Life doesn’t always happen unexpectedly.

Sometimes, people go on for years believing in something, only to know that their world was not as real as they thought.

In this article, we will share a collection of stories which are filled with surprises, moments of truth, and the challenge of facing what was hidden for so long.

Story 1:
After six years together, my fiancée called off our wedding, and in the note she left me, she wrote, “You were a soft place to land while I was between phases of my life.” Six years. We were four months away from getting married.

There’s no way I’ll ever be able to bounce back from reading that. It’s not like she said it verbally and didn’t mean it—because sometimes words come out, and you don’t mean them. She chose to write it and chose to give it to me.

I’ll never be the person I was before she told me I was merely a soft place to land. © TrustworthyEnough / Reddit

Story 2:

Story 3:
On her d3athbed, my stepmother (who had raised me from the time I was 3 years old and died when I was 35) told me that she never thought of me as family but just didn’t know how to get rid of me after my dad abandoned us. © Responsible-Movie966 / Reddit

Story 4:
I grew up thinking we were poor. My parents were extremely frugal—no eating out, no new clothes, no vacations. I started working at 14 to help with bills.

Then, when my dad passed, I found out he had over $1 million in savings. My mom admitted they just didn’t believe in spending money. I was furious—I struggled for years while they sat on a fortune.