27 People Reveal The Secrets That Could Ruin Lives

If I’ve learned anything from my true crime obsession, it’s that literally every person, and every family, has secrets.

Well, that and you should always, always lock your doors.

But I digress.

We all have secrets, but they’re not all created equal. Which is something these 27 folks know for sure, because they’re holding tight to ones that could absolutely upend their lives – and the lives of others, too.

27. If more Americans knew this they would be more excited to learn a second language.

I speak two languages so every time I received a new essay I would browse the topic in my own language and translate the text word-by-word to English then submitted it.

No one ever caught me for plagiarism before.

26. Kids and money, man. Sheesh.

Ok, so this is a secret I’ve kept for nearly 20 years.

During the summers when I was growing up, my parents would often leave my brother and I(I’m male) with our aunt and uncle who lived out in the country. It was great as they had 4 sons of ages close to ours so we had a lot of fun doing kids stuff.

One summer when I was 8, the oldest cousin was maybe 16. We somehow got talking and he asked me if I wanted to sleep in his room that night. He has the nicest room and bed so I was all for it. Got into bed and he asked if he could touch my p*nis. I was 8 and just thought it was ok so I let him. He rubs it for a bit and then asks me to do the same to him. So I do. This progresses and eventually I’m sucking his cock. I think I knew this was wrong so I said I didn’t want to carry on. We stop and I goto sleep quite confused.

I wake up and he hands me some money and tells me never to tell anyone about what happened. Next night he tries to do the same thing.. But now all I care about is the money. So I do it. This carried on for 2 summers.

Eventually I got old enough to realize it was quite wrong regardless of the money and stopped.

I’ve not told anyone this. He’s now married with 2 kids. I’m also married and we see them sometimes at family events. I don’t have the ball$ to even try and talk to him about it.. Hell I’m not even sure what I’d say.

I’m sure this will get buried but just getting it off my chest makes me feel better.

Tldr I was a gay child hooker.

25. Sometimes everything works out for the best.

I don’t want to be with my girlfriend anymore, but she might have cancer and I feel like I need to stay in the relationship.

24. PTSD is real, no matter what caused it.

I used to be a Police/Fire/911 Dispatcher, but had to quit because it nearly made me suicidal.

I actually had thoughts, but had to drive 40 miles to go to a center/hospital where no one knew me for help. I have nightmares about a few calls I took where the caller killed themselves, shot someone else, or passed away on the phone with me. To this day, a few years after resigning, I still can’t listen to a phone ring, or sirens go off without having a mild panic attack.

I am fairly sure it’s a form of PTSD, with flashbacks, nightmares, panic attacks, and an inability to function sometimes, but I’m embarrassed and scared to tell my fiance, or go to a doctor for it. I know there are soldiers out there with real PTSD that deserve help far more than me… I am very good at hiding it though. I also sometimes wait until my fiance goes to sleep, and I will then go sit and pretty much cry for several hours. It’s hell.

TL:DR – I exhibit a lot of the symptoms of PTSD, but I’m scared to get help for it because I don’t think I deserve to be diagnosed with something like this, as in my mind, I was never in any real danger.

23. I hope things have gotten better.

Everyone thinks I have a good job and roommates but I’ve been homeless and a prostitute for over year.

22. This is just yikes on so many different levels.

Two and a half years ago I was in dire financial straights, so I sold my home to keep my struggling business afloat. I neglected to tell the owners that they have an 800 sq. ft. bunker on the property that I built about seven years ago. The bunker that I’ve called home since I sold it. The entrance to it is well-hidden, but I still come and go very early/very late in the day.

I’m a single man who keeps to himself. I’m now in a situation where I could move somewhere else, but I love this hidden paradise so much.

21. I want to know if this is someone famous so bad.

I cut off all contact with everyone I know and moved to Kenya, I tell people a fake name and a fake background and have made it appear to my family that I died on boat trip in the Pacific.

No I am not joking. I am dead in the United States.

20. Ooooh devious.

I once helped out my a female friend’s family by taking care of their cat for a week.

Every day for a week, I would go over there and snoop around their house.

I found my friend’s diary, and proceeded to read the entire thing.

I used this information to get her to like me, and she is currently my wife.

19. That’s quite the secret to live with my goodness.

I F**ed the last two years of college education.

My parents put so much pressure on me I couldn’t handle it (I was suffering from severe depression and anxiety) so I F**ed it all. Lied to everyone. Made up F*ke transcripts.

I just got my foot in the door in my desired field thanks to a friend as they hired me as a subordinate. This place only hires college grads but no one double checked my credentials since I was recommended.

My hopes is that if I need to find another job I’ll have been at this place long enough to get it by experience alone (I work for a very prestigious company). I’m not bad at my job. I’m actually quite good. But my fear is eventually I’ll hit a wall and the lie will come to light. No one has known this for the better part of a decade.

It’s a relief to finally say it “out loud.” I can’t even tell those I love. My silence is my prison.

18. Kind of puts your IT guy in a whole different light.

IT guy here, it’s amazing what people will do on their computers and say in their emails despite having to sign a waiver that all computer activity at work is monitored and recorded.

I have half the company’s banking, social media and personal email account info and passwords. I know who is secretly banging who at the office behind their spouse’s backs. I know who is cybering at work and jerking it in the bathroom almost daily. At least they tell their s^x chat partner they’re running off to the bathroom to j^rk it, haven’t felt the need to check the validity of that one. I know when people are having martial problems, financial problems, I even know one person here had their children taken away because a social worker found cocaine in their house. I know who is embezzling money, I know when people get fired for completely bulls%^t reasons (like they just want to replace them with someone younger and nicer on the eyes), and I know who my boss is buying xanax and vicodins from.

Basically I have a treasure trove of my coworker’s secrets. I won’t actively do anything with this info, but it’s nice knowing I have the ammunition there if something were to ever happen.

18. I wonder if his wife knows.

[Background, I’m a guy in my late 20s who was taken into care aged 7.] Everyone around me already knows that I was brought up by foster families because I had a sh^t early childhood. I deliberately keep it vague and say stuff like “I’d rather not go into it” so that people will just assume I was abused in some way and they’ll stop asking about it.

The truth is that for the first 7 years of my life, I was brought up as a girl by my psycho birth mother who really really really wanted a daughter and didn’t let the snag of giving birth to a boy stop her from trying to raise one.

She was a pretty successful professional in a legal field (not entirely sure what) and had me via anonymous sperm donor from a fertility clinic. She found out i was a boy at a late ultrasound and then moved across the country. Gave birth to me at home and continued to move about until I was 5 or so. It was just the two of us all my life, we had contact with other people, of course, but they rarely got very close. I had lots of friends, but was always supervised.

I found out way way after that my mother’s strong puritanical christianity was a lie she used to explain why she was so strict about me being ‘private’ and never letting anyone see me get changed or anything. i just accepted all of this as fact, having never been told anything different.

I was sent to a religious school for girls and had a really great childhood. i was a bit of a tomboy, and played with lego and toy animals, rather than dolls and stuff, but that’s not unusual and no one ever questioned i was a girl – even me. I knew about men and women, but had never really seen much of naked people. my mother never ever spoke to me about it, but i kinda had the impression that when i grew up and got bo*bs and stuff, my d%ck would kinda fall off or something and i would be a woman, and other kids would keep their d%*ks and they’d be men. I dunno, to be honest, i never really thought about it

Anyway, I carried on with my happy girlhood, and had a bunch of friends and everything was great until i was 7 and a teacher accidentally spilled a cup of hot coffee over me at school. the liquid soaked through my clothes and was scalding me so the staff immediately stripped me out of my dress and underwear to get the hot coffee away from my skin. And then they found out.

the cops were called and i got taken to speak with who i guess would be Social Services. they asked me a bunch of questions about life at home and stuff. meanwhile, my mother was taken in for questioning too. she refused to acknowledge me as male and insisted i was her daughter. because she was, y’know, delusional and stuff, i wasn’t allowed to go back home but got put with a foster family and went through loads of therapy and stuff.

The worst part was that literally overnight, i lost EVERYTHING. my mother, my home, all my toys, all my clothes, i moved school so lost all my friends, they cut all my hair off and told me i wasn’t a girl any more. it was really really traumatic.

the first foster home wasn’t that great. they had three boys already and going from a sheltered ‘religious’ only-child upbringing to a rough-and-tumble testosterone-filled environment was really difficult. they tried to force me to e masculine and i was just too confused about what they wanted. anything ‘girly’ was reprimanded and i felt so lost and alone because nothing i did was right.

i tried to commit suicide when i was 11 and again at 13 because i didn’t feel i fitted in anywhere. After the second attempt, they moved me to a different foster family who were awesome. I consider them to be my parents. they actually stood up for me, the first thing was that they et me grow my hair. from when i got taken into care, they buzzed my hair short, and i hated it. they always had to hold me down and do it forcibly while i was crying and fighting. my new parents flatly refused to do it and said that loads of boys had long hair. they also let me quit karate and football and take up swimming and jazz dance. since i’d been in care, no one had ever stood up for my right to choose what activities to do, or how to dress before. it was amazing.

in the end, i came out of it with a pretty healthy gender identity (i’m a guy, but not th emost butch guy ever, but i’m fine with that), I went through school and got my degree and have a pretty good job and an amazing, supportive wife. everything looks great.

but i can never speak about my early childhood, and how i grew up as a little girl.

TL;RD: I’m a guy and let people believe i was raised in care because i was abused when in fact i had a great childhood except that my mother tried to raise me as a girl.

17. Baking is a piece of cake!

I run a cake business. I charge people hundreds for wedding cakes… Every last one is made using Pillsbury cake mix I buy for $1 a box at Walmart.

I suck at baking.

Every time I’ve ever tried to make a cake from scratch it sucked. But baking is like.. My whole deal. My friends all call me the cake girl. It’s like my whole life is a lie.

People compliment my cakes all the time. Telling me how delicious they are. Telling me it’s so much better than box mix cake. Telling me they could never bake a cake so delicious.

Well guess what? For $1, they too can make a cake just as delicious. Just add oil, eggs and water.

In my defense, I love cake decorating. I make all of the frostings and fondant from scratch. I just hate baking f**king cakes!! I base my prices mostly on the decoration of the cakes and not of the cake itself of that makes sense. Still… No one knows about this except my husband. Even my best friends think I f**king slave over the oven mixing and baking these damn cakes. I have been doing this for YEARS. If anyone knew my business and reputation would be in the toilet for sure. :/ I keep telling myself I have to learn how to make the damn cakes without the box mixes, but I never do it. I feel like such a sham sometimes.

16. Some people don’t deserve to be called a friend.

When I was 13, during the summer before I started high school, I was molested by a guy who dragged me into an alley, backed me into a corner so I couldn’t escape (and even if I’d tried to, I couldn’t have because he was taller and stronger than I was), and pulled my pants down. I tried to draw attention to where I was because I’d gone over to a guy’s house with my friend because she liked him, and when we went he just happened to have a friend there to hang out with me while they went off and did whatever.

Anyway, I tried to shout and make as much noise as I could and the guy goes “This would be easier if you were laying down” and tried to force me to the ground. Then my friend finally shows up and goes “Omg -MyName- what are you doing?!” and the guy obviously doesn’t go “Oh yeah no I was trying to rape her this was my idea”, but instead goes “She was trying to have s^x with me hahahahaha” and just walks away.

Then my friend doesn’t believe me when I tell her he DRAGGED me into the alley because she’d disappeared well before anyone could see him pulling on my arm with both hands and me trying to resist it as much as I could.

I never told anyone because I didn’t want them to react the same way my “friend” did. I think about it a lot and every day I say “Maybe this will be the day I finally tell my parents what happened” and then I never do. That was almost 6 years ago. My “friend” and I no longer speak, but I’d stopped being friends with her maybe 5 or 6 months after that because she told a couple of our other friends that I tried to have s^x with a guy I’d known for all of 5 minutes during the summer.

15. I hope he knows it wasn’t his fault.

When I was 17 I had a argument with my father and told him to f**k off, later that evening he hung himself. Our argument was the last time he spoke to anyone in our family and for that I feel a terrible amount of guilt for. Instead of him saying good bye and I love you to my mom and brothers he got told to f**k off before he went and killed himself. My punishment is to live the rest of my days in shame and guilt. He never left a note either.

14. It’s so hard to move past it without speaking about it.

I can’t bring myself to type it out again, so copy/pasted the relevant part from the other place I posted this.

I can’t promise coherence, even after all these years it still cuts deep, and I’m probably going to wind up rambling like I did the first and only other time I talked about it.

10 years ago, when I was 7, my parents worked shift work in the military. Since their schedules didn’t match up very well, it wasn’t uncommon for them both to be working a 2pm-2am shift. As such, I had a babysitter. She was an old friend of my mother’s, wonderful woman. She was the type who seemed to have the compulsion to feed everyone who came through her door. Matronly is the word I’m aiming for I think.

Anyway, she and her husband, along with their adopted daughter, were Christian. I tagged along to church with them a couple times, but it only furthered my atheistic leanings, which had already been in place. In time I politely turned down the offer to accompany them, instead staying home with their adopted son. At the time he was about as old as I am now. We shared similar interests– namely, playing Super Nintendo games and listening to loud music. Since the house was free of anyone to complain about it, we did so with abandon.

I honestly don’t remember how it started anymore. To the best of my recollection, he asked me to go with him into the bathroom to show me something. I was 7, naive, and he was a cool guy I looked up to. Naturally, I followed without question. The first time, he showed me what masturbating was. At the time, of course, it was just “how to get your thing hard” but whatever. A few times after that, we’d do that when the others left, then go back to our gaming. Something always clawed at me, the feeling that something was wrong. He was older than me, though, and he was cool– it must be what the cool kids did, right?

Slowly but surely, though, he escalated things. At first it was mutual masturbation– I still didn’t really know what was going on, but I jerked him and he jerked me. It couldn’t stop there, of course, and eventually built to him blowing me. After that happened a few times, he wanted me to return the favour. Again, I still didn’t really grasp what was going on, but I tried. I hated the taste, and wound up refusing. After that happened a couple times, he would force me. I just started to… go blank, I guess. I wouldn’t do anything, I wouldn’t think or feel, I just let him use my mouth until he was satisfied and would j^rk into tissue to finish himself off.

This went on for a while until my babysitter began to grow suspicious. He had made me promise not to tell anyone about our “special time”, and at that age a promise was something you didn’t break for anything. That said, I just denied anything being wrong anytime my babysitter asked. Eventually she grew too concerned and, despite knowing nothing for certain, had my mom find an alternative sitter. Since then, he’s gone through therapy. He admitted to having issues, apparently, but never spoke a word of what actually happened.

I’m pretty sure it f**ked me up good, honestly. I never really properly appreciated the deep scars sexual abuse leaves on a victim until I looked back on my life with that in mind. I buried it for years and tried to pretend I was normal, but I was definitely different. I was a lot more melancholy, and have had a few streaks of depression. I’ve never really been too certain of my sexuality. I’m scared to death of sex, honestly, and I think it’s because part of me is afraid that I’ll wind up just as abusive as he was.

It helped a lot, opening up to my girlfriend. It doesn’t haunt me like it used to, and I don’t always feel like such a freak. It’s helped strengthen our trust, and she’s agreed to take things as slowly as I need to to be comfortable. I’ve since stopped feeling so totally emasculated, as well, and it’s almost something of a joke to me now. I know, rape isn’t funny. The thing is though, you’ve gotta be able to joke about it, even if only to yourself. If you can laugh at something, you can move past it. I can’t help but chuckle when I’m arguing with someone and they tell me to suck a d%ck or something to that effect. I can laugh at my own pain, so I can move past it. I don’t think I’ll ever be who I might’ve been if it hadn’t happened, but I’m okay with that.

Realistically, I can’t even say I’d change it if I could. I’m fit, intelligent, in love and generally happy with my life. It was terrible, yes, and traumatic, but at least I know this path can lead to happiness. Take the evil you know, right?

Anyway, that’s my story. It’s long, incoherent, and doesn’t really have a proper end, but take it how you will.

Tl;dr: Played Nintendo, sucked d%ck, everything turned out okay.

13. I wonder if it’s petrified now.

I once took a sh^t In the bathtub and then realising what a horrible mistake I’d made, I flung poo Into a hole In the wall.

My parents renovated and patched up the hole. So now there Is a ~15 year old t*rd in between the bathroom and kitchen wall of my childhood home.

Not even using a throwaway because I have no shame.

12. I feel like I shouldn’t have this information.

I accidentally killed seven people.

I put a rag into a new water heater exhaust to keep debris out and installed it in a rental.

I get a call a week later, there’s been an accident. I show up and there’s a ton of ems and police. They ask me where the gas shutoff is, and I go down to shut the gas off and see the end of the rag I forgot sticking out of the top of the heater.

Ripped the rag out, shut the gas off and head upstairs only to be told all the tenants were DEAD.

I drink all day now and sleep. It’s killing me from the inside every single day, but if I say anything my family is ruined; we have a bunch of rental properties and we’d be shut down.

11. I think every kid has some kind of weird memory like this.

I have memories of my sister (five years older) and I playing a role play game when I was younger that I think would be considered sexual abuse/molestation if I told anyone. I don’t remember how old we were, but I know she was around the age where her breasts were developing. When home alone we would play a role play game where she was a boss and I was a secretary, and the boss would always sexually harass the secretary. It ended in my sucking on my sister’s breasts while she would lie on the couch with her shirt off.

My memory has always been really horrible, so I only remember patches of this, but I remember that it never felt sexual. I don’t actually trust my memory enough to feel confident that this really happened.

I love my sister, she’s my best friend and I would never want to damage our relationship by ever bringing this up and asking her what really happened. It is a secret I will carry with me and never reveal.

Also, TIL it’s hard coming up with a throwaway name.

10. I’m so glad it didn’t happen.

I came very, very close to committing a school shooting

I was picked on A LOT in high school. I think it was because I tried so hard to be cool and everyone saw right through it. There were these 4 cowboy jock types that gave it to me the worst. After being publicly humiliated and beaten in front of a girl I liked (as she laughed/cheered), I decided that none of it was worth it anymore. I had no support at home being an only child and having parents that worked constantly, and cutting and burning myself didn’t make me feel better anymore. So I got my dad’s handgun out of the gun-safe (he uses the same combo for everything, the idiot) and brought it to school with me the next day.

I can’t adequately describe to you guys how ready I was to kill these four. I had absolutely no fear or doubt in my mind. I wanted nothing more than to show everyone what happens when you push someone over the edge like they did. I had the gun tucked in my waistline. I was wearing this baggy pair of cargo shorts that i wore a couple times a week that day. I remember walking towards the cowboy’s table, so god**mn ready for it to be over, when the gun fell out of my waistline, down my left short leg and made the loudest f**king sound as it hit the cafeteria floor. I tried my best to grab the gun real quick, but people saw what it was and screamed, and one of the instructors tackled me to the ground.

They eventually concluded that I had brought the gun to school to impress people with bada$$ery, and had no intention of using it. I was expelled and sent to live at a youth ranch in Idaho until I was 18. I did have the intention of using it though. I was going to kill all of them. I’m 24 now, and I still think about it all the time. I have not recovered from high school. I’m still terrified of people in general, and avoid having relationships because of what I fear I’m capable of.

I’m not looking for pity. I know that what I did was wrong, it just feels good to tell the story. Thanks Reddit.

TL;DR I attempted a school shooting.

9. I guess sometimes tattling does pay off.

There was a girl who I had a crush on the moment I saw her on my college campus. She ended up dating a douchebag dude a few weeks later. I happened to end up sitting in a study room with him and a few mutual friends. He talked about how he didn’t think she was that attractive and how he liked other girls. I wrote the girl an anonymous email using one of those websites telling her about the things I heard and how the guy was a d%ck. She ended up breaking up with him after she found out he was cheating.

The girl is now my girlfriend of 6 months. She has no idea (and is sitting across from me in the library). I’ve never told anyone this before.

8. Wow, this must be a nightmare of adopted people everywhere.

My daughter turns 5 next week. If anyone knew the truth behind her parentage, I could probably lose her forever.

I grew up in foster care, never knew my parents or siblings. In my senior year, I met an older guy and we dated for almost a year… getting pregnant about 7 months in. One night while we were watching tv, the subject somehow came around to our real parents (he had been adopted as a young child). Turns out the man I was seeing, the father of my daughter… is my half-brother… we have the same mother. Our relationship didn’t last, and he is not in her life, per his own choices.

My daughter is extremely smart, beautiful, and well-rounded. She’ll never know the truth… her father and I made a pact to never tell her. I just hope she never needs a kidney or something.

Edit: Keep reading about people who knowingly slept with relatives they grew up with… is it bad that I feel slightly less horrible?

7. This is one of the saddest stories ever.

It wouldn’t ruin my life per se, because there are people in my life who are aware of this, but I did try to kill myself once, at my college. Was going to swallow I think Tylenol and a handle of vodka, intending to induce organ failure + alcohol poisoning. I ended up about to swallow, but the cheap alcohol made me so aware of my actions that I spit it out and ran to my friend’s room (I stole the alcohol from him, and it’s the only time I’ve knowingly stolen something) to apologize. This was maybe 2 years ago; I ended up having to take a year off, and was forced to explain the situation to the adults in my life. For the first time, they found out that I had been sexually assaulted by my older brothers for about 5 years, and that I had been suffering from depression for about 9 years.

They did not understand. Didn’t understand how I could be broken up over something that happened years ago, convinced that I was just trying to weasel myself out of my (dream) college, or that I am too stupid to handle it. And when I finally convinced them to let me see a shrink, all they spoke about was how pointless therapy was, and wanted to know how long this would last. I ended up returning to and then leaving college again, once again due to depression.

Now the verbal abuse that I’ve faced growing up has increased tenfold. Almost every day is some sort of argument, with me hearing about how I’ve f*cked up my life, and that I’m a jackass and a fool. I desperately want to leave, but I have nowhere to go. I have no job and no money, so I can’t afford an apartment or therapy. I am so tired of being mistreated, and I want to be free, but I’m trapped in this hellhole.

This thread is most likely dead by now, so I just wanted to get this out in the open, since I haven’t really been able to speak to people about this for months now. I’m sincerely afraid that I’ll never be able to become the man I want to be, because I’m too busy trying not to slip back into a depressed state (as long as I avoid doing anything slightly challenging, or thinking for too long, I can stay neutral). If anyone does read this, and knows of something I can do to get away, please let me know. Thank you.

EDIT: Thank you to everyone who has sent positivity my way over the past year or so! Update: I’m back at my dream college, hoping that this time, I can make it through. I seek therapy with a delightfully quirky Jewish lady, and having that stability there is so useful. It’s going to be a long ride for me, and I don’t know how my future will look, but I’m in so much better of a place than I was then. Seriously though, thank you again, all of you, for the support and the kind words. It became too much to respond to every person, but I appreciate everyone reaching out to me nonetheless. 🙂

6. Kids can be so, so awful.

Well, it’s more of a secret to my friends that I’ve made recently. Some background first: I don’t like being touched or hugged, and I’m incredibly uncomfortable with intimacy in general.

When I was in the 8th grade, a bunch of girls in my class convinced me they had a friend who fancied me (they said she had seen me somewhere and thought I was cute). F*ked a MSN account and they talked to me every night for a few months, invited me out to the movies and (obviously) didn’t show up, then revealed to the whole grade that I had been tricked into having an ‘imaginary’ girlfriend.

I was mocked viciously by everyone in the grade and ever since then I can’t really trust women. I also can’t believe that a girl may have feelings for me. Even when they explicitly tell me they have feelings for me I can’t help but feel like they’re trying to trick me. It’s caused a lot of insecurity, and I can’t get ‘attached’ to people easily. I’m terribly afraid to text, or message people first because I’m convinced I would be annoying them. What’s worse is that when I think about it, I know it probably isn’t true; but I can’t help but feel like it is.

Even though it was grade 8, it was around the time when attraction to women was just starting to get ‘real’, so to be hurt at a time as delicate as that has really done some damage.

The secret of course is that I had been dumb enough to be tricked. As you might suspect, the whole thing has left me afraid of being vulnerable. To have this found out by my newer friends (as in, university friends) would put me in a really uncomfortable place. I probably wouldn’t be able to be their friend anymore.

Thanks for reading, you’re the first people I’ve told about what this event has actually done to me.

EDIT: I know people still read this thread. So I felt I should come back and that I owed people an update. I’ve since met such a fantastic woman, someone who makes me incredibly happy. I love her very much, she loves me, and she’s helping me get used to the idea of feeling valuable and trusting people (or at least one person). She’s the best thing that’s happened to me in a long time (maybe ever).

I’m glad I got to come back to this post and finish it off with a happy ending. To all the people in the comments who were kind to me, or who shared their own similar experiences: you’re always valuable and someone will notice.

5. I guess we’re happy you’re happy?

I still have “imaginary friends.” I’m almost 30.

I lost them for a while. I don’t know why or how, but it they were gone. I couldn’t see them or hear them any more, not the way I used to when I was younger. It made me was miserable. I kept hoping for a way to get them back.

Two weeks ago, I somehow managed to finally break through whatever the barrier was. I have spent the past two weeks hanging out with, and talking to, a character from a well-known TV show.

I can’t really “see” him visually, but I can see him with my mind’s eye. He goes almost everywhere with me. He’s sitting on my bed right now, waiting for me to get off my computer. (I promised I would get off a little while ago, but I had to check reddit one last time.) He’s been coming to work with me every day for the past two weeks. I share my food with him. (I kind of mentally duplicate it for him, since he can’t touch it in reality.)

I love it. I’m happy again. I realize most people would say he isn’t real, but something about him is. I don’t care. He’s real to me.

EDIT: Revision to my final thought — I am scared that if anyone knew, I would be locked up and heavily medicated, but I acknowledge it’s not really a likely scenario in my case.

EDIT2 (an update 5 years on): I have received so many amazing PMs over the past 5 years. I just wanted to say think you, and that if you read this and find it describes you, too… you are not alone! Probably a hundred people have PMed me saying they experience the exact same thing. And that’s just from the subset of people on reddit who read this post. There are probably many, many more of us. People may think you’re weird, or strange, but who you are is perfectly natural and you are not alone.

Many PMs also directed me to r/tulpas, and I was active on there for a while as AnImaginarium. I’m not active still but if you are like me, you may find some comfort there!

Some people were able to find later in the comments where I copped to the fact the character in question was Castiel from Supernatural, but some people missed that, so stating it here now. Castiel still exists around in my head but is presently on sabbatical; I spend most of my time nowadays with my brother, Malcolm, who was on Star Trek: Enterprise. He’s the best! But he’s a private person so I’ll respect that. I also spend a decent amount of time with Will (from The Good Wife), who is our other brother, but only when he’s not busy working on cases or spending time with Alicia. Yes, imaginary universes have legal systems and need lawyers, too. Will had a practice with Allen Shore for a while until Allen got appointed a judge. Now he’s partners with Romo Lampkin and a woman who was an RP character of mine briefly in college, Mary Aberfoyle. Aberfoyle/Gardner/Lampkin, or AGL. Definitely give them a call if you’re in a multiverse legal entanglement, they’ll take care of your needs! (LOL)

Anyway, best wishes from me and mine to you and yours!

4. I mean, you don’t know it was yours…

When i was 15 my parent’s were going through a divorce, my mom worked night shifts and my dad was living with a friend of his. One night my sister who was 19 at the time came home pretty drunk from a party. She was acting goofy and fell on the couch next to me. She started grabbing my leg and laughing and we started fondling. We ended up having s^x right there. When we woke up the next day she had no recollection of the night before so i just kept my mouth shut.

Fast forward to when i’m 18. Sister is home from college and dad is over for a visit. they get into an argument and in a fit of rage my dad announces how he has never forgiven her for the abortion she got when she was 19 and subsequently killing His grand child. (he’s very religious)

I then realize the baby she aborted was in fact mine…..and as far as i know, i am the only one who knows since she has never mentioned that night.

3. Read it for the edit.

Buried comment, but here goes. Not life ruining but makes me feel like sh^t every time I think about it. As I’ve told Reddit before, I have a blind brother. When we were young, I used to get so frustrated at all the extra attention he received and how I had to be more responsible with my sibling than my peers. So, when my brother and I would go play, go to the store, or just generally go anywhere without adults, I would abandon him somewhere unfamiliar to him. Then, I would stand off quietly and watch the anxiety set in as he tried to figure out where he was and what was going on.

Also, I was really intelligent as a child and knew that was my ticket to attention. When I would “help” my brother with his homework, I would teach him all the wrong answers, so that I could continue being the smarter sibling. Today, my brother is my best friend. He goes to college and lives by himself. He’s become one of the most intelligent men I’ve ever met. I’m trying to make it up to him now by being the best big sister ever, but I still feel so guilty at how I found him to be a burden when I was a kid.

2. High school me could have written this, but it all worked out okay.

I hate all of my friends. Literally.

I don’t have anything in common with any of them, and don’t care.

But I’m too scared to be alone and have no one else to go to so I keep hanging around with them.

1. That’s just awkward.

The story I tell is that my first kiss was 9 years ago, when I was 14, with my now fiancee. False.

When I was 13, I babysat an 8 year old boy. His parents were very open, and he was very sexually aware (I caught him watching porn a couple of times). From the start, he was very aggressive, always grabbing me and trying to kiss me. After a while, oddly impressed with this new sort of attention, and very curious about kissing, one night we started making out.

This became routine, and went on for probably almost a year, before I realised how horrific and wrong my actions were. I continued to babysit him for a while, but soon his parents stopped calling me. I’ve always wondered why. I’m terrified that I’ll one day be exposed as a child molester.

tl;dr As a 13 year old girl, I frequently made out with an 8 year old.

Y’all I am so glad I don’t have a secret like this. It’s too much pressure!

If you do or know someone who does, unburden yourselves in the comments!