It's bad enough running into a psychopath or sociopath––I've had a negative experience with a psychopath and I lived to tell the tale––but imagine actually being related to one. Consider the havoc such a person could wreak on family dynamics.
After Redditor xValkyx asked the online community, "Siblings of narcissists, psychopaths, or sociopaths, what's your experience?" people shared these rather unsettling stories.
Warning: Some sensitive material ahead.
"That same year..."
When I was 10, my mom put a lock on my door because my brother started threatening to kill me and my mom in the night. When I was 14, he fixated on my mom and threatened to burn down our house, shoot my whole family, and steal all the valuables and drive away. That same year, (he was 17), he took our car and ran away from home for two weeks. We ended up calling the police on him. When he came home, the police decided that it would be best if he lived somewhere else so he did. As we were cleaning out his room we found hundreds of knives, a hand gun, lighter fluid, gasoline and lighters.
"I was playing with a suitcase..."
I was playing with a suitcase while watching TV. I was small enough to fit myself in it. My brother, nearly four and a half years older than me, saw what I was doing and asked to zip me up in it. After already having learned to never trust him, I asked Mom to watch us to make sure he didn't do anything stupid.
He zipped me up inside the suitcase and started carrying it in a shuffle-step.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
I heard the sliding door to the enclosed patio open, Mom started screaming and I could hear her slapping my brother repeatedly. The suitcase fell over onto its side with me still in it.
I managed to pry open the zippers from the inside and got myself out of the suitcase as quickly as possible. Mom was still slapping at my brother, screaming "Why?!
I was two feet away from being dumped inside a suitcase into the family hot tub.
He laughed and said that I would have floated, what's the big deal?
So, yeah, that's what it was like growing up with a sociopath.
"My daughter..."
My daughter was hit by a drunk driver when she was 12 and nearly died. She was in a coma for two weeks and I was there all day every day, except to go home to shower and change. My sister decided that when I was at the hospital was the perfect time for her and her druggie girlfriend to jimmy the sliding door off the track, break in and steal everything she could find--jewelry, my camera, and yes, my daughter's piggy bank.
The b!tch stole the piggy bank from a comatose kid.
"When she threw a cup of hot tea..."
When she threw a cup of hot tea at my face because I refused to show her something on the computer. Or the time when she yelled at me for over an hour because I was really sick and had thrown up all over the bathroom sink. The same bathroom she had just cleaned.
I stopped speaking with her over 7 years ago.
"The things they say..."
It's interesting really. My mom died recently. When I called my sister to come down the day before she died she said "I thought she was going to die today. I'm not disappointed, but I can't keep missing work."
The next day I called her to come to the hospital again as the doctor and I made the decision to take her off the ventilator. On the phone she said "Well, can we pull out the tube as soon as I get there because I have plans tonight."
She also proceeded to ask me for rent money that day, as I also live with her.
The things they say, and don't realize how messed up it is is really baffling.
"I sometimes think..."
She called the cops and CPS, repeatedly accusing our step dad of child abuse. It usually lined up with her having rules and punishments. She didn't like that my parents did research on how to raise a psychopath that doesn't become a murderer, they suddenly knew all her tricks and tactics. I sometimes think about how sad it must be to be physically incapable of feeling human emotions, but it clearly would only hold her back.
"Lived an entire lifetime..."
Lived an entire lifetime not being aware that it isn't normal to run to your bedroom and hide when dad gets home. That it isn't normal to be scared of your parents reactions to, well, anything.
Becoming a mom and having little kids that I just looked at and knew.. I could never beat them up for picking a flower, or shame them for not knowing how to hang a shelf, or throw grubs at them if they come outside, or throw potato salad at them if they say they don't want any... yeah. It wasn't normal and only just now am I realizing all of that.
"Since then..."
I haven't spoke to my brother in 3-4 years. Last time I did he went after my wife and that was the last straw for me. Since then, my parents have cut him off, he lost his job, and his life has spiraled. Not sure what he is up to now but my quality of life has improved with him not in it.
"I'm not even totally sure..."
I'm not even totally sure of my older brothers diagnosis but several years ago I found out through his journal that he had an elaborate plan to murder me and had apparently attempted to before, but couldn't go through with it. His reasoning was mostly because I was mean to him as a child, but really he was the one cruel to me?? The part that really f*cks me up is that both my parents knew about his wish to kill me and never said anything to me, let us sleep under the same roof. They always coddled and treated him differently than me. He is severely mentally ill, likely a psychopath, has been in a mental hospital now for several years. I cut contact with my parents as soon as I moved out.
Do you have something to confess to George? Text "Secrets" or "
" to +1 (310) 299-9390 to talk to him about it.
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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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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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.
Nbc Jump GIF by SuperstoreGiphyHave 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.
Season 8 Teacher GIF by FriendsGiphyThe 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.
spelling GIFGiphyNo, 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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Watch where you're going!!
"Switch lanes without looking."- yamsnavas2.
But you're such an easy target.
"Criticize you and laugh like it’s common practice or just part of the conversation."- oneandahalfeggs123
Ha Ha Lol GIF by Pierce The VeilGiphyPeople just love me!
"Repeatedly telling everyone that you're 'such a good person'."
"If you have to constantly say that about yourself then you might not be that much of a good person."
"Kinda like the 'I'm a nice guy' situation."
"I had a team leader who would say that about herself."
"She's the reason everyone quit the team ,including myself."- grumpycoffeee.
"I'm right, you're wrong."
"Wildly overestimating their knowledge/competence, while also underestimating the competence of actual experts."
"'Everyone that works with ___ are so dumb, they should just do [this] and [this] but they only care about ___'"- chshcat.
know it all boomerang GIFGiphy"You're kind of in my way."
"Stand in the way of aisles, doorways, etc., then actually act offended that you dare say 'excuse me' when you need to get through."
"I get people sometimes loose track of where they are and don't mean to accidentally block access ways."
"But most people actually are embarrassed they did it and legitimately apologize and immediately get out of the way."
"Jerks however feel entitled to block the way and think you're the one imposing on them for asking them to move."- llcucf80.
"Cause you're there for me too..."
"They remember you are their friend only when they need you or need something from you."- SuvenPan.
Oops!
"Not apologizing when they found out they were clearly wrong."
"Destroying your property because they are entitled."- kitchen_clinton.
Ugh, can you believe him?
"When I meet someone who spends more than half their time complaining about other people they know."- ofsquire.
earth litter GIF by Lil Dicky"Hey, you!"
"The impatient finger snapping that some people do to get someone's attention such as in a classroom or when asking for the check at a restaurant, etc."
"It's just degrading to snap at someone like that and instantly puts a bad taste in my mouth."- Sixhaunt·
It's always a good idea to try to really get to know someone, and not resort to pre-judgement.
But sometimes, one single action can simply say it all.
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