Ask Lemmy

When I was 15 or so I get home from school and get a AIM message from an account I don't know claiming to be a girl at my school who has a crush on me, but too shy to reveal who she is. Which was weird all by itself because I didn't use AIM often.

At first I'm delighted, but she quickly becomes sexual. Talking about masturbating to me in very explicit detail. I get freaked out and stop responding. Which prompts an angry phone call from my Dad saying the account is messaging him now and bothering him at work. How she got my account info wss confusing, but i didn't even know my dad had an account.

So I respond a few more times, and very quickly "she" starts sending me porn, which then turns to sending CSAM saying I need to masturbate to it too. I'm freaking tf out and block the account. Which prompts another angry phone call. I tell my dad I don't know this person and tell him to just block the account to stop him getting bothered. He calls me a pussy and hangs up.

When he gets home, I tell him that the account was sending me freaky stuff. He stomps over to the computer, opens an terminal and typed a long string of characters that returns our IP address. "If it happens again, do this and we can catch this freak". He then abruptly closes the window before I can even read what he typed, much less remember it. He slams his bedroom door and that's the last I see of him for the night.

Took me a long time to fully understand and accept what happened that night, but I never looked at my dad the same again. There were a few more odd situations where he put CSAM in front of me or sent it to my step-dad getting him fired. But he died before I gathered the courage to confront him.

When I was around 2 years old I was raped by a family member several times over the course of several months. My parents decided to stay quiet about it, and never mention it again. My mind just kind of decided to shield me from it as best as it could. I shat myself everyday for years (until I was 8 years old, and moved to another country). I could not say no to any figure of authority until I was in my 30s. I had regular nightmares that I could not explain for years. Developed insane social anxiety, and hated (and I mean HATED) my sexuality for years. It took several attempts over a decade to get my mom to even admit that something might have happened. I still don't really what happened as my mom doesn't seem to know shit, but my dad just refuses to even be in the same room if I start talking about it.

Neglect stories... I've got a few.

From the time I was six or seven she tried to reason with me (with +3-hr scoldings) and get me to change to her christo-Amway of thinking up till I was 16. Than I has a choice: knuckle under or get out. Being 16 and full of great, well thought out plans I left with three garbage bags of winter wear and clothes. Yes, she and him (my father) agreed that the decision to leave was my own to make. At sixteen.

Fast forward to me being 62. She lies dying in a home, and forgives me as her final act of charity. Yeah, ok, so buh-bye.

And him? Dementia. Game. Set. Match.

Treat your children as precious (if temporarily irritating) treasures and remember you only get to throw them away once.

There isn't enough time in the day to talk about what my parents did and didn't do that they should have. The breaking point was when I discovered that my mother was abusing my autistic son in the same manner she had me. It made her happy to make him cry and she was cruel in how she did it. May she rot.

Recognized for being really intelligent.

Rejected my thoughts and opinions about everything because it scares their fundamentalist religious sensabilities.

That cognitive dissonance still fucks with me.

There are so many things.

After I was in a car accident in college, my mom convinced me that it was too risky to take my car to a shop in the city where I lived, so I let her take it to her own mechanic.

Months went by, and every time I asked about it, she claimed it was still at the shop and she had no idea why it was taking so long.

After I lost both my jobs because I didn't have reliable transportation, I found out that my mom hadn't taken my car to the shop.

She had been letting my younger brother, who still lived at home, drive my (unrepaired!) car to community college so she didn't have to give him a ride.

I suppose most folks would consider my breaking point to be unwarranted.

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About four or so years back, a parent fell over. They are heavyset, requiring firemen to be lifted off the floor. They were nude, so I asked the fire department to send same-gender fighters, if that can be reasonably done. My parent threatened to have me thrown out of the household, out of embarrassment.

While that ultimately didn't happen, it was a great breach of trust for me. I don't have enough of an income to survive without a home, and quite frankly, I will take my life if I can't enjoy it. Far as I am concerned, the threat of homelessness and poverty, isn't much different than having a gun to my head.

I realized that this parent, like the other one, didn't love me. The affection I held for them was fading over the years, but this is what broke the chain for me. I don't love them anymore - they are like a rock or any random thing. They just exist. I won't hurt them, but I also stopped going the extra mile. I ceased patrolling to check on their health, nor did I try to cook real meals or ask if I should fetch restaurant food for them. I simply made TV dinners at the appropriate times, and didn't speak to my parent anymore.

My relationship was simply one of going through the motions.

My dad was a rush limbaugh guy in the 90’s then moved to info wars, my mother who he married when she was 16 dotes on him due to his history of being abused as a child, so my dad never grew up, never learned any hard lessons, and she never made anything of herself but to be his voice box when I refused to debate him on politics.

My mom then only called to relay her struggles, or to nudge me on politics, I would call her on holidays and gift them lavishly with my nice IT job, especially after my dad was forced into retirement during Covid.

Anytime I mentioned a challenge in my life they would turn it around and tell me how they had it worse, when I told them good news, it barely registered.

The last straw was when she called me just before the last presidential election to strongarm me into voting for Trump. She crossed a line and I hung up. Haven’t talked since, and finally have peace in my life, well some peace anyway.

enabling parents, causing failure to launch in thier children(for whatever reason) causing rifts in the family and relatives, is a common theme im seeing in multiple posts online. also the parents being financially irresponsible with thier planning of retirement. alot of parents assume/expects thier children to be thier retirement plan. i see alot of contempt/resentment as a result.

This one may seem silly compared to the things I've read.

My parents gave me a strange eating disorder that it took a while to get over.

Mom refused to accept that there were foods or perhaps ingredients that I was either unwilling or unable to eat. As an example, Onions are horrible and they literally make me sick, whether its whole chunks of onion or powdered onion. But she kept sneaking onion into stuff she made because she just knew I'd like them if I just tried them! It wasn't a matter of "like" it was the fact that if I ate some I'd end up doing a technicolor yodel over the toilet while she told me I was being dramatic. Sometimes if I was really unlucky I wouldn't make it to the toilet which would make her even madder. So Id get spanked after puking.

This caused me to be really mistrustful of food that I didn't prepare myself. I also had problems eating in front of other people, because mom (both parents really) would get upset over how I was eating, and it took me until I was in my 30's before I was comfortable eating with other people around. Which did wonders for my social life in my 20's.

Mum was taking emails from Republican shits, even though we lived in Australia.

Eventually, between all the shit going on, I decided to go no contact with her over it. It took so long to deprogram myself from a shitty Mormon upbringing, plus systematic abuse throughout teenage years. I wasn't willing to go through even more crap all over again.

She died six months later.

Openly not believing in my academy career, which was a failure for the lack of motivation.

Mine was a cold, brittle narcisst. Any good I did, she had done... frequently with stories how someone had told her she was the best they'd ever seen. A less stupid version of Trump.

Sadly, she was actually quite brilliant in her field (biochemistry), while simultaneously being so ardent of an adherent of a panoply of new age crap (psychic healing and the like) that she literally prevented me from getting surgery for a TBI. Instead of much needed medical assistance, I got veggie smoothies and visits to her weird friends. My head still hurts.

There was so much more crap after that, but it was such a revelation as an adult that she would rather I suffer than admit her 'genius' wasn't the solution to all problems.

She died in December. I shrugged.

If I wasn't a good as her, I needed to do better, try harder, stop being lazy etc. If I was better than her at something she would pick out the most miniscule flaw she could come up with and give it to me as a back handed complement then slowly work it into random conversations until it became my insecurity.

The thing that sticks with me the most though, she had me absolutely convinced I was far too fat to wear shorts in public, let alone a bikini. Finally was convinced by my group of friends that I was in fact, normally sized and literally handed one and told to wear it.

I was not expecting to see my Mom between getting dressed and going to the pool. She asked me if I was really going out like that and how I was going to handle everyone making fun of me then highly suggested I go change into my 1 piece. Said she wasn't going to feel bad for me when I came back crying

That broke me. Of course I believed her. She was my Mom she just wanted what was best for me right? I can still see the look on my friend's face when I came back in the room to change and she said "you know that's not true right? There's nothing wrong with you. This is about her."

Took me years and years to realize she was very wrong. I didn't let anyone take pictures of me for awhile after that but I saw some recently of 3 years later when I had "gained some weight." Holy fuck, there is zero chance in hell I was fat.

Anyways, she had a horrible, long {9 years), and painful death and probably got abused pretty bad in the nursing home. Good riddance to that piece of shit. Because I got off easy with just emotional and mental trauma. What she did to my siblings was significantly worse.

Vote for Trump a third time. Fuck you, mom. You're officially a Bad Person™.

Visiting the family next month and I forbade them from telling her we're coming. I said they can tell her whatever they want after we're gone.

I already had a rocky relationship with my dad after he made some questionable statements concerning COVID, but there are 2 distinct memories that just keep popping up.

No 1 was him helping me move into my own apartment while my maternal grandfather was dying in the hospital. We were talking about vaccinations (a requirement to visit patients) and how me and my brother got one, he started tearing up and said something about how kids shouldn't die before their parents, how egotistical we were for getting vaccinated, and how we'll die in 2 years.

No 2 was a few years later, we were standing on the sidewalk after having watched a movie, and someone had hung a pride flag from their balcony across the street. And while I'm not part of the LGBTQ community, I have good friends that are, and am firmly of the opinion that people should be allowed to do who and whatever they want to, as long as everyone involved consents. However, my dad apparently felt important enough to complain about how that's just "gay propaganda" and how he "isn't against it but they shouldn't force it into everyone's face" and so on.
My guy, it's a flag. On a balcony. On the 4th fucking floor!? Chill out.

My dad invited me to meet him at work, one day. It was a bad week for me and the new step-mother getting along, and so I wasn't surprised. We took a little walk from the shop and stopped to chat.

"I've given you all 25 years of my life," was when the conversation changed, mid-speech. "Now it's time for me. It's my time."

It was how he invited me to go live with my mom, or just go. It began a bit of a formative time filled with stress and anger, and I daresay we've not been the same since.