14 People Who Ultimately Discovered a Harrowing Truth

Every now and then, our lives can completely change when we find out a secret or figure out why something puzzling happened. Even though these discoveries can be unsettling and change our lives, they often turn into important lessons that make us wiser and stronger. The stories we have for you today show us that life is more complicated than it seems at first.

In high school, there was a girl I considered a good friend. One day she stopped talking to me, and for an entire year, she avoided me, which hurt.
Later, I learned that a couple of individuals had called her pretending to be me and were extremely unpleasant to her. I never got specifics on what was said, but the cold shoulder made it clear that she valued me more than just a friend at that point. The relationship never was the same after that, even when the truth was found out. © PsychoticMo***n / Reddit

My older sister used to play our Disney read-along tapes to me every night while guiding me through the words in the books; she taught me to read this way. I didn’t realize until years later that she was using the tapes to cover the sound of our parents fighting downstairs. It saddens me that she never got to have a childhood. © Unknown user / RedditOne day, my friend was over at my house playing video games. My mom called us over to her room to help flip the mattress over, so we did. We then went to another friend’s house. My mom called that friend and said, “There were two 20-dollar bills on top of the dresser; did you get them?” I said no. I asked my friend; he said no.
5 minutes later, my friend asked if we wanted to go to the toy store because he had 40 dollars in two 20-dollar bills. I say yes, and we go, and he buys me a yo-yo or something.
It took me YEARS to finally realize that my friend stole the money. © HurricaneHugo / RedditI have huge gaps in my memories as a child, weirdly inexplicable ones that always felt strange. It’s not just basic forgetting stuff; I’ve had a few instances of this happening as an adult as well. Well, it turns out I have a dissociative disorder, and that can cause amnesia. © crescentcactus / RedditWhen I was a kid, we had a special treat for dinner on occasion: white bread, butter, and sugar sandwiches. I thought it was awesome, but I didn’t realize until I was an adult that we were eating that because we were really poor. © seymour1 / Reddit

From when I was around 4–6 years old, there are memories of my father taking me to random houses or hotels and making me sit in one spot for hours at a time. I never understood why until it just hit me one day that he was making me tag along for all the affairs he was having behind my mom’s back. I didn’t realize this until around a year ago. © King-Halcyon / RedditWe were learning about dominant and recessive genes in science class in elementary school. I couldn’t grasp the concept because it couldn’t be right that both my parents had black hair and brown eyes, and I had blonde hair and green eyes. I think this was in fifth or sixth grade. Then in my teens, I discovered that my beard hair had red mixed in, but I never gave it much thought (no one in my family had red hair).
Found out at 28 that I was a sperm bank baby. Everything made sense after that. © Davydicus1 / RedditIn 7th grade, I would occasionally hack up these nasty little white lumps that smelled horrendous, like rotting food mixed with really bad breath. I had no idea what they were, but after they stopped, I didn’t think about them again until someone mentioned “tonsil stones.” Turns out, that’s exactly what I was hacking up. Ugh, the smell was just appalling. © apocalypticradish / RedditWhen I was a kid, we lived in some run-down apartments. I remember several times I dreamt that I was being tickled in the middle of the night.
Several years later, I put 2 and 2 together and realized that it wasn’t a dream. I actually was being tickled—tickled by the roaches that infested the apartment. © FlexasState / Reddit

After a few weeks of marriage, my wife found a napkin in my pocket and swore it was not her lipstick. I had no idea how it got inside my pocket. For months, I was blamed for having an affair. One day, I noticed while I was wiping my mouth after eating a sandwich and drinking a red Gatorade that it was the same shade as my “evidence of an affair” napkin.
26 years later, we are stronger than ever, but when I bring this up, I swear I feel she’s not 100 percent sold on it. © mikedjb / RedditI went to an international school in Asia that attracted a lot of kids with very wealthy parents, most of whom would get dropped off by their chauffeur in a brand-new Mercedes. I had a scholarship, and we were working class.
I never understood why my mom would take us to school at 6 am before anyone else was even there and park the car miles away behind this big tree. She’d just tell me it was good to exercise before school. Turns out, she was embarrassed about our little Mitsubishi and didn’t want the other kids to pick on me if they saw we were pretty poor in comparison. © jessiehailey / RedditI had a security blanket far longer than I should have. It disappeared when I was about 6. When we moved out of the house when I was 13, my brother revealed that he found a hidden compartment underneath the floor of the laundry chute where he would hide things. He kept it a secret for nearly 10 years. My blankie was in there. © Scarya**manbear / RedditI had a substitute teacher show the class a puzzle in fifth grade. He then told us he would tell us the answer the next day. Well, I never saw that sub again. I spent over a decade trying to solve that.
I have notebooks full of attempts. All through middle school, high school, college, and even at my job! I kept trying and trying. I would take breaks from it for months but would always come back to it. I would even do it in meetings, trying to solve it.
Then, after 15 years of trying to solve it, I decided to try and Google it one day. I can say I felt a little devastated when I found out that the problem was impossible to solve. To spend so long trying to solve that problem only to learn that it is mathematically impossible. I guess that could count as “solving” it. © China_1 / RedditAs a kid, I would wake up a lot at night, and I’ve always had trouble sleeping. Once I moved out, it got worse.
Turns out my dad has sleep apnea, and our rooms were adjacent, so when he stopped breathing (stopped snoring), it would wake me up until he started snoring again. It took me until I was in my late 20s to figure this out when I had a significant other who snored, and I would get the best sleep I had ever experienced. © stassquatch / RedditChildren remembering what seems like past lives can be puzzling. It becomes intriguing when they talk about these memories, even if we’re not certain if they’re true. The tales shared in this article are eerie, and they left us completely baffled.

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