When I was a teen in the ‘60s no one in my family was allowed to talk about Aunt Rita because she preferred the company of other women. I thought that she was a strong vibrant happy woman who never had a bad thing to say about anyone and didn’t care what anyone had to say about her. She was friggin awesome.</blockquote >
#2.
When I was 5 my dad one day took me with him to visit a guy about buying a wagon. While they were talking I went into the backyard to play with the guy’s grandson. My Dad forgot I was with him and just left. He came back 25 minutes later and that was the very last time my Mom let my Dad take me anywhere until I was old enough to call home. The biggest plot twist is I’m now married to the grandson. But yeah, my Dad hates if anyone brings up I got left so we don’t.</blockquote >
My uncle committed suicide to escape the hatred of the family. He was gay and their “Christian” values said to treat him like absolute garbage because of it. After he passed my grandmother tried to destroy all of his things; they were/are apparently possessed by demons. I was allowed to know him, though. He was still blood, after all. I loved him so much. Now the only memories of him that I have are playing Legos and solitaire in the computer room. I have a few of his things that no one will ever get their hands on. I’ll just be over here, hanging with my demonic spoon rest.</blockquote >
#4.
When I was 12 (in 1999) my parents told me they were taking me to Disneyland, and dropped me off at a boarding school and just left me there for 2 years. I had no warning and no idea what was happening or why, and no idea when I would see them again. All these years later and I still cry when I think about it.</blockquote >
#5.
My dad’s old hairstyle in the 80s. We have an agreement to never bring up the perm again.</blockquote >
#6.
My wife once made some kind of chicken with a chocolate glaze. We don’t ever speak of that evil lest it rise again!</blockquote >
#7.
My family didn’t talk about anything beyond the weather, prices at the grocery store, and light gossiping about other family members. I was 12 when my dad died. No one said his name again, and there were no stories about him. As an adult, I reflect on how pathological the avoidance was.</blockquote >
#8.
My grandmother sadly had to enter a TB sanitarium when she still had a handful of children at home. A couple of older sibs moved back home to help raise them. Eventually my grandfather started seeing another (married) woman in their small rural community. My mother always said that once her mom learned of the affair, “she just gave up” and died at the sanitarium. This was about 3 years before the advent of antibiotics that might have cured her.
So now grandfather was widowed, his youngest two kids moved to town to finish out high school by themselves, and the Other Woman had a baby that was putatively her (still) husband’s child. I don’t remember if her husband died or they divorced, but by the time I came along, my grandfather was married to the Other Woman, and had been for decades.
He was the patriarch of our very large family, the only grandparent I ever knew, though surely he couldn’t have picked me out of a lineup, along with his dozens of other grandchildren. Once during a pretty lubricated family get-together, the Affair Baby, now a grown woman, said something like: “I just don’t know where I belong in this family” (because supposedly she was no blood kin to any of us). My lovely Drunk Uncle Nick said: “Well hell, you’re our SISTER!” I was about 12. I swear the windows rattled from the seismic release of emotions over what was finally acknowledged.</blockquote >
#9.
My aunt talked my cousin out of an abortion (not her kid, just her niece) and it ruined my cousin’s life. She lost the kid, ended up on all the drugs, and spent a while in jail. She’s got her life back on track at this point but she was headed somewhere until that meddling holy roller got involved. My family doesn’t talk about it, but I sure do. Every time I see that Aunt. She can rot in hell, and I will never let her forget what she did to my cousin—we were thick as thieves. It’s been thirty years, and my rage still burns white hot.</blockquote >
#10.
We all pretend we don’t know my uncle is gay. No one has a problem with it at all aside from my uncle himself, who has a lot of shame about his sexuality due to some childhood trauma. So we all pretend we think he’s just such a hermit that love isn’t for him and all he needs is his cabin and his fishing pole. He knows we know, we know he knows we know—but for now this is how he feels most comfortable.</blockquote >
That today is the day my mom died. No one has mentioned it. Rest in peace, Bobbi Jo Caraway. I’ll always remember, even if they don’t.</blockquote >
#12.
How I was forced to marry my second cousin at 16, and when I finally couldn’t take it anymore when I was 23. I called my mother begging her, “Please let me come home, he is going to kill me,” actively beating me as we are on the phone. All she could say was, “Baby, I can’t help you.” Then she hung up on me. Thankfully I made it out alive. Nearly a decade later, I am living a completely different life as a new wife and mother.</blockquote >
#13.
My biological maternal grandfather smothered my newborn uncle in retaliation for my grandmother sticking up for herself during his abusive tirades. He’d been abusive in every sense of the word towards my grandmother and their children, and for the most part, my grandmother just took it out of fear. One day she got a bold streak and argued back at him. He stopped arguing, and my grandmother thought maybe he just decided to leave it alone. Later that day he smothered their newborn son in his cradle and told her if she ever talked back to him again, she’d be next. He led the authorities to believe it was crib death, and so it was ruled to be such. Thankfully, my grandmother escaped him some time later. I didn’t hear this story until I was an adult. I never met my maternal grandfather, and I’m quite content with that. If I cared enough to know where he was buried, I’d go piss on it.</blockquote >
Oh, in my family, it’s definitely the mysterious ‘potluck fight of 2016.’ Like, no one will tell me exactly what happened, but apparently, it involved my aunt’s potato salad, my grandma’s deviled eggs, and my uncle making a ‘harmless joke’ that escalated into full-on chaos. All I know is that someone stormed out, my mom ended up crying, and to this day, the phrase ‘potato salad’ is basically a trigger word at family gatherings. We’ve all collectively agreed to just pretend it didn’t happen, but the tension every time someone brings a dish to share? Palpable.</blockquote >
#15.
My brother sexually assaulted me from age 6 to 12. We found videos of him recording girls at school—like under their skirts and stuff like that without them knowing. I tried to reason with my mom that he needed help after a suicide attempt, but she didn’t listen. He left a suicide note saying, “Cremate me,” and sped and crashed his truck. After he died, we went through his computer, and it was filled with even more videos he took of girls at school. But my mom refuses to the core to say it was a suicide, refuses to talk about the note or the behavior that led up to it, and refuses to acknowledge my sexual trauma in any capacity. The family doesn’t talk about any of it. That’s a big fat sack of nope.</blockquote >
#16.
The fact that my father is likely responsible for the disappearance of his first wife.</blockquote >
#17.
On my dad’s side: my paternal grandmother died from “complications from diabetes” when my dad was in his 20s. The elephant in the room is that my grandmother, who to be fair had mental illness issues, killed herself by putting herself into a diabetic coma after finding out my grandfather was cheating.</blockquote >
#18.
My aunt abandoned my grandmother on her deathbed, leaving my dad to sort out everything. After he did, the only thing she cared about was the money and didn’t even try to show up for the funeral. She won’t even talk to her own daughter (my cousin) because she had kids with and married a Black man. They’re happily married, by the way.</blockquote >
#19.
My mother slept with my brother-in-law while he was still married to my sister. Big-time family drama.</blockquote >
Autism. We’re all autistic. I’m just the one who got my kids diagnosed. I absolutely cannot have that conversation with my mother. She used to have meltdowns over how I wasn’t masking very well. Not the words she’d use, of course.</blockquote >
#21.
One Christmas, we had to pretend my cousin wasn’t 7 months pregnant because her dad “didn’t know.” She was thin as a rail with a big beach ball belly. Denial was strong in that part of the family.</blockquote >
#22.
My mom had a brother who was a couple of years older than her. From what I’ve put together, he was autistic and was sent away for electric shock therapy sometime in the ’50s or ’60s, which eventually killed him. We have no idea when he died or where he is buried. My grandfather refused to speak about him and would change the subject or leave the room if asked anything about him. The only evidence we have of his existence is a picture of him and my mother as children and some forms from the hospital he was in. Just really sad all around.</blockquote >
#23.
My great aunt and my grandma (her sister) hate each other so much that I didn’t even know she existed until I was 30. I was accidentally shown a picture with her in it. I still don’t know why they stopped talking, and grandma is obviously not willing to talk about it at all. The funny thing is, I know my great aunt’s children. They’re really close to my grandma and come to every holiday dinner. I always knew they were related to me, I just never knew how.</blockquote >
My late uncle had schizophrenia or something adjacent. Things weren’t bad enough to force him into treatment, but mental illness was undeniable. When I asked if he’d been taken to a doctor, you’d think I’d kicked a baby. That uncle is “a little weird,” and that’s the end of that conversation.</blockquote >
#25.
The fact that I have two half-sisters. My dad cheated on my mom. My mom knows about one of the girls, not the other. Ancestry DNA for the win. No one says a word because we don’t want mom to have to relive that trauma.</blockquote >
#26.
My blood type doesn’t make sense. My mother is a B+, my father is an O-. I found out I’m A+ in college when I donated blood. When I brought it up, I was immediately and brusquely shut down. I DNA matched to my paternal cousin on Ancestry, but no one else in the family would do a DNA test. I doubt I’ll ever get an answer.</blockquote >
#27.
How my uncle Freddy killed his girlfriend by pushing her out the back door in the middle of winter and leaving her to freeze to death. He got off because of lack of evidence. Half the family won’t talk to him now, and the other half takes pity and pays for his bills.</blockquote >
#28.
My dad beat the living shit out of me and my brother very frequently. Then we both grew bigger than him, and I confronted him once when he was about to do it again. It stopped then and there, and we never talked about it since.</blockquote >
#29.
Both my parents cheated on each other. All my aunts and uncles got divorced, but my parents stayed together, drank, and fought. Supposedly that was better.</blockquote >
I have an older sister I have never met. My dad got a girl pregnant in high school and refused to marry her. She gave the baby up for adoption. It was a closed adoption in the ’60s, so I would not even know where to look for her. I found out one night years ago when my dad had too much to drink and told me. Both of my parents are now deceased. They would never talk to me about it after that one time.</blockquote >
Alex Buscemi
