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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Anyone life utterly unbelievable?

55 replies

Icedlatteplease · 23/05/2025 20:08

Anyone life so monumentally shit that if you wrote a book you'd sound like a fantasist. Getting to the stage where I don't even believe it myself

OP posts:
MmeChoufleur · 23/05/2025 21:56

Yes! One of the first things I said to my therapist was that I was scared she was going to think I was a fantasist because my life from birth has been a series of unbelievable catastrophes. I honestly don’t know how I’m still here and functioning. I have an ACE score of 10, CSA, two abusive marriages, raped by a stranger who was only caught when he raped and murdered another woman, lost custody of my child to one of the abusive exes, dealing with a psychotic, alcoholic mother, a drug addict brother, an autistic child who is subsequently transitioning (in adulthood). There are more things that are so bad I could never mention them on here. That’s on top of the more ‘normal’ bad stuff like parent’s sudden death, 2 miscarriages, bankruptcy and losing my home.

Things have settled down in the past three years and my life is currently amazing. I’m grateful every day, but I’m always waiting for the hammer to fall (again).

MilnersGold · 23/05/2025 22:00

I have my Dad terminally ill and I care for him with my mum. My 18 year old is so mentally ill we are always on the edge of him being sectioned.

My colleague at work today totally lost the plot at a delivery turning up at the wrong time, it was an absolute disaster.

Oh how to live in her world. Id love that to be the biggest drama in my life. But I can't say anything so I keep quiet

TeaAndToast8 · 23/05/2025 22:08

Yeah mine was has been pretty shocking.
Age 0-18 I also could have had one
of those books with a sad child on the cover.
20-40 I escaped, moved hundreds of miles away from everyone related to me and I’ve not had it bad, lots of therapy, lovely husband and kids.
40-44 My childhood came knocking (well the met police did) They wanted me to be a witness and stand up in court and tell my story. I did.. It was fucked and I feel like I’ve been living in an extra long episode of 24 hours in police custody.
44 - present day.. I’m getting over it AGAIN!! I need to bloody holiday so badly!
I don’t anyone with a past like mine, I know they must be out there though.

FlyingontheGround · 23/05/2025 22:10

Yes, I worry that people who haven’t known me my whole life will think I’m making it up.

bestcatlife · 23/05/2025 22:11

Yes! Mine. It's almost laughable.

ToffeePennie · 23/05/2025 22:13

Yes! If I wrote a book it would be a grey cover with just the title in red and a very miserable child on the cover.
some things are just so crackers it’s almost ridiculous to the point of it being a farce

bestcatlife · 23/05/2025 22:14

@MissAndrey I also shut down after that last thing on your list happened to me. I gave up on life. Hugs to you.

Sahara123 · 23/05/2025 22:14

ParsnipPuree · 23/05/2025 20:34

My life was too. Now it is the opposite. Every phase of life is a moment in time. Nothing is forever.

Trouble is some things are forever , not just a phase .
My daughter with physical and learning difficulties getting cancer isn’t just a phase.
Thats on top of a fair amount of more regular but still difficult crap I’ve had to deal with.

PickANumber · 23/05/2025 22:16

I know a woman that if even half the shit she comes out with is true I do wonder how she holds down a stressful job (not that great at it but hey Ho)

Different person but if you’ve had ABC happen in your life you can bet £107,987.98p that she has been through ANC DEF GH and VCD on top but obviously her was so much worse

MistressoftheDarkSide · 23/05/2025 22:17

One of the worst things about being on a continual roller coaster of shit, is how it makes me feel the need to apologise for things that have truly been out of my control and largely left field.

"I'm really sorry but my Dad has just died"

"I'm ever so sorry but my MIL is palliative with Alzheimers and could go at any time"

"I'm so sorry, but my mentally ill SM might show up at Dad's funeral and create a scene because she believes I'm in a cult and prostituting myself, so could we make it private please?"

And that's just the milder stuff in the present.

People wonder why I have such a dark sense of humour, and it's very much a defence mechanism, because if I didn't laugh in a hollow fashion, I'd start screaming and might never stop.....

ParsnipPuree · 23/05/2025 22:21

Sahara123 · 23/05/2025 22:14

Trouble is some things are forever , not just a phase .
My daughter with physical and learning difficulties getting cancer isn’t just a phase.
Thats on top of a fair amount of more regular but still difficult crap I’ve had to deal with.

I’m so sorry about what you’re going through with your dd, and yes of course some things are forever. But even in the darkness, things change.. there are better and worse times.. times you feel more positive and appreciate even small wins.

smallstitch · 23/05/2025 22:22

Not at the moment but I’ve got two friends who are really going through the mill at the moment, and sometimes I think “wtf, as if they haven’t got enough to deal with”. Sorry to hear you’re struggling 💐

BananaramaNananana · 23/05/2025 22:24

The only way is to think it's some kind of parallel universe. It was only the police and others believing it's f*cked that's validated me. I did have a normal childhood. It's my ex that did the rest! Reads like some kind of sensationalist sun newspaper headline. I'm alive and suspect our experiences are not as uncommon as we believe ..... behind every suburban front door things happen that are out of the realms of "ordinary".

MistressoftheDarkSide · 23/05/2025 22:36

I'm exceptionally grateful for two friends who have stuck with me through thick and thin, one I've known for knocking on 30 years, and we all have the same sort of "bad luck" in common so we can relate and pitch and whine in a safe space. We'd all crawl over broken glass for each other, or help bury a body if necessary.

Other friends who are more casual just don't know what to do with me, and I get it, it's fine, although there's a sort of Typhoid Mary vibe, or wariness as though I'm an unexploded bomb or something.

A few people have treated me like a specimen, and tried to analyse why I seem to attract this stuff. Aside from the occasional musing that I may have been a terrible person in a past life, or maybe it's cos I was born on a Wednesday I try to avoid such analysis - because shit just does happen sometimes and I don't need a diagnosed persecution complex on top of everything else.

Another downside is that it makes me seem a bit gullible or naive, because I empathise with other tales of woe. I'm getting better at being discerning as I've gotten older, but I have definitely been an easy mark for proven unscrupulous types in the past.

BeardofHagrid · 23/05/2025 22:40

Yes, OP, same. Sometimes I try to tell people little bits here and there, and they’re like WTF. If I told them everything that’s actually happened to me I think their heads would explode 😂

I always say I have the reverse Midas touch, because everything I have a hand in turns to shit and goes so, so, so wrong.

Emilysmum90 · 23/05/2025 22:49

Some of these are utterly dreadful, I'm so sorry. I've had a few bad years in my life but nothing to compare with some of you.

Fully understand the feeling of a person, or a series of men people who don't know each other, all being so fucking sociopathic to you that you start to blame yourself and never mention what they're doing to anyone. I'm very lucky to now be married to my lovely DH but there is a great deal I've never told even him.

GargoylesofBeelzebub · 23/05/2025 23:22

Ha. I met an old friend for a drink. She said "I'm so jealous, from what I've seen on Facebook your life looks perfect"

I said "well..."

By the time I'd finished my list of awful things that have happened she said "fuuuuuuuuck"

IWillAlwaysBeinaClubWithYouin1973 · 23/05/2025 23:27

Just nodding along sadly here. Mind you a "friend" told me the other day that my situation seems to be "self perpetuating". I do believe my friends think it's about time I stopped all this death and destruction and just had a normal life. If only I tried a bit harder eh ...

YourOnMute · 24/05/2025 00:03

Yes, mine too.
At the moment my life is fairly calm. But for the vast majority of my life it wasn't so.
Not only did I go through a lot of trauma, I also had quite unbelievable stuff happen that wouldn't be out of place in a film script. Absolutely nuts stuff. I was born into an eccentric family where life was just bizarre for one.
I often think people think I'm making things up.
It also drives me mad when people give me advice or expect that I did x, y or z. Sometimes life just isn't that easy.

ThatDenimExpert · 24/05/2025 00:13

The disbelief must be a common experience. I don’t know why people assume it’s made up. I was finally believed when I went to therapy

NamechangeJunebaby · 24/05/2025 00:38

BeardofHagrid · 23/05/2025 22:40

Yes, OP, same. Sometimes I try to tell people little bits here and there, and they’re like WTF. If I told them everything that’s actually happened to me I think their heads would explode 😂

I always say I have the reverse Midas touch, because everything I have a hand in turns to shit and goes so, so, so wrong.

This…. I could have written this. I wonder how I manage to have a decent job, and manage day to day. Therapy has helped and CBT helped me learn new ways to cope and seemed to stop me lurching from one disaster to another. But the last month or two have been bad again. I’m coping alright but it’s wobbly and every time I think things are improving something else happens and it’s a bit of a shit show at the minute.

NamechangeJunebaby · 24/05/2025 00:40

People who’ve had lovely lives can’t possibly get their heads around it but when you’re living it you don’t know any different and just kind of get on with it the best way that you can. They think it sounds like a bad episode of eastenders on repeat, but crap does happen to people.

GYBE4 · 24/05/2025 02:13

I'm not glad others are in the same situation but I'm glad others have commented that they feel the same.

I've been on MN for years and years. It's always been in the back of my head that I can't let too much slip under one username, or someone is going to think I'm telling tales.

NotMe1981 · 24/05/2025 03:46

Haha I DID actually have a sad face book published about my shit life 🤣. And the only bad reviews were saying that it must all be made up because it all seemed so far fetched. Unfortunately for me it was all true.

The good news is things don’t stay that shit forever. Seems like a whole different lifetime now.

HereWeGoOverAndAgain · 24/05/2025 04:29

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