25 Traumatizing Childhood Events That Messed People Up
1.
When I was around 6, I saw my uncle's friend feed his shit to his dog. Told me to keep quiet about it, later on, he was dry humping the same dog.
2.
One lunchtime in 1st grade there were some boys in my class who were standing on wooden benches. They came up with a game where they'd take turns jumping over the decently sized gap between benches. These benches happened to have metal legs. One of the boys misjudged the gap and his leg hit the metal hard.
I don't know/can't remember how exactly it happened because I was only like 5, but the metal gouged out a huge bone-deep wound in his shin. I can still remember his screams, the brightness of the blood as it gushed over the concrete, and marveling at how white bones actually are.
4.
Watched a woman jump off of the Olive overpass in Seattle onto I5 when I was 10, a semi-hit her at 55. Etched into my brain.
5.
1st grade. We had a field trip to the local turkey/chicken farm. They also process the birds there. We are doing the tour and one of the birds is in the defeatherer (since learned this is called a picker) except this bird wasn’t dead yet. The worker pulls it out, kills it, and puts it back in.
6.
Saw this guy get hit by a bus, His body literally exploded from the impact. His head was recovered in front of my daycare center I was being walked to my mom’s car and I just see a bus and red liquid everywhere. F*cked me up a while.
7.
My dad cry at my grandfather’s funeral. Holy fuck. Never saw him cry before that. Very few times after. That moment is forever etched in my brain. I have feared my father’s death my whole life. Because if that can break him, I know it is gonna destroy me.
9.
A stray dog I fed sometimes, killed a cat and I wasn't able to save the poor kitten. Other than that I've seen a lot of animal corpses considering I grew up in a rural area/outskirts where there were a lot of stray animals in the wild.
11.
When I was 5, I woke up hearing my mom screaming like the world ended. I got up and ran to my parent's bedroom. I saw my mom, screaming and crying, in a bed covered in blood. I saw my dad projectile vomiting blood, blood was also coming out of his nose. I remember hearing my mom asking him to please wake up, she was trying to open his eyes. I don’t know for how long I’ve been watching this situation but I remember my older sister calling me into her bedroom, away from this very traumatizing situation. I remember my dog going crazy when he heard the ambulances and when the first responders came in.
My dad died later in the hospital. We still don’t know exactly what caused this. We do know my dad had a cerebral hemorrhage and organ failure due to an extreme loss of blood. I’m 27 years old right now and this still has me fucked up.
12.
Looking back now, it is probably as a 6-year-old watching a car hit my 3-year-old brother and send him flying into the air and splat down onto the road, and everyone screaming. I particularly remember the fear and pain in my dad's voice screaming "No!" Weirdly, I don't really remember feeling any emotions at the time but I do remember thinking why is everyone saying he's been run over when I clearly saw him flying into the air. Looking back I can see that the incident did affect me but maybe as a 6-year old I was too young to realize at the time.
My brother survived, BTW. He was in the hospital for months with broken legs and pelvis but completely recovered.
13.
My mother was sick throughout my childhood. I remember when I was a small child; I found her naked in bed- dead. I remember trying to wake her, checking her pulse, nothing. I refused to cry because I thought that was "brave", and I rummaged through her wallet because I thought I would need money to survive.
When I went to school the next day, I resolved to tell nobody, because I was afraid of their pity. My friend, who had stayed over that tragic night, had already told people though. Even my bully was sorry about the situation.
14.
I was walking to school on the same path as a teacher and family friend, she was just in front of me, when her ex-boyfriend runs up, shoots her in the head and then himself. He survived. She didn't. this was right in front of the connected high school. The entire school was sent home for the day, but I was a second-grader (7yo) and it really messed me up.
15.
I remember being young probably 7ish. My mom went into a seizure(she has epilepsy) and dropped to the ground in our living room foaming from her mouth. My dad literally just stepped over her like she was nothing but trash and left. I've never seen someone treat a human so coldly. It's the reason why I now work in healthcare.
16.
When I was about 5 years old my dad my brother and I were walking along the Mississippi River in southern Missouri. My dad suddenly started telling us we needed to go home right away but my brother and I wanted to stay longer. But then I saw what my father was looking at. A dead body. A man probably about 25-30 years old sitting on the ground his back against a tree and what looked like black vomit down his shirt. The body was purple and bloated. The tongue stuck out of his mouth a bit. It didn’t traumatize me at the time not realizing what was going on but it did a few years later when I was old enough to understand what I saw.
18.
Junkie brother freaking the f*ck out after being locked out of the house.
You'd be surprised how much it still hurts, even if your sibling stabbed you in the back over and over. Stealing money from the family. Asking you, a fourteen-year-old, for cash that you usually use for lunch. Even if all that, it still hurts you emotionally at the very core to hear them so lost. To hear them sobbing. To hear that they have nowhere to go. To hear that they're so sorry and would do anything to make it right.
It's also terrifying to hear them demolish property outside, to scream. To be an animal unhinged, driven by a basic need for more of a substance.
You know it's the right thing that has to be done. But it's difficult. Even more so when you have to convince your own mom she did the right thing.
19.
I was 13 when I found my best friend dead from suicide, the worst part about it was the people who pushed her to that point were laughing about it for a LONG time. My mom let me get a tattoo with my best friend’s name in a heart. But that’s a sight I won’t ever forget.
20.
When I was 4 and my mom was coming to pick me up from my Dad's house (split custody after divorce), his new wife nearly beat my mom to death on the front lawn with a wireless landline phone. All the while, yelling into the phone with 911 saying SHE was being attacked. I was in my mom's Mustang with the child locks on, couldn't get out to do anything. Just screaming to please not kill my mom. My dad wasn't even there, he was a doctor and always at work until evening.
My Mom ended up going to jail for "trespassing", despite her face being beaten to a purple mess while the new soon-to-be stepmom didn't have a scratch on her. My dad never believed me, ended up marrying the woman. We've never had a relationship since
21.
Witnessed an early morning solo car accident where the car split in half and the person was ejected. Out of fear of an explosion, I didn’t get too close to the car or person (who was dead at that point). The next day, I found out that “person” was an acquaintance and had the locker immediately next to mine in high school.
22.
My own face gashed open.
When I was younger, I tripped going full speed down a parking lot concrete hill & completely smashed my face & head. it was full of dirt, rocks, glass, etc as it also was a poorly done parking lot hill. I didn't feel a thing at first, but I touched my face and my hands were coated red. I guess I had too much shock and adrenaline to feel anything but of course seeing so much blood as a child I screamed and cried and almost passed out. I did run into the bathroom when I ran into my house before heading to the hospital; I remember looking at myself and seeing my face basically ripping apart. my nose was split wide open, forehead completely scraped off, lip busted open. scarred me for life seeing my own face like that.
23.
My cousin and I were six years old and we were outside playing. Her mom was handling a rifle and it misfired and hit her on the back of the head. She died instantly and I saw it all. She was alive one second and dead the next and it easily could have been me. My aunt was never the same and ended up letting diabetes kill her years later. My cousin’s sister was 1 at the time, so she used to ask me a lot growing up what her sister was like. The only solace I have is that her organs were donated, so there are a couple of people walking around alive nowadays with a remnant of her alive as well.
I am in therapy and finally addressing this, but I still shake when I talk about her and I’m 33 now
24.
My dad pushed my mom through a glass door. She tried to catch herself but her arms went thru the panels and she instinctively pulled her arms back thru. Blood EVERYWHERE. You could see her flesh hanging from the broken glass still left on the door. Totally thought I was watching my mom bleed out. She went into shock almost immediately. She kept saying, "I'm fine. This is going to be fine. " My dad didn't even call an ambulance. He was more worried about getting blood on his new car.
25.
When I was about 7 I saw a man fall down an escalator and crack his head open. There was so much blood everywhere and for years I thought he'd died and refused to use escalators. If I was forced onto an escalator, I'd end up having a panic attack or I'd be so scared that it took my 10 minutes just to put my foot on one.
My mom told me a few years ago that he didn't die, he had just badly cut his head and passed out but once the ambulance got there, he came to and went to the hospital to get stitches. She actually felt really bad because I had never told her that I thought he had died, she just figured seeing the guy fall was the only reason for my fear of escalators.
As an adult, I'd still rather take the stairs or a lift but I don't mind getting on escalators too.
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