There are so many things that can derail a childhood.

People are walking around as adults, still dealing with – or not dealing with – trauma from way back when…and sometimes, they didn’t even realize why until much later on.

He wasn’t sad.

When I was about 12 years old, I had piano lessons with a piano teacher who would come to my place every week.

He showed me his fully erect penis. He made me touch it. Twice. In two different weeks. Both times mom was home, in the kitchen, making food.

Only like 14 years later, I suddenly realized how horrible this actually was.

That probably also explains why I never felt sad when this teacher suddenly died of cancer. He was really good at playing and teaching piano, that’s why my mom never understood why I wasn’t sad when he died.

I told her now, and she was shocked and disgusted at what he did back then.

What a wild story.

My parents divorced when I was 3yo because they started using  m**h together, and my mom got hooked. Dad told her to get help or he was leaving, and she chose to move in with their m**h dealer, marrying him several years later. Dad got custody of us, and that was its own negative situation (though Dad never got high again, and neither did his second wife, so at least that part was better), but in the first few years, we still spent a lot of time with Mom in the drug house. This included that, during the summer, we were with Mom full-time, only seeing Dad or his family on Wednesdays and every other weekend.

The first few years after the divorce were the worst, using-wise, amongst my Mom and my stepdad. In the autumn when I was 6, they had a baby, a little boy. I ended up being the one that cared for him when I was over there, as Mom and Stepdad were often too high to bother to care for him correctly, and they taught me how.

Anyway, the summer after the baby was born, I’m 6, my sister is 5, and the baby is about 7-8 months old or so. My sister and I were outside playing when she complained that her toe hurt. Mom was awake, so I took my sister to her to tell her. My sister always had a very low tolerance for pain, and she became aggressive when my mom tried to look at it. Being high, my mom ended up slapping a bandaid on it without really looking at it, and telling my sister it was going to be just fine. Sister still complained that her toe hurt a little bit, but we were able to go on as normal.

Fast forward a couple of days, sister is still complaining, Mom has been awake for about 3 days. My mom and I cornered my sister in the bathroom and tried to hold her down to look at her toe. My sister was kicking, biting, and screaming m**der. Mom decided to just forget about it, and leaves my sister with a still sore toe. She crashes from her m**h high a few hours later, and we know she’s going to be out for awhile (often, she would crash and sleep for 24-27 hours straight). But we’re little, so we’re sure that my sister is going to be fine.

The next morning, I woke up to get the baby a bottle, and tried to wake my sister up. She was literally gray. She could barely open her eyes. She refused to get out of bed or even talk to me. I was scared. I fed the baby a bottle and went to check on Sister. Still gray, still not talking, still can’t really open her eyes. I realized I needed to do something.

I snuck into my mom’s room where she and my stepdad were still sleeping soundly, and I stole her cell phone. I called my dad’s mom, and told her I thought Sister was really sick, and she needed to come get us. She asked me where Mom was, and I told her she was sleeping, and I couldn’t wake her up or she’d be mad at me. She asked me to try anyway, but I couldn’t get Mom to wake up. Grandma said she was coming. She called my other grandma to come pick up my baby brother.

Grandma got to us, waited with us until my other grandma picked up my baby brother, and thne we went straight to a clinic at the hospital grandma worked at. Sister was so sick, she couldn’t even try to be aggressive with them. I was in the room at the doctor’s office with them to answer questions, because Sister couldn’t. I explained to him that she hurt her toe, and she’d had a bandaid for a couple of days, but she just wouldn’t get up this morning.

He took the bandaid off her toe, and I saw his face go pale. He told my grandma to look, and my sister’s toe was blue, like the color of mold. Her foot was bright red, and there were like, lines, I guess snaking up her foot into her lower leg that were bright red, I remember thinking they looked like spider legs. He looked at my grandma and told her “This little girl needs surgery right now.”

So, my grandma tried to get a hold of my dad at work, but he worked at a factory, and she was unable to reach him. They couldn’t reach Mom either. They let my grandma sign the consents because of the severity of the situation – she had Cellulitis, and it was spreading, she could lose her leg or even her life.

I was too little to understand what that really meant, but my grandma tried to explain the best she could that Sister’s toe was what was sick, and they might have to cut parts of Sister off to make her less sick. When they took her into surgery, that’s where it got even worse – Grandma didn’t know Sister was allergic to Penicillin, and since she couldn’t get a hold of our parents, she had no way to tell the medical staff. Sister had an anaphylactic reaction on the surgery table.

At the end, Sister had to have her toe amputated, and she stayed about a week in the hospital. Grandma and Dad helped to be sure that I could stay with her, and I remember we had a lot of fun with me pushing her in a wheelchair to the pediatric unit’s game room, where we played a bunch of video games together while she recovered.

I also remember the original doctor coming to tell me that I saved Sister’s life, but I didn’t know what that meant at that time. I was little enough, and the crazy situations were normalized enough for me, that I didn’t question how serious it was. Sister’s toe got sick, they removed it, she’s not gray anymore, and sometimes this stuff happens.

We’re both now in our 30s, and I work as a substance abuse counselor. I’ve heard a lot of heinous cases of child abuse and neglect, but to this day I’ve never had a client tell me their negligence or abuse led to the literal amputation of any of their children’s body parts. It’s the most insane addiction story I’ve heard of, to date.

He’ll never know.

My classmate in 3rd grade who I had known since kindergarten, asked me to follow her home after school because she was scared. She also started flinching to fist bumps around that time, to any fist really.

After the school made some deal out of me escorting her home and heading back to school to wait for my mom to pick me up, I never saw her again. I am guessing the father was abusive but I will never know.

Some game.

My dad and I used to play “Spaceship” and to get the space ship started, I’d have to blow into a tube to hear the electronic beep.

It was his DUI test to start the car before they started putting cameras in the cars.

Glad he’s sober these days.

A dark thread.

This thread is dark and only gonna get darker.

My mum strangled me when I was 11. My take away for a long time was how kind she was because she wrapped a folded towel around my neck before taking me to xray.

Kids will do anything to protect their image of their parents as good guys.

Definitely dark.

I remember cuddling up with my mom when she had a brace on her nose. It’s the kind you have after a surgery, and we talked about her nasal surgery.

It took like 10 years later before I realized that the reason for that corrective surgery was my dads fist

Believe your kids.

I was lifted off the ground by my middle school bully and choked until my throat shattered and his hand sank into my throat.

My mother of course didn’t believe me and said I had just entered voice change.

15+ years later I still have an aching wound in my throat that can open up and inflict pain.

I still can’t drink soda because bubbles feel like acid.

I have no idea what broke since there are 5 things it could be.

A formative memory.

My mother cutting her wrist and stabbing the walls because she was convinced there was someone in the walls.

I was probably like 4-5. the image is burned into my memory regardless.

In case he was nervous.

My Dad gave me a few hits off of a joint and some of his beer before my first day of 4 year old kindergarten.

I guess he thought I would be nervous.

I was 4.

Under his spell.

My youth pastor/youth group leader used to share porn with me after everyone else in the group had left. I was 15-16 when it started and a horny little bastard who had no access to adult material at home (late 90’s dial up on a shared computer in a public space). He was a postal employee and minister in training. It carried on until I was 18 and started dating the girl who would go on to become my wife.

I just took it in stride that he was being cool and sharing something I wanted with me because he had it. It got weird one time when he left me in his office with a video playing and told me to take my time, tossed some paper towels in, and then came back to check on me. I didn’t do anything except watch. It was awkward AF and then he saw I was nervous and gave me a weird hug. I chalked it up to nerves on my part.

My perspective changed when he accepted a role at another church and had to move. He was trying to get rid of his stuff and wanted to give it to me. I was interested until my roommate in college said it was f**ked up which made me take a step back and realize how inappropriate it was.

In 2019 he was charged with r*pe, attempted r*pe, and s*xual assault of minor and finally, this year, plead guilty to all charges for a grand total of three years in state prison.

I had come forward as a witness and got interviewed by the police and his defense attorney’s investigator. I was prepared to make a statement or testify if I had to but really didn’t want to have this part of my life made public. Thankfully, because we were all minors when it happened, our names were withheld and the prosecutor chose not to include charges associated with me because there was no physical harm done.

Looking back, I know other people who might have been involved with/abused by him. With 20+ years of hindsight, I was lucky I was so dumb and didn’t let myself fall completely under his spell.

What in the world.

I used to live in a poor neighborhood. Every Christmas season, there would be groups of kids around my age (maybe around 10 to 12) who would go from house to house and sing carols in exchange for some money.

This one night, my Dad and I were alone at home when a small group of maybe 3 to 4 boys stopped by to sing for us. At the end of their performance, my dad tells them that they need to do something extra if they want him to give them money. When they asked what, he tells them to pull down their pants and show him their penises. They were obviously reluctant, and I can tell that they were very uncomfortable. I was too. My dad then pulls me from the side and tells me to show my penis so they would understand what he meant. I don’t know what came over me but I showed my willie for all of them to see. He then laughs and continues to press them to drop their pants. That’s where my memory ends.

I get flashbacks every now and then and it bothers me. I can’t bring myself to tell my mom because it was such a long time ago.

A sad life.

My friend asking me to dress up in his moms clothes including underwear. He also liked to shove frogs in ac compressors’ rotating fan blades.

He went into the army and shortly after leaving killed himself.

A good brother.

One of my earliest memories is my sister attempting to suffocate me with a pillow.

She’s nine years older than me and for a solid chunk of my childhood and into my teens it just sort of hung out in the back of my head and it was a story she would tell about teaching me to play peekaboo.

Then our brother, ten years older than me, told the story from his perspective as how he learned he couldn’t leave me alone with her.

Heartbreaking.

I had this friend as about a 10 year old kid who lived in a trailer park during the summers we would pretty much just roam the neighborhood all day or do whatever and our parents would have no clue where we were.

One day he decided to run inside to get some toy or whatever and I followed. I saw his mom passed out on the coach a needle in her arm and this kid who couldn’t have been more than 8 or 9 was just like oh yeah she’s like that all the time in the most nonchalant tone.

At the time I was like okay grab your toy and lets go. Now thinking back it just breaks my heart.

A nightmare jerk.

My last foster dad said, “I don’t have to worry about what happens to you foster kids because I can always get another one and you are covered on state insurance.” This was regarding serious injuries when working on his land and small farm.

We had already been to the ER that summer three times, including dropping a fence post driver on the kids head and splitting it open, and myself having bar wire fence stretch so tight that it snapped on me sliced me open in my hands pretty badly, but could have ripped open my stomach.

At the time, I laughed it off as logical because he was right that he didn’t have to pay for our medical bills. As an adult, I realized how seriously f**ked up it was that he was treating us as outright expendable if we had life altering injuries and how much he only wanted us for labor.

Pre-divorce.

I was sitting on the couch at 5 yo when my parents started arguing and my mom threw a red book at my dad.

Just thought it was a fight.

Turns out it was their pre-divorce fight after my dad caught her cheating.

Didn’t learn about the cheating until I was 16 and only recently learned it was a brick that she threw at him.

These are some serious confessions.

I guess we really can’t protect our kids, as hard as we try.