To know you are responsible for the death of another person can leave irreparable scars on your psyche.
"There's never a time, even when I'm laughing at a party, when I'm not thinking about it," Pam Uhr, a woman who was responsible for the deaths of two boys in a car accident, told The Guardian in 2018.
How would you expect your life to change after such a devastating event? How would you even go on?
After Redditor mfmisor asked the online community, "Redditors who have accidentally killed someone: How has it impacted your life?" people shared their stories.
Warning: Some sensitive material ahead.
"It was such a violent crash..."
It was a cold Friday morning on March 14 , 1997. My senior year in high school was coming to an end and all was right with my world. I was driving my 1988 Ford Bronco to my friend's house to pick him up before school. About a mile before his house a 70 year old woman and her 93 year old mother riding shotgun turned left in front of me from an unprotected green light. There was no chance to brake at all and I T-boned their Toyota Camry going 50 mph. The older woman died instantly the police said. It was such a violent crash that it sent their vehicle off the road and collided with a power pole. The driver suffered major injuries and sadly she died 3 days later.
After all the rumors and gossip which lasted until I graduated I was cleared of all wrong doing. The police determined that the driver was cited 2 times recently for driving without a DL. From what I understand her eyesight was quite poor and she must have not seen my truck. Thankfully I was wearing my seatbelt and only suffered a broken collarbone and bruises. Still very sad about what happened and it sometimes still haunts me to this day almost 25 years later.
"The day after I graduated..."
I got into an accident in high school when I was 17. T-boned a woman crossing a main road, she wasn't wearing a seatbelt and was ejected from the car. She died three days later in the hospital.
I was charged for negligent homicide with a motor vehicle and reckless driving (calculations showed I was doing 20 mph over the speed limit) . The day after I graduated high school I spent a month in prison. It's been 9 years and I still haven't bounced back completely.
"I have no regrets."
I guess technically I've helped to kill about 5 old ladies. It's kind of an unspoken agreement amongst the nursing staff that if someone hasn't moved, eaten, or had a drink in 4 days and their feet are mottled.....well......we make them comfortable. Morphine is always prescribed by then and we collectively ensure our patient is in as little pain as possible.
I have no regrets. I've even had a family member thank me for helping her mom.
"After the accident..."
When I was 16 I was going home from work late at night and needed to swing by the gas station. I was getting ready to make a left turn into the station and waited for a few motorcycles to pass and i looked down the road to clear the turn and saw a single light from a motorcycle about a mile away so I went ahead and made the turn. About halfway through the turn I saw the light getting brighter and noticed the guy was maybe 3 feet away from my car. That's when time began to slow down as I stomped on the gas to try to get out of the way. It was unfortunately too late as his body hit the side of my car completely shoving to the side. I got out and he just layed crushed in the street.
The gas station was very busy so a crowd immediately formed around the man and cops and ambulance came. He died a few hours later in the hospital.
After the accident I just sat on the side of the road thinking well im going to prison I just killed a dude, very much in shock and a bystander came up to me and said "do you see what you did!!? Go see what you did!" I wasn't really responsive at this time. After detectives came and talked to people i found out the guy was going well over 150mph on a bike trying to catch up to his friends and when I pulled out he didn't slow down but apparently ditched his bike and only his body hit my car. Turns out if he stayed on his bike he would have missed me completely. I was bothered for some time but have come to accept that this kind of crazy sh!t happens, just have to carry on.
"I used to be an airline pilot..."
I used to be an airline pilot for a relatively large regional airline. Because I didn't make much money doing it, I worked as a flight instructor on my days off from the airline.
One day a student of mine and I were up practicing some maneuvers over an area with a lot of trees.
As we were finishing up and about to go back to the airport, our engine started acting weird. It was a bit rough and we lost RPM. No big deal, I thought, I figured we were just running the mixture too lean, so I enriched it and had no improvement.
I started heading towards a field we passed a couple miles back. It wasn't big but it was our best shot if things got worse as the airport was something like 15 miles away.
The engine only got worse. I was having trouble maintaining altitude and I radioed in a mayday call with our position.
Eventually, the engine died completely. I tried a restart but nothing worked. As we were lining up our final approach, we made sure the airplane was secured and all that.
Turns out the field was a lot smaller than I thought. We touched down and it was extremely rough. I had a lot of pressure on the breaks, trying to not lock them. The trees were coming up very fast and I decided we weren't going to stop so I tried to get the airplane back on it's front wheels and slam on the breaks to make it flip so we could at least stop.
I thought about it too late and we smashed straight into a big tree. I can't remember very clearly getting out but I do remember seeing my student in the front seat slouched over with his head to the side. I tried to yell for him to get out and realized his eyes were open. The local police arrived within minutes of us touching down and later they said they saw us coming in.
They got my student out and took me to a hospital to be looked at and X-Ray'd because I had bad pain in my neck and back. They pronounced my student dead at the scene. His neck snapped on impact.
I didn't have any legal action taken against me or anything, the NTSB and FAA said that I did the right thing in the situation. I just wish I could've gotten the plane flipped over. I feel guilty. His wife blamed me and tried suing me.
I have extreme anxiety and don't fly anymore. I wish I could bring myself to do it because I truly loved it.
I work construction now because I have always loved building stuff and fixing up the house. I'm 36 years old now and have it on my bucket list to fly one last time.
"I think about it a lot..."
It wasn't my fault, but when I used to drive a wheelchair transport van, a bracket that holds the wheelchairs down failed. The guy tipped over enough to hit his head on a cross brace when I turned a corner. He had a degenerative disease, and had fragile bones. He ended up in the hospital, and never recovered. Passed a few days later.
The last I heard, the company that made the brackets ended up changing their design because the accident unveiled a flaw in their design.
I think about it a lot, because a person died who was in my care. I don't feel guilty about it or anything, There was nothing I could have done differently; something just broke. It's still a bummer when I think about it though.
"He blamed me for the accident..."
Not killed immediately, but turned into a quadriplegic, which is a death sentence for a 19 year old.
I was also 19 years old, driving a friend of mine around my hometown because he hadn't been there in years. He had moved out of state many years before. Was on a narrow country road, very hilly and windy. I am cresting the top of one hill, going a little faster than the speed limit, and a van comes up driving right down the center of that road. There's a steep embankment to the left, and a deep ditch to the right. I swerved to miss the van, realized I was going into a ditch, and swerved back. I ended up swerving completely around this van, and hit the embankment on the left. My car flipped down that hill seven times. I was wearing my seatbelt, but he wasn't. My side of the car was practically crushed, his barely had a dent. But because I was wearing my seatbelt, I just got glass embedded in my face and scalp, and messed up my left eye, shoulder and hip. Because he was not wearing his seatbelt, he broke his neck.
He blamed me for the accident, and for everything that happened to him, so I have not heard from him since it happened. I can only assume he's dead now, as the life expectancy of full quadriplegics is pretty low.
It's been 15 years, but no one gets in a vehicle that I am in without a seatbelt. Period.
"Not a lot has changed..."
Several years ago, I was driving on the interstate and a guy ahead of me's tire blew out, he panicked and spun out into my lane. I slammed into the passenger door and his teenage daughter was killed on impact. The other driver was deemed at fault, but I felt guilty. It took quite a bit of time and therapy, but I realize now that there's nothing I could have done-- it was just an accident.
Not a lot has changed, but I now give extra space whenever possible while driving.
I believe I've found..."
I believe I've found as much peace that I personally can find from the situation but there will always be lasting effects that I just need to learn how to work with.
"They'd be justified."
My best friend was a heroin addict. She kept begging me for money to "pay bills" or "court fees". Deep down inside I knew what it was for, and I felt bad saying no to her, even though I knew what it was doing to her.
I literally would lie awake at night every time I gave her money wondering if she would die that night.
One night I gave her money and a ride to the ghetto to buy. She bought more than she needed, sold to someone else, and they both died of an overdose that night.
As for how it's affected me, I'm a wreck. I still have nightmares. I went catatonic after it happened. I stopped eating, stopped leaving my house, had issues getting out of bed. I don't remember much from that time. Just darkness and despair.
Very few people know what actually happened that night. Some tell me that if it wasn't that night, it would have been another when I wasn't there. Others have told me that it's my fault she's dead.
I was diagnosed as having PTSD as a result of her death. That has not been easy to deal with.
Some days I wish someone would hurt me. Beat me within an inch of my life, maim me, kill me, anything. They'd be justified.
"Towards the end..."
I'm not sure if I'm responsible but I think I contributed to a family member dying.
8 years ago I was 22 and my mom asked me to stay with my grandpa and grandma for a few weeks to help watch them. My grandpa had just gotten out of the hospital and got the green light that his cancer was still gone.
However, as a precaution I was to help him walk around the house even with his cane that they gave him.
He was watching tv or something and had to get out of chair to get a drink. I told him I'd get it, and he insisted he could get it instead. I told him I was supposed to help him walk to the sink.
He denied he needed help, adamantly, and just told me to walk next to him. I was waiting by the couch maybe 6.5/7ft away. He was near me and stumbled/dropped his cane. He caught himself on the side of the couch and slowly lowered himself onto the floor.
My mom saw it and told him that he had to go to the hospital, per doctor's orders. He got into an argument about it, but it was too late, my mom had already called 9-1-1.
He was carted off to the hospital, fully aware and talking with the paramedics as easily as you talk with friends. The doctors took x-rays and noticed something in one of his lungs. They weren't sure so they wanted to figure out what it was, and ran some tests.
The tests were negative for anything that it could possibly be. He slowly got worse, they tried all sorts of medication and nothing stopped it, his lungs slowly faded over six or so weeks, the meds didn't even slow it down,
Every day for six weeks, my entire family including cousins, aunts, and uncles spent the day in the hospital. A few of my cousins couldn't bear to even go visit him because it was so heartbreaking to them.
Towards the end he couldn't even speak. When he was first admitted he was fine and optimistic, slowly though the realization of what was happening dawned on him. He didn't deny it, but rather accepted it. He said his final words to each of his children and grandchildren. Told his kids how wonderful they were and all his favorite moments with them.
His wife, my grandma, and his kids sat with him after the doctors told them they need to prepare for his death because it was very close.
I'd like to say he went peacefully and quietly, but he didn't. There was a death rattle which my mom said was "indescribable" his body lurched and his head rolled to the side, mouth agape.
I don't know if me helping him to get a drink would've made a difference. I was supposed to do a job for someone I loved, I didn't and now they're dead.
Before my career change I worked as a pharmacy technician through college. It was a good job for me, and since our pharmacy was only for nursing homes and mental institutions I didn't have to get a public facing job.
If anyone reading knows much about medication, you might recognize that Warfarin is A. A blood thinner B. Usually prescribed in very minute, exact dosages. Glove changes after handling were enforced pretty heavily. It really isn't one to play with.
So pretty typical day. I'm filling cassettes for I think 7 days and apparently misread one of my fill stickers. I didn't see that I was supposed to split 2 5mg tabs in half. (Before anyone makes the obvious point about 2 half tabs being the same as one full, I know. Some insurances will only pay for halves since it's cheaper. Silly, right?)
So by the nature of these weekly cassettes, you typically fill them over the course of the week along with other homes cassettes, and they all leave sometimes up to 4 days later. A day after that particular mistake went out the door, we have got a floor wide meeting with the owner of the pharmacy. A bit more exposition, but he was a very serious, very hotheaded man. We didn't get along well, all things considered. He's the only boss that ever openly threatened my job prior.
The meeting is as expected, very serious and informing of the mistake. He called a 'critical failure.' The tech responsible for the fill missed it, the pharmacist in charge of checking it missed it. The nurse in charge of administering missed it. He said the patient was rushed to the hospital, but it could've been alot worse and used this opportunity to make it clear that this type of mistake wouldn't be tolerated in the future. The rest of us were looking around, unsure about who the tech and pharmacist was.
As I was heading out to grab lunch, bossman grabs me and tells me we need to talk. The 'oh s***' alarm was going off pretty hard at this point. I step into his office and soon have a pharmacist sitting next to me.
Now for as aggressively angry as I've seen this man get, he was very calm and spoke very clearly. He explained that we were the 2 who made the mistakes. We messed up and he didn't want to single us out in front of everyone, which would have been a nicer sentiment if it hadn't been followed up with the patient dying in the hospital. It felt like a brick came off my chest and was replaced by a cinderblock. I didn't know the patient, never talked to him, didn't know was his conditions were, but I played apart in his death.
The coming days I tried to shake it off, but I couldn't be there long before I would think about it again. And again. And again. I ended up taking a few lunches with that pharmacist over the next couple weeks. He seemed to take it better than me, but it clearly affected him too. We both worked considerably slower, double checked ourselves constantly. It sucked. Work wasn't even close to enjoyable anymore and I'd end up hating myself as the days when I went home.
As this was happening I had some changes in my own life. Some I chose and some that just happened. Bad timing for sure, but it helped to push me out of pharmacy work for good, into a more hands on, bluecollar job. I still think of it from time to time, and it doesn't cut me like it used to, but I'd say the event helped me with an attention to detail on important matters. I oversee a mechanical shop, so I'm a bit of an ass when it comes to safety, but it comes from this experience.
I was the court appointed guardian for an old lady who lived on the top floor of a four story walk up after she had gotten drunk and left her water running until the fire department broke her door down to wake her up. All the people in her building wanted her out and I fought with them for about three years to keep her there, but I knew she should move since she could not walk up and down the stairs.
I managed to get her an apartment in a building with an elevator, but it was smaller and she hated it. No one wanted to rent to her so it had been very difficult to find a new place, but I promised her that we would keep looking and she could move when we found something better.
After about four months in the new apartment, I got a call from the hospital. She had fallen asleep while smoking a cigarette and it lit her blanket on fire. She was in the hospital unconscious with burns over 90% of her body and smoke inhalation. A friend of hers mentioned that because she had lived in and was used to her old apartment she would not have had the same problem. I've really felt like it was my fault ever since. If I had her moved into a hospital, or a nursing home she wouldn't have died.
"Not a single day goes by..."
I was in a car accident 12 years ago that killed a friend of mine. Not a single day goes by that I don't think about it. I have nightmares almost every night reliving it. It was just an accident, according to the police report I hydroplaned into an oncoming car. My friend was killed instantly. I had to move away from my hometown because of the harassment. I got death threats on an almost daily basis, as if I went out that night with the intention to kill someone. The "anniversary" was 4/28 and it was a rough one.
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CW: Suicide
There is so much to learn in life.
And once you acquire certain things mentally, you regret it.
How much 411 have you come across over time that made you think... "How can I unlearn that?"
Yeah, not possible.
Knowledge is power and sometimes it's a nightmare.
Don't we have enough to keep us up at night?
Damn curiosity.
Well let's do some learning.
Redditor RedBoyFromNewy wanted to shed some light on creepy issues we need to be discussing. They asked:
"What’s a disturbing fact that not a lot of people know of?"
So who is ready to spill, and where do you find the info?
From the Guts
"Without mucus your stomach would digest itself."
Ddubsquizzee
"The reason you body produces more saliva before vomiting is your bodies way if protecting your mouth from the acidity of the vomit before you actually throw up."
-AntiVegan-
Death
"There are more suicides than homicides in the US every year."
tmsanch
"60% of all gun deaths in fact are suicides. It is estimated that someone offs themselves with a firearm every 20 minutes in the US. And 80% of them are males."
hymnsees
"And what's worse (knowing, as my family just went through this.)... 70% of suicides have no note. It's a common misconception that most people leave a note and it just isn't true. Mainly because a lot of people who write notes realize they don't want to go through with it. Those who are 'successful' just do it."
jdward01
After...
"You can give still 'birth' if you die while pregnant. The decomp process will force the baby out. It’s rare but it does happen."
MelissaAthalie
"This is usually what ends up happening when a pregnant woman gets murdered. They usually find the fetus either completely separate (like in the Lacy and Connor Peterson case) or in the same location as the mother, but clearly birthed (like with the case with Shanann Watts). It's something I never knew happened until very recently and I think it's one of the most horrifying aspects of death."
rivlet
Disaster
"The deadliest ship disaster was the MV Wilhelm Gustloff, a ship built during the Nazi Regime. In January 1945, she was evacuating 10,000 German citizens ahead of the soviet Invasion when (albeit ironically) a Soviet Submarine spotted them, and fired three torpedoes. The ship was on the freezing cold Baltic Sea, and the davits (ropes) for the lifeboats had frozen over."
"Not only that, but the ship was only meant to carry 2,000 people normally. These two factors, coupled with the harsh angle the ship was sinking at, meant only half of the lifeboats could be deployed. 9,400 people drowned to death that night, and nobody knows about it."
TheNonbinaryWren
I See You
"Your eyes have a separate immune system than the rest of your body, and if your normal immune system ever learns about your eyes, it will target them and you'll go blind."
hiruko_uchiha
Oh my eye. How do we protect them? As if I don't have enough stress.
Launched
"Penguins can launch their poop out of their butts like 5-6m far."
Bela_hrn
Despair
"Cotard's delusion, also known as walking corpse syndrome, is a neuropsychiatric disorder in which the person is in eternal damnation. They literally believe they are dead or dying [or don't have organs], the amount of despair is unimaginable and simply can't be grasped by people not suffering from it."
SweetTimpaniofLogic
'hard problem'
"It may seem like we know a lot about the human brain, but our standard way of studying brain activity is an fMRI, where a single pixel contains over 3 million neurons. That is more than many vertebrate animals' entire brains. The truth is, we really have no idea how the brain gives rise to consciousness."
"Edit: Even if we somehow perfectly worked out all the neural correlates of consciousness so we could say a mental state happens if and only if some exact pattern of brain activity happens, we would still have the 'hard problem' of consciousness: Why do these physical processes give rise to raw subjective experience, rather than just happening 'in the dark?'"
zeugenie
2 Minutes...
"If your esophagus closes and you cannot swallow, you have about 2 minutes before saliva starts reaching your windpipe. It is not a long time, but it is long enough to panic..."
grat_is_not_nice
"I have Eosiniphillic Oesophagitis and have had food stuck in the oesophagus for up to 24 hours before. And it’s horrible. You don’t realise how much saliva you swallow, to be constantly choking and vomiting that back up isn’t the best experience!"
AwayFollowing554
Get Lucky
"You’ve probably been closer to dying multiple times in your life then you even know. Just got lucky, or unlucky depending on who you are."
GingeBeardManBro
Well that's enough to disrupt sleep for life. Thanks y'all.
If you or someone you know is struggling, you can contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).To find help outside the United States, the International Association for Suicide Prevention has resources available at https://www.iasp.info/resources/Crisis_Centres/
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The best stories are ones with exciting plot twists.
But the next best type of stories are the ones that continue spiraling out of control.
Curious to hear examples of this, Redditor _Mitnix_ asked:
"What's your best 'oh you thought this was bad, it gets worse' story?"
It's story time. You may want to buckle up.
It All Started With A Cat
"This is a long one, but I promise it's worth it:"
"A buddy of mine was cat-sitting for a friend of his while the guy was out of town on a vacation. My buddy didn't have a car, so the dude told him that if he needed to go out and pick up more cat food or anything, he could borrow the car."
"At the time, my buddy was living right down the street from this guy, staying at his parents' house. So my buddy was just going over for a few hours each day to feed the cat and keep it company, then going back home."
"Meanwhile, he's also been flirting with this woman online. She lives several states away, but he feels like they seem to be getting pretty serious. So he decides to take some liberties, really push the envelope on where he'll pick up cat food from, and he takes his friend's car on a little multi-state road trip."
"This is insane, right? Just atrociously bad judgement, especially since someone does need to feed the cat. To solve this, he left his parents a note. It read, 'I am camping in the woods behind our house. Please go over to ____'s and feed his cat. I'll let you know when I'm home.'"
"Boom. Problem solved, right?"
"Except that the 'woods behind our house' are about 20 yards deep. It takes less than five minutes to walk through them and come out into the neighboring housing development. So his parents went looking for him, calling out for him, and couldn't find him. They got worried and contacted a family friend, a local police officer. He subsequently got a hold of the fire department. There was a full-on search party combing through about 1/50th of an acre of woods. Unsurprisingly, they were coming up with nothing."
"This was before cell phones were common, so my buddy was completely unaware that his plan had fallen apart. He was cruising along on his 12-hour drive, expecting to get to this girl's house just in time for dinner. Except he didn't have a GPS. So he got lost. Very lost. Like, by the time he turned up at this woman's house, it was almost midnight."
"When he got there, she was crying her eyes out. He assured her that it was okay, he was fine, wasn't hurt or in a wreck or anything, he'd just gotten lost. And she said, 'No, no, I wasn't worried about you. My dad just died in a motorcycle accident.'"
"So he bailed on his cat-sitting duties, stole a car, and inspired his parents to file a missing-persons just so he could awkwardly watch a woman cry for a few hours and then drive back home."
– GavinBelsonsAlexa
The Beekeeper's Nightmare
"I will try to keep it short. I am a beekeeper. My 3rd year of beekeeping, I suddenly developed a severe allergy to bee stings. It was spring and I was installing bees for the beginning of the season. I was up to the last hive, went to install that package of bees and one stung me right in the top of my head."
"I finished up a few minutes after and went up toward the house to do some other things. I started feeling flush and I could feel my heart racing. After I few minutes I realized I was having an anaphylactic reaction."
"If you’ve never had one, aside from the physical symptoms, they also say you will get a feeling of impending doom. That was spot on. I absolutely felt I was going to die and people do die from these reactions."
"So I am now in the house and desperately searching for Benadryl of which I have none. I am also having trouble breathing, my body is going haywire and I feel like I’m going to black out shortly."
"I call my mom, who lives an hour away, to call 911 because I feel like I will be unconscious soon. She says okay, phone rings 30 seconds later. It’s my mom, she goes 'I called 911 but they said you have to call'. This was my first wtf."
"So I call and it’s a very typical 911 call she is trying to keep me talking and I essentially started vomiting and she is still on the line and I am waiting and waiting for this alleged ambulance."
"A full half hour goes by. At this point I am actually coming out of the reaction. So I go to sit at my kitchen counter. I’m still on the line with the 911 dispatcher. I see the ambulance pull up and I say, oh they’re here. She’s like great, are you okay? I’m like yes and then she says goodbye and hangs up."
"I see the EMTs outside but my driveway has a gate so they are just standing there and they ring the bell on my gate and I am just looking at them, dumbfounded. Like I called for an emergency over a half hour ago, and they’re gonna roll up here and ring my bell and wait for me to come out when I more than likely could be unconscious or dead on the floor."
"I literally had to go out and let them in. Then they basically talked me in to going to the hospital to get checked out. Another huge mistake because this took place in the 2 months in my entire life when I didn’t have health insurance. So I ended up paying $4000 for a late ambulance and some IV Benadryl and epinephrine."
"Oh which also reminds me, a paramedic also showed, put the IV in when I agreed to go to the hospital. Then I felt something dripping and turns out he put it in my artery rather than a vein and it was just pushing the fluid out of the IV."
"0/10 would not go through any of that again…but I did 10 years later when I had another anaphylactic reaction due to a bee sting. However this went a lot smoother and I had epi-pens and a responsive ambulance."
– soline
Oil Everywhere
"Arrive home from work, my house reeks of oil."
"Go in the basement, and there's a pool of oil, with my stuff floating in it. The oil filter on my burner rotted out (it was defective and recalled, but the tech never bothered to notify me or replace it). Call up the tech, he throws a new one, charges me the emergency call fee, and advises I call HO insurance before running away (it was his fault, I didn't know it yet)."
"This was February in NY, about 13F out, and obviously the burner wasn't on while sitting in a pool of oil. But, they get there pretty quickly soak it up, and get things running so my pipes don't freeze."
"Only way to get the smell out is to dry clean everything I own, then shampoo all the carpets, run deodorizers, etc. Takes weeks. Had a headache the whole time."
"Turns out, my basement has cracks, most of it leaked through. They had to cut out my foundation and dig out the contaminated soil."
"Oil in soil means DEC gets involved. Whole new can of worms as they now had to monitor the process, test at every step. Big enough deal I have a spill number in their database."
"A 20 yard dumpster, with 20 yards of oil soaked sand, is so heavy that it broke through my driveway, destroying it. They did that twice, took out my entire driveway."
"Remember how I said this was in February? March brought the COVID shutdown."
"I spent over a year with my basement in shambles, holes in my driveway, plastic sheets taped up, no washer/dryer, and all sorts of equipment kicking around."
"The next spring, they're back and working, and screwed everything up. Not going to get into every detail, but after a big fight, I managed to get rid of them and bring in a new company to fix their screwups and finish the job. Old crew got very difficult when the new crew requested permits and reports. Turns out, they never bothered. Had to do all that before they could start working again."
"New company dropped a storage crate on my yard to store my stuff while working, destroyed my grass, took out a sprinkler, took out my neighbor's driveway curb, got concrete all over my brickwork, but at least the nightmare was finally over."
– MyNameIsRay
These Redditors have been dealt with some major blows.
People who say that things will always get better, are partially right. Things do come around, eventually.
But you never know how many curve balls life has to throw at you until there's a resolution.
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Never miss another big, odd, funny or heartbreaking moment again.
Life is full of disappointments. We lose out on a job opportunity or the one designer article of clothing we really wanted is not available in our size.
But we go on.
But the biggest letdowns are the ones we never see coming but must contend with.
Redditor Frequent-Pilot5243 asked:
"What is a depressing truth you have made peace with?"

No matter how much you prize a friendship, not all of them are for forever.
Here Today, Gone Tomorrow
"A friendship you thought would last forever can end in an instant."
– Febreze4200
The Best Mate Who Quit
"My best mate of 20 years, said that he didn’t want to be my best man and just said he didn’t want to be my friend any more. Hurt like hell."
– Gavindasing
It's Okay To Let Go
"Sometimes people you care deeply about will choose to drop out of your life and all you can really do is have the grace to let them."
"edit. to everyone struggling with being left behind, and to everyone struggling with having to be the one to leave- I hope the pain eases for you soon."
– girlloss
Restarting The Process
"I have a really hard time with this one. Every friendship I've had in my adult life has only lasted a couple years tops. Rarely a falling out or anything, but just drifting apart or sh*t happens type deal. It's hard for me to make friends in the first place because I'm pretty shy, so having to regularly restart that process is really discouraging. Right now I don't really have any friends because I've just kinda given up trying."
– plebeian1523
The harsh reality of losing the people we love hits home for these Redditors.
Grandpa Time
"My grandpa just wanted to get to know me and the man I was becoming during his last year of life. Which I was too young and too selfish to realize."
– MrMunky24
Lost Opportunity
"Yeah, this hits home. I spent 90% of my childhood with my grandparents. I was at their house almost everyday. When I got into my teens and obviously found friends, discovered women, all that stuff and then I just stopped seeing them. They’re both gone now and they died with the memories of me as a child. Although they seen me sometimes while I was older, they didn’t know me because I didn’t give them the chance."
– Loud-Distance-1456
In Grief
"My dad passed away 6 weeks ago and I will NEVER see, hear, chat or get to hug him ever again & that forever is a long time."
– somethinggood19
These sobering facts were huge disappointments.
Truth About CPR
"This is coming from a firefighter:"
"If you have to perform CPR on them, it's most likely over for the patient."
"I'm not sure if I've made peace with it completely, but I've accepted it at least."
– Rukhnul
The After Effects
"I've taken CPR training twice in the past 10 years. The instructors were so completely different... The second one flat out told us 'you're giving them about a 15% chance of living, and even if they live, they will probably have some kind of severe trauma that will dramatically decrease their quality of life.' Wow..."
– DavidAg02
Despite Having Good Intentions...
"No one is coming to help."
– _meddlin_
That Train Has Left The Station
"I'm aging nonstop."
– insaight
Innocence Is Gone
"My childhood is gone, and I have no good memory from that phase of my life."
– anonymoose_mrx
No matter what, life goes on with or without us.
The best that any of us can do while we're passengers on this giant spaceship is to take life as it comes and pick up the pieces the best we can when things don't pan out as we'd hoped.
Sometimes, it's about celebrating the small victories–like finally finding a store that has your shoe size.
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People Describe The Times Someone Mocked Them For Being Wrong But They Were Actually Right
The truth matters.
Something one would think was a given in modern society.
Yet all over the world, there are people so unbelievably stubborn, that they simply refuse to believe the facts.
Sometimes even when presented with evidence.
This could be for something menial, such as refusing to believe that a cotton candy was actually invented by a dentist.
But sometimes, refusing to believe the truth could have serious consequences, up to and including climate change, the effectiveness of masks, and the disproportionate amount of gun violence in the US.
Redditor Lady_Of_The_Water was curious about the many things, both frivolous and serious, people refused to believe were true, leading them to ask:
"Whats something someone thought you were wrong about and ridiculed you for it, but it turns out you were right?"
What's that smell?
"That there really was a gas leak in the apartment building."
"Thankfully, the fire didn't cause much damage."- yamsnavas2.
There's a reason the bill is so high.
"Our water usage at work went up a lot."
"They checked all the toilets, sinks for leaks, couldn't find anything."
"I mentioned that it seemed to coincide with the new water cooler system installation, maybe that should be checked."
"They basically laughed at me."
"That stupid water system never worked good and the guy came in 3 different times and said it was just the filter."
"Every month it needs changed???"
"Didn't seem right."
"Finally a different technician came in and result was it was never installed correctly."
"I asked, 'could that have anything to do with the increased water usage that started when this got installed?'"
" He smiled 'I wondered if anyone caught that, yes the valve was not correct and water has been running'."
"For 5 months!!"
"If only they had listened."
"Total redemption!"- McTee967.
Have you ever looked at a map?
"I had a coworker doubling down repeatedly, claiming that new Zealand is north of Australia."
"I even told her about how I had lived there and she just assumed I was such a huge idiot that I didn't know where on the globe I was living."
"Brought the smartphone out and put an end to that."
"Let me just say, it's ok to not know where all the countries are."
"The problem is if you heavily assert you are right and others are stupid."- PlopPlopPlopsy.
Is it supposed to hurt this much?
"My husband told me that I was a 'baby' about my IUD insertion and insisted that it wasn't painful."
"That my concerns about entrusting a stranger to shove a foreign object into my body were paranoid."
"I listened to him because really, the info you'd find online is overwhelmingly positive."
"Long story short: the provider placed it wrong, didn't check/fix it when I asked her to."
"I spent 4 years in pain that I eventually 'got used to."
"It expelled half way out my cervix, had to get it yanked out at the ER."
"That's when I was told that copper IUDs are notorious for breaking inside the uterus."
"Because it broke inside me."
"The cherry on top?"
"The female gyno with three kids I saw to get the broken piece removed told me that 'cervixes don't really feel pain' and that I didn't really need to remove it."
"Goes without saying, I was in severe pain for 2 weeks straight before this appointment."
"Tons of women came out with their stories about lawsuits over IUDs, how they got pregnant with an IUD."
" Stories similar to mine."
"And how women should really be offered anesthesia or pain pills for this procedure."
"And when my husband was surprised to learn about the pain I endured I reminded him 'You called me a baby and everyone else told me it was all in my head'."
"Which is why I didn't talk about it."- PopK0rnAndMMs.
Seems like you could learn something from me.
"In sixth grade chemistry a teacher asked us what element was a gas that was lighter than air, and extremely flammable/explosive."
"I grew up on science because of what my dad does for a living and Bill Nye."
"I knew about the Hindenburg, and so I was really proud of myself when I raised my hand and said 'Hydrogen'."
"The teacher laughed at me and said that no, it was Helium, and the entire rest of the class proceeded to laugh too."
"Almost three decades later I work in a lab now, and f*ck that teacher I was right."- vanyel_ashke.
The dictionary is your friend.
"I have worked as a translator and a proofreader."
"For one of my translations, it went something like 'and he piqued her interest'."
"My proofreader docked me for an inaccuracy and switched it to 'and he peaked her interest'.”
"I’m still salty."
"I tried to get the agency I was working for to remove this person as a proofreader since I question his/her command of the English language."
"Had a similar problem with the phrase “lynch pin” used metaphorically."
"I stopped working with that agency because it pissed me off so much being 'corrected' incorrectly."- spot_o_tea.
No, that's just an illusion.
"When I told my mom that the clouds were moving and she laughed like I was crazy."-
Did you even read the menu?
"I was in the passenger's seat at a Carl's Jr Drive Thru with a friend."
"He asked what I wanted and I requested the Fried Zucchini."
"He puts half his body through the window to the voice box and goes on this 'My friend here thinks you have some kind of food I know you don't have so I am just going to say it for laughs because you will get a kick out of this'."
"She wants FRIED ZUCCHINI' and starts laughing."
" Well guess who ends up eating fried zucchini."- User Deleted.
And how do you spell that?
"Believe it or not, the pronunciation of my own middle name."- ThePlantie.
We have standards in this community...
"Not me but my Mom tells a story about how she wrote a paper for school about how tough her small town makes it for any new people moving in."
"Basically if you didn't grow up there you were a social outcast for decades and were excluded from a lot of things."
"The teacher didn't agree so she got a bad grade and scoffed at."
"A few years later a news paper reporter essentially wrote the same thing and won a local award for calling out the same small town BS that was going on."- Jberg18.
It's pretty amazing that anyone in this day and age would jump to tell someone they're wrong without having any authority.
Particularly when someone can quickly look up the truth on their phone in less than a minute.
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