My mom always told me my father had died in Vietnam during the war.

Imagine my surprise when he showed up to my High School graduation because he'd seen my name in the local paper (I graduated valedictorian and I'm a Junior). Turns out my mom had kidnapped me when I was a baby to keep my father from trying to get custody when they split up. He lived about an hour away from me the whole time I was growing up and neither of us knew it.

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My best friend growing up was actually my half brother that my dad conceived with a family friend.

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I was a single child my whole life, then my dad died and I learned in my 30s, that my cousin was my brother, I had a half sister who lived across the country, had a sister down the street and another half sister who was like in her late 50s.

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Helluva lot lighter than 99% of this thread but I didn't find out until like 15 years after the fact that when my uncle divorced his wife and got with another woman was because they were swingers and the husbands decided to just swap wives. Now they're hardcore Bible thumpers.

EDIT: Yes, the swap was consensual by all parties.

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Matthew Barabas

Matthew Barabas

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10 hours ago

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i feel like its extremely wrong and hypocritical to do these things, and then become hardcore bible thumpers. you haven't earned it.

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My half-sisters were kidnapped by their (undiagnosed at the time) clinically insane mother who kept them from my dad for two years. He came home one day and they were all gone. He spent those years looking for them, but since it was the mother who took them, he didn’t receive much help from authorities. During those years, my sisters suffered at the hands of their mother and her numerous male companions. One day, their mother just got tired of them and sent them back to their dad.

I didn’t know any of this until a few weeks ago. It explains so much.

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My father, a man of questionable morals, set my shy brother up with one of his mistresses. This woman, desperate to escape poverty, agreed to the arrangement.

Tragically, my father continued his affair with her even after she married my brother. This left my brother in a deeply troubled and painful situation.

My brother passed away at the young age of 50, leaving behind a complicated legacy. I'm unsure if the child he had with this woman is my sister or my niece, given my father's involvement.

My brother's life was marked by sadness and turmoil, a direct result of my father's selfish actions.

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My parents always told us kids that my mom lost her front teeth because as babies we’d accidentally head butted her so often we knocked them out.
The truth of it was that when my parents drank (which was, and I assume is still, all the time) they would argue a lot. When my dad got sick of my mom’s voice he’d pop her in the mouth with the back of his hand.
He’s the one that knocked out her teeth, and then blamed it on us as babies.

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My mom and dad were real brother and sister but they didn't know it too until they had 2 kids.

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I knew that my biological father had a sister that died when she was 6-yrs-old. It wasn’t until I was grown that I heard the full story. My Dad was 10 and Helen 6. He was supposed to be looking out for her while they were outside playing. They had walked to a neighbors house and Helen wanted to go home. Dad wanted to stay and told Hellen to walk back home by herself. She was hit by a car and died. My grand-parents blamed my Dad and he carried that guilt his entire life.

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My mom's side of the family owned a couple family members from my dad's side of the family during the slave times.

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Apparently my dad tried to strangle his ex wife and the only reason she survived is because she cut his arm with a kitchen knife. My mom and I got to find out that little fun fact together, because his ex called her to warn her that he was crazy when she found out he’d remarried. ? so there’s that.

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My family fought in WWII


on both sides.

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My grandfather was greatly displeased with his son Roland, who was mentally handicapped after an infection. So one day he gathered his 8 children in the yard, took out his hunting rifle and staged a mock execution of Roland to "teach him to be right".

My mom was maybe 10 years old when this happened.

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Great grandparents living in Europe lost all their kids in the Spanish flu epidemic; immigrated to the US and just popped out 5 more kids. Wild.

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Grandma didn't just disappear. Grandpa put her into an institution for what would probably be baby blues/ depression and irritation with a 5 year, 3 year, and a few month old kids, he was a trucker, so he was gone the majority of the time.
They gave her enough brain zap zaps that it turned her into a shell of a person, and she didn't even remember her kids. They visited only once when the youngest turned 18. She stayed there for 40 years completely alone, and no one knew or cared she died. She's just a random number in a mess of a graveyard they toss the wards of state in. She's less than two hours away in Minneapolis, but I won't drive in The Cities. I much prefer my small Wisconsin town.

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Matthew Barabas

Matthew Barabas

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10 hours ago

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you mean the same town that condemned your grandmother to this life?

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That my father's arrest at a rodeo in his teens (that led to his mom kicking him out, complete estrangement from his mom and siblings and his eventual adoption by his best friend's family) was not just a little dustup. He beat another person so badly the victim almost died. He was fifteen.

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I have an uncle who went to prison for [unaliving] a homeless man in the street with a few of his friends. They let him out early and he goes to family gatherings. He’s fairly close with a lot of the family and as kids we would have sleepovers at his house. At one of the sleepovers we overheard him abusing his wife thankfully they divorced but the family still invites him. But she’s the crazy one according to the family.

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