Loose lips might sink ships, but if these 12 secrets find their way into the world, they could submarine entire lives – and probably more than one.
Secrets often (usually) touch more than one person, so these will probably stay buried for a good long time.
Still, that doesn’t stop redditors from sharing stuff anonymously and making us all wonder aloud, “WTF?!?!!”
12. No one believed her.
When I was 17 I was gang raped after a party, the cops didn’t believe me, my parents didn’t believe me, and everyone who I’ve told since has stopped talking to me. It was not pretty, I was cut up at a party… beaten and thrown in my car. They drove donuts in the grass field next to a church on a Saturday night, Sunday morning. f*cked up my car and left me battered and bruised in the back seat. I woke up initially when I was being raped (only think gang as I do remember multiple voices at this point) but then tried to keep myself awake long enough between blackouts by blasting music. So the cops found me at the wheel of my car with people lining up for church with f*cking metal blasting on repeat. I planned murders in retribution but decided it was better to just leave. The only proof I had was that I shat blood for a week but I felt so bad I couldn’t even show anyone. sh^tting when you have a rectal tear is a terrible thing. The thing that hurt the most was that no one believed me, I did make stories and lies but none to this extent.
11. I have no idea how he lives with himself.
I know this thread is most likely dead now, but I used to masturbate a lot. And when I was 10 I had a technique where I’d let off a load into a sock then wash it and quickly dry it, now I couldn’t leave it hanging outside or use a dryer otherwise my family would’ve seen it and probably smell it or whatnot. So I’d put it inside my gas heater unit. Unfortunately my sock had caught on fire inside the unit, blew it up and set my house on fire. Only my brother was home at the time, and he managed to survive the house did not. For 5 years we stayed from caravan park to caravan park whilst we waited for confirmation that it was not arson and we could receive an insurance payout. We eventually did and scr*ped together money to start rebuilding the house. The house is still being rebuilt to this day and it shames me anytime I have to visit my parents living in a tiny mobile home where my backyard once was.
10. Two equally disturbing stories.
I had something very similar happen to me, OP. We’ll call him Tim. Tim was my best friend, and he always came to me when he needed someone (his mom was bipolar and made his life really tough, and he didn’t know his Dad). We had two or three other suicide scares but we talked him out of it and brought him back from the edge. Well, this week he comes to school Monday and just seemed off. We tried to talk to him but he never really responded. Part way through the week, he calls me and asks if he can stay at my place, that he can’t stand his Mom. I ask my Dad and he says no, saying that Tim needs to deal with his problems at home. I explain to Tim what the situation was and he says ok and hangs up.
That Friday, I notice that he seemed different at school, and I had a really bad feeling about it. He didn’t even seem there. I tried to talk to him or something but he just wasn’t himself. After school, another friend brought him home at the end of the day, and he was the last person to see Tim alive. I got a call later that night that he had hung himself.
It’s been two years and I still regret not helping Tim, I feel like there was something I could have done. It just sucks that I couldn’t help him that time, and that’s all it took for him to slip away.
Thing number two:
My cousin has let me feel up her breasts for the past three years (we started when she was 13 and I was 16). We never did anything else, never below the belt or anything, and we never talked about it. I’ve since stopped doing it by avoiding being alone with her so neither of us try something, but we never talk about it. If that came out, I probably wouldn’t be able to face that side of the family ever again. I get nervous going to family gatherings sometimes because of what they don’t know.
9. A secret from down under…
After graduating from high school, I went to a small out-of-state college where no one from high school knew me. I was told many times how impressive my false Australian accent was, so I decided it would be great fun to go through college pretending to be from Australia.
All of my friends and even my girlfriend of two years think I’m Australian. I have a completely F*ke Australian identity, family, and past.
I will soon be graduating, and I plan on asking the girl to marry me. Everything she knows about me is Australian I don’t know how to tell her she doesn’t really know me.
Guess I’m forever a bloke.
8. Yeah that guy is not your friend.
Not ruining my life, but my single secret. This will get buried, but that’s fine.
I was about 23 and was working kind of late. My friend wanted to go out and was bugging me about it. He’s gay, I’m not… But eventually he talked me into it. So we go to a little dive bar and are hanging out, just chatting. A couple of friends were supposed to come too, but they never showed up. I was nursing my first gin and tonic when I went to the bathroom. I came back and finished my drink, and that’s when things started getting fuzzy.
I knew something was wrong so I ordered water for my second drink. But it didn’t work. My world was spinning, and I had basically lost control of my motor functions. My memory is pretty rough too. I remember my head on the bar, and he was rubbing my crotch. I remember him helping me to his car, dragging me up his stairs, passing out on his floor, him blowing me… I was back in his car at one point and then I woke up in my bed. I felt like sh^t and was totally surprised that my car was in the driveway. I have no idea how I got home. At one point in the night I left an incoherent voicemail on my best bud’s phone.
So I was raped, and I was so embarrassed, he totally got away with it. I’ve never told anyone, not even my wife. She knows something happened, just not the extent.
7. There is no good part of this story.
When I was six, back when SNES was all the rage, I remember watching my older brother playing his game. He loved it. So much so that when I went to play it, he would only let me play it if I sat on his lap. So I did, because I was so desperate for my brother to love me (he always bullied me, especially when he would babysit me) and I was so happy that he was hugging me and treating me like a sister. One day, we brought the system up into my room. He told me I could only play if I was naked. I said ok. He then took off his pants and laid me on the bed. I remember saying to him that I wanted to play the game. He said ok, but only if he could poke me. So I tried to play the game, but he kept bumping into me and shaking me. He got angry and yanked the controller from my hand and told me to close my eyes and that I could play again later. So I did. He just kept going. And then he stopped.
This happened as a weekly thing. Sometimes he would let me play, others he would force me to just lay there. He stopped having s^x with me when I was seven and a half and he left to go live with my dad. I never realized what had happened until my mom had the talk with me when I was ten. I didn’t tell her because everyone loves my brother and I wanted him to love me. To this day, no one knows about this in my family except for me. We talked about it once when I was eighteen and graduating. He apologized and all what I could ask him was if he loved me, ever. He didn’t say a word. I asked him why he did it. He asked me if I ever told anyone. I said no and I repeated my question. He said he couldn’t tell me why and then left. He killed himself a week later. I still feel as though if I never asked him, if I never brought it up, if he would still be alive. The f*cked up thing is that I would do anything, even letting him have his way with me, if it meant he was alive. Now the most f*cked up part. Let us flash forward to a few months ago (just about to hit ten years after his suicide). My dad found a letter my brother had written, in an envelope, tucked away in my dad’s attic with all of my brothers belongings. My dad didn’t open it. Just handed it to me as it was addressed to me. “I did it because I love you.”
Edit: so since posting this, for one, I wanted to say thank you for the sympathy. For the first time in a few months, I was able to I guess breath easier. I told my husband. Actually, I showed him this. He knew mine right away (side note: never use your husbands nick name for you as a screen name…duh) and shipped my son to his mother’s for the weekend so he can take me to tell my family. So this, right here, is directed at him since he doesnt seem to get it.
I don’t want to. I don’t want to destroy my family. I already caused my brother to kill himself and I will not give my mother a heart attack. f*ck you right now, Eric, for not understanding me.
6. He should be in jail.
When I was 13 I caught my father in bed with my 15-year-old brother’s girlfriend (also 15).
I haven’t seen her since, but I’ve been blackmailing my father with it for the last 6 years.
5. I think they should have told their mom.
Honestly, I’ve kinda been waiting for a thread like this to come up. None of my friends know any of this, and I don’t want to tell them. Not so much a lack of trust as their inability to understand.
So, when I was in middle-high school my mom, sister, and I were living with my stepfather (better school district from where I was). Everything was fine for a few years, but he got… crazy. Whenever my mom left for work my sister and I were left alone with him until he left (he worked second shift). First he’d start with yelling at us for no good reason. A reason, yes, but never a good one, it was always insignificant. Needless to say, my sis and I were scared sh^tless when this happened.
Things escalated from there. He’d start hitting us, almost every day. Again, always over something insignificant. A good example was when I hung one of his shirts with the hanger hook facing left instead of right. It got to a point several times where he’d actually grab whichever one of us happened to be in his way and hold us off the ground, against the wall, by the throat.
To make it clear, my mother knew about none of this. The man knew how to hit you so it didn’t leave a mark, and he is an obscenely good liar. Any time we tried to call him out to her, he’d lie his way around it. The only time that other side came out around her, he blamed it on his heart medicine.
My sister moved out when she turned 18, but I still had three years left. So now all of his anger was directed at me. One time in my senior year, I was actually scared for my life and ran off into the woods next to the house until my mom got home. She finally believed me then, and we made plans to leave as soon as I graduated. She told him she wanted to leave, and he of course decided that I was costing him his marriage. Those last few months were hell, but in June of last year we moved. I’m now in college, safely away from him.
While I bear no malice against him, I will not forgive the sh^t he put me through. Also, it feels wonderful to finally get this off my chest and tell it to someone, even if nobody reads this.
4. I mean…why, though?
I have been pretending to be colorblind to everyone I have ever known, including my own parents since I was in 3rd grade.
I am now 28 years old. I even convinced an optometrist of it.
3. Short but shocking.
My grade 6 teacher let me touch her bo*bs once.
That was fun.
2. What about your real family, though?
I’ve pretty much been a f*ckup all my life. when I told someone I was suicidal, they talked me out of doing it, but I laid on them a bullsh^t story about being abused as a child, and just generally made myself seem so pitiful and helpless, they took me in to their home and treated me as one of the family: fed me, clothed me, everything, and never once asked me for anything in return.
I still live here with them 10 years later, I work in the garden and help the 5th grader with homework, I do all the grocery shopping and cooking and I live here like this all based on a pack of lies. I guess I am mentally ill somehow, but I don’t know if I can ever get better w/o telling someone the truth. It makes me feel sweaty and sick in my stomach to even think about telling anyone this story.
Edit: since some people are asking, I will add some more info: I used to have a good job in a successful business and a fiance I wanted to spend the rest of my life with, until I found out alcohol was more important to her than anything else. She broke up with me rather than break up with booze and I was completely devastated. I used to spend 30 minutes or more each day at work hiding in the walk-in refrigerator and crying. I talked to everyone about the situation, the consensus was that I should just forget her and go bang some hot bitches to get over it, but I just couldn’t. After a few weeks I walked out of work in the middle of the day and went home to take a shower. I started taking showers like 6 times a day and started planning how to kill myself. When I met someone who was sympathetic, it was just easier to play the part of a helpless victim who had been done wrong in so many ways that I needed to be rescued and taken care of rather than take responsibility for making my own situation better.
I am having a panic attack about typing and posting this.
1. Get out however you can.
My husband beats me every day.
He also forces himself on me often.
I think about suicide daily.
I feel as though my life would be ruined if people knew, not ruined in a way that a lot of these other stories would ruin someone…but it would ruin me enough.
I’m guessing it must have been therapeutic for these people to share, so I guess that’s good?
Do you want to share a terrible secret with us? We’re all ears in the comments!