Back in high school, I had my wisdom teeth out. They knocked me out with nitrous oxide, and had me do that “count backwards from 100” thing. I counted back for a while, then stopped. They didn’t seem to mind. The nurses on either side of me were talking about nurse stuff, getting ready for the operation, and I realized I could move my arms, even though that had both been immobilized. I lifted one, and it was like wiping an eraser across the blackboard… where my arm had passed was just blackness, like the side of the bed had ceased to exist. I reached out to the tray beside the bed to try to grab it, and it disappeared. I tried to touch the nurse and she was gone… I reached out on the other side for the other nurse and she was gone, too; I flailed around for a few more seconds trying to grab hold of something, but everywhere I moved, I left a trail of black nothingness, and then everything was black.
Mental Illness. Her therapist, who I honestly never thought was really helping her, had diagnosed her with depression and agoraphobia*. I think she was BPD with some kind of paranoia issue. She also went out of her way to do destructive things that then allowed her to play the martyr, because people were being mean to her when they asked her not to destroy their property in front of them or get in their way while they were carrying heavy objects (everyone, anyone).
She wasn’t doing any CBT with her therapist and I don’t even know if she was ever telling her therapist the truth about a lot of things. Her attitude toward her therapist was more “gosh, she’s always so nice to me”, which is odd given the things she was doing. In retrospect, I feel like ‘wait, if you reacted so poorly to anyone pointing out when you were doing something destructive or asking you not to do it, were you or were you not talking about your difficulties with her?’
But the thing is, she worked to keep things to a minimum right up until we were married, when all hell broke loose.
- Agoraphobia is an anxiety disorder characterized by symptoms of anxiety in situations where the person perceives the environment to be unsafe with no easy way to get away. These situations can include open spaces, public transit, shopping malls, or simply being outside the home. Being in these situations may result in a panic attack. (But she worked at the Renn Fest every year and went to the Mall of America on a regular basis.)
I was at work one night when a serial rapist broke into the building and raped me at gunpoint.
He pointed the the gun in the back of my neck and told me I was dead if I didn’t remember the safe’s
combination…and I didn’t know what the combination was. :eek:
Wow, Newtosite. What did you do or say to get him not to kill you?
I was a kid living with my mother after my parents split up. We did not have a telephone and were living in an apartment in a house in a less than good neighborhood. My father had been to “visit” earlier in the day to discuss the divorce. Basically he wanted the divorce ASAP no child support no alimony nothing. He just wanted to be free to marry his girlfriend. My mother said he had to help support me. As he was leaving he muttered I’ll kill you both. Needless to say we were scared; but we didn’t have anyone we could stay with and no money to stay at a motel. My Mom said if he comes back I’ll distract him, you run to the backdoor go to the neighbor and ask to use their phone and call the police.
Late that night he came to the house. He knocked and knocked and tried to break the door down with no success. Then he smashed in a window and climbed in. Fortunately I got to the neighbor and called the police. The sound of the siren scared him and he quickly left the house and drove off. We told the police what happened and they supposedly followed him. I know they did not arrest him.
Most of my childhood is pretty fuzzy; but I recall that night as if it happened yesterday. The sound of the glass breaking, the feeling of the cool air on my face when I went out the backdoor, the scent of the evening air, the neighbor lady holding me while I cried.
My earliest memories, up to age eight or so, seem to consist almost solely of things that terrified me, but I guess it’s a toss up between these two (both from somewhere between ages 4 and 6):
I’d been in the hospital for recurring lung issues, and had been told I’d be released that day. For some reason I thought I’d need to call my parents to come and fetch me. I had memorized our phone number, but unbeknownst the local phone system had gone from six- to seven-digit phone numbers a few weeks before, so the number I had didn’t work any more. From this I somehow got the notion that my parents had deliberately abandoned me, and completely lost my shit at the nurses’ station. The staff did what they could to console me, but they must have thought I was a weird kid, which, well, to some extent I was.
The other one, more serious, involved my Dad at a swimming pool we had visited with other family members. My Dad apparently had become annoyed that had not yet made any attempt learn how to swim, so decided he’d force me to learn, right then and there, by tossing me in at the deep end. This did not have the desired results, to say the least. I distinctly remember my Dad and maybe some of the other adults actually laughing as I swallowed water and began to sink. Finally someone, maybe one of my uncles, went in and fished me out.
I should note that in general, my Dad was not an intentionally cruel person, and I can’t think of him ever doing anything like that again to me or my siblings. Nevertheless, that one thing seriously messed me up for years. I think I was 12 before I was able to work up enough courage to go in water above my waist again.
I remember the dry taste of copper in my mouth and having to force myself to move, but not the actual incidents … how odd.
Probably the scariest was the home invasion. The sound of someone downstairs woke me; this was odd because I sleep like a stone, and even the dog didn’t wake. I had dry copper mouth, but I went to check it out anyhow, because I was convinced it was nothing, but sure enough, there was a person at the bottom of the stairs.
Everything was fine, I howled a threat, the dog woke and barked, the person ran away … but it was scary.
And there was the time we spun out on I90 when we were little more than kids.
Or every time I heard a new noise in the cottage in the middle of the woods (why yes, I do watch fewer horror movies now).
It’s always worst when you are alone.
I kept insisting I didn’t know the combination! He eventually dropped it. I was his 26th victim; I later
found out he had never killed anyone.
I rolled a car in Montana once. I wasn’t an experienced driver and was going too fast in the rain on a windy mountain road. I was unhurt but my girlfriend, who was asleep in the back seat, broke some ribs, and her dog went through the window (fortunately he was OK). The moment when we went off the edge of the road was the scariest I’ve ever experienced.
The second was camping in Samburu National Park in Kenya when a pride of lions engaged in a battle royal with a pack of hyenas about a hundred yards from my tent a few hours after nightfall. I spent a lot of time thinking about whether I should stay quietly in my flimsy tent or make a dash for the car. I decided to stay put but didn’t get a lot of sleep that night.
My Wife’s cancer diagnosis. I was afraid I would lose her, I was afraid I would not be able to give her the support she needed, I was afraid she would not be strong enough to emotionally to complete her treatment.
My worst moments have included vehicle vs. whitetail deer. Many incidents. They are out to get me. I swear, I think that is the way I’ll die.
I was driving a cab in Charlottesville, VA, in 1975. People often call a cab to get rid of drunks and other undesirables. I got called to a house to pick up some guy’s mother-in-law. She got in the cab carrying a large bag and asked to be taken to another residential address. She was pretty drunk and talked the whole time. Halfway there, she asked me to take her to the police station instead. She then said that she figured she should “turn this into the police” and pulled a shotgun out of the bag. She rested it on the back of the front seat as I drove her to the PD. Before she got out, I suggested (very politely) that she might want to put the shotgun back in the bag before she went inside. Or, let me put in the trunk while she went to get an officer. It was half an hour later before I realized that I didn’t even collect the fare.
I can see where that would be terrifying. “Am I being quiet enough? Can they smell me? Am I going to pee myself and then they’ll smell me? If I move, will they hear it?” :eek:
I have been around way too long because I already know half these stories. And I’m sorry for the suffering many of you have endured.
I thought of another scary moment, when I was in junior high I visited Cedar Point and we had an event that involved several water spouts and funnel clouds at once. I didn’t really know what was going on until I got kicked out of the line at an indoor coaster (Disaster Transport.) She just said, ‘‘You all have to go outside,’’ and when someone asked why, she said, ‘‘You’ll see when you get outside.’’
Cedar Point, for those who don’t know, is a peninsula where you can readily see both coasts at once. So we had one water spout coming at us from the Disaster Transport side, made a run toward the other coast, saw another water spout coming up from behind the Raptor (I had no idea water spouts rarely make land, all I saw was a tornado on either side of me.) I finally bolted toward the bathroom for cover, but there were too many people in it so there was an overflow. I looked over my head, roughly near the parking lot was a huge ass funnel-cloud about to drop on my head.
Nothing really came of it other than me metaphorically pissing myself in terror. There had been several other funnel clouds throughout the park but nothing touched down. I had recurring nightmares about dying in tornadoes for years. I still do, sometimes, but they tend not to end with me dying anymore.
Wow. My only direct Tornado sighting was extremely close, but not at all dangerous.
In my teens we lived on 10 acres in the country, south of town. My dad and I stood in the backyard one day watching a wall cloud approach from the south-southwest. A small funnel started to form as it came toward us. It passed almost directly overhead, still a relatively small funnel, then dropped down about a mile away, you guessed it, headed straight toward the only trailer park within about 10 miles. :smack: It damaged five of them, but I think only one person was injured and no one killed.
Maybe not THE scariest, but being asked personal questions by some internet rando over and over is certainly disturbing.
I was on an escalator in Penn Station, going upward from the platform to the station. It was rush hour and the escalator was packed full of people sardines.
Two teen girls tried to muscle their way upward (i.e. “escalators as stairs”), but didn’t get far and started shouting for people to go faster.
Then one of the idiot girls screamed “HE’S GOT A GUN! OH MY GOD HE HAS A GUN!!!” People freaked out and total chaos ensued as they pushed, screamed, and fell.
I couldn’t move at all, so I closed my eyes and thought “this is not how I pictured dying.”
There was, of course, no gunman. People had minor injuries from the stampede and the idiot girls took off.
So, this was my scariest moment. I had to sit down for a long time because I was shaking and had Jello legs.
That is the scariest thing I’ve seen here. Like Loach I may be dead inside, I stay pretty calm in the face of physical danger. But something like that would get me seriously freaked out.
ETA: I haven’t been right next to Lion vs. Hyena fight like **Colibri **though. I think that one would probably get to me.
I was driving cross country and trying to go a great distance before stopping to sleep, but the struggle to stay awake seemed too difficult. I found a big parking lot, pulled into a space, and slept in the driver’s seat, finally giving in to the struggle not to nod off.
I awoke around dawn, facing the grill of the tractor-trailer I had parked in front of.
Staying at a beach house on Lake Huron with family and friends. 13-year-old daughter announces she’s going for a walk on the beach. And doesn’t come back.
There are undertows, there are swamps, there are militia weirdos in the general area, and she’s a kid in a bikini. The things that went through my head.
We sent out search parties on foot and by car. I was on my way to the closest State Police post when my husband called. He’d followed her route along the beach and met her coming back from a walk that turned into about five miles there and back. She was perfectly cheerful and had no idea how much time had passed, or how freaked out everyone was.