When I was 7 my moms boyfriend was beating her to a pulp. I was sure he was going to kill her this time.
I wholeheartedly believed I could overpower him and save her so I grabbed a toy hockey stick and ran over. All it took was one measly swing from a scrany, malnourished kid and all his attention on me. That's all I got in before I realized how wrong I was, followed by watching my mom run out the back door. I knew in my heart she wasn't leaving to get help and I was right.
I've gone through a lot before and after that but I've never been more horrified than that very moment. I remember the horror leave me shortly after when I was certain I wouldn't see tomorrow.
This sounds like BS but is completely true. My mother once locked me in the attic for several months while my father was out of town. I was around 15 years old. There was a bedroom and bathroom, but no food. I survived on an unusually large container of Chichis Hot Salsa that my dad had gotten me for my birthday (it was my favorite snack) and a bottle of cranberry juice. I refilled the juice bottle with water from the sink. I went from ~160 lbs to under 100bs. Near the end I began experiencing seizures.
I will never forget the first meal I had when my dad got back into town. It was a sandwich from a pizza place, and I can still taste it clearly. It was heavenly.
I found my three year old unresponsive during a nap and knew he was dead, but had to try my best to comfort my wife as she broke down screaming while trying to resuscitate him. It's still hard to think about.
If this happens to someone you know, please let them know about SUDC (Sudden Unexplained Death in Childhood). It's like SIDS but for children older than 1 year. The SUDC Foundation has a website at https://sudc.org/ and provides community for parents, grandparents and siblings that have gone through it. In my case, having community might've been lifesaving.
Sorry to come across like a PSA, but March will be SUDC Awareness Month, and this post made me think of it. I'll be posting about it over in [email protected]. It's not exactly an upbeat Lemmy community, but I hope that it can help anybody else going through the same thing find the community they need.
Sorry about that. I couldn't imagine what that is like.
Never be afraid of being abrupt with something you want to get off your chest.
My son turns 3 next month and had no clue about SUDC. Thank you for sharing.
My heart goes out to you and your wife. I hope you both found some sort of peace.
My 2yo is having a bad day, so he's laying on me and watching the Nightmare Before Christmas. This was a hard 3 paragraphs to read; I'm sorry you, or anyone, had to go through that. I'm gonna hug my son now, until he's upset again.
Thank you for sharing. I am so sorry that you and your wife have had to endure this.
I appreciate the PSA…. my grandbaby is 3 and I literally, naively, thought “guess we’re out of SIDS territory” a while back.
Holy shit. I’m so sorry you had to experience this.
What is the actual cause if death tho, like does their heart just quit or some other essential process or organ just quits?
No one knows. It's a diagnosis of exclusion. It's a lot more common in infants (although still relatively uncommon), and significantly less common in kids. There are some types of conditions that you can't really tell at autopsy though. So if the heart suddenly starts beating out of whack or if someone had a seizure, there is not necessarily going to be evidence of that for you to know what happened, unfortunately.
My daughter dying.
I was on a church work camp trip at age 14 and while changing, one of the adults was filming me with a camera and the other kids in the room were laughing. I even went behind a door to cover myself and the pervert peeked the camera around it.
That was pretty horrific.
What the fuck. I mean, it's terrible already but to have the fucking balls to just do that out in the open???? The fuck??
In hindsight, absolutely.
He ended up getting caught because he put the original tape instead of the edited one in the church library by mistake. It was supposed to be an inspirational video of our church youth group going out and help people after a flood in the area.
Years later I ended up running into him at a shopping mall, and by this point I was about six inches taller than him and had a good physique. I got in his face and said "Where's your camcorder now, motherfucker?" It was pretty satisfying.
Fucking gross and disgusting
I would not be surprised if this happened in america
Yup, sadly when it comes to religion, there's a lot of pedophilia that just gets ignored or swept under the rug.
A stroke that should have killed me suddenly. While being in the worst shape of my life, on the ground with severe vertigo, projectile vomiting, and in the worst physical pain I'd ever been in, the horror really started when I closed my eyes to die and some how woke up...
I had no idea about life saving medicine or what happens when you're close to death and it's their job to save your life on a different kind of time where they tell you what is going to be done to you... It's really a treat being told that you're getting a spinal tap in the same 5 minute window that you get the spinal tap...
Possibly was listening to my sweet mom crying and softly begging my dad to stop raping her in the other room. I was in denial about it tbh. He was a verbally abusive man, but I never knew that it extended to anything physical. He was not shy about screaming at her in front of us kids, so I honesty didn't think I was correctly interpreting what I was hearing at the time. Both my patients were very quiet during this event. So I'm not sure how often it happened. I didn't help my mom or anything at the time like an asshole...I just wasn't sure what really happened.
It was only many years later when I stumbled across some PDF files of divorce paperwork where she stated that he would rape her. She chose much softer language in the paperwork, carefully avoiding the "r-word", but I knew she wasn't lying because of what I remembered. She did say that he often wasn't very physically "successful" at it, which I guess is a bit more comforting? Anyway, this absolutely and totally enraged me. I fantasized about ways I would torture this man. But alas I never did anything of use and continue to allow this man to speak to me and spend time with me. I'm an asshole for it, really.
Much less significant, but there was also a time where my brother repeatedly tried to record videos of me naked and didn't stop even after he got caught. That was such an intense violation of my privacy and permanently changed the way I feel about him and view him tbh. We have an ok relationship now, but I'll never forget it.
You’re not an asshole for “not doing anything”. You were a child. Even as an adult, it’s difficult to step up and make decisions like that against a parent, especially when he can physically overpower you and there are likely severe physical consequences as a result. It’s nice when you can, but it’s difficult and not easy. This is going to sound bad, but I feel it’s truth that it was not your job to step up and defend your mom. No child should ever have that as an obligation placed on them. I’m sure your mother doesn’t think that of you if she knew you knew this and had overheard what she went through. In fact, your mom would likely feel sadness for you having to be a part of that and assume she had to do something to protect you from being exposed to it. She did the best she could with what she had at the time as did you. Both you and your mother are victims (in different degrees, but still victims, nonetheless) and don’t forget that. A victim does what they can with what they have and there is no right or wrong about how they handle the unjust abuse they endure.
This is all on your dad for being the only asshole by not having a basic level of respect for another human being, his partner, the mother of his children. Additionally, exposing his children to that in the house they also lived in, to have to hear and know their own mother was being abused by their father, a man who was supposed to protect the family, not be the cause of something so horrific.
Your mom stood up to him eventually and that’s what matters most. I’m glad she’s out of that now as are you.
If you feel you need to, then you should cease contact with your dad, but that is a decision you should make for yourself depending on how you feel about everything. Of course with what little the rest of us know, we feel you should cease contact for your safety, but you know the bigger picture and are best equipped to make that decision for yourself. Don’t feel bad if you do feel he deserves forgiveness and his child still in his life because you have decided that. That’s your decision to make and no one can or should fault you for that decision you make for your life.
I hope you and your mother are doing better now. I’m sorry for all the pain you two endured as a result of this and your other experience. I’m doubly sorry that you are hard on yourself, which I don’t feel is warranted.
Thank you for your kind words. One of my siblings did end up going no contact with my father, actually. I don't really agree with the particular way he went about it (long story), but I more than support the outcome tbh.
Honestly, I feel like there was an opportunity I had during the divorce where it would have made sense for me to go no contact with him. But he was very good at trying to make me feel bad for him at the time (I mean, we are all only human after all), and he even went and unprompted bought me a fucking car. I actually was going to refuse it, but was convinced otherwise. Through the years I've found that the interactions between my father and I can be mutually beneficial in their own ways, though I feel bad at times because I view what he did as unforgivable honestly.
We moved across the country from him and it has been nice that way for several years...I only see him a couple times per year. The frustrating part is he plans to move to my part of the country when he retires next year. I've repeatedly tried to reiterate to him that I am not going to suddenly see him every week because he moves here, but he doesn't seem to get the message. Honestly I'm at a loss as to what to do when that eventually occurs. Part of me kind of wishes he'll die before then so I won't have to worry about it.
Anyway, I know you didn't ask for that, but I appreciate the time you've taken and the words you've spent.
When I was a teenager I saw someone bleed out.
My friends and I were hanging around downtown at the phone booth outside the all ages club. My hometown had a lot of historic buildings downtown with stuff like the original windows.
One of my friends said bye and began walking home, he rounded a corner and we thought that was all we'd see of him that night.
Not five minutes later he came running back around the corner to the phone booth to call an ambulance, his hands covered in blood.
As he had been walking home, a tweaker had broken into one of the local old machine shops. As he was walking by, the tweaker was caught by a janitor trying to huff gas from one of their tanks, and he jumped through the front window to escape.
My friend was walking by just as this happened. As the tweaker went through the window, because it was 100-year-old glass it came off in huge chunks and sliced the tweakers jugular. My friend tried to staunch the bleeding, an adult in a car stopped, took over, and told him to go call 911.
Shortly we were all crowded around about 15 feet from the scene waiting for the ambulance to show up. It took the ambulance about 10 minutes to get there and the tweaker was long dead by that time.
A runner up is working on a freeway median cleaning crew and finding the aftermath of an Amazon truck that had crashed. All the packages had been spread out all over and clearly someone had come after and looted a bunch of it.
I looked it up, and the driver had died in the crash. I'm not sure if Amazon ever bothered to clean up any of it, I was working for the state and we cleaned up what we reasonably could, but many of the packages were untouched and so we moved on without adding them to the trash pile.
Probably the time when I got arrested for defending myself against a bully in highschool. I thought those pigs were gonna murder me, but luckily, they seems to be enjoying their donuts (figuratively speaking, idk if they were actually eating donuts) so they didn't really do much physical harm, but I had to spend like 6+ hours at a police station with other juveniles whom did things more serious than what I did, they did things like robbing people on the street, and one kid said he was there after he got caught trying to steal a car (My internal thoughts were like: wtf lol 🤣 that's wild). Like these kids don't even look like career criminals, just stupid kids that needs help. They held like 5 or 6 of us in the same room half of the size of a normal classroom. Like... that should be a fire hazard, but again, pigs being pigs. The whole time was psychological torture.
Anyways, charges were eventually dropped. But they did a good job converting someone to anarchism.
Fuck the school admin for siding with the bully
Fuck the police for doing zero investigations and just taking the school admin for their word
ACAB
Mom beaten by my dad during childhood. Images I could not describe that only Alzheimer could take away.
Carbon monoxide poisoning when I was like 8 or 9... Just chilling out at a relative's house, then I just blacked out, next thing I knew there was cold air blowing at my face and I was outdoors. I've experienced other terrible things but this is probably the closest "near death" experience I have so...
Something similar, but far from identical, happened to me.
I had a nosebleed that wouldn't stop. IIRC, when it was over, the doctor said that it was normal to have sixteen units of blood and I was down to twelve.
As a result, before it was over, I passed out ... I think four times. Each time was only for a few seconds, but was an interesting experience. I've never passed out like that before, so I didn't know what was happening the first time; however, each subsequent time, the experience was consistent enough that I could warn the medical staff. The nurses apparently found that a bit amusing.
First, the world would go all purplish, then greenish, then the greenish world would go all wibbly, then I would be an alien mechanic working on a spaceship, then I would be awake with no awareness of the transition to or from. I recall the world going from purple to green looking kind of like a CRT that badly needed to be degaussed.
Also, when it became clear the nosebleed was going to be a lot, my wife gave me a giant mixing bowl to hold under my nose for the drive to the ER. I walked in holding it under my face, which rather alarmed the guard in the waiting room.
The staff didn't really take me seriously until the first time I passed out, so once I was admitted I spent a while waiting. While I was waiting and simply dripping into my giant mixing bowl, I voiced a comparison to how the demons communicate in Supernatural. One nurse acknowledged me, but sadly, no one laughed.
edit: This wasn't a horrific thing, which is why I didn't add it at the top level. I don't love blood, but it doesn't bother me, and passing out (while obviously not a good thing) was kind of euphoric in the moment. Each time I woke up I remember coming about with a relaxing sense of "everything is going to be okay." If it hadn't happened in a hospital, it probably would have been scarier.
OC, what you described sounds frightening and horrific in hindsight. I'm glad it didn't go worse.
I used to be a transportation manager and oversaw drivers who would drive older adults with developmental disabilities to and from their home and the day care facilities they would attend.
One afternoon, one of the drivers called me and was in a panic saying that she had called the paramedics because one of her passengers had passed away in the van on the way back home. She had pulled off to the side of the road while waiting for paramedics to get there with the rest of the people in a not so great area. Thankfully most of the gangs in the area knew us and wouldn’t bother our population, probably defend them if something happened, but I still wanted to get there and help out any way I could so they could get on with their day.
I got there and the van, one of those long 15 passenger vans, was parked on the corner and all of the people were standing on the curb with the driver and the police and paramedics were there.
We got another couple drivers to come take the rest of the people with them so they could go home, but this driver, this was her personal van. Like she owned it and contracts with us to use it, so she didn’t want to leave it unattended.
The police had confirmed that the woman had passed away and was still in the van. She was in the very backseat in the middle between two other passengers. One of the passengers had to literally crawl over her dead body to get out of the van.
So I told her to get into my truck and we’d just sit there and wait for the coroner.
We sat in my truck for hours and just stared at the back of that van, all the while only we knew there was a dead person sitting in there. She didn’t want to go anywhere to make sure no one stole her van so I just sat there with her and we talked for a while.
It was about 5 hours when a Honda Odyssey van pulled up and a bunch of guys in suits got out. We greeted them and they got inside and put the woman’s dead body into one of those bags you see on TV. I remember when they were pulling the bag out and I remember hearing it drop on the concrete. It’s such a weird sound to hear and like nothing you’ve ever heard or experienced.
People were now crowding on the streets as it was obvious what was going on now.
The driver just couldn’t take it and turned around and I held her while I faced the whole thing. They put her in the back of this van and drove off.
Last part was to take the van back to her house but obviously she didn’t want to drive it back so I let her drive my truck and I drove that van back to her house. The whole drive was just so creepy. The rear view mirror had a perfect position on that particular seat the whole ride and I just couldn’t get over the fact that someone literally just died there a few hours ago.
I made sure to give her a few days off and rearranged my schedule because that was enough for me and I wasn’t even the one driving when it happened, so I couldn’t imagine what she was going through. And not just for her but the safety of the others, it seemed best to have her take some time to recoup before returning.
Just one of the creepiest experiences of my life.
I remember hearing it drop on the concrete. It’s such a weird sound to hear
Other than my parents and some pets, I've never interacted with a dead body. However, before I met my wife, she worked in mortuary sciences (I don't know her title or anything, but she reconstructed and prepared cadavers in the back of a funeral home).
Based on the stories she's told me (as well as her stating this directly), when a dead body is out of view of its former loved ones, it often gets very little respect, such as you described here. To be fair, some of that is by necessity (to keep the body presentable) but sometimes it's due simply to the situation being mundane for the workers.
Also, it's very surprising to me that it took five hours for the pickup. Both of my parents' deaths were somewhat anticipated, but pickup was very prompt both times. That said, it was in a smallish town, so that might be related.
Someone died under train I was on, I was passenger and haven't seen it but I did feel when train ran over them.
Harnessed to a large windsurfing sail, I found myself caught between the sail and the water in light rain, close to a reedy shore, out of nowhere.
Probably that time I saw a dead bloated body floating down a tropical river. He must've been there in the sun a while.
Lime jello with sliced black olives
I didn't actually "see" this happen, but I did experience it, and there are a few people who know this story.
I came across someone who had prepared to do a large search around a large wooded area I had access to. I came up to him about it, and he said the family had lost a dog and was going to find it, and I offered to help. The wooded area was something like a park and had a lot of twists and turns, a lot of weird divergences and convergences. We were to call or text each other if we found the dog.
At one point, we came across one of the last places we could possibly look. One part of the path forked in one direction and the other in another direction. I took the path on the right and he took the path on the left. Part way down my path, I got a text saying he found the dog, and I thought it was a time for joy and was like "oh good". Not ten seconds later, I heard what sounded like one of the most agonizing screams I ever heard. Naturally I was startled, and it turned out the dog had rabies and it was in the active stages. I still don't know how the man is doing now or even if he made it.
If another example of something horrific is desired, there is probably something even more horrific than that hiding under everyone's nose here. I have two friends, which I call my best friends and which are the only two people I can call friends in every sense of the word, and they are avid spelunkers (the term for cave exploring, both the supervised, regulated kind and the spontaneous kind), a hobby which I mention often was taught to them by my grandfather but which I could never get into (though they have achieved a few world records with their exploration). Some crazy shit happens in cave environments, and a massive amount of complaints have piled up regarding how many of the individuals who need rescuing (both the successfully rescued and supposedly the unrescued) end up saying the last two people they saw are the two best friends of mine (who are spoken of as potentially lured certain circumstances in motion, sometimes with everyone indirectly knowing each other somehow), with the friends on the other hand never having ever needed any kind of external help for anything. They aren't said to have broken any rules in of themselves, but the idea all these people have all these tragedies they could even cite (which they then associate with my friends, as well as saying theft have also occurred) is scary to think about. Like imagine, from their point of view, witnessing the end results of so many tragedies in full horror, and somehow the thought comes to mind that none of it is an accident.
Apart from physical injuries, I believe rabies is quite preventable with a shot after being attacked?
It depends on how long you wait and where you are bitten. The further a bite is from the brain, the longer you have to live, and the larger a mammal is, the longer it takes for the rabies to develop (so, for example, a whale bitten on the tail will take almost a decade for the rabies to develop and kill it).
However, even then, the shots aren't just a one-time ordeal. You need to find a way to get a shot a day for I think twenty or so days before the rabies affects the brain. Remember that these are vaccines. There are no cures, you can only race against time to prevent it (or you can vaccinate yourself before there is any reason to fear, which is common in certain occupations).
Unless your circumstances are generous, like if you got bitten in a lucky spot with a lenient amount of rabies and then rushed immediately to the hospital, your chances of surviving are next to zero. The reason bat bites mean certain death is because they always bite on the neck, with people who don't know the signature thorn-like feeling of a bat bite not realizing they were bitten fast enough to react in time (so yeah, if you feel a thorny sensation while walking at night, call someone immediately).
