Life is full of surprises! You may be going through a traumatic experience, losing all hope in life and humanity, when out of the blue your whole world turns upside down for the better. The situation can also be vice versa.
In this article, people share their biggest life plot twists.
[Source can be found at the end of the article]
After losing 3 kids to miscarriage and infertility, my wife and I started the process of an adoption. Days after we sent all the final paperwork off to China, we found out my wife was also expecting. Twins.
I now have three 11-year-olds, 7 weeks apart in age.
RoboNinjaPirate
Traded a beloved Subaru STI for a new Lexus SUV because my girlfriend and I needed something big for the dogs and I couldnt afford 2 cars.
Fast forward to when I was able to afford 2 cars and wanted to order a brand new STI, saw my old one driving around… talked to the guy and he sold it to me.
Fiasko21
Had a best friend growing up who was also my neighbor. Siblings always said that I looked like him and that it would be funny if we did a DNA test. Years go by and we are both in our late 20’s and he on a whim does the Ancestory.com DNA swab. Turns out he matches with my family. He’s my half brother and Dad had to explain a lot that day.
monstergoro87
Convinced I was going to die alone while I was in high school. But met and befriended a girl, and started going out with her. All her friends told me they were confused because they assumed she was a lesbian. We’ve been together for 10 years and married for 2 years.
Surprise plot twist: I figured out that I’m trans and started seeking out my transition over 4 years ago. Still happily together.
Fretzo
Went travelling with my girlfriend of four years, met an amazing person, all became best friends and travelled with each other for 4 months, got matching tattoos as a souvenir of our amazing time.
Plot twist: girlfriend cheated on me with that person we had become best friends with every night in the last week… whilst I was in the same room, asleep. Found out through fixing her broken phone for her and the messages coming through.
lasttothefirst
My father died when I was 6. My mom told me it was a heart attack while he was out at sea with the Navy. In my teens I assumed she might have been covering up something bad about him to spare my feelings and maybe he killed himself or died of a drug overdose or something because he wasn’t fat or unhealthy.
Cut to 20 years later and 7 of the 8 siblings in his family have died before the age of 60 because of heart disease related issues. I’m starting to think it wasn’t a lie.
bupdup
Since I was 13, I have had horrible foot pain whenever I walk more than an hour. When I worked at my church bookstore, I would often have to sit for the majority of the time I was there. My ankle would swell up, and if it was really bad my knee would too. Every photo of me we have taken at Disney or Universal, I am in a wheelchair.
We never really got a conclusive diagnosis. I was diagnosed with juvenile arthritis, an unspecified autoimmune disorder, and even a ganglion cyst. After an MRI, a partly fused bone was discovered in my ankle. A single surgery was all it would take to fix it, or at least lessen the pain. If only we had known that back then …
I_Ace_English
Grew up super rich. My dad was a real estate mogul in the European country I grew up in. Seriously no worries in the world, life was perfect. Then, one day, a bunch of government officials, heavily armed, raid our home, take all the contents of my dad’s office, take him away, and now he’s in jail for Fraud and Money Laundering.
Yeah, the money isn’t there anymore, my family was torn apart and because I missed being a spoiled brat I drank myself into oblivion for two years. Now I just function like anyone else — work full time at a restaurant, internship, college classes.
It is just interesting making the mental shift from KNOWING your life will be worry-free and extraordinary because of nothing I had accomplished to not knowing what my future will look like and working hard to earn a spot in this world.
vvvulture
This one is good. Literally one of the luckiest and the best things that happened to me. When I finished secondary school at 15 year old I had such poor grades that I was not selected to any college I applied. I had no plan for my life. Then my parents saw that local vocational school/college was starting to try out combining college and high school (not sure if those are correct terms for them since I’m not from english speaking country), but I got in just by signing the paper. It took four years but after that I went to University of Applied Sciences and here I am now: product development engineer and working for a big company, planning power plants.
WM_
My Mom (55 at the time) asked me to visit her while she had surgery to remove an ovarian cyst. It was an outpatient procedure and asked me to drop her off and take her home a couple hours later. The plot twist came when the doctor explained that it was stage 4 cancer and she probably had 6 months to live. Life is fleeting. Enjoy every second that you can.
B_Eazy86
I married a girl who implied she would kill herself if she was without me. I hopped on a cavalcade of abuse and infidelity for 10 years, punctuated with her stints in an institution. I was so stressed out by her that I would literally get heart palpitations before she came home from any of these stays. Luckily, I was bailed out when she fell in love with her best friend and took off. I filed for divorce which took another year because my spiteful ex wanted to punish me by delaying her signature. Borderline Personality Disorder is not fun.
There is a happy ending however. The divorce finally went through, and I decided to take a little in town vacation. I got a nice hotel room and treated myself to an elaborate dinner. When I had finished my fantastic meal I gushed to the waiter that it was the best I’d eve eaten. She told me that the chef was available if I wanted to meet her. Being the Irish gabber that I am, I gladly accepted.
A few minutes later, the chef came to my table and we had what could only be described as a love at first sight moment. I’m not even sure what we said to each other, if anything, at first. I asked if she was free after her shift and we have been together ever since.
roundeyeddog
I was bullied in middle school, and by high school it took me the whole 4 years to come out of my shell enough to talk to people I wasn’t already friends with. My family moved out of state right after graduation, and my anxiety was so bad that I went outside maybe ten times in the entire year I lived there. I had little to no life skills because my parents either didn’t know how to teach them or they were too lazy.
Plot twist: I ended up moving half-way across the country to live with a guy I only knew online, got a job in retail, and got promoted to customer service manager. I regularly deal with confrontation, whether it’s an angry customer or having to coach an under-performing employee. I’m the first one to seek out help and ask questions from strangers. I also organized a community food drive, and I’m getting into organizing events.
Sometimes I look at my life and think, “How did I get here from where I was?
bippybup
Fell pregnant accidentally with a guy I was mad about to begin with, but the emotions were rapidly waning.
I have gone from being independent and happy to living with his parents who dictate our entire lives and knowing I am with the wrong person but I am too scared and broke to leave. What happened to my life? I am depressed and cry daily, used to be a champion runner. Now I am overweight and pathetic. Beautiful kid though.
Basically I went from on the up and up to a terrible needy female with no alternatives right now.
itsmegain
Girlfriend of 8 months went into rehab for the last 2 months. I visited twice a week and brought a little present every time. Called twice a day for 20-30 minutes a piece and every time, we laughed and talked about our lives, gossip, our future etc. Fast forward a week, my cousin with sickle cell goes into the hospital and I miss a call and one of her visits. I explain to her the next time we talk what happened, but after that she doesn’t call me for a whole week. Come to find she thinks I don’t care about her at all so she immediately met someone else/ or has been cheating on me for weeks and just sent me a letter breaking it off, blaming me for her entire stay in rehab as well. Plot twist: the guy she cheated on me with was the same guy she accused of stalking/ harassing her and I ran into him wearing my sunglasses leaving visitation day.
GhostCerberus514
When my ex left, it was very sudden. Just “I don’t want to be married anymore. I don’t want to be a mother anymore.” Boom. That was it. I find out she’s been conversing with someone online, ironically because I encouraged her to. She complained about not having a social life because we had three small kids (9, 5, 4). We got into Lost and I found a forum for discussions. She got super into it, but mostly because of all the forum drama (apparently everyone was internet cheating on everyone). A few months later, she’s leaving me on Thanksgiving Day. She blamed me for everything, of course, and I bought most of it like an idiot. Come to find out the guy she left me for is transgender. Ultimately he became a woman and left her for another man, last I heard.
Willard2566
My mom told me my dad didnt want anything to do with me. He lived about 5 minutes away from me my whole life but always refused to see me when I was a kid. I got older, and resentful, and around 13 I stopped trying to make contact. The only time I spent with him was when my mom randomly dropped me off at his house when I was about 14 so he could watch me for a few hours. I ended up painting his kitchen for him and then when she came to pick me up they had sex loudly in the room next to me. Fast forward 17 years later and my mom gets drunk and proceeds to tell me that hes not even my father, hence why he wasnt on my birth certificate. She was apparently sleeping with numerous men at that time and says my dad doesnt think Im even his. Could have saved almost 2 decades of anger and hurt towards this man if she had just NOT told me that he was my dad.
LoIIip0p
Unexpectedly fired from my job due to a completely stupid reason. I was hideously ill prepared for such an event and had no savings. Was on the verge of being homeless, could not get another job due to being honest about my being fired for breach of contract.
Roughly eight weeks after losing my job, I am technically homeless.
But that’s only because I’m standing in the airport half a world away in Sydney, Australia to make my way to temporary accommodation, two days before I start my new job. Two weeks after arriving, I’m sharing a house by the beach with a very pretty female housemate from Romania.
So it turned out pretty well.
intheweehours
My best friend spent a year telling me I should try out her friend-with-benefits guy (he and I were friends, but didn’t know each other very well at the time) because he’s so much fun in and out of the sack. I resisted because I hoped they’d fall in love (she’d never been interested in romantic entanglements, never spent more than a weekend with a guy), and because I thought he was too young for me (he looked several years younger than he was).
Eventually he hit on me directly in a way that piqued my interest, and we started a summertime fling, both swearing it was just friends-with-benefits. Less than two months later he blurted “I love you” and my immediate reply was “Thank God you said it first!” We spent a few more months attempting to resist anything like a commitment but by the end of the year, he’d moved in with me.
18 years later, we’re married and still wildly in love; we just bought a house recently. Best friend was thrilled for us both, officiated at our wedding, and continues to very happily be a spinster with cats.
MichikosMom
Until the age of 13 I was the happiest kid in my neighbourhood, and the most skilled one in athletics. I had the highest grades in school. The best toys you could ask for. And I was skilled in arts and crafts (and music, whose junior band I used to lead), and made my own stuff for convenience.
Then I was bullied to the point where I attempted suicide thrice, destroyed my life, my brains and so on. I was afraid of stepping out of my house for a few years. Shut myself in and became a recluse.
I recovered a bit and got into college and retained good marks… but now I have only few friends, a rare skin disease, and trouble with trusting friendly people fast enough.
Priyon
I married when I was 20. After college my wife recommended that I go to grad school in her home state so she could be closer to her family. Turns out the only reason she wanted me to do that would be so that it would be easier for her to leave me. Once we moved back to her home state she cheated on me, racked up a bunch of debt in my name and left me.
I was in a dark place for a while but I ended up dating a lot of amazing women and ultimately found my actual soul mate. We’ve been together for 7 years now and are still extremely happy. Meanwhile my ex-wife got addicted to drugs, has a criminal record and had to declare bankruptcy.
RandomoniumLoL
That my father was gay. He married my mother and had me and my brother as a family obligation to his parents. Then he left us all to work in another country for few decades.
He died of AIDS about a decade ago. He was hospitalised for common illness but took a turn for the worst and ended up in ICU without gaining consciousness. The doctor couldn’t tell me directly that he had AIDS, so the doc kept on repeating and hinting “alternative lifestyle” and etc to lead me to guess what he had.
dezjinniez
When I was in high school, I got caught cheating on an English quiz (it was stupid; we had to memorize a poem and I had not in fact memorized said poem). The teacher caught me, took my exam, wrote a note on it, and proceeded as normal.
Parent teacher conferences were a few weeks later. But a week or so before that, my english teacher mysteriously left his post and moved across the country. We had substitute teachers for a month or so, so no P-T conferences ever took place. My parents never found out, and apparently the english teacher didn’t spread the word of my dishonesty as no one ever mentioned it to me. I was admitted to National Honor Society and got into all the colleges I applied for.
02474
I got accepted into the best STEM college in my country.
Midschool me think that you need a huge amount of money to study there, plus my family isn’t very wealth (we were poor when I’m in elementary school to the point we got evicted from our house). My parents always want me to study in a state-sponsored college where I get a diploma in accounting or taxation and work as a civil servant by the time I graduated because the there is no tuition fee at all.
Since then I always think that I will never study in my dream college while my rich friend could go to any school he wanted. Fast forward, after years of fuss and bickering with my parents, I got accepted into my dream school. Surprisingly my rich best friend can’t go to any school. In the end, he was the one who went to the state-sponsored one.
meellodi
My dad had to do some training in Ft Myers area. We lived in Ohio so a nice Florida vacation in late February would have been great. Unfortunately it was happening during the week of midterms so I couldn’t go. The rest of the family went and on the weekend they went down to the Florida Keys and had a great time. They teased me about it for months about how awesome Key West was.
Fast forwards 3 years…
I have a quarter life crisis and wanted to move to Texas or anywhere in Florida. On Wednesday I decide to look for jobs. On Thursday I find a good temporary 6 month job I’m perfectly qualified for (some very specific types of training regarding aircraft refueling and corporate aviation customer service). On Friday they call me and interview over the phone, and on Saturday they call back and hire me. On Sunday, 1 week later, I’m driving down to begin what became my new and better life.
Where? The Florida Keys… Where I lived for 3 amazing years. Guess who got to return all that teasing with pictures of fishing, diving, spearfishing, drinking, etc.
skiman13579
Getting my teaching gig after college, at the campus I had just graduated from.
I went from recent graduate living with parents and working at a call center while trying to get a real job. Still not really ready for adulthood with rent, bills, savings and all that stuff. I thought that buying a pre-made sandwich from the grocery store for lunch, instead of fast food every day, made me responsible.
Then after a single phone call I was responsible for hundreds of students education and their future choices in life. I was on my own, with more money than I knew what to do with (40k is a big step up from $13/hr)
I had a hot bucket of responsibility dumped on me and I had to quickly grow out of my “young do whatever I want in my early 20s” attitude and into a possible role model and mentor for people only a few years younger than me.
gwarsh41
I worked for a university library for the past five years. Last year I got a promotion at my old place of work to a supervisor position. Six months into that job, the pressure I felt (real or imagined) became too much and I had a mental breakdown and took medical leave while searching for a new job. I had wanted to work in IT so I focused there.
My father helped me get a job at a call center he worked for, they contracted to Apple. No benefits, crap pay, but it was IT and it was experience I needed, so I accepted. Before I even started there, I got a call from Spectrum to work at their call center as a tech, benefits and a dollar more an hour. So I did the training and then quit to work for Spectrum. Quickly I realized I wasn’t going to enjoy this job, but it was a better position and I learned what I could. Three weeks into the training, I get a call from another university in the same system that I used to work for in response to an application I had forgotten about months ago for an IT position. They gave me an interview that felt more like an introduction to the job, then a week later hired me. The new job pays more than my first job and it’s not on the phones, actual in person break-fix job which I wanted.
StinzorgaKingOfBees
8 years (and 2 children) into my marriage, a 15 year old girl called my house, claiming to be my husband’s child. He had no idea she existed, and she had been lied to her entire life about who her father really was. It was absolutely heartbreaking to see my husband grieve like that for his child. That was 9 years ago, and we have healed, and now we are grandparents. Pretty ordinary life before and since, but that was a big twist for sure.
dontfuckingjimmyme
I was 19 and casually seeing a girl. Then one day I found a lump in one of my testicles while I was taking a shower. Went to the doctor and it turned out that it was cancer and that they would have to remove it. Oh, and I would have to have at least 2 rounds of the most intensive chemo out there if I wanted to not die. There was also the very strong chance that I would be sterile for the rest of my life. Realizing that this was something that I might not survive I ended things and dropped off the face of the planet for the girl I was seeing, as I didn’t want to end up being the dead boyfriend. She found out what was going on though and basically insisted that she be with me through it all. She came to every single 8-10 hour chemo session and helped me through recovery. Fast forward 6 years and we are happily married with 2 kids and our 3rd on the way.
HypnoticGremlin
Met my biological dad when I was 23. After a couple years he invited myself and my toddler son to come live with him as I was struggling financially. Wanted to put me in his will, his wife at the time suggested a paternity test “to be sure.” I get the mail in, swab your cheek one. 6 weeks later the results came back that he wasn’t the dad. She kicked me out. I was homeless, dropped my son off with his father and explained everything, said give me 3 months to work and save so I could get an apartment again. Father of my son claimed abandonment without telling me and got full custody.
Plot twist: 2 weeks after that, biological dad’s wife flipped out and in her moment of mayhem admitted her triumph of swabbing her own cheek and sending it under my name for the paternity test. We’ve since retested and he’s my father.
Lunatyc84
(Source)