Outcasts Are Telling Stories of How They Got Their Revenge

I worked at an auto parts store as a delivery driver for the hub store for a while. Basically when they tell you “we don’t have that part in, but we can have it here by 6” I was the guy bringing it from the bigger store.

We had a manager there that was DEFINITELY all coked up pretty much all the time but thought he was sneaky about it but it. He was basically just way to amped about everything all the time but occasionally he would slip up on some of the details of day to day stuff.

This turned into him a few times deciding to change up the schedule after it was posted and forgetting to tell anybody. So, I kept getting calls on my days off like an hour after the route was supposed to leave with whoever was the shift manager freaking out about where I was... which was in bed... because on my schedule it was my day off.

Now I lived about an hour to an hour and a half bus ride from the shop so there was no way I could make it in before the next route would be leaving anyway so there really wasn’t anything I could do. Unfortunately, since this was a big corporate company these got run up as no call no shows and after he did this like 4 times in a month I got marked for mandatory termination.

He doesn’t tell me this though, he tells me that I’m “getting suspended” conveniently until the next paychecks show up in the mail. I’ve been through this before at another job and they do that because, in my state, after they fire you they have to have your last check in your hands within like 48hrs.

So I show up “to my shift” already knowing what’s up and sure enough as soon as I show up I get told I have to go to his office. He drops the news that the system mandates that they have to fire me because of his fuck up on the schedule.

He tries to be apologetic and tells me that after the 90 day lock out he’d happily hire me back. I tell him if I’ll still need the job in 90 days I’ll just come hang myself in the warehouse. He didn’t really know how to respond to that so he leaves me to finish up my termination paperwork.

Since we were a big hub store, the district manager was often around and came in to work on something and asks me why I had missed so many shifts. I tell him that I didn’t and I’m basically getting fired because the manager has a coke problem he can’t deal with.

He asks if I really think he does coke and i was like “.... come on man.... the dude is always bouncing out of his office super amped in the morning with a bad case of the sniffles? EVERYONE knows he’s doing blow in his office.” He’s chewing on that and I take off.

A few years later I ran into one of my buddies who worked there and ask him what ever happened to the manager. “Ohh dude, he got fired like a month after you left. I guess corporate found out he was doing a bunch of coke and they had to can him.” Damn shame ☕️🐸

Username: Rborthick

A friend of mine worked in IT at a (former) Fortune 500 company. There was an issue with their email server that was caused by a phishing attempt. To find out what happened, he had to go into individual emails to locate the source. In his search, he found an email directed to his supervisor that was stating the entire IT department was going to be let go in a month, and only his supervisor would be left to stay.

My friend secretly let his coworkers in the IT department know to start looking for another job and told them not to let anyone know that they knew. Meanwhile, my friend had a secondary plan: he wanted to see how chicken-shit his supervisor truly was.

Everyday, my friend would drop hints and have leading conversations with his supervisor, hoping that his boss would say something, anything, prior to the day of the downsize. He was hoping his boss would give them a heads up and not blindside them, but it was to no avail; the supervisor was tight-lipped.

With a week before his firing, my friend planted a virus in their file server that was timed to go off two weeks after he was to be fired. The virus was designed to randomly delete a folder on their file server and their backup server, permanently removing it from their files and archives.

It could be a small file or a big one; it was random, but it was complete annihilation. The thing is, if his supervisor said anything prior to Downsize Day, even if it was the day before, my friend would remove the virus.

Downsize Day came and sure enough, they took his keys, his badge, everything, and my friend walked out with a smile on his face. Two weeks later, a friend and (former) coworker of my friend's called yelling, "WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO!?"

"What are you talking about?" my friend asked.
"The [account name] folder is gone! It's fucking gone and no one can find it! They all think you deleted it!"
"It couldn't be me. I was fired weeks ago."
*click*

Username: Boon3hams

My very first online friend killed herself nine years ago because she was rejected first by her mother who was a drug addict, then her father and stepmother who were incredibly right-wing religious, then her school which kicked her out for using hair dye in the "wrong colours" of all things as part of her plan to come out at school (her school was a private school that had a lot of really bullshit rules), and was sent to one of those Troubled Teens things run by religious nuts *to cure her from being a lesbian.*

She came back home and found out her room had been renovated, she was now enrolled in a very oppressive private Christian school, her old clothing had all been cut up and replaced with plain cheap shit, her computer was nearly entirely wiped of any of her digital photos (which I got back for her), most of her accounts (that she had left logged in) were deleted except YouTube and Skype, and any sort of communication with her former friends was barred.

I managed to help her get around the communications block and get to talk to a help line, but she was so traumatised by all of it that after 2 months of living that way, she hung herself. I was the last person to ever speak to her.

In doing so, she managed to completely ruin the image, reputation, and careers of her father and stepmother. I don't want to disclose what they did for a living, but they were well-liked in their town and were seen as that generous couple who took in a sadly troubled teen that was conceived when the man was a "foolish" twentysomething. It was a super conservative California town, which sounds like an oxymoron, but California can get really really conservative the further away from the city you get.

She had evidence of their abuse, and had used it against them, and it didn't quite make the news but it was well-known. I knew her friends well (as I often talked to them too and became close with them after this) and they said the fallout was crazy.

The father had sexually abused her and though charges never got laid, as this was 2011, his reputation was ruined and he ended up divorced and broke, he lost any sort of money to lawyers in fighting the fact that he was publicly blamed for the suicide by others in his neighbourhood.

The stepmother went to remarry a few years later and was barred from the foster care system because the suicide was pretty damning evidence as she had been revealed to be extremely physically abusive and would subject her to unusual punishments like sleeping in a wet sleeping bag outside or making her eat her dinner while running laps around their property including the stuff she spilled.

The bio mother, I don't know much about. I've heard of her going into rehab maybe a year after the suicide but I don't know anything else beyond she failed it and sort of drifted out of any sort of online presence but isn't outright dead or anything. Just on a shitload of heroin.

I still hurt and wish that my friend was here today, but I can't help feeling that she'd be smiling knowing that she managed to absolutely ruin these people's lives.

Username: [deleted]

Back in the 80s as a kid, I was on a town swim team. There were older (3-4 years mostly) kids that bullied me relentlessly. Wet towel snapping, tripping, slamming into lockers, everything you could think of. Adults never believed me when I complained, nor would they even bother to have someone supervise the area.

One day they were pulling their usual shit in the locker room. About 2 dozen boys were in the room, and of course no adults around. After getting shoved multiple times I made it to a bathroom stall. I locked the door and stood on the toilet so they couldn't reach me.

Everyone was hooting it up and egging the bullies on. At this point, I snapped. I knew there was only one thing I could do. I pissed on him.

With great deliberation I dropped trou, aimed my prepubescent pea shooter at the crack between the door and divider and let loose like a fire hose on the bully. I don't know how long I manage to shoot off, but the cheering quickly turned to screams and swears as they realized what I just did.

Of course they ran off to find the coaches and claim to be the victims. Thankfully there were a few others that corroborated my story.

My punishment was that for 2 weeks I had to change in a separate locker room by myself. The bullies? Kicked off the team. Never saw them again. That was the last time anyone bullied me there.

Username: Kodiak01

I’d have to say I sort-of fall into this category, although I more or less burnt myself down to try and cope. My dad died when I was like five or so and my mom just couldn’t cope. She kept up the facade for a few years but untreated grief wore her down, plus she’s as stubborn as a bull and wouldn’t accept help from my dads family to the point that she cut contact with them entirely; up until a few years ago it had been over a decade since I saw or spoke to any of them.

She got pretty heavy into Vicodin and started mismanaging money really badly, was hardly “present” for us and just couldn’t provide the love and support I needed as I was also dealing with untreated grief. As I started recognising what was going on and realising how horrible our situation was it began to wear on me.

I didn’t want to be like her so I avoided pills, but I was so sad and angry all the time to the point that if I wasn’t basically disassociating with books, music, tv, etc., I was drunk off my ass at 15 having sex with total strangers 10-50 years older than me just to feel loved for a little while.

Around 16 I had a phone that my best friends mom paid for so that someone could get a hold of me since we frequently didn’t have power and my moms phone would get shut off. One night she was using it because her service had been cut and she started snooping around my texts, and read a conversation I had with a social worker at my school about how much I hated being so poor.

She felt guilty and instead of doing the right thing (kicking the pills, getting her shit together) she imploded on me and basically told me if I didn’t like it I could get the fuck out. This is was honestly an empty threat but I knew that if I stayed I would’ve just had to deal with more verbal and emotional abuse.

It was dead of winter and the busses didn’t stop at my house, and I knew even if I could wake my mom up she’d just be a dickhead to me so I chose to walk through a snow storm in whatever I could wear that would keep me from freezing my toes off.

At the end of the day instead of getting on the bus home I convinced my social worker to release me to my nana even though she wasn’t an emergency contact, and finally got out of that hell-hole.

I’m 22 now, in a loving relationship of five years, living on my own and making better money and living a better life than my mother could ever provide me. She’s still drug-addicted and broke with all of her kids having left her. Moral of the story I guess is that the fire might burn, but the ash can make great fertiliser.

Username: Solaptrys

This is what I can't stand: Administrators being the apologists of bullies and treating the victims as if they did something to invite it. The school wasn't even doing anything to protect her, were they? In the 60s, my mom was the girl in your story.

She was bullied by a group of girls, especially the leader, Heidi. This bitch sought out my mom daily. She did everything from hit my mom in the face, trip her, and even broke her glasses multiple times.

This was a posh private school. What did administration do? Nothing. It was ok for my grandparents to pay thousands in tuition, yet the school was perfectly ok with letting another student harass another to the level that Heidi was to my mom.

My grandparents were told that there was no proof of my mom's claims and that Heidi is a wonderful student! After that meeting, my Gram was angry. My grandfather, not one to ever back down, encouraged my mom to "be a lady". In the same breath, he gave her his blessing to kick Heidi's ass if she ever came near my mom.

It turns out that Heidi lived in the same neighbor as my mom, only streets over. She saw my mom in the front yard and confronted her by shoving her to the ground. This bitch had the nerve to taunt my mom about how weak she was and that there was nothing she could do about it.

Remembering my grandfather's words, my mom kicked Heidi in the knee. HARD. She knocked Heidi over, began beating her up, and letting out guttural sounds in between.

According to my mom, she focused on the knee that she kicked Heidi in and just kept going. My Gram was none the wiser, probably cooking something and being her resourceful self, and my grandfather was at work.

Since Heidi showed up by herself, she was at a severe disadvantage, especially to my mom's brand new platform shoes with bells on the toe cap. Every single time my mom kicked Heidi, those bells rang a shrill, cheery toll. Heidi cried for mercy and my mom stopped. She invited Heidi to come back for round two when she recovered. Heidi didn't look back; she hobbled home.

Word got around school what happened. Nobody wanted to mess with my mom. The school couldn't do anything because it didn't happen on their property and my grandparents acted like they were none the wiser when the school contacted them.

What I found hilarious was that when Heidi's mom showed up at my grandparents' house to find out what happened, my Gram answered the door and told this person that her daughter deserved it. My Gram slammed the door in her face and never interacted with them again. Heidi never looked in my mom's direction.

Username: leftclicksq2

I'm the child in this story. I'm also autistic and have never fit in with my family. My Dad never wanted kids, my mom was an abusive monster that wanted kids. On my Dad's deathbed, he told me my mom had raped him and that was the only reason I exist. Same as my sisters a few years later.

He died shortly after. And my uncles had loaned my dad about $67,000 collectively. So, two months, later, the depts still haven't been paid because insurance is being a cunt and my parents changed something a few days before my Dad died. My uncles, who are millionaires, by the way.

One bought his daughter a BMW and the other bought his son and daughter an F-150 and a horse, respectively. I've always fought with my mom and she broke my jaw when I was 18, backhanded me in the face with a ringed hand and other shit. I was no better, I yelled and screamed and hit her in self-defence. She hit me because I was annoying.

So, two months after my Dad died, my uncles are harassing my mom for the money because she was in charge of it. I see a golden opportunity and I take it. I wrote a two-thousand-word email to all my family members, all the family friends and everyone else who knew my mom.

I wrote what my dad said to me, I wrote that my cousin was amateur pornstar for a time, with links to all the videos I could find of her. This is the same cousin with the BMW, I wrote that one of my sister's friends made a porno 2 months after her 18th birthday, wrote what my uncles had written to my mom about the money.

How they've been waiting for it for 6 months. Even though my Dad only died 2 months later. I wrote about how my mom abused the fuck out of me. Admittedly, I embellished a lot of it, but I wrote it with soul. 6 days later I found out my mom killed herself. When my sister dropped by my apartment to tell me, I broke her nose.

And I knew my uncles would probably never get their money. Which did put a smile on my face. The following week, I stole her ashes and dumped them down the toilet. No one ever found out what happened to them. And a month later, I found out my cousin from the porn had been expelled from uni, lost her car and her boyfriend and had been disowned by her parents.

My sister's friend had also killed herself. And my grandma died around Christmas. I don't have an exact date. Oh, and my sisters were so distraught that one of them lost her scholarship, which was also her only source of income while the other was got a DUI or whatever.

They are both barely scraping by now. So, with a single email, I fucking obliterated a large chunk of my family, destroyed others and just really fucked them up.

In response to all of this, I went on vacation to London, England in November and have no regrets. I still talk to some of the family friends. Not all, but some. I have never been happier than with this email.
Username: Trick_Enthusiasm

I guess it's time to out myself as a jerk. Many moons ago, when we first started crawling online the internet there was a fandom for a video game. The video game title in questions has numbers after it.

There was a message board where the "in" people went to hang out for this message board. I started going there and quickly realized that my fandom was corrupt, gross, and full of people maybe shouldn't hang out? But I had made friends though, so I attempted to talk to them about some of the things that probably needed to change in the fandom:

Example: One poster was like 28, married, with two kids, but she spent all her time online with a 16 year old posting sex messages where he would strangle her. The 16 year old was super defensive of the 28 year old woman. Anyhow, this was a public forum. A lot of people of various ages and from various countries came upon this forum.

At the same time I had started a webpage. Back then you could find online coding to make something similar to fanfiction (.) net or achieve of our own. So I got together $100 + by saving from my after school job. I made this for my fandom. There were over 800 pieces of fan art and fanfics on there. Literally it was an archieve that all you needed to do was sign up and put your stuff on it. I was in that particular fandom for a few years.

Eventually, things came to a head. I was known for my ideals of justice and being somewhat rigid with them. I admit I was one of the issues with the fandom. I told the 28 year old to tell her little 16 year old to stop sending me emails about how he was going to kill me.

This caused a particular large fight on this message board. The 28 year old woman and 16 year old were extremely popular with basically everyone. Personally, I never liked either. They just felt fake and off.

I was kicked out and told to never come back. So I left and never went back. But when I left, I took all my person information on the people. I deleted my whole webpage to the fandom. I received many messages about that webpage being the only place they had saved their art.

Turns out a lot of people were saving their personal emails on it. It was around the time of floppy disks after all. The fandom didn't support me though. They were too happy to follow the lead of the leader of the owner of the message board.

And then? I had suspected for some time that some people were telling lies. So I contacted the Department of Family and Children Services. The married 28 year old? Turs out she was in her 40s. And the 16 year old boy she was cybering with on a public message board?

He was 12 years old when he started. He was still underage when I reported him. So I sat back, and watched the 40 year old lose: her place as top dog in the fandom, her job, her husband, and her two adorable kids that she was ssooo proud of.

As for the under age kid? Don't worry, as soon as I found out I contacted his parents and told them the whole story, left the information for the 40 year old woman with them, and told them that maybe their kid shouldn't be alone on the internet.

Rumor mill says eventually the 12 year old kid ended up going to juvie as he tried so hard to get back online. Eventually, he tried something criminal to get back online. Remember, time of floppy disks.

The owner of the message board? She might have had a job with a video game company. I might have gotten her fired. Within a month of this happening the fandom imploded. Everyone went their separate ways. The game is still being made.

But it never got popular again in the states. Matter of fact, they won't even hire English actors to do the voice anymore. Now its all just subtitles. That's the story of how I imploded a fandom while in a fit of rage.

Username: librarybunny13

So I was 20 when I started working at Walgreens. I am now 32. On November 11, 2011 shortly after I turned 21 my dad was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. I was sitting on the windowsill at the hospital and called Walgreens and told them the horrible news. My manager only asked "are you coming in tomorrow?"

Then a week or so later my performance was suffering obviously and my store manager Todd pulls me in the office and tells me "you'll need this job soon, it will be you and your mom only" dickhead.

I also tried to call out for period cramps and this ass told me to "get used to it" because I'd be having periods for the next 40 years.

I was told I could not use my dad's illness as an excuse to call off work. Nobody thought it was serious. Two weeks before he died, I was supposed to come in at 3pm. They told me I could stay at the hospital til 5pm. 2:45pm my phone starts going off saying they're calling me. Hell no I'm not answering. I go in at 5pm and they try to write me up for being late.

That place was horrible. I got a friend in with me at that place and she is drop dead gorgeous and she could do no wrong. They would blame all of her shortcomings on me.

February 3 2012 my dad died. My mom made me take 2 weeks off work to be with family and begin grieving. After l the abuse I go in on black Friday 2012 and I had had enough. They pull me in again, todd and this other manager and todd tells me that he can't have me messing around because he has a family to feed.

He gets up, walks out. I flip him off behind my back and the other manager sees me do it. Goes and tells todd. I have him approach me on the sales floor in cosmetics and he is asking me what the fuck is wrong with me and etc.

I get into a screaming match with him in the back. I call my mom who says to tell them to kiss my ass and walk out. He asked me what I was going to do and I threw my name badge down, told him what I was told to say and walked the fuck outta there. I was told he was in a major car accident years later and may have lasting injuries. That's karma for you.

Username: doborion90

It’s a long story but I was basically that child. My parents loved me and everything but I could tell they where ashamed of me because I’m gay and have all these mental disorders due to biological factors and also the fact I was severely abused by a group of family friends that where living with us.

Long story short these family friends repeatedly abused me, sexually and physically and mentally through the ages 9 to 10, my parents found out about and automatically kicked them out of the house. However when I was 13 these family friends kidnapped me and forced me into human trafficking, and put me through unspeakable forms and physical and mental and sexual torture.

I was saved at age 15 but I was never the same after that. My parents through they tried to accept I could tell I was a nuisance to them they acted very cold towards me and often dismissed alot of my emotions as they where ashamed of having a son with severe mental illnesses. I got bullied in school a lot because I was raped people made fun of me for getting raped and also made fun of me for having mental illnesses relating to trauma.

I eventually snapped from all this abuse I was put through that I started to become violent I started getting into violent fights, I would try to kill my school bullies including even writing out plans to kill them and made a hit list too. I also wrote up plans on how to kill my abusers too as they where still alive and I never got justice from what happened to me.

My abusers had the nerve to show up to my school they corner me and tried to rape me again but I snapped and all I remember is blacking out and than being covered in blood than I realized I just killed my abusers.

After the incident everyone at school was afraid of me and I became a horrible person. The incident that caused me to admit myself into a psychiatric ward was when I tried to kill myself that was when I realized I need help and that I can keep living like this and that I’m becoming just as evil as the people who abused me.

I’m much better now and I’m a safe person now that I got the help I needed and I’m properly medicated and I also am getting the love and nurturing I never got as a child. I also speak at events for people who I struggle and I tell them my story to show that if I can overcome being like than you can too.

You’re probably wondering why authorities where never involved this is because it took place in the slums of Brazil which are completely unregulated meaning their is no laws there. I’m not proud of who I once was but I’m a different person now I just learned the hard way of what happens when you give into the worst parts of your personality.

Username: [deleted]

I used to work for a truss-building factory where turnover was high. I got the job because my friend was already working there. For context, I was betrayed by my post-secondary school co-op program (where I got my tuition fully reimbursed by them), and my last job was at Home Depot.

It was going well there until they no longer gave me and the 30 other seasoned employees hours and gave them all to new hires who were cheaper. So I was already feeling relatively betrayed by the world at this point, and hoped my new job would be different.

And it was for awhile. They liked my work ethic and even gave me a golden employee review saying that I was doing very well and should keep it up. Later on, my best friend who was also looking for work also got hired on and he was also getting golden reviews. Things were looking good...

Until they weren't...By the beginning of winter of 2022, the company started treating me and my friend very differently. Just one week after we got our glowing reviews, and how they were going to put us in charge of a new line, they started looking for any reasons they could to write us up.

Even when they had nothing to accuse us of, the boss and foreman were actively looking for anything they could to get us in trouble or written up. But nothing came of it, of course, because there was nothing to write up.

Now, keep in mind, there were people at the company who definitely deserved to get written up but never were. They would be coming in high or drunk, constantly breaking stuff, taking half-hour breaks in front of the foreman and manager's office, but nothing ever came of it. That, and again, they had such a hard time finding new workers; nevermind good workers like they said me and my best friend were.

So I found it suspicious that they were treating us like this.
**But then, in the middle of our Tuesday shift in early October, my best friend was fired for absolutely no reason.**

They never did give a reason, and only said some bullshit along the lines of "you just weren't working out" once my other friend pushed for a reason. They also told him to go home as soon as possible even though they fully knew that he and I relied on my other friend to carpool with him to get there, so he didn't have a ride home to the town half an hour away...

In my mind, with everything going on, I suspected that they were trying to cut costs as they saw that they weren't going to be doing so well in the future, and that I would likely be next. That, and I couldn't stand the way they fired my best friend and treated him after he needed the job so much.

So I quit. I felt even more disappointed in the world, and especially with that company. But little did they (and I at the time) know, but my cousin's newest job was being responsible for finding construction companies for contractors to hire to fulfill jobs...

**I told him everything.**
**After some more investigations into the company, he found out I was right, and has since convinced other contractors to not get work through them.**

Last I heard from my friend who still works there, they haven't had any contracts come in since January. That, and they've now tried to get their employees to work at other retail locations, and they still have no work for them to do there or back at the factory.

But he still refuses to admit that I was right about the company foreseeing business going downhill (which I said was the real reason my best friend got fired). I've still been unemployed ever since, but seeing the company be destroyed from the inside and find itself on the verge of impending bankruptcy was worth it.

Username: fortifier22

Once upon a time, in a remote village nestled between the mountains and the sea, a child named Karim was born. With his piercing green eyes and the shock of red hair that crowned his head, Karim was an enigma from the very beginning.

The people of the village were wary of him. They whispered about his strange appearance, his fiery temper, and the way he seemed to know things that no child his age should know. It wasn't long before the villagers began to call him "The Child of Fire."

Despite his isolation, Karim longed for the warmth of the village's embrace. He yearned for friendship, for a place to belong, but everywhere he went, doors were closed to him. Children were warned not to play with him, and the adults exchanged furtive glances when he walked by.

As the years passed, Karim's bitterness grew. He resented the village that had rejected him, and he felt a mounting anger deep within his heart. It was as if an inferno raged within him, yearning to be unleashed.

On the eve of his sixteenth birthday, a terrible storm struck the village. The wind howled like a banshee, and lightning illuminated the sky with an eerie glow. As the villagers huddled together in their homes, Karim ventured out into the storm. His anger, like the storm itself, could no longer be contained.

With his fists clenched and his heart pounding, Karim climbed to the highest point in the village, overlooking the sea. There, he shouted into the raging storm, "If you will not embrace me, then feel the wrath of my fire!" With that, he threw his arms wide, and the storm seemed to respond to his call.

As lightning crashed down around him, the storm's fury ignited the village. The wind carried the flames from house to house, and within moments, the entire village was ablaze. The villagers, once so quick to scorn Karim, now called out in fear and desperation.

But Karim was gone. He had slipped away in the chaos, disappearing into the night. The villagers were left to rebuild their lives, a painful and humbling process. As they did so, they couldn't help but wonder if things might have been different. Had they embraced the child who had been so desperate for warmth and love, could they have prevented the fire that had destroyed everything they held dear?

Years passed, and the village slowly healed. New homes were built, and new children were born. The legend of Karim, The Child of Fire, was passed down through generations. But now, it was not a story of fear and superstition. Instead, it served as a reminder of the importance of compassion and acceptance.

The village had learned a lesson it would never forget: A child that is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth. And so, the villagers vowed to embrace every child, to welcome them with open arms, so that none would ever feel the need to set their world ablaze again. Then they all clapped.

Username: gorramfrakker

When I was a young teen, back in the mid-nineties, our school had an event they called "Cheemo Days" which apparently arises from an Inuit word meaning friendship. Knowing the cultural sensitivity of the town I grew up, I have no idea if this is correct.

Cheemo days were our school's version of "school spirit" week, where the Leadership class (handpicked mysterious cloaked students in some classroom ringed with opaque smoke, for various right-minded Christian children) chose some kind of fancy-dress theme, chose a bunch of "hilarious" games to play over lunch and a whole week of theme-based events.

The theme never failed to rest of some kind of vaguely insulting stereotype, something that would have been hilarious had you not been a member of that group. For example, Geeks, Punks, Goths, etc., all with themed costuming, all poking fun at the actual kids that fit these vague stereotypes.

For example, while I didn't really fit with them, I was often lumped in with the "geeks," and being part of that year's "geeks" team meant basically joining the Big Bang Theory for a week, dressed in geekface with a calculator and a pocket protector.

Now maybe for you, this sounds like overreaction. Of course it was - we were teens; nonetheless, it's important to point out that we had a particularly toxic school for "weirdos" - our town had the most Churches per capita in North America, and a very restrictive sense of "normal."

Our school was visited by anti-discrimination groups twice, and at least once they were booed and jeered and vowed not to return. My sister was "weird" enough for folks to light her hair on fire, and no, not as a prank. We even had a nearby White Power uprising - it wasn't a pleasant place to be labelled "different."

Despite being part of the groups parodied, I actually didn't mind that much. I mean, it hurt some of my friends who didn't like their actual style being parodied (this was back when being a geek was the equivalent of being a 30's sideshow attraction, before geeks were cool).

Similar to the punks, who found the "punk" costumes pretty demeaning. Still, I didn't mind, I thought it was "lame" but not really insulting. Just kind of one of those things I'd rather ignore and go about my business.

In the first year of my experience, I remember being too shy to don a full costume, but deciding to play along a bit, wearing my team colours. Apparently this wasn't enough "spirit," and I was snatched in the hall, downed and pelted with bingo-dabbers. I skipped all the events and generally stayed out of school at lunch.

The next year, the theme was around professions. I had been slotted into the "plumber" team, and despite everything, dressed in my best work-clothes, even bought a mini plunger to complete the ensemble. A kid who I'm pretty sure's dad was a plumber, stole my stuff and tossed my plunger into the rafters. Needless to say I skipped the events.

The next year, I was kind of dreading the whole thing. I was hanging around an older kid now (we wrote and directed a couple of short plays, horribly derivative 4th wall splattering comedies with way too many characters) and the "freaks" of the school, all gun enthusiasts with a penchant for porn, trucks, and bad cop movies and I was kind of sick of Cheemo days.

I thought, wouldn't it be fun if we created our own team. Pull a parody bit, maybe even show up and fail at a few games. I thought it was a bad idea, but my older friend thought it was hilarious. We bounced around 90's alternative isn't it ironic names until we came up with the Independent Team, with the slogan, "Join Us, Be Different!"

Our goal was to recruit a couple of the other freaks and geeks who didn't participate in Cheemo, folks who were going to skip the whatever stupid theme it was and the games anyway, and rally around with a few laughs. We made a few posters. My favourite slogan the older kid drafted was "Cheemo Days Is the Opiate of the Masses," but we had a lot of jokes of that ilk. We put up a few posters in public areas, with a few joke slogans.

The next day they were gone. Every one, torn down and scrunched into the trash. Maybe they had a right to do that, but it was irksome that nobody even got to see the joke. Somehow, however, the word had got out to every member of the high-school underclass that there was a new team, and the "man" (other children) didn't like it.

We soon had meetings of a dozen or more co-conspirators, including the absolute pariahs of secondary society. Suddenly it was an all-consuming mission, just trying to get one poster up that wasn't immediately quashed.

I printed off some deliberately misspelled "Join the Independant Team: We Stand Apart, Really Really Far Apart," type missives and snuck after ours to celo-tape them in the hidden corners of the school. I put them on windows, which was a feat, since our school practically had no windows, and those that it had were barred with a metal lattice.

Every poster was gone by morning. Now the school had a veritable movement on its hands. Freaks and geeks were printing posters in their spare time, I even had a guy tell me a poster reading "I bet you 10 bucks you'll tear this poster out of my hand" was torn out of his hand. One guy, the school scapegoat, the Harry under-the-stairs of the whole school, and his one friend printed business cards with Anarchy symbols and various slogans mixing fascist and anarchist ideology (I don't know how that makes sense either).

People were passing them along in secret, while meanwhile, I was writing a letter to the school and to various other authorities on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (yep, I was an ass) arguing that our rights were being quashed - I abandoned this step however, when I read what was being written on behalf of the independent team now.

Now people were taking it REAL serious and I was a little nerved. At our last meeting several of the lowest ranked kids started talking about what we were going to do next year. Somebody floated the idea of a "Fascist" team, and mentioned how "nothing" was going to stop us again, what kinds of battles they were ready to throw down if anybody stepped in our way.

I just backed out. It was all just big teen talk, but I made sure not to mention the Independent Team for the rest of the year, hoping it didn't come up again. I had the feeling something bad was going to happen if that started again.

The independent team didn't rise, but something else did. One year after that, Columbine happened in the US. Everyone wanted to blame video games, or TV, or movies, but for me it was obvious. If a little prank based solely on goofy ironic slogans could boil over into a thirst for revenge, I could completely understand how two kids with access to guns and a few shoulder-borne chips could take that final step of gumption and kill the enemy.

These guys were desperate to fit in with anybody, to be noticed for something other than being "weirdos" or losers. They'd burn the school down to feel an iota of warmth. So I don't know if that fits, but yeah, I'm so glad kids are taught to be more inclusive today. Maybe it doesn't always work, but I hope people know the drying tinder that sits silently in the corner of a high-school hallway.

Username: SuperSpeersBros

*Let me preface this by saying my brother has 2 young kids (daughter and son) and has custody of our oldest sibling's youngest who is turning 18 in October, so I'm not talking about cutting contact with a little kid nephew or anything.*

I mean my brother and nephew practically avoid me. I like playing games. Love it even. It's my form of social interaction that I enjoy as an introvert. Be it board games or video games I love them.

They say they arent avoiding me, but I spent time and money systematically eliminating things they used as common excuses, for easy outside. I just wanted to hear the truth, that they truly didn't want to play games with me.

First our schedules didnt overlap so I went out of my way to cater to their schedule, then it was the xbox is taken by the little kids watching things (the xbox had an extra hdmi cord that could be hooked up that went to a different tv that they could use) so I gifted the kids a streaming device (like roku or firestick).

They didnt hook the thing up for over a month until I said "look if you're not going to use it I have things I can use it for and just give it back if that's the case" miraculously my nephew claimed it for himself and it never made it to the tv so that they kids could use it to watch disney+ or netflix or whatever they watch stuff on.

We've never really connected anyways, but I thought games were different, that somehow it could bridge the gap that started during my childhood. My brother never calls me unless he wants something. My nephew never calls me unless he wants help with something he swears he knows how to do.

And then my nephew goes on to tell my brother and his wife how annoying I am just trying to spend time with my family in a medium we all share. It's not like they don't play games. They have their hearts set on making money streaming. Then they like to pester me about how I buy the basic editions of games (because I know they are going to play it with me maybe a handful of times.)

Hell I don't even enjoy games anymore. They go on and on when they are over about how cool such and such game is and how much fun we'll have playing it later. Then they text me they'll be on after they finish something, then they demand we switch to play a game they like instead of what was planned, before saying they don't feel well or are tired after I put my foot down.

It just sucks the fun right out of it, and then not 30minutes later I'll see the notification that they are online playing the game they tried to get me to switch to. And before you say anything I've tried just playing the games they like, but its like letting your friend decide where you go eat everytime you hang out eventually you're going to want to eat somewhere else.

I finally just cut contact with them. Blocked on all social media. Blocked on my phone. Blocked on all gaming platforms, and I deleted all the games from my pc. I'm burning the bridges as thoroughly as possible, if they don't want me in their life then I'm not going to keep being the only one attempting to bridge the gap that they seem to be widening.

I'm done being a footnote to their lives. Last time my nephew was over and trying to be all buddy buddy I just said "look I'm not your friend, you've made it abundantly clear so stoo trying to pretend we're friends for two hours before avoiding me the rest of the time".

It's not necessarily burning the village but I'm dont building bridges, I burnt the ones I was trying to keep and they aren't going back up. I not a social person by nature so the few connections I had I was trying to keep, but i don't think they've truly been there for a long time.

Username: Swalksies

My aunt fits in to this. Her father (my great-uncle) was a jerk who was conservative when it came to his family but had a wandering eye and was really fun to people not his immediate family. Her other siblings had other traits that made them independent and notable. She was really into fashion and stuff which her father didn't approve of, and was a beauty queen. She wasn't great at school. Her father all but called her a whore.

She got pressured into marrying her boyfriend, someone she had just been casually seeing. He got a job in a cold East European country and she moved with him. He turned out to be incredibly abusive, and his parents were too. She got a divorce. Her parents disapproved of her and took down the pictures in their house where she was.

She found someone else and got married again, and found a really nice job. But she had a string of miscarriages. The personality issues stemming from the abuse make her marriage really fraught and so many miscarriages can't help either. But she's now financially independent and owns a giant house.

She's turned around and lashes out violently at her sister and brother, became really abusive to her parents, and cut out all family members. I'm very close to the sister and she sees my aunt as a problem to be managed and a real pain in the ass, and takes a lot of her mental space.

But the thing is, why doesn't anyone bother to be kind and understanding with her? Every time I say "she's still affected by the abuse" I hear "oh she exaggerates" or "even I got divorced from an abusive marriage but I don't spend all my time on self pity" (which is true but it's very telling about the parents that both their daughters ended up in abusive relationships at an early age).

The sister is mad my aunt doesn't open her large house up to refugees (the sister is a bleeding heart type) or doesn't take classes to learn more, or be more social, but hey, she learned distrust right from when you all started treating her like crap for wanting to be pretty instead of smart. Why would she want to share anything with a world that has given her nothing but garbage?

Username: sensitiveinfomax

When I was working at one of the only grocery stores in my town, it was in the deli/bakery area. Slicing meat, handing out portions of the salads in the case, taking cake orders, etc. Worked there just shy of full time, and would normally come in just after open, and work until close.

Things were fine there at first, but the fact that I'm a hard worker (and usually just want to help as much as possible) started to bite me in the ass. They went from appreciating my work ethic to bitching when I couldn't finish closing the entire department alone. For those who haven't worked in a deli/bakery before, there's A LOT of cleanup at the end of the night, even for two people.

One such night, I was forced to run alone because folks had called out for x reason. There had been a huge rush that night, and management had made sure to stop by, and warn me that not getting everything done wasn't an option. Yeah, ok Ralph. Went about my business.

It finally got late at night, and I had this weird moment of clarity, standing amid the chaos in the back. Two sinks full of dishes, no hot water to wash with, a deep fryer that hadn't been touched. Floors and garbage to start on. Both deli slicers were dirty. I was expected to be out by 11pm. It was like 10:35. There was no way I was getting all this done.

For whatever reason, that moment just hit me like a ton of bricks, and I decided I was thoroughly tired of being overworked and underappreciated. I busted my ass for that place, even shadowing to other departments to make sure things would run smoothly. I took off my gloves and hair net, and wrote a nice long nastygram for the morning supervisor, and left that taped to the table. And just walked. They never bothered to call me.

Went in a week later to get my last paycheck, and folks kept looking at me like I had a third head. As I was signing off for my check, the clerk leans over the counter in awe and flat out asks me, "But why did you do it?" So I told her the first thing that came to mind. "I got tired of the taste of shit, so I quit eating it." Grabbed my money and left.

Username: reeedrobyn

I worked in food service when I was a teenager, this was about 10 years ago. The woman who owned the little sub shop I worked at was a notoriously mean person. She did a ton of shady stuff business wise but I was 19 and didn't really know how things worked back then.

One of the girls I worked with was good friends with the owner and the managers. There were two locations and this girl was willing to travel and work at both spots and generally do what was needed to get shit done.

She was also loyal when it came to keeping her mouth shut about the bullshit behind the scenes. So one day a friend or someone visits her at work and she gives them a free sub. We were allowed to make one free for ourselves every day so she figured she give them her free one. Owner freaks out and they get into a fight about it, she ends up getting fired.

Shortly after this the owner sells both locations to the managers and moved out of state. Both businesses ended up closing within a year which was confusing because both spots did pretty good business. About 6 months after they close I receive a weird letter from the DOL and a check for like $30, something about tips I was owed from when I worked there.

Eventually I ran into the girl who got fired at her new job and she told me everything. Turns out she had called a bunch of different places, labor department, IRS, health department, and told them everything she knew about the owner. The fact that she had been paying us partially under the table, the fact that we never got our tips.

She was apparently violating some health department laws that I didn't know about as well. She ended up on the run essential from the IRS and that's why she sold the businesses and left the state. But since the girl who got fired was mad that the managers hadn't stood up for her she followed up and provided information about business assets that were still in the original owners name, like the buildings and the kitchen equipment

They went after everything and that's why they ended up closing. To this day it's the most ruthless take down I have witnessed.

Username: f0xontherun

Me. I’m an example of this. My parents have told me they loved be, nearly every day, but I don’t feel loved at all. I feel like a poem but everyone is illiterate. Like a song, but everyone is deaf. But I have to keep everything inside. I don’t really have anyone to talk to, and I don’t have friends either.

Everything I’ve tried has made it worse, and I think I’ve become violent out of cold, bitter loneliness. I have started to hate the sound of people talking, laughing, or just doing anything to be honest. I act all nice on the outside, but on the inside,

I’m in agony every day and there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it, or I’ll be told to be happy, to stop ruining the mood. That I’m just being edgy, and that everyone goes through it at some point.I’ll be told that I’m faking it for attention. The healed yet still visible knife and razor cuts different places on my body? Apparently those were for attention.

The times I nearly died from eating too much glass, paper, deodorant, chalk, and soap? Yep. I guess that was for attention too. The several therapists I’ve went to who didn’t do anything except give me trust issues? They didn’t think I had “depression”, they didn’t think I had “anxiety”, they didn’t think I had “adhd” either, they thought I had “just for attention.”

The extreme hate i have for my gender that I don’t even want, which brings a higher possibility of being murdered and having a low chance of being respected? I guess I just wanted attention. I surround myself with cutesy things to trick myself even more into thinking I’m fine, but in reality, every time I see someone even just existing around me, I just want to kill them so badly!

I don’t know why I’m still alive, but I am. I keep trying my best to make other people happy, to keep it all inside. I don’t know how long I can keep it inside, but I’ll try to as long as I can. Everyone else is enjoying their childhood, and I just have to sit their and watch, wondering why I can’t be like them, since they’re’s nothing holding me back.

But I can’t. I remember that I’m not gonna be like them because I’m not them. And I never will be like them. I have no innocence. And I feel like people will never understand me. I don’t remember a time when I had innocence that everyone deserves. This may have not been a reply you were looking for, but it’s the first I thought of. Thanks for taking the time to read this.

Username: Onyx-Jackson

My ex best friend/roommate is slowly and actively burning her own village down. She had a really neglected childhood. One parent committed suicide when she was three, the other became an absent alcoholic parent.

She was shunted all over the country between her extended family and remaining parent. That parent used her to “get better” then dipped out. They ended up overdosing in the exes early twenties.

To compensate she started drinking at an early age and is a raging alcoholic. She is manipulative and jumps from relationship to relationship with out waiting for the first one to end. I always knew when she was in a new relationship because she would drop off the face of the planet and get pissed if you tried to contact her.

She collects people she calls friends, but only associates with them when it is convenient for her. She also gets angry when people do not drop their lives to answer her every beck and call. Only has one close female friends at a time (me for 6 years). But that “best friend” is really just another female she can have a one sided “my tits are bigger than yours” pissing contest with.

The last true conversation I remember having with her was me confronting her about how she is as a person. She was drunk of course but there was no batter opportunity to talk with her. The days she would not drink she is usually so hungover it was like trying to sneak past medusa to be in the same room. I told her everything, she was pretty receptive and apologized.

The next day things got ten times worse. A week later she kicked me out with the excuse of “You are not making my boyfriend your top priority.” The following three days I moved out, and she was almost begging me to stay. But that was that, friendship over. I told her I will not stick around to watch her dig her own grave nor bring me down with her.

It has been two years and I have not heard from her since. I truly love her and hope she gets it together. But, she is one of the worst people I have ever known.

Username: [deleted]

When I was in college about 15 years ago, I went to a school with a good journalism program as that was my major. I ended up leaving prior to graduation \[I burned out bad\] and two years later, after I moved to another state with my husband who was in the military, I restarted my education at a university in that state.

Their j-school was different - anyone could work for the college newspaper if they had enough experience as it was a paid job, whereas at my former college, working on the newspaper was part of our curriculum.

I worked on the paper for three semesters, and at the end of the second semester I applied for one of the top editorial positions and thought my experience would help. I was turned down for both the editor-in-chief and managing editor roles by the advisor because, and I quote, "We need a male voice who's more authoritative and can better manage staff." Ooooookay.

The guy they hired, G, he was a creative writing major whereas the rest of the staff were journalism or graphic design majors. I was asked to be a "copy editor" except the advisor expected me to do layout as well because G staunchly refused to learn, leaving me and one other person \[who also had other tasks to handle on deadline days\] to design the paper on a twice-a-week deadline.

The first deadline day of the semester I came down with the flu but couldn't afford to miss classes or deadlines so I masked up. As I was popping ibuprofen while trying to focus on InDesign, G said to me while browsing the web, "You can keep grimacing, it's not going to make me feel sorry for you."

G took a week off after a death in the family a couple of weeks later and I stepped up into his role. Things were running great, the staff got into a good groove and the newsroom felt less stressful. Until he got back. The Friday at the end of that week he and I sat in our advisor's office where I addressed the way he treated me and the staff, and he interrupted me to spend a solid 10 minutes attacking my character, calling me a bossy know-it-all and that the entire staff hated me.

The advisor sat back and did nothing - oh wait, he didn't do nothing, he acknowledged G's concerns and ignored mine. \[Also, I had moved to this state in the Bible Belt from San Francisco, and the staff knew - in fact, G assigned the title "West Coast Bias" to my weekly editorial.\]

So, that Friday afternoon with deadline day being the following Monday, I saved all my articles from my work computer to a zip drive, made sure all the necessary articles were edited, and drafted letters of resignation to both my advisor and the head of the department, citing direct quotes from G.

They wanted to take advantage of someone with my experience level who had a skill that my superiors refused to learn on principle? Have fun with that. I was taking 18 credits and my grades went up after I quit. No regrets. And the Monday edition of that paper looked like shit.

Username: sangriaflygirl

A was the eldest of two sons (A&H). A was always responsible and H was the black sheep. Their parents worked hard and grew a small family business. A had to drop after school sports to help manage the business. He worked hard at school and work and helped bring in modern ways to the business.

A had to leave for college. He was gone for a few years but came back. He still didn’t know what to do with his life so while he was figuring it out, he came back home. He began working to grow the business into 2 diverse arms of the industry. He knew H wanted one of the arms for himself and he knew that his little brother wasn’t going to amount to much else so he stepped back and let his brother take ownership.

Unfortunately, the Great Recession happened and the older arm of the business died. But fortunately, A, had been working on a major half million dollar cash injection into the arm his brother was put in charge of. This fortunately happened a year before the downturn of the economy and a year after the economy had tanked, the arm had tripled in size.

Furthermore, A was working on real estate for his parents’ retirement. He knew that they could not continue working so he wanted to make sure that he built up their passive income portfolio enough to cover their current standard of living. A finally gave them the financial freedom he thought his parents deserved. And A also knew what he wanted to do - go into real estate.

A’s father told him thank you for the help and that’s when A replied that it wasn’t just help but actual work that he did. His father didn’t see it that way. A asked well was H helping out too and the father said of course not he is actually working. A was floored. After all his hard work, it was discounted to just help. He decided from then on to not help his parents with any more “help” related to the businesses or the real estate.

Some time passed and H ended up bankrupting the business. The parents were too old to restart everything so they asked A for help. A agreed to help because he didn’t want all of his parents’ years of hard work go to waste.

But they would need to hire him. He said that he would charge them $100k to refinance all of their loans (which equaled to roughly 5%) and he would take a 20% cut of the after-renovation value of the real estate portfolio which would come out to $4.9 million. The parents said that price was too high. A said that he gave them the help for free before but they did not value it.

Now if they wanted to retire within 2 years instead of another 10, they would have to pay him for his services. They chose to sign the contract and he helped them retire with more money than they ever had in their lives.

Username: lzc2000

I had a lot of lacking support with my parents in general, but my dad in particular. it started with resentment to him, but it became a resentment to anyone who didn't fulfill what I saw as their basic obligation in society, as my dad never was much of a dad and didn't really feel like he was interested in trying.

it wasn't exactly a village, but after living with him and my uncle for 2 years, both being verbally and emotionally abusive as I was trying to become an adult and belittling me and essentially expressing no faith in my or my abilities.

Came home late from a graveyard shift, and I was exhausted. my uncle was drunk and looking to pick on me, and made a few snide comments, and being at the end of my patience, I sniped back and he informed me that he wanted to beat the shit out of me. I made some distance and ran to my dad who, surely, would defend his terrified son and maybe hand him some kind of righteous beating.

Instead he told me that "clearly Chris thinks he can back it up.". So I left and got a few blocks away, and just got angrier and angrier until I couldn't convince myself to walk any further. I got scared and called the cops, told them if they weren't there in 15 minutes, to go to my dad's house instead, because I'd be there. They got there in just under 15, and took me to a mental ward.

That being the inciting incident, I became a lot angrier towards anyone I felt hadn't done their duty to... whatever. partners being unfaithful, shitty dads, so on. I had a roommate who dipped out on cleaning his room in the rancher we'd been renting, costing me my security deposit, and went on a warpath.

I did housing searches for places he could afford for three months and told everyone but the upper end of his price range that he was a terrible tenant and posted his name on every "rate your tenant" site I could find, then demanded the cleaning fees from his father (because he was living paycheck to paycheck) and described to his friends what he did. most unfriended him.

When I saw him 2 years later he was still living in an overpriced shithole studio apartment, and didn't have his gaggle of friends hanging around him anymore.I also revealed to my dad personally that my uncle had been fucking his then-wife behind his back, that she was pregnant, and that she planned on keeping it and leaving him, with evidence to boot.

Username: s00perguy

My partner and I work at the same place. She’s in senior management and I’m just a lowly worker. We’ve had a new administration come in about 12 months ago after some pretty scandalous and dastardly behavior from our former boss and his family who ran the place like it was their own personal bank account. So we’ve been through the ringer.

Since they’ve come in the rhetoric has been the same thing from the new admin. Say one thing do another. We care about your mental health and well-being but literally go out of their way to break up staff and isolate us.

Well this week my SO was supposed to be running a fairly important professional development day. It was on how we structure our reporting systems and this is her jams. She’d been working on it and putting stuff together for months. (Throughout all of which she was being continuously undermined and sabotaged by admin. Cause you know fuck it why not)

Well last week she got an email letting her know that she was no longer needed for said project and that it was all taken care of by admin. This was pretty much her sign. After months of underhanded crap that has taken a huge mental toll on her she walked in and handed in her notice this morning before we all met.

The PD was a disaster. They had no idea what they were talking about and had everything back to front to the point the entire staff were searching the room for her with visible confusion and panic. She remained calm and professional through the whole thing and simply told them that this was new and she was learning it with them (which is true as they had kept her locked out of all conversations over the last week).

It was the biggest sign that she’d done the right thing and I’m so glad I got to watch the whole thing unfold. I’m still here though.

Eating my portion of the shit sandwich. But the satisfaction of seeing them scramble and fret over finding answers to stuff that she’s been handling now for so long was the sweetest of beverages.

Username: arougebeard

There was a kid at my high school who was socially awkward, but seemed well-meaning overall. You could tell he may have been on the spectrum or had some other sort of disability, but he seemed to be pretty high-functioning regardless. Of course, since it was high school, he was often made fun of.

I would often join the lunch line in the cafeteria around the same time he did, so I would overhear him trying to interact with others in the line. He would do magic tricks and make jokes, which were often met with responses like "Oh, yeah, cool!" and other short, not-so-sincere remarks. That was as close as I got to interacting with him.

One day, in the middle of History class, the school went into lockdown. I remember how vague the announcement over the PA system was. The class anxiously started texting relatives and using their then very limited phone data to get information (unlimited plans weren't super common yet and phones weren't that smart yet).

Word got out that there was an active threat inside the school. It was a student. The student had opened a backpack and revealed lighters, gasoline, knives, and what appeared to be a homemade explosive device.

Later that day, we learned it was the kid I described above. The kid who had just been trying to make friends in the lunch line.The incident was reported when he approached his favorite teacher.

He confided in her with a question: "What do you do when part of you wants to do something really bad and the other doesn't?" He had then allowed her to look in the backpack.

This teacher handled the situation very empathetically and safely. I just sometimes think about how differently the day might have gone if that student (who is, last I heard, in custody) hadn't had a teacher he felt comfortable confiding in. To any teachers reading this: You make a HUGE difference. Keep being awesome.

Username: CorgisOnTheMoon

I live with Emotional Intensity Disorder, formerly known as Borderline Personality Disorder. “Personality disorder” is a misnomer- the illness is all about emotional dysregulation and the inability to cope with emotions so intense that they register in the brain as physical pain. One of the hardest and most terrifying features to someone experiencing it, though, is the near-constant paranoia of the people in your life abandoning you.

Ironically, in an attempt to avoid abandonment I would often overshoot it and end up causing the abandonment from how desperate I behaved. Because of the intense emotional pain I would try to avoid it by clinging to any means of alleviating the pain, including acting submissive and content with being at the bottom of the proverbial food chain.

I’d hurt myself out of a desire to punish myself for perceived slights against people I cared about to atone. I’d chase after anyone who dared to run off without a good reason (and there almost never a good enough reason to satiate the paranoia).

When my ex abandoned me, left me and then hooked up with one of his friends, and then gave me an ultimatum to move out after telling me that it had everything to do with his new fuck buddy (after reassuring me a month before that it didn’t have anything to do with her so he’s a fucking liar) I had very little left but to kick and thrash.

I fucked up what little access I had left of his bank account before he shut off the card. I infected all of his pyrite samples (he collects rocks) with an infamous pyrite disease that causes them to oxidize and crumble to dust.

I purposefully left items for him to deal with because I was through. I burned bridges because I was so starved of affection that I would rather get any attention, even negative attention, if it meant feeling something other than despair and fear.

Username: MonochroMayhem

At my last job the manager that hired me was fired for doing false returns and pocketing the money and was only caught because the assistant district manager did a random visit since her store was only an hour from our location. She wouldn't have caught it if she hadn't rechecked the returns for the last two months. The manager was fired on the spot after admitting what she had done.

Three months later we have a new manager and a new key holder. The assistant manager during this time started to hold a grudge against the district managers since the assistant was still friends with the old manager.

The assistant manager didn't like how the new manager was doing things (also wasn't happy the new manager was 20 years younger than her...) and decided to constantly complain to the former manager. The rest of the employees ended up contacting HR to beg for them to intervene with the assistant manager, but they told us they couldn't help because we needed to confront her ourselves......

Assistant manager ends up filing an anonymous complaint to HR due to the new manager messing up ONCE on one of our weekly shipments. 2 weeks later the head of HR and district manager call everyone into work minus one worker because they wouldn't be in town.

They come to our store and interview each of us to ask how are things going and pretending that this was normal. Turns out someone, not the assistant manager, filed a complaint about the store and the assistant district manager (the one who fired the last manager).

Assistant manager admits to filing the random complaint, but the plot twist was that they weren't their for hers since they saw it as a suck it up type situation. Someone else, who we've concluded was the old manager, called the in a complaint that in general stated that the assistant district manager was feeding the district manager false information about the stores and filing false reports.

In the end both the old store manager and assistant manager burnt the bridges they had made. Former manager ended up gaining a reputation at the outdoor mall the store was at for being unhinged with some crazy ass rumors about her started to pop up.

The assistant manager got demoted another month after the investigation because she tried to point fingers at everyone but herself when it came to problems she was causing during our weekly shipments along with a few not so friendly comments.

Sadly this job always had some problem going on while the company was in business. This just happen to be the biggest shake up I got to have a front row seat to.

Username: LadyRogue92

I lived in a coop in a college town. There were two guys in the house, one a misfit who was awkward, wore fedoras, had trouble looking you in the eye, and was not really friends with anyone else there. I'll call him Tim. The other guy was good looking, athletic, the house treasurer, and popular with the other residents. I'll call him Sam.

Sam kept complaining that the house was short on money, people weren't paying the rent on time, and that we were in serious financial trouble. Tim kept telling everyone that something was up, that Sam was lying, he thought he might be buying drugs, that we need to look at the financial records.

Nearly the whole house sided with Sam, and Tim eventually attempted to get a restraining order against Sam (despite living in the same large house together). Tim would rage against everyone at anyone who would listen - to the point where he became consumed by this, like some wild-eyed religious fanatic preaching on the street corner.

Fast-forward a year. I had moved out, but learned from the new treasurer that the books eventually got opened. Sam was a heroin addict and had been embezzling from the house for months and months. He had stolen over $10,000 to get high.

It was his first offense, and I don't believe he served jail time (or brief time, with a fine). Tim disappeared, I don't know what happened to him (and I reckon he didn't quite "burn the village down"). But he was the only one who was right the whole time.

Username: pancakeonions

I (30f) was neglected and abused as a child by my large family but I was always made to believe it was normal "punishment" or gaslit into thinking I had issues because I was always so sad when I "Have no reason to be depressed". You know, house, clothes food excuse.

I went to therapy. Found out that stuff wasn't normal. That my mum ignoring me to be on her PC is not actually healthy (literally telling me to fuck off or "thats nice now go play" without looking away from the PC), and my dad leaving all day to be in the shed and then coming back and yelling at everyone for nothing, apparently that wasn't normal either.

Either is being SA by brothers. My mum caring about my brothers girlfriends more than me cause I wasn't girly enough, or them favouriting one of my brothers because he was the "smart" one and I was just "almost as smart as him". I tried to KMS at 13 and non of them even noticed. As an adult they would only call if they need something and then go off at me for not keeping in touch.

And those are just the parts that stick with me the most. There is SO much more. When I FINALLY had the guts to confront my family about all this. My mum neglecting me emotionally, my dads anger and my brothers assaults. etc etc.

Dad: "kids will be kids"
Brother1: "I didnt do any of that"
Brother2: "I know I SA you but I did it because I was assaulted too"
Mum: "What did I ever do to you to deserve you ignoring me?!"

So I just cut them all out. Moved to another state and started again. I am SO much happier than I ever was in my 30 years.

And the rest of the family never even TRIED to contact me about why I was suddenly absent from family events... I honestly doubt they noticed. Their loss I guess.

Username: Ashamed-Platypus-612

Mmmm.... I grew up in your typical abusive home that could have been a Netflix documentary. I am a compartmentalising master. My mother never defended me. She made excuse after excuse for the way my dad behaved.

“I was just trying to keep the peace.” “I didn’t know what to do.” “If I could go back I would do things differently.” “I’m sorry I’m not the mother you wanted.”

When I was 18 my parents began signing parent plus loans for me they’d never have the ability to pay back. While I fully intended on paying back the debt at the time, the abuse got worse - way worse. Strangled, head slammed into tile - constantly kicked out of the house, gaslit - you name it.

While my mother never physically hurt me, she watched it happen. She stood by and effectively condoned the actions. I got kicked out on Christmas Eve after being strangled - she just stood there and let it happen, I literally didn’t do anything. She told me I was at fault and needed to leave.

Finally when I got away and I began to heal I realised all of this. And I decided that these parent plus loans will be the monthly reminder for the rest of her life that she was never a mother. She will feel and relive the guilt over and over and over again.

It will destroy whatever is left of her. Every time there is money missing from her account she will remember it’s because of those loans. Loans she signed for, loans she has to pay because she destroyed her relationship with her son.

She will feel ever trapped in this endless cycle. Just as I felt trapped as a child. Only then maybe she will understand what she did for all of those years.

Username: FourSharpTwigs

I lived in a coop in a college town. There were two guys in the house, one a misfit who was awkward, wore fedoras, had trouble looking you in the eye, and was not really friends with anyone else there. I'll call him Tim. The other guy was good looking, athletic, the house treasurer, and popular with the other residents. I'll call him Sam.

Sam kept complaining that the house was short on money, people weren't paying the rent on time, and that we were in serious financial trouble. Tim kept telling everyone that something was up, that Sam was lying, he thought he might be buying drugs, that we need to look at the financial records.

Nearly the whole house sided with Sam, and Tim eventually attempted to get a restraining order against Sam (despite living in the same large house together). Tim would rage against everyone at anyone who would listen - to the point where he became consumed by this, like some wild-eyed religious fanatic preaching on the street corner.

Fast-forward a year. I had moved out, but learned from the new treasurer that the books eventually got opened. Sam was a heroin addict and had been embezzling from the house for months and months. He had stolen over $10,000 to get high.

It was his first offense, and I don't believe he served jail time (or brief time, with a fine). Tim disappeared, I don't know what happened to him (and I reckon he didn't quite "burn the village down"). But he was the only one who was right the whole time.

Username: pancakeonions