Real People Share Their Deepest, Darkest Secrets

Everyone has a secret. Often times, we keep certain pieces of information about ourselves confidential because we're embarrassed by them or we're afraid of what might happen if we let them out in the open. Thankfully, the internet allows us to be anonymous. Here are the deepest, darkest secrets of real people online:

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#1 Don't Worry About Me

That I've been lying to everyone the past several months that I've gotten better. Don't get me wrong: I drink less, but still a lot. I barely made it out of bed in the past three weeks. Just incredibly isolating. I'll live. I just need to get up, take a shower, eat something and take it day by day. I'll be okay, I promise.

#2 All Alone

I'm really bad at forming bonds with people. I might act like I care about people but deep down, I just want to be left to myself. I have to act as I belong with the people around me when I clearly don't. I feel like I'm just cheating everyone around me. I feel like I don't belong anywhere. Not at home, not college, not anywhere. And on top of that, I've got a six-hour commute back and forth daily. It's hard for me to have a social life.

#3 Holding Back

After finding out I had a lifelong, transmittable disease as a child right before I turned 15, I suppressed every bit of my intimate side. When I’m around other people, even the thought of kissing someone gives me tremendous anxiety. Now that I’ve started working on those issues, along with my almost 20-year marriage ending, I’m terribly afraid I’m going to pass away sad and alone.

#4 An Empty Shell

Who I am is a facade. I genuinely don't know who I am. I'm legit just an empty shell. I become the person people want me to be.  All my life I've been what everyone else expects me to be or wants me to be that I don't know who the heck I am. I did try to work on it and I have made some progress but I have to still hide who I am as it just provokes unwanted and unnecessary reactions.

#5 I'm Not Happy

I'm not happy. I haven't been for months. I feel too powerless and afraid to change anything. I sort of just hope everything stops. It's hard. I think from the outside I look so put together. My grades are good, I interact with people well, I'm just tired all the time and I don't really care about anything too deeply anymore.

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#6 Hiding To Fight Back

I've been hiding my recurring addiction from everyone. My parents and most other people think I got sober years ago. In reality, I relapse every six months to once a year, to the point where I have to lie to get out of work for a couple of days to fight withdrawals. I missed so many important social interactions because of it and I hate myself every time it happens. I'm the best at believing my own lies that this time I can use responsibly.

#7 No Tears Left To Cry

My ability to empathize with others is almost nonexistent. When I'm in a situation where everyone else around me is crying, their emotion doesn't rub off on me at all. I'm more stressed about trying to make myself appear just as sad as them than the actual situation causing the sadness for others. I guess empathy grows from personal experience, which I don't have a lot of.

#8 A Tough Battle

I have really bad intrusive thoughts. I’m trying to get a new therapist because I just moved. But my intrusive thoughts are why I really never want to live in another place with a balcony, and it's not because I’m afraid of heights. I have OCD and bipolar 2. I have been diagnosed, and I have been in therapy and on medication for over a year.

#9 A Troubling Anger

I'm scared of the "real me." I'm not an angry person, generally—I rarely get mad at things, and I'm not a violent guy. The few times I have gotten legitimately angry, or even just irritated, I've been told by people it genuinely scared them. Hearing that cut deep. I hate knowing that I've genuinely made people afraid.

#10 Not In My Cards

I'm no young buck anymore, and, though I have an overall easy life, I have had my share of experiences through it. I can sympathize, but I rarely empathize. It drives my wife up a wall, since I rarely show more delicate emotions, and she's only seen me cry a tiny handful of times in our near 25 years together. I wish I could show more, and I really feel like a sociopath some days, but it's just not in my cards.

#11 Losing Touch With Reality

I have a successful and positive life, but if I give myself 10 minutes alone with my thoughts, I succumb to the deepest and darkest possible confusion about life that my mind can comprehend. I feel that I lose touch with reality more every day and I’m worried that soon I will lose my mind without any control.

#12 Trust Issues

I don’t trust my girlfriend. It’s not her fault; in fact, she’s always been great to me. My last serious relationship was four years long and it was absolutely horrible. I was treated like dirt and she cheated on me, so now I can’t trust my current girlfriend just because I’m messed up. It leaves me constantly anxious and worrying, and I know that it’s not her fault so I just have to deal with it.

#13 Out Of Place

I’m out of place. Constantly. Even with the things I love, I feel out of place doing them. People take one look at me and smile awkwardly to ease the tension. They think that my injuries make me stupid. They throw subtle insults at me because they think that I’m their punching bag and will do it willingly. I don't know what to do.

#14 A Huge Regret

#15 Not The Life For Me

I regret having a kid. My son is a really awesome kid, but I feel like a terrible mother. I have constant anxiety. I feel like I’m constantly angry. I’m constantly stressed. I feel like I have to be perfect for my son all of the time. I constantly feel guilty about everything. On top of that, I hate making dinner every night and trying to give my kid a healthy variety.

#16 Different Desires

I recently came to the realization that my significant other doesn't want children due to her mental illness. As much as it's a deal-breaker for me, I don't feel like I can break it off and leave her to suffer through her depression and anxiety on her own. I feel trapped. I regret not having that discussion with her earlier on in our relationship.

#17 Near The Breaking Point

I'm working on my master's degree in law. I've wanted to become a lawyer ever since I was a kid. It's really freaking hard and sometimes I fantasize about quitting, moving back to my small home town, buying a deep fryer and getting a job at the local supermarket. No more expectations. No more pressure. I wouldn't do it, but God, sometimes I really want to.

#18 Dealing With Depression

I've had depression for the past seven years, but have nobody to tell because I just don't feel like I have a close enough relationship with them. The only two people I trusted enough to tell found a way to blame me for all their issues and cut me out of their lives completely. Now, I go through stages of utter depression, and then other stages of depression because I feel guilty for feeling this way. And then, to top it off, another wave because of the thought that if my mother knew, it'd tear her apart and that's something that would push me over the edge.

#19 A Twisted Trajectory

Both of us knew we liked each other, but neither of us had the courage to tell the other. We ended up drifting apart eventually. I was crushed for years and left wondering if she ever felt the same way as I did. A year ago, I met her again at a birthday party. She was about to get married and I had a stable relationship after years of disastrous flings and no strings attached kind of things. We met at a bar a few days after that and confessed our mutual love. I attended her marriage a few months ago. Life sucks.

#20 All By Myself

I genuinely feel alone in the world. I don't feel like I connect with any of my peers or coworkers. I don't get invited out to social gatherings, or have anyone randomly text or call to do something. Half of it is intrusive thoughts, half was a series of life events that changed my normal life significantly.

#21 Where There's A Will...

I finally found a girl with the exact same personality, similar life experiences, and the same interests (not just in hobbies but also studies). The worse part? She’s all the way in Canada and I’m in SEA. It feels really bad that life threw me some hope in finding my partner, but that hope is like crossing a galaxy.

#22 Stay Strong For Her

I battle against harmful thoughts daily, but I put on a practiced smile and pretend everything is fine. If it gets to the point where I can't even fake a smile, I just tell people that I'm a bit down or having some minor negative thoughts. Honestly, if it wasn't for the fact that I know that my little sister needs me, I doubt I would be here today.

#23 Forever An Acquaintance

I feel like people tolerate being around me but nobody actually likes me or enjoys being around me. I feel like people would rather not spend more time with me than they have to. I get along with people and I am good at making conversations, but for the majority, I don't think they like me enough to consider me a real friend.

#24 Deep In The Closet

I’m gay. Not just gay, I’m MEGA GAY! I haven’t come out to my parents cause they are very umm... restrictive of my opinions to be expressed. I just want to tell someone, but the only people that I’m comfortable with that know are my friends (probably because most of them are queer in some way) and everyone at my school. News spreads fast.

#25 Judgmental People

In reality, I’m not dumb. I know what you’re thinking or feeling about me just by the look on your face or by the way you shake my hand. I know that you’re probably disgusted by my appearance, and I know that you’re going to find the quickest way out of wherever we are so as to text your friends about the weirdo you just found.

#26 Aimlessly Wandering

I have no freaking clue what I'm doing with life. I just feel like a failure at everything I do. I don't really want a "woe is me" pity party about it all, I just want something to finally work out in life. I grew up with pretty bad parents and family relationships. I had a kid at 17 and now I'm a single parent mooching off of family while I bounce from dead-end job to dead-end job.

I desperately want to pursue a hobby as a career but have zero means of doing so and most likely won't for a very long time. If I didn't have a kid, I would've probably either abandoned everything and moved across the county by now.  Maybe one day I'll get hit by some luck that I don't manage to mess up, but until then, I just feel like I have to suffer through it.

#27 Temporary Turmoil

My ex cheated on me and left just after our 18 month anniversary. We had just gotten our own place. I struggle every day to see a point in anything anymore. I feel I could quite happily crawl into a ball and do nothing forever. But life needs to go on. So I put on a brave face and do my daily routine just watching the hours, the days, the months go by. I know I’ll be okay, but I’m not okay right now, and I suppose that’s okay.

#28 One Bird, One Stone

I ended a red-tailed hawk that was injured without realizing it. My family has chickens, and red-tailed hawks are known as "chicken hawks" for a reason, so we always try to keep hawks away from our chickens. One just landed down near our porch one day while I was home alone.

He was scaring the chickens so I threw a rock at it. I was already feeling bad about it, but then I realized afterward that he was holding his wing strangely. He was probably injured and I probably could have rehabilitated him if I had stopped to look first. It's my greatest regret to date.

#29 Life Without A Bro

I am married with two kids and I am generally happy. I have some leftover friends I see occasionally and I have a brother I see sometimes. Other than that, I no longer really have friends, and I definitely don't have a "best" friend. I'm 31 and I feel like I don't know how I would make a new friend or if I even could at this point. I'm not lonely because I have my wife and kids, but sometimes I miss having another guy to talk to who can relate to the same issues I have in life.

#30 Unsteady Feelings

I have myself thoroughly convinced she is cheating on me and that she is going to leave me. I've never been in a relationship where I wasn't either cheated on or she left me for someone else. I don't deserve my current significant other. She is a beautiful woman inside and out, yet all I see is her hurting me painfully. I know I'm wrong, yet that deep part of me always wins the battles inside my head.

#31 I'm A Sociopath

I think I’m a sociopath. My grandad is, and my mom has narcissistic tendencies, so it’s plausible. My mom has a really hard time relating to people and understanding pain, so growing up I heard a lot of “stop feeling sorry for yourself and get up” whenever I was hurt or cried. Don’t get me wrong; I love my mom, and she did her best, but our relationship is more sisterlike than motherly.

#32 A Crippling Loneliness

I feel like I have this crippling loneliness that hasn’t really gone away. I’ve never been in a relationship, and it makes me feel very alone, especially seeing people and good friends all getting into relationships. I get comments about how I am attractive, but I still haven’t been in any relationships... Is something wrong with me?

#33 A Bully's Past

I was SUCH a jerk when I was thirteen. I made fun of my brother all the time, participated in bullying other kids, acted like a brat to my parents, etc. Things changed as I got older: I made better friends, and just plain learned how to be a better person. Don’t hesitate to call your kids out when they’re being jerks. They’ll almost certainly get better as they get older.

#34 Doing The Least

I want to get money without working. Like, I really want to just spend every day 24/7 on my computer doing whatever I want. I have a scholarship at a university and they always say, "Do the things you want," or "You should work for what you want to be," or "Follow your dreams," and things like that. But in fact, there are things that even if you really wanted to, would be impossible to achieve.

#35 Me, Myself, And I

I’ve tried making friends. However, I can only do so online because we live in a world where appearance is everything. So I continue to be the nicest person I can be as long as there’s a barrier between our faces. As long as you can’t see me, you can see who I am on the inside. I've been all alone for many years and I hate it, but I also don't feel like doing anything about it.

#36 Pinpointing The Problem

I have an eating disorder. I don't even know what to label it as. It's not anorexia because I binge, and it's not bulimia because I don't purge often. I live with my family so it's hard to purge, workout, and not eat. I'm not in danger of dying, I promise—my BMI is normal and I'm 25 lbs away from being underweight. I lost 35 lbs in 1.5 years. I feel like I can't "recover" because I'm not at my goal yet, and I'm not physically sick.

#37 Giving Up

The chemo has stopped working. I am "taking a break" and should be going back on a rougher cocktail in a couple of months. I don't think I can do it anymore. Four years is so long and I don't really see the point in fighting anymore. I vacillate between feeling like a coward and hopelessness. I don't have the heart to tell my family or friends because they've supported me in my fight all this time.

#38 The Case Of The Ex

I still have feelings for my ex... who broke up with me like, four years ago. Strong feelings, too. Like, I still sometimes get emotional thinking about not being with her. And I'm with another person now who I love very much. She's great and such a good person. I love being with her, but not the same way as I loved being with my ex. I feel like my ex was "the one" (as freaking cringy as that sounds). And it makes me feel really bad that I won't love anyone completely because my ex will always have a piece of me.

#39 The Unhappy Worker

I hate my job. I see no future in what I'm trained in (and meant to be competent at) but I also have no idea what I would do instead. I suffered depression because of my job, and it always feels like I'm two bad days away from jumping in front of the nearest train. I worry constantly I'm too much of a mess-up to ever be any good to anyone or myself.

#40 A Social Outcast

I can’t connect to people my age. I feel like a social outcast. I’ve tried to do all the things that seem to make other people happy, and I just can’t seem to relate at all. I don’t have a hard time interacting with people, and from what I gather from my surroundings, I’m liked well enough and people enjoy talking to me. I just can’t develop real friendships. I’ve never had real friends, just acquaintances. It sucks.

#41 The Call Of The Void

I experience the call of the void often. For those who know what it is, you’ve had it too. For those who don’t know, the call of the void is when say, you're driving by a bridge and you get the sudden urge to just steer absolutely towards the edge. Not in a suicidal urge but like, something you feel you want to do just because. It happens often with other people in the car. Mom, babies, wife included.

#42 A Dark Future

My anxiety has gotten extremely bad. I'm legitimately scared of what the future is going to look like. The concentration camps in China, the Hong Kong protests, the Syria mess, the Trump presidency, the rise of the far-right, Brexit, Lebanon, Chile...

I can't help but feel like all of it is about to explode and it scares the heck out of me. The future almost feels like a... shadow on the horizon. And I feel like whatever that shadow brings will be different from the life I've lived so far in a way that I can't predict, and thinking about it is terrifying.

#43 Falling Out Of Love

That I don't love my wife at all. I love her as the mother of my kids but I have grown so tired of her ignorance, anxieties, fears, overall controlling nature, and general disregard for the fact that I too exist for more things than to provide for her the lifestyle she wants. But mostly because the one time in my life I asked her to step up and help, she told me she'd rather divorce me than do it. So I fell out of love for her that exact moment. It was over three years ago.

#44 A Detrimental Cycle

I need to change my life and I'm too scared to tell my significant other. I have substance abuse problems that I'm hiding very effectively right now but I know it will not last forever. We have centered a large part of our life around craft beer and if I quit that I just know that I will alienate and be alienated by friends. I need to lose weight and get in shape but I'm too lazy to start and I'm depressed because of it, so I drink more.

#45 A Negative Outlook

I'm living with an ailment that I'm too scared to tell anyone about. I was too stupid to get help and start managing it and I've lost the will to live or better myself in any way. This has slowly been destroying my relationships with my family and friends as I seclude myself more and more. Now I'm about to get kicked out of my place with no job, skills, or money.

#46 No Plans

I have no idea what I want to do with my life but people around me think I do. They think that I'm smart and that I can do a lot of things. In reality, I'm super lazy and find most things pointless. What helps me maintain good grades is my kind of good memory (it still isn't some high-level memory, just enough for me to get by without studying more than 20 mins).

#47 A Frustrating Diagnosis

I was diagnosed with migraines and vertigo, severe enough to include constant nausea and slight nerve damage. My scans show signs of a head injury of some kind from several years ago that my doctor believes might have played a role in developing this problem. It's hard to figure out exactly what could have caused this, and that's what makes this situation frustrating.

#48 Can We Be More Than Friends?

Ever since 5th grade, I had a crush on my best friend. I don’t know if he’s gay or bi or neither, but I’ve always liked him because we’re very close. We share the same hobbies, we both laugh at the same stupid stuff, etc. In freshman year, I tried to move on from him and started dating this girl for a year, but she’s not my type. I get jealous when girls try to date him, and I get happy when he regrets them. I never told him that I had a crush on him. I hinted at it, but he thinks I’m kidding. I never told anyone about this and I dream about it a lot weirdly. I’m still wishing one day I could date him.

#49 Cutting Ties

I have started to truly hate my one friend. She complains about everything, claims that any alternative way of life from the one she's used to is wrong, and always needs to be the center of attention. Then she acts like I'm the jerk when I get upset about it. Talking to her is draining, so now I avoid it. I can't stop seeing her though because I live with her and I am actually friends with her boyfriend.

#50 Needing A Do-Over

I just want a do-over in my life. I don’t feel happy where I am, even though I know a lot of people would do anything to be in my position. I feel like an ungrateful pain in the butt because of it. It will be a few more years before I can realistically change the way my life is, but it doesn’t feel like it will be enough at this point. I just want to start over.

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