I had no job, no money and no family. I was young and had no identity documents, and was knocked back from government services because I couldn't prove who I was. I took the first safe shelter I could. With the benefit of many years experience, I know there were other options but at the time it seemed like the only option. There are ways of accessing help without ID, but I didn't know where to look.
It was a small, dodgy outbuilding at the back of someone's property. It was clad by nothing but tin. The wind would lift the rusty roof up and slam it down with a deafening crash for hours at a time. No insulation, no services of any kind. I slept on an old mattress, just laid on the floor. It had a slope to it and the springs were poking through. I had a single, sweat-stained blanket.
I lived there long enough to experience both an unusually cold winter and a heatwave. I remember the sound of the frozen grass crunching beneath my feet. It was the first time I'd ever experienced temperatures that low, having grown up in a hot climate.
The owner would occasionally let me use the facilities inside their house, but only ever during the day when it was unlocked. They gave me enough food to survive which they'd leave outside for me. We'd have a very brief exchange maybe once a week. Apart from that I had a total absence of social interaction. The property was isolated if you didn't have a car - which I did not.
It was a trap. It seemed better than the streets, because I had relative safety and a roof over my head. But it also left me totally unable to change the situation I was living in. I couldn't go anywhere to find help, I couldn't contact anyone. I didn't want to leave because the alternative seemed worse. I was stuck.
The owner had meant well. They had their own mental health issues and, even if they had been high-functioning, they had no idea what to do. They were a hoarder and the inside of their home was somehow filthier than my "living" space. The situation was a result of the contradictions between their heartfelt desire to help, their own anxieties and other mental demons. They were trapped too, in their own way, and had barely more contact with the outside world than me.
Isolation destroys your mind. You can't think straight, you lose your ability to solve even basic problems. You become paranoid. You hallucinate. Your memory is obliterated, not just for the period of the isolation but the memories formed before and after too. I had to piece together a time line of major events in my life from a couple of years before and after from little scraps I kept.
I lost my inner monologue during that time. The voice in your head. My thoughts became sensations and movement, like water being poured into a network of branching channels and spreading amongst them. They'd remain that for years and even more than a decade own it's still not the 'same'.
I was almost non-verbal at the end - finding even a few basic words, to say "yes" or "no" to a question was exhausting. My manner of speaking is not the same as it was and my accent isn't quite like anyone else who was born here. For at least a year later I was still losing time, hours or days, and was unsure of how I got there.
I was aware I was losing my mind throughout the process. I'd try to force structure and logic upon what I was processing but it doesn't work. The information you're receiving is already corrupted, then it gets further twisted in your mind. There is nothing more terrifying than being trapped in your own mind.
Eventually the owner, in a more lucid moment, managed to get mental health services to come out. I felt so betrayed at the time. I was terrified of them, unfamiliar faces after so much time alone. I was deeply ashamed. I'd come to realize this act saved me, but I hated the owner for it at the time.
Testicular torsion. As a teenager, I woke up early in the morning with the worst back and stomach pain I had ever felt in my life. I remember thinking I might be sick, vomiting, then passing out from the pain. My parents found me later that morning because I was delirious and moaning. They took me to the hospital and it was fixed.
Just kidding! My parents are shit bags so they told me I just had the flu and I was being dramatic. After my testicle swelled up to over double the size later that day, they called our family doctor who said I probably had a hydrocele and he'd look at it when he got back from vacation. For the record, mine was textbook testicular torsion, my doctor was as idiotically negligent as my parents.
The pain again became excruciating that evening and I was exhausted from lack of sleep, so I started yelling and demanding my parents take me to the hospital, which they did the next morning. There was TV to be watched, they couldn't bother with taking care of their children. The ER determined my testicle was quite dead. Surgery was scheduled for that evening and I've had one testicle since. Get fucked, mom and dad.
I met a homeless guy once and we talked. He told me about a time when at the train station there was someone laying on the ground, in the winter, nearly dying in front of a Cash Terminal.
People just stepped over him and were annoyed, while that person nearly died. He told me they had surveillance footage though and many of them where sued for denial of assistance.
The same guy had a huge fresh wound in his face. He was at the train station seeing 4 people attacking a single person. He went to them to see what was going on, had a weird feeling and turned around, someone smashed him in the head.
That was 4:00 in the morning, in the Winter at about 4°C. He woke up at 10:00, nobody helped him, and he nearly died.
He went to the hospital on his own to get stitches. A paramedic gave him his reflecting orange jacket, so that nobody would ever overlook him again...
Also told me how people would shit and piss directly next to where he had to sleep.
Nobody deserves to be homeless. This is so fucking sick.
I'll just go with a tame one (Edit: I have a lot to pick from and most are really hard to put into text due to the trauma)
My firsthand experience with police brutality
For context I was 15 at the time and still in highschool
When I was homeless I slept on some benches in my hometown and one night I slept on the bench behind the local library because it was one of the few that was covered and it was raining that day.
I was woken up by being tazed by a police officer.
He was screaming and I couldn't do a damn thing because I was getting tazed.
After finally falling off the bench he stopped but was screaming that he could kill me and leave my body in the woods (the town is basically right on the border of a national forest) and no one would find me.
He was screaming that if I didn't leave he would.
I took off like a bat out of hell.
He followed me with his car from a distance for a while before finally taking off in a different direction. When he took off I stopped walking down the streets and made my way to my school through less conventional means and slept there that night under one of the buildings.
Edit 2: For anyone curious, I was homeless for 8 years. I've got a nice place now and I'm back on my feet.
Most likely society's response to the time I was sexually harrassed.
Like it wasn't straight up rape, but I got touched in bad places and boundaries disrespected. I was 16, the girl doing it to me was 16 too. To this day I have no idea if she was into me or if she just got off on how I'd completely bluescreen whenever she did it as a powertrip.
So anyway, being a teenager and certified "good kid", I didn't fight about it, I just knew I hated it. So I went to the adults in my school for guidance... And got laughed out of the principal's office. Because "I was a boy, of course I liked it and I had only gone to the principal as a way to humblebrag".
Got a similar reaction from the other teen boys.
So anyway it took me 10 full years to even start opening myself back up to human touch in general, as I spent that decade terrified of human touch in general.
I had a old boomer call for my hanging when I was a teen.
I'm brown. I am minding my business at a store. some boomer said I should "Remember there's cameras in this store." Like wtf? I said, "Those cameras are for you."
And before I know it, he's flipping out calling me a thug and that I'm lucky to be alive because in five minutes, he can have his friends lynch me.
Security guard came over and immediately took the Boomer's side. And told me to either leave or cops will be called.
Welcome to America.
I was doing some work with an academic center that provided continuing education for the teachers and caretakers at orphanages. We always worked with local administration or charities who would educate the administrators and caretakers on how to maneuver the legal system in their country, while we provided the technical training and education resources. The goal was to get the children trained in a trade skill so they could support themselves when they got out. The areas we were working in were often remote and never in good areas, but the teachers and caretakers usually tried, they just didn’t know what they were doing and needed a little help. But at least they were trying.
By this point I had worked all over latin America, and a handful of countries in Africa. All of these people and cultures were different, but you could tell they tried, and the people in the villages and towns respected, and in many cases helped those that tried. Honestly it was some of the best and most rewarding work I have ever done.
I’m saying all of this because back in 2008 I ended up seeing an opportunity to go to Russia and do the same type work. I thought I’ve never been to Europe or Asia, sure that sounds exciting. Expecting to see the same thing I had seen in 18 other countries by this point. People in rural areas who saw a need and stepped in, now they just need training.
Instead of a rural town or village, we ended up in Kostroma, a city of a quarter million people. We find out from our contact from the Ministry of Education, that children are usually kicked out of orphanages at 14 as they are no longer profitable. At that point we should have immediately started asking questions, alarm bells should have gone off, etc. But it was the first day in a new country, we’re still getting to know our contacts before we start training. So there’s still some cultural unknowns, could be a translation error, any number of things.
While we’re doing our training, the teachers and caretakers were very standoffish, much more than we were expecting, but whatever, we’re the new people. They also have very strict times of when we have to be out of there. Makes sense, end of the work day, you’ve got kids to take care of, we get it.
We stayed too late one night and we found out the reason why the kids could become, “no longer profitable.” Evidently all of the orphanages in the area would sell kids for a night, and when they got too old, people didn’t want them, so they got kicked out. When we found out, obviously the first thing we did was try and report it. But we were told by both our contacts from the Ministry of Education, and the police, that’s just how they do business. If the kids want to eat they have to work.
We broke our contract with the Ministry of Education stating what we witnessed and left. Don’t know if anything has changed, but I’ve not been a fan of Russia ever since.
Racism. I've been called racial slurs for not just my race, but other races. I've been profiled by police. I've watched my boss not only allow racist remarks made by my coworkers for no reason (eg: working like a hard-R) but laugh along to them. People judge Tarantino's movies for excessive use of racism but I think they're the most honest depictions of American culture.
Public school. Everyone hated me, I never made any close friends, I was almost killed by my classmates more than once. One time I was pushed down the stairs another time I was shoved in front of an oncoming bus. I've become permanently depressed and have deep trust problems because of it. Years later when I was holding someone I loved in my arms as we fell asleep watching something together I realized that I felt happy for the first time in my life. Before then I had felt amused, vindicated, or excited but never happy. It's such a strange thing to realize that you've never been happy once in your entire life and had just never realized because you had no way to know what you were missing.
I'm 62 so this happened a long time ago. My mom didn't like novacaine so she found a dentist who didn't use it (I found that out later as an adult). For whatever reason I had 15 cavities one year. I couldn't stand it but somehow I got to the last day of many and I just couldn't do it anymore. I couldn't willingly open my mouth for that pain, I just couldn't.
The dentist took that hooky little metal instrument dentist's have, held it near my cheek, and said, "If you don't open your mouth, I'm going to go in RIGHT. THROUGH. HERE." Those last three words were punctuated by him poking my cheek with that little hooky instrument; once for each word.
I opened my mouth in the worst fear and feeling of abandonment I've ever felt. I now need nitrous and my wife holding my hand to get through a cleaning. Dr. Fryer. A sadist.
Going with my father to figure out how we would clean up the bathroom my grandfather attempted suicide in as I didn't think it was something he should do on his own (it was my maternal grandfather but still...). I was right. It made every horror movie look tame. However, it was so terrible that there wasn't much we could do other than phone crime scene cleanup and stay out of their way while they earned every single penny of their fee.
Attending the funeral of a family member every single year multiple times until I was about 18 ... and then sporadically on a regular basis since then.
I'm Indigenous Canadian and I grew up in a small community and from the time I was a baby, I attended a funeral of someone I knew at least once a year and usually two or three times a year until I left home.
At first as a kid, it was weird ... then as I grew older it was disturbing because every time I saw a dead body, I realized ... some day that's going to be me, my life will end and I'll no longer be here. At about eight years of age, it was quite an existential crisis because it scared the shit out of me for about a year. After that, it became terrible to attend funerals, then sad, then felt like nothing ... I could no longer feel sad, afraid or anything .. I no longer really cared and became apathetic to it all.
I now accept death ... I hate it, I don't like it but I accept it but it took seeing a lot of dead bodies for me to get to this point.
Did some volunteering at some old folks homes and a hospice.
The hospice had people who were literally trapped in their own bodies. Bedridden and unable to move their arms, legs or even speak. They communicated yes/no by monotone grunting(two for yes, one for no.
Person was fully conscious and aware. Just unable to act on the outside world.
I survived a drug induced coma and since then my brain just misses a lot of cells. I once had a pretty high IQ and nowadays I can be happy I remembered to take my pills in the morning. The most I can do is a low level sysadmin job, for everything else I basically lack the brains.
It's not really something I have experienced in a past tense, I experience this shit every single day. Hate to be ridiculed for my bad memory especially. My coworkers don't know that and regularly make fun of me.
Depression and gender dysphoria. It's not very dramatic nor fast-acting, it just ate away at me for a decade until I was sure I wasn't gonna survive the next few years.
The fear of death doesn't go away, it just starts to seem like the least terrible option. And it's one thing when you get those impulses to do it, but it's even scarier when you feel calm and levelheaded and still feel you should do it.
Living through fall of communism in USSR and the start of capitalist era. One of the memories I have from the period is when food shortages started happening. All the families in my neighborhood would end up lining up at the store early in the morning like black friday, and then the store would just wheel out a cart with whatever they had that day, and people would rush in to grab it. Me being a small kid at the time, I could squeeze between people and get to the cart quicker than my parents. So, I was basically risking my life being trampled to death just so I wouldn't starve that day.
TLDR: fuck capitalism.
I was a delivery driver once, I loved the job. Until they made us follow their crappy routing system called "ORION". Problem was you can't implement it in real world settings. Since we were forced to follow it, I argue it put our personal safety at risk due to increased turns and overall time driven. Quit because I'm not dying over it. But it was the most frustrating, hellish thing I ever had to do.
Alcohol withdrawal after months of insane 24-7 drunkeness. I was in a pretty bad place for a number of years. I've gone through withdrawals like this multiple times, usually when I was passed out and woke with no booze just after the legal cutoff for sale at night. There is nothing worse feeling on the planet. No illness or injury (that I've experienced) can compare.
I'm trans, so, that's one thing
More recently, I suffered from some pretty severe sleep deprivation as a result of a bout of insomnia. Hallucinations, micro-blackouts, the world stopped operating in a way I could understand properly. I would never, ever wish that upon my worst enemy and I hope I never experience it again.
I don't know about "evil" because I don't really subscribe to the Christian good vs evil. Yeah there are people out there who do terrible awful things, but generally speaking the most "evil" things come as a consequence of our amoral decisions.
We decided in the US that cars should be the primary method of transportation back in the 50s in order to stimulate the growing car manufacturing industry. That decision now results in nearly 50,000 people a year dying in car accidents.
We are not much different from the Mayans sacrificing victims in order to bring rain. We do the same thing, but for a different ideological purpose.
This is, in my opinion, much more dangerous and harmful than "evil". Sadists come and go but institutions and ideology remains.
Having said all that, I've been robbed & beaten. I've been through heroin addiction. I grew up as an illegal immigrant.
All of those ultimately shaped who I am today, but there were definitely difficult moments. Life is complex though and I think "evil" had nothing to do with the most traumatic and painful events in my life.
Not sure, I'd have to say it's a tie between having my hometown sunk into chaos by the classic tabloid treatment, accidentally contributing to the first human tragedy of someone close to me I've had to hear about, witnessing my only friends' families tear apart by legal forces, assault and stuff at the psych ward, being kidnapped once, and overall people targeting me for various reasons.
Marriage. Don't get married. I am not kidding. Tie yourself inextricably to someone and discover hell.
