Certain hardships people encounter are more extreme, unusual or unexpected than you would see in any film. This piece tells the true accounts of people and the events that truly altered their lives—sudden shocks, powerful emotions and events occurring during daily life. They look unusual, but these events did in fact happen.
My first story: I found out that my wife was on a dating app. I made a fake profile and started chatting with her that way. Some flirting later, I asked for a picture from her.
When I saw the photo she sent me of her at 20, it froze me to the spot. It was hard to delete—since it was right after we first met and started dating. The problem was, she cropped me out in the end.
When I got home that night, I saw that she had been crying. She gave me a box and told me to open it. Inside the box was the wedding ring. I froze. She said she wasn’t happy and wanted to end the relationship. I explained that I had been the one she had been messaging on the app.
Shortly after her question, she said in a calm voice that nothing had changed. She had considered and chosen long before this happened. She reported that the last two years had been very hard for her. The reality of everything stared at me so fast that it seemed my life changed all at once. I had no idea she was feeling that way.
After fininshing college, I found a position at a finance company. After I told him I had graduated, he did not respond positively at all. Much later, I discovered that he used to be a part of their team.
The manager replaced him with a relative who turned out to be not good at the job and ended up being fired. This hit him hard. As a result of his depression, he retired from the finance world and never looked back. My parents did not tell me because they loved me and hoped to protect me.
The following day, I gave my resignation to the company. I couldn’t accept working with any company that had treated my father that way.
My cousin, it was said, ran away when she was sixteen. Trace or message, but gone just like that. It was twenty years later when she came to my father’s funeral. Alive. Calm.
She insisted that she never ran from her problems. Her family had been told to leave. Her pregnancy brought disgrace to her family and they sent her away. The woman was responsible for raising her child by herself. She wants us to meet her charming daughter! Something in me tore apart.
At age 23, I needed my birth certificate to get hired. It was impossible for my mom to find it, so I bought my own copy. I discovered I was adopted in that same way. The weirdest thing, though, is
My “brother” is my half-brother because he is my birth mother’s first son. She gave me away when she was young and reclaimed me when she grew up. No one has ever explained this to me. When I talked to my parents about it, they began to cry. They claimed they would do it when it seemed right. As it turned out, the parent never came for her.
Story Six: It wasn’t until I learned that my parents had already lost a son that they wanted and so they were happy to have me. We argued when I was 14 and my sister was 16. Having reached her limit, she said, “The reason you’re alive is that the other kid is dead.” A few years later, I got confirmation that my theory was wrong and she had been genuine after all.
