This troper's Awful Truth is nowhere near the level of awful that most of these are but it's something I need to let out:

Seven years ago my mother developed ovarian cancer which in itself was an awful truth for a naive young {{Cloudcuckoolander}} like myself. However the real awful truth for this Troper was being told by a kindhearted nurse a week after her mother's death a few years later, that her mother had been on intense radio therapy for over half a year and was in fact terminal; something she managed to hide not only from me and my dad, but also from all the rest of the family. In fact, she hid it so well we thought she was getting better. The thought that my mom, who couldn't even sit up by herself at this point, could barely eat and who effectively knew she was going to die, not only managed to hide all of it from of us but also managed to put on such a cheerful face that we all believe it right up until her death, makes me crack a little more on the inside every time I think of it. ...If I become even a sliver of the kind of person my mom was by the time I die, I'll know my life was worth it.

Same troper as above. If the above isn't enough, then know that exactly two years later (same date even) my Auntie (whose birthday is the said date) died of brain cancer which the doctors didn't know she had since they were too busy focused on removing her breast cancer which would have also killed her. While this troper managed to deal with this death much better than she did her mother's, she is sure that her Grandmother on her mother's side (who is both the kindness and most iron-willed person she has ever met) has not and personally dreads to think of what would happen if either of her other two aunties or her step-grandfather were to pass away within the next few years...

This troper discovered the Awful Truth about why a friend called her in the middle of the night one time, and left a voice ma crying. Hold on to your seats, and suspend belief. The friend had been raped by a guy some months previously. He was the leader of a gang, and kept coming back or sending goons after the friend. This troper and several other people pitched in to help her stay safe. Fast forward several months, and this troper asks about the voice mail and the rapist. The friend doesn't answer. Eventually, she just says the problem is taken care of permanently. As it turns out, the night the friend left the message, she had found the rapist and killed him after he tried to hurt her again and was calling in distress. Let's just say this did not end well...

This troper was held against his will in a Bedlam House so he couldn't testify in a custody hearing. Two months later, his school put him there for complaining about being bullied by the system. He accidentally broke a window on the grounds on Thanksgiving Day, leaving him with some nasty scars. He ended up being held for four days (leaving him in said Wacky Shack for a fortnight) past the legal limit because his mother didn't want to end her vacation early.

This troper's parents found out an awful truth about this troper... The real reason she attempted suicide. The reason? Constant sexual, mental, and physical harassment by fellow students and physical and emotional abuse by her older brother. They also happened to learn about the drug use then too.

This Troper's girlfriend told him of a man who was interested in her. He thought little of it, until the next time they were together she said he showed her his penis. The awful truth? Well she spit it out just as her and I were to get intimate; they actually had sex. I have never experienced such rage in my life, and worse - I held it in...

In This Troper's case, he found out from his girlfriend of three years that she wanted to break up with him. Over an IM. On Valentine's Day. While this troper was halfway around the world studying abroad. Now, with some years' distance it's clear that this sort of thing happens a lot, and life goes on regardless. But unfortunately for this troper at the time, it didn't end there. Oh, no; It Got Worse. Firstly, she spent a month going back and forth over whether she was really serious about the breakup, at times saying she wanted to see other people, at others claiming that this troper was X trait he needed to change, at which point she would get back together with him. (In hindsight, most of her accusations were spurious at best, but at the time he was willing to do or say anything to get her to stay. Yes, he was a poor lovesick dope, this troper was.) Then, just as things seemed like they were taking a turn for the better, she manufactured some slight this troper supposedly caused to get histrionic over, resulting in a two week period of no contact (which this troper later learned was the ''official'' start of her relationship with her now-fiancé©). Even that, this troper could take; he was just starting to come to terms with things, when he got into regular contact with the now ex-girlfriend's roommate. Though unwilling to directly come out and incriminate the person living with her, she dropped enough hints to reveal that ex had been sleeping with her "new" boyfriend since even before this troper left for his semester abroad, and was basically lying her head off for several months straight while this troper suffered according to her whims. Whether this was intentional cruelty on her part, or simply a spectacularly botched attempt to let this troper down gently, is an open question he really would rather not know the answer to. The roommate's reaction: "I ''told'' you you didn't really want to know." \\ No doubt some will say that I should have left her cold when the whole kerfuffle started and dated a local (or several) instead. But to a (then-) idealist still in the throes of young love, the ordeal of the breakup and the subsequent revelations about the kind of person his ex really was were absolutely devastating, and finding a Replacement Goldfish was really the farthest thing from his mind. He could have at least cherished the relationship for what it was if not for that final piece of the jigsaw puzzle, but then again, he probably would have driven himself mad wanting to know the truth if he didn't find out. It's just like that, sometimes...

That sounds oddly like what happened to this troper, except with less incest.

Ouch. I feel for you. The same thing happened to me, twice. The first time, it was the marriage breaking up on Valentine's Day (two months after the wedding), after we had taken the new lover in for a month or so because they had lost their other housing. The second time, my boyfriend married another woman, and didn't tell me about it until a week later. I'm friends again with the first ex, but not the second.

This troper is and has always been subject to a constant stream of authority figures in her life failing to give her (often rather important) information because of this attitude; it's reached LockedOutOfTheLoop levels at times, but the crucial difference that prevents it from actually becoming so is that it's not an ''active'' conspiracy, just a bunch of well-meaning but misguided people taking a wrongheaded approach to the situation.

Reading this page... that might not be such a bad thing.

When this troper was nineteen, her boyfriend of slightly more than a year proposed. This was October. (You need a scorecard for this.) In early December, he came to visit from college for a weekend to see his fiancee perform in a play. She put him back on the bus and literally never saw him again. Two weeks later she received a distress call from his parents, asking if they knew his whereabouts. Apparently, he packed some clothes and his laptop, left some vague note which said he was leaving, and ''disappeared off the face of the planet.'' At least, that's the way it seemed at the time. About six weeks after that, he was finally located -- living on the other side of the country with a girl he'd met on the internet. His whereabouts were discovered by a mutual internet friend in Australia, who got to be the lucky person to inform the troper that her engagement was canceled. (For the record, this was over twelve years ago and the troper is extremely happily married, while her ex was dumped by the internet girl and went on to be married and divorced twice. So, y'know, karma does work.)

This troper's mother left home at the age of 18. Now, mother (let's call her Jane Doe), this troper always suspected, had not just up and left for no good reason. She (Jane) came from pretty much as white trash as it gets, and her literally insane mother left when she was 2. Her stepmother never told her what deodorant was, and all her limited clothing was crap, so Jane got mocked a LOT as a kid. So, this troper had always figured what made Jane up and leave was Jane's dad (troper's granddad) trying to assault her or something. Oh no. This troper overheard Jane talking to her (Jane's) half-sister over the phone over the summer, and it turns out that granddad (let's call him Sonofabitch) had been molesting Jane. Since she was NINE. And this troper is pretty sure molest includes repeated rape. And Jane didn't know it was wrong until later, and craved SOB's approval growing up. Charges were never pressed, and apparently Jane figured SOB didn't know any better... yeah, right. There was sporadic contact between SOB and this troper's family over the years (we live halfway across the country from him). This troper never liked the old bastard, despite not knowing anything about all this. But since Jane didn't want to turn us against him, she never told anyone but this troper's dad. Jane even flew out to visit him when he got sick a few months before he died. This troper was hard-pressed not to request permission to come so she could yank the plug herself. Bastard. And then there was a gathering of sorts to help Jane mourn, with family friends who had never met SOB coming to console Jane. This troper really, really wanted to give Jane a good shake and then hunt down SOB's corpse and go at it with a chainsaw. This troper hopes he BURNS IN HELL.

This troper's (Jane's daughter's) own awful truth was finding out at age 19 that the reason she had never had a period was because she didn't have a uterus. Her ovaries are fine, but it's impossible for her to carry her own kids. And this troper has always been a huge kid person, and wanted to have tons of kids. Sure, there's adoption/in vitro, but in a horrible way it almost seems sometimes like the universe said "oh, you're a weird chick. No kids for you."

Regardless of why it happened, that's a painful thing to have to discover. I'm sorry. *hugs*

This troper, in middle school, was at an all time low. I didn't get very good grades, wasn't very good at sports, didn't have a lot of things she could do well, etc. But I had some friends at least that stood by me. But in 8th grade, I overheard two of my 'friends' talking about how much they hated me, and how they just wanted me to go away and die. This sent me into a depression that I didn't tell my parents about, but I think they knew. The next few years I would look at a knife and go ''You know, it would all be over... All of the pain, just with a single slash...'' Good thing that I never did it though.

This Troper often wonders how a cold knife would feel in his feverish heart. Is that bad?

No.

This troper was horrified to discover that the grandparents she grew up with and loved as much as if they were her own parents (probably MORE than her own parents) are not biologically related to her; her mother is adopted. Worse still, the confession was accidental, and her mother had intended never to tell the said troper at all. Troper suspects, through one thing and another, that her real grandmother was her adoptive grandmother's sister. She can't prove it because she can't do too much investigating without her mother finding out.

Biology means NOTHING. I have one bio parent and one adoptive, and biology means jack. It's love that matters, since it's love that makes a family.

This Troper's first girlfriend was during the summer he turned 15. Two years after the couple broke up, she died of a brain aneurysm in her dorm room. Six months later, said Troper was in a restaurant and started a conversation with the next table over, where he discovered: A) this gentleman was dating her the exact same time said Troper was, and B) she had actually died of a drug overdose. Stranger than fiction indeed.

This troper's first girlfriend didn't even really break up with him. She told him she was going to a city about twenty minutes to a half an hour away to stay with a friend while her parents were moving stuff in her house. So she gave him a number to call and when he did? A guy answered the phone and wanted to talk to him. "Sure," said I, thinking nothing of it at the time. After a while, he says "Dude, I'm sorry, man". Troper goes "For what? I don't even know you." To which Phone Guy says "That [ex's name here] dumped you for me." Troper said "Whoa. Back up a sentence or two." Yeah, turns out she'd been sleeping with this guy. Like, for a month. Not only that, but she was physically and mentally abusive towards him, but he would deal with it because hey, it's his first girlfriend. We're all allowed a pass for doing stupid things because of that. Anyway, for a long time after that he was horribly depressed to the point that he dropped out of school and stopped caring about pretty much anything. He's fine now, though, thanks to some good friends and a relationship after that that ended on ''slightly'' better terms (which, as it turns out, is Troper's only other relationship). Now, if anything, he's overly peppy all the time, and feels like he's learned a valuable lesson in life for the whole ordeal.

This troper will start off by saying that his (now deceased) grandfather was a millionaire. Now we move on to my uncle. Five years ago, my uncle (married, had kids, then divorced a long time ago) met a woman who, herself, had been married, had kids, and divorced a long time ago. They got off really well with each other, and he proposed. She accepted. It was this big huge deal for my family, everyone was happy, the kids were happy, the parents were happy, and the happy new couple took the whole family on a cruise to Alaska. One month later, the marriage had been annulled. For the longest time, the information this troper heard had led him to assume that, for some reason, said uncle had gone to see a doctor and was shown to be at risk of developing Alzheimer's. His new wife, fearing for her children and their livelihood, promptly annulled the marriage. That's what this troper ''assumed.'' A few months ago, I finally learned the truth of the matter. The wifey had ''paid'' the doctor off to "diagnose" my uncle with some form of early-onset Alzheimer's. of you with some knowledge of Alzheimer's might know that it's ''impossible'' to diagnose Alzheimer's while the afflicted is still living. The wife had intended to use this "diagnosis" to place her in control over my uncle's finances, including those that would come from his share of inheritance from my millionaire grandfather. She was hoping to gain control of all this money so as to care for her own children's livelihood. My uncle was the one who had annulled the marriage, and with good reason, too.

This troper would rather not have found out his mother had been sexually abused by a relative as a child.

This troper would have had to have been held back from buying a gun and committing a very bloody murder. You're a better person than this one.

This troper learned the same. This troper was glad to learn karma works, when the son of a bitch died of cancer; technically, it was the chemo that killed him.

What kind of cancer? Because if it was testicular cancer, that's just the hand of God right there.

This troper learned much the same, though completely by accident. She found an old artist portfolio, and opened it up to see what was there. The very first picture was a simple but very... graphic red painting. This troper eventually pieced together that the portfolio was of stuff her mom had done while in art therapy, and already knew that her grandfather was abusive to her mom when her mom was really little, so it all clicked after that. This troper doesn't regret it, though, despite not telling her mom about it, because that picture was the reason she was able to forgive her mom for being absent from her childhood. Her mother suffered from PTSD and depression, and knowing what her mom had gone through to trigger it makes this troper sad. This troper's grandfather also died from brain cancer before she was born, but its hard to think about it as karma when him dying hurt her mom anyways. This troper hopes he burns in hell.

Most assuredly; God forgives... but not the unrepentant.

This Troper learned the same, but with a twist... he learned it completely by accident (mom was having a phone conversation with her sister, a victim of the same guy, and she only talked about it because she thought I was asleep). He's in his early twenties now and his parents still think he doesn't know.

This troper stopped just short of learning this about his father... He basically cut his mother off at one point while she talked about his father's family (horrible people whom this troper never met), saying "I don't want to hear this." He knows they were never very nice and were emotionally abusive, but he doesn't want to know any more, ever.

I learned that my mother and all her sisters (and possibly brothers - she had NINE siblings) were molested by her father. I found this out long after he died of cancer, and I had met him once when I was a kid (never did anything to me, thank God). Made worse by the fact that most of my family members don't know about this, and think he was a great guy.

This troper was molested from an extremely early age until she was nine by her grandfather. A while after said grandfather died (when troper- let's call her Annie- was ten) from cancer, Annie discovered that Grandfather also hurt Annie's sister and cousin. Cousin's mama told Annie how when Grandfather and Grandmother weren't even married when he died, even though they lived in the same house, and that Grandfather had *several* other families that Annie's mother and Annie's mother's siblings don't know about. This means that there are probably other little children who have been hurt by Grandfather. And even worse? Mother and Grandmother refuse to acknowledge Annie's need for severe, overdue therapy, and believe that Annie's androphobia is Annie's excuse to be a lesbian. Also, Annie's big brother isn't her full brother. In fact, Big Brother doesn't have any full siblings at all. He has thirteen half-siblings, including Annie and Annie's sister.

Come here. If anyone needs a hug, it's you.

This troper learned that his mother was sexually abused by her (now dead) stepfather as a child, and has at multiple times desired the ability to bring said stepfather back to life for the sole purpose of painfully killing him. Repeatedly. This troper is a Christian, and has forgiven said stepfather just as many times. And sometimes still desires to bring him back to life just to be able to kill him.

This troper has been told that her awful truth life story could go on Jerry Springer. To sum up: her parents divorced when she was a small child, and her mother eventually remarried. However, when she was eleven she learned (not by being told, but by paying attention) the man her mother had married was her biological father, and who she had thought was her father, whom she adores, is not related to her at all. And her parents had divorced because of her mother's affair, among other reasons. And this meant she had two half-sisters. And she wasn't supposed to find this out. She finally confronted her mother when she was eighteen, and she admitted it was true. She also admitted that if she had had her way this troper would have never learned this. Eventually she learned everyone in her family was in on it, besides the people directly affected. Then her stepfather who was her biological father died and she learned he had had an affair while married to her mother. She couldn't make any of this up if she tried.

I've always had troubles with my friends, often resulting in a lot of 'Best Friends' Triangles, where I'm normally the odd one out. Over the past year my true best friend has grown further away from me, and I feel like I've been replaced by a newer, trendier, more exciting model. I hadn't seen my best friend for a quite a while, she told me she had a really bad case of flu, I didn't think too much of it because she's normally 'conveniently ill' whenever there's an examination or a lot of work to do. I made a remark concerning this to my friends, they were all disgusted, called me a bitch and left. Apart from one who stayed to say 'How could you say that? After all she's been through.' I was confused and asked what was going on. I was told that my best friend had severe depression and the reason she had been taking so much time off was because she attempted suicide by taking a paracetamol overdose. I was the last to know. Suddenly I felt like my best friend really had grown apart from me. Oh and we're all only 14 years old by the way.

This troper fell in love with a girl who is a close friend, confessed, and was turned down. But it's okay, right? I'll just tell the person she falls in love with IfYouEverDoAnythingToHurtHer I'll find you and end your life in a LudicrousGibs, but then a few months later I realize that yep, I can't let her go, I'm still in love. Then, during an IM chat with her and a few other friends, I find out that she doesn't intend to marry ''at all''.

This troper had something similar happen. He fell in love with his best friend. For the last four years, she has known, and has basically danced around the issue, jerking him about. Recently, she moved one state away (she originally lived in Minnesota, this troper in Florida.) Then, "Oh, I can't love you, sorry, I am in love with some guy who DOESN'T KNOW WHAT A REPUBLICAN IS." Then it was, "Oh maybe I love you, maybe I don't." Then, "NO, I don't." Then I stopped talking to her for a few weeks because, honestly. I was depressed as hell. She cried about us not talking. Her best friend, who I was casual friends with, and her now-boyfriend, both started attacking and threatening me. I reminded the boyfriend that, while he could kick my ass, I would slit his throat and dump the body in a shallow grave, and I tried to keep the casual friend from hating me. Now, the boyfriend constantly pesters me whenever the girl goes offline, "HEY DO YOU KNOW WHERE SHE WENT?" "Am I her fucking keeper?" "Well..." "* Sigh* No, I do not." The casual friend no longer speaks to me. The girl, who was my best friend in the world, I only talk to once every week or so. Not too bad, compared to some of the people on this page, but life still pretty much blows. This all came to a head only a few months ago, but this troper got over her for good in about five minutes, just because she asked.

Good for you, brother. She doesn't deserve you.

This troper never met his paternal grandfather--all this troper knew about his grandfather had died before this troper was born (and technically was never a grandfather while alive because this troper is his eldest grandson). This troper's younger brother asked about it once or twice, resulting in the tension in the room skyrocketing and this troper's mother saying that he (the grandfather) was in an accident. (This troper was never the kind to ask his parents about anything, preferring to put the puzzle together from the little slips everyone occasionally made...) Around the time this troper's grandmother was nearing death, his mother pulled him and his brother aside and revealed the AwfulTruth: his grandfather had killed himself; his grandmother had tried shortly after, but was stopped in time; and his father had been thinking about trying due to the failing health of this troper's grandmother. Compared to everything else on the page, this story is nothing, but I mention it because it's somewhat of a subversion--this troper's (internal) reaction was along the lines of: "Hmmm, good to know. I'll remember to keep hiding my emotional states from you so that you don't freak out and think I might try killing myself." Of course, as far as this troper can tell, it was actually the AwfulTruth for his brother, who isn't an ice-hearted bitch.

This troper, despite having disowned his father for abandoning him at age 8, has been very close with his step-sister ever since a chance encounter on the internet four years ago. He has talked with her every day since then, something that he doesn't even do with his own mother, and he considers her the closest person to him. Only a few months ago, he noticed her mention something very odd about some old ex and asked for clarification, and then everything horrible about her life came out. She was sexually assaulted by an ex-boyfriend at 13, and when she went to an authority figure about it her friends turned their backs on her, despite it being ''at their suggestion'' that she do so. The Troper's father, henceforth known as The Bastard, is a verbally abusive drunk who has apparently been physically violent with her mother in the past. Despite this and despite both the sister and her mother knowing that The Bastard has to go, they can't because they literally need him in order to put food on the table. Oh, and did this troper mention that because of both The Bastard's problems and the mother's inability to work, his sister won't be able to leave home and go to New York like she really wants once she turns 18? Oh, and just to add, in the four years between meeting her and finding this out, she put on a perfect ThePollyanna just to keep this troper from worrying about her. She should have been more worried about his jail sentence once he gets a plane ticket and ends up guilty of two murders.

This troper grew up believing that he had come from a very nice, normal, balanced family. Cue the last year where he found out that mental illness runs in the family, that his father used to be a drug addict, that his mother had taken the troper with her to pay off his father's dealers, and that his mother almost left his father (which was when he decided to go into rehab).

This troper feels your pain--she knew her father had stopped drinking shortly after her little brother was born. What she didn't know about was the crazy-insane alcoholism (vodka hidden in planters! A cologne bottle! And every vessel in the house!) and drug addiction (cocaine like whoa, shared a dealer with his cardiologist), which led her mother to pack this wee troper and her little brother off to the grandparents while my mother threatened to leave my father and deny him custody unless he went into rehab. It took three stints until stuck, and he's been sober for over 20 years now. For 15 years, I was told that my father had been "on a business trip" during the period he was in rehab, and that he didn't drink because of various other health problems. The Awful Truth came out to the admitting doctor's in an emergency room when they asked if there was a history of mental illness in the family when this troper was hospitalized during her first severe depressive episode (complete with no eating/sleeping/bathing for almost a week and suicidal tendencies) at the age of 17. On the upside, the family has been very, very open since then.

One troper feels your pain. He also found out recently that his family is filled with mental illness, drugs, and abusive relationships. They only told the troper because they think he's a developing head case too.

This troper will never drink because of all the stories she has heard from her mother's side of the family (namely of a relative-a long, long time before she was born-getting so drunk that the morning afterwards he took a pot of boiling water right off of the stove and ''drank'' it).

That's pretty much the same reason why they finally told me--that and they felt I was old enough to finally hear the AwfulTruth.

Old enough in my case would mean spend my life cleaning up everyone's shit until I go crazy like them. Family sucks.

This troper was finally told about her family's long history of mental illness after spending a good part of her life dealing with her own mental illnesses. Yea, if I wasn't afraid of going truly crazy before...

This troper found out that one of childhood friend's mother was a dyed-in-the-wool Bundy. She overfed the girl's older brother, did not medicate his ADHD, underfed the childhood friend to keep her from getting "fat", knew and did nothing about the youngest child's rampant Kleptomania, even encouraging it, and had often taken her kids to a local fire department, and had apparently skimped on my aunt's pay when my aunt babysat her. It took several of her friends to hold down this scrawny stick of a 3rd grader from running over to the irresponsible parent to beat the living shit out of her, especially at how her poor friend was more or less being instructed into a world of body issues.

This troper's mother had told him many an AwfulTruth: at various points in his life, he discovered that she had been abused by her father, she had been molested as a child by her older brother, her first husband (his father) had become a drug addict, and that's why he couldn't see him anymore (though he got clean later in life, and we were reunited); her second husband sexually and emotionally abused her, and her boyfriend after her second husband was a drug addict and forced her into doing pornographic photo shoots. Each of these facts were found out long after he had any chance to do anything about it. Upon discovering the last, he flew into a rage, ran off for several hours to avoid doing something stupid, and then returned home and forced her to promise him, "No more secrets. ''Ever''."

Nothing grand here, but about 11 years ago I went through treatment for my myelodysplastic syndrome (AKA pre-leukemia). I got better. 10 years later came time for the hospital to stop their bi-annual check-ups and send me to a normal local hospital. During a relatively bland and unsurprising conversation with the doctor listed many things that still need to be checked out from time to time, casually mentioning that I can't have children between heart ultrasounds and gland check-ups. After thinking about it for a few seconds I finally blurted out "What!?" and judging by the doctor's facial expression I didn't have to explain to her that I had absolutely no idea about any kind of sterility. While she was genuinely surprised that I had never been told about it before, she still mentioned that due to sterility not being life-threatening, nobody had probably ever thought about mentioning it. Especially not at the time I had to go through circumcision just a year before. Of course, the twist in the wound came later when I addressed my parents about the matter and after their initial shock they only had "We would have told you soon" to say. No idea what would have counted as "soon" for them since I was nearly 20 years old at the time. And not long after came "It's not like you were planning to have any kids" and "Did you know how much we love you?". In that order.

I think that's pretty grand *hug*

This troper found out about a year ago that her uncle molested both of his brothers and his sister. That would be this troper's dad and her aunt, and the uncle she never knew because he was killed in a hunting accident when he was nine. This horrible fact was compounded by the fact that her grandma ''walked in on her oldest son molesting her daughter, turned around, walked out of the room, and never said anything about it again.'' This troper still loves her grandma, but she can't excuse that attitude. As for her uncle, every time she sees him, she wants to beat the shit out of him, as she feels this molestation drove her aunt to become promiscuous enough to have no less than three abortions during high school, leaving her unable to have children. I already was uncomfortable around this uncle because when my brother and I were very young, he came to our house and beat up my parents because he was insulted by an offhand remark my dad had made to his wife; he injured my mom's kidney badly enough that her lupus attacked it and she had to endure three years of dialysis and a transplant. Between that and what he did to my dad and aunt, it takes all my self-restraint not to stick a barbecue for through his eye every time my grandma hosts a stupid "get-together" to pretend like the members of the family don't hate each other. Nice try Grams, but I will loathe that *** until my dying day. Oh, and if all the aforementioned wasn't bad enough: he refuses to spay or neuter his cats. Then, when he feels there are too many kittens, he goes through and does "purges." With a shotgun.

You have the self-control of a hero. If I had been you, I would be in prison for his murder. Twice.

This troper's always had trust issues. I was the last to find out that both my parents were having affairs (and were even willing to blame me for one of the causes). Being TheUnfavorite, I thought finally escaping from the family with the help of my then boyfriend was cause for celebration. Two weeks later, my boyfriend dumped me out of the blue with the typical "it's not you, it's me". While we remained friends, I later found out -- accidentally when a friend of his slipped it all out on an online forum we were all on -- that he had been cheating on me during our entire relationship with a barely legal girl out of state (off seeing her while I was forced to go to my [BLEEP] of a father's funeral by myself for starters). Even though he played match maker between me and my current husband, I still never got a sincere apology from him for how he treated me, nor the relationship equivalent of a WellDoneSonGuy before he died.

A bit inverted in this troper's life. This troper was part of a fairly fun, happy, and content Internet community before the whole thing went up in flames, due to some conflicts with a neighboring message board. Rather than waste energy on it, this troper simply left the community. Those of this troper's friends who remained simply told her, "It's boring without you," but whenever she brought it up, said friends got a little cagey. However, she later learned from one of her lurking friends that she'd become the favorite punching bag of the community since her departure, relentlessly mocked by a certain portion of the old guard, and a picture of herself she'd posted had been Photoshopped onto nude pictures, hobos, and other unflattering forms. The inversion came from the fact that, while this troper chose to ignore it, being largely averse to SeriousBusiness, the friend who told her was all but ready to go MamaBear on those individuals who ganged up on me and rip their arms off. She does admit it's pretty nasty, but not being directly exposed to it, she can't otherwise comment.

This troper recently found out that her grandmother was a supporter of Hitler during WWII. Well, not all that of an awful truth for me, but certainly for my mother! And we didn't even find this out because the grandmother told us. Hell, she's already been dead for a good ten years. We just read it somewhere. Quite... unpleasant. This troper also didn't want to find out that her mother had been raped as a child, because now she doesn't want to go outside during the night anymore (the troper, not the mother).

This troper knows all too well about being better off not knowing. I won't go into the whole story since it's rather long. She was meant to be my first love, I had stopped (temporarily) letting myself get held back by low confidence and that. I thought she was beautiful and amazing and best of all, SHE was the one who asked ME out. That sounds good doesn't it? Well from a blog she wrote I found out (quite a long while after) how she really felt including that she just felt sorry for me.

This troper, for most of his childhood, had always assumed that the friend living with his father was in fact his father's lover, even going so far as to refer to his actual father as 'Dad' and his father's friend as 'Pop'. His two dads were exceedingly loving towards him, and endlessly patient - despite the fact that he was a very sickly child and required a lot of attention and money spent on him after he lost his leg due to circulation problems. The AwfulTruth? His biological mother (whom he had always assumed was a surrogate or something to that tune) was an ex-wife with whom dear old dad had a one night stand after meeting over some legalities involving alimony in concern with her impending re-marriage; she soon realized she had a bun in the oven and her fiance was entirely understanding in the whole ordeal, until they found out the baby was a boy. At this point the fiance decided he wasn't going to raise another man's bastard, and told her it was either him or the baby. Instead of risking her figure for a baby that she wouldn't keep anyway, she went through several illicit measures to induce a miscarriage, prompting the birth of this troper at 126 days premature (for those who are keeping track, 128 days premature is the record for the most premature baby to survive), and the nature of his birth is the root of all of his health problems. To top this all off... his dad and pop were never even lovers. For the record, euckie is completely done with assuming ''anything'' about ''anyone''.

...Ye... fucking... gods... man. Do you want a hug? A place to live for a while? ;.;

This troper would like to designate you TheWoobie of the wiki, and bring you hot soup and cookies..

This Troper had a friend who, at a seemingly random point in his life, decided that he wanted to join the police instead of becoming a psychiatrist. The friend, had until that point, been extremely non-violent, and generally nice. Shortly after this decision, the friend began working out, joined a mutual friends boxing gym, began studying hard, broke up with his girlfriend, started getting A's in his work, and researched the police and criminal psychology a LOT in his free time, and became a fan of psychological thrillers and such. Which sparked some curiosity in me, as the friend had been much more light-hearted and concerned with helping those around him and keeping them happy. He initially thought it was inspired by the slew of detective stories and the 'death note' and 'monster' anime they had both started having marathons of. He eventually found the friend's old notebook that he had gotten in the middle of the marathon. It had quite a bit of what looked like Japanese writing in it, and dates from before his transformation to just after it. He confronted his friend about it, who seemed to honestly have no idea what it was. After looking up a lot of Japanese symbols and some amateur cryptography this troper decoded it, it turned out to be a diary written in code (inspired by the anime this troper had converted him to) and detailed some disturbing events this troper didn't know about. Turns out the friend had been raped by an unknown assailant, which had been filmed; the assailant then blackmailed the friend with this information (and the tape), turning him into a slave and continuing the sexual abuse. The friend became unstable, had lots of nightmares, and eventually figured out that the assailant was one of his friends. He didn't know who though, which made him paranoid and made the nightmares worse. The diary then detailed a planned murder, which scared the shit out of this troper since it was eerily perfect. After nearly murdering the assailant (the only thing that stopped it bordered on deus ex machina) the friend had another breakdown mentally, the assailant disappeared and the friend began his obsession with joining the police. After confronting the friend, he had ANOTHER breakdown, had to be taken to see psychological help, and even hypnotized (!!) at one point. The friend had repressed all memory of the incident, and even throughout the incident, had told no-one at all what was happening, suffering in silence. The diary was the only thing that existed as proof of what had happened (outside the rape-video). And it was almost lost itself (if the troper had not found it). This troper has trouble deciding how he thinks of his friend now, in one way he admires him, in one way he feels pity for him, and in another he is thoroughly terrified. His friend nearly got away with a very brutal murder (and trust me, he would have gotten away with it) but on the other hand, now he's kind of like Batman.

This troper finally came to realize her father really doesn't want anything to do with her. He doesn't even talk to her after not seeing her for years. What made this worse was, during her youth and early adolescence, this troper's mentally ill Mom was pretty emotionally and verbally abusive - and she'd been hoping Dad could help her. But he did nothing even after finding out about the abuse. This story does have sort of a happy ending, though! Mom got lots of help and was able to stop the abuse, and while Dad's a jerk, the rest of his family adores this troper.

This troper hates every one of his friends. Best friend gets into horrible relationships and can't see it coming, other best friend is fixated on rationalizing his fiction, female best friend has no aspirations, local friend is a spoiled little bitch who deserves a near-fatal kicking, girlfriend is impossible to figure out, because there may indeed be nothing more to figure out despite her intelligence Worst part? troper hates himself more than anyone else. Sorry for the rant, but awful truths and all.

This troper found out a close school friend who she'd hardly seen in years had been diagnosed with skin cancer when he stopped and gave her a lift back home in his car one day and almost casually mentioned it. Close friend also claimed that it was fine. Troper assumed this to mean that it was curable, in remission, whatever. This troper was sorely mistaken.

This troper's grandmother (the only person she trusted as a child) has a habit of dropping awful truths in casual conversation--and there's no way to tell whether or not most of them are true. Examples: "The doctor says you'll never be able to have children." "You're running out of time to make amends with your mother, because she's dying." "Your little sisters are developing an awful lot of psychological problems because of the way you abandoned them." "Your father only married your mother because she begged him not to make her get an abortion." "Your two grandfathers might have been estranged half brothers." "Your best friend from middle school just died of a protracted illness. She was asking for you. You didn't know?" I don't talk to her anymore.

Probably not, this (unknown) troper has a grandmother who behaves very similarly. She has no discernible mental problems or physical conditions of any sort, but she absolutely ''loves'' doing the oddest things, and she lies. When Granddad passed away she started handing out money to my dad and uncle, saying she was going to die (She was perfectly healthy), she started taking dirty laundry out and hanging it on radiators around the house whenever family came to visit, and began claiming she has precognitive powers when it came to TV Programmes. Eventually she had to be sent to a home, and after a few visits during which it became apparent her disgusting dirty laundry habits were getting worse (She managed to sneak some of her soiled underclothes in to my mum's purse at one odd point) and after several escape attempts it became clear that either the staff were not doing their job properly, or they just didn't want her there. She was moved to another home (After a brief stay at hospital during an illness scare. Three guesses how it started and how it ended) where she promptly began claiming she had lost all of her memories and that my father (her son) was adopted/not hers/a complete stranger (In that order). Etc. Nobody knows why she does it, she just does. It's a similar behavior pattern to what is up there.

sounds like this Troper's grandmother who I have just recently learned absolutely DESPISES everyone in the family, except for my alcoholic trailer trash abusive uncle (who steals money from my grandmother but she could care less because he apparently walks on water to her) a few weeks ago I overheard my mother telling another relative on the phone "when I graduated high school my graduation present from [my grandmother] was her telling me 'you know if I had to do it all over again I would have had abortions rather than keep you kids... no wait. I'm sorry don't get upset, I take it back I would still keep [aforementioned uncle] so it's OK'"

This troper's maternal grandmother is a serious piece of work. She had three kids from two different marriages (my mom, my aunt, and my uncle), ultimately divorcing both husbands. My uncle was in a terrible car crash when I was three (I'm now eighteen), leaving him bedridden, blind, and seriously brain damaged. Despite the outpouring of support from the rest of the family, my grandmother proceeded to tell everyone that they didn't really love my uncle, that she was the only one who could take care of him, and refused to allow the rest of the family to see him, unless they were planning on giving her money to pay for his care. When I was ten, my great grandmother (whom my mother loved and respected very much) died of old age. The entire family (most of them live in Tennessee) came up to pay their respects, only to hear my grandmother deliver a speech that was apparently nothing but a huge lie tearing down my great grandmother. Needless to say, my mother was ready to kill her. As if this wasn't bad enough, I recently learned the entire AwfulTruth about my grandmother from my mother: my grandmother used to tell my mother that she would never be worth anything, and would never get a job better than a secretary, as well as manipulating my mother and aunt to fight each other for her own amusement. She refused to pay for my mother's college tuition, and attempted to keep her from getting custody of her bank account when she turned eighteen. It's a good thing my grandmother doesn't let anyone visit, as I'm not sure she would still be living after I did.

This Troper found out at the age of 19 that my father still questioned my paternity. As far as I know, that particular elephant is still in the room. Due to that and a few other things, I don't talk to my family much.

This troper's aunt was getting her tubes tied, and the surgeon was very angry that "people like her wasted his time." After some sharp questions from her, she nearly went ballistic when she found out she'd been sterile since giving birth to her now-grown son--and had never been told.

My grandpa... He's such a character: He always seemed so nice and quiet, then I discovered when I was 20 A LOT of things: He lost his virginity with a married woman... when he was 13. He supported the Mexican communist party (and he spent some time in jail for "suspicious activities"), he has a secret family... Maybe it's not so shocking like all the stories above, but trust me: to this Republican paleo-conservative troper, all that stuff was just too much to handle...

He sounds kind of awesome.

"Hey, you know when you were younger and Mom snapped, yelling at you all the time, breaking a wooden spoon as she spanked you, spending time in a mental hospital, and then finally having a religious experience that saw you being taken to a Pentecostal church during your formative years and really screwing up your relationship with God, and meanwhile, I became a poor student, starting drinking at 13, started doing drugs at 16, and was told by our Mom that he was worthless? Well, 15 years later, here's the reason why. Our Dad, our perfect father, the one you spent your whole life trying to please and whose respect you've fought tooth and nail for, sacrificing any attempt at relationships, a social life, or even a vacation of any sort? Congratulations, he was having several affairs and cheating on your Mom at the time!" "Wow, thanks bro! I absolutely didn't need to know that, and I appreciate you telling me this at a bar, because man, I'm gonna have to drink even MORE heavily now and re-evaluate my entire life!" "No problem! Now that I've thrown your entire perception of the parents we know and love completely and utterly out of whack, wait until you see what I have planned for Christmas!"

One of this Troper's professors recently told the class that he had canceled the exam and has something else planned. He won't tell us what, because he says it would just scare us...

I hope that you don't live in Georgia. A professor here recently told his class that exams were canceled, then proceeded to murder his ex and three other people and is now on the run from the cops. The worst part? He's possibly still at large.

Every semester or so, this Troper's high school holds skit competitions between the four classes. The Junior class's skit had become the hot topic because they always waited until everyone had left campus to practice. Cue this Troper, who stayed late working club officer duties. The terrible secret? The class president was to cross-dress for the burlesque routine.

This troper actually found out over the course of a couple of years that a) his parents weren't married, b) they'd never been married, making him a bastard, c) they'd both been married before and d) they'd both been divorced before for adultery. A nice mix of {{Squick}} and this.

Additional: e) After doing the maths, I've concluded that I was the product of the original adulterous liaison. Not only am I a bastard, I was an unwanted bastard too. Awesome.

Hey, this troper is an unwanted bastard, too. And tell you what: the bastard part doesn't bother him at all and the unwanted part didn't matter that much anymore when he found out that his father is a jerk anyway and his mother did her best to screw his life up as little as possible. Perhaps you would be better off not minding the adultery. Actually, it's fun, at least if you're smart enough to use protection to prevent the aftermath.

This Troper's parents divorced recently; he thought it was the usual "we don't love each other anymore" thing, it was way worse. Turns out this troper has a dead little half+sister (from his father's first marriage, something this troper didn't know; the cause of death is a mystery to him, tough he knows it was an accident) and an older half-brother (the only thing he knows about him is that he lives in another city and was born from a girlfriend his father had before his first marriage); also, his father had a mistress for more than 10 years and that his parents stayed married so his father wouldn't forget about him and his sister (like he did with his older son). What surprises this troper the most is that his younger sister still supports his father over his mother (luckily, physical resemblance makes it clear that he and his sister are indeed biological siblings).

When this troper was just a boy, he saw a tiny pocket knife in his grandmother's purse. Curious as he was, he asked his grandmother why she was carrying around such a small pocket knife. She just smiled gently and said it belonged to "Uncle Danny". This troper was somewhat confused at the time, since he knew no Uncle Danny. But being the eight-year-old that he was, he thought nothing of it. Fast forward several years, after his grandmother's death. Following her funeral, his mother made a comment about how his grandmother was "up with Danny, now". Curious, he asked her who Danny was. Uncle Danny was his grandmother's son and mother's brother who died of pneumonia when he was just five years old. To this day, his mother's eyes are still filled with pain and grief whenever Uncle Danny is mentioned.

Not as bad as some examples, but recently I found out that the girl I asked to Winter Ball about two, three months ago (and about a half year before it occurred) had apparently forgotten I had asked at some point and somebody else had asked her out (in general, since Winter Ball is a band only thing). And she had accepted. It's not as bad as other peoples (She is a nice girl, and I got some subtle vibes she was forgetful anyway) but it's still kind of depressing.

While not as bad as some, is worse than many. This troper was the girl that was the emotional punching bag growing up. It essentially reached a point where she could not believe a compliment about her appearance (and is still has a long way on the road to recovery for that to go). In her junior year of high school, she was buying a ticket to homecoming from a teacher. One of the young men in her class (not the most popular, himself) walked up to her and stammered out a request for her to accompany him to the dance. She, not being very well acquainted with him, but knowing he was in Drama, asked him if he was being honest or messing with her. He gets the most hurt look on his face, and she gets yelled at by the teacher for being mean. Needless to say, she feels terrible afterwards.\\ \\ The next day, she's out in the courtyard, eating lunch with her friends, and the same boy comes up and asks again. She accepts. It's not as if he's her dream guy, but it's the first time she's had a date... ever. On the night of the dance, she spends 2 hours at the hairdresser's (would have happened anyway) and gets all nice and pretty for the dance. When she arrives at the hotel where it is taking place, she sees her date, getting out of a limo. He then turns around and offers his hand to his date and escorts her inside. Nothing in this troper's entire life hit her as hard as that sight. She thought she was used to disappointment, but the sheer depth of this deception just hit like a brick. She gritted her teeth and bore it, since her parents were there and chaperones, so getting home would have been awkward. About halfway through the dance, the composure is gone. This is when most of her friends find out what happened. She probably would not have made it through that night if it hadn't been for the friends that she had there. She still should probably get some therapy at some point, but at least she's able to remain functional.

Oh, ''honey''. *hugs and feeds hot soup*

This troper has a list of them... ugh.

The first is that his first love, when she went to Florida to visit family over Christmas after becoming the LOVE OF HIS LIFE and The One and all but telling him he was hers decided to start dating another guy... and didn't tell him. I had to find out on FACEBOOK... when I confronted her she told me she really actually loved me and that this other guy was someone she'd seen off-and-on for years down there and this was the last time, she just wanted a final goodbye. Like a fool, I believed it... then shortly after New Year's (she was still down there) she got ENGAGED to him... which I had to discover on, you guessed it, Facebook. And she claimed that it was 'purely symbolic' and that it would never work out between them, and that he knew about me. I was a fool again and believed her... after the multiple phone calls from her to me. Then shortly before Valentine's day, I once again find out on Facebook that she's dating someone else... UP HERE. Needless to say, I told her off with some rather strong language after that. Still deeply in love with her, though...

Second one... my dad was apparently physically and emotionally abusive to my mom who only left him when I was six months old because of that and that she had to leave me behind because he was between her and I and wouldn't physically let her take me. Also, I may not be his biological son... and I'm not supposed to know this stuff.

Third: a former friend that I had thought of as almost a 'brother' to me pretended to be my friend for the better part of a year to get me to loan him a lot of money then betray my trust so he could avoid paying me back.

Fourth: My AP English class was an online course and no one told me that a) you couldn't use your home e-mail to send in assignments or b) that my assignments weren't being received UNTIL THE END OF THE SEMESTER. Yeah...

This troper had a terrible experience right before the start of high school: one of my "friends" ''accidentally'' let slip that I was TheScrappy of our group (apparently everyone would groan and roll their eyes when I went to sit with them at lunch/overheard them talking about a party where "everyone from the group" was invited and assumed I was included, etc.) I had such bad self-esteem issues it took me two years to be outgoing enough to attempt to make new friends, and I still have trust issues with my new circle (that eighth grade incident was pure ParanoiaFuel for me).

That is this Troper's worst nightmare - I had about the same status in her group, at about the same age, but was fully aware of it, and am now terrified that most of the people I hang around with are just too nice to say anything. I feel for you.

This troper had a very similar experience, I've always been very shy and decided that I'd go on a college trip to Europe, a very good friend of mine was also going and I thought it would force me to be more outgoing. Anyways, about seven of us bonded (or so I thought) and I was beginning to feel confident for the first time in ages, complete with phone calls home letting my parents know I was having a great time, and had made friends with lots of nice people. On the last day, when we were on the shuttle bus to the plane I overheard the original friend and one of the new friends arguing about who had to sit next to me. Turns out I was the scrappy, but they liked the original friend and were just too 'nice' too ditch me completely and had lots of entertaining sessions where they'd talk about me. So the result of my trip - no new friends, one lost old friend, and my confidence now completely gutted. There was a slightly happier twist when the European's came back over and I made friends with somebody I hadn't on the original trip but it took me a very long time to resolve the trust issues.

This troper just transferred out of a Presbyterian women's college where things like that were bizarrely common. She remembers overhearing a few girls talking about having treated a girl on a trip abroad like your "friends" treated you. They were talking about how much they regretted it. If there's any chance you, above troper, attended the same school that this troper did, maybe that could be some kind of consolation... At least they know they were assholes and won't do that to anyone again.

This troper experienced a similar reveal in 8th grade. I had always suspected as much, but wrote it off as baseless paranoia. One day I was upset about something. I don't remember what it was exactly, but I spoke with some friends that I thought might be willing to listen. One guy's response was along the lines of "You're too serious, that's why nobody likes you!" I laughed, thinking he was joking around. That's when I noticed the others nodding in agreement. And yeah, if you ''already'' have self-esteem issues at the time, something like this can cripple your ability to trust for years to come.

This troper is the same way. He really liked and trusted his friends until one day he asked why they never let him play their fantasy daydream future games with them. Their answer? "Well, you're so ugly, we didn't see the point in getting your hopes up." After that they decided to do that daily to him for a year and a half. The same year and a half when he was being told at home that he was a 'fucking retard' on a weekly basis by his stepfather. He still can't be called ugly or stupid without having a breakdown.

This troper had this classmate - Let's call him X - in vocational school; laid-back, funny, and an all-around nice guy. X graduated and this troper never saw him again, which she thought only natural since he was one of those classmates she never hung out with outside of school. Fast-forward eighteen months, this troper is sitting in the living room of a friend who used to be in the same class, with a bunch of other people, some of whom were also in that class. The hostess casually remarks that the two armchairs in the room used to belong to X, and then goes on to muse that "Come to think of it, it was around this time last year that he hanged himself." This troper kept quiet then, but later spoke privately with another friend who'd known X and confessed she'd had no idea and asked about what happened. Turns out that to this day, no one knows why he did it.

Given the things that are out-in-the-open common knowledge within her family (substance abuse problems, several relatives who are in and out of jail, several relatives who are career welfare recipients and consider working for a living "stupid", and at least one known - now deceased - pedophile), one troper is very much afraid to even ''think'' about the stuff that might still be buried. She really doesn't ''want'' to know how much worse her family can get.

So, this troper used to adore her uncle and aunts. After all, they were so nice and loving compared to what her friends would tell her about their relatives. They couldn't possibly be the most selfish people on the planet who would try to cheat one of their siblings' (aka this troper's father) out of his inheritance from said troper's loaded grandfather, right?

This pales so much in comparison to the rest of this page that it would be bone white, but it still is something horrible (to one person's POV). This troper is lucky; most things are already known (mental illness is a big one, and her middle brother is really mentally fucked up, though still a great guy). However, for some reason, the 'awful' discovery that my parents gleefully had sex on my oldest brother's bed made said brother almost burn his mattress.

I'm sorry, but that last sentence isn't so much 'awful' as 'hilarious'. I mean, sure, somewhat squick-inducing, but hilarious nonetheless.

During my senior year of high school, this troper found out I was adopted because a cousin blurted it out over the phone during a conversation. Cue me locking myself in a bathroom crying, which I never do, for about an hour. The next few weeks, according to my friends, had me acting weirder than usual and my parents telling me they planned on revealing that fact on my eighteenth birthday; I was seventeen at the time.

This Troper didn't find out that she was a product of her mother's second marriage, not her first (Husband #1 was a Vietnam veteran with severe issues) until her sister told her after her mother had mentioned it one day. Apparently it had just "never come up" and that's why neither of us knew about it. Same thing for us finding out our grandmother had married three times. And same deal for the fact that the reason my step-grandma on my dad's side never talks to us anymore is, among other reasons, that she hates my sister and I for being smart and not total hillbilly failures like her biological grandkids. Eeeesh.

This troper's parents divorced when he was 2, and he currently lives with his mother. She had abandoned this troper's father and fled to Florida after one of his drunken rages went too far and he tried to kill her and her son. She quickly got a divorce in Florida, and both this troper and his mother, after his father's death in February of 2007, have been besieged by phone calls and visitors. It turns out that daddy REALLY got around, leaving this troper with, at the very least, three half-siblings. And that's just the ones he KNOWS about.

This troper's awful truth isn't ''nearly'' as bad as most of the others here, but why not? One day a couple years back, this troper and her mother had just come back from the doctor's office. Said troper had been watching TV when her mom told her to come listen to the answering machine. Her friends had been trying to call her so they could do 3-way, but she hadn't been home and they didn't realize that the answering machine was on, so they starting saying bad things about the troper behind her back. Needless to say, this troper's had trust issues ever since.

Please tell me you played the tape for them and then told them to fuck off.

Related to Nazis. Famous Nazis, who killed a lot of Allied soldiers. Yeah.

This troper always knew in the back of his mind that his grandfather died when my dad was pretty young, but I never though to ask further. I must've figured it was a hard subject for him, and I didn't really even know there was more to ask. When I was thirteen we went to a funeral for his niece, who had committed suicide (she had been paralyzed for a very long time as a result of a car crash). The mood there with my dad's family was understandably sad, but it wasn't until we went home that I learned there was some more significance which I hadn't known about. My dad filled me in. My grandfather, his father, committed suicide as well. He had an unknown mental disorder, which he was recovering from, but he didn't want to go back the institution. He shot himself in the backyard shed, and my dad was the one who found him. My dad was sixteen, the age I am now. I found out around the same time that with my middle name I'm named after my great-uncle on my mom's side, who also killed himself for similar reasons. I had no idea there was that much suicide in my family.

I suck. Just discovered this after trying anything I really liked/was good at, only to discover that I'm good at some things that I don't like, and I'm really bad at what I like (or almost everything else, for that matter). Except sports, I don't like these and I'm bad at these anyways. I know I won't succeed in life just because I suck too much to do so. Also, even my parents felt like I was insignificant, not only to them, but to the world. If I died, people wouldn't really notice, and would feel relieved for a sudden silence. But I live just to piss off God, anyways, so, while I tried to kill myself in the past (and sucked hard to do so, as obviously expected), I just gave up.

You do not suck. You will never suck, and believe it or not, people do and will care if you die. You have a reason for living, dammit, so please, please don't give up on living a full life.

*Hugs* You do not suck. You are a great, wonderful, awesome person and I bet a lot of people would kill to be like you. Never give up, damn it! There are people out there who care more than you think.

This troper's sister is about 20 years older than him, and she lives in Manitoba (I live in BC). A couple years ago, she cut off all ties with my mother. When I asked my mother why, she said that my sister had some mental issues, and was suffering from depression. I couldn't believe this, since my sister was all cheerful and nice on the rare occasions I saw her. My mom said that her problems were hereditary. This didn't fit with my parents - they never seemed to have any major mental problems. After asking some more questions, I found out that my sister is actually my half-sister, and her father killed himself a long time ago. I was totally shocked by this, since I had nothing even close to a hint of this. On some later thinking, I'm thinking that might not actually be the whole truth - since I also suffer from depression, and have come ''this'' close to suicide twice.

This troper recently discovered the reason for a very unfortunate event in which the police illegally broke down her door, her mother was hospitalized for 4 months and she herself had to live in a foster home for awhile, and then move in with her aunt and overall suffer a serious trauma- was because her father was remarrying and didn't want trouble. This troper was ''twelve years old.''

...Jesus Christ.

...I'm just...I'm just gonna go take some Prozac now. You all need hugs. Very much. And anti-depressants. Hugs and anti-depressants.

This troper found out that the person she went online to talk to, and grew very close to, for about two and a half years was a lie. All made up to make her look bad in front of everyone this troper knew, all being carefully orchestrated so I would be hurt to the fullest degree. I've been kind of shell shocked since.

You poor girl. Who does that? Who has the kind of time to fuck with someone to that degree, for no reason? The person who did that needs a boot to the head (a low-tech, yet surprisingly effective behavior modification technique that remains one of this troper's favorites.)

That's just horrible! What kind of sick bastard does that kind of thing!? This troper kind of has a passionate great burning hate for that kind of thing by the way (If you could not tell).

In this troper's biology class when it was covering how blood types worked, the teacher told us of a student who had discovered from that class that he probably had the wrong parents.

When this troper's father was a teenager, he'd spend about 2.5 hours travelling on the train/bus to school for rugby practice on Saturdays. Out of the blue, his father offered to start giving him a ride down, which was pretty unusual considering he was a total bastard. But anyway, my dad was touched by the gesture and for a few months he got a ride to rugby practice. Then one day the free rides were suddenly stopped. Ten years later, my dad learned from his brother that his father was actually having an affair with a woman right near by dad's school, and only offered the rides as an excuse to go see her. Once he broke up with her, he didn't give a damn about my dad's ride anymore. That pretty much sums up my grandfather.

This Troper has had fairly good relationships with his aunt and uncles on his maternal side, but he only vaguely remembered his father's brother as being fairly nice if a bit distant... and oh yeah, why haven't I seen him in like 10 years? Did I make him up? Well, one day I found out that my uncle ''despised'' my father because he (my father) got to become CEO of the business my grandfather used to run, while the uncle was fired for being quite frankly a lazy bum (let no one say that my dad got to become CEO simply because of his father). Worse, it turns out that he's currently living on welfare and hasn't had a steady job in years. After my grandmother got Alzheimer's, my dad visited her almost every day even though she didn't recognize him and wouldn't remember the visit as soon as he left. My uncle? It's been years since my grandmother was diagnosed, and he hasn't once seen fit to visit his dying mother. Yeah, I'm just a bit bitter.

Bitter? Be ''proud'' that your dad is a caring, hard-working role model, not like your uncle the bum.

This troper and her sister knew mum's cousin and her whole family had died in a fire many years ago. I always assumed it was accidental and they all died from the smoke in their sleep. A few years ago mum told us the truth: The cousin's husband seemed outwardly like a really good man but was in fact a smooth bastard who did things like taking all of the money and used it on himself while she had to scramble to feed and cloth the kids, insulted my mum when ''she was right there'', and cheated his company out of money. They got divorced, she got full custody of the kids, and he was forbidden by law to take the child support. He ''still'' managed to talk his way into getting all of it. One night he broke into her house with a stolen key, locked her and the youngest kid into a closet, the rest in a room, and put the house on. In his car was their life insurance written out to him. The ONLY reason he didn't get away with it was because while he stayed to make sure the fire didn't burn out he got drunk, fell asleep on the couch, and died with the rest of them. One week later mum met with a women who expressed her sorrow over him and his family's death. Cue my mum telling her why exactly the fire started in the first place. Didn't take long before the rest of the town knew the truth, but I still mourn the relatives I never got to know.

This troper thought she was the only one who escaped being molested by her pedophile grandmother. When she was 19, after a week or so of mysterious physical symptoms, she remembered something that had happened on a changing table when she was less than a year old. Take a guess.

G-g-g... Holy crap! Who DOES that?!

How did you remember something from when you were less than a year old? Isn't that impossible?

It's not. I remember the room I was born in, and the last time I saw it, I was a day old. I wish that poor person didn't have such a good memory, however...

Let me see...I'm adopted, not so bad, but I find it out when I saw my original birth certificate, the deal is that I'm actually son of my aunt, and the problem is that my aunt and my adoptive mother are in the middle of a family feud (for money...classy). My aunt (my biological "mother") is maybe the most selfish and cruel person I've ever met, damn, you can even say I hate her, and knowing that awful truth has changed my former easy conception of reality. I've been a little selfish myself since I was a little kid, and now I'm afraid of becoming in someone just like her.

This troper recently let slip an Awful Truth. I was having a discussion with a friend of mine about sleeveless shirts and tank tops, when I revealed that the reason I can't wear them is because I self-harm and I have scars on my arm. Cue an uncomfortable, awkward silence.

My great-uncle was in the Pacific War. I thought he was a hero because he fought at Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima. Turns out he was a big fan of mutilating dead Japanese soldiers...

Don't blame him too much. War really screws a person up.

I've spent my entire life wearing a forced smile, because I've always thought the other branches of my family were perfect, and I didn't want to be the black sheep who made my mom, dad and siblings look like the "bad ones" in the family. Turns out that bipolar disorder, anxiety disorders, major depression, and possibly autism all run in our family, and many of us end up StepfordSmiler-caliber creepy; I may express attributes of the above. I may also have none of them. I'm also a hypochondriac, so even if I don't have anything wrong with me, I will be constantly imagining that I do. Now, on a less melodramatic note, when I'm suitably comfortable in a situation I tend to remove the filter between what I think and what I say almost entirely. This made me a CreepyChild growing up, and as a teenager, means that I let loose details like the fact that I may have been raped, I occasionally have fainting spells in public places, and I dislike clothes shopping because the thought of having to look at my body disgusts me. These topics ''only'' come up when other people are starting to become content and cuddly. Also, I kept the fact that I had a romantically (if not sexually) aggressive stalker at the tender age of 13 away from my sister until it was too late, despite the fact that she may have been able to help keep me safe. If she didn't take a golf club to the girl's car windows. Now, aren't I a bucket of fun? (On an unrelated note, I love all you tropers, and if I met you, I would gladly hug you if it would make you feel better. Please, stay safe.)

This page both makes me lose my faith in humanity at some of the horrible things people can do yet strengthens it because of the way in which everyone here deals with it. Mine are no where near as bad as the others on this page.

Throughout all of elementary school, this troper had a group of 2 close friends. (the closest friendships I've ever had, to a certain extent at least). In 6th grade, one of those friends suddenly started verbally bullying me. To make matters worse, everyone else in my grade ignored me, probably because of my intense shyness that I am still trying to break out from. I think my shyness might have something to do with the bullying in 6th grade. Anyway, 6th grade was pretty bad. I won't call it a living hell because it wasn't quite that bad. I also told no one about this during the entire year. Then in 7th grade, I remember this distinctly, I was seated next to this "friend" because of assigned seating. While I was mentally groaning at the prospect of sitting next to him, he dropped his assignment pad or some other small book. I instinctively picked it up and gave it to him. I heard him mutter something under his breath, something positive about me I think but I was never sure of the words. Then we started becoming friends again. Subsequently I became much less shy. In 8th grade, I discovered that in 6th grade, his dad was suffering from prostrate cancer and I ended up the outlet for his emotions regarding this situation. (His dad survived)

This one isn't anywhere near as bad. About a year ago my mom confessed that she and my dad were illegal immigrants. I also found out from the documents they needed to provide for their attempt at gaining legal residency that they almost divorced shortly after coming to the US because my dad wanted to move somewhere else or something. I also recently found out that the extended family that I have in the United States, Dad's cousins and their families, do not lead lives as happy as I thought. I can't remember all the details but one story involved my dad's cousin who had a daughter from a previous marriage that ended because her husband cheated on her with a younger woman. The story came out because the daughter was involved with the bad kind of people, you all know the kind, and that she was sort of mooching off of her aunt and uncle. I think. I may not have the details right.

My godmother's former husband committed suicide. He was a nice, upbeat guy. Little did I know that he suffered from some sort of mental illness that eventually led to him committing suicide by slitting his throat in his kitchen, on the day of a psychiatrist appointment. His younger daughter and wife walked in on his corpse surrounded by a pool of blood. They had to move out because of the trauma. (They later moved back in and my godmother remarried someone who loves to party because he loves to drink. I don't think he's alcoholic though.)

My godfather (completely unrelated to my godmother) was murdered in a robbery attempt.

My older brother suffered from WoW addiction. He lost a 4-year $10,000 scholarship to a college that he loved because he stayed up extremely late playing WoW and slept in. He didn't go to classes and didn't do work. He failed out of the school in his Sophomore year. He was supposed to have graduated this year but instead has another 2 years to go. I found out about all of this from hearing the loud arguments coming from my living room while I was attempting to fall asleep. A year later my mom tells me this. Now she wants to make me commute to college, severely limiting the colleges I can go to. I will fight it if I so desire though. She was also considering sending me and my siblings to a psychologist for video game addiction. The problem is, I can control myself. I've shown time and time again that I get my school work done despite playing video games as well. Fortunately, my mom has more or less realized this.

Wow. I didn't realize I had any of these. ... . Everyone else here still has it far worse (Well, mostly everyone) And some of these aren't awful truths in the sense of the trope, but in the literal sense.

Hugs for everyone who needs one.

This troper was born with an immune disorder, had his face cut during the c-section, and was placed under the sun lamps and forgotten about until burned to scarring in an intimate place. He knows this because during sixth grade sex-ed class he had the startling realization that something was different and asked his mother why. Then he was despised through middle and high school because he kept looking over the stall dividers trying to figure out just how different it was. Furthermore after a minor car wreck he found out he had fused vertebrae in his neck and lower back, most likely because his father beat his mother while she was pregnant. Being double jointed on the joints on one side of the body while every joint on the other is fused or aches or grinds for some reason is probably related to that as well. During the course of my three-year career in the marines I almost died of pneumonia on three separate occasions, after which the immune disorder was diagnosed. Also during my military career I got a call from home telling me that my best friend from middle and high school killed another friend of mine's father and youngest sister and put their mother in a coma. With a butcher knife. According to the newspaper the father died on his neighbors front lawn thinking his whole family had died. I got calls from the murderer's mother in the middle of the night and had to lie through my teeth to this poor sobbing woman just to comfort her. During the course of our conversations, I agreed to accept letters from the killer (I would throw them out unopened and I could never bring myself to write a letter back like she asked). When I got out of the military, on my first day back, on the ride home from the airport my mother told me how her house was a mess and it was all my fault (after a three year absence). On the same day a man mistook me for somebody else and tried to run me over. That same week I was subpoenaed for the murder trial (the murders themselves happened two and a half years earlier so apparently capital cases go really slowly) as a character witness for the defense. During the next few years I was torpedoed by my own mother, who treats me like a felon even though I have never gotten in trouble with the law. I ended up impoverished, literally starving at some points, without a vehicle, in a town that forgot that I'd enlisted six months before the murders and thought my disappearing around that time was suspicious. When I asked my mom what her damn problem is, I find out that at sixteen she was molested by her brother. Which kind of explains all those times she implied (never directly stated) that her son and all men were evil and abusive, by means of stopping the car at the side of the road and screaming it at me at random intervals from age six on up. I used to and still suffer bouts of self loathing over odd things from that. I used to think that I was evil and hid from people. The Uncle who molested her went on to have a family and apparently never did anything like that again. He keeled over at fifty-three though. My father remarried and had another son and his new family is painfully normal. So I have to keep all this shit to myself. I don't want to put other people through the doubt, guilt, and anger I've gone through. I am getting a reputation because I get angry at my parents really quickly and never explain why. My little half brother is really disappointed with me because I cussed out his daddy on several occasions.

Sweetie, please seek help. You've had a hell of a time and you need someone to help you through it.

This troper gets to combine the girlfriend issues with parent issues. First girl he ever kissed, funny, intelligent, wise and witty for her age. She helped him out when his own father double-crossed him on a business deal when he was 14. He was there for her when her mother died, and she herself went spare. After her mother's death, said girl spent a lot more time with his father, with whom this troper has an ambivalent relationship. She needed a father figure (never knew hers) and he was gentle, kind, and caring...to her, anyway. Six years into the relationship, he proposes, and she accepts. He accepts a job in China right after getting his AA degree, and right before he leaves, he, she, and his parents go on the first vacation the parents have had since starting a business a decade before. His mother and father (who still lived together) spend pretty much of the time arguing with each other. Then, he leaves for China. This is the setup.

The Awful Truth part happens in stages. Two months into his year-long sojourn, this troper finds out that his fiancee has "always" been attracted to his father, and wants permission to sleep with him, just while this troper is away. This troper rationalizes it to himself, and agrees. Meanwhile, an old friend from college dies of a cocaine overdose. Two months after giving permission, the fiancee is completely stupid with love for the old man, and everyone around them knows what's up. This prompts her to accuse this troper, over the phone, of telling her friends. This troper tells his father and fiancee to stop what the fuck they're doing. They appeal to his pride, beg and grovel, and he relents. Also, by way of same phone call, he finds out a very old business friend that this troper knew since he was 15 has died of cancer.

Late the next month, this troper's father is arrested. This troper's teetotaler, DARE-program father is arrested crashing a car outside a bar in central (State), doped to the gills on cocaine which he'd apparently been taking for two years in order to keep up with his self-inflicted hellish work schedule. Because he knows all the right people, this troper's father walks with nothing more than community service and two N.A. meetings. This troper's fiancee completely supports him. And this troper finds out that the car in question was his truck. Because of the fallout of this, this troper's mother, in a completely unexpected move, tells his father to go fuck himself and moves out. Of the house her own father built. Leaving him, and this troper's fiancee, living there and in control of the property and business. She continues to work for the old bastard, but feels much better and takes up painting. The next month, this troper's mother and father have an argument. When the fiancee tries to intervene, he tells her it's "none of (her) damn business." Fiancee, understandably angry, stomps out to her huge 70s American car, turns it on, puts it in reverse, and steps on the gas...and runs over the dog this troper raised from a puppy since he was 10. The old man takes the dog to the vet and has the poor boy put down, which this troper acknowledges as an act of mercy. He finds out about ''this'' part three days after it happened.

The month after this, this troper meets a local girl in China with whom he doesn't realize he's falling in love. Meanwhile, the older eccentric this troper admired in childhood dies of cancer.

Two months later, this troper receives an email from Fiancee timestamped to 2 in the morning, her local time. It says "call me your father is gone". This troper buys a phone card and calls her, expecting to hear her explain about his father's death. It turns out he went on a date with this troper's mother that evening, and at 4 in the morning still hadn't come home to her. She feels lonely and jealous. This troper tries to console her, and goes to see the Chinese girl for a friendly movie. It becomes much more than that, and they spend the weekend together. On Sunday night, his father calls him and complains that he didn't give him a present for Father's Day. He talks to Fiancee, who accuses him of sleeping with the local girl...true. And declares that, therefore, her relationship with his father is retroactively moral and good. And starts to complain that he's not paying as much attention to her any more, and she feels lonely...the same thing as happened to this troper's mother, this troper, and other objects of the man's affections. Remember the "wise and witty" descriptor? This troper wonders where the hell that woman went and who replaced her with this shrill and ignorant bitch.

This troper is wrapping up his affairs in China, and gets on a bus for one last trip. Fiancee calls and appeals to this troper's open mindedness and cultural sensitivity in that, since certain Indian tribes allowed a man to be married to two sisters, she should be allowed to be married to a father and son. And appeals to his scientific curiosity as reason for him to support this plan. When he, grinding his teeth, lets her down on that plan, she describes how she's going to drop out of college and start running his father's business for him, the way his mother used to before "she stopped loving him." This troper holds his tongue, then speaks to his father, speaking "mano a mano" about "those crazy women, eh?" This troper hits a bump in the road and loses the call, then redials. Fiancee picks up and explains there are Some Things He Needs to Tell Her. They argue as the sky, I swear, turns from south China sunny and war to grey and raining to monsoon. They, finally, break up. This troper has a Heroic BSOD in an abandoned temple somewhere in the jungles of south China. And goes back home, where the Chinese girl is waiting for him. His continuing BSOD alarms her, until she figures out what it's from, and brokenhearted breaks up with him a day later. People sometimes wonder why he doesn't celebrate Fourth of July any more.

This troper takes a thousand-mile overland trip across southeast Asia, braving shell-shock, culture-shock, hundred-percent-humidity and hundred-fifteen in the shade, jungles, monsoons, cheats, touts, pickpockets, living on no money for a week, and Bangkok, before flying back to America. The part he could have done without finding out? Is that his father his been impotent for the past fifteen years. This troper is better now, though.

Dude, that's rough. You could make a movie out of that. I was really hoping while reading your story that at least the Chinese girl would work out. At least you're better off without that fiancee.

This Troper has suffered two accounts of rape when I was 8 and 11 at the hands of my classroom peers, an earlier attempt by the same peers, trapping me in a trailer's closest and assaulting her for several hours when I was 7, her current boyfriend who did the same at first, but we have since worked a lot of things out (and he hates that he did them to me), and only mum knew about the assault, watched five of her friends die at separate times and she could stare on helplessly, talked her mother out of suicide, watched her mother and father get repeatedly violent and fight, last Christmas going so far as threatening separating, one of them moving out of this house and divorcing.

Her sister has cerebral palsy and this troper has already been voted to be her future caretaker for when things go sour, and I may have to accept she will live a much shorter life then me.

She gets the Demon Child status of the family, she's never trusted, a demon worshiper ghost summoner (since I'm Pagan), used to lie and steal food to get attention (when I was 7-12! That's 9 years ago so far), never trusted because of that previous, if something goes wrong I'm first to blame, and is the same one who posted about that carefully orchestrated plan by make fake friend above.

I lived for six months almost in a house where I was constantly physically, emotionally and mentally abused by an insane mother who let her sons and their friends assault me and control me, threatening the Mafia if I never behaved, threatening to take me away from my family forever if I so screwed up a little, the family I love to death, the family I would die protecting, using me as a pole for blame, claiming I raped her oldest son (I was being the caretaker for his mother while he was gone to the Army, which is how I got in that house to begin with) and was never let out or able to talk to any of my male friends. I can't hear the Mafia anymore and help but run or duck or cry in fear. And my family considers me the Demon Child, they don't know what I feel like, they ignore me, they couldn't get me a gift they would know I like because they are never interested in talking to me, I know nothing to them. And they don't know what I've been through, anymore and they would throw me out, and I would only depress them. My boyfriend now knows and is helping me through it. I'm just 21 and I already feel like I've lived as long as I wanted to... like I never lived at all, really. I'm sorry, I sound pathetic. I will be quiet now.

You're not pathetic *hugs*

This troper's dad died in a car accident when she was young. One night a year ago, she was camping with her mom and her aunt. They thought she was asleep and her aunt let it slip that the police had concluded that her dad had been drunk driving (IDK if they even tested his blood alcohol, but it sounds like they didn't). Her family couldn't contest the finding because her dad had already been cremated. This troper doesn't know if her dad really was drunk driving. He was a bit of a drunk. This has left her feeling completely conflicted. Either her dad was a drunk, or the town trashed his reputation so they could get away without plowing/sanding the road enough. I hate cops now, and I've decided never to touch alcohol. Her mom doesn't know she knows. And the kicker? The scene of the crash is less than 1/2 mile from her house. They try to avoid driving by there, but sometimes its unavoidable.

This troper would have rather not found out that the only reason why her sexual abuser (who hurt her when she was twelve and sometimes in public view) got off scot-free was because the (young and female) police officer sent out to question him thought he was ''charming''. Also, slightly related to that, she really didn't want to know that her mother was raped at fourteen by a boyfriend, her girlfriend was sexually abused at fifteen and that a few of her friends suffered at the hands of either shitty boyfriends, fathers or step-dads.

As a result of alcohol, this Troper found out that her father had a son with his high school girlfriend at the age of fifteen. The way he said it implied that nobody else in the family knows about this. In other words, I have an older half-brother and all I know is his first name, and the approximate part of the country he lives in, but I can't look into it any further in case the revelation breaks up our family. I think I'd rather not have known.

Well, it's not really awful, but it is... Squick. Very, very much Squick. What is this troper talking about? Well, let's just say she really, really, really did not need to know his father went and got himself castrated so he could have more sex with his new wife... Euuuugh! *Shudders*

Uh... how can he have more sex if he's ''castrated''? There's nothing for him to have sex ''with''. (Excluding tongue, fingers... the point is, he'd be finding it harder to orgasm, wouldn't he?)

One has to assume (and/or ''hope'') the original person actually meant a ''vasectomy'' and just has a horrible case of YouFailSexEdForever, since said father would not only have more trouble orgasming, but a ''vastly'' reduced sex drive in the case of castration. I mean, there's a ''reason'' they used eunuchs to guard harems.

''Castration'' doesn't necessarily mean that he got rid of the whole thing - just his balls. The rest is optional.

Still would mean a reduced sex drive, which goes against the whole "have more sex" thing. And a vasectomy is no big deal.

In May 2008, this troper's only living grandparent was diagnosed with rectal cancer. In July, my 31-year-old sister was diagnosed with breast cancer and had to get a mastectomy. In August, I was diagnosed with diabetes. In February, my dog died. In March, my grandma died. I got my grades back from last semester; I failed half my classes and lost my scholarship.

Awww...things will turn up for you. *huggles*

This troper had deduced by a sherlock scan that she has a bad case of crippling depression. Her mother is a prime example of a ditz, her father is an immature prick, they are not very helpful with helping to foster aspirations to GROW, her relatives are crazy and she has morbid tracks of thought. She can't force herself to act normal, she absorbs facts in interesting ways, she has a peculiar case of Autism and she has grown away from her siblings.

At this rate, she is stuck between getting a car from her uncle and traveling across the country in order to feel better or going to a psychologist to talk. She does not need to be in a {{Liz lemon job}}, she needs help bursting out of her {{Shrinking violet}} tendencies.

My example is not very impressive compared to every other story on this page, but still... I've had clinical depression from a young age, post traumatic stress disorder from an event when she was 12, borderline personality disorder that started in her teens, and dissociative fugue that kind of sprouted out of the other three (mental disorders tend to travel in packs.) They make life an absolute picnic in hell for me and everyone around me. I've made serious suicide attempts in the past, and eventually started abusing alcohol, mescaline, and crystal meth as a coping mechanism--the fact that I've lived as long as I have is something of a bloody miracle. These mental illnesses are all relatively easy to treat with a combination of therapy and medication, but I never received any form of treatment; the only reason I got diagnosed was because one suicide attempt when I was sixteen required a month long hospitalization, and a psychiatrist at the hospital worked with me during that time. I thought this was because her parents were violently anti-psychiatry; it ties into some of their religious beliefs, and they've been incredibly dismissive of the mentally ill my whole life. Between the mental illness and the rather extreme substance abuse, I was unable to leave my parents' care for some time; once I did, I cleaned up and sought treatment, and now (many, many years of therapy later) I'm doing okay. I can even pretend to be a healthy human being on some days. The Awful Truth part? Quite recently, I found out that my father's been in therapy treating his antisocial personality disorder since I was about two, and my mother has been in therapy and taking antidepressants since she was in her teenage years. I can't actually find any reason why they denied psychiatric care to their only daughter when she was obviously sick. We don't talk any more.

Good Lord! We need to change this page to Woobies Unite or something...

Seconded. This Troper wants to find every single person on this page, buy them a nice stiff drink and then prepare them a big hearty meal.

Thirded. And I want to find every raping/molesting/drinking/belittling piece of shit mentioned on this page and beat them in the face with a hammer until it breaks.

This troper would like to say how much this warms her heart. I would love a good, hearty meal with anyone like these. Thank you kindly. Very very very much kindly. I can't say it enough in this sentence. I guess it gives me hope. No matter how cheesy that sounds.

This troper would also like to offer hugs and cookies, and second the motion of beating the pieces of shit with a hammer. Or other blunt instrument, I'm not picky.

If those rapists/molesters die, they stop suffering. Death is too good for them. I say, we kidnap them all, and stick them on an island. With no food. You can guess the rest...

This Troper has always thought her family was normal and happy. She's a idealist that found out one day that one of her aunts is considered a 'black horse' to the family because her husband controls everything in the family. Also, the uncle I thought was happily married with a young kid? Divorced, can't hold a proper job, doesn't want to hold a proper job, found a new girlfriend, is being hounded by his former wife to pay alimony, has no money to pay for it - and I find this out at Pizza Hut. At lunch. I could care less for my uncle, but the one I'm worried for is my little cousin. She's one of the sweetest babies ever and this happens. I don't even see her anymore, since her mom wants absolutely nothing to do with us, but I miss her so much.

As a kid this Troper had one aunt and uncle who seemed like the perfect couple. They always had the big family parties, their kids were all smart and successful, the uncle was a doctor, the aunt a teacher... Then when the youngest cousin graduated from college, it came out that the uncle had been in love with another woman on the other side of the country for most of his marriage, and was only staying married for the kids. Even their kids didn't know about this. A few weeks later the aunt and uncle got a divorce, and the uncle flew off to live with his mistress. They keep showing up at family reunions, apparently surprised when my cousins don't want to talk to him.

I hope that your cousins reconcile with their father; after all, he did put his personal happiness aside for years to give them the best childhood he could.

This troper was always a bit messed up as a kid. Bad social skills, body issues, and quite a few years of therapy to fix all of that. She's gotten better though, but at the time, she was jealous of her twin sister for, apparently, not having any of those problems. Sure, her grades started falling in high school, but even then, she always struck me as the "normal" one. At least, until a year ago, when this troper got a call from her mom saying that her sister had checked herself into emergency care because she was having thoughts of suicide, and that she'd apparently tried to overdose a few months earlier (right around the same time as our most recent birthday). Turns out that she'd had a LOT more problems than she let on about. Thankfully, she got the help she needed and is doing a lot better now, but it still scares me to think about how it could have gone.

On a lesser note, the above troper also got bad vibes from the news that her younger cousin (still in middle school at the time) was already sexually active.

Well, gee... You guys make me feel like I went through nothing. I mean, sheez, I had a fairly hard life myself, so... I think I'll just let it out...

Wow... I... wow, my life might've been bad... I mean, had to deal with my step-father (never knew my real father, mom had to raise me on the farm with grandma and grandpa and one of my uncles, leading her to be the black sheep of both her family and our religious community... Very, VERY conservative religious community...) go through over a half-dozen strokes and heart attacks in the span of 22 months when I was in the sixth grade and he got more and more violent and short-tempered over time. Hell, I was actively hiding behind walls, ducking around corners and all that jazz when I saw him (at age 12) simply because I didn't want to deal with him. And I ended up in the mental ward (twice in a close town, then once in the state hospital) due to the resulting trauma I had to deal with (left a LOT of anger issues). It didn't help that the government got involved during that four year period (11 to 15) and took me out of my home and I ended up living on my own (basically) for the past decade with only minimal help from my family. I don't really trust the government much after that. I'm 26 now, and was taken out of my home at age 15 (when I ended up in the State mental hospital, got out 3 months later, then spent 6 months in a half-way home to re-learn how to adapt to society, got back home at age 16).

The story does have a good note, thankfully. While I still have a lot of anger issues, I've mellowed out a lot over the years and I can actually talk to my ex-step-father without wanting to hurt him. It helps that he's mellowed out a lot too over the years and he's genuinely sorry for what he did. Doesn't erase what happened, but it makes it a little easier to swallow. I don't actively search him out or talk to him unless I see him, but I don't go and snub him either.

While it may pale in comparison to the rest of the stories on this page (seriously, all of you need big hugs), I recently found out that may no-longer stepfather (who would have an entire entry on a KickTheDog page, if not CompleteMonster), nearly cost my mom her kids (meaning me and my older sister) when they first met. How? Well, when we were living in Chico, California (we moved away when I was about to start preschool, or maybe while I was in the middle of preschool), it turns out my stepfather made money as a drug dealer. One day, he had to help my mom by watching the two of us while she worked. The same day, he had a drug deal to make. I'm sure you can fill in the blanks. It may not seem to be too much, but after all that I went through with him, I thought I couldn't hate him more than I did before I found this out.

I'm homeschooled. When I was quite young (7? maybe 8?), a teenage boy used to come over and take lessons with my mother. At one point he took me into the shed and sexually propositioned me. I didn't understand what the hell he was talking about, but thankfully understood enough to turn it down. I don't know how long it was, but eventually I realized I should tell my mother - he never came back to our house. A year or two later, I found out he had done the same thing to my sister, two years younger than me. My mother never said what had happened beyond that he had asked her. I don't know if the sister I've always been extremely protective of was molested or turned it down like I did. When I was 14, soon after I'd finally realized what he'd wanted me to do, I met him in the grocery store. It took all my self-control not to slap him. That's not even going into the time my father let slip something that suggested my uncle had been accused of molesting two young girls, something I really didn't need to know. Or the fact that I didn't learn until I was 16 and already suffering from depression that I inherited the genetic predisposition from my dad, explaining his intense mood swings and his emotional abuse of us all. Or learning that my mother almost left my father before I was born. Or that my oldest sister also suffers from depression and intense mood swings, and has for the past six years. Or when my second oldest sister bluntly told me she doesn't think my depression is real, and I need to just suck it up and deal with it.

This is NOTHING in comparison to the other stuff I've read on here, but nearly all this troper's friendships with everyone who is NOT from an anime or video game have turned out to be fake. The first set of friends I ever made in my life, all online, turned out to be lying to me for the entire three years I knew them, and they only just revealed that to me this past summer, shortly before we would have reached our four-year anniversary. Last summer my whole summer basically revolved around this one boy I met on a website, who was basically one of the best friends I ever had. A month later, he admits to me that he was deliberately trying to pretend to be my friend so he could later attempt to get me to leave the site by turning on me. All that friendship, all the laughter? It was a facade he was using before leading up to his cute little "reveal," which he'd planned all along.

This anonymous troper (at age 9) found out that her older sister (at age 16) was diagnosed with rhabdomyosarcoma. Cancer. (First person now!). Throughout her 2 years of treatments, I tried to keep myself in the loop and I'd ask about things like how my sister's CAT scans went and everyone always told me that everything was going smoothly. The first awful truth happened when I walked by the room my grandparents were talking in and found out that everyone had been lying to me. Her cancer kept showing up on scans. No one knew that I knew the truth until years later, but I'll get to that next. The 2nd awful truth came in early 2001 when my sister broke the news to me that the 6 week stem cell transplant that she endured had failed and that she was going to die. She passed away in April of 2001--two days before she was going to turn 18. I was 11. The last awful truth happened YEARS later when mom and I were talking and I found out that my sister actually told everyone to deliberately lie to me so that I would not be scared/worried/etc., but in doing so I still have problems to this day if I feel that important information is being withheld from me, and I've turned out to be quite nosy. I appreciate the efforts that they made to protect me but it ended up doing more harm than good.

When I was seven years old, one of my cousins abruptly died at eighteen. Even though we didn't get to see each other often, we were very close; she was like an older sister to me. My parents didn't tell me exactly what happened; by sheer chance, I was at a friend's birthday party that afternoon, so I missed the call. Dad picked me up after the party ended, drove me home in silence, then they broke the news to me. (I actually developed a mental block over it, and never attended another friend's birthday party out of fear of coming home to that kind of horrible news again.) The AwfulTruth came some time later, when I overheard my parents talking about it. They'd told me it was an accident, but actually, they suspected she'd been murdered by her boyfriend. (Apparently, they got into an argument while he was driving, and he ''claimed'' she opened the door and got out of the moving vehicle on her own. My parents believed that he'd actually pushed her out. But since they were the only two people in the car, and she obviously hadn't survived to tell her side of the story...) All these years later, and they ''still'' aren't aware I know about it, and haven't ever talked to me about their suspicions.

Last November, this troper found out that she and her twin brother are freaks biologically and ancestrally. We were adopted by our aunt, whom we knew for years as our mother, after the woman we knew as our aunt (and was actually our mother) gave us to her after we were born. Why didn't she keep us? She loved us. She came to see us almost everyday and would tuck us into bed if she stayed the night. So why didn't she keep up us? Why? Because she was raped by our uncle when she was fifteen.

Do the math. It ain't pretty. This troper went into a depression for months after finding this out. She didn't let her "mother" and "father" know that she knew the truth, but she did tell her brother. (He didn't take it well). We went to get tested and see just how closely related were are...and according to the doctors, we shouldn't even be humanly ''possible'', much less alive. We share over 75% of our DNA instead of 50% like fraternal twins are supposed to. We're either chimeric, inbred semi-identical twins, or there has been a lot more incest, rape and sexual abuse within the family than this troper would like to be aware of. SO, when this troper says that she doesn't tolerate BrotherSisterIncest, ParentalIncest, or IncestIsRelative, regardless of whether it is consensual or not, '''do not fucking question her'''.

This troper would like to point out that if your biological parents were full-siblings, then you and your full-sibling will share 75% of your genes. Now, you said "over 75%" which is a bit vague. Does it mean 82.5%, implying some more incest very close in the ancestral line, or 75.5%, which could easily be due to population distribution and random chance? If your doctors said you shouldn't be "possible" or "alive" then those doctors are morons. People who have been products of a higher degree of inbreeding than you and your brother have existed throughout history. Also, while this troper will not question ''your'' intolerance of consensual incest, your family's situation is not in any way a rational argument against it. Rape is evil, period. But incest does not imply rape.

Actually, because of the way DNA is divided into the gametes, two full siblings could share anywhere from 0% to 100% of their genes. Yes, most of the time it is very close to 50%, but extremes either way are not impossible, just improbable. Therefore, you would expect the first poster to share 75% of genes with her brother, but it is quite possible that they would share more or less.

This troper is the bearer and cause of AwfulTruth. The majority of my family doesn't know that I have depression, let alone that I attempted suicide. None of them know that despite the anti-depressants I take, I'm still filled with self-loathing and near-constant thoughts of suicide, but I'm so terrified of being institutionalized again that there's no damn way I'm going to admit this to anyone, including the psychiatrist. I am deeply damaged, and without hope of improvement, and I can't tell a soul.

One of the few positive lessons to learn from this page is: There is no such thing as "no hope of improvement". Have you tried anonymous counseling? Depression is a terrible demon, my sympathy to those attacked by it. I can't give you a real hug since I don't know where you live, so have a virtual one instead.

This troper has a half-brother who grew up his whole life thinking his biological father had been killed in a car accident when he was a baby. Our ''ex-mother'' (she eventually disowned us) also said she'd married my father the year before I was born. Thanks to the Internet, my brother found out that his biological father was alive and well up until about a year before my brother thought to look him up on the Internet. To make matters worse, my brother had moved to a town less than half an hour away from his father and never knew it until his father was already dead. When my brother asked our ex-mom about it, she went into a rant about how everyone (except her) is a liar and can't be trusted, trying to pre-empt any attempts at getting more information from other relatives. Eventually, she had to change her story to say that my brother's father had faked his death and she never knew he was still alive.

To cover her lies (unsuccessfully), she has repeatedly hacked my father's e-mail account and sent e-mails pretending to be him and explaining her side of the story, set up a Myspace account as my father, and makes up illnesses in my other (fully-grown) siblings to try to get me to talk to her. Most recently, she found out I was posting on a local forum and used numerous accounts to say nothing but kind things about herself. This backfired on her. Even before I realized who she was, people who had known her as far back as 40 years ago figured out who she was and called her out on her lies.

Perhaps the funniest part of it all is that my ex-mother considers herself a Christian and is always quoting Bible verses. Meanwhile, she can't tell the truth to save her life.

When the subject has come up with other relatives who know more details, the relatives will sometimes offer more information, but I tell them I have no interest in it. I already know she's a liar. If it happened before I was born, I really don't see the point in finding out more of the truth.

There's much more to the story, but this is about all that's relevant to the awful truth part.

I also had a moment of realizing the awful truth when I was dating a girl I really liked a lot. I never suspected she might be seeing other people at the same time. While she was on a trip with some of her friends, her young nephew died. She came back from the trip a few days before the funeral, but she avoided me until the day of the funeral. When I saw her at the funeral, she had a huge hickey on one side of her neck that she didn't even bother to cover up. When I said something about it, she said she'd been in a Jeep accident and that this was an injury from that. I was appalled that she would tell a bold-faced lie at her nephew's funeral, but I just acted like I believed it and pretended like nothing was wrong, then even went back to her sister's house for a few hours, which the family really appreciated because I entertained the nephew's younger sister the entire time. When I left, she asked me if I wanted to go home with her. I made up an excuse and never called her again. I'd just ignore her calls and not return them, either. I saw her months later in a bar. When we talked, all I did was say "hi" and some small talk. She eventually had one of her friends try to pry information out of me, which I guess was just a way to get me to tell her why I just disappeared. I simply said something like, "I guess it's just a case where I realized she wasn't the right person for me and I didn't want to waste any more of her time."

A comparatively light example from this male troper, but...

He once had a good friend of the opposite gender, who among other things was the only attendant of his 13th birthday party the day before he moved some three thousand miles away. We kept in touch for a while afterwards, and I developed a mad crush on her, but that's another story. The point here is that I used her as a confidant throughout all this time(I was thirteen/fourteen in a new high school with poor social skills). Sometime later, I learned that this friend of mine had some major mother issues; the mother was a former model (Ms something or other), the friend was an {{otaku}} of the highest caliber with a younger sister who took after the mother. The mother apparently had a habit of getting drunk and entering screaming matches, and the friend suffered from some pretty serious self-esteem issues, bad grades, and all that there. And on top of some really embarrassing {{dogged nice guy}}isms from me (although I was like twelve at the time), ''I'' was using ''her'' as an emotional crutch. This male troper is by no means a saint, but when he put two and two together, there is nothing, ''nothing'' he has done in his eighteen years and some odd months of life that he truly feels regret and guilt over quite like this. If he could do it all over again, he would man up and, even if he couldn't be there for her over all those miles, at least not additionally burden her with his pussy-ass problems. At least he gets some small measure of comfort over the fact that he recently talked her out of one of her depression periods.

Here's a triple-bill, though thankfully I was fairly GenreSavvy about them:

Being told by instant messenger that the girlfriend you've been with for five years no longer finds you physically attractive and is basically keeping you around until someone more interesting comes along. Fortunately I had the sense to stop bothering to talk to her, shortly before finding someone better.

Being told that having the police round to take away the knife and the painkillers and spending a month in residential psychiatric care was an attention-seeking stunt by one's own mother, the day after getting out of hospital. Again, this was the point where I stopped bothering to talk to her.

Discovering that the annoying habit of sounding like you know what you're talking about when you're just making it up that you spent years training yourself out of comes from your father, who is completely unconscious of it, and finding this out during a blazing row. Incontrovertible proof that he was talking out of his arse has failed to elicit an apology, I might add. But again, I stopped bothering to talk to him at this point.

And the moral of all this? There is nobody with whom I feel an emotional connection, however strong, that I cannot cut off instantly and without regret if they turn on me. They can be replaced.

I agree that all three of those people were majorly out of line. But since one of my deepest fears is inadvertently insulting or hurting a friend and being cut out of their life with no chance to make amends, I find your moral NightmareFuel. I talk without thinking way too often, and even when I do think, it comes out wrong and I just dig myself into a hole.

This troper has two (light) examples for the price of one: I learned my father didn't die in a car crash and my mother didn't die of lung cancer as I thought, but of AIDS. Fortunately, I'm healthy. My mother was a single mother and died when I was nine and I never met my father but according to my grandparents (who raised me since my mother's dead) he passed away when I was around four. I learned the truth about my parents' deaths when I was nineteen: I told someone my mother died of lung cancer and my uncle corrected me. I questioned my grandmother about it and she told me everything. Why it was an AwfulTruth? Because I was lied to for years. Not to mention the UnfortunateImplications. Chances are my grandparents did what they did because many people are prejudiced against AIDS patients and blame them for being sick. Unfortunately, there were people in my school who knew it and bullied me because of it (no, really).I also learned my grandparents were lying when they said my father didn't know I was born, he did. He just didn't care. He most likely didn't care about my mother either. Apparently he was a rich, SpoiledBrat. I was naive for thinking my father would have cared about me if he knew I existed, but still. But still, I love my grandparents and know they are trying to protect me. I'm just being childish and bitter.

This troper thought that he at least had some friends that cared about him, but after directly stating that earlier that day, I was dead-set on hanging myself, and having the sole reaction be to my choice of simile, I've learned that they really, really don't.

This troper discovered just how mean humans can be. No cares for morality, wanting an eye for an eye, for the rest see Troper Tales: Humans are Bastards.

You should try reading Troper Tales: Crowning Moment of Heartwarming. It might restore a bit of your faith in humanity.

This troper's male friend was deadly jealous of his mother's godson because he thought she paid much attention to him, often buying him expensive clothes (he was much poorer than my friend's family were) and inviting him to dinner every two months. He was a Jerk to this boy though the boy always tried to be nice and friendly to him. When the godson had an odd illness and my friend's mother offered to pay the treatment, my friend confronted his father about it. Then he learned the "godson" was actually his mother's first child. She abandoned him to the father right after giving birth and never gave him any financial aid other than some clothes and dinners, despite the boy's father being a very poor mechanic who had to raise the kid alone because my friend's mother never accepted any responsibility for their son. And everybody knew what their real relationship was -- including the "godson," who had always tried to bond with my friend ''because'' he knew they were half-brothers. My friend was very hostile to his mom for a while after learning that.

For a period of time this Troper had a seemingly endless stream of Awful Truths revealed. Learning in gruesome detail the extent that two relatives were mentally ill, learning that several teachers at my school wanted to medicate me, learning that I was a bastard in the literal sense, meeting my father for the first time, discovering I had two younger half siblings, one of those half siblings having severe health problems and discovering not only that I had this whole other family but that my best friend at the time knew them all better then me. Did I mention I was 9 at the time?

This Troper, a supposed only child, remembers a time when she was thirteen, and jokingly asked her grandmother whether she had a sister, to which her grandmother suddenly got all silent for a moment, then said, "Yes". So, naturally, she asked her grandmother about this "sister". Her grandmother then snapped and told her to ask her (adoptive) dad. Figuring something was up, she worked up the nerve to actually go and ask her dad. Her dad at first denied anything. Then, commenting that her grandmother has said "yes," she pressed on. So her dad told her the story. Her birth mother had a child with her husband, but went crazy, stole her uncle's gun, and shot the little girl. The mother was committed to a mental institution (which This Troper already knew, but not in so much detail). Then she met a man there who had also been committed (for shooting someone in a bar), stopped taking the birth control pills she was given, and sneaked off to a back room with the guy, where This Troper was conceived. Needless to say, this wasn't exactly the story she expected to hear, and was pretty well stunned into silence for a while. Thankfully, she got over the initial shock over the years, and now the story ALWAYS gets the most "ooh"s and "aah"s when told to a group of people sharing stories about their fucked-up families, even if they don't completely believe her. This Troper also finds a perverse "cool" factor in that SHE's the one with the ridiculous backstory. Jaded? Sociopathic? You decide!

So, this troper had a friend, a guy who he had known for thirty years. We're talking from the cradle. Closer than a brother, been through all sorts of life-changing events. His family life was... complicated. Abused by his various step-fathers, disowned by his various step-mothers (like I said, complicated). The point is, when it came down to it, he and I were each other's family. Nothing could separate us. When his daughter was born, guess who was the godfather? And when it seemed like nothing could possibly go wrong? You guessed it. Well, the main part of the awful truth is this: Remember the start of this current depression? While some of you may be a bit young, I doubt it was invisible. People losing their jobs, and their homes. Well, not him. He had a good job, working in utilities. He had a nice home, and finally had a family of his own. And me (Zoidberg). Well, one Christmas Eve, he calls to tell me his wallet was missing. I said I'd come over and help him look for it. He said that was OK, he'd find it. Three days later, the local PD shows up. According to them, I took it, and they proceeded to to take me in. First time ever in the back of a car... And I kept telling them I didn't have anything to do with it. I convinced the interviewing officer to call him, and he did. All I heard was my lifelong friend and brother tell the police to take my a** to jail. Urk.

Well, it turned out that I was innocent, and the charges were dropped. They eventually arrested him for filing false charges, and in the process of taking him in, found a Hunter S. Thompson load of party favors in his house. They ended up taking his truck, his house, and custody of his daughter. And to top it off, I tried to re-establish contact with him (he was, and will always be, my family). his response? Death threats. Left field, folks.

Moral of the story? You NEVER know someone. No matter the length of time, no matter the circumstances of your lives. But that shouldn't stop you from caring. Yeah, it sucks sometimes. The pain is indescribable. But still...

I'm surprised at how forgiving many people can actually be. I'd have personally decided he'd crossed the line and broken all ties with that kind of traitor. Yes, detaching is difficult, especially with someone you've known for practically half a lifetime. Very often, however, detachment and letting go is one step to healing. Even then it is best to take it slowly. Let go one inch at a time. The more you cling to what can't be changed, the more pain you cause yourself. Sometimes we face a situation where we have to ask ourselves a question: '''Is it worth it?''' I doubt there would be anyone in existence who would never, even once in their life, had to face this kind of decision. Many people I've known have done so and even I have, many more times than I'd like to admit. He might always be your family, but are you willing to risk more emotional pain? Do you still think he deserves a place in your life? How you proceed from here is up to you...

All of her life, this tropette has been terrified of people, acted strange and hated herself. About a year ago, she learned that what her elder brother did to her when she was young was not normal, and that her problems are the result of his physical, emotional and sexual abuse. She thought everyone had this done to them as children, and she was the only person weak enough to be hurt by it.

This Troper would rather not have been informed that his paternal grandmother was quite possibly the worst mother and wife in recent history: she was an unrepentant liar, manipulated doctors into giving her prescriptions, drank heavily, neglected her children, cheated on her husband (who adored her and gave up a great job for GM because she didn't get along with his mother and he couldn't bear to see her unhappy) when she finally decided to deal with her alcoholism--with two separate men, one of which was her own first cousin. When her husband (my grandfather) died, she essentially gave my 15-year-old father and his 18-year-old brother a big "fuck you" when she sold her house, high-tailed it to Florida with the man she'd been seeing, and got married not six months later.

First off, hugs to all of you, followed by your drink of choice, followed by your favorite meal. Second of all, a long painful death to all the assholes mentioned above. A ''very'' long and ''very'' painful death. Now compared to a lot of you my experiences aren't as bad, but they still suck, and thinking about them still hurts.

I met a girl at a concert once and we hooked up a few weeks later. After several weeks of dating I found out she had a boyfriend - that's right, ''I'' was the other man! I called her a week later to confront her about it only to find out her number was disconnected. She lived too far away for me to swing by her place and talk to her face-to-face, so I just chalked it up to a live and learn experience. Then about 5-6 years later she calls me out of the blue (when I met her I was living with my parents so she still had that number; they in turn gave her my number not knowing that she wasn't the "old girlfriend" she claimed to be), and asked if we could get together. I only went to talk to her about what had happened years earlier only to find out that (she claims, I've never found out if it was the truth or not) I had gotten her pregnant and she miscarried seven months in. "And you waited five years to tell me this?" I asked. "Would you have tried to call me if you'd actually had the baby?" Without even pausing she told me she wouldn't have. I turned and walked out (that was fifteen years ago). If she was telling the truth our daughter would be 20.

The second girlfriend in question I met through a friend of a friend kind of deal. We got along really well at first, she was always telling me how much she loved me, but then would talk to other guys on the internet dropping not so subtle innuendos, even going so far to ''flirt with another guy right in front of me!'', it took everything I had not to grab the nearest blunt object and cave this guy's head in. Near the end she started getting really clingy to the point of nearly suffocating me. Then I found out (over the course of two weeks) she was fooling around with at least two people behind my back, from ''five different people'', all of whom I trusted and had known for several years (compared to the few months I knew her). I cut off all contact with her, and moved on with my life. I ran into her a year later when I had started dating the woman I would later marry. She cried and put up a fuss before denying it. She eventually admitted the truth when I told her that my five friends had told me what was going on, then looked me in the eye and asked me if there was a chance for us to get back together if my relationship with my girlfriend (now my wife) didn't work out. I simply told her no and haven't seen her in the nearly ten years it's been since then.

And finally, after losing my job and trying seemingly forever to get a job with no luck, I, my wife and year old baby were forced to move. We moved in with a friend of a friend. This asshole, despite having a job never seemed to have any money, spent what little money he did have on cigarettes and upgrading his computers, and was without a doubt the worst housekeeper in the world. Even when we (being my wife and I) tried to clean up he wouldn't lift a finger. I was still trying to get a job (I eventually got one, but was fired nine days later through no fault of my own, couldn't get a new one after that though), and then the water got shut off. Right before DSS showed up. They saw the conditions we were living in and took my son away. My wife and I cried for nearly an hour. Did he care? No. He was more concerned about how this was going to affect ''him!''. Fortunately family stepped in; my parents took my son in, and my mother-in-law let us move in with her until we could get back on our feet. We stopped back at his place when we were in the neighborhood about a year later (when we were going to court to regain custody of our son) and found out he had gotten evicted for not paying the rent and the filthy condition of the house. I told my wife if I ever run into him again I cannot promise that I won't punch him in the face.

This troper could have lived without being gently informed earlier this month that, actually, when your parent repeatedly dumps you on the hard shoulder of the motorway and/or starves you, that's technically abuse, AND that her "childhood therapy" was actually "six years of involvement in a cult which is an offshoot of Scientology". Ignorance really is bliss, and she'd like to go back to thinking her childhood was "just a bit odd".

Compared to some of the stories - and this troper is mentally hugging everyone on this page, by the way - these aren't much. But they're the kinds of things I didn't want to think of.

So, I have a younger sister. She's the sweetest girl, 10 years old, and she has Downs Syndrome. Now, I was very young when she was born, so to me this wasn't much of a big deal, and I also wasn't stupid and knew that things could be so much worse. The other day, though, my mother asked me to proof-read her will. And I haven't looked into Downs Syndrome, but reading about which of the 'remaining children' will take care of my little sister, and what my mother would like for said little sister when she dies, l looked it up...and shit, I'm almost definitely going to outlive my little sister. And if I outlive my older sister (which is the next story, because the fun never ends)...as the second oldest, I'm going to be the one taking care of her in the last years of her life. Which I would prefer to putting her in a care home or something, but I'm going to have to watch her deteriorate. And I don't think I'm strong enough for that.

Now, about that older sister...I'm not gonna lie, I've always though I was the 'weird one', because of some psychological issues I've had in the past few years which seemed to stem from sweet fuck-all. And she was always the smart, down-to-earth one. Fairly normal. Until the other week when we had as close as our family gets to a heart-to-heart, and she essentially told me that if nothing happens to improve her life before she's 25 then she's going to kill herself. She didn't mean this self-pityingly; her life isn't amazing, but it's not the worst. She said she just didn't want to sit around getting old and useless. Considering my own issues with it, I understand where she's coming from...but now what the hell do I do? I told her that I'd rather she didn't but that I'm not going to talk her out of it...but I'm pretty sure she's serious and I don't know what to do with that. Do I tell someone? Do I try and talk to her about it? It's so selfish of me, but I'd rather she just hadn't mentioned it if she's going to do it. I feel like whatever happens is going to be down to me and I don't know what to do about it. So yeah, they aren't as awful as some of the things on here, especially because they haven't even happened yet. But they are things I'd rather not anticipate, and I don't really have much choice now that I know. Hella responsibility, y'know?

You definitely should talk to her more about it. I wouldn't try to straight up dissuade her because she would probably shut down, but ask her what would count as an improvement in her life, and if there is anything you can do personally to improve her life. And believe me, I was in the same boat as your sister once - I actually wrote a note to myself saying that if I wasn't where I wanted to be by the time I turned 25 I would kill myself. While I'm not 25 yet, I did recently find that note and tore it up. I don't want to sound weird or anything but I just wanted to tell you my story to at least offer some hope that your sister can get better

My issues may not be nearly as awful as anyone here, but my father thinks I suck and that I'm a failure at life. He went on a tirade about how I'm very average and will never make more than $60,000 a year. He also tries to discount every achievement I have or compliment I get. He also implied that I'm a loser and told me that the only reason I was invited to my sister's party was because my mom made her do it. I know that he only married my mother because she begged him to when she was pregnant, and I feel kind of bad for him because we probably limited him greatly. It doesn't help that my mom is functionally illiterate and my dad has at least a bachelor's degree. Our "family" is the result of a major damn mistake. I wish I was never born.

You might not agree with what I'm going to say and you shall probably feel agonized at my bluntness. You might even want to punch me. Twice. Or until I'm down for the count. Some parts of your story ring vaguely familiar to me. I most likely have a very different background than you and don't know the whole of your life, so I'm not offering advice. Instead, I'm offering you a different point of view. You know what? None of us get to choose our parents, unfortunate as that is. However, if there's something I could conclude from your passage, it's that your father is a real loser, who feels the constant need to put others down to feed his own ego. Since I can sense that you, well, don't think very highly of him, I might as well say this: He probably won't be the last of his kind you'll encounter in life, the last of those vampiric losers, whose ego is too big to fit a planet-sized paper. (I know, because I've known truckloads of these guys everywhere, and even acted like on myself to my father and a few other people) Besides, it was he, who got your mother pregnant, so it's all HIS damn fault. Good news for change! You have no damn reason at all to blame yourself. If you give in and blindly believe his comments, you are actually handing one portion of your personal power to him. He wins, because he manages to bring you down. Why does he want to bring you down? To feel better about himself. If he claims you're good for nothing, ignore it, dismiss it altogether. Don't say anything to his face to avoid making things worse. Imagine him rotting in a ditch, drinking booze and crawling in garbage, urine, feces and vomit. Next time you're alone looking in a mirror, look at your own face for a while and think ''What if my father is wrong? I have potential to become better.'' I'm not saying to start a oneupmanship contest(that's one of the most certain ways to get one's ass kicked), but recognize he only wants to drag your self-esteem down. There it was. Hope you benefit in some way from this.

I'm not offended at all. Thank you, I'm glad you took the time to help me.

Allow me to add my two cents: my father is okay, but my ex-mother is a total loser and always has been. All my life, she's treated me and my older brother like crap and then acts like she's never harmed anyone. I think she has narcissistic personality disorder. She claims she doesn't and even claimed that she was "certified sane," although I don't think any certification for sanity exists. A few years ago, she disowned us (not the first time). Since then, I've broken off all contact. She blames my older brother and me for all the problems in her life, including things that happened before we were born. She even told my brother his father was dead (a big lie) and she continues to lie about everything in life. She has impersonated my father numerous times on the Internet (through e-mail and Myspace to name two) and recently has been following me on a message board, pretending that she supports veterans (my brother and I are both veterans) and pretending not to be her. When my friends find out that my ex-mother has never met my son (or any of my older brother's kids), they're shocked and tell me I need to keep trying. It takes a lot of explaining, but in summary, sometimes parents are unworthy of your respect, love, or admiration. They brought you into this world, that's true, but that doesn't mean they can treat you any way they want. All my life, my ex-mom would make up stories about me and when she would beat me so badly that I had to see a doctor to get stitches in my head, her excuse was that I whine too much. If you ever try to tell her something about herself, she condemns you and says you're just jealous, then starts up a series of lies. Her most recent thing is to pretend that there was a big family feud that was started to make her look bad. In truth, she tried to pit various family members against one another to make them look bad, but failed miserably. She's also said that she has written an autobiography that won some kind of an award, but refuses to share it with anyone. Probably the worst thing is that she claims to be a "good Christian writer and wife." She says this all the time.

On a slightly more comedic note, this male troper has realized that, in the event that you got completely smashed and went to bed, even if you don't remember a second of it there's no guarantee that you didn't get back up at some point (this male troper was wondering how he got that skinned knee and stains on his shirt in his sleep). Apparently I'm somewhat of a LovableSexManiac when completely out of it (and surprisingly erudite while doing so. Also, I Do Not Get Sarcasm). Probably better off not knowing that, though, and luckily it was short-lived and nothing really bad happened. Lost my favorite pair of CoolShades though, some tart ran away with them apparently.

This troper, when 14, dated a girl who basically dragged me around everywhere, treated me like shit, cut me (I still have scars on my left arm) to drink my blood and later broke up with me ''because I never bit her''. She apparently thought I was a vampire. This is just the first in a long line of bad relationships, but also the first big step in making me lose faith in religion: We met in church. After she broke up with me, everyone looked at me with more disdain than ever before. This troper likes to find a bit of dark humor in that, at least.

Long after I was over that relationship, I met another woman online. We had a loose internet dating thing going on that grew for a few years. She told me she loved me and wanted to be with me. She later told me how she was ''dating someone else'', but still acted like she wanted to be with me. I was too soft hearted to complain, so I decided that as long as she's happy, I'm okay with it. Then she asked if we could be in an open relationship, which I agreed to, grudgingly... And then, later still, she claims, when I finally have had enough and yell at her, that we were never IN a relationship. I wasted three years of my life kissing her feet, only for her to throw me out of her life. I have since sworn off women.

A while ago I ran into a teacher from my old school. At first she didn't recognize me, but when I told her my name she said "I remember you. You were the class bully." I thought this was a joke until some former classmates and I started planning a school reunion on Facebook, when someone chipped in with the most vile, vitriolic abuse I've ever been subjected to in my life. It stated that I had ruined this girl's life by bullying her after her mother's death (which I had no idea about), with long descriptions of how I should have died instead of the mother. It ended with her expressing her hope for me to die of terminal cancer and rot in hell, as I am allegedly not worthy to even breathe the same oxygen as "decent" people. I reported this to Facebook and had the group shut down but was understandably horrified. Even then I wrote it off as an emotional overreaction on the other girl's part (she'd always been a bit self-obsessed and bitchy), until a mutual friend from school basically said "Yes, that's what we all thought of you. You were a horrible bully and we were terrified of you." I've always considered myself a lively but snarky person, and genuinely didn't realize that what I considered joking around with other people (and, yes, pulling pranks on others who'd annoyed me) was considered awful bullying by my classmates and teachers. It makes me worry about what the people who are in my life now really think of me, and whether I'm actually going to die because this woman said I deserve to.

People are assholes when they're kids, it's just about unavoidable; chances are you didn't think you were bullying her, and she took it the wrong way (I've fallen into that trap a few times; some people just don't seem to think to ask you to stop before running straight for a teacher). If it is any consolation, I, anonymous internet man, will tell you that between the fact that you did not know about the death of the mother and had a non-zero chance of knowing what you were doing constituted bullying, combined with your age, no sane man would hold you responsible for your actions. Let the stones be thrown were they may, the truth of the matter is that you do not deserve such abuse, and anyone who would stick to you as a friend for so long after has likely forgiven such transgressions and seen to the heart of you as you are now. Yourself as a child may have been in the wrong, but you are in the right. And so long as you are justifiably in the right, the damage they can do to you is limited.

Um...if three separate people have told you that you were the class bully...you were. Are you still a bully?...maybe. People do sometimes change. Unfortunately, "she was oversensitive and bitchy", "it was just a joke/prank", and "they annoyed me" are classic bully rationales, so that bodes ill. Even worse, finding out that you really upset someone, but having a first reaction of punishing her for ratting on you really sounds bad. Don't let this become an ignored epiphany. (Also, since you really were the class bully--you may be remembering wrong. It doesn't seem likely you would tease someone that she should have died instead of her mother, if you didn't know her mother had died. It wouldn't make much sense.)

When I was younger, I used to wonder why my mother was afraid of the sea. When I asked my dad, I always got the response "I'll tell you when you're older". Obviously, this made me want to find out even more. So I told my friend about this, and, unbeknown to me, she asked ''her'' mother if she knew. She then called me out of the blue and asked me if I wanted to know - it turns out that, when my mother was ten, she and her three sisters were being driven to the beach by a friend. The driver went to park in front of the pier but when he tried to stop the brakes wouldn't work, and they went off the end of the pier and into the sea. One of my mother's sisters didn't survive. Last year, my dad talked to my sister and I about it, but he did so without telling our mother. Later on, I found out that my grandfather died at around the same time, but I still don't know how it happened. I honestly don't know how she coped, and I understand why she never told me.

Hooooooooooooooo boy. Let me tell you the worst relationship I've ever had, the one that accounts for my lack of faith in humanity, my general gynophobia (Fear of women, not vaginas) and what cost me my future as a teacher. She was gothy, the only gothy girl in this troper's (Who will use first person now) county. Almost love at first site... I asked her out after a few days of conversation. The first month was great, perfect. I learned about her, and her past, nothing too odd. I learned why she moved to my small town, again nothing weird. Then, at two months, and ten days, shit fell down. She started lightly accusing me of cheating. I, of course, denied, being a lovestruck romantic and mega-Woobie. She started yelling. I got scared. What happened next sent me to therapy after therapy, and lead to my mental diagnosis. She pulled out a knife, and started yelling "Well, you might not have cheated, but I fucked your brother!" There's one problem there. I don't have a brother. I have a very young, very athletic FATHER. I told her this, and she screamed at me to stop lying. I almost got the knife away from her, but she got in one good slash across my face. I'm blind in my left eye now. After I ran away, I called 911, had her ass arrested, had my father put on trial for indecent liberties with a minor, and fell into depression. I went into therapy, got diagnosed with PTSD and borderline psychosis. Know what that means? I'll never EVER be hired as a teacher. Plus the meds are starting to run my mom dry. Oh, FYI, this all happened in SEVENTH GRADE.

*hugs*

This Troper (who will continue in first person) first wants to say that I feel so, so sorry for everyone above. What I have doesn't even begin to compare, but I need to get it out. I found out when I was about ten years old that my mother has severe bipolar disorder. She's had it all her life. It certainly did explain a lot, as I can clearly remember when I was only seven seeing my mom have a complete mental breakdown and having to be bodily carried out of the house by my dad so he could get her to the hospital before she ran away from home or hurt herself or something else (which she has done before, repeatedly). At the same time, this came with the knowledge that the reason my mom was sick so often was because her disorder was simply not regulated AT ALL or thoroughly inadequately at best. When I was three, my mom went through a severe manic episode and ended up in a terrible bike accident that left her skull shattered and with brain damage from which she was never expected to recover. Somehow, she did (even growing back a collarbone in the process, LITERALLY!), but ever since then, I've had to watch my mom slowly slip away from me because her disease is getting more difficult to regulate and the brain injuries she experienced are getting much worse as she gets older. She has good doctors now, but there's only so much they can do. My mom is unable to keep up with the house chores, cook, work, or do anything. Her memory is shot to hell, and she spends most of the day in a drug-induced stupor because she's developed into a hypochondriac and takes far too much pain medication for her headaches, many of them psychosomatic. It's become so terrible that we can't trust her to do even the most basic tasks like taking a book back to the library because she will forget or get lost every single time. I don't really have a mom anymore, and I haven't for quite a long time. Honestly, I sometimes wish I didn't know why she was like this because it's so bloody hard to watch my mom disintegrate from the intelligent, funny, loving person she was into this...this shell. It really, really sucks. The only good thing about this situation is that my dad and I have become very close; we're kind of a mutual support system. Thanks for your patience, apologies for this massive rant (I've kinda bottled it up a lot...), and massive hugs to all.

Extremely minor compared to other entires on this page (and I think there are not enough hugs in the ''world'' for everyone here--but you deserve every hug you get), but the biggest things in my life.

This troper didn't need to know that her great-grandfather was an abusive jackass of a veteran (of WWI) whose beatings eventually forced her grandfather into a mental breakdown (which also later prevented him from joining up in the Army in WWII, since he was a patriot at heart and they didn't accept people the thought would break down in combat) and caused him to run away from home at age twelve. Or that the stepmother was basically Lady Tremaine without the rich background.

She also didn't need to know that her cousin (who she finds to be funny and cool) is flat-out ''not helping'' with his younger brother's college expenses despite making more than anyone in the family. This guy makes six digits at less than thirty years old, lives in an apartment, and has only two people--his wife and daughter--to support. His dad paid this guy's college fund ''in cash'' and he hasn't paid him back, either. This guy could support himself comfortably on ''half'' his paycheck...

And she didn't need to know that her cousin's husband is a self-centered JerkAss who threatened to hit his wife's brother and actually ''does'' hit her in front of their daughter. Or that the female cousin is basically using him (to get pregnant) as an excuse not to go back to work. And he seemed like a genuinely funny, video-game-loving kind of guy...

Granted, none of these affected this troper directly, but it seems rather jarring compared to the big, happy clan-ish family she had grown up knowing...

Though not that bad, this troper (@/{{Phrederic}}) has had a tough relationship with his dad. Despite being told that he loved me, by my divorced to him mom, and me believing her it turns out the real reason they divorced wasn't just them, "falling out of love", no, it was his abusive behaviors, I don't know if it was emotional or physical. And he apparently got back into her good graces just to abuse her again. I've broken off all contact with him, and my two brothers have pretty much done the same thing, its the worst thing I could imagine for him.

In another really minor case, I had an associate of mine that me and my peers would make fun of for his puffy cheeks. Turns out that the puffy cheeks was a side effect of the chemo he was going through for the brain cancer he had, we were ten, and yes I feel like a gigantic bastard. Luckily he doesn't remember as we're [=BFFs=], or he's a saint.

This Troper is a complete and utter fool about love, to say the least. Throughout high school, she wanted a boyfriend. During her last year of high school, a friend of hers casually mentioned a cousin who liked this Troper. Letters were written, phone calls were made, but there was never an arranged meeting that was carried through. From what this Troper had heard, the cousin was a very timid and sweet soul who would most likely faint if he saw, touched, or talked to her face-to-face. It wasn't until after the cousin's birthday that she found out the whole truth. The one thing she had known was he had inherited AIDS from his parents. What she did not know was he had multiple sex partners before pursuing an innocent courtship with this Troper, getting some of the girls pregnant. Amazingly, none of the partners or supposed offspring had contracted the disease. To top it all off, he didn't want to see this Troper because she was "too good to get hurt by someone like [him.]" He is currently living in another state, and the friend doesn't talk about him, to this Troper's relief. This Troper was quite upset and wonders to this day if he was lying about his feelings the whole time.

This troper has been suicidal for three years now. During a particularly bad time in my life, I became extremely emotionally distant. It was to the point where I wouldn't let my own mother touch me with out wincing away, which I still do but not to such an extreme. At one point, I suppose my mom got fed up with all this, and took me out to get ice cream. While this was suspicious, I went along with it. Randomly my mother brought up the topic of how my mom and dad got divorced. I was never told, and my mom seemed to shy away from the subject at first, but I stupidly insisted she tell me. I always thought my mother and father just didn't love each other anymore, and was fine with it. They had been divorced most of my life and I was fine with it by now. Here's a little background: I really love my father, he's one of the most important people in my life. I always revered him and looked up to him, and I basically thought he could do no wrong. Then my mother hit me with what is quite possibly the worst truth I ever learned in my life; They divorced because my father was cheating on my mother. This is earth shattering to a child whose only person she ever turned to in her life had done something so horrible. My mother proceeded to tell me that afterwards she attempted to commit suicide, and was put in a mental hospital for a day or two before she got out. She also told me she attacked my father when she found out. The worst part? A year or two later I'm still suicidal, and I've recently found suspicious emails to my father that suggest he has a girlfriend he's kept secret from us for a long time. Oh, and guess what else? I'm only twelve years old, turning thirteen in May.

This troper doesn't have it anywhere near as bad as anyone else on this page, and would like to offer you all lots of hugs, warm fuzzy blankets and hot water bottles. However, I do have one delayed onset AwfulTruth to deal with. I got chronic fatigue syndrome at the age of 13, and after my diagnosis I joined support groups and such to get as much information about my condition as possible. I learned that while many CFS sufferers do recover and go on to live a normal life, those who have it for ten years or more hardly ever recover from it, suffering from it their entire lives. I was about 14-15 years old at the time of reading the leaflet, and because my CFS wasn't severe enough at the time to make me housebound and I'd only had it for a short time, I wasn't very worried about the thought of never recovering. I am now 22 years old, it's around 9 years since my diagnosis, and my health has gone way downhill. I am unable to leave the house without someone accompanying me in case I get ill or too exhausted to be able to get myself home safely. I suffer from social anxiety due to hardly ever talking to anyone other than my family. The prospect of having this illness my whole life is becoming more certain by the day, and since I'm only getting worse, I now have to face up to the fact that one day, I may be so ill, weak and racked with pain that I may no longer be able to walk, do anything I love or have anything to look forward to, hold a proper conversation with my own mother or maybe even feed myself, and be stuck like that indefinitely unless I can find a doctor willing to euthanize me because CFS is not a fatal disease and I could never ask my mother to do something like that to her own daughter. Even if I stay at my current level of health, I will never be able to become independent or get a job and my depression and anxiety will probably only get worse.

Oh, sweetie. *hugs you tight* If it's any consolation, I'm 20 and my health has gone down rapidly in the past couple of months, leaving me unable to leave the house or walk properly (I need a wheelchair now) and the doctors don't even know what's wrong. So I kinda know how you feel? *is fail at comforting*

It's not a recent revelation, but it certainly came as a surprise at the time. My parents being immigrants, most of my family lives overseas so I don't get to see them that often. My Uncle on my Mom's side was married with two kids, my cousins, right? Well after a few more years, a few more visits, I didn't see my cousins anymore. Now, they were a fair bit older than I was so I figured they were just off at school or whatever. Turns out, first of all that they weren't related to me at all. They were his wife's kids from a previous relationship. The reason I hadn't seen them? Turns out my male cousin got involved with drugs, and his sister overdosed from drugs he either supplied, or that she got from his stash (not sure which). He went to jail for it, and that's all I know. My Uncle later divorced his wife, so I'll probably never know more than that either.

While not as bad as the ones above, it was disturbing to me when I found out I used to have a twin sibling in the womb, before I murdered it and absorbed it. Basically I was a Cannibal Murderer before coming out, which by the way, was a complicated pregnancy that almost killed my Mom. I tried to kill my family. ...before being born. That may sound silly, but it's disturbing to me.

Hugs. I killed a twin sibling in the womb, too. (That somehow sounds wrong.) Whenever I failed at something, I thought I was the wrong one to survive, he certainly would have done better.

As I got older, my parents slowly unveiled to me just how dysfunctional and self-destructive most of the members of both sides of my family are, including a pedophile great-uncle, severely alcoholic grandmother, etc, etc. It was all explained bit by bit to me from the age of 10 until I became an adult. Though each one was an 'awful truth,' I consider it a tremendous blessing that I was raised in a comfortable and stable home given all the madness that swirled around my parents as I grew up.

This troper (who doesn't currently have a page, but may edit one in when he does) has a few stories to tell, although they don't seem anywhere near as bad as other people's. Basically (going first person now), a friend I knew between the ages of five and eighteen, who liked to tease me about my weight, height, glasses, habits, and lifestyle, told me on my 18th birthday that he'd never really liked me, but felt sorry for me. I had another group of around five friends, all of which I knew for 10+ years, tell me they considered me less of a friend, and more of an official mascot for their little group of friends. I found out my house mates, who I thought at least liked me, in fact hated me. And that's not even getting into all the bitchy things girlfriends have done, from leaving me for my best friend (who I only introduced her to because I liked her enough to have her meet my friends), to cheating on me by sleeping with a guy 'because he was there'.

I'm surprised that so many people have had such horrible experiences in their lives...well, it's an Awful Truth that life can be really nasty.

This troper (Krythan Warrior) recently learned an awful truth about himself. It was about 2 years ago when it all started going down hill, though the problems reach back much further. For lack of a desire to say it directly, let's just say that I have a direct mental illness genetic link. This person has a much more serious condition than I do, in the sense that there is no awareness of having the illness. Life had been incredibly stressful due to such things. My sisters dealt with it in their own way. They were also more social than I ever was and due to both being older than me, knew about the ill person long before I did. Fast forward to Grade 9, where I'm a nervous wreck of a kid. I already didn't feel like I belonged in elementary, so high school just made me feel so much worse. I loathed myself for not being social enough, for being unhappy and most of all for doing both well in school and not good enough, if that makes any sense.

Then Grade 10 came along and while I still defined my worth by my schooling and social isolation, I was able to gain some reprieve from my self-hatred for awhile by acting like I was fed up with hating myself for no reason. Eventually it became reality, until the end of Grade 11, when I started to notice my thoughts sticking and I was thinking of more and more disturbing things that were contrary to my nature. Home was still stressful and I was loosing my motivation and drive, but I thought by just pushing myself a little more to get to that Grade 11 peak again and generally stay there. Needless to say, it didn't work. The disturbing flashes only got worse and home life got worse, my computer habits got worse and I even felt guilty for feeling funny on my oldest sister's wedding day. I became more and more stressed out and it began having adverse effects on my body like random nausea, fatigue, drowsiness and even acid reflux for when I was really stressed out. I was also forcing myself to choose course pathways I didn't really want. I had four 12U courses that semester, including math, which when taking into account my unwanted lack of motivation was extremely frustrating because I just didn't know why I couldn't even write a sentence sometimes!

In the first month of school, the home situation was getting so bad that in order to try and get the ill person to stop screeching at other people I held a knife in front of my stomach. I didn't end up cutting myself, but it still got worse. The ill person had an issue with skipping out on medication, citing strange side effects, which obviously weren't really there. One day, near the end of that month, on a Wednesday I believe, it was a morning where I just hadn't done any homework and it just bothered me so much, especially the math, that I finally went to talk to the VP at my school, social workers and my bro-in-law and my pops were involved. My bro took me to the hospital because I was such a wreck and thought of hurting myself. The morning after (it was a long wait, especially since I wasn't bleeding out the wazoo. It was all the kind of pain you CAN'T see.), I finally saw a psychiatrist and I was diagnosed with a double whammy of OCD and Depression. It's been a long journey and very hard. My life was changed that day. I continue to look back at events and feelings in my life that I haven't shared and look at them through a new lens. I continued to battle the obsessive thoughts, most of which dealt with me being a worthless piece of crap for whatever reason. In my search for understanding of my illness, I came up with several analogies and metaphors to share with my doctor and those who support me. The most notable one I believe, is what I call the Banshee (later learning its prior mythological nature). It's a giant purple and grey baboon with a rainbow butt and giant fangs and has a dual voice one high and cackly and the other low and rumbly. The banshee personifies every negative unfounded thought I have about my self that contributes to my self-loathing.

However, I offer this truth about myself with a silver lining. My sister and bro-in-law saved me. They took me in when it became apparent that I couldn't live at home anymore and even when I moved back after the medicine had stabilized my mom (I'm no longer afraid to say it) they still supported me and I finally felt like I belonged in the family. I finally feel that inside, right now. It took me about two years, but as I write this, I can say that I acknowledge that yeah, I'm ill, but the illness is not me and never will be. I'm currently engaging in an actual hobby of mine and it makes me happy! I'm a writer and I'm thankful for tvtropes because, in its own little way, helped me find myself and thus, helped me to heal. I even have a fanfiction.net account and I'm writing Naruto fan fiction! I'm actually pleased with myself, which is a lot more than I could say a few years back! And a message for everybody here, I don't care if this sounds cheesy or whatever, but never forget that if you want to be happy you'll find a way. It may take a while, but as you search you'll find yourself becoming the kind of person you truly are and at the same time the kind of person you always wanted to be, but didn't think you really could be. Peace. I hope that by sharing, this can help somebody. I mean, what's experience for?

LighterAndSofter than the stories here... There was a classmate (we'll call her Allie, not her real name) who was the girlfriend of another male classmate. This troper had never known anything about her, but had seen that she was quite close with her parents. I thought they looked a bit old to have a high-school age kid but I simply assumed that they were a bit older when they had her. So over a spring break, classmate went out for vacation. Then for some reason, there was a phone message on the answering machine in which some woman who I had never met saying that Allie and I apparently had sex with each other, and that she had also done it with a neighborhood boy named Jack (not his real name). I didn't know what the hell was going on, until another message said something a bit different (that Allie told her and that she was Allie's mother, which I didn't believe because she didn't ''sound'' like who I thought Allie's mother was). I got this one and deleted it, thinking "...okay this is weird". Unfortunately, phone call number three...this time, it was from ''Jack's parents'' - and ''Dad'' got to the phone first and asked what on earth I was doing. Knowing I was too responsible for that, he wrote it off as a prank. So we tried to contact Allie to find out what was happening, only to get no response on the other side of her line. Like the next day after that, Allie's parents invited me and Jack to the IHOP they managed (with our parents) and they explained the whole situation to us (well, I got the idea that they told our parents ahead of time, since they seemed to know). Truth was, they weren't Allie's parents - they were her ''grand''parents. Allie's biological father was a Deadbeat dad, her mother had her when she was 16, and they felt like such terrible parents (i.e., leaving Allie's mother alone for days at a time, thinking she was alright and independent) when they once came back and noticed Allie's mother suddenly had a baby with her. Of course, Allie's mother wasn't...well she wasn't ''exactly'' innocent, given that she pretty much walked out and left Allie with her grandparents at like 8 months, kept coming in and out...then finally decided to cook up some elaborate story to break her up with her boyfriend she was "concerned was using her."

This troper's half-brother had a shit life. His/my father married a woman who another relative refers to as "The devil" (for good reason). The devil had been married before and had a child already but when she married my father, she tried to have more kids. One girl was stillborn and the other died an hour after birth. Tragic? Yes. But that isn't a reason to hate a person. Eventually my brother was born and... the Devil was completely terrible to him. She would beat my father (he grew up with a "never hit a girl" stance) in front of my brother and then have the old man spend the night in jail, she would break my brother's toys because they were from some other relative, she would watch him step out of the shower and made him hide his penis between his legs to simulate having a daughter and she once literally kicked him while he was down. It was not a wonder that he turned to drugs to help him with his pain. And then he overdosed. Somehow he pulled through but it left him thoroughly broken. As he battled his drug problems, our father met my mother and I was born. Then our little brother was born. And then, six months after our little brother's birth our father died. Big bro couldn't handle it at all. As the years went on, big bro was the closest thing to a man I had in my life and every other adult told me that he was not a person to look up to (understandable now but it's probably not best to be so blunt with a kid and share these stories with him). He tried reconciling with the devil numerous times but it never quite took. Eventually he married a woman of his own volition (a woman who had been raped by her brother and his friend at gunpoint). Yeah, things just got more screwed up from there. The years took their toll on him. His health deteriorated rapidly. Breathing became a chore for him. One year, as we celebrated my mother's birthday, big bro needed to take a nap on little bro's bed. And he never woke up from his nap. When my mother called the Devil to tell her that her son had died, her first response upon hearing her son had died was, "I'm not paying for the funeral." During one of our last conversations big bro asked me, "why did my mother hate me?" I couldn't even tell the poor guy that it was because he had even lived at all.

Dude......That's awful. I'm not one to express my feelings but damn. I really hope she burns in hell. I hope your big bro finally found the peace I know he was searching for....

Seconded. I'm not the one to call for violence, but a self-centered bitch like her shouldn't get away with what she did.

This troper's mother married her father after his divorce with his ex-wife. I've grown up learning that this woman was bad, having physically and psychologically abused my half-brother and threatening my father in order to get him to pay for my disabled half-sister's rehabilitation. I hadn't seen my half-sister in years and my half-brother was perfectly fine, moving from an apartment to a new house with his girlfriend and child, so I did not pay much attention to this entire story until we got a call from her a while back. Upon hearing my mother screaming and swearing (and she hardly swears) while on the phone, I asked her who it was after she hung up. My mom then sat me down and told me how that woman was into drugs and alcohol and had an actual police record for physically assaulting my father and her with a knife. While mom was pregnant of me. On top of what she did to my half-brother and her lack of concern for my half-sister's accident. Let's just say that the only thing that is preventing me from hunting that bitch down today is that she died of cancer about a year ago.

This troper was hanging out with some of the cast members of her school musical, and one of the girls was holding a framed picture of a married couple. I didn't know her very well, so this troper didn't ask about the picture. Instead, a friend of hers asked why she didn't come to rehearsal yesterday and the girl simply held up the picture with a sad smile. I know that Sad face + Silence + picture frame = someone in that picture died, so I assumed her aunt or uncle died and I kept quiet. Her friend didn't catch on, so she asked her question again. "I was throwing away my mother's ashes into a river," she answered. "She died of cancer last April." She went on to share that her dad died five years ago, and she was walking around with their marriage portrait in memory of them. Then to make things even worse, she shared that she has siblings and is pretty much a type A StepfordSmiler. This troper managed to walk away before crying her eyes out, and all because her friend didn't catch on and had to question further. At least her friend gave her a hug so she wouldn't have to be hugged by someone she didn't know (aka me).

This lurking troper has a few. First, I found out that the grandmother I had grown up with on my mother's side wasn't actually grandmother. My biological grandma had died when my mom was very young, making the one I had known my step-grandma, my youngest uncle (my mom's younger brother) my step-uncle, and et al for his branch of the family. None of that matters to me really except for the fact I found out about it at the age of thirteen, on the night my mother died of breast cancer, from my sister (who was ten at the time and only knew about it by accidental eavesdropping when she was younger) when she asked my paternal grandma (watching us while dad stayed with mom at the hospital)if there was anything to her half-remembrance of this factoid. I never got to talk to my mom about it, but my similarly in-the-dark-until-teen-years older cousins have acted as a support group. The second one relates to the first: a few surviving relatives of the biological grandmother (who died over forty years ago) wish to meet me, my sister, and the two aforementioned older cousins. None of us are on board with this idea because we've never met these people, didn't know they existed for the longest time, have no emotional connection to them, and know that whatever relationship they may want...we can't give. Luckily, it hasn't been forced...yet.

Same lurker troper, but this squicky story didn't feel right lumped in with the above family drama. My eldest cousin is in an odd family situation. Pregnant at 19 with a child of still unclear paternity, she ended up married to a guy 12 years her senior who had two kids from a previous marriage. That's not the bad part as they are very happy, in love, just had a kid of ''their'' own, and are raising a happy though unconventional family together. The squick comes in via their oldest, a wonderfully off-beat thirteen year old. She is genetically related to neither parent, the product of the ex-wife's promiscuity in high school. For most of her life, her egg donor (as that whore is not a damn mother) blamed the child for her crappy lot in life, and heaped abuse of all sort upon the poor girl. The worst is that egg donor...I'll say used her daughter to get quick cash and the end result is that said daughter can never have children. Your imaginations can no doubt fill in the rest. Additionally, the daughter has no faith in the criminal justice system as her egg donor has had a warrant out for her arrest for two plus years at this point and literally nothing has come of it. It is highly disconcerting to hear a barely pubescent thirteen year old state she would kill her birth "mother" if the woman ever came near her younger siblings. It is even more disconcerting to look inside yourself and find no ability to disagree with the sentiment. Even worse is knowing that in five years time, records currently judicially sealed will become opened once more and the manipulative, abusive swine will once more be able to find her daughter. I am afraid of what might happen if contact is made...but I'm not sure which possibility scares me most.

This troper's life has been totally secret free and happy! Oh, wait, no, no it hasn't. We'll start with the basics and work our way up the the part where the universe kicks this troper so hard she feels it in her ovaries. On multiple occasions she has learned she's TheScrappy of several groups of 'friends', only being kept around in most cases because they wanted someone who would take being teased and abused without a word when they were bored. A girl she looked up to when she was little proceeded to blame a broken glass door on her - which had it not been anti-shatter would have seriously harmed This Troper - when she was out of ear shot, and all of her so-called friends backed the older girl's story up. (It had a 'happy' ending, as there had been a few adults watching who later told the actual story. I was still left out of a lot of things for the next few years because I'd not been happy to take the blame.) This troper finds out after almost two years of crushing on a boy four years her senior, he hates her guts and decides to tell her in the most crushing manner possible. Trust issues abound for this gal. Now for the good stuff. This troper has always wanted an older brother. At about thirteen she learned that had the pregnancy not miscarried, she would have one. While this troper was certainly not as affected as her mother was, to this day she's devastated to have never met the big brother that should have been. And finally, the kick in the gut for both this troper and her mother (and, while we're at it, her mother's siblings). Her mother's aunt's father was apparently a very bad man, having been caught abusing his daughter and another girl - his wife just refusing to speak about it after walking in on it happening. Then, he took a relative who had learned out hunting. There was an 'accident' and that relative was soon in a burial plot, the bad fellow getting off scottfree. Skip forward about 40 years. This troper is in the car with her mother, on their way to get the vehicle cleaned, only to have the bomb dropped that one of her aunts had killed herself two years prior. It then proceeded to get even more horrible. The other girl that This Troper's Mother's Aunt's father (Note to self: learn how family titles this far from oneself are handled) had abused? That was the aunt who had killed herself. How did people learn this? The aunt's daughter found out from her stepfather, who had been trying to help her with little to no avail, that her mother had spent well over half of her life trying to cope with years of being raped before a mix of years of nightmares, having told only her husband, and failed attempts to tell her therapists what had happened culminated in her just offing herself one night without warning. To add just one last bit of insult to stinging injury, this troper's great aunt? Yeah, she has no idea that her father's actions are what led to the suicide of her oldest niece. It's another case of AwfulTruth just waiting to rise to the surface. Damn world.

This troper's heart goes out to you and your family. *hug*

This troper lives in western Washington, and he has an older brother he has always been attached to, from since birth. One weekend when this troper was still a young'un, his older brother was going to take him and their younger sister to the Pacific Science Center. That weekend, the older brother didn't show up. He came back later, but there was never any real explanation. Years later, he was talking to his mom about it. Due to depression and other fun such stuff, (this troper's family has a history of this kind of stuff, including his generation, and he counts himself lucky for not having anything. Yet.) his brother drove to Montana. To try to commit suicide. This was his big older brother who always watched out for him. And if he couldn't handle it, what was wrong with this world? This troper got over that fairly quickly, but it was still a pretty shocking revelation.

Yeah, I know that this is absolutely NOTHING compared to all the others, but I'm going to tell you anyway: In October 2007 I got together with my first boyfriend, who before that was a friend of mine that I had gotten to know through his younger brother who was also a friend of mine. Right after we got together, he confessed to me that I was the first person he had ever kissed, which I thought was quite sweet and it felt kind of special since it had been my first kiss as well. We stayed together for the remainder of that year and well into 2008. When we broke up, it wasn't because we had a fight or anything; we just came to the conclusion that we were better off as friends, and we actually stayed very good friends after that. Now, more than two years later, we are still great friends and almost all the people we hang out with are our mutual friends. Then, a couple of months ago, the whole group was hanging out, and for some reason we started casually talking about kissing. We all told the others how many people we had kissed and in which years and we all had a laugh about it. When it was my ex-boyfriend's turn, he confessed that besides me, he had kissed three people, one of which was in 2007. None of the others thought that was strange since they didn't know what he had told me when we got together, but I can't seem to let it go. The way I see it, there are two possible explanations to how he could have kissed someone else that year: either he lied when he said he had never kissed anyone before me, or he cheated on me after we got together. It's not really the fact that he kissed someone else that disturbs me (because a kiss isn't that serious after all, I doubt that you could even count it as cheating), it's the fact that not matter which of the two explanations are true, both of them mean that he LIED to me! And I will probably never know the truth, because I don't want to mess up our friendship by asking him about it, especially since a falling out between us could also jeopardise the friendship of the whole group.

And I thought I had issues... OK, the first one is kind of a subversion: I broke with two of my best friends because of a nasty argument. For an entire year I felt that I was the cause of the argument, didn't say anything to anyone and became very sour. Cue a birthday party with people who had been friends with the other pair, and it turned out that they had talked shit about me on my back, and not happy with that, talked shit of other friends on their backs with the others. I've never felt so liberated in my entire life, even if the experience turned me into a female KnightinSourArmor. The second one: in the period of three years my mother told me that my then living grandmother (my father's mother) had always hated my father and my oldest aunt, had mistreated my parents, treated my brothers like shit, and turned her husband into her puppet to the point he wasn't able to do anything for himself; my youngest aunt had the hobby of causing arguments between people that were very good friends to the point of them nearly becoming enemies, and usually talked bad things about my mother (and her husband mistreated one of his sons because he liked to read); and my mother's family, with about two exceptions, is a herd of liars and petty criminals that enter in the definition of StupidEvil. That together with my youngest cousin being a rabid savage made me wonder about what kind of demonic extended family I have.

A couple of months ago, one of our cats came up to the house severely beaten up. At first, I was told that he had been beaten up in a fight with another cat (it was only one of his back legs and thighs that had been injured), but a few weeks later, I discovered the Awful Truth. Someone ''shot'' him. My parents should have called the Sheriff but didn't, and my mom hasn't finished regretting that.

This troper's story is not nearly as terrible and depressing as most of the rest on this page (you all deserve mega hugs and cheesecake cookies), but I do want to get it out there. When I was younger, my father was depressed. I didn't find this out until I was fifteen years old, in the car with my father after a tiring theater performance and large dance party. While I was being told that my twelve year old brother has ADHD and mild depression. Both bombshells dropped at once were bad enough, but factor in that I was severely and suicidally depressed for much of middle school and still have recurring episodes, and that I did not seek help (or, thankfully, kill myself) for fear of what it would do to my father's reputation (he's a child psychologist). I exploded into tears. His depression caused him to be fairly mentally and emotionally abusive when he was teaching me to ride a bike, and every time we went on vacation, causing this troper to fear vacations. A few weeks ago my father, my brother, and myself were talking about my paternal grandfather, who has had medical difficulties on and off for most of my life. Last time we visited him I began to suspect that he had Alzheimer's, but I didn't want to even consider it. It turns out that he has been actually diagnosed with Alzheimer's. Not only that, but everyone in my family, even my younger brother, knew about it, except for me. I had to find out about it in passing. The day after that, my father went to the doctor because he suspected he had a kidney stone. He picked my friend and me up from a very long day working in the sun at a sort of festival and told me that he had diabetes. I couldn't cry or do anything in front of my friend, and went into a BSOD. I broke down in school the next day but did not tell my family.

This troper didn't realize it at the time, but went through what must to most people be an "awful truth." I grew up living with my mother, grandmother, uncle and a man who stayed with us. I didn't know why until later. Growing up, I got a good deal of positive attention and reinforcement from my family... and enough negative attention from that man to counter all the rest of it. I craved his approval more than anything, and never got it; he knew it, and taunted me with it... that's just about the nicest thing he did. I'd rather not recount any more of it. I never had a happy day with him around, and he always caught me away from my mom. She didn't know a thing about it. He was careful not to bruise me, and I was terrified to say anything, because of what he might think, and that my mom might not believe me. I believed my family hated me, despite how much they showed their love, and that he was my punishment, and that even he really hated me. One day, my mother kicked him out for a reason unrelated to what he'd done to me, and later, thankfully when I was better able to deal with the revelation, I found out he was my father. By that time I was... not happier, due to many other issues, but I cared less and only realized later what a messed-up situation it was. Writing it down now, it feels kind of like I'm making it up.

I am a KnightInSourArmour type, my associate "Susie" (not her real name) is a boy-crazy idealist always raving on about romance and love. I used to make fun of her a lot, frequently tell her to shut up and stop being naive, and quote divorce statistics at her. Understandably, we weren't the best of friends. Then, one day, she found out that I like to knit and was all gushingly admiring of me and asking if I could teach her because her mother loved knitting. From the conversation after this I found out that her mother died when she was 12, Susie has since made several suicide attempts because of it, and a lot of the mushy romance drivel is because she wants to copy the housewife-y stuff she saw her mother do. As you'd expect, I am now pretty guilty about being so awful to her. We're actually friends (sort of), I'm teaching her to knit, and we avoid certain topics of conversation that we wouldn't agree on.

...First of all, I'd like to say that all of you deserve major hugs and a good, hot meal.

From a young age I was frequently told by my Mother that I would never amount to anything while she would sometimes hit me, scratch me, that sort of thing. The reason? ...No idea. Fortunately, she's gotten better over the past few years but my greatest fear is turning out like her and it's gotten so bad that one of my {{berserk button}}s is someone telling me that I will end up wanting children.

I was always a bit of a {{shrinking violet}} but in my younger years I was quite pretty, gorgeous blonde ringlets and the like, so the most popular girl in my grade became my best friend. When I got glasses, though, she hurriedly proclaimed me ugly and unfit to be anyone's friend. I was seven.

And both of these contributed to my huge screw-up in the form of John (not his real name). John's home life was worse than mine and when we both found out about each other's home lives, at the age of thirteen, we became fast...friends. Due to both of our self esteem issues we constantly hurt each other, both on purpose and accidentally, and had a ton of make-ups and break-ups because of our opposite personality. Me a cross between a {{Meganekko}} and a CuteBruiser depending on the day and him a 'caring' sort who tried to help everyone but himself. When his JerkAss of a father finally left his house his family was infinitely better and he focused most of his attention on me, using any means necessary to try to get me to leave home even though I told him I couldn't (I didn't and don't want to leave my two younger siblings). During our last huge blowout (at seventeen!), he called me 'pathetic,' the one word I cannot stand, and said that he never wanted to see me again. Of course, by that point I was fine with never seeing him again, and about five months later he tried to become friends with me again. When I refused he told me that I was making a mistake and that he still cared for me...yadda yadda...At this point though, I had a few trusted friends by my side, who knew the whole story and decided I was in the right, and they encouraged me to stick by my decision to never see or hear from him again.

And, last but not least, I remember almost nothing before the age of ten and my Mother believes that I was abused by the popular bitch's Father back when I used to sleep over at her house. I honestly couldn't tell her whether or not I was because I have no f-ing memory of the incident!

Where should I start? I'm addicted to laconic entries, so I will summarize / list it into a few sentences. You can ask me to respond to your questions and add more detail, but it may be a while before I can respond. In general, I will say that middle school and my current years in high school have been a slightly negative life changer. I A) Don't really trust anyone; B) Am kind of pessimistic about humanity; and C) Feel metaphorically, socially, and (made-up word) societally lost; especially after this school year. I need the summer break to rethink my high-school (and real) life.

7th Grade in middle school: I had very angry-ranting-serious trust problems in 7th Grade. I was the victim of many {{Manipulative Bastard}} schemes and I heard that most were all aimed at me. Most people in high school are way more friendly and trusting.

English in 10th Grade (This Year): One of my required books of the year was {{Lord of the Flies}}. It was kind of a depressing read. {{Your Mileage May Vary}}. but for me and as pointed out by the lecture notes, it showed how savage humans can be. Is human society becoming savage? (Sad Face)

Humanity is a complex little species. You can see us as so many different things. There's the savage beasts and there's the biological machines, the font of violence or the potential for utopia and peace. Don't spend so long worrying about the faults of others that you remain a bystander. Live your life without fear of others living theirs. To me, humanity is nothing but the interaction of fleshy constructs but even I can hold my misanthropy and my loathing on a leash. Hold fast.

Family: When I was young, I never really knew my paternal grandfather, but when I was older, I found out he died from either '''skin or lung cancer'''. Around 2007, my maternal grandmother's brother died of '''lung cancer'''. And now, just a few weeks ago, my maternal grandmother's brother-in-law died of '''heart of 3}} cancer'''.

Yeah, (I'm serious) I have a strong cancer-phobia. Maybe I'm lucky that my parents, some of the older generation, and me haven't gotten sick in nearly 2 years.

My mom works at a hospital and was partnered with a medical treatment drug development firm for certain cancers. The one for heart cancer is still in approval phase for '''three months''. I wish the FDA don't take an entire f****** year, then we probably could have used it to at least delay his death.

My problems don't even amount to anything compared to the stuff on this page but here goes: This troper was seven years old when her mother became tired and lethargic. Although this troper was still young, she knew something was wrong (I just put it down to her Bi-Polar disorder). After collapsing several times and locking up (the woman could not move) my mother was informed she had Renal Tubular Acidosis. To put it simply, she can never hold enough potassium in her blood to keep her healthy. At all. This combined with her stomach ulcer, is bad. The thing is, it turns out she has the worst recorded case in history (my mother's case has made it into the medical journal) and it turns out that this version of the disease is ''hereditary''. This troper also... You've probably guessed by now, right? Due to awkward circumstances, every time my mum gets ill I have to skip school to look after her and keep her safe. This troper is thirteen years old, extremely intelligent for her age, and her education is going down the pan. I apologize if I come off as selfish and preachy but please, ''enjoy your family while you still can!'' Everyone in my family has become a shell of their former selves because of stress or illness. I haven't seen my mum laugh in four years! The whole situation has turned me from a happy idealist into a bitter cynic with no hope. I am sorry for the wall of text and would like to say that everyone on this page needs a hug and soup.

This Troper's awful truth was when she was fourteen, she found out that her dad had loved other women, not had an affair but loved them anyway. The way she found out was finding a letter from her mum to one of these women asking that she [the woman] tried not to split up this troper's parents' marriage. It goes on to say that she [this troper's mum] knew that her husband had loved other women and thought that she [the other woman] would make a good stepmother for us. There goes the belief that my parents have a stable marriage compared to everyone else's parents who seemed to be separated or divorced. You can't unlearn something like that.

Well... This Troper has a grandmother on her mother's side. She has recently found out her grandmother did not pay for This Troper's mother's college university, rather spending the money for herself, and favoring my mother's brother. Oh yeah, and he cheated on his wife. Now I feel really guilty for being so argumentative with my mother ever since the age of seven. Awesome.

This troper's uncle had two wives. He had children by each. In both cases, they got divorced and the child/children live with their mother. This troper recently found out that his oldest child doesn't want to talk to him and hasn't seen him in months (no idea if that's changed since I found out) and that his younger children's mother and her partner are abusing them physically. It gets worse. The youngest was sexually abused, and he's five now. This troper's uncle and her grandparents are engaged in a legal battle to win custody of the kids, but the amount of red tape that's being generated is clogging everything up. Every time this troper thinks about it, I flash back to the only time I met them, and remembering how cute and playful they were makes me want to kill someone.

This troper was wondering how her great-grandma was doing, and asked her mother. She was then informed that her great-grandma had died two years ago and they had never bothered to inform her because the topic honestly never came up.

This troper's is more of a realization. He is 13. His father married very old, and right now is 69. From doing research, he realizes his father will probably not live very much longer; he'd be lucky to live to 80. While, ideally, I'll be an adult by the time he dies, I'll still have to deal with the death of a family member long before most do. Also, his mother is 40 (yeah, around 20 years age difference), so when his father dies his mother will have to live the rest of her life without a husband and probably alone for most of the time (I currently live in a hell hole and plan to move to a good university.) I'll visit her whenever I can, but still... man...

The only best friend I've ever had was the daughter of one of my dad's old college buddies. We lived about an hour away from each other so we only saw each other a few times a month, but we were as inseparable as we could be, given the circumstances. Then, when I was about nine, we moved to a new state about six hours away. We went back and visited my friend once, but then suddenly stopped. I was ''constantly'' asking to go back and visit her, but my dad always said "Maybe someday, but not now." This went on for ''years''. Finally, when I was fourteen, my dad told me that the reason we had never gone back and visited my friend was because she had died. He only ended up telling me because I hadn't forgotten about her like he had hoped I would.

When this troper attended sexual education for the first time he silently realized that this was not something his father was supposed to be doing with him. Years of screwed up followed this realization. If anything it was worse when realizing that sex was not supposed to be painful.

This troper attempted suicide in February. He is very disappointed that he failed. With very weak therapy, things started looking up again, but that was for a few weeks and now he's in the same state again. His family told him that they made efforts but he hasn't made any, so the problem must be with him. Maybe he should consider not failing next time!

This awful truth was told to me in a very calm, not-at-all malicious way, but it still shook me to the core for awhile. I had a girlfriend in junior year of high school, who we'll call "Alice". I was a junior, she was in eighth grade, and a classmate of my younger sister. I took her to the junior prom, and was even briefly engaged to her (only without the ring). We broke up after a few months. Seven years later, my sister told me that before Alice dated me, she dated ''my sister.''

This troper also has been told that the first sexual experience of both my mother and my sister (I only have the one) was being raped.

I have an example, not my own however. My former boyfriend's ex-girlfriend told him that every Saturday, she knit. He believed her, of course. Later, he found out the awful truth. By knitting, she meant having sex with the boy next door. When confronted about it, she simply said, "I meant knitting in quotation marks."

I used to utterly adore my grandmother until I found out all the stuff she did to my mom. She made my mom quit school and get a job. Everything was going good until one day my mom went to get her check and found out that her mom had already picked it up and spent it playing bingo. Apparently this had been going on for a while since she would find money missing all the time. She also would leave my mom to watch her brothers and sister for days at a time.

This troper has some pretty bad Awful Truth examples, but I think this page could use a lighter example instead. Growing up my mom would make bacon every once in a while, and I never liked it and as such avoided it when going to out eat, or eating at other people's houses. Then a few years after moving out on my own, a friend made some and I tried it... and it was INCREDIBLE. I mentioned to my mom how I had suddenly started liking bacon a lot and she said "Oh, that's because I've always used turkey-bacon, not real bacon!" Cue the BigNo from me. Now we have a running joke about how my whole childhood was a lie, and we've found quite a few other things that I like now and didn't when I was younger because she used fake/imitation versions of them.

This troper recently found out on an internet news listing that one of his best friends, one of the few people to whom he would have trusted his life, was charged with several accounts of sexually exploiting little boys, and videotaping the acts no less. The worst part about it is, after careful thought, this troper should have seen it coming.

This troper has a couple:

When I was around the ages of 13-14, my mother and I use to have nightly chats with our friendly neighbor lady, Sally. One day Sally and her children (who keep in mind were between the ages of 8-11) came over to our house to talk with us like always and somehow Sally ended up telling my mother and I how her husband, Paul, used to abuse her. All of a sudden my mother blurs out that my father also used to abuse her and that one night he came into the house in a rage and tried to choke my own mother to death. Later on, maybe a few months later, my mom and I were driving around downtown talking about nonsense things when out of the clear blue I decided to ask my mom the question that had been nagging at me for a while, did my dad do drugs? Turns out, yup, my dad was a drug addict through the time my second oldest sister was born up until my family and I moved to another house in another town (thankfully he has been sober for the past five-six years, from the time I was ten up to now). I then also asked my mom if my dad actually did quit his job or if he was fired. Turns out, he was fired when he took a drug test and it came back positive (which leads me to the other question, how did he pull this off for so many years?) It also turns out that when I was really little, I always remember my mom telling my sisters and I to be super quite when my dad was home from a trip (he used to be a big time truck driver, gone for days, up to even a week or two), when he would be trying to get some "sleep." Turns out, my dad was coming off from whatever drugs he was using (my mom has stated that she'll tell me when I'm old enough but I told her no, to take it to her grave because my opinion of my dad is already screwed up, but I have a feeling that he was taking either meth, heroin, or crack.), and my mom was afraid that if my sisters and I would be too loud, whether from running or yelling down the hallway, my dad would come out of the bedroom and possibly either harm my mom or me and my sisters. My older sisters do know that my dad was into drugs, my mom told me that he admitted it to them one day when they were older but my dad still thinks that I don't know when I do. It's hard to look at him the same way I did when I was a kid, the dad who loved us and who tried to be there for us (and yes, sadly he was never there for me or my older sisters during our childhood, missed sports games, graduations (5th and 8th ones, he did make it to the actual ones, etc.) He's trying really hard to be there for me now since I'm the last child and also because of the fact that my sisters have cut off ties with the whole family, but it's just really hard.

When I was really little, I always thought that my uncle (my mom's younger brother) and my aunt (his wife) had a great loving marriage. They had two adorable children, and my uncle was a mailman and my aunt was a successful radiologist. I always thought they would stay together until death and I wanted to have that same kind of marriage when I would grow up. A few months ago, my mom was on the phone talking to my uncle, like always, when I came in to get a snack. My mom motioned for me and hold up a note she had written on stating "Your uncle and aunt got a divorce." Turns out, my aunt was having a mid-life crisis and was flirting with another doctor at the hospital she worked at. My uncle discovered these text messages and when he asked her, my aunt stated that she wanted to be separated from my uncle for a while to "date other people" and that my uncle could do the same. My uncle wanted nothing to do with it and stated that he wanted a divorce. Almost a year later, they're sharing joint-custody of my two younger cousins and my uncle is fighting super hard to get full custody since my aunt is acting like a bitch and unreasonable mother to my two cousins. My faith in a loving marriage as theirs has been destroyed but luckily my great-aunt and great-uncle restored my faith in it. Still, it sucks knowing that one of my favorite aunts did that to my uncle.

I have never liked my grandmother (my mom's mom), because of countless stories my mother and my uncle have told me about her, certain things such as, if my grandmother knows your fear, she will use it against you (my mom and uncle are both afraid of the dark and when my grandmother was pissed or was trying to punish them, she would lock them in an empty dark room for hours, forcing them to stare at one corner of the room; or sometimes she would force my mom to make funny faces in the mirror for hours.), or one time she caused my mom to develop an eating disorder simply by just stating that my mother was fat and ugly over and over again (luckily my mother beat the disorder and is now a happy and healthy mother :D). There are other times such as when my mother wanted to have a birthday party but couldn't because my uncle wouldn't go (the thing was, my uncle was to be allowed to stay at my mom's party because it was going to be "no adults" only) and turns out, my grandmother paid my uncle not to solely go so my mom wouldn't have a party. Also, she cheated on my grandfather with another man (who turns out, used to be a family friend!), and after my grandfather and her split (when I was barely three), she went and married the man she was cheating with (my step-grandfather, who I never met). A while later, my grandfather passes (when I was only seven), and then less than a year later, my step-grandfather passes. She is now the only grandparent I have left and I'm really afraid that when she dies, I'm not going to grieve as much as I did when my grandfather and my other grandmother died. And to top it all off, I just found out all of this information over the past fucking year.

With the last story, when my oldest sister was nineteen, she became pregnant with my niece. Because of the pregnancy, she got married to the father of her child, my (former) brother-in law. I love (and still do) my (former) brother-in law, Paul, but it turns out that he did countless things such as:

Smoking marijuana and getting caught by my parents (and stated that he would never do it again, which was a big freakin' lie).

Hurting my oldest sister (physically and emotionally, my oldest sister went on to state that it was like living with a dictator because of the way he would talk down to her) and also physically abusing my little niece (apparently it only happened one time, but no, no ONE hurts my niece!!!!) and thus getting arrested by the police.

Being tested for bi-polar and it coming back positive, then selling and dicing up his medication for money.

All of this came to a blow when my oldest sister decided to leave him and pack everything up and return home to where my parents and I lived, Paul became so angry, he went and tossed out everything that belong to my oldest sister and my niece, and also threw out belongings that my mother had given my sister (such as my grandfather's Christmas ornaments). It turns out thought, this all happened when Paul's grandfather (who he was super close to) died, and Paul just went spiraling downhill, my sister re-states times when he would put on his grandfather's robes (he's Jewish, I'm sorry that I don't know what it's called, excuse me for that please), and state that he could "see" his grandfather and would engage in full-on conversations with him. Even thought everything he has done is wrong, I still love him and wishes he gets the best of help (he's currently living with his father and step-mother the last I heard, I have little contact with my oldest and older sister; I have two by the way) because he was like a big older brother to me and he still is to a certain point.

I realize that my example does not compare whatsoever to some of the awful things that have happened to other people on here but it was still pretty hard on me. Right, I had been best friends with this girl for about 9 years all the way through Primary school and into our first few years of Senior school. Anyway we made friends with some other girls when we moved into Senior school at first everything was great and I really liked them but after a while they decided they didn't like me and began spreading rumors behind my back. The girl I had been best friends with started telling everybody in my year secrets I had told her such as my dad having Manic Depression. I was bullied in every single class constantly for about 3 years to the point where I wanted to move to a different school and began cutting but I pushed through it and asked to be moved into a different registration class. I made friends with some different people who are great friends and I am still friends with now but there is more. I became really close friends with another girl and she still is my closest friend... surprisingly. I told her about a guy I really liked and who I was getting quite close to so one time he was having a house party and he disappeared to his room with her to "talk" but a few days later she told me that they had actually done a lot more than talk, anyway after a while they started going out so I made myself move on. A guy that I hadn't really known very well started showing interest in me and so I started to get to know him and we started going out after a while. I was really happy for a while with him and lost my virginity to him when I was 16 but it turned out that he was still in love with his ex girlfriend and had been cheating on me with her. I didn't find this out from him but from one of his best friends who was sickened by what he was doing so I confronted him and we broke up. I went straight back to being withdrawn and quiet after this and my friends started avoiding me and I got so scared that what had happened before with my friends was going to happen again that I avoided them so they wouldn't have any ammunition. They eventually confronted me and told me that basically they fell out with me because I was barely speaking to them or I wasn't fun anymore. None of them even wanted to ask if I was okay they were just annoyed by my presence. Right now in the present a guy I knew asked me out on a date and I did go with him but got too scared to do anything afterwards so I called things off, I had sat talking to my best friend about how I liked him but was confused and worried about starting anything with him. So what does my friend do? She sleeps with him, then tells me about it and me being my usual doormat self too scared to say anything in case I lose all of my friends again, I tell her that it's fine and she shouldn't feel guilty because who am I to stand in the way of something simply because I like a guy. I really do know my example isn't as bad as basically every other example on here but for me, it was bad so I just needed somewhere to tell my story because I can't say anything to my friends.

Part of this troper's family discovered the AwfulTruth about our "noble" ancestor who first settled in America. As the stories go, he was a sergeant in the British army who fought for the Royalists during the English Civil War, and sailed to America to practice religious freedom. The reality? He was a PsychoForHire who participated in some brutal campaigns for BigBad Oliver Cromwell, and fled to America when that didn't work too well. While this was the source of much shame within much of the family, this troper and his father think that reality surrounding our family is more BadAss.

The same troper also is descended from genocide survivors(specifically, the Armenian Genocide), and had a real {{Fridge Horror}}/{{Humans Are Bastards}} moment when he learned what the word "genocide" meant and what happened to many of his relatives.

Wow. The Armenian genocide happened to be the #1 historical event that inspired Hitler to launch the Holocaust, since it was already fading from most people's memories by the 1930s. In fact, Hitler rationalized that since people didn't remember the Armenian genocide, people wouldn't remember the Jewish genocide. So your family is descended from the first major modern horror in history. Be proud of them for being survivors, please. *hug*

A lot of bad shit has happened to me before in the past, but only a couple of things qualify under this trope. First off, I had no idea what happened to my grandparents when they came over to the U.S. from Mexico and so asked my mom one day about whether she knew about anything regarding my maternal grandparents (the ones I was actually close to when I was growing up). The answer was pretty standard issue from my grandfather, but it turns out my grandmother's family was hounded out of Mexico by Zapatistas who wanted to take over their orange orchard, and when my grandmother's dad (my great-grandfather) came back to secure the land for his family, the revolutionaries (this happened ca. the 1920s) killed him.

Second qualifying thing: I was a member of a choir for several years. It was a church choir, but the choir and musical directors took it very seriously and I learned a lot from the experience. I loved it and we sounded really, really good. We even coalesced into a family unit and they even sang at my dad's funeral Mass. When the choir director was going to marry the musical director, I participated in the bridal shower and attended the wedding. Fast forward a few years and I'd lost contact with the group when I found out on the news that the choir director was being charged with possession of child pornography. Lots and lots of it. He was convicted of it, and in the accompanying newspaper article I found out he started getting into it a few months before my dad died. Think about that for a moment.

All these awful truths now present this troper with an awful truth. The truth being that there is a possibility that the people he knows could have all kinds of incest/pedophilia/sociopathy/adultery going on that he is unaware of. Coupled with the fact that people tell me that I don't pay enough attention... AwfulTruth leads to ParanoiaFuel...

GAH! Now ''this'' troper is going to be worried. For the most part, I've avoided Awful Truths. My parents made sure that my brother and I understood that the baby in the picture is my older sister who died before I was born. Recently, though I attended a self-defense course with my mother, a friend and her mother, and my mother relayed an incident when I was in kindergarten: At the time, I had a boyfriend and we did kiss. This of course, got a lot of attention at a Catholic school, so one day at recess, some first grade girls (and a male friend of mine) ''held me down and forced my boyfriend to French kiss me''. I remembered the incident, but I didn't remember it happening like that. Now, I'm not exactly traumatized (it DID happen over ten years ago, and I can't even remember the names or faces of the girls who did it), but... I'm not sure what exactly happened. I mean, I'm such a ditz that I never noticed that I was being picked on. Did the incident happen as I remembered it? Or did my mind simply rewrite the memory to help my 5-6 year old self cope? And if I never notice these things about myself, how the hell am I going to notice horrible things like this with other people?

This Troper always thought her family was more or less AwfulTruth-less, until she learned (though she still isn't ''supposed'' to know) that her cousin, who she was close to as a child, is going through rehab for a drug addiction. This took time to sink in, but then this Troper learned how her cousin had gotten into drugs -- as a way to cope with depression stemming from the fact that throughout her teens she had been repeatedly raped and blackmailed for money by an older man her (no good) group of friends were getting drugs and alcohol from. This Troper is still trying to deal with this huge disruption of her perception of her family, but she can't even imagine what an inconceivable AwfulTruth this must be for This Troper's aunt -- finding out that her daughter was being abused for so long without catching on that something was wrong. Interestingly, This Troper's cousin and aunt always had a rocky relationship (to say the least), but since this revelation they've started to become close -- as if, perhaps, This Troper hopes, they're finally beginning to see each other for who they really are.

When I was little, I went on a 2-week holiday with my parents to Northumbria. I was having lots of fun, and I wrote a postcards to my grandma "Mama" and my great-grandma "Narnie" every day... or at least, I think I did. On the second-to-last day of my trip, I found out that had died in her sleep the night we left. Fuck, did that screw with my holiday, to the point where all I remember is crying as my dad told me how had kept EVERY. SINGLE. CARD. that I'd written to Narnie and some horse riding.

This troper's first love had been a classmate of hers when she was younger, starting in 6th grade and lasting roughly four years. Because her crush was ''very'' physically affectionate with her--not just a friendly hug every now and then, but as in climbing into her bed during sleepovers or joining her in baths--this lovestruck troper believed her feelings were reciprocated. It turns out this crush not only did ''not'' feel the same way towards her, but had been manipulating her throughout their "friendship", had stolen her books and movies, had hacked into her online accounts, read her mail, and emotionally blackmailed her. She moved away a couple years ago, without a word of goodbye, and even after knowing all that she did to her, it took this troper a year to fall out of love with her. And the worst part? Now that this troper no longer wants anything to do with her past crush, ''she's'' the one who's now sending her constant emails to "be friends again".

This (anon) Troper witnessed a very sad one in the mall. Two friends walked passed me and when we were about 4 feet apart a girl runs by and yells "Carrie (made up name) what's with the hats?" So apparently the girl had seen 'Carrie' wearing hats all the time before, mildly interested I turn to see and 'Carrie' ripped off her hat, revealing to her friend her bald head and the fact that 'Carrie' had cancer. So the running girl's face just falls and she starts sobbing. Then running girl, 'Carrie', and her friend are all sobbing. I wanted to hug them so much, but I didn't want to intrude.

So, I've got this friend. He's a musician, kinda funny, weird, but he's got a mostly good heart. He fell head over heels in love with a girl when he was 15. Said girl was 19, and killed herself when she was 20, after agreeing to marry him when they grew up. Specifically, she killed herself over another woman. Said kid moves on. Then, when he's 16, does some research about something his mom told him, got some testing done, and he's basically going to die when he hits 20. There is a 15 % chance he'll survive to 25, and from there, the numbers keep dropping. Ideopathic Homogeneous Brain cancer. I've told this story to a lot of people, but theres two problems with it. First off, Ideopathic Homogeneous Brain cancer translates to unknown similar brain. The second is, well, what's the first thought to your head when someone starts off a story saying "I've got this friend"?

This troper's heart goes out to you.

Seconded.

This troper has had a few serious {{Awful Truth}}s but would like to share an amusingly tame one: When she was two years old she had a stuffed dog that she named Puppa. She really, ''really'' liked the toy and hugged it so much that its head came off and couldn't be fixed. This troper's mother became concerned that this troper would inhale or choke on the toy's stuffing, threw the toy out while this troper was sleeping, and then called her mother several hours later (this troper's grandmother) to talk about something else. She wound up mentioning Puppa's demise, saying "Puppa's head came off so I had to throw it in the trash." This troper's mother thought that this troper was still sleeping and that, if this troper did hear it, the only word in the sentence she'd know would be Puppa's name, so not much damage would be done until she noticed the toy was missing. This troper was awake, standing right behind her mother, and fully understood what was said. Cue this troper crying and trying to get Puppa out of the trash.

I've always thought it was kind of cool that I'm a descendant of vikings. That is, until I found out that one of my ancestor's name was Halvdan. It means ''half-arsed'' and they named him that because he was a bit weird. So yeah.

This troper thinks the aesop of this page is. A. assume nothing and B. everybody has little dirty rotten hurtful secret and c. families are all messed up in their own ways. *Buys all participants in this thread their comfort drink of choice and free hugs forever* It's strange how almost all of these stories are family related....

This troper had been asking his best friend if he wanted to hang out, and every time I asked, he said that he was busy. I felt bad, because it just seemed like he was making excuses not to hang out. But my mom had bumped into my friend's neighbor at the grocery store and learned that his parents had divorced. Apparently his mom (who's a nurse) had to work much more because of this, and so he had to stay at home to watch his little brother and pick him up from school. I was shocked when I heard, because I had known his parents for years and they seemed great together, and I felt bad that he never told me. Though it's not anywhere near as bad as what you other tropers are posting. This page is making me sad. =(

This Troper had some {{Awful Truth}}s that might not exactly seem awful compared to the ones above, but they were enough to scar me.

My mother blurted out the fact that my sister almost died when she was 5 months old one day. Keep in mind that my sister was (and still is) the {{Butt Monkey}} of our family and is socially inept (though she got better recently).

My friends from high school... weren't friends. From the start of high school, I WAS willing to make friends and I actually did make many (both fake and real). Half across the first semester, nearly half of my real friends transfered to other schools and my fake friends started spreading rumors. Then by the end of the school year, most of my real friends had transfered. Some did so because of the rumors and others did it because of a separate case where two girls from our school were trying to maim each other. Two years passed and somehow all the fakes became my real (of so it seemed at the time) friends. I was finally getting recognized and had more friends than ever. Then a year after that, a {{Bitch In Sheeps Clothing}} started pulling a {{Wounded Gazelle Gambit}}, saying I've bullied her during the past few weeks and I've been blackmailing her into all sorts of things. Of course, anyone who knew me would say that she was just spilling bullshit but being the {{Karma Houdini}} she is, she got everyone to hate me in a matter of days. By the end of that semester, I had to drop out because she also got the rumors to spread outside school and I almost got into the local news because of that.

Now, before you say the above should belong to another Troper Tales page, I must add that I've been getting more repressed memories that hinted my "friends" were actually backstabbing me through {{stealth insults}}. The worst I've got so far was recalling the conversation where I talked to this Nepalese girl and her friends about my oldest brother sexually molesting my brothers and I when we were kids. When I finished, they all laughed and walked away. I could've sworn I was close to slapping the leader's head so hard her head would fall off.

My father ignores me simply because I'm not perfect in his eyes. My sister (mentioned above) gets more attention than I do. When I was younger I used to be {{the Ace}} in my class but when I admitted to being suicidal in the 6th Grade, he started ignoring me. And by now, right after everything that's happened above, he's still ignoring me AND calling me every insult under the sun behind my back. I only found out when my mother just mentioned the whole thing to me. And I never noticed because he rarely even talks to me in the past.

P.S. Sorry if I just come off across as whiny and pathetic. I just needed to get all these off my chest because I'm too stressed right now...

A few years ago, this troper had crushes on... honestly, two people at once (who we'll call Tiffany and Abby). I considered myself best friends with Tiffany, who shared my feelings about Abby. So the two of us would sometimes fawn over her, but you know what I found out a few months later? Tiffany and Abby had been going out with each other for several months. And I later found out they'd gotten together on my birthday. Honestly, at this point I started being sort of nasty toward those two, but I still really loved them, especially Tiffany at that point. Later on, after Tiffany had blocked me from MSN, I found out from Abby that Tiffany no longer wanted anything to do with me. Admittedly, a lot of this is my fault for being a bitch, but it fits under {{Awful Truth}}, so..

This troper learned to read by the age of three, and always loved books. He especially enjoyed science fiction, especially robots. He went through school with no friends except for a couple who weren't even in his class. People teased him for no apparent reason. He got a full-ride scholarship to a good school... and procrastinated it away when he met a story-writing group online and spent all his time there. After he dropped out for getting F's and D's, he got a job as a dishwasher using his ADHD diagnosis for which he was medicated with Ritalin all through school. Then, his mother heard about this study a grad student was doing: how many kids with Asperger's Syndrome were misdiagnosed with ADHD during the late 80's? This troper was; he later got an official diagnosis from a hospital-based program. His hyperlexia (early reading) and lack of eye contact are classic symptoms. He was also medicated wrong, put in the special ed classes instead of gifted classes, not explicitly taught social skills, not given time with counselors, and generally educated wrong. Because of all this, he had no specialized schooling required to get a technical job which would fit his abilities and minimize his disabilities, and no social skills required to get and keep any job other than manual labor. (He's developing social skills through a Toastmasters speech and leadership club, and hopes to go on the lecture circuit of autism conferences.)

Same Asperger's troper: Recently, CSI had an episode built around a pathological hoarder. Her house was literally piled to the ceiling with the debris of her life. To get through the mess, the CSI crew had to carefully discover the few paths between clear areas. The troper was watching CSI with his parents in their house... which was about 1/8 as bad. All his life he had been walking between piles of stuff. His parents are both hoarders, and taught him to be; the accumulation of his life's debris currently occupies 1/12 of the volume of his room, and 1/6 of the floor area.

I guess my truths aren't nearly as traumatic or life-changing as others' truths, but... here goes what I need to let out. I had a girlfriend, let's call her L, she was amazing. We went out for the longest time. One day, we were together, and she seemed to want to go beyond second base, but nothing happened. That was the last I saw of her for three months. Obviously, I was worried sick. One day on IM I saw her and she acted as if she didn't know me. After eventually prying out some sense of what happened, she basically told me she had changed and that we were nothing anymore. Last time I heard of her. Through luck I found out the truth: She was moving to another country. Whether she did it to make me feel better, or to keep me away from her is something I will never know.

This one might be more WhatCouldHaveBeen status, but this troper recently learned that there was a chance he might have developed a birth defect that would have caused him to be born with severe mental retardation and possibly dying after a few years. Some members of his family apparently advised my parents (who were young and scared at the time they heard this) to consider an abortion depending on the results of a prenatal test that would have determined whether or not it would get worse. Fortunately, I was found to not have the symptoms, but the possibility that I might not have existed is sometimes a little bit unnerving.

This troper had a life peppered with Awful Truths. The first came at age 7, when her mother sat her down and promptly told her that her conception was a mistake that cost the woman a career, schooling, and 'ruined' her relationship with the father. She then said the only way to fix it was to have another child, my sister, and that only sped up the deterioration of their relationship. 2 years later my mother married another man who doted on her little sister but beat the crap out of her and one day, while they played with toys she admitted he'd been sexually abusing her and begged her to not tell their mother (I did and she still resents me for it. According to shrinks, he 'conditioned' her well.). It took nearly a decade but the perv got his day in court yet the lawyers only focused on what he'd done to her sister. After pressing, the suits admitted they only pursued her little sister's abuse because what he did to her was 'more interesting' and the lead lawyer outright said he'd let the perv's lawyer win because she was an old friend from law school (verdict: not guilty). During college, she had a nervous breakdown and ended up in a mental hospital for a little over a month. During that time, no one visited her--not even her Nakama or her boyfriend (who knew about her being committed) and when she got out, she was shunned. 5 years later she finds out her boyfriend told everyone that she'd run away to cheat on him. On top of it all, her father recently admitted that he's sired COUNTLESS children and it's only a matter of time before they seek him out. Those are just be biggest ones. If she continued on, this would get TL;DR (if it hasn't already).

'''WHAT... THE... FUCK!!!''' Sorry if I'm overreacting, I and several people I know quite closely have been through that kind of shit ''and hard,'' so believe me when I say that no one '''''and I mean NO ONE''''' should have to go through ''any of that.'' No matter how many times it's already been said, I really wish I could find you and give you a hug right now. You deserve it.

Mostly subverted in this troper's life, both my parents and all four of my grandparents were awesome at least as far as I knew while they were still alive, my parents were always straightforward with me, we played Santa instead of them telling me about Santa and letting my dreams get crushed as a child. The most I have come to this is that I just recently found out that my grandparents on my dad's side, may they both rest in peace, never really once supported my dad outside of obligations. And later, as in after my grandmother's funeral, when my aunt and uncles on my dad's side were going through the house, they basically berated my mother because they all believed she was staying with my dad to get his inheritance, which is why I don't talk to them much, but it's not so much an awful truth because they did it, it was finding out that the grandparents that I had known for all of 10-14 years respectively felt the same way, I guess this is why subconsciously I was never really close to my relatives on my dad's side.

The AwfulTruth About this troper? Where to Begin? I honestly don't know, so forgive me if this get to rambling... I'm acutely aware of my own mortality, disabled in such a way that I'm probably not expected to live past 40 assuming I attempt to take better care of myself, but have no real incentive to do so.

My AwfulTruth isn't as bad as any of the other tales on this page, but I still feel that I want to post this somewhere and get it off my chest. It's not even really mine. Last October, I was visiting my grandmother with my own mother. It was in the evening, and I was in their living room, with is partitioned off from the kitchen. Now, my mother has been acting odd all day, telling my grandmother (a cancer survivor) too not exert herself, and too be careful. I, unfortunately, hadn't put the dots together, so what happened next came as a total surprise. My grandmother confronted my mom in the kitchen for a reason why she was acting so odd. My mother, in a completely out of character moment, began to break down crying. That's when I knew something horrible had happened. Tearfully, she choked out to my grandmother that her latest CAT scan had shown her cancer had metastasized for the third time in her pelvis, and due to her age, it would mean that the cancer would most likely be terminal. I've never cried so hard in my life.

This certainly isn't like the other stories but here it goes. When this troper was little she had a big Chow-Chow dog named Smoky. He was her only friend at that age because she was really shy and didn't like anyone getting close to her. She loved him so much, they used to play together and sometimes she would stay up with him at night because she was worried that he'd get lonely all by himself. One day after coming back from second grade her mom told her that she had sold Smoky to a family with a larger yard for him to run around in and in a town 60 miles away, and that he was happier off with his new family than he would ever be with theirs, so it would be better to not dwell on him. She was absolutely devastated and cried for days and days. Well flash forward to when she was in her Freshmen year of high school when she asked her mom how he was doing only to find out the AwfulTruth that Smoky had not been sold at all. He had gotten loose from his chain and was running down the street only to get hit by a truck and die instantly. Her mom had gotten her cousin to bury him up at their farm so she wouldn't find his body. Suffice to say she was not happy to find this out.

This troper has a similar story, but less tragic. This troper had a hamster called Hercules who was loved and played with very much. One day I found he wasn't in my cage. He furiously believed that his mother had given her away to his own friend at school, who he pestered for weeks to give him back. Flash forward to high school. His mother revealed that she had dropped the hamster and broke it's neck, then thrown the body into the compost.

I always knew my mother's side of the family had issues. She didn't even let me or my siblings see anyone from that side for a decade. I didn't remember this incident, but apparently what finally caused this separation was a birthday party for my six-year-old cousin (we were all within four years of that age at the time, my sister being the youngest, two). My mom figured leaving us in the care of our grandparents and uncle for an hour at Chuck E. Cheese's wouldn't end too badly. When she picked us up, everyone said that it was a wonderful time and let her take us home. Apparently I was the only one of the children who witnessed my uncle threatening to break my grandfather's leg and telling my grandmother to "Sit back down, you bitch." I relayed this information to my mother on the ride home, nearly causing her to drive off the road. She called her mother when we got back and said that she would not be associating with any of them for a long time.

My grandfather died when I was younger. I assumed he was just old and died of natural causes, because no one ever said otherwise. I guess my mom forgot that no one had ever told me the truth, because when we were talking about her family one day, she mentioned in a casual tone that he had committed suicide. I should have reminded her that no one had told me before that point, but I was too stunned to say anything. I don't think she knows that that was the moment I found out. It also didn't help that the next day I was stuck listening to a group of people who were discussing suicide as though it were some kind of personal inconvenience for them, and complaining about how annoying suicidal people are to the rest of the "productive" population. I was surprised that I wanted to defend my abusive grandfather for the first time in my life.

This one isn't as big a deal to me, but apparently my mother was very sick when she was pregnant with me. Because of her illness and the medicine she had to take, she was afraid I would be born with all kinds of defects. Now, this is certainly not to say that a life with a handicap isn't worth living, but I had a bit of a blank moment thinking that I could have been born with a deformity or a mental disability. It was so expected that my mother was preparing herself for it. Of course, she would have loved me and given me a wonderful life no matter what. I couldn't imagine a better mother to have under any circumstances. And I'm happy to say that all my senses work perfectly (I haven't even needed glasses), I have no deformities and my brain is healthy by most medical standards. Thinking about what could have been, though... It just gets a little creepy.

This Troper is 16 weeks premature. This Troper also had a twin sister who died at 1 day-old from underdeveloped lungs.

This troper knows how you feel: I was 2 weeks premature and I had a twin brother who died during childbirth. And my sister technically died on being born, but recovered (basically, my mother had a insulin injection while my sister was still connected. My sister's heart stopped, but it started again a few seconds later). When I heard that, I realised that my sister may not exist today had either my twin brother survived or her heart hadn't restarted.

This troper used to have an uncle that she and her cousin (from a different uncle) both adored, and who loved them, taking them to the beach and water parks and joking with them - generally a good uncle. Fast forward to her early teens. She doesn't see him much anymore, but she still loves him. When another uncle dies (my first family death, and he was 31... it was awful), he even takes my cousin and I out of the wake because we can't handle it anymore and brings us to the boardwalk, even buys us flip-flops so we have more comfortable shoes. Then I learn that my aunt, his wife, was formerly an alcoholic and started drinking again after the death. Everything goes downhill from there. He pushes her down the stairs and she leaves him. He calls, trying to get her back, promising all the vodka she can drink. She divorces him, gets a restraining order, and moves in with her parents. I find this out after they break up, although it led to my parents promising not to hide things like this from me. The story ends when he dies of a heart attack. When I was told, all I really thought was, "I know I should be sad, but I'm just not." Not that I was happy, but I wasn't really mourning. I know compared to all of these people with horrific stories, this is sort of whining about nothing, but I just wanted to get it out in the open.

Even though this is a lighter example compared to some here: This troper's mother suffered from cancer and died when he was on fourth grade. He thought that it wasn't a painful type of cancer at least or that his mother died of a brain metastasis. Years later he started investigating through the medical history and asking relatives to discover that his mother really suffered of a painful type of cancer spread in tiny spots through the whole body. Made worse by the realization than this troper's mother acted as if she didn't suffer too much to not worry him, and the fact that he is never going to be able to thank her, and even worse when this troper's father revealed to him that one of the possible causes of such a degenerative type of cancer is some possibly still not well-tested pill that his grandmother may have taken at a point of her life.

It was awful truth for this troper who found out his dad was murdered by his best friend's dad before he (the troper) was even born. Even worse when he found out the reason his dad was murdered - he had raped the murderer's wife, subsequently causing her to become pregnant with her only child.

The AwfulTruth for me came when I was about twelve, when one day after school I came home to an empty house (not unusual) which remained empty for hours (unusual). Then my brother came and told me my mother and father had both been sent to prison for stealing my ill Grandfather's pension money and spending it on drugs. Lots of stuff came out after that: my parents had been secret heroin addicts for years, my dad was a former drug dealer (who may have Borderline Personality disorder) and all those years he spent locked up in his room he was actually smoking weed, my mother had had major depression and been sexually abused by aforementioned granddad as a child, and that those previous months she'd spent locked up in her room she'd been doing heroin with dad, even though we were living in poverty at the time and that money could have been spent on me and my little sister. Also, my brother had a different father to me. Also, I didn't care anymore. Combine these wonderful facts with fun things like bullying, instances of domestic violence, family relations so fucked up the child-line operator couldn't help me out and my own abandonment complex/strong family values/belief in truthfulness, and you get one unhinged girl, and no surprises.

This troper's truth is tame in comparison to most of these. I come from a VERY poor family. I joined the army when I was 17 to escape the poverty. My parents are awesome people, who would give you anything they had (which isn't much). My childhood was pretty good. The awful part? At 25, I'm more financially secure than anybody in my family. My brother is in the same boat as them, and my sister is going the same route. Its awful to think that these awesome people are never going to be able to improve their situation. Even more awful that since I was 17, I've been helping support my parents and my brother's family. My biggest fear in life is that I'll end up like the father that I so dearly love.

PlayedForLaughs with this troper. I have a tendency to get emotionally attached to things. When I was eight or so, our family sold our old car. I refused to leave it, even belting myself into the seat. My parents finally convinced me by saying that they would swap the cars' computers, so the new car would have the old one's "brain". I soon transferred my attachment to the new car. Sometime in high school, I found out that they had lied. I had a fake HeroicBSOD.

This troper has a huge, sort of messed up, extended family, complete with many cousins. This troper also wants to go to Toronto for uni, a place where her paternal aunt and uncle and two guy cousins live. She always thought that when she went to Toronto with her family she and her mom had to stay in her maternal grandma's bachelor apartment and troper's brother and dad staying with the paternal aunt because maternal grandma missed troper very much. Turns out its because paternal aunt and uncle want to keep the wealth in the family, so to do that they have to get troper married to one of their 2 sons. One son is 2 years older than troper, the other is 6 years older. When troper found out, she raged and raged. (BTW the reason the sons can't marry the other cousins is due to the cross cousins rule. And the only other cross cousin eligible to marry the guys is a 6 year old.) If that's not enough, troper found out a few days ago the younger guy committed suicide. Over a rejection. Troper is angry with the world.

This Troper posted previously, the Mafia/Demon Child/ Assaulted by classmates, for those who got too much ADD to read (I don't fault you.) I knew my older sister, the one with palsy, had a twin that died before birth, though those details weren't specific to me. I just knew. It turns out that my sister's twin made it through birth, but was somehow visibly deformed in some way that made him unable to thrive, or even live longer than a few minutes outside the womb, but that there was a pregnancy before that one that I never knew about, and Troper strongly suspects the kid didn't survive on any regard. I'm the healthiest child my parents have ever had, and it makes me feel horribly guilty for all the fights with my parents, and also wondering what could have been with my two older siblings.

This Troper was conceived in a violent knife-point date rape, my birth mother sent me to adoption on the day I was born, and my parents intentionally hid this from me. This was most likely the moment when I started having depressive/suicidal thoughts and started feeling sick around Christmastime (when I found all this out).

Very mild example compared to what this troper has seen on this page, but this Troper found out only RECENTLY that not only did her father leave her mother because he didn't want a daughter, but that the guy also abandoned three other women with a son each AND abandoned all of his children because he was an alcoholic. The kicker? She waited until I was twenty-three, and already struggling with major depression and gender identity issues to tell me ANYTHING about this bastard. So I really have four brothers, three of which I have never met, and one of which she knows all too well to be nothing more than a thief and a drug addict.

I live in Poland. This story is about my mom's AwfulTruth experience. My dad used to be the boss of a pretty well-prospering digital printery, and my mother was an executive of the Customer Service Office in that very same firm. At one point, the company was so successful it started to take commissions from customers abroad, with Germany being the most interested in their service. The interest actually became so big, they weren't able to manage all of them, so they decided they needed an agent stationed there. My mom's sister, my aunt, was living in Germany for about 20 years then, so she was assimilated with the country, knew the language very well, etc. Since she wasn't working at that moment, she seemed to be a perfect candidate. So they gave her the job. They were in successful cooperation for about 5 years, until my mother visited said aunt. They had some work-related stuff to do, so my mom went through the payments, the company's incomes, outcomes and other papers. As it turned out while she did that, her sister was gradually stealing money from the firm, in very small doses, but it summed up to an amount close to 100,000 Euro. My mother was devastated, she left the country as soon as she could and when she reached home, she didn't leave the bedroom for 3 days straight. It was not so much about the money they lost, but about the trust she would never be able to regain for her sister. Needless to say, the company soon fell into a hell hole because of all the debts it couldn't pay, because my aunt couldn't pay it back. My dad recently quit his position as the boss, put the co-founder in charge and is currently unemployed. My mom stayed in the company, but only after it cut all bonds linking to her sister. Also, my aunt forbid her son all contact with my mom, despite that she is his godparent. She's been spreading lies about what happened ever since, usually heavily discrediting my parents in them. The whole thing was a shock for me too, since she was always my favorite aunt... She was very funny and outgoing, and I never realized she had financial problems since she always seemed to waste money on unnecessary gifts. It's probably why she used to be so popular - she won over people's - and probably mine, too - sympathy with money she didn't even have.

This troper found out that their mother was raped on a few separate occasions (which she described in disturbing detail in the letters I found), one of those times the guy broke her rib, which she mentioned reluctantly a while ago. Said troper was only twelve when they figured this out, and still feels cripplingly sick whenever they think about it. Oh, plus my uncle threatened my mom with a gun, and both my parents were a couple of delinquents who experimented with drugs. Pretty mild compared to the rest of this though, my heart goes out to all of you poor people. :(

Half of this Tropers face is scarred due to a fire when he was 5 (Honestly, I look like Harvey Dent/Two-Face from The Dark Knight), The Entire left side of my face, neck and a good part of my left arm are just a one big, brown, vein pulsing scar and leaving me with a blank, sightless eye, I've always kept it hidden as I wrap it in Bandages and try to pass it off as a kind of Turban, Everyone was fine with it until High School veered it's Ugly head and one day, some ass wipe decides to yank my bandages off in the middle of class for no reason much to the horror of everyone else and him too once he realised what I was hiding under there, Suddenly, I'm labelled as a Freak, Tormented constantly, People would call me scar face and mock me by taunting me with matches, One day someone decided to light my bandages on fire in the middle of the lunch hall, I quickly rip them off and then the guy taunts me by telling me that ripping off the bandages was pointless since my face can't get any worse, something inside me just snapped and I took the match he used and stubbed it out in his eye. As he's screaming on the floor I yell about how everyone in this school apart from me are the monsters and that if there is a Hell, I'll meet you down there and dunk your head in a pool of lava and see how they like it, I Left that school 8 Months ago and my parents finally raised enough money for a skin graft operation that's set for Next Saturday.

This Troper remembers her dad taking her to see one of the family friends a lot when she was very little, but we never stayed there for very long. Even so, I adored her and her family and they were always nothing but sweet to me. I subsequently worked out that she was my dad's dealer.

This example has been removed and replaced with a giant hug for everyone, along with reassurance that yes, we do want to hear your stories even if they're not as bad as everyone else's, and yes, we do love you all. *hugs*

Oh, and some pictures of kittens.

You people are truly marvelous, and my story isn't anything formidable compared to what a lot of you have gone through. Drinks are on me if you don't mind Shirley Temples. This Troper was once playing one of those free online [=RPGs=] when he struck up a conversation with what he thought was a pleasant young woman of 18 years (he was fourteen at the time). This is not necessarily important backstory, but it could help. After two years of online relationship, the Troper is told by his mother that he should not have been discussing his few known details of his absentee father's life with a 37-year-old woman. Naturally, he doesn't exactly respond well to knowing that he's been getting yanked around by a pedophile with a marriage and family of her own three states away. That wasn't the most awful truth that day, though, in his opinion; as it would happen, the absentee father the Troper was discussing had murdered his wife and his two children within the year before the conversation. This Troper is still disturbed, not only because he fears that he is more like his father with every flash of intense anger, but also slightly because the infant half-brother he will never meet was given the name he was expected to have.

This Troper recently found out that before marrying her grandfather, her grandmother was in a relationship with a guy who, shortly after their break-up, ended up killing someone in a bar fight. The way she just casually brought this fact up mid-conversation was a real BreadEggsMilkSquick moment.

Sooooo... This troper doesn't have much to share on the mind-breaking horror front (and her heart goes out to everyone who does), just a few family problems she happened to stumble across as she got older. One of her uncles (on her mom's side; he married into the family) is a control freak who may or may not be emotionally abusing his wife and kids, based on the testimony of the youngest aunt on that side. We're not really sure. On her dad's side, the lone aunt is basically a screeching harpy who verbally abuses her 86-year-old father over his right to act as an independent adult--basically, he wants to move out and she protests the fact that he's using his own money (that might have been part of the will, not sure) to do so. Both of her kids are complete losers and the daughter is in an abusive relationship. Said aunt has threatened to sue both of her younger brothers (my uncle and my dad) on the false accusation that Grandpa wouldn't have gotten fed up with her bitchiness (or made his "poor" decision to move out) if he didn't talk to his two successful sons. So far, I've decided to stay out of the entire affair--if anyone from either set of relatives calls, my parents can field the issues. I'm happy to just ignore both sets of screw ups.

One exception--if the kids of the control-freak uncle call, I'll talk to them with no problem (and try to convince them to stay with my family for a while).

For most of my life, I'd been told my great-grandfather died of a heart attack (this happened when I was about 7). Ten years later, I found out that was only half the story, since my mum decided to bring the subject up for some bizarre reason when my cousin came round. Basically, ever since my great-grandma died (before I was born) my great-grandfather had been depressed, since they'd been together a long time and she died while the rest of the family was on holiday and she was housekeeping, so it could have been any time over that week. Roughly ten years later he couldn't take it any more and overdosed on paracetamol, but then changed his mind and phoned my grandparents, who called an ambulance round. It was when they hauled him into the ambulance he had the heart attack. It's really quite shocking, the things you learn when you grow older, the explanations for things you were too young to understand come to light and a lot of the time it's quite painful.

Not nearly as bad as most examples on this page, but here goes. This troper had a good friend, who she had been close to and trusted for nearly seven years. One night, she and her friends all went to a bar and crashed at one guy's place. This troper woke up in the middle of the night to said guy friend groping her - keep in mind that he was ALSO close with her boyfriend of 7 years. Over the next year, Things Got Worse...much worse. This troper and her boyfriend went over alarm bells they remembered from the past seven years of friendship with the guy, only to come to the the awful realization that their beloved friend in fact displayed most traits of a full-blown sociopath and they had somehow missed it due to his charming demeanour. Needless to say, this troper has since had a bit of a problem with overanalyzing her friendships, lest she miss something like this again...

My memory of my own past is notoriously spotty with huge blanks punctuated by the occasional memory. One of the memories that surfaced during a recent attempt to take stock of my life revealed that I have been suicidal to some degree almost continuously since I was six years old. After a while I became so good at ignoring those feelings that I completely forgot how long I'd been living with them.

I'd always known that I had a great aunt on my mother's side who had died in her 20's some time after having brain surgery in the 1950's. I'd assumed that she had died of brain cancer. It turns out that it is much more likely she had a lobotomy.

I started therapy after having bouts of anger and whiplash-inducing mood swings. We had a look at my life and some journal entries starting when I was eight or so, and the therapist determined I had been suffering from depression since at least the age of eight, due to abuse at school (I am twenty-two at the time of this writing). Nobody would notice, though, since I felt like I had to act happy all the time. I remember adults constantly telling me to smile and saying that I needed to "grow a thicker skin" or flat out telling me I was exaggerating (or, in the case of a sexual assault, that I brought it on myself) when I reported the bullying. I also had a lot of very negative beliefs regarding myself, including, "If someone wants to touch me, in any way, and I don't let them, I am a bad person for denying them, but this doesn't apply to the other person" and "If you don't do everything your friends tell you to, you are a bad friend." My classmates at the time were a little too grown-up for their ages and took their social cues from the more sexualized videos on MTV and BET. They were also fond of asking me WhyDidYouMakeMeHitYou when I questioned them. This, combined with that second belief led to me isolating myself from my peers and choosing not to make friends all throughout middle and high school. I really believed this was how normal people treated their friends. What was even more disturbing was that I had an entry, written when I was around fourteen, that had a detailed description of how I would commit suicide. I'd come to the conclusion that gassing myself would be the best way, since it would be easier for my parents to clean up. That implies I put a lot of thought into the idea, maybe too much. The awful truth part is that I actually thought all of this was totally normal, that I should get used to the idea of everyone treating me this way because that was how the world was. I'm glad to say that now I've realized I was wrong.

I go through suicidal thoughts when I get really sad and upset. Somehow, that cheers me up. (Weird, I know) But I made a pro/con suicide list. There were more pros than cons.

Awful Truth: This page just serves as a reminder to us all about what a Crapsack World we live in.

The very fact that these are exceptions - and that we're all collectively horrified by such things - tends to suggest just the opposite.

Today, this Troper learned why the only guy in my eighth grade class who was nice to me hasn't been to school since April. It turns out that he has a rare form of leukemia that rarely responds to treatment. Currently, thanks to the treatment he's undergoing, he suffers from splitting headaches. He's in so much pain, he can't even read the "get better soon" card that I sent him. No one knows if he'll even live to September. Did I mention that this guy once aspired to be a hockey player?

A short while ago, I've found out I can barely feel emotions after all that's happened to me. It just hit me how f***ed up that is.

This troper's moment has a major one: For most of his life, his mother would always complain about his grandmother, who despite being negligent, didn't seem that bad. Finally, he pestered his mother enough to tell him the truth. His grandmother had found the will of he's great grandmother, and in an act of supreme selfishness, tore it up and took all the money that his great grandmother had saved to give the rest of the family after she had passed away. You could imagine this troper's reaction.

Okay. So I could handle finding out that my adored maternal grandpa was gay, grew up during a time when being gay was considered an illness, was put in a hospital for it, and only married her Grandma to get out. (I mean, really, in ''that'' situation, I don't think even my Mom and Grandma could blame him too much.) But i ''really'' could've gone without knowing that he's a pedophile, which is why I can't see him in person-- just letters and phone calls. I love him to death, though.

I have a story about my stepdad that would drive sane men to kill, but it happened to me, so it doesn't go here. (He knows what he did. He spent a good nine years doing it. If he is not going to pay for his crimes, then, at the very least, may his sanity be slowly but steadily chipped away at over the course of his continued existence until they one day find him dancing about, swinging heavy objects at all his worldly possessions and shouting turns of phrase that would make Captain Beefheart seem perfectly coherent by comparison. But I digress.) What I can tell you, however, is this. It's not as harrowing as whatever you guys can come up with, but here we go...\\ Partway through the summer I turned 15, I was asked to pack all my stuff in shelves and whatnot, and clear off my desk as well, Several stickers and posters went up on the wall, at which point Mom pointed out that that wasn't the best of ideas. A few days later, I was looking for a pair of gun muffs (I was using them as earpieces for a set of headphones that had since blown out) that I later found out were in a shelf all along. I speculated aloud that they might still be at my grandparents' house, at which point I was called out by Mom for mentioning their town. About a week later, Mom led me to an apartment complex a few blocks from where we all (us and said stepdad) lived. Later, as we began packing our things into a moving truck and changing our residence, Mom explained what was up: Turns out Mr. Right was starting to get abusive, and was worrying his lungs out that Mom might leave him for a man whose full name he probably didn't know.

«Don't worry, @/HomemadePsycho, when your father died, he was at peace. In fact, his only disapointment was you.» Thanks Mom, I REALLY needed to know that.

Relatively minor compared to a lot of these, but-- My fluffy little animal sidekick... well, I ''thought'' he was asleep. I could feel his heartbeat. It turned out I was feeling my own heartbeat pounding through my body, since I was so tense. And I could have saved him if I hadn't misinformed myself.

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

1 cup (2 sticks) butter-flavored shortening, softened

3/4 cup granulated sugar

3/4 cup packed brown sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 large eggs

2 cups (12-oz. pkg.) NESTLE TOLL HOUSE Semi-Sweet Chocolate Morsels

1 cup chopped nuts

PREHEAT oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.

COMBINE flour, baking soda and salt in small bowl. Beat butter, granulated sugar, brown sugar and vanilla extract in large mixer bowl until creamy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Gradually beat in flour mixture. Stir in morsels and nuts. Drop by rounded tablespoon onto un-greased baking sheets.

BAKE for 9 to 11 minutes or until golden brown. Cool on baking sheets for 2 minutes; remove to wire racks to cool completely. ??

PAN COOKIE VARIATION: Grease 15 x 10-inch jelly-roll pan. Prepare dough as above. Spread into prepared pan. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes or until golden brown. Cool in pan on wire rack. Makes 4 dozen bars.

SLICE AND BAKE COOKIE VARIATION: PREPARE dough as above. Divide in half; wrap in waxed paper. Refrigerate for 1 hour or until firm. Shape each half into 15-inch log; wrap in wax paper. Refrigerate for 30 minutes. Preheat oven to 375° F. Cut into 1/2-inch-thick slices; place on un-greased baking sheets. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes or until golden brown. Cool on baking sheets for 2 minutes; remove to wire racks to cool completely. Makes about 5 dozen cookies.

FOR HIGH ALTITUDE BAKING (5,200 feet): Increase flour to 2 1/2 cups. Add 2 teaspoons water with flour and reduce both granulated sugar and brown sugar to 2/3 cup each. Bake drop cookies for 8 to 10 minutes and pan cookie for 17 to 19 minutes. ...*hug* <3