Juicy secrets are something nearly everyone can appreciate. But, when the secret is one that could potentially shatter your worldview or turn your life upside-down, things aren’t so fun anymore. Having to learn the hard way about your parents’ divorce or how much an ingrown toenail hurts are things we could probably live without.
#1 Very, Very Wrong
I found out that my father never wanted to have me (or, for that fact, any children at all). Actually, he told my mother that if she had me, he'd spend his life making both of us completely miserable. My mother, on the other hand, was convinced that once he saw me, he'd change his mind. She was very, very wrong.
#2 Lifelong Struggles
After my dad passed away, my mom, before she passed away, said he always felt my struggles were because of him accidentally dropping me down the stairs as a baby. I struggled in school with math and I physically have a form of muscular dystrophy. But, we didn't know that at the time, so he believed my physical issues were his fault. It apparently ate him up and helped fuel parts of his depression. I didn't need to know that.
#3 Best Friend’s Behavior
I always blamed my best friend’s erratic behavior on mental health issues until, one day, I found her passed out on my toilet. I then realized that her behavior always got erratic after bathroom visits. Unfortunately, she may have mental health issues, but addiction was the main reason for most of her behavior.
#4 Trust and Love
I expressed a little concern about my ex-girlfriend hanging out with a co-worker so much after work. I asked her if there were any feelings there. She said no and told me that, since we had been dating for six years, if I really loved her, I needed to trust her. I agreed with her, so I let it go. Three months down the line, she gave me a heads-up that she wasn't in love with me anymore and she was in love with him instead. So much for trust and love.
#5 This is Really Nice
How good opiates feel. I had some very severe throat and sinus surgery a few years ago and the doctor gave me a massive amount of Dilaudid. I have no recollection of the first week post-surgery. But, my mother said that one of the first things I said as soon as I was physically able to speak again was, "Now I see why people get addicted. This is really nice."
#6 Confronting Him
One of the worst things I found out was that my dad harmed my sister. To be clear, I wasn't the one who found out about what happened between them. My sister confronted him (one of the bravest things I know of) and legal proceedings began. One night, my mom got all of us together and told us what was going on.
#7 Audiology Exam
What tinnitus is. I've heard the ringing for so long that I just assumed everyone heard it. When I finally went to the VA and they put the headphones on me for the audiology exam, I couldn't believe how deafening the ringing really was in the silence. After I talked with them and found out that it wasn't normal, I was shocked.
#8 Beach in July
I didn't meet my dad until I was 15. It was in secret since my mother wanted nothing to do with him. Within the first three sentences exchanged, he felt the need to tell me that I was conceived on a beach in July. I was the product of a going-away relationship doomed before my conception. He followed it up with, "We were good at two things, me and your mom. Unfortunately, we were fighting more than anything else, so it stopped being worth it."
#9 Mom’s Accident
My mother passed away in a car accident when I was just three years old. I didn’t know much about it at first. But, I found out from a newspaper article years later that it was her fault. My mother wasn’t paying attention and crossed the yellow line, which ended both her life and that of the person in the other car.
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#10 Wisdom Teeth
How horrible the procedure for taking out your wisdom teeth is. I had to take them all out, so two weeks ago, I went to the dentist in Europe. In Europe, they don’t use laughing gas, but just local anesthesia. I thought that they would take a scalpel and cut away until my tooth came out. I then thought they would sew it up. That wasn’t the case. The dentist just leaned in my mouth with what seemed the strength of a million suns and cracked out my tooth while I was lying on the bench, sweating profusely out of fear.
#11 Keeping Secrets
My mother knew she was sick a year before she told anyone. This was after I literally forced her to see a doctor. I was under the impression that we told each other absolutely everything because up until that point, we did. I found out the truth a month after she passed away when I’d requested all of her related paperwork from her oncologist.
#12 Ex-Girlfriend’s Phone
Looking at my ex-girlfriend's phone when we were on a trip. I would take any physical pain I've had so far over what I felt when I saw the things on there. It was totally gut-wrenching. I wanted to marry her. I tried to forgive her and worked very hard to do so. At the end of the year, I was ready to start our new life and put it all behind.
The day after I signed a lease for a nice apartment, she ghosted me. I tried hopelessly to reach her, calling dozens of times a day. She dumped me over an Instagram message after about a month of this. After trying so hard for her and finally feeling better, she ended it that way and left me alone 1700 miles from anyone I knew.
#13 Messy Child
Just how disgusting of a human being I was and am. When I was a kid, I knew nothing. My mom is a single mother and she didn't take proper care of me. I took showers once a week or less, I was messy, I was ugly, it was bad all around. Other kids called me names, avoided me, bullied me, but I never knew why. Once I grew up, I realized just how bad it actually was. Today I am aware of two things: where my childhood went wrong and that in 10 years, I'll realize all the wrong things I do today.
#14 Making Contact
Just how close my pilonidal cyst was to making contact with my spine. I had an open wound for a year because the first surgeon was a joke and it ripped immediately. He told me to take baths to help it close up naturally. 11 months later, I got the second surgery. It was apparently only millimeters from tunneling to my spine, which could have caused me an infection. I wish I never knew how close it was.
#15 Moving Away
That my best friend took her own life. She told me she was moving and gave me all her stuff because she said she had a furnished room where she was going. I hadn't heard from her in a while and she never answered my texts. So, I looked up her name to see if she had an accident. Nope. The kicker is she had talked me out of it back in 2014 and I wasn't able to be there for her.
#16 Bringing it Back
When I was around 10 years old, I was sitting on the couch and my older sister came towards me and punctured a hole in the cushion about a foot from my leg. She immediately told me not to tell our dad. I was young and naive and my sister had a kind of twisted sense of humor, so I really didn't know what to think. It definitely did some damage now that I look back on it. Years later, my sister announced that she had planned to attack me, but chickened out at the last moment. At this point, I had all but moved on from the incident, but this brought it all back and then some.
#17 Innocent Teenage Mind
I once had a manager at one of my first jobs as a teenager. I honestly loved working there. The manager was always energetic and fun to be around. After I left, though, he seemed to disappear. I went in one day and asked about him. The employee said, “Oh! You mean the high guy?” That blew my innocent teenage mind.
#18 Fumbling and Cursing
When I had my wisdom teeth taken out, my dentist was really rude and rough with me. I kept telling him I could feel everything, but he shushed me. He was fumbling and cursing and after it was done. My sister-in-law said he shoved some pills at me and turned me loose in the lobby. Turns out, he was an alcoholic and got arrested shortly after for coming to work when he wasn’t mentally fit. It was a horribly traumatic experience.
#19 Care Packages
My dad informed me when I got back from Iraq that I was the reason he and my mother got a divorce. I never really wanted to join the military anyways, and it messed me up big time. They had financial troubles and my mom sent me care packages quite a lot. Apparently, that put them into bankruptcy. If I hadn't joined, it wouldn't have happened. I just wanted to get out of that house because it was like I didn’t exist.
#20 Sugar Daddy
After we broke up, I found out that my ex had been online looking for a sugar daddy. She did this only three months into our 12-month relationship. I thought the whole time she was genuine. Turns out, most of the time she was lying to my face. She broke up with me and started going out with her sugar daddy. She found him two months before she dumped me.
#21 On the Hunt
I think one of the hardest things I’ve learned in life is that education doesn’t translate into a good job. I was made to believe that if you studied hard, you’d automatically have an easy life later on. I'm in search of a job right now, and I've never felt this betrayed. It's like I woke up in a living nightmare.
#22 Spoiled Birthday Present
Way back when my husband and I were dating, I snuck a peek at his order history near my birthday and ruined my present. It was a beautiful engagement ring, exactly what I was hoping for. I was working multiple jobs, going to school full time and a general PMS monster during that time. I looked because my birthday present was “late” and I assumed that he forgot. Nope. I never told him I knew that I knew he was planning on proposing and I don’t ever plan to. Lack of sleep, stress and hormones may have made me quite the monster at that time, but he always saw me through that and I’m eternally grateful.
#23 Attention Seeker
My parents paid less attention to me than any of my other siblings. It still affects me to this day and while I have certainly made progress on it, it still is hard to get over the favoritism that still continues. My parents divorced when I was a teenager. My dad has gotten a lot better while my mom has continued to get worse. We are all working on it, besides my mom.
#24 Spilling the Beans
My uncle would strike my cousin when they were alone to toughen him up. He would do it harder if my cousin cried and promised worse if he cried to my aunt about it. My aunt didn’t find out about it until my cousin was 21 when his current girlfriend spilled the beans. Apparently, it happened his whole childhood until he bulked up in high school during wrestling and stood up for himself. Everyone in my family just acts like all of it never happened.
#25 Dad’s Side of the Family
The real reason why half of my dad's side of the family doesn't speak to us. My twin and I were always told it was that they just weren't that close and also had some mental health issues. But we learned the truth after my dad passed away because no one on his side of the family came to the funeral. They opted to have their own.
Turns out that my parents had trouble conceiving. This I knew. I also know that me and my twin are IVF babies and we were born very premature. I'm talking about one-pound baby premature. Shortly after, my mom developed an illness. What I didn't know was that during this time my dad was also taking care of his sick mother (my paternal grandmother) as well as looking after his sick wife and two newborn preemies. He ended up asking his brother to help look after their mother since he'd been the one doing it.
Soon after, my dad spent more time with us than his mom. His mom took a turn for the worse and passed away. My father's brother blamed him for “abandoning” the family and blamed my twin and I for what happened. Apparently, if we weren't born, my mother wouldn't have been diagnosed with an estrogen-positive illness. Also, they were all very Catholic and IVF was a sin. I never met my grandmother. I'm named after her. But apparently an entire side of the family thinks it's mine and my sister's fault that she's gone.
#26 Hurtful Parents
I found out my girlfriend told my parents that I was extremely depressed. They responded, "So? What do you want us to do about that?" and they never brought it up again. A few months after they kicked me out for textbook depression, I found out my mom cashed out the Uplan my grandmother set up for me. She used the $25,000 in it to pay off the IRS from problems she incurred due to addiction.
#27 Freshman Year
I found out during my freshman year of college that my dad was not my biological father. I discovered that my mom was with a co-worker of hers on the side. I also learned later on that I had three step-brothers and my biological father passed away from lung complications. That was a lot to learn all in one swoop.
#28 Belief in Psychiatry
I was diagnosed with anxiety, ADHD, and a tendency for manic episodes since I was about four or five. But my mom didn't believe in psychiatry or medicine and my dad thought I was "quirky" and didn't want me to change. So, both agreed on not giving me medical attention. Now I'm 21, incredibly anxious, have had multiple EDs, and have mild depression. Also, my childhood life at school and making friends was incredibly hard. Finding out now that most of my social trauma could've been avoided but wasn't just angers me.
#29 The Doll House
When I was six or seven, my mom missed my birthday. I remember crying and my grandma and uncle just kept saying, "She's coming, don't worry." She came very late at night. They woke me up to tell me she was there and I was really excited. But, I was also wondering what kept her. She got me a doll house and told me she was out all day searching for the perfect, best birthday gift for me, and I believed her. I found out later that she stole the doll house, and had forgotten about my birthday because she had been laid up in a hotel room. She totally forgot about me.
#30 Italian National Team
My dad passed away when I was 12 and my mom remarried when I was 15 to an Italian businessman. I really liked him and he was a really interesting man and loved my mom. He spoke five languages and traveled for work a lot. He used to tell us stories about when he was younger in Italy and told us that he played soccer for the Italian national team and was in two world cups. It was a long time ago and information from that time was hard to get, so we all believed him.
One Christmas, about 10 years ago, I found videos online of the games he said he was in. I was so excited and bought them... only to watch them and find out he had always lied to us. He never played. I decided to just keep it as my secret as to not ruin his relationship with my mom and siblings because I think they would question many other things about his life. He is a good man and I love him, but this always makes me wonder what else he lied about.
#31 Painful Injections
How painful it is to take out an ingrown toenail. The first time, the most painful thing was the injection of anesthetic. Everything went great, but after six or seven months, it almost grew back. I had to take it out again. The second time was so much more painful. The injection of the anesthetic was a lot more painful and took longer to work. After the procedure, it was a lot more painful than the first time. I really hope it was the last time. I'm so scared to do it again.
#32 Second Nature
Almost all the audio in nature documentaries is created by human beings after-the-fact. The crunch of snow under a bear's foot; the splash of a great white shark jumping out of the water; the sifting through sand of a mole; all produced with props in a studio. I used to love Planet Earth, but now I can't even get through an episode without thinking about a dude in stained sweatpants playing with wooden blocks.
#33 Coming a Long Way
That I was the bad person in my relationships. Turns out, I've become the person I was afraid of becoming my entire life, my dad. A jealous dude with anger management issues who never sees his own faults. To be fair though, I've come a long way since my best friend straight up told me what I'd become and that if I stayed that way, she was going to stop being friends with me.
I guess I don't regret finding out because it helped me get my stuff together. However, the fact that you were the bad guy and you were the reason some of your friends cut ties with you is a pretty hard pill to swallow. Especially knowing that you'll never get to make it up to some of them because it's been years, so why should they care at this point.
#34 Age Gap
Finding out that my 23-year-old sister is in a relationship with a man of 65. He started grooming her when she was 19. I found out just before I moved out when I was 19 myself and it destroyed my family. My parents are grieving, feeling that they have lost their daughter to this monster. I try and see her as often as I can, but it hurts. She’s not the same girl that she used to be and I have no idea how to handle it.
#35 Mom’s Episode
My mother was forced to do migrant farm work in her teens and her uncles and father took her money. She was forced to pick cotton and other back-breaking labor. I found out when she was having an episode from her dementia. Nothing like hearing your mom slip into her native Spanish and scream at her uncles. If they weren't all dead, I'd have hunted all of them.
#36 A New Phone
My dad going behind my mom’s back. I was super excited about getting a new phone so I plugged it into the computer and all the photos popped up from iPhoto. I still haven’t had the heart to tell her since it would destroy her. I don’t know if I should tell her or not. She wouldn’t have anything since she doesn’t have a job and relies on my dad.
#37 Father’s Regret
My sisters all regret learning that my father didn't want any of them. He wanted a son and was disappointed for 10 years before divorcing their mom (unrelated reasons) and marrying my mom. I regret learning that he divorced my mom because my sister (different father, same mom) is bipolar and he didn't want to deal with a child with a mental disability.
#38 Skipping the Party
My dad refused to be at my 15th birthday because my black boyfriend was there. My family is white and my dad is bigoted, which is something I wasn't aware of until I was older. For years I thought he was giving the house to me and my friends. I came to find out he didn't want to share his home with a black man. I was appalled because my boyfriend was a sweet guy with the same interests and would never hurt a fly. But, because he was black, none of that mattered. It put a big wedge between me and my dad.
#39 Long and Winding Road
"The Long and Winding Road" by the Beatles was always my favorite song. I just loved the instrumentals and thought the Beatles were so awesome and versatile for producing a heavily orchestrated song and wondered how a person could write such an amazing song. I found out that all that orchestra was not supposed to be in the song. It was in fact, added without Paul's consent. Paul hated how the song turned out. To make matters worse, this contributed to the break-up of the Beatles.
#40 A Bit of Fun
I was dating a guy for four months. I thought he was becoming my boyfriend. When I asked him to be my boyfriend, he said he liked me but the timing was off (since I might be going back to school). I told him I’d most likely not be going back to school. And he just said he wanted to continue doing what we were doing but not lead me on. Learning that it was never moving toward something really ruined all the memories with him. Our time meant a lot to me and now it feels like it never meant anything but a bit of fun to him.
#41 Finding Out New Things
I was in a bad relationship with a narcissistic sociopath and of course he was going behind my back. We had just broken up but he was still living at my place, taking his sweet time moving out. He regularly went to hotels and Air BnBs to meet with his new girl at that time, which I didn’t know because he told me otherwise.
But, I kept finding things around the apartment: presents she gave him, hotel key cards, one time even her underwear she apparently gave him to remember her. I know it's good I got out of this relationship and I am doing much better without him, but finding out more and more each day was full-on psychological horror.
#42 Dad’s Life
After my dad abandoned my family, he partied his way through life, lost his welding job making over $85K a year in a rural town and basically adopted his new girlfriend’s kids. He was like my best friend and I haven’t seen him in two years. At least he managed to wish me a happy birthday this year… a day late.
#43 Divorce Papers
I regret reading my parents' divorce papers. So, my dad has always been honest with me, as far as I know, the man has never lied to me. Whether it was a good or bad situation, he never beat around the bush and always told me the truth even if I didn't want to hear it. When I was younger, I told him some of the things my mom had said about him and about their divorce.
He told me that she was lying and asked me if I wanted to see the truth about what happened during the divorce, offered to let me read the divorce papers. Naturally, as a 13-year-old monster, I was curious and wanted to know the truth. The judge asked my mom, "Ma'am are you wanting any custody over this child?" My mom replied with, “Absolutely not. You can have the little puke." It changed my opinion of my mom until the day she passed away.
#44 Dad’s Last Words
My father passed away when I was only six years old, but I can remember exactly his last words to me. He said, "I'll miss you, Trevor." Trevor’s my brother. I always knew that I was the least favorite child, but his last words were exactly what I needed to prove my point. Honestly, I didn’t need to hear that.
#45 What Happened Between Them
My best friend and I had a crush on the same guy, who happens to be a close friend to both of us. She is considerably more emotional than me, so she would constantly talk about him, asking if I thought he liked her, telling me how hard it is to not know, etc. All the while, she knew I was also very into this guy, but I continued to entertain her thoughts and tried and help her not feel bad.
After months of doing this, I found out they made out and all her misery to me was because he told her to never let anyone know what happened. So she was asking my opinions and advice without ever mentioning she made out with a guy I also had feelings for. I wish she never told me what happened between them.
#46 Forget You Saw Anything
My father once sent me a very explicit message intended for his mistress. He did this shortly after renewing his 25th wedding anniversary vows with my mom, no less. He asked me to "forget [I] ever saw anything." I told him my mom needed to know, and that if he didn't tell her before she got back from trip, I'd have to.
He then blackmailed me on the threat of kicking me out, claiming that I had blackmailed him with my ultimatum. I packed a go bag, called my mom, escaped to a friend's house, and never looked back. So… yeah. That day my dad reaffirmed that no matter how low I set the bar, he can find new and unsurprising ways to be a terrible, disappointing person.
#47 Don’t Tell Me
My mother told me at a young age, and throughout my life, that having children ruined her life. If she could go back in time, she would have never had kids. And that kids only ruin your life and that if it wasn’t for us, she could have done more with her life and be something great. She told me that if I were to ever get pregnant, she didn’t want to know anything about her grandchildren. She also told me to not even tell her they existed. Now that I’m older, I don’t blame her. She was with my father who was very hurtful. In her mind, I was what tied her to him.
#48 Husband’s Girlfriend
About eight years ago, I found out that my then-husband was with another woman and that she was pregnant. She ended up homeless, sleeping in her car, and I don't care what she did, I'm not having that. So, I moved her into our guest room and took care of her. I gave her my maternity clothes, found her a good doctor, took her to her appointments, cooked for her. When I eventually left him, I even got them back together.
A couple of years ago during an argument, she told me that the whole time she lived with me, they were still with each other. She also said that she had never actually been homeless, they lied to me because they knew I'd take her in. That was such a huge slap to the face. I wish to Christ that she never told me.
#49 New Information
That the man who raised me isn't actually my biological father. I found out about this when I was 14 years old. I struggled with the information for a while but, I'm 21 now and I don't care. He’s my father either way and I love him as much as I did before I found out, possibly even more. I know my biological dad, he sucks.
#50 New Position
I found out that my co-worker, who was supposed to be my assistant, has actually been making more money than me this whole time. They gave her a new position a year ago and I found out she's making $10 more an hour than I am. Apparently, she had made more than me before she changed positions. I don't think I can get over it.
