#1
#2
She was 20 years old, struggled to walk, stand or even sit straight. The evening before I found her she was dragging herself around the house as if searching for me.
She laid on my lap for hours and when I had to go to bed she wouldn't let go. She knew what was coming and wanted to stay with me.
I know this is not as bad as some other stories I read, she was just a cat after all, but I never really recovered.
Her name was Indy, by the way.
#3
I told my mom and she wouldn’t believe me. The next day, I told my teacher, because we had just talked about inappropriate touch the week before. She looked me in the eye and called me a lair. I stopped trusting adults completely. I was 9 years old.
The author of the viral thread was very vulnerable with us when we got in touch with them. They opened up about the scarring experience they had that motivated them to look for other people with similar experiences.
"I had a harrowing experience when a baby died at the hospital, waiting in line, in my arms," u/vigilantee001 opened up to Bored Panda.
They said that this tragedy happened due to pneumonia. "Telling that part exacerbated my whole body. A part of me died that day. My heart was completely devastated."
#4
#5
She broke her hip when she was in her late nineties, and she had to be put in a nursing home. I would go visit her, by then she had started living in the past. She knew me, but she thought I was still in school and would ask why my brother wasn't home, what we wanted for supper, things like that.
One day I went to see her, and didn't recognize me or know who I was, and didn't speak. That was the most heartbreaking, gut wrenching day of my life. That broke me. Completely. I went to my car and cried like a baby for a long time.
She died at the age of 103, but that was the day I lost her. I didn't cry at her funeral.
#6
According to the OP, "you don't come to terms" with events like this. "That was a child that never got a chance at life, like a poorly lit match stick never having a chance to glow," they said.
"You have to find a way to get past that. Intensive therapy can only prevent you from being a nihilist. I have constant therapy to keep me going for now."
#7
#8
Bit of backstory: My mom was a children’s librarian (she also worked at a children’s bookstore for a while) and one of her favorite parts of her job was getting to do “story times,” for the kids where she’d read to them and they’d do activities she prepared etc. For as long as I knew her she’d read to me and my sister, sung us lullabies, and was always there for advice or encouragement or any other reason we had for talking with her. Words are a very important part of my life and were always central in my perception of her and the way she showed love.
Then they had to remove her tongue.
When she first told us and once it had registered that I would likely never hear her voice again I completely broke down.
That said, she did still manage to speak some - I strongly believe there was nothing that could have stopped her from that - but it was nowhere close to how she could before. She actually made some audio recordings for us the night before her surgery. Personal messages, my favorite lullaby that she used to sing to me, and a couple of my and my sister’s favorite picture books that she used to read for us. I still have them to this day and I am forever grateful they exist.
#9
Healing from trauma might sound impossible at first. However, with the guidance of a mental health professional, you can begin this healing process. You don't necessarily 'move on,' but you can learn to live with the loss and pain you've experienced. The goal is to get to the point where you can make the most of your life despite the setbacks you've faced.
Furthermore, the continuous support of your loved ones is invaluable. When you know for a fact that somebody has your back no matter what, you feel safer. It's also important that you try to reach out to people who have overcome similar traumas. They can support you, as well as give you practical advice on how to live your life, day by day, now that everything has fundamentally changed.
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#12
To end the comment on a better note, though: that was late October/early November last year. We got pregnant again fairly quickly and we're 33 weeks with a healthy pregnancy so far.
At some point, you will have to deal with something so traumatic that it’ll make you question everything you know about life. It might be a serious illness, the loss of a loved one, relationships falling apart, or the realization that the people you’ve trusted might not always have your best interests at heart.
However, life isn’t all about pain and loss, even if it seems that way at times. There are lots of positive experiences, both in your past and your future. And the harsh reality is that life goes on, no matter what happens. The way that we react to and frame traumatic experiences can leave us either more resilient or devastated.
Human beings tend to focus on the negatives more than the positives because it’s useful for survival, from an evolutionary perspective. It’s our brain’s way to keep us safe.
#13
Still recovering 9 years later.
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#15
“Our tendency to pay more attention to bad things and overlook good things is likely a result of evolution. Earlier in human history, paying attention to bad, dangerous, and negative threats in the world was literally a matter of life and death,” Verywell Mind explains.
In short, people who paid more attention to the bad things happening in their environments were more attuned to danger and, therefore, more likely to survive and spread their genes.
Research conducted by Nobel Prize-winning scientists Kahneman and Tversky found that people tend to place greater weight on negative rather than positive aspects of an event, whenever they make decisions. This means that individuals can sometimes want to avoid loss more than they want to gain something.
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#18
Hearing their mom at the funeral, I finally understood what crying like a wounded animal sounded like. It was painful.
Furthermore, human beings tend to focus on negative information. However, all of this focus on negativity can harm your mental health. You might find yourself dwelling on dark thoughts, hurting your relationships, and generally having a pessimistic perspective on life.
It’s important to be realistic but not pessimistic. If you find yourself trapped in a loop of negativity bias, you can fight back against it by changing how you think. For example, you can reduce negative self-talk. “Instead of fixating on past mistakes that cannot be changed, consider what you have learned and how you might apply that in the future,” Verywell Mind suggests.
#19
#20
At that point, I was living in a house with my mentally ill half-brother. The same month my mum died, I was r*ped. I moved into a flat alone, and at that point, everything from the previous few years hit me like a truck. I was working full-time but trying to function normally, but grief always catches you up.