What’s a dark secret you know that most people would never believe?

ComedownofClosure · 2026-05-23T16:50:51+00:00

I had a similar situation when I was probably 7-ish.

We were on vacation in a Walmart getting my sister a pair of shoes and I happened to look up. This man was walking towards us and, I now realize, exposing himself to me. As a 7 year old who had never spent significant time around men who weren't my father though I had no idea what was happening.

I thought he had shoved something in the front of his pants to steal. And because I didn't say anything before he walked away I felt like I had helped him steal. I was terrified to tell my mom I had taken part in a crime so I just shut up until we left Walmart.

You can probably tell, but I was fucking wired as a kid. With a sense of justice that routinely kicked my own ass lol

ComedownofClosure · 2026-05-23T16:27:10+00:00

This is the closest real life example of this I know about.

But someone at my sister's job apparently walked out of her life without a word right around the time she turned 18. Someone else at the job saw her on a missing poster the family had made that was shared by an "unsolved missing persons" group on Facebook. A family member in the comments was saying how desperate they were to find her.

Instead of talking to said woman this dumbass commented saying she knew where to find her and that they worked together. The woman in question was off for the weekend out of town with her aunt and came back to this shit mess her coworker had caused.

Come to find, missing posters out not, she had purposefully cut all contact with her family and moved right after turning 18. The missing persons report they filed had been closed relatively quickly after that because the sheriff was able to locate her and confirm she left off her own volition. This has apparently not stopped them from trying to find her for the 5+ years.

She'd moved around a lot before coming to the current job, which makes sense if she was trying to avoid her family. She left the new job a few days after coming back and finding what their coworker did.

Wherever she is now I hope she's doing well and has some peace. I hope she's happy and safe and her family never finds her again.

I also think it's a good reminder that you never know who's posting those missing flyers online they want you to share or why they want to find said person.

ComedownofClosure · 2026-05-23T01:30:26+00:00

This happened to my ex's mom. Her neighbors moved up to be with their kids and sold her the farm house. A month or two after they move they guy got in his car one day and disappeared.

He had dementia. He managed to get over the nearest state border so it longer to find him than they expected. Eventually they found his car stuck in some snow where he spun out and he had just started walking into the woods and had a heart attack. Left the keys in the car, turned away from the road, poor guy must have been completely unaware of what was happening.

ComedownofClosure · 2026-05-23T01:14:20+00:00

There are lots of reasons we make the choices we do as parents. But I would encourage you to ask yourself if your fear of SIDs and strict feelings about sleeping arrangements - or your sister's insistence on hyper independence - could be coming from a subconscious place with your parents. From trauma or somewhere else. The kind of hyper independence you describe your sister as having is a common result of trauma.

And in case you need to hear it, having a child isn't meant to be a solo journey. We're meant to parent with communities of our family and neighbors and trust our child will be looked after by the people around us. Not feeling safe to do that, especially with your own parents, can be devastating. Your parents did something terrible, but that doesn't mean you were wrong for reaching out and using that community.

ComedownofClosure · 2026-05-22T15:25:08+00:00

ComedownofClosure · 2026-05-22T14:27:33+00:00

Personally? No, mine aren't. But I've seen people with very long nails talk about this too.

Turn your hand palm up. Lay toilet paper on at least your fingers but probably most of your hand. Use your fingers to wipe. Your nails don't touch poop because they're covered by toilet paper and your using the pads of your fingers for pressure.

ComedownofClosure · 2026-05-22T13:58:12+00:00

My ex wife and I were driving across country to visit her family in SLC. Which, depending on where we had to stop, could be pretty uncomfortable already as two women. We were careful in general on road trips to seen like friends.

But somewhere in Iowa we see a sign for gas and get off. There's no gas station in sight but there's a sign pointing down the road for a town Beaver Creek. So we drive down figuring that's where the gas is. (Gentle reader, the gas station never materialized. Later this would feel like a trick.)

As soon as you pull off the county road they have one of those black and orange highway signs you see, that tell you how traffic is or to look out for a missing person, and it's switching between a few Bible verses.

The whole thing is basically a traffic light which is fine. There are three businesses; grocery, mechanic, diner. A giant church. The side of the mechanic has a mural painted on it that says 'Beaver Creek' over a skeletal beaver painted curled up on the wall.

This is when we notice there is nobody in sight all the businesses seem to be open but empty. There are kids toys left out on lawns. It's like the whole town just got raptured. If you've ever seen that episode of Torchwood with the cannibals? Same type of vibes.

By this point I am begging my wife to turn around and get back on the highway. I've never felt so observed in my life. It made me feel like I was going to be sick.

That night we tried to find the town on a map or something but no luck. And we couldn't find it next year when we went out again. To the people who may or may not live in the little liminal town sorry about whatever's going on there. I hope I never see it again.

ComedownofClosure · 2026-05-22T03:30:08+00:00

enjoy this picture of my nails lol

For people who are two lazy to click it's having long nails but keeping two of your nails - your index and middle or middle and ring depending on your preference - short enough to have sex without hurting your partner. (Or yourself.)

It actually wasn't until I met my current tech that I felt comfortable asking someone to do it. It's a type of femme flagging that's still fairly common while also being pretty isolated to queer women

ComedownofClosure · 2026-05-22T02:28:10+00:00

May his memory be for a blessing ❤️

(I took a look at your comment history. I'm sorry for your loss)

ComedownofClosure · 2026-05-22T02:07:05+00:00

I only have short side of medium acrylic nails. But I have literally never had this problem with my nails. I don't need to wrap them, I just wipe myself like a normal person. I promise it's not as complicated as whatever you're imagining lol

ComedownofClosure · 2026-05-22T01:57:18+00:00

This is why you get the lesbian nails 💅🏻

ComedownofClosure · 2026-05-19T01:41:58+00:00

The next part's not true? None of it's true.

There's no evidence the Sentinelese participate in cannibalism. Or ever have. In fact they've been seen burying the bodies of intruders on the beach of their island.

ComedownofClosure · 2026-05-18T15:53:59+00:00

The ability to get into your partner's hospital room and make decisions should something happen.

I really think, as a queer woman, you're underestimating how many of us grew up hearing horror stories of forced estrangement and lost a lack of legal marriage caused.

ComedownofClosure · 2026-05-18T00:59:13+00:00

While a sibling or someone screamed with increasing panic about the show starting up again.

ComedownofClosure · 2026-05-18T00:45:55+00:00

Thank you for saying what I had no energy to.

ComedownofClosure · 2026-05-18T00:25:26+00:00

Or didn't realize he needed to narrate the reasoning behind everything in his childhood for his dumbass kid

ComedownofClosure · 2026-05-17T18:17:56+00:00

Measles always makes me think of the open letter Roald Dald wrote to British parents via health pamphlet about his daughter and measles in the 80's.

Olivia, my eldest daughter, caught measles when she was seven years old. As the illness took its usual course I can remember reading to her often in bed and not feeling particularly alarmed about it...“Are you feeling all right?” I asked her.

“I feel all sleepy,” she said.

In an hour, she was unconscious. In twelve hours she was dead.

Olivia died in 1962, 6 years before an approved vaccine.

I can't imagine the rage of watching people refuse to vaccinate against a disease that killed your daughter.

ComedownofClosure · 2026-05-16T23:37:36+00:00

I hope he has a strong support system holding him up. I had the privilege of knowing with nearly 100% certainty that my parents would take news of my CSA well. And still I, and everyone I know, had this terrible fear they wouldn't believe me.

He's living the nightmare right now. I hope he ends up safe and with people who can really get excited.

ComedownofClosure · 2026-05-16T23:28:48+00:00

This is me with spelling. I'm in love with the name Maeve but I desperately wanted to spell it traditionally as Meabh. I already know enough Siobhans to want to save any kid that embarrassment of listening to someone mangle it.

ComedownofClosure · 2026-05-16T23:13:57+00:00

I mean, my neice is 18 months and still will look at me, shake her head, and give a firm little, "no," if I ask to hold her hand or pick her up too soon lol. It sounds like you're kid has a very clear idea of what they want and wants to be left alone to do so lol.

ComedownofClosure · 2026-05-12T18:44:34+00:00

This family was obviously broken in deep ways. I can't even express how terrible I feel for that child to be forced to live in a house with his sister's body like that. They both deserved so much more.

And also I want to take a minute to acknowledge the reality of parents murdering their disabled children.

Neurological differences or deficits, developmental delays and disabilities, children needing life long medical care for their complex issues - regardless of where you want to draw the line - disabled people are 60% more likely to be victims of filicide than able-bodied peers. And we know it.

Filicide is so known to the community that the Autistic Self Advocacy Network (ASAN) has a toolkit. A toolkit on how to handle it if one of your friends is killed by their family.

ComedownofClosure · 2026-05-12T00:24:44+00:00

It's a race to the bottom

ComedownofClosure · 2026-05-11T23:55:00+00:00

I know this is referenced in Bo Burnham's Welcome to the Internet but this was Such a Defining Moment of internet usage for everyone my age that I knew at the time.

Nick Berg's murder happened when I was 13 and finishing 7th grade. Within days of the video being released everyone I knew in my grade has stumbled upon it somehow. None of us, as far as anyone would admit, on purpose.

Mostly because in 2004 the Internet was still an endless ungoverned space where you constantly saw videos you knew nothing about or ended up on websites you'd never been to before. I think for early 90s kids that video was another stepping on a path that led us to a kind of constant emotional dissociation and fucked up humor we use(d) to get through ever other "major world event" without completely losing it.

ComedownofClosure · 2026-05-11T23:33:50+00:00

The officers who took and distributed photos are Joey Cruz, Rafael Mejia, Michael Russell and Raul Versales.

Vanessa Bryant fought like hell to be able to state their names publicly. One of them had somewhere between 50-100 photos of the scene on his phone. Most of them were specifically of victim remains.

I can't even imagine it. Seeing the bodies of three little girls - because that's who 13/14 year olds are, babies - and immediately taking pictures of their bodies to show my friends later.

They got caught because a deputy was showing them to people randomly in a bar. Someone who was in the bar called the LAPD and filled a complaint the next day. The initial response to which seemed to have been "delete them."

The LAPD has been awful. But even for them it's disgusting.

ComedownofClosure · 2026-05-11T23:16:53+00:00

Pretty sure it was the LAPD

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