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People Who Were Once A 'Missing Person' Share Their Story

People Who Were Once A 'Missing Person' Share Their Story
mrs/ Getty Images

Typically, unless a young white girl goes missing in the news we won't hear stories behind the multitudes of people who are categorized as "missing person." People disappear every day, sometimes by their own choosing, and it can be enlightening to know the reasons why.


Reddit user, u/BrianThePinkShark, wanted to hear a story not often told when they asked:

Redditors who were a "missing person" what's your story?

A Nap To Forever Change Your Life

In 2nd grade, I fell asleep on the school bus ride home and missed my stop. My mom always waited at my stop to meet me, and freaked out when I didn't get off the bus. The bus driver looked back, and since I was lying down fast asleep, he didn't see me. An hour later, I woke up at a random school bus terminal on the outskirts of town, and my mom had phoned half the town freaking out.

Funny story to tell now, but my poor mother was convinced I had been kidnapped for a solid two hours, it really took a lot out of her.

surejan94

Shopping For Safety

My parents stopped talking to each other since I was 5 but they still lived together.

One day, my father took me (9F at the time) to go shopping with him. We came back to find all the neighbourhood looking for me and screaming my name, well...my mother was relieved but my parents had their 1245543th fight again.

This could have been avoided with one phone call.

I wish they could just divorce.

AerisRuby

"For some reason they didn't think my bear story was as cool as I did."

When I was young, probably about 6 I think, my family went on vacation to Yosemite. We stayed in a small cabin at a campground. I met another kid who was a bit older than me, and we went exploring. Apparently we went a bit too far, and eventually ran into a bear cub. We just stood and stared at each other for a few minutes and went our separate ways. When I got back to the cabin, I found out that park rangers had been out looking for me because my parents had no idea where I was.

For some reason they didn't think my bear story was as cool as I did.

SonOfDadOfSam

It's Just 10 Digits

Was never reported but my dad once forgot me at a café in the mid 90s during a time when local police was looking for this guy. Because everyone was paranoid at the time, my mom had made me learn my full name, my adress, our phone number and my parents' work phone numbers by heart and so when people realized that I was alone they were able to call my mom at work. Shortly after my dad showed up absolutely horrified. He had forgotten that he'd taken me with him.

Make your kids learn your phone number by heart.

Thr0wmeawayalready

Always Leave A Note

It was my first day in kindergarten, I was supposed to go to the after school day care but I lost the note saying I was supposed to. So the teacher shoved me on the the bus and told the bus driver where I lived ( not sure if that's actually how it went down but regardless they made me leave) The bus drops little 5 year old me off at home. All the doors are locked and my mother wouldn't even get out of work for another 2-3 hours. So I do what any little kid does I sit on my front porch and cry.


Luckily I lived right across the street from the high school and this angel of a woman sees me from the the bleachers while a soccer game was going on. She comes over to check on me and stays with me the entire time.

Mean while at the school the staff is going crazy because im no where to be found, my mother was called and as im told, crying profusely. Then out of the blue I see this 1960s brown Cadillac pull up and over walks my principal he thanks the women for taking care of me and brings me back to the school.

spektorboy

Okay, Kids Need To Really Reconsider Their Nap Situation

My sister once had the entire neighborhood, the police department, and God knows who else out looking for her. It turns out, she had crawled behind the sofa, and fell asleep on top of an air conditioning vent for about 5 hours. My mom went inside as the sun started to go down, and sat down on the couch to cry. My sister then crawled out from behind the couch, and started petting her on the head asking her what was wrong

Bangbangsmashsmash

When Death Is More Preferable Company Than Home...

My mother was on the phone with the police after I fell asleep in a cemetery for 7 hours after school?

I had a sh-t homelife, so I'd be anywhere and everywhere I could be to not go home. Beginning of the school year was still really nice outside, so I decided to hit the Dunkin Donuts near my house, grab some coffee, and I walked to the cemetery that was maybe 10 minutes walk from my house.

There was a really nice mausoleum in the cemetery, which happened to be the structure at the highest point in the city, so you can, on a clear day, see about 15 miles. I chilled there for a while, just kinda thinking. About 300 feet away is a statue of Jesus on the cross, with other figures. I was kinda tired so I laid a little ways away from it, just enough to get some shade, not enough to be laying on it, and I listened to music until I passed out. Woke up a few hours later, figured "f-ck it, might as well go home" and my mother started losing her sh-t. "He just walked in, I'm so sorry- WHERE THE F-CK WERE YOU????"

I left and went back to the cemetery

moonshinetemp093

Mother, Dearest

I was kidnapped by my biological mother and missing for 3 months when I was a year old. My bio-mother has a horrendous crystal meth habit, took me during a court-mandated visitation and kept me in her various users/sellers houses.

When I was found, I hadn't been changed in days, I was in damp clothing and I had been given cough syrup daily to keep quiet. She was arrested and eventually released.

thunderp00ps

The Longest Year Of Your Life

Not me, but my brother was missing for around a year. He'd disappeared before, but only for a few days --he suffers from paranoid schizophrenia and would often get delusional--but this time he didn't turn up. We live in NYC and my parents had no idea where to look for him. They'd regularly go to the police station and look at pictures of bodies that had turned up. He didn't have any friends or girlfriends we could ask about him. He had just vanished.

A year later we got a call from a hospital in DC. My brother had been picked up on the street, nearly dead from malnutrition. He'd gone to Washington to warn the government about something or other. He often refused to eat, believing his food was poison, and lived on the streets for a year. The only reason he survived was because other homeless people took care of him and convinced him to occasionally eat something.

He was a skeleton when they found him, full of flea bites. Eventually my parents nursed him back to health. He's still mentally ill but hasn't tried to disappear again. I think about him whenever I see a homeless person.

jew_biscuits

The Best Real-Life Examples Of 'You Can Have A PhD And Still Be An Idiot'

Reddit user mariababexoxo asked: '"Never confuse education with intelligence; you can have a PhD and still be an idiot," stated Richard Feynman. What are some real-life examples of this?'

test tubes
Talha Hassan on Unsplash

The saying "it's not brain surgery" hasn't meant the same thing to me ever since Ben Carson took his place on the national stage.

The saying "it's not rocket science" doesn't hit the same with me ever since one of my life-long friends became a rocket scientist.

I don't know Ben Carson—just his many public blunders—but in the case of my friend, he's an absolutely brilliant guy.

However I often wonder how my friend managed to survive this long and apparently this isn't an unusual phenomenon.

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Erik Mclean on Unsplash

Back in the 1980s the threat of nuclear war was pervasive in daily life.

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Both told the story of an atomic apocalypse, with Threads set in the UK and The Day After in the United States. I wasn’t familiar with Threads until about 5 years ago, but The Day After was a TV event everyone seemed to be talking about in the USA.

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Content warning: abuse and suicide.

There is a level of devastation caused by being cheated on by a partner, especially if it's someone you trusted and have been with for a long time that people who haven't experienced it can't understand.

I've been lucky in that I've never been cheated on myself, but I've had friends who have gone through it. My college roommate told me it was the worst pain she's ever been in when she found out her boyfriend cheated on her, and she couldn't imagine anything worse.

It was indeed horrible. My confident, strong roommate was crying all the time and wondering why she wasn't good enough to keep her boyfriend's interest, even though that had nothing to with it.

Redditors agree that being cheated on is painful, but also are prepared to share things they think are emotionally more painful.

It all started when Redditor Darkterrariafort asked:

"What is something more emotionally painful than getting cheated on?"

Medical Helplessness

"Watching your most precious person die a painful and scary death and knowing there’s nothing you can do about it. F**k cancer."

– coastalliving40

"This. I watched my husband starve to death from gastroesophageal cancer."

"It was like watching a nightmare repeat of my dad all over again. 😞"

– NedsAtomicDB

Mama Who Bore Me

"Death of your child."

– NBA_Fan_76

"I truly cannot imagine a deeper pain."

– theawkwardmermaid

"Your child being serious injured by your ex, and custody court keeps forcing the kid into contact with their abuser."

"You spend years of your life dealing with court homework where you recount every excruciating detail of your own abuse at the hands of this person, in addition to the crimes against your child."

"It costs you about $100,000 in legal fees, and you still aren't able to protect your child. It keeps going on indefinitely, and perversely, your ex tries to send you to jail because the child runs away from them."

– JadeGrapes

"Being responsible for your childs death directly."

– Kanulie

"My father passed very suddenly and unexpectedly two summers ago. It was the deepest, unimaginable despair that it was almost like a dream. Being walked to the little room at the hospital where they let you know he didn’t make it on the ambulance ride was surreal and up to that point the worst moment in my life."

"One month after he passed, I was in a four wheeler accident with my then three year old. And we were alone as my husband was out of town. I wasn’t being negligent- it was just a terrible, terrible accident. But, in the chaos of being thrown off and being in complete shock, I thought the four wheeler was pinning her down. I was screaming at the top of my lungs and crying and trying everything I could to lift it up. Remaining calm simply wasn’t a possibility when you think you’re killing your own child."

"She wasn’t pinned-and actually didn’t have a scratch on her. EMT checked her out and I went to the hospital because I had ripped the top part of my thigh off trying to lift the ATV."

"The whole thing was eye-opening in the worst way possible. Because, I could never, ever, ever, ever imagine losing my daughter- especially to my own fault. What if she had been hurt or died that day? I would be living in my own constant hell. I didn’t think there could be worst pain that when I lost my dad, but now I know there is. Just the thought alone of losing my daughter brings tears to my eyes."

"Life is really rough sometimes. But it gets better."

– BoredMillennialMommy

Going Down

"Seeing a loved one go on a downward spiral and you can do nothing to stop it."

– New_me_old_self

"Extension of your comment: Seeing a close one(wronged by their protectors) going down the spiral."

"You tried to help them a lot but they dragged you down with them and left you not just empty but drained."

– Sullen_Wretch

So Hard

"Suicide bereavement."

"I lost my best friend in 2022. Found him. Everyday is a struggle to not be in my grief."

"I’d take 100 heartbreaks, 100 nights of going to bed hungry, and 100 punches right to the face just to have him back."

– KatastropheKraut

"It does. I got wasted and said far too much about myself once. One of my friends verbally smacked the f**k out of me, got me to see that people do care about me and that my relationships aren't all just superficial, really just hit my sorry a** over and over again with the idea that I'm deserving of love not because other people get something out of being with me but because I am a human being, and it slowly does get better."

"It stopped me, I was going to kill myself in two months on new year's."

"When I can't live for myself, I live for other people, even when I start doubting other people actually like me, I still don't do it or hurt myself at all, because there's always, no matter what I feel in the moment, a chance that they do truly just care about me."

"If I end myself now then I give so many other people survivor's guilt, I leave all the people I care about wondering for the rest of their lives how it all could've been different if they had just tried a little bit harder to help me. I won't elaborate now but I feel a similar sort of regret when it comes to a number of aspects of my own life. I could never leave someone with something so unfathomably more painful than that."

– pissandsh*tlord

Sounds Awful

"Mental instability. It's cruel because it's your own mind killing you, you can't run or hide and it's long-winded. I couldn't say a single event has been more emotionally stressful than what's happening."

– Country-Road--

"It’s like you’re dead in your twenties but haven’t been buried til you’re 65."

– Gmr33

Tragedy You Never Get Over

"Having your mother pass away in your arms."

– Repulsive_Cricket923

"Something similar happened to me when i was 4. My parents sent me over to get babysat by my grandmother and she sat on a chair and passed as i was sitting on the floor playing with my toys. I only thought she was sleeping at the time, but later learned the truth as i never saw her again."

– Lucidnuts

Just Done

"As far as relationships go, being abandoned by your former partner is pretty damn painful."

– heyitsvonage

"Mine did this to me after 2.5 years and it was f**king devastating, it took years to get over. He acted as though everything was fine, I was his everything, we were actively planning how we would elope after I finished my degree that term, and BOOM NO DO-OVERS YA DONE."

"It was immediately what came to my mind when I saw this post."

– paprikashi

My Work

"When someone steals your research, hands it in first, gets the high distinction, then everything you submit is plagiarizing that a**hat."

– StaunchMeerkat

"This is two steps worse than, "hey can you put my name on your paper too.""

– karmagod13000

Rather Be Cheated On

"When the person stays with you but they secretly still yearn for that other person (even if no cheating occurs)."

– Deleted User

I actually didn't think there was anything worse than being cheated on after watching my friends go through it.

I stand corrected.

Do you have any stories to share? Let us know in the comments below.

If you or someone you know is struggling, you can contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988.

To find help outside the United States, the International Association for Suicide Prevention has resources available at https://www.iasp.info/resources/Crisis_Centres/

ancient ruins
Andreas Brunn on Unsplash

Mistakes happen, but when the world is watching, those mistakes are magnified.

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