What is something that happened to you which changed you forever, good or bad?

[Largeletters]

Another thought-provoking question... what is something that happened to you which in turn, changed you forever or was especially life-altering?

 

[Burned out]

Small misfortunes that snowballed into life changing series of events. Or, just the "shit happens" kind of thing. I'll write about both.

-Desire to watch tv on floor while having back leaned against end of bedframe, caused a thrown out back. I take Ibuprofen, have a weird reaction and poor sleep, combined with existing stress. Doctor prescribes atypical anti psychotic which I have multiple extremely life threatening adverse reactions to. Get thrown in psych ward, put on antibiotics due to an injury caused by the antipsychotics. Wake up one day with a damaged neck overnight, which goes on to become chronic pain for life, and restricts my range of motion and activities. Think it was the antibiotic that did this, since people sometimes have this reaction in some part of the body, typically the heels.

-I took steps to prevent becoming a victim of violence, and ended up experiencing injustice for doing just that. Too sensitive to go into detail.

-When I knew I had just become a victim of injustice, I jammed my toe and developed recurring gout in it, which restricts my activities and range of motion, again, and when bad is days/weeks long of white hot pain and prevents even a second of sleep or normal walking from point a to b.

-Loss of rights by simple misunderstanding (separate event).

-The misfortune of having any connection with mental health, as they are not honest and upfront about the limitations of what they can reasonably achieve for you, or honest about the amount of damage they can do to you just by when you go with their recommendations. I knew before any treatment at age 11 they would not help, and so far they haven't, two decades on.

-Body ruined from psych meds. Fat, and losing hair due to a medication necessitated just by being on certain meds in past. Never had any of the problems the psych meds in question were even developed for.

-Lifted light weights with correct form, body still decides to get multiple pinched nerves that now make the same and related activities impossible. Can't wipe my own ass, physically I can, but then I'd feel the pain. Bidet/shower is solution.

-Simple things that caused a lot of suffering in the end, too numerous for here. A lot of disillusionment as well.

 

[unreal]

One of my close friends killed themselves in my freshman year of high school. Nothing has ever really felt the same since then.

 

[motel rooms]

My ex married a woman, but he still kept trying to get me to fuck him, which I eventually foolishly agreed to do because I loved him. He cheated on her with me for about two years & then he dumped me for a hotter guy. I showed proof to his wife that he was a bisexual whore, she told all of his str8 friends & family, & he jumped from a balcony on the 19th floor of a hotel

 

[Mentalmick]

A messed up left hand after a deep wrist cutting. I can't do much with it anymore and it looks hideous with no fine movement muscles. And it keeps bloody twitching.

 

[ClownMe]

heaps of little shit, getting bullied at school, my parents not caring about me, developing peculiar sexual fetishes and fantasies to name a few.

 

[FuneralCry]

I think for me it was when I was starting to get health problems. I then realised that life is not worth living and I realised how bad it can get, there is unlimited potential for suffering, as our bodies can torture us. Before I got tinnitus I had no idea that such a condition existed and that something like silence can be taken away and there is no escaping from it. I have never wanted to be alive really, but having that happening just made me not want to exist a lot more and think seriously about suicide.

 

[Fragile]

There were many moments in my life that changed me forever, almost always for the worst.

But I guess the one that affected me the worst was knowing the full extent of my genetic illness, then understanding my poor prognosis. The moment that the symptoms and my thought process started to deteriorate was so disheartening, I completely lost any hope that I had left. This was the reason why I created an account on this forum.

The worst part is that I always thought I could recover, or at least improve and live a normal life, despite the fact that I've been suicidal since my childhood for many reasons that now pale in comparison to what I'm experiencing.

 

[puppet_nihilist]

For me it was being born. This was a very significant point in my life, it changed everything for me. I want to ctb to correct that misfortune, although suicide will never negate or undo the damage and the curse of having existed in this world.

When I was very small I jumped from a table while playing with a friend, we both fell. My friend landed on top of my face and I hit my head pretty hard on the floor. I got seriously inured and almost lost enough blood to die. Everyday I wake up I wish it had actually killed me. My friend only got minor cuts in their hand lol.

 

[hʚll]

For me it was being born. This was a very significant point in my life, it changed everything for me. I want to ctb to correct that misfortune, although suicide will never negate or undo the damage and the curse of having existed in this world.

same. i want to ctb but i know even death won't justify/make up for all the suffering that you, me and everyone has gone through. is so unfair

 

[Cast_Away]

Some Chuck Palahniuk books like fight club, lullaby, haunted. I listened a few of his interviews/podcasts and just the way he talks, writes and thinks about life changed something inside me. He told some stories most people would find disgusting and brutal. But they are real. People do horrible things, this is the world we live in. People prefer to turn a blind eye to this, but i'm choosing the red pill. Horrible, but real life.
"it's only after we've lost everything that we are free to do anything"
"So in lieu of fixing somebody, I always kind of strive to kind of present them with something that is going to make them excited about living."

Music. When i started really listening to it, every song playing in my headphones in different places hits differently. I listen to the lyrics, riffs and screaming and just look around. I see so much more in the world with it.

Skateboarding. Even after breaking both of my legs, i realize it's something i can't live without. I still fucking love it. It's the freedom of riding my board, landing your first kickflip after many days and a lot of pain, meeting random people in a skatepark, who are strangers, but at the same time really close to you.

After sucking at everything for a bunch of time, i just accepted that i'm okay being a loser. Like even doing something that seems impossible to go wrong, with me, it goes wrong. It's just funny now. How can you manage to "fail to fail"? thats just stupid, but i'm okay with what now, it kinda makes me special.

A week ago i saw this comment at youtube music clip that made me think a lot.

and i realized it's actually true for me. Hope it might help you too.


I don't wanna write about bad stuff that happened to me, right now i'm trying to keep going and not letting it drown me. I don't want to think about that, just wanna keep going, keep fighting no matter what. Maybe some of the things i wrote above will make you reconsider your life and the way you look at it. No matter what, you are special. Even if it is in some weird way.

 

[Celerity]

When I was in 5th grade, the whole class ganged up on my friend and told her to kill herself. She told the wrong person that her mother tried to kill her as a baby. What fucked me up wasn't that it happened but that the apparently nicest, sweetest, least aggressive people in the class joined in and really had a great time. I remember seeing the smiles on their faces. There was nothing I could do. I tried to jump in and intervene, but I may as well have screamed into the void.

No amount of arguing with the teacher helped. I should just let it go because they were just words, apparently. It didn't help that my friend was a troublemaker, so fuck her, I guess.

Due to that experience more than any other, I have a lot of trust issues. And you know what? Aside from family, I have paid dearly every time I put an ounce of trust in anybody, so little me knew what was up. But I'm a slow learner, apparently.

One of my close friends killed themselves in my freshman year of high school. Nothing has ever really felt the same since then.

How long ago did that happen?

 

[Largeletters]

When I was in 5th grade, the whole class ganged up on my friend and told her to kill herself. She told the wrong person that her mother tried to kill her as a baby. What fucked me up wasn't that it happened but that the apparently nicest, sweetest, least aggressive people in the class joined in and really had a great time. I remember seeing the smiles on their faces. There was nothing I could do. I tried to jump in and intervene, but I may as well have screamed into the void.

No amount of arguing with the teacher helped. I should just let it go because they were just words. It didn't help that my friend was a troublemaker, so fuck her, I guess.

Due to that experience more than any other, I have a lot of trust issues. And you know what? Aside from family, I have paid dearly every time I put an ounce of trust in anybody, so little me knew what was up. But I'm a slow learner, apparently.

I'm so sorry you had to witness that. It's heart-wrenching for me, so I can't imagine what it was like for you as a child to witness that. I had somewhat similar experiences in school, and no one really stood up for me, so my heart goes out to you and your friend at the time as I sort of know what it's like.

I understand having trust issues. It sucks. All people seem to do is abuse the trust and faith you put into them.

 

[Celerity]

I'm so sorry you had to witness that. It's heart-wrenching for me, so I can't imagine what it was like for you as a child to witness that. I had somewhat similar experiences in school, and no one really stood up for me, so my heart goes out to you and your friend at the time as I sort of know what it's like.

I understand having trust issues. It sucks. All people seem to do is abuse the trust and faith you put into them.

Yep, for sure. The minute I stop being immediate useful is the minute I expect to get ditched. I don't tell people IRL shit about how I'm really doing. Either way, they leave me anyway. Gotta stop getting my hopes up.

 

[Largeletters]

Yep, for sure. The minute I stop being immediate useful is the minute I expect to get ditched. I don't tell people IRL shit about how I'm really doing. Either way, they leave me anyway. Gotta stop getting my hopes up.

Most people in my life have used me and then find someone better, I never expect people to stay long. That's why I don't bother finding new relationships or rehashing old ones; what's the point?

 

[Celerity]

Most people in my life have used me and then find someone better, I never expect people to stay long. That's why I don't bother finding new relationships or rehashing old ones; what's the point?

Exactly. Same. I even had an ex "friend" invite me out only to change her mind and ghost me and then complain about how tired she was from the activities she excluded me from. It'd be fucking hilarious if it weren't the story of my life. Nowadays, I'm like this meme:


Anything to keep the overwhelming despair and loneliness at bay.

 

[Alwaysbadtime]

When I knew I couldn't keep my pets and I sold all my books.

 

[disillusionment]

One was being abandoned by my mom at age 2. I still saw her like once in a while throughout childhood (like maybe two weeks on summer vacation or something?) but she was always in another province, not present for any milestones in my life, etc. She floated in and out of my life when it was convenient for her, showing up for a while and saying it was for good, and then abandoning me again to move away with some guy she barely knows. She always chose some guy over me and then he'd end up cheating on her or dumping her. This made me resentful of her for not being there for me, and this anger towards her became a huge problem in my life, really made me develop personality issues and anger issues.

Then at age 9 my dad was arrested and my brother and I were questioned, asked things like does your daddy hug you and stuff. I didn't know why he had been arrested until a few weeks later when my older sister (who had moved away to another province with my mom) called and told me that our dad had sexually abused her. I remember the way I slumped down on the floor, phone in hand, crying inconsolably and telling my sister I don't believe her. My little heart was breaking, feelings of safety and security broken. And then when my dad and his gf asked why I was crying and I told them, they didn't even hug me and comfort me (they never did.) In the end there had not been any evidence my dad sexually abused my sister but I still grew up as a young girl with a father I suspected of being a pedophile and I had no idea whether he had actually done that to my sister or not. So I walked on eggshells around him, and worried that he had an attraction to me. He was super innapropriate with me, he'd comment on my body, talk to me about how to please a man, talk explicitly to me etc and say that my friends (my age) were hot. So yeah this all fucked me up big time, I had a fucked up father figure, an absent mother figure, and being bullied relentlessly at school, no escape from anything. Even the one person I trusted, my English teacher, he had told me I could confide in him about my issues and I did, I started to trust him and open up to him and then he started hitting on me and I felt so betrayed

My mom would also cycle through boyfriends constantly and took me to ATV rallies with older men when I was a preteen and I think that this combined with my lack of a safe father figure made me develop daddy issues bigtime and I was attracted to older men, not boys my age. I also became obsessed with getting male attention, perhaps because I felt ignored and neglected by my father, so I even developed an eating disorder and became obsessed with looking a certain way to get attention, which helped me develop into the self-centered, attention seeking, rotten person I am today. I also grew up really hating myself and being self-destructive so I would hang around with guys who would mistreat me or who I didn't really want to be with, as a form of self harm I guess? Denying my own feelings. people would ask me why do you date these types of guys and I really didn't know. I guess not wanting to be all alone but also a form of hurting myself. I also felt deep down that I am unlovable and broken and no decent guy would want me

Bullying was a HUGE thing for me too, it really damaged my self-esteem and gave me social anxiety. My parents knew about it and my family even laughed at me and made fun of me after I got punched over and over and kicked by a much older girl (I was in grade 7 so 12-13 years old, she was in grade 9 I think, way bigger as well) and she had beaten me up simply because I looked at her and she didn't like my face. Then even that English teacher, who I had been confiding in, I overheard him telling the girl who beat me up that he would have done it too. I was bullied from like grade 4 up, physically and verbally, punched many times, called so many names. And yeah I guess it's my fault I was too weak to fight back but I was a nonviolent little kid who doesnt even know how to throw a punch, being beaten up by way older kids.

Absollutely everyone has been complete shit and either hurt me or just stood by and laughed at my suffering, so that's why I'm selfish and am accused of only caring about me, and can't connect to other people at all.

 

[Painless_end]

Another thought-provoking question... what is something that happened to you which in turn, changed you forever or was especially life-altering?

I grew up and saw not only the nature of adult interpersonal relationships in the world but also things like how important is money, and social status.

But the problem with this was, I also saw deeply my own weakness in being able to hold down a job, or being interested in any thing long enough to make it a hobby or profession.

In the absence of these mental drives that are common in most people, I found myself hopelessly floating into nothingness and that changed me forever.

 

[Meditation guide]

I can look at some accomplishments such as graduating from college. That was important to my confidence level, as well as giving me a very well rounded education. I finished in three years and am enrolled in some graduate classes.

 

[Futile]

When I broke my leg at 11 years old. I had to drop my dream of becoming a football player ad to this very day I can't drive because of it. At the end, it didn't even matter much, but it was the first time I realized that life might not have been what I hoped

 

[Symbiote]

Sexual child abuse starting at 5, then when telling someone about it, they didn't believe me. Early on, I knew that life was harsh and has a way of tainting you over time until you CTB. Many instances and events that occurred throughout my life that I can summarily assume that I didn't matter and that my needs don't matter.

 

[littlelungs]

Obvious trigger warning for mention of child sexual abuse, for whatever it's worth:

Being sexually abused and raped by 2 different people, starting at age 6. Tried multiple times to tell someone what was happening. Wasn't taken seriously and nothing was done about it. One of the times I was even told that "I shouldn't be doing things like that" after waking up in the abuser's bed one day* (not the first time) with no pants on, bleeding from the mouth and feeling like I'd been ripped in half. All of that did a number on me, both physically and psychologically, and it was just a downward spiral from there on out.

(*I was often given crushed-up pills before bed to make me sleep, because I was otherwise afraid to go to sleep – shocker – or I'd get up shortly after "falling asleep" and just give the adults a thousand-yard stare. I think it was my subconscience trying to ask for help because I'd often "wake up" in the middle of it, and I'd be in the middle of trying to ask for help with something, but not being able to get any other words out... so then the pills started. It was just some dimenhydrinate as far as I know but it knocked me the fuck out every time.)

Also, just while I'm at it, the expression "everything happens for a reason" makes me feel sick. I'd like to challenge anyone who says that to look at an 8 year-old girl who's being fucked by her own family member, burned, choked, dragged around by her hair, cleaning up an alcoholic family member's vomit, chased with lit fireworks, afraid to go to sleep out of fear what she'll wake up to, tried to kill herself with a plastic bag over her head to escape it all, etc etc, that "everything happens for a reason". Fuck that.

 

[Largeletters]

Obvious trigger warning for mention of child sexual abuse, for whatever it's worth:

Being sexually abused and raped by 2 different people, starting at age 6. Tried multiple times to tell someone what was happening. Wasn't taken seriously and nothing was done about it. One of the times I was even told that "I shouldn't be doing things like that" after waking up in the abuser's bed one day* (not the first time) with no pants on, bleeding from the mouth and feeling like I'd been ripped in half. All of that did a number on me, both physically and psychologically, and it was just a downward spiral from there on out.

(*I was often given crushed-up pills before bed to make me sleep, because I was otherwise afraid to go to sleep – shocker – or I'd get up shortly after "falling asleep" and just give the adults a thousand-yard stare. I think it was my subconscience trying to ask for help because I'd often "wake up" in the middle of it, and I'd be in the middle of trying to ask for help with something, but not being able to get any other words out... so then the pills started. It was just some dimenhydrinate as far as I know but it knocked me the fuck out every time.)

Also, just while I'm at it, the expression "everything happens for a reason" makes me feel sick. I'd like to challenge anyone who says that to look at an 8 year-old girl who's being fucked by her own family member, burned, choked, dragged around by her hair, cleaning up an alcoholic family member's vomit, chased with lit fireworks, afraid to go to sleep out of fear what she'll wake up to, tried to kill herself with a plastic bag over her head to escape her home life, etc etc, that "everything happens for a reason". Fuck that.

I'm so sorry for what you've been through... I wish there was more I could say. Those events would definitely shape one's experience in life. I agree with you, those who say that stupid bullshit definitely have had it easy if they feel that way.

 

[littlelungs]

Also, meeting my now-husband on SS, two weeks before I was supposed to hang myself in a hotel room. I'd made the reservation and everything.

Continuing to live obviously meant an absolute shit-ton of even more suffering, but I just had to be with him. I wanted to die so badly but I felt this indescribable pull inside of me that I couldn't just ignore.

He was the first person to really validate the physical aspect of my suffering (he's is going through the same thing, and at the time I had absolutely no idea that that's what I have, too) and is the reason why I now know, at the very least, what the hell is wrong with my body, because he helped me find a neurologist (who doesn't have their head up their ass for a change) to diagnose me. There's no approved treatment or cure but at least I have a fucking name for what has been wreaking havoc on my body for the past 12 years, on top of all of the other countless issues I've unfortunately got. Add it to the list.

But yeah... meeting him definitely changed me forever. I love him so much it hurts.

 

[Anonymous1997ES]

Being misdiagnosed with Asperger Syndrome when I never had it (found out I was neurotypical a few years later after it).

It caused people to treat me more like a child, they stopped taking me seriously and reaching out, and in a nutshell, I destroyed my life because of it. Had I not done that, I think I wouldn't be suicidal, maybe a bit depressed, but not in a void I won't be able to escape no matter how much I want to.

 

[Mr2005]

Didn't get a computer/email address/take a computer course

 

[netrezven]

Being misdiagnosed with Asperger Syndrome when I never had it (found out I was neurotypical a few years later after it).

It caused people to treat me more like a child, they stopped taking me seriously and reaching out, and in a nutshell, I destroyed my life because of it. Had I not done that, I think I wouldn't be suicidal, maybe a bit depressed, but not in a void I won't be able to escape no matter how much I want to.

I know a kid who got recently diagnosed as autistic, just because no one wants to look after him for years. They needed to wash their hands and arrange free support from a special teacher. That kid has trauma, but is not autistic. And when he grows up, will find out the truth and will hate them and for an obvious reason.

 

[Anonymous1997ES]

I know a kid who got recently diagnosed as autistic, just because no one wants to look after him for years. They needed to wash their hands and arrange free support from a special teacher. That kid has trauma, but is not autistic. And when he grows up, will find out the truth and will hate them and for an obvious reason.

Dear God... I hope someone can help that kid, no one deserves to grow up living a lie...

 

[Cant Maintain]

the covid lockdowns. losing 8 friends in quick succession. getting long covid, leading into fibromyalgia that just hurts fucking CONSTANTLY. losing the ability to do an athletic thing I truly loved. loosing someone that I loved from the same sport.