[serious] What was your first traumatic experience?
When I was a kid I was walking with my dog through this big field with very tall grass.
As we’re walking, all her hair stands up on end and she jumped in front of me right as a big coyote came charging out of the grass at us.
It was bigger than her but she put up a heck of a fight.
The sound of animals fighting is horrible, I was just frozen with fear.
After a few seconds that felt like minutes, she got the upper hand and turned the coyote on its heels and chased it off before doubling back to me.
I had never seen a wild animal aggressive like that and it scared
the hell outta me.
The next day we found the coyote dead.
Up close I could see that it was missing hair and seemed to have a very bad case of mange.
I felt kinda bad for it actually.
I had seen coyotes before and they always sprinted in the opposite direction.
This one must’ve been really sick and desperate to go after my dog.
As I type this out 14 years later, I’m happy to report that my dog is currently happily sleeping on my bed.
She’s a great dog, and even though she’s slowed down with age, she still stands up tall and raises her hackles whenever she hears the coyotes
yelping in the woods behind my house.
I think she’s still ready for round two.
My sister tried to commit suicide when I was 7 by cutting her arms legs and neck with a razor blade.
My older cousins found her and hauled her into the driveway.
Me and my sister grabbed towels for my parents.
We waited 20 minutes for an ambulance.
She survived and was sent to a group home.
When I was 11 years old my best friend passed out a swim meet.
Me and my friends at first thought she was fine, but 2 days later, we were brought to the hospital to visit her.
She was in a coma and completely unrecognizable.
Her parents told us to try to talk to her because she might be able to hear us but all we could do was cry.
She died later that day.
I don’t think anyone knew how to properly help a bunch of 11 year olds grieve.
EDIT: we later found out she had died due to a heart defect.
Nearly drowning at 5 years old.
I don't remember a lot when I was that age but I remember that pretty vividly.
I was walking around a pool, filling a coke can and pouring it on the concrete lines.
I went to fill it up and slipped in.
I remember struggling to get out but just never could.
The next thing I remember is being cradled in my mother's arms and thinking "what happened".
My mom put me in swimming lessons shortly after that.
Edit: Since this is getting attention I want to point out some important links:
- [Red Cross Swimming Lessons and Water You can use this to
find classes near you, if available.
- [Red Cross CPR You can find CPR lessons here too.
- [Pool and Swimming A few basic tips for behavior around water.
- [Videos of Drowning doesn't looks like the movies or TV shows.
Learn what it looks like by watching videos of real life events and rescues.
My mom took my dad and I to the park where she was planning on telling him that she was leaving him.
I was told to wait in the car as I heard them yelling at each other.
My mom then opened the car door, told me she loved me and left me and my dad there.
We tried looking for her but couldn’t find her.
Watching my mom walk away and out of my life at seven years old gave me horrible separation anxiety.
Edit: Hi so I posted this last night and woke up to tons of love and I’m just in shock to how much attention this has gotten because this was the first time I’ve posted on Reddit.
I’ve gotten a few questions so I’m gonna answer them here.
After running
away she had a boyfriend pick her up, I found this out years later after the incident.
Yes I did see her again a year later because she tried getting split custody of me but failed.
After that I would only see her very rarely.
I wanna say thank you for all the nice comments!
I appreciate them so much
Physical: got run over by a car when I was 4.
Mental: (somewhere around 4) stepfather was in a drunken rampage and was going to hit me.
My dog bit him, so he strangled my dog to death in front of me.
Edit: Wow.
I have gotten so many supporting repiles.
I'm fine (kind of, i have lived a very sad life, and I won't go into it here, but I'm here).
This was one of those things early in life that i didn't even know I remembered until the question brought it up.
Kind of sucks that this is my most upvoted comment.
You guys are great though.
I saw a family of 6 get into a bad car wreck on the interstate Easter Sunday of 2nd grade.
Got a good 5 sec view of a contorted body of a woman who got thrown out a windshield.
Shot burnt into my brain and desensitized the beep outta 7 yr old me.
Fast forward 10 years and I watched a classmate of mine get smacked by a pickup truck in front of my house while he was on a bike.
Ran to him and he was obviously already dead and his abdomen was basically jello.
I stayed with him until the ambulance took him.
Somehow out of the whole experience the worst thing about it was me trying to explain to my mom why I
had blood up to my elbows
Losing my mum at 9
She was raising me mostly by herself and my birth father was not part of my life ever
She was in hospital for something that should have been simple but she had to stay over night, the next morning my mum's partner and my uncle(mum's brother) turned up at the partners parents place where I was, I was all excited because I only got to see my uncle for birthdays and Xmas
Then they sat me down and told me what happened, first time I know I just burst into tears, no build up or anything just heard the words from my uncle and I started crying
Been over 25 years now and I still get choked up and I struggle watching any show about foster kids or losing mums to this day, also I visit her grave every year on her birthday
It was a mental one.
I was very young and I woke up to my dad yelling at my mom while she was sobbing for what felt like an eternity over the fact that she bought herself a lighter and didn’t buy him one (they both smoke).
It was from then on that I noticed my dad was an alcoholic and he hated us.
My mother was abusive emotionally and physically during my younger years.
One time, I didnt sing her happy birthday when I was 7, and so she locked me in a room, and bent me over to cane me repeatedly.
Now obviously to a 7 year old this was super high end pain, and I was screaming and crying hysterically and it became a blur.
All I remember was my grandparents banging on the door and threatening to call the police
When i was younger like maybe 5 or 6 i was playing around with my brother in my bedroom who just learned how to walk.
So were just playing in there and my brother lost his balance and his fell on the sharp edge of my bed frame.
The edge is so sharp it punctured a hole on my brothers head, he cried while blood was dripping down his head.
my parents busted through the door and rushed him to the ER.
He has a little scar on his head to this day.
Had a babysitter hold my left hand against a lit burner because I was coloring with the wrong hand.
Joys of being left handed.
Coming up on two years in a few months a homeless man committed suicide by kneeling in the middle of the road.
It was 12:30am I was on my way back to work from lunch he was wearing all black and I didn't even have time to press the brakes because there is little to no lighting near the port I work at.
My guess is he was hoping for one of the many semi trucks that go down that road but instead he got me.
Still don't like driving at night but I'm the night guy and I still have to drive that road.
My last foster mother gave me a reason to splash in the tub.
Guess my 3 or 4 year old self needed taught not to splash water.
She held my face under water for what seemed a lot longer than it probably was.
I was five years old and my grandma hit a car on the freeway.
Both cars rolled but the driver of the other car wasn't wearing his seat belt.
He fell out the open window while it was rolling and was effectively smeared on the pavement by either our car or his car.
I remember sitting on the curb while a first responder was evaluating to see if I was okay, but more than anything I remember the wife of the deseased man was screaming in agony at her meat-crayon husband.
I told my family I didn't remember a thing from the accident because I didn't want them to worry.
One of my first memories actually.
I think I was three but may have still been two.
My mom and dad were arguing and then my dad slammed my mom's face into the corner of the TV.
These were the old wooden cabinets tv's.
Edit: to everyone trying to analyze and jump to conclusions based on just this, you are wrong lol
I went through a lot of beep as a child and most cause of my dad's addiction to alcohol.
He eventually went to prison when I was 13.
He did a lot of terrible things but he truly was two completely different people.
He was the most loving and caring
person during the day and then he was the devil at night.
Going to prison was the best thing for him cause not only did it get him sober but it saved his life cause there's no way he would have made it with how much he drank.
Out of all the beep he did, my dad was a good man.
And then you can have what my parents had, a good relationship for the most part but one has a drinking problem and the other has an attitude problem.
Add in my mom not being scared of beep and you get a spicy relationship.
They split up after this so it's not one of those typical husband beats the wife and manipulates her situations, she beat the beep out of him too.
I was 4.
My family went to visit my grandparents.
They had an in ground pool.
Everyone was outside having a BBQ.
I was walking around the edge of the pool and looked down and saw my little brother had fallen in the pool right behind the ladder.
He was only 1, so he obviously couldn't swim.
I laid down on my stomach and looped my arms under his arm pits, pulling his head above the water.
But just barely.
He was HEAVY.
He was fully dressed and I was only 4.
I screamed and screamed for our mother.
It felt like forever but someone finally noticed me and all the adults came rushing over.
No one ever talked to me about it afterwards.
I was terrified of
water for a long time and am still very over protective of my little brother.
When I was about 8 I walked in on my dad pounding my mom from behind....
Im mexican so im sorry if my english is bad.
When I was around 6 years old I was constantly with my mom because she worked as a domestic employe and she didnt had enough money for a babysitter and she didnt have any people of trust at the time in the city.
One day we were walking from the house where she worked to a bus stop in a highway, where we waited around 3 minutes.
Then everything here starts to get serlous.
It was 2012, when drug war was really violent in my área, with a drug Cartel called Los Zetas fighting for the area with other drug cartels.
We had so bad luck that a gun fight between Los Zetas and the army started there with us being trapped in the middle
of the gun fire.
I remember I could see bodies and blood coming from the cartel cars, i was so scared and my mom and sister were crying.
The gunfight lasted like 2 minutes, but it felt like hours.
Thankfully, none of us got harmed and the army killed all of these guys.
I was traumatized for months, but sadly, the constant violence was normal for me and didnt even got scared anymore.
A dog ripped a part of my cheek off I looked in the mirror before I went to the ER and saw my exposed jaw bone.
My dad beat the beep out of me when I was 7 years old because I told him I didn’t like him singing to me when he woke me up for school.
I’m about the same age he was when he did that to me and I can’t imagine having the arrogance to do that to a child.
Felt like I was dying when I caught H1N1 Swine Flu in 2009 pandemic.
Maybe I was, could not breathe properly and had an auto immune reaction that ruined my life.
Left me with constant chronic severe leg pain when I was barely into my teens.
Those 3 weeks of having that flu were traumatic indeed.
Found out 5 years later I have Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome.
First memory of existence, as far back as it goes, I remember being so small that the world looked huge.
I was in the dining room because I loved crawling around under the chairs.
Hear a bang and it's mom being thrown against the wall by my dad.
I remember running over, laughing and giggling because I thought it was a game.
I grabbed at his leg to play along while he hit her.
He turned around and punched me in the stomach.
Hard.
It was the strangest feeling because my mom started screaming but I couldn't hear her.
I fell on my butt and what was weird was I didn't cry.
I didn't even register it as an injury, even though it
hurt so much.
I just remember I couldn't breathe in as much as I wanted to.
I kept trying, and every time I got some air down, I'd use it to laugh a little.
Gulp of air, wide eyes, little giggle.
It was such a bizarre response but I can remember it clear as I'm sitting here.
I just thought we were playing and I got hurt and I wanted to keep playing but I couldn't breathe.
I went to a party in the woods one night like a bonfire and me and my friend were really drunk then someone gave us some Xanax without us realizing it we both took it and the next thing I remember I wake up in a hospital bed.
Most comfortable bed I’ve ever lain in but I overdosed that night and had my stomach pumped I couldn’t eat a full meal without puking for like a week and I had intense heartburn for a month.
I still don’t completely remember that night.
I’ve been kind of ashamed of it but figured this would help me get over it.
My parents were fighting, I was about 5 and my brother 7.
Dad threw mum down the stairs and threw her University textbooks at her.
Grabbed her face and hit her multiple times.
My brother and I were crying, didn't know what to do so we just watched.
Physically mollested/encouraged to be raped at 4 by my older cousin/older brother.
Was made to believe it was my fault and blackmailed about it.
Caused me a lot of shame growing up, and even now.
I also remember my mom overdosing on Valium in the same time period.
She survived.
Sexual and physical abuse by my babysitter or coming home to my cat dead in the street.
I forget which happened first.
Seven was a rough age.
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