Women of Reddit what was your biggest reality check?

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1. I was taught growing up that if you work hard, your efforts will pay off. I graduated high school, graduated college then got my first corporate job. I learned there that it’s not what you know, but who you know. Granted, that company has huge turnover so I had no future there: it didn’t matter how hard I worked because the promotions always went to the CEO’s family.

2. That a lot of the time karma never comes. People will always be responsible for horrible shit and a lot of the time get away with it without a problem. The world isn’t good always wins and evil loses.

3. When I landed myself in the mental ward in my early 20s

4. When I was sicker than I’d ever been in my life, and my then-spouse left me in the emergency room to go home and sleep because it was taking too long. If he’s not going to be there for me at a time like that, I’m better off by myself.

5. When I was raped and couldn’t tell anyone about it because it would have been a he-said/she-said situation. We were dating and I didn’t leave him, so it would have looked like I was making it up.

6. When my best friend of 8 years ghosted and blocked me everywhere with no way of contacting her and no explanation while still owing me 500 of the €1000 I’d borrowed her a year before (which was only the cherry on top, all things considered). – I’m never trusting anyone like that again. Not fully, I mean. That’s over. I don’t think I’m able to form friendships like that again, where I think “I trust this person with my heart and soul, they’ll never fuck me over”, which was definitely how I felt about her.

7. I’m not invincible

   When I was 19 and in club clothes on the way to my girlfriend’s car three homophobic guys attacked us and beat the shit out of me

   They didn’t hurt my girlfriend, so I call that a win for me, but I was underweight at the time and my jaw and several bones were broken

   So yeah, I’m tough but being tough doesn’t change being half the weight of my attacker and outnumbered 3 to 1 while wearing heels and a skin tight club dress

8. When my ex-brother checked himself into a mental ward. My mother called me to ask what I had done to him. I was 18, he was 21. A couple of days prior, he attacked me in our home and tried to rape me. I realized that I was truly all alone and that no place was safe. My mother would never take my side, no matter what.

9. Realizing that all my people pleasing wasn’t going to get me the recognition and validation that I craved; that at the end of my life, I would die just like any other person and nobody would be handing me points for going above and beyond for everyone else while neglecting myself.

   Part of this was unlearning my Catholic upbringing, the other part was starting therapy to understand why I tried so hard to please others (to appease abusers so they wouldn’t hurt me). It wasn’t because I was a kind and noble person, I did it as learned behaviour to stave off anxiety from a lifetime of abuse. I’ve since learned healthier coping techniques and am making a real effort to recognize when I’m people pleasing vs when I actually want to do something.