Speaker 1: Redditors who had a dying confession but then lived what happened.
Speaker 1: Story one. I used to work on construction with this guy,
Speaker 1: let's call him Larry. One day on sight there was
Speaker 1: this big mess with a scaffolding rig. A vehicle accidentally
Speaker 1: backed into it while Larry was working underneath, and the
Speaker 1: whole thing collapsed on top of him. It looked really
Speaker 1: bad At the moment, he was pinned, bleeding from a
Speaker 1: head wound and said he couldn't feel his legs. He
Speaker 1: was absolutely convinced this was the end for him. While
Speaker 1: a few of us were trying to lift the scaffold
Speaker 1: and give him basic first aid, Larry kept asking for
Speaker 1: someone's phone so he could call his wife, Susie. Our
Speaker 1: supervisor handed one over, and Larry, believing these were his
Speaker 1: final moments, poured his heart out over the phone in
Speaker 1: the most dramatic this is it way you could imagine.
Speaker 1: While fully sobbing, He told Susie he hadn't been the
Speaker 1: husband he should have been. He confessed to having multiple affairs,
Speaker 1: stealing from Susie's parents, creeping on their neighbor's daughter, and
Speaker 1: doing drugs with Susie's sister. He was apologizing and asked
Speaker 1: looking for forgiveness, thinking this would be the last time
Speaker 1: they'd speak. Well, turns out Larry wasn't dying at all.
Speaker 1: Once the scaffold was lifted. It turned out he'd only
Speaker 1: been pinned by a few awkwardly fallen tubes and bracers.
Speaker 1: They'd landed in just the wrong way to put pressure
Speaker 1: on a nerve, which made his legs go numb. His
Speaker 1: head injury only needed a handful of stitches, and outside
Speaker 1: of some bruises, he walked away in weigh better shape
Speaker 1: than we all expected. Susy didn't exactly appreciate the unexpected honesty.
Speaker 1: By the time he got out of the hospital, he
Speaker 1: had lost his house, his truck, custody of his kids,
Speaker 1: and ended up with a pretty hefty monthly child support
Speaker 1: and alimony situation. To top it all off, he got
Speaker 1: officially written up at work for not wearing his hard
Speaker 1: hat under the scaffolding, which was company policy. A while later,
Speaker 1: I talked to another guy who was working with Larry
Speaker 1: that day. Apparently the whole incident started because a forklift
Speaker 1: picked up one of the storage carts for the scaffold pieces,
Speaker 1: but it hadn't been properly secured, which which was Larry's responsibility.
Speaker 1: Before we continue, do us a quick favor. Smash that
Speaker 1: like button and subscribe to support our channel. Story two.
Speaker 1: I was in a pretty bad accident a while ago
Speaker 1: that left me with a concussion and a spinal injury
Speaker 1: that needed emergency surgery. By the time I got to
Speaker 1: the hospital, things were moving fast. The surgeon came in
Speaker 1: and gave me the standard rundown of risks, but my
Speaker 1: concussion brain completely latched onto one line, there's a very
Speaker 1: small chance of death, and suddenly I was convinced I
Speaker 1: wasn't making it out of that operating room. In that
Speaker 1: weird mix of panic and clarity that only comes when
Speaker 1: you're concussed and think you're about to die, I had
Speaker 1: one super specific regret hit me hard. I didn't tell
Speaker 1: my brother I loved him enough. So with my phone
Speaker 1: barely hanging on at like two percent battery, I called
Speaker 1: him up. I told him I was proud of him,
Speaker 1: that he should move on, live life to the fullest,
Speaker 1: and basically gave him the emotional version of a farewell
Speaker 1: letter in under a minute. Anyway, the surgery went great,
Speaker 1: zero complications. I woke up groggy, but very much alive
Speaker 1: and almost immediately saw my brother without missing a beat.
Speaker 1: He smirked and said, so just because you survived doesn't
Speaker 1: mean I can't still live my life to the fullest. Right.
Speaker 1: It wasn't in either slash or situation. I obviously told
Speaker 1: him he couldn't. Story three. So this happened during that
Speaker 1: inland hurricane we had last year. The winds were insane,
Speaker 1: trees were snapping, debris was flying around, and I was
Speaker 1: huddled in the hallway of our house just waiting for
Speaker 1: the roof to rip off. Genuinely thought the whole place
Speaker 1: was going to come down. I remember sitting there, heart pounding, thinking, Yep,
Speaker 1: this is it, this is how I go. At the time,
Speaker 1: my roommate, whom I'd had a bit of a complicated
Speaker 1: friendship slash flirtation situation with, was at work, and in
Speaker 1: that moment of total panic and existential dread, I figured
Speaker 1: if I was about to die, I didn't want to
Speaker 1: go without saying something real, So I pulled out my
Speaker 1: phone and sent her a text that said something like, Hey,
Speaker 1: so I might actually die in this storm. Just wanted
Speaker 1: to say I love you too much to risk not
Speaker 1: saying it. If I somehow survive. See you tonight if
Speaker 1: I don't. Sorry for the levity. Well, the house ended
Speaker 1: up being almost completely fine ninety five percent and scathed.
Speaker 1: Lost a couple of shingles, a tree branch dented the gutter,
Speaker 1: but that was about it. When she got home from work,
Speaker 1: she was smiling from ear to ear. She'd been feeling
Speaker 1: the same way for a while, said, my apocalyptic panic
Speaker 1: text kind of cleared the air. We decided to give
Speaker 1: it a shot and actually dated for a while after that.
Speaker 1: We're not together any more, but it ended on good terms.
Speaker 1: I'd give the whole experience a solid seven out of ten.
Speaker 1: Would confess my feelings during a near death situation again
Speaker 1: if necessary. Story for when I was fifteen, I tore
Speaker 1: my acl playing softball and needed me surgery. It was
Speaker 1: a routine procedure, but teenage me didn't see it that way.
Speaker 1: Once they gave me the anesthesia and I was good
Speaker 1: and loopy my brain, I suddenly decided this was it
Speaker 1: my final moment on Earth. I became completely convinced I
Speaker 1: wasn't going to make it off that operating table. As
Speaker 1: they were wheeling me down the hall toward the ore,
Speaker 1: I sat up, or tried to at least, and dramatically
Speaker 1: shouted at a completely random orderly tell my family I
Speaker 1: want to be an organ donor. I have zero memory
Speaker 1: of this whatsoever, but my mom was standing nearby and
Speaker 1: witnessed the whole thing. She still brings it up whenever
Speaker 1: the topic of hospitals or organ donation comes up. We
Speaker 1: still laugh about it now. At the time, I didn't
Speaker 1: fully understand how organ donation actually worked. I had this
Speaker 1: vague idea from TV and health class that organ donors
Speaker 1: were walking around just one emergency away from being whisked
Speaker 1: away to donate a kidney to a stranger. It honestly
Speaker 1: freaked me out a bit. I thought it meant someone
Speaker 1: could just ask for a piece of you and you'd
Speaker 1: have to hand it over. Eventually, I realized that's not
Speaker 1: how it works at all. You're not getting harvested just
Speaker 1: because you're on a list. It's about helping others if
Speaker 1: and when you truly can't be helped anymore. So I
Speaker 1: educated myself, got over the weird fear, and signed up
Speaker 1: to be a donor like I'd always wanted to. Funny enough,
Speaker 1: I had a room eight years later who gave me
Speaker 1: grief about it. He argued that you're going to be
Speaker 1: so mad when they bring you back to life in
Speaker 1: the future and you don't have your eyes, like we'd
Speaker 1: reach a point in human history where full on resurrection
Speaker 1: is on the table, but eyeballs are the one thing
Speaker 1: science can't replicate, and out of all the people in
Speaker 1: the world, I'm the lucky one they bring back still blind,
Speaker 1: though because I checked a box at the DMV, the
Speaker 1: logic was wild. Anyway, I'm thirty seven now and still
Speaker 1: an organ donor and thankfully still in possession of both
Speaker 1: eyes for now. Story five. My dad was recently diagnosed
Speaker 1: with cancer, and after his initial surgery to remove the tumors,
Speaker 1: he was in a rough spot week, in a lot
Speaker 1: of pain, and for the first time in his life,
Speaker 1: not in control. That was a scary realization for him.
Speaker 1: Now let me give some background. My dad has always
Speaker 1: been kind of selfish, the type of guy who really
Speaker 1: only puts effort into things if there's something in it
Speaker 1: for him or if it's convenient. My brother and I
Speaker 1: were raised mostly by our mom and later on by
Speaker 1: our amazing step dad, who's still a solid part of
Speaker 1: our lives to this day. Growing up, my dad would
Speaker 1: always make it clear that we weren't getting any kind
Speaker 1: of inheritance. He planned to spend everything before he died.
Speaker 1: He's been a bachelor for thirty plus years, no spous
Speaker 1: and he'd repeat that no one's getting anything. When I
Speaker 1: go like it was a badge of honor, my brother
Speaker 1: and I always just shrugged it off. It's his money,
Speaker 1: after all, and saying we didn't care was our way
Speaker 1: of not letting it hang over us. So cut to
Speaker 1: him lying in a hospital bed, genuinely thinking he might
Speaker 1: be on his way out. He has this emotional breakthrough
Speaker 1: and calls us both saying he's changed his perspective, says
Speaker 1: he doesn't have to be in a pine box to
Speaker 1: start giving, and wants to gift us each some money
Speaker 1: while he's still around to see us enjoy it. We
Speaker 1: were surprised but touched. It felt like a big shift
Speaker 1: for him. There were some string attached, of course. He
Speaker 1: wanted to approve what we used the money for. Fair enough,
Speaker 1: my brother talked about putting in a new pool. I
Speaker 1: brought up replacing floors and windows, which are things I
Speaker 1: actually need but haven't been able to afford. Dad approved
Speaker 1: both ideas and even seemed excited about them. He never
Speaker 1: gave us an exact number, but the way he talked
Speaker 1: it sounded like these would be significant gifts. A couple
Speaker 1: of weeks later, the test results come back and it
Speaker 1: turns out his cancer is very treatable and was caught early.
Speaker 1: We were relieved. Both my brother and I had flown
Speaker 1: out to be with him, helped take care of him
Speaker 1: and support him through chemo. Then one day he sits
Speaker 1: us down and says, now that I'm not dying, there
Speaker 1: are still a lot of things I want to do,
Speaker 1: so I'm not giving you guys the money. After all,
Speaker 1: if you knew the man, you'd know this whole thing
Speaker 1: was very on brand. Still, I won't lie. It stung.
Speaker 1: We didn't expect anything, but having the rug pulled after
Speaker 1: it was offered like some grand gesture was rough. Story six.
Speaker 1: My dad and mom divorced when I was really young,
Speaker 1: like two or three, and while we were technically in contact,
Speaker 1: it was never a father daughter relationship. He was more
Speaker 1: like an old acquaintance I saw from time to time.
Speaker 1: He didn't parent me. We'd grab lunch every now and then,
Speaker 1: maybe a drink if we happened to be in the
Speaker 1: same town, but it was always surface level. Over time,
Speaker 1: I started to realize just how invisible I was in
Speaker 1: his life. Once, not long before the pandemic, I ran
Speaker 1: into him at a pub. I walked up and said hi,
Speaker 1: just casually trying to make conversation. One of his friends
Speaker 1: came over and asked how I knew him, and when
Speaker 1: I said, oh, I'm his daughter, the look on his
Speaker 1: face was pure shock. That was the moment it really
Speaker 1: sank in. My dad didn't talk about me, probably never
Speaker 1: mention me at all. When he passed, it got even
Speaker 1: more surreal. His funeral was across the country, and my
Speaker 1: sisters and I went. Even though we weren't close to him.
Speaker 1: We spent the day being asked if we were co workers.
Speaker 1: Not a single person there, people who had known him
Speaker 1: for decades, had any idea he'd even been married, let
Speaker 1: alone had three daughters. It wasn't even angering at that point,
Speaker 1: just hollow. We weren't in his will because there wasn't one,
Speaker 1: but we did end up finding out he had savings bonds,
Speaker 1: apparently all in my sister's name. She mailed out our
Speaker 1: shares later on, along with photocopies and receipts. My cut
Speaker 1: came out to just under thirty dollars. It's not about
Speaker 1: the money. It never was. It was just the final
Speaker 1: proof that we were never really part of his story.
Speaker 1: The worst part, honestly, was watching some of his friends react.
Speaker 1: You could see how blindsided they were. They felt awful,
Speaker 1: like they'd missed something huge about someone they thought they
Speaker 1: really knew, and weirdly, I felt worse for them than
Speaker 1: I did for myself. He spent his whole life keeping
Speaker 1: us out of the picture. I guess that part never
Speaker 1: changed even in Death Story seven. I actually witnessed one
Speaker 1: of these first hand. A few years ago. My husband
Speaker 1: and I were driving behind his uncle when he got
Speaker 1: into a pretty bad car accident. We were the first
Speaker 1: to reach him. His car was mangled, there was a
Speaker 1: lot of blood, and he couldn't feel anything except his head.
Speaker 1: He thought he was dying. While we waited for the ambulance,
Speaker 1: he started saying what honestly sounded like his final words.
Speaker 1: He asked us to tell his wife that he loved
Speaker 1: her deeply and that he was sorry he hadn't always
Speaker 1: treated her the way she deserved. He called her the
Speaker 1: love of his life, and admitted that when they first
Speaker 1: got together it was because he fantasized something about her,
Speaker 1: and not out of love. He'd been initially drawn to
Speaker 1: her for some shallow physical reasons, but over the years
Speaker 1: he realized she was so much more than what had
Speaker 1: attracted him at first. She was kind, patient, resilient, and
Speaker 1: the best thing that had ever happened to him. He said,
Speaker 1: she deserved to be loved holy, and if she ever
Speaker 1: found someone new after he was gone, he hoped she'd
Speaker 1: never settle for less than she was worth. It was
Speaker 1: an emotional moment. He was barely conscious, clearly in pain,
Speaker 1: and genuinely believed those were his last moments. The ambulance
Speaker 1: arrived soon after and rushed him to the hospital. Turned out,
Speaker 1: the injuries looked worse than they were at first glance.
Speaker 1: He had some surface wounds, but the real damage was
Speaker 1: to his back. He'd fractured parts of his vertebrae, specifically
Speaker 1: the small bony protrusions called transverse processes, but the spinal
Speaker 1: cord itself hadn't been seriously compromised. The numbness was from
Speaker 1: swelling and trauma. He needed a few surgeries and a
Speaker 1: long recovery period, but he made it. A few days later,
Speaker 1: we shared a toned down version of what he'd said
Speaker 1: with his wife. She got emotional, of course, but took
Speaker 1: it with grace. Honestly, though it was a bit awkward
Speaker 1: for us, We'd always looked up to him, and hearing
Speaker 1: that his marriage had started on such shallow terms was surprising,
Speaker 1: to say the least. Funny enough, they're still together and
Speaker 1: stronger than ever now. I think the whole incident made
Speaker 1: them both revaluate their relationship and appreciate each other more.
Speaker 1: Story eight. This isn't exactly the dramatic life or death
Speaker 1: confession you might expect, but it's my story. A while back,
Speaker 1: I was in a pretty serious car accident. I ended
Speaker 1: up breaking my neck and had a nasty injury where
Speaker 1: a piece of metal went deep into my thigh, causing
Speaker 1: a lot of bleeding. At one point, I honestly thought
Speaker 1: I was going to die because I was losing so
Speaker 1: much blood. While I was still conscious and in pain,
Speaker 1: I called my girlfriend at the time. I wanted to
Speaker 1: tell her something important, something I'd been saving up for
Speaker 1: for months. I'd been putting away money, about five thousand
Speaker 1: dollars with the plan to surprise her with a down
Speaker 1: payment on a new car. My goal was to put
Speaker 1: down ten thousand dollars total, so that her monthly payments
Speaker 1: would be really manageable under two hundred dollars. But in
Speaker 1: that moment, thinking I might not make it, I told
Speaker 1: her I wanted her to have the five thousand dollars
Speaker 1: i'd saved, and asked her not to tell my family
Speaker 1: about it. I passed out on the phone with her
Speaker 1: after that, and when I woke up in the hospital,
Speaker 1: she was right there beside me. She asked me what
Speaker 1: the money was for, and I told her the plan.
Speaker 1: That's when she started laughing. Turns out she'd been secretly
Speaker 1: saving too. She'd saved seven thousand dollars toward the same goal.
Speaker 1: Two weeks later, once I was able to walk again,
Speaker 1: we took all the money we had twelve thousand dollars
Speaker 1: and went to buy her car. Then we went to
Speaker 1: my mom's house in Florida so I could recover more comfortably.
Speaker 1: Story nine. Not me, but my old boss's brother. He
Speaker 1: works in bomb disposal, specifically the kind of high stakes
Speaker 1: stuff involving land mines and chemical weapons. One day, he
Speaker 1: and his team were working in a secure facility on
Speaker 1: a device that contained some sort of nerve agent. While
Speaker 1: inside the containment room, one of the team members accidentally
Speaker 1: dropped the device. Alarms went off, lock down protocols kicked in,
Speaker 1: and the three people inside were told to prepare for
Speaker 1: the worst. Basically, they were advised to call their families
Speaker 1: and say their good byes. It was that serious. He
Speaker 1: tried calling my boss his brother multiple times to say goodbye,
Speaker 1: but my boss kept ignoring the call, assuming it was
Speaker 1: something casual or unimportant. Meanwhile, in the locked room, the
Speaker 1: situation got even tenser. The device wasn't detonated, but no
Speaker 1: one wanted to risk another move, So my boss's brother
Speaker 1: stepped up and volunteered to finish disarming the bomb. His
Speaker 1: logic was, if this thing's going to go off, I'd
Speaker 1: rather it be quick than die slowly from whatever it's
Speaker 1: packed with. Miraculously, he succeeded disarm the whole thing, no casualties,
Speaker 1: no detonation. Now, every time his brother's phone rings, he
Speaker 1: always picks up, no matter what story ten. This didn't
Speaker 1: happen to me directly, but to a close friend, and
Speaker 1: I was there when it happened. Two days before my
Speaker 1: friend's mom passed away. She sat us down and out
Speaker 1: of nowhere, admitted to killing my friend's dad many years ago.
Speaker 1: She said she found out he had been essaying a
Speaker 1: disabled neighbor's child, and after that she couldn't live with
Speaker 1: letting it go unpunished, so she claimed she started feeding
Speaker 1: him rap poison. Now what's wild is that no one
Speaker 1: ever suspected her. Everyone thought he just came down with
Speaker 1: some mysterious illness. He was in the hospital for about
Speaker 1: a month before he died, So we asked her, wait,
Speaker 1: but he was in the hospital for weeks. Wouldn't they
Speaker 1: have figured it out. She just looked at us and said,
Speaker 1: that's why I told him not to eat that horrible
Speaker 1: hospital food. I brought him food myself every day. We
Speaker 1: were all just stunned, no idea if it was true
Speaker 1: or if she was just saying something wild at the end.
Speaker 1: But she passed two days later and no one ever
Speaker 1: brought it up again. Whether it was a real confession
Speaker 1: or something her mind created near the end, I honestly
Speaker 1: don't know, but it stuck with all of us ever since.
Speaker 1: Story eleven. This one came from my great grandmother, and
Speaker 1: she was in her final days, completely out of it
Speaker 1: on pain meds, and started having conversations with people who
Speaker 1: weren't there. At one point, she began talking to me
Speaker 1: but called me deb which is my aunt's name, so
Speaker 1: she thought I was someone else entirely. And then she
Speaker 1: just casually said her youngest nephew wasn't actually her nephew,
Speaker 1: he was her great nephew. The woman he believed to
Speaker 1: be his oldest sister was actually his biological mother. I
Speaker 1: didn't say a word about it at the time, just
Speaker 1: let it slide and keep my mouth shut. Honestly, I
Speaker 1: wasn't even sure if it was just the med's talking.
Speaker 1: Fast forward about two years, her sister passed away, and
Speaker 1: in the fallout, the truth came out from the niece,
Speaker 1: who was actually the guy's mom. She finally admitted it
Speaker 1: to him and it tore the family apart, huge fallout.
Speaker 1: People stopped speaking to each other, old wounds reopened, and
Speaker 1: it turned into full blown family warfare. So, yeah, she
Speaker 1: wasn't just rambling. That confession was very real. Story twelve.
Speaker 1: I was stationed in Hawaii when that infamous ballistic missile
Speaker 1: alert came through, the one that said this is not
Speaker 1: a drill. For a few long, horrifying minutes, we all
Speaker 1: thought it was real. At first, there was this eerie calm.
Speaker 1: I had just been sipping my coffee and scrolling through
Speaker 1: Warhammer subreddits, enjoying a lazy Saturday morning. Then my phone
Speaker 1: lit up with that alert. My brain did a hard
Speaker 1: switch from weekend mode toll we might all die in
Speaker 1: the next twenty minutes. I immediately called my wife. She
Speaker 1: was working up on the North Shore at the time,
Speaker 1: a solid distance away from where we lived on base,
Speaker 1: so there was no realistic way to reach each other
Speaker 1: in time. I gave her a rundown of what to do. Immediately,
Speaker 1: get to shelter, avoid windows, stay underground if she could,
Speaker 1: and told her to call her family. Then I called
Speaker 1: my parents, who live on the East Coast. I told
Speaker 1: them not to panic, that I loved them and that
Speaker 1: no matter what happened, they'd always meant the world to me.
Speaker 1: But I also told them I had to hang up Rachel.
Speaker 1: My wife was out there alone and I needed to
Speaker 1: make sure she was okay. I called her back. She
Speaker 1: was trying to keep it together, but I could hear
Speaker 1: the fear in her voice. I just talked to her,
Speaker 1: told her how much I loved her, reminded her of
Speaker 1: the best moments we'd had together, tried to keep her grounded.
Speaker 1: I didn't know what else to do, so I just
Speaker 1: stayed on the line while sipping RUMs straight from the bottle.
Speaker 1: It felt like we were either minutes away from death
Speaker 1: or about to be launched into war. Either way, everything
Speaker 1: was about to change. But nothing happened, no impact, no shockwave.
Speaker 1: Eventually we found out someone had hit the wrong button.
Speaker 1: It was all just a mistake, a very public, very
Speaker 1: terrifying mistake. It was a huge relief, of course, nervous laughter,
Speaker 1: some anger, but oddly it also brought us all closer.
Speaker 1: What messed with me most was how normal everything had
Speaker 1: felt just moments before. One second, I was enjoying a
Speaker 1: quiet morning. Next I was trying to soothe my wife
Speaker 1: through what we thought were our final moments and prepping
Speaker 1: to head to war. We joke about it now, between
Speaker 1: surviving twenty twelve, the Great Recession, that missile crisis, and
Speaker 1: a global pandemic, it kind of feels like we've been
Speaker 1: running through a cursed timeline. But hey, we're still here.
Speaker 1: Story thirteen. When I was younger, my grandfather on my
Speaker 1: dad's side fell seriously ill and was hospitalized with what
Speaker 1: turned out to be tuberculosis. At the time, things were
Speaker 1: tense in our family. My grandfather had always been a
Speaker 1: very strict, traditional man. He had strong ideas about how
Speaker 1: people should live their lives, and he pushed those expects
Speaker 1: hard on both my dad and to a lesser extent, me.
Speaker 1: It created a lot of resentment over the years, especially
Speaker 1: between him and my father. Anyway, there was a moment
Speaker 1: in the hospital when he genuinely thought he was dying.
Speaker 1: He pulled my Dad aside and for the first time
Speaker 1: in his life opened up. He told him, I'm sorry
Speaker 1: for being a terrible father to you, my son. I
Speaker 1: pushed too hard, forced my beliefs on you and your boy,
Speaker 1: and I know you both resented me for it. I
Speaker 1: was too strict, and I see that now. Maybe this
Speaker 1: illness is karma, or maybe it's a wake up call,
Speaker 1: but let it be a lesson to both of us.
Speaker 1: I love you. It hit my dad pretty hard. He
Speaker 1: wasn't the kind of man to cry or show emotion much,
Speaker 1: but I could tell those words meant something. For years,
Speaker 1: he'd carried that emotional weight and Finally, hearing his dad
Speaker 1: admit fault brought him some closure. Surprisingly, a few weeks later,
Speaker 1: my grandfather's health unexpectedly improved. The TV was treated successfully,
Speaker 1: and he fully recovered. Some time after he got I
Speaker 1: asked him if he meant what he'd said back in
Speaker 1: the hospital. He paused for a second, then nodded and said, yes,
Speaker 1: I meant it all. I was wrong, and I'm doing
Speaker 1: my best now to live better. He eventually moved out
Speaker 1: of the city and settled in a quiet rural area,
Speaker 1: where he spent the rest of his life in peace, gardening, reading,
Speaker 1: and enjoying nature. He mellowed out so much. The man
Speaker 1: who once lectured and criticized us constantly became someone who
Speaker 1: listened more, smiled more, and seemed genuinely at peace with himself.
Speaker 1: For a bit more context, my parents were teen parents.
Speaker 1: They were young, in love and trying to figure things out.
Speaker 1: My dad worked himself to the bone trying to provide,
Speaker 1: and sadly he passed away from overworking. My mom eventually remarried,
Speaker 1: but her new husband was nothing like my dad. He
Speaker 1: was egotistical and harsh, the kind of person who never
Speaker 1: tried to understand our families past. But despite all that,
Speaker 1: I still think about that moment in the hospital between
Speaker 1: my dad and grandpa. It didn't undo the years of tension,
Speaker 1: but it was something real, and in the end, I'm
Speaker 1: glad my grandfather lived long enough to reflect change and
Speaker 1: leave this world with some peace in his heart. Story fourteen.
Speaker 1: When I was deployed in a rock BALLID two thousand
Speaker 1: four to two thousand five, I was part of a
Speaker 1: small team that operated on base, but I wasn't really
Speaker 1: part of a specific unit that men. I spent a
Speaker 1: lot of my off duty hours alone, and looking back,
Speaker 1: being isolated like that in a war zone didn't do
Speaker 1: great things for my mental state. I even had a massive,
Speaker 1: twenty plus person tent all to myself, which made the
Speaker 1: place feel even more hollow. Rocket and mortar attacks were
Speaker 1: pretty common on the base. The enemy would set up
Speaker 1: makeshift launchers basically roof gutters buried in the dirt and
Speaker 1: attach a timed fuse before disappearing hours later. The mortars
Speaker 1: would hit, usually in volleys of three. Most of the
Speaker 1: time they were wildly inaccurate, but not always. One airman
Speaker 1: lost both his hands and legs to an attack, so
Speaker 1: the danger was real, even if the hits were were rare.
Speaker 1: One night, I was alone in my tent, just killing time,
Speaker 1: probably reading or playing video games, when the loudest explosion
Speaker 1: I'd ever heard went off. I didn't even hear it
Speaker 1: as much as I felt it. The blast hit hard
Speaker 1: and close. Then moments later, a second mortar landed even closer.
Speaker 1: I heard debris and dirt pepper the outside of my tent.
Speaker 1: That was the moment my body froze. I knew these
Speaker 1: attacks usually came in threes, and the third could land anywhere,
Speaker 1: including right on me. So in the few seconds I
Speaker 1: thought I had left, my brain did what I guess
Speaker 1: a lot of people's brains do when they think the
Speaker 1: end is coming, and I made peace with it. I
Speaker 1: mentally reached out to whatever higher power might be out there.
Speaker 1: I remember thinking something along the lines of if you're there,
Speaker 1: now's a good time to show up. I even made
Speaker 1: a wild promise in my head if I survived this,
Speaker 1: I'll become a priest. It was the most genuine moment
Speaker 1: of desperation I've ever had. The third explosion never came.
Speaker 1: Minutes passed, and then hours, and that was it. The
Speaker 1: attack was over. I survived. Obviously, I didn't become a priest,
Speaker 1: but that moment changed me. It's strange. I think I
Speaker 1: might still carry some form of PTSD from that night,
Speaker 1: but not in a typical way. I'm not haunted by
Speaker 1: vivid flashbacks or anything, but it definitely shifted my perspective.
Speaker 1: I've found that the big existential stuff doesn't FaZe me
Speaker 1: any more. I don't get wrapped up in fear about
Speaker 1: death or what's beyond this life. I've made my peace
Speaker 1: with those questions, but ironically I have less patience for
Speaker 1: the small day to day annoyances. My wife and kids
Speaker 1: would probably say I can be irritable at times, and
Speaker 1: they wouldn't be wrong. I still think about that night sometimes,
Speaker 1: not because of the fear, but because it's the clearest
Speaker 1: memory I have of feeling totally at the mercy of
Speaker 1: something bigger than myself, and somehow I walked away from
Speaker 1: it with a kind of peace. I didn't expect to
Speaker 1: find Story fifteen. I guess mine's a little different. My
Speaker 1: confessions and near death experiences never happened at the same time,
Speaker 1: but they've shaped each other in weird ways. I've written
Speaker 1: several letters in dark moments of my life, kind of
Speaker 1: like goodbye notes, always thinking it might be the end,
Speaker 1: but ironically writing those letters actually helps me not go
Speaker 1: through with anything. I get so caught up in explaining
Speaker 1: every little detail why I felt the way I did
Speaker 1: and trying to absolve others of guilt that by the
Speaker 1: end of it, I've processed so much that I no
Speaker 1: longer feel like I'm in crisis. It's happened at least
Speaker 1: five times. Writing became both my warning sign and my therapy.
Speaker 1: On the flip side, I've made plenty of love confessions
Speaker 1: to people over the years, driven by this constant feeling
Speaker 1: that life is short and unpredictable, like why leave things
Speaker 1: unsaid when we could die tomorrow. Unfortunately, those confessions never
Speaker 1: quite landed. Either I was too late, or they ghosted me,
Speaker 1: or they were already dating someone. But I still don't
Speaker 1: regret saying it. I'd rather be honest and risk rejection
Speaker 1: than let silence turn into regret. As for near death stuff, yeah,
Speaker 1: I've had a few moments. I almost choked to death
Speaker 1: on a peppermint when I was eight legit thought that
Speaker 1: was it. Got threatened by a room mate who snapped
Speaker 1: during a hotel stay on a band trip and pulled
Speaker 1: a knife on me. A couple of years later, I
Speaker 1: ended up in the hospital post wisdom tooth surgery because
Speaker 1: the bleeding wouldn't stop. Turns out, the pain killers I
Speaker 1: was given didn't play nice with my mild clotting issue.
Speaker 1: What was supposed to be routine turned into a few
Speaker 1: days of real worry, and then there's just the every
Speaker 1: day chaos. I've had too many close calls on the
Speaker 1: road thanks to reckless drivers weaving through traffic at one
Speaker 1: hundred plus m p h on highways. It's made me
Speaker 1: a ridiculously alert driver, but it also fuels that same
Speaker 1: say what you need to say mentality. I guess all
Speaker 1: those brushes with danger have reinforced my belief that anything
Speaker 1: can happen at any time. Story sixteen. We had bought
Speaker 1: a piece of land out in the woods and figured
Speaker 1: we might as well put it to use by cutting
Speaker 1: down some trees for firewood. It was just a casual
Speaker 1: day of working out doors, nothing out of the ordinary,
Speaker 1: but things took a dark turn after one point. We
Speaker 1: were taking down what we thought would be the last
Speaker 1: tree of the day. We cut it clean, but when
Speaker 1: it fell it hit another tree. That second tree wobbled
Speaker 1: and toppled into a third one, which ended up crashing
Speaker 1: straight down on my coworker, total domino effect. It sounds fake,
Speaker 1: but I swear it actually happened by some freak stroke
Speaker 1: of luck. The tree didn't land completely flush with the ground.
Speaker 1: It was slightly elevated by a stump or maybe the
Speaker 1: terrain underneath, so it wasn't crushing him entirely. Still, it
Speaker 1: was bad. The guy was pinned and in serious pain.
Speaker 1: There were a couple of us there, and we immediately
Speaker 1: rushed to help. While we were scrambling to move the tree,
Speaker 1: he looked up at us and said he needed his
Speaker 1: phone so he could call his wife. He just wanted
Speaker 1: to tell her he loved her and say his good byes.
Speaker 1: He genuinely thought he was going to die right there
Speaker 1: in the woods. We managed to roll the tree off
Speaker 1: after a few minutes of sheer panic and effort. Paramedics
Speaker 1: came pretty quickly after we called, and it turned out
Speaker 1: he had forebod broken ribs, but nothing life threatening. Definitely
Speaker 1: a close call, though he made a full recovery, but
Speaker 1: I think that moment really shook him. We all walked
Speaker 1: away a little quieter and way more respectful of how
Speaker 1: unpredictable nature and gravity can be. Story seventeen. This happened
Speaker 1: to me a couple of years ago, and I still
Speaker 1: think about it often. I was in a really dark place,
Speaker 1: mentally overwhelmed with anxiety and self doubt. I had been
Speaker 1: dating this guy for almost two years, but throughout our
Speaker 1: relationship I kept having this sinking feeling that he was
Speaker 1: being unfaithful. He always insisted I was just being paranoid,
Speaker 1: that I was imagining things, and that I needed to
Speaker 1: stop being so insecure. Over time, I started to believe him.
Speaker 1: I began to think I was the problem. During that December,
Speaker 1: things hit a breaking point. I truly believed I couldn't
Speaker 1: take it anymore and made an attempt on my life.
Speaker 1: Before I did, I called him and poured my heart out.
Speaker 1: I told him I finally believed him that I was
Speaker 1: sorry for being suspicious and accusing him of cheating, especially
Speaker 1: with his only female friend, whom I had always felt
Speaker 1: uneasy about. I apologized for being, in my mind, a
Speaker 1: terrible girl friend. I took all the blame. I thought
Speaker 1: it was the last thing I'd ever say to him.
Speaker 1: But I survived. I ended up waking up and somehow
Speaker 1: still made it to school the next day because I
Speaker 1: had mid terms. No one around me had any idea
Speaker 1: what had just happened. I was emotionally wrecked and physically drained,
Speaker 1: but I showed up like nothing happened. And then he
Speaker 1: ghosted me two full days of complete silence after almost
Speaker 1: two years together. He didn't say a word. When he
Speaker 1: finally did reach out, it was just to break up
Speaker 1: with me. Shortly after, I found out the truth that
Speaker 1: he had been cheating. Everything I had felt for months
Speaker 1: was right, but he had manipulated me into thinking I
Speaker 1: was just crazy and insecure, gaslighting at its finest. Looking back,
Speaker 1: the part that stings the most isn't even the cheating.
Speaker 1: It's the fact that I apologized to him that, in
Speaker 1: what I thought were my final moments, I spent my
Speaker 1: last energy trying to make him feel okay. I regret
Speaker 1: that deeply, but if there's a silver lining, it's that
Speaker 1: I made it. I've done a lot of growing since then.
Speaker 1: Story eighteen. A few years ago, I went backpacking with
Speaker 1: my brother and dad on a trail my dad had
Speaker 1: dreamed about hiking for years He'd been reading guidebooks and
Speaker 1: planning the route for nearly twelve months, so this trip
Speaker 1: meant a lot to him. The plan was to hike
Speaker 1: for a week, but from day one it was clear
Speaker 1: my dad was struggling physically. My brother, who's in great shape,
Speaker 1: would hike ahead with me for a bit, drop his pack,
Speaker 1: and then run back to help Dad by carrying his
Speaker 1: load to Meanwhile, I'd slowly make progress with my pack
Speaker 1: and my brother's pack while they caught up. Not the
Speaker 1: smoothest system, but we were making it work. I pushed
Speaker 1: hard to make sure we spent at least one night
Speaker 1: on the trail, since I knew how important it was
Speaker 1: for our dad to experience it. As the day went on,
Speaker 1: I found myself hiking alone, trying to get us to
Speaker 1: the designated overnight shelter before dark. That's when things got intense.
Speaker 1: I was alone, I owned tired, and a little on edge.
Speaker 1: When the bushes just off the trail started shaking violently,
Speaker 1: I froze. My first thought was bar The adrenaline hit hard.
Speaker 1: I slowly backed away, trying not to make any sudden moves.
Speaker 1: I made it back to the place where we'd left
Speaker 1: My brother's pack, and thinking I might be in real danger,
Speaker 1: I sat down and wrote a note to my wife
Speaker 1: and kids. I told them I loved them and added
Speaker 1: a line, don't be as stubborn as me. Then, just
Speaker 1: in case, I pulled my driver's license out and stuck
Speaker 1: it in my pants pocket, figuring if something happened, at
Speaker 1: least they'd be able to identify me. With no cell
Speaker 1: signal and panic setting in, I decided to try and
Speaker 1: find my brother and dad. Safety in numbers right, but
Speaker 1: as I was hiking back, I ran into another hiker
Speaker 1: headed toward the shelter. Just seeing another person calmed me
Speaker 1: down a little. I figured, if there really is a bear,
Speaker 1: at least he'll spot it first, so I turned around
Speaker 1: and went back toward the shelter with him. Turns out
Speaker 1: that was the right call. I managed to get the
Speaker 1: tent set up and everything ready by the time my
Speaker 1: brother and dad showed up at dusk. When I told
Speaker 1: them what happened, my brother shrugged and said it was
Speaker 1: probably just a deer, but there were multiple signs posted
Speaker 1: around the shelter warning about an aggressive black bear in
Speaker 1: the area, so I'm not sure bear or deer. I
Speaker 1: have never felt that kind of fear before I honestly
Speaker 1: thought I was done for. I know now that black
Speaker 1: bears rarely attack, and I probably wasn't in actual danger,
Speaker 1: but in that moment, I was fully convinced my life
Speaker 1: was on the line. My heart still races when I
Speaker 1: think about it. The next day, thankfully, the trail was
Speaker 1: mostly downhill and we hiked out as a group. The
Speaker 1: trip didn't go as planned, but we all made it
Speaker 1: out safe and ended up with some unforgettable stories. Story nineteen.
Speaker 1: This isn't my own dying confession, but it involves my
Speaker 1: biological dad, so I thought i'd share some background. My
Speaker 1: parents split when I was just two years old. I
Speaker 1: stayed with my mom, who later remarried and moved to Australia.
Speaker 1: I didn't meet my bio logical dad until I was sixteen,
Speaker 1: so he was pretty much a stranger to me. Fast
Speaker 1: forward to my mid twenties. A few years ago, I
Speaker 1: found out through my mom that he had been diagnosed
Speaker 1: with cancer and given only about three months to live,
Speaker 1: but he fought hard against it. When he was on
Speaker 1: his deathbed, he made a confession to his three daughters
Speaker 1: from another relationship. He told them about me that he
Speaker 1: had kept me a secret all these years and gave
Speaker 1: them instructions on how to get in touch with me. Miraculously,
Speaker 1: he recovered and has now been cancer free for six years.
Speaker 1: The weird part is none of those sisters ever reached
Speaker 1: out to me honestly. Even though he's my biological dad,
Speaker 1: he's still basically a stranger. My stepdad is the one
Speaker 1: who raised me and has always been my real dad,
Speaker 1: so I'm okay with not having contact with those sisters.
Speaker 1: It's a strange situation, but it didn't really change much
Speaker 1: in my life story twenty Back in twenty nineteen, I
Speaker 1: hid an absolute breaking point. Within just a few months,
Speaker 1: I lost my remaining family members and my dog all
Speaker 1: in quick succession. It crushed me so deeply that I
Speaker 1: completely stopped taking care of myself. I got severely dehydrated,
Speaker 1: developed chest and throat infections, and my immune system basically collapsed.
Speaker 1: My boyfriend was my rock through it all. He helped
Speaker 1: me start eating and drinking again, and I even had
Speaker 1: to go to the hospital for a Ford drip to rehydrate,
Speaker 1: plus a heavy course of antibiotics. During this time, I
Speaker 1: felt like I couldn't breathe properly. I was crying every day,
Speaker 1: convinced that this was the end for me. Facing that
Speaker 1: near death experience made me realize something important. I hadn't
Speaker 1: truly told the people I cared about how much they
Speaker 1: meant to me. So I reached out, telling my friends,
Speaker 1: my boyfriend, and even talking to my pets. I even
Speaker 1: went to my uncle's grave and finally patched up a
Speaker 1: bunch of broken relationships I'd neglected or lost over the years.
Speaker 1: I didn't die, of course, and eventually I got better,
Speaker 1: but that brush with death pushed me to fix my
Speaker 1: life in a way I never expected. Now everyone important
Speaker 1: to me knows how I feel. I saved some friendships
Speaker 1: I thought were gone forever, and I'm even closer to
Speaker 1: my pets. It's kind of crazy, but thinking I was
Speaker 1: going to die was what finally made me heal and
Speaker 1: mend those broken bridges. Story twenty one. So mine wasn't
Speaker 1: a dramatic car crash or life threatening illness. It was
Speaker 1: a hash brownie that nearly made me spill my soul.
Speaker 1: I had one at a friend's place, thinking it'd be
Speaker 1: a chill time, but it hit me so wrong. My
Speaker 1: blood pressure tanked. I couldn't breathe properly, and I genuinely thought, Yep,
Speaker 1: this is how I go. I texted the guy who
Speaker 1: gave it to me something along the lines of I'm
Speaker 1: very intoxicated I might die today. As soon as I
Speaker 1: sent it, I kind of shocked myself, like, if I'm
Speaker 1: sending that kind of message, I must really not be okay.
Speaker 1: So I ran to my mom for help. Yep, that desperate.
Speaker 1: She basically went into full on panic mode, but did
Speaker 1: her best. Started blowing air into my mouth, trying to
Speaker 1: help me breathe, even though neither of us really knew
Speaker 1: what we were doing. I had a brief moment of
Speaker 1: clarity after that, where I felt okayish until it hit
Speaker 1: me again harder. That second wave of panic had me
Speaker 1: confessing everything I told my mom about the brownie, told
Speaker 1: my whole family I loved them and thanked them for
Speaker 1: everything they'd ever done. It was like this emotional purge
Speaker 1: I couldn't stop. They rushed me to a doctor who
Speaker 1: gave me an injection. I don't even know what it was,
Speaker 1: but within a few hours I was totally fine again, physically,
Speaker 1: at least mentally. I felt ridiculous, but also kind of
Speaker 1: relieved For a little while. Afterward, things with my family
Speaker 1: were really open and warm. We talked more, I felt
Speaker 1: closer to them, but eventually we drifted back into our usual,
Speaker 1: we don't really share feelings mode. Still, I think that
Speaker 1: moment stuck with all of us a bit more than
Speaker 1: we let on. Story twenty two. I was in a
Speaker 1: pretty horrific car accident when I was twenty one. We're
Speaker 1: talking full facial fractures, a broken jaw, a cracked forehead,
Speaker 1: a shattered eye socket, and even brain damage. The doctors
Speaker 1: didn't sugarcoat it. Either I wasn't going to make it,
Speaker 1: or I'd survive, but with major impairments for the rest
Speaker 1: of my life. They put me in a medically induced coma,
Speaker 1: and when I finally woke up ten days later, everything
Speaker 1: had changed, not just physically but mentally too. I realized
Speaker 1: just how much time I had wasted being afraid to
Speaker 1: live fully. At twenty one, I had barely done anything
Speaker 1: outside the safe and comfortable path because I was always
Speaker 1: worried about the future, and suddenly it hit me I
Speaker 1: almost didn't get to have one. The recovery took years.
Speaker 1: For the first seven I genuinely believed my time was
Speaker 1: still ticking down, like I had been granted a short extension,
Speaker 1: so I lived like the clock was running out. I
Speaker 1: took massive financial risks, stuff I'd never have considered before,
Speaker 1: because in my mind, I was like, screw it, I'll
Speaker 1: probably die soon anyway. Now I'm forty four, still here,
Speaker 1: And honestly, I look back and laugh at how convinced
Speaker 1: I was that the end was just around the corner.
Speaker 1: I made a lot of impulsive decisions, but I also
Speaker 1: lived way more boldly than I ever had before the accident.
Speaker 1: It completely rewired how I view time, fear, and risk.
Speaker 1: Story twenty three. This actually happened to my best friend,
Speaker 1: and it scared the life out of me. They had
Speaker 1: this horrible cough that had been going on for a
Speaker 1: few days, and it got worse really fast, Like by
Speaker 1: day two or three. They were coughing up blood, constantly
Speaker 1: throwing up, and just overall sounding like their body was
Speaker 1: giving up. They had ordered some kind of intense medical
Speaker 1: equipment they thought would help, but it wasn't going to
Speaker 1: arrive for another week, and they genuinely didn't think they'd
Speaker 1: make it that long. Then I got the message it
Speaker 1: was this long emotional text where they basically said stuff
Speaker 1: like you made my life worth something and even if
Speaker 1: I'm gone, our bond will still be strong. I barely
Speaker 1: got a third of the way through it before full
Speaker 1: panic hit. I immediately started calling and texting NonStop, totally
Speaker 1: freaking out. I thought they were dying right then. Thankfully,
Speaker 1: a couple of days later, the medical gear arrived and
Speaker 1: it it actually worked. They got better, like completely fine now,
Speaker 1: but that message burned into my memory. For a moment there,
Speaker 1: I thought I was losing one of the most important
Speaker 1: people in my life. Story twenty four, when I was seventeen,
Speaker 1: I had a serious head injury, lots of blood loss,
Speaker 1: and while waiting for the ambulance, I started blacking out.
Speaker 1: I genuinely thought I might not make it. In that
Speaker 1: weird moment of panic and clarity, I blurted out to
Speaker 1: my parents that I'd actually hated them for the past
Speaker 1: six years, not just anger, full on resentment. I told
Speaker 1: them I had wished bad things on them, and all
Speaker 1: of it just poured out before I lost consciousness. I survived, obviously,
Speaker 1: and five years later we've never really talked about it again.
Speaker 1: We sort of have this unspoken truce. I keep things
Speaker 1: civil until I graduate college. They act like they never
Speaker 1: heard what I said, and I don't stir the pot
Speaker 1: with extended family. They don't treat me differently, and I
Speaker 1: keep my real feelings to myself. Not exactly closure, but
Speaker 1: it works for now. Story twenty five. Not sure how
Speaker 1: much this counts, but a few days ago I found
Speaker 1: a lump on my inner thigh. As a teen with
Speaker 1: limited medical knowledge, my mind immediately jumped to cancer. I
Speaker 1: panicked for a few minutes, thinking the worst, before calming
Speaker 1: myself down. In that brief window of spiraling, I genuinely
Speaker 1: thought I might not have much time left. It was weird.
Speaker 1: I started seeing everything from a different lens, like none
Speaker 1: of this really matters in the grand scheme of things,
Speaker 1: because we're all going to die someday. But that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean life isn't worth living. It actually felt like a
Speaker 1: sobering reminder that life is short and fragile, and it's
Speaker 1: okay to acknowledge that sometimes. It also made me think
Speaker 1: about how insignificant we are in the bigger picture. We
Speaker 1: often walk around thinking we're these one in a million
Speaker 1: cases who somehow have more to offer the world before
Speaker 1: we go, but that's just our ego talking. People die
Speaker 1: every day. We don't get special treatment just because we're
Speaker 1: self aware of it. That little moment of panic gave
Speaker 1: me a crash course in Memento Mary, being mindful of death.
Speaker 1: It's not a negative mindset, more like a reality check.
Speaker 1: And just to end on a lighter note, if you're
Speaker 1: a guy, lumps like this are actually pretty common. They're
Speaker 1: often just fatty deposits or cysts that are totally harmless.
Speaker 1: I've since learned that it's nothing serious, but I'm still
Speaker 1: planning to get it checked when i can, just in
Speaker 1: case story twenty six. It was a Saturday afternoon and
Speaker 1: I had made up my mind that I didn't want
Speaker 1: to be here anymore. I didn't outright tell anyone, but
Speaker 1: I did what felt like my own version of a goodbye.
Speaker 1: I ran as fast as I could to a nearby park,
Speaker 1: hoping to find some peace and solitude. Before leaving, I
Speaker 1: sent a few subtle quiet messages to some friends, just
Speaker 1: enough so that if they were paying attention, they'd realize
Speaker 1: something was wrong. The only public thing I posted was
Speaker 1: a simple line, love y'all be good to each other.
Speaker 1: That was all I wanted to leave behind a small
Speaker 1: piece of me out there one last time. The park
Speaker 1: was more crowded than I expected, and the beautiful day
Speaker 1: made it impossible to find thee I was searching for.
Speaker 1: But the bigger surprise was that some of my friends
Speaker 1: noticed the tone of what I'd done. They immediately reached out, calling, texting,
Speaker 1: and messaging, and they talked me down just by being there.
Speaker 1: Their ability to read between the lines and sense what
Speaker 1: I was going through saved me. I know it's not
Speaker 1: the dramatic, tearful deathbed confession many might expect, but in
Speaker 1: a way, that simple post and those few messages were
Speaker 1: my confession. I don't have any big secrets or regrets.
Speaker 1: Just to hope that people would be kind to each other.
Speaker 1: I didn't go through with it, and looking back now,
Speaker 1: I'm incredibly grateful. Story twenty seven. When I was around thirteen,
Speaker 1: I got really sick from food poisoning, which turned out
Speaker 1: to be botulism, which is pretty serious and can be deadly.
Speaker 1: I remember my mom was driving me to the hospital
Speaker 1: as the symptoms started hitting me hard. I was completely
Speaker 1: convinced that I wasn't going to make it. It wasn't
Speaker 1: exactly a confession, but I couldn't stop thinking about how
Speaker 1: devastated my mom would be if I died. I kept
Speaker 1: apologizing over and over, telling her it was my fault.
Speaker 1: She'd have to suffer through losing me. I kept replaying
Speaker 1: in my head how the pickled fish I ate didn't
Speaker 1: taste right and why I even ate it. The worst
Speaker 1: part was that it was my mom who had given
Speaker 1: it to me and encouraged me to eat it. She
Speaker 1: doesn't even eat fish herself, so she had no way
Speaker 1: of knowing it was spoiled. I can't even imagine how
Speaker 1: she would have coped if I actually had died that day.
Speaker 1: The guilt and grief would have been unbearable, not just
Speaker 1: for her, but for my dad too. Botulism has a
Speaker 1: relatively high mortality rate, so it wasn't an irrational fear. Luckily,
Speaker 1: I got to the hospital in time and received treatment.
Speaker 1: I pulled through, and while the whole experience was terrifying,
Speaker 1: it really made me realize how much my family means
Speaker 1: to me. It also showed me how fragile life can be,
Speaker 1: and how important it is to appreciate the people around
Speaker 1: you while you still can. Story twenty eight. This one's
Speaker 1: a bit wild and honestly still confusing to me. So
Speaker 1: my friend was seriously ill and near the end of
Speaker 1: his life. While I was out of the room one day,
Speaker 1: he told my then wife that I was having an
Speaker 1: affair with another woman. The thing is I wasn't, not
Speaker 1: even close. The strange part is that she never mentioned
Speaker 1: this to me or anyone else while he was alive.
Speaker 1: It was only after he had passed away that she
Speaker 1: finally brought it up. I'm not sure if it was
Speaker 1: some sort of twisted joke from him he was always
Speaker 1: a prankster, or if his illness he had brain cancer
Speaker 1: somehow affected his mind and made him say things that
Speaker 1: weren't true. There's also a chance she was just trying
Speaker 1: to mess with me for reasons I don't fully understand.
Speaker 1: To this day, I have no idea what really happened
Speaker 1: or why he said what he did. Was it a
Speaker 1: cruel joke, a symptom of his illness, or something else entirely,
Speaker 1: I guess I'll never know. Story twenty nine. Back in
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, I hit a really low point and ended
Speaker 1: up attempting to off myself. Before I went through with it,
Speaker 1: I sent out a few messages to some of my
Speaker 1: closest friends, I took the chance to thank them for
Speaker 1: being good friends over the years. I also apologized for
Speaker 1: being pretentious during middle school, a phase I'm not proud of,
Speaker 1: but wanted to acknowledge. None of them knew what was
Speaker 1: really going on at the time, But looking back, those
Speaker 1: messages felt like my way of saying goodbye or clearing
Speaker 1: the air. What surprised me most was that, after everything,
Speaker 1: our relationships actually improved. Maybe it made them realize how
Speaker 1: much they mattered to me, or maybe it opened up
Speaker 1: space for more honest conversations between us. I didn't end
Speaker 1: up going through with it, and I'm glad I didn't.
Speaker 1: Story thirty, it wasn't exactly a deathbed confession. In fact,
Speaker 1: it was almost the opposite. My mom spent the last
Speaker 1: fifteen to twenty years of her life building up a
Speaker 1: carefully curated fictional version of her past. To anyone outside
Speaker 1: our family, neighbors, church members, and co workers. She was
Speaker 1: a saint. She painted herself as someone endlessly kind and patient,
Speaker 1: someone who had overcome hardship with grace. Meanwhile, the truth
Speaker 1: at home was much messier and far more painful. Our
Speaker 1: relationship had been strained for years, but when she got sick,
Speaker 1: I still stepped up to help her. I didn't want
Speaker 1: her to be alone in her final days, so I
Speaker 1: stayed with her in her room for an entire week.
Speaker 1: That time was complicated, to say the least. Even near
Speaker 1: the end, she was still trying to control the narrative.
Speaker 1: She timed her final calls to her sister, whom we
Speaker 1: hadn't spoken to in decades, and even to her attorney,
Speaker 1: deliberately trying to avoid any revelations until after she passed,
Speaker 1: like she wanted to win by keeping up appearances one
Speaker 1: last time. I didn't learn the full extent of what
Speaker 1: she had been saying to people until after her death,
Speaker 1: but even in those final days I caught glimpses of it.
Speaker 1: I overheard her encouraging her sister when she could barely
Speaker 1: speak to send me harassing texts. I eventually confronted her
Speaker 1: about it and cleared things up with her sister directly,
Speaker 1: but it left a sour taste in my mouth. Her
Speaker 1: coworkers came in full of admiration, calling her a saint
Speaker 1: and raving about how sweet and patient she'd always been.
Speaker 1: One of her supervisors came in and introduced herself to me.
Speaker 1: I recognized her name immediately. My mom had always spoken
Speaker 1: of her with bitterness and anger, but in that moment,
Speaker 1: I realized why her boss had seen through the act.
Speaker 1: That's probably why my mom disliked her so much. For
Speaker 1: a long time, I carried the emotional weight of who
Speaker 1: she really was because publicly everyone had been fooled. It
Speaker 1: felt like no one knew the real version of the
Speaker 1: person I'd grown up with. When she passed, I didn't
Speaker 1: feel relief so much as release. I'd already mourned the
Speaker 1: mother I wished I had, the one the world thought
Speaker 1: she never really existed, except in stories she told others.
Speaker 1: Story thirty one. A few years ago, I had a
Speaker 1: near death experience from what was either a severe asthma
Speaker 1: attack or an allergic reaction. We still don't really know
Speaker 1: for sure. All I remember is suddenly waking up and
Speaker 1: realizing I couldn't breathe. My mom was crying and screaming
Speaker 1: for help on the phone, and I genuinely thought that
Speaker 1: was going to be it. The next thing I knew,
Speaker 1: I was in the ambulance, with my mom still crying
Speaker 1: next to me, and a paramedic on the other side,
Speaker 1: frantically trying to find a hospital that could take me in.
Speaker 1: The weirdest part is that the cause was never officially identified.
Speaker 1: That day, I had eaten some glazed peanuts, so my
Speaker 1: mom thinks I had a delayed allergic reaction to those,
Speaker 1: but the paramedics said that would have been too late
Speaker 1: for the timing to make sense. The doctors leaned more
Speaker 1: toward an asthma attack, but then we found black mold
Speaker 1: behind my bed, not just a little but a solid patch.
Speaker 1: So now I'm pretty convinced it was the mold that
Speaker 1: triggered it. Story thirty two. This isn't my story exactly,
Speaker 1: but it's about my ex's grandma's best friend, and it's
Speaker 1: one that really stuck with me. So this woman was
Speaker 1: given a prognosis of just about two weeks to live.
Speaker 1: She had been holding in a lot for years, grudges,
Speaker 1: feelings about friends and family. She'd never really said out loud,
Speaker 1: but once she found out she was facing the end,
Speaker 1: she finally let it all out. She expressed all the
Speaker 1: frustrations and disappointments she'd kept bottled up for so long,
Speaker 1: alongside that she gave away almost all of her possessions,
Speaker 1: including her beloved prize winning cat, something she'd treasured deeply
Speaker 1: for years. But then something unexpected happened. About ten days later,
Speaker 1: she made what doctors called a miraculous turnaround. She ended
Speaker 1: up living for another couple of years, longer than anyone expected.
Speaker 1: Those extra years were complicated. She spent much of that
Speaker 1: time estranged from the people she'd confronted and gone off on,
Speaker 1: but she stayed close with those she truly loved. She
Speaker 1: often said that she wished she had been honest with
Speaker 1: everyone much earlier in her life, that maybe things would
Speaker 1: have been different if she hadn't held so much inside
Speaker 1: for so long. As for the cat, well, I don't
Speaker 1: actually know if she ever got it. Back Story thirty three,
Speaker 1: a friend of mine was in the ICU after being
Speaker 1: in a coma for almost two weeks. He was hooked
Speaker 1: up to around eight different ivs and monitors. Ironically, he
Speaker 1: might have survived sooner if the hospital hadn't accidentally given
Speaker 1: him a staff infection in his blood. His family actually
Speaker 1: ended up receiving a settlement over that, but that's another
Speaker 1: story anyway, While he was fully aware that he probably
Speaker 1: wasn't going home, he asked to see a reverend to
Speaker 1: make a confession. When the clergy showed up, my friend
Speaker 1: asked for a very specific minister by name, some one
Speaker 1: who wasn't around any more because there were serious accusations
Speaker 1: made against him during his time in the ministry. Apparently
Speaker 1: that minister had fled and gone off the grid. My
Speaker 1: friend looked at the reverend, then back at me, and
Speaker 1: said that the missing minister was behind the power station
Speaker 1: on the state line in the swamp, maybe one hundred
Speaker 1: yards into the trees. The reverend asked if my friend
Speaker 1: wanted absolution, and instead he basically flipped him off and
Speaker 1: told him to leave. From that moment, it was clear
Speaker 1: that my friend was dropping a heavy accusation that this
Speaker 1: missing minister was dead and buried out in that swamp.
Speaker 1: My friend survived, but that confession lingered with us all
Speaker 1: story thirty four. Awhile back, I had to get my
Speaker 1: wisdom teeth removed. Now, dental visits have never been my thing.
Speaker 1: I've always been terrible at handling them, like I've panic
Speaker 1: way more than most people. Because of that, my dentist
Speaker 1: decided to put me under general anesthesia for the procedure,
Speaker 1: which felt like a relief at first, but before the surgery,
Speaker 1: I was convinced something was going to go wrong. Maybe
Speaker 1: it was anxiety, maybe paranoia, but I wrote a seven
Speaker 1: page letter and left it under my keyboard. I figured
Speaker 1: if something happened and I didn't wake up, someone would
Speaker 1: find it. It was a mix of a letter to
Speaker 1: my loved ones and some random thoughts I wanted to
Speaker 1: get out. After the surgery, I came home feeling totally
Speaker 1: out of it. I won't lie, I was pretty high
Speaker 1: and not exactly myself. I ended up burning the letter
Speaker 1: because well, I was relieved to be alive and didn't
Speaker 1: want to dwell on those dark thoughts anymore. But that
Speaker 1: third day after getting my wisdom teeth out was absolutely brutal.
Speaker 1: The pain, the swelling, the feeling like I was trapped
Speaker 1: in my own head. It was the worst, but I survived,
Speaker 1: and honestly, it made me realize how much our fears
Speaker 1: can sometimes trick us into preparing for the worst, when
Speaker 1: really we just need to hold on a little longer.
Speaker 1: Thank you for watching. If you enjoyed this video, be
Speaker 1: sure to give it a thumbs up, subscribe and hit
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