this post was submitted on 01 Oct 2024
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[โ€“] transientpunk@sh.itjust.works 3 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

Dad - gave mother speed while pregnant with me, then abandoned the family before I was 1, never to be heard from again.

Mom - committed suicide before I was 10

Aunt - Was a raging narcissist who psychologically and emotionally manipulated/coerced me for ten years

Uncle - beat the fuck out of me for ten years

Growing up sure was fun...

[โ€“] sudoroot@lemmy.zip 32 points 10 hours ago

Mom took the door off my room due to her not trusting me? Smoked a lot of weed but never ever in their sight or in the house. All I did was sit on my computer in my room. Absolutely horrible experience.

She ended up putting the washer and dryer in there with me too..

[โ€“] random_character_a@lemmy.world 6 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

Public humiliation and forcing me to distribute my hard earned savings to people watching, because neighbourhood kid threw an apple at a rich persons house and I was nearby and didn't do anything.

Edit: I was little vague, due to being in a hurry.

My father has a tendency to brown nose anyone with wealth or influence. The "rich person" in question recognised me and complained to my father, about me and my friends, even though the apple thrower wasn't even part of my social group. My father decided please the neighbourhood with public demonstration of "taking responsibility".

Everyone present was horrified and nobody took my money. That infuriated my father even more, but in the end he was satisfied that I was crying. Lesson learned. Matter was never discussed again.

That "lesson" wasn't the only one, but that one stuck in my mind.

[โ€“] sgibson5150@slrpnk.net 13 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Their utter disregard for me as a person, as demonstrated in particular by the sudden violent outbursts and beatings, was not a great time. Probably the worst, though, was when they disowned me. They apparently didn't like what they had made.

[โ€“] velox_vulnus@lemmy.ml 7 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago)

I was going to write a lot of stuff about my own experience, but then I decided that it wasn't worth writing and getting my identity exposed, so I'll say "same", minus the disowning part, because I come from a collectivist society. My failure as an mid-20s adult is theirs to blame, because that's how broken I am, and I still can't cope with the past. Tough-love my ass.

[โ€“] POTOOOOOOOO@reddthat.com 10 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

I love my parents. We did what we could to get by. Sometimes thet means pushing the expiration dates on food. This lead me to associate meat with illness. I ended up becoming a vegetarian at a very young age; before I knew what that even was. Meat still grosses me out to this day.

[โ€“] callouscomic@lemm.ee 3 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago) (1 children)

Interesting how experiences shape us. Glad it sounds like you have only positives with respect to your parents.

[โ€“] POTOOOOOOOO@reddthat.com 3 points 6 hours ago

Yes, no regrets there.

[โ€“] Mothra@mander.xyz 24 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

My mother passive aggressively bullied me regarding potential love interests to the point I was absolutely terrified of even mentioning boys from my class as dealing with her unfounded teasing was unbearable. This didn't help at all with my romantic relationships, I was always lacking in support in the area as I turned the topic into a taboo during my adolescent years, at home in particular.

As for my father it's not much what he did but what he didn't do. He's one of the smartest men I've ever met, he is good at managing his finances and networking yet he never gave me much support or pushed me to achieve anything in these areas - when he did it was briefly in the form of criticism. Again, this also snowballed into an adulthood problem I'm still grappling with.

[โ€“] dosse91@lemmy.trippy.pizza 12 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

I'm a guy but I had a very similar experience with my mother basically making it an embarassment to talk or let alone date anyone. I missed out on a lot of things before I realized that what was going on wasn't normal.

[โ€“] Zorsith@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago)

And then they wonder why you don't tell them things about your life, like what your hobbies are (if you are even able to enjoy hobbies anymore) or what you're enjoying.

[โ€“] NineMileTower@lemmy.world 23 points 10 hours ago

My parents weren't bad parents. They did their absolute best to raise me coming from trauma themselves. They still don't even know they suffer from it. Their trauma made me feel like I was not good enough. However, I will pass intrinsic value and compassion on to my kids.

[โ€“] KingJalopy@lemm.ee 23 points 8 hours ago

Mom divorced my abusive alcoholic father and married a man from England. I was 14 but she figured I had the maturity to know it would be ok if I stayed with him instead of moving to England with her and my brother. I was angry at her because I was 14 and dumb. She left me in the US and gave me no end of guilt for making my choice once a grew up a bit and realized I made a mistake. Once she and her husband moved back to Oklahoma I took a position in California and now I'm guilted for that at the age of 42 because she can't see my daughter whom she never bothered to spend anytime with anyway because of her constant depression about having married another different kind of abusive man.

[โ€“] dohpaz42@lemmy.world 23 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

Birthed me. Then they had the audacity to celebrate it each year there after.

[โ€“] ramble81@lemm.ee 7 points 6 hours ago

On the bright side, life is a terminal STD with 100% mortality rate

[โ€“] A_Union_of_Kobolds@lemmy.world 19 points 10 hours ago

Their struggles with alcoholism led to me becoming an alcoholic, which nearly killed me multiple times, and did end up killing my mom before she was 60.

Fortunately I got sober a year before she passed. I'd have almost certainly drank myself to death had I not.

[โ€“] dfyx@lemmy.helios42.de 12 points 8 hours ago

My parents split up when I was in my 20s. They both moved out of the house I had grown up in. My girlfriend and I stayed and rented it from my dad, planning to buy it from him as soon as we were financially stable enough to get a loan.

Fast forward a few years to me having a well-paying job and my girlfriend almost being done with university. Things were looking really good. On my 30th birthday, my dad abd his new wife suddenly started pestering us about the house being too big, too expensive, too whatever for us to the point of ruining the whole evening. A week later I got a letter from him, telling me I had six months to get the money or get out, strongly suggesting the latter. Never even got a reason.

[โ€“] Crozekiel@lemmy.zip 9 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

When my brother and I were both in university, we lived in cities about an hour apart. We grew up about another hour away, so to visit my brother my dad had to drive through the city I lived in, passed the campus for my university, to get to the city my brother lived in. You could literally see the buildings on campus from the interstate through the city.

He would call me about once a month to tell me about the awesome weekend he just had visiting my brother and seeing one of their school football games. He would rave about how much fun it was and always say "you should come down too next time". I would always tell him I probably would if he would tell me about it before the trip instead of after...

I started to resent my brother being the "obvious favorite". For years we barely spoke. We reconnected like a decade later when we happened to live in the same city. One night around a few beers, we started hashing out old shit, and I brought up him being dad's favorite and all the trips dad made to visit him.

That's when I found out my dad made it all up. Our dad only visited my brother's campus twice, the day he moved into the dorms and the day he graduated...

Dad - gave mother speed while pregnant with me, then abandoned the family before I was 1, never to be heard from again.

Mom - committed suicide before I was 10

Aunt - psychologically and emotionally manipulated/coerced me for ten years

Uncle - beat the fuck out of me for ten years

Growing up sure was fun...

[โ€“] Alice@beehaw.org 7 points 5 hours ago

There's probably stuff that's a lot worse in a vacuum, but tbh my dad giving me the talk about his own childhood trauma and the cycle of abuse. He concluded it by telling me to remind him of "the cycle" next time he's raging.

Even as a kid I knew that telling a large, angry man with a belt in his hand and daddy issues, "hey, you're acting like your father" would just make the beatings harder.

Second runner up is that apparently he convinced my brothers and sisters that I was the favorite and he never abused me like he did them. That meant they hated me and abused me too.

Third runner up is probably the hoarding or the 24/7 black mold exposure or maybe the animal hoarding, or possibly when he assaulted a woman in front of me (although technically not something he did to me)

[โ€“] Zorsith@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 5 hours ago

Nitpicked and poked fun at almost anything i watched/read/did/listened to, and anybody i interacted with, to the point that I sometimes struggle to find enjoyment in things, typically prefer to have a wall behind me and eyes on an entrance (they liked to sneak up and surprise me), almost exclusively use headphones for any form of audio, and struggle to form friendships with anyone.

[โ€“] Truffle@lemmy.ml 4 points 4 hours ago

My mother not loving me and saying it to me outloud at an early age. It was a very heavy burden no child should ever carry. Also she would put on a show for other people going on and on about how much she loved her kids and how she loved being a mom while continuing the abuse behind closed doors. It was maddening.

Taking myself to therapy as a young adult so I could heal, saved my life.

[โ€“] corroded@lemmy.world 0 points 4 hours ago

One day, you're going to die. Unless you are fortunate enough to die suddenly, you're going to experience the terror and the pain the comes along with dying. Anyone who cares about you is going to be saddened by your passing.

None of that would be true if you had never been born. Your parents, every parent, has condemned their children to death and has ensured sadness for anyone who comes to care about them.

The worst thing my parents did? Not using protection or having an abortion. Conceiving a child is the most selfish act any person can do.