she brought some friends of mine into it by trying to get them to say that they thought I was full of myself. They all got uncomfortable and disagreed.
  A week later, a classmate made the same mistake on her homework, and the teacher made the exact joke I had made but failed to see the hypocrisy in it. © sambosefus / Reddit

• My ex-boyfriend’s biological dad left when he was ten. He gave up his rights, and then his stepdad eventually adopted him. His stepdad used to talk so much about the bio-dad, saying that he wasn’t a real man for giving up his kids.
  I found out after we broke up that the stepdad had an older child that he gave up the rights to, but he was still a man somehow. © idealisticb***h / Reddit

• During my entire childhood, my dad mistreated my mom and accused her of cheating. He would call her workplace and ask her supervisor what the organization’s policy was on employees having relationships with customers, and basically, just things to make my mom feel terrible.
  None of my brothers or I ever believed she had cheated on him, as she could barely keep friends because our father tried to control every aspect of her life, let alone how she would have time to cheat on him while raising four children that he was barely around for.
  Fast-forward to me at 21, and I catch my dad cheating on my mom. A year later, I discovered I have two other siblings from different mothers who all fit the time frame of my parents’ marriage.
  Luckily, he isn’t in our life much. © one30eight / Reddit

• A friend from high school invited me and three other friends over for what he described as a “party.” We thought it might be a small gamer party with some nerdy board games or something, as there were only the three of us plus him and his wife.
  His wife then proceeded to start an hour-and-a-half presentation and tried to sell female beauty products to a group of males between the ages of 19 and 22. I was astounded. © blackdragon8577 / Reddit

• As a child, I received an invitation to a birthday party. It was handwritten and given to me by the kid whose birthday it was. When I arrived, he pretended not to remember inviting me and asked to see the invitation. He denied writing it in front of many of my classmates and said I invited myself. I was so upset that I wanted to leave immediately, but my mom had already left. I had no choice but to tell his mom what happened so she could maybe drop me off.
  His mom’s reaction caught me off guard. As she recognized his handwriting, she got angry at her son for being unkind. She was super sweet, gave me some Lamingtons and a soda, and told me I could play video games alone until my mom picked me up. That day, I discovered that none of my classmates were my friends. © MoefsieKat / Reddit

• My ex-boyfriend was angry that I was on a dating site and had gone on a few dates within a month of our breaking up. He did the exact same thing, but it was “different” because his dates went badly, and he was lonely. © tintinfin / Reddit

• My father called me, found out I got divorced (I didn’t tell him because we were not close, and I knew he would side with my ex), and told me he was “incredibly disappointed in me because marriage is supposed to be forever.” He was calling me to tell me he was getting married for the FIFTH time. © r124124 / Reddit

• Our school’s schedule got revamped, which meant that one of our classes, which was two periods long, was cut in half to accommodate all the changes. When I brought this up to the teacher I was co-teaching with, she called me an idiot and told everyone sitting at our table group that I wasn’t very good at math, and everyone laughed. A few minutes later, the principal clarified the new schedule, only for her to realize that she was wrong in the first place. Seeing the look on her face when she realized she was the one mistaken, not me, felt so good. © jooby-the-nooby / Reddit

• At work, one day, I was writing a menu board for lunch specials. A couple came in and started chuckling behind me. The lady gave me this snide look and said, “What’s a sandwich? It’s spelled SAMWITCH, honey. Hahaha, she wrote SAND, like in the desert!”
  I just smiled and didn’t even correct her. © trixablanca / Reddit

Unraveling family secrets isn’t just about uncovering the past and grappling with the present and shaping the future. Some people seek solace in sharing their experiences and finding comfort in the commonality of human struggles.