“Grandma died during surgery”. I didn’t call her the night before because I thought it’d be awkward and I didn’t acknowledge the risk of heart surgery.

My wife telling me that she can’t deal with me anymore in November 2024. We were together for twelve years. TBH, I was also sore that Trump just won the election despite that Project 2025 was public knowledge, so I was super vulnerable already, and her departure pushed me into a long-term psychotic break.

I had been getting progressively crazier in the years leading to her announcement. My psychotherapist discontinued my service to go on maternity leave some years before and I had then moved to Sacramento. Then the COVID-19 epidemic hit, everyone needed psychotherapy and so they all stopped taking Medicare since their schedules were packed with better payers. And then they all burned out.

So I went without mental health care for years figuring I could deal better than those who are not used to being crazy. Evidently not so.

There are more factors. Her job in construction was going south so she changed jobs to a non-profit that helps victims of human trafficking (and is still brutally busy but is far more fulfilled by her work), and the income difference affected our lifestyle.

its happened a few times in my life so i dont have an exact quote. i always wanted to be a part of something bigger than myself, be on a team, make something with my friends, help someone with their dream, whatever. i was basically told “you have no skills and no ability to help, so you would only get in the way”. it hurt so much to be deliberately excluded by people who i thought were my friends, to be told im worthless to them, im incapable of helping them. after a few of those i cant even bring myself to offer anymore, and no one ever asks. part of me doesnt see the point of living if this is how people see me.

Just being told I was ugly. Objectively I’m fine (although, of course, it’s all relative) and it took a while to work out.

I’m not conventionally handsome, but I have been fortunate enough to have good looking girls be attracted to me when I was a younger man. It blew me away as I believed I was a troll, thanks to toxic fuckers who took it upon themselves to comment negatively on my appearance when I was a teen. I still vividly remember one day in class this spotty new guy went on a sustained and articulate tirade about how weird looking I was. I had to fight to hold back the tears. This was 30 years ago and I still wince at the memory of it.

I’d pretty much come to terms with how weird I looked, then I went to uni in the city I was staggered to find that girls liked me. And not just for being the funny guy or whatever - there were genuinely women that would come on to me in clubs. It freaked me out to be honest.

To this day I don’t know if I was some sort of ugly duckling or what. Or maybe my face was just wrong for my rural home town, whereas the city, with it’s wider gene pool seemed to like me.

I also don’t get why these pricks (all men) wanted to bring me down. Guess some people are just mean bastards.

“you’re an open book”, like they thought they knew me and that’s all I’ll ever be

I was sitting around a picnic table with a few friends and a couple new people we didn’t know too well. Someone had the idea that the new people go around and predict something about each of us, who they had basically just met.

One of them went around and said something super nice about each person, like “you’ll get that job you always wanted” or “you’ll have kids that will end up doing great things” stuff like that, kind of impersonal but nice generic predictions.

When she got to me she stopped, looked at me really hard, and said “you’re going to die, sad and alone.” There was silence for a few seconds and then most of us started cracking up, because we were sure she was joking. But when we stopped laughing, I saw she hadn’t even cracked a smile, and she looked me straight in the eye and said “I’m serious.” Then moved on and said something super nice about the next person.

This was more than 15 years ago and it hasn’t stopped bothering me. Needless to say, she and I never became friends.

When I was being raped and tortured repeatedly by a younger male family member for over 2 years and cried for help, being told that it was something I imagined or made up to stir drama was extremely heart-shattering.

It didn’t matter how much physical evidence I had gathered, nobody in my life would recognize the seriousness of the situation or even take the smallest steps to prevent the abuse from happening.

I was too afraid to call the cops because even my parents refused to believe me. I lived in a very rural town which likely never encountered a situation like mine. Nobody was on my side. My abuser poisoned my family and friends against me before/during/after the abuse, to make sure I had no one to go to.

“When we got together you were skinny and your hair was long.” After a long conversation about my looks changing over time. It should not be shocking that he, too, aged. Anyway yeah he left me for someone ten years younger…

When I came back home from the hospital after my amputation, my wife of 30 years told me she didn’t sign up for this, packed up her things and left.

“…are you aware that that is 100% terminal within a year?”

I wasn’t.

I have a bit of a story to tell about this particular question.

It’s a question I asked of myself.

Brought on by my sister calling child protective services on me after my wife died. She left me. With four children, and I was in mourning and not dealing well.

It led me the ask the most painful question of myself. Am I a good father?

The answer was no.

I wasn’t a good father. And I’m glad she made that call. It woke me up, and I changed everything around. Or at least, I hope so.

There were two times in my life where I grew my hair out and had shoulder-length long hair and I’ve gotten some pretty nasty comments for it, both online and in-person.

I’ve had some pretty nasty insults thrown at me, like “pedophile”, “tr***y”, etc

Even when I posted a pic of myself on another account on r/ToastMe on Reddit (basically opposite of RoastMe), most of the comments were people openly shitting on my appearance and the mods turned a blind eye to it…

No, that guy holding a swastika flag at a Nazi march isn’t a Nazi. You don’t know anything else about him!

I don’t need to, though - and now, I don’t need to know anything else about the guy who said that, either.

I used to compete in an annual competition in high school, one year I got 4th, the next third. You needed first to progress to national level.

A friend of my teacher said “when do you just shoot the horse” right in front of me.

Thankfully I never saw that guy again, but Jesus, what an asshole. That was the last year I did that competition.

It was two occasions about eight years apart. One was Mom calling to tell me Dad died, the other was my brother calling me about Mom.