It took a long time for me. I knew they did mean things but when you are raised like that it seems normal. The real breaking point is when I realized my mother was abusing my autistic son the same way she had me. They both died last year and I didn’t go to either funeral. My dad would often get in my face and scream at me while my mother would destroy anything I loved. If she gave me a present in a few years it would be gone. She would have and would be “saving it” for me. I have nothing from my childhood. I don’t have my class ring ‘she bought’ because I would just lose it was always the excuse. My dad was little different. I had a heart attack and got behind on my house payments. My dad ‘helped’ me out buy taking over the loan. When I signed both him and the POS bank guy told me it was just them adding him to the loan but it was them cutting me out. I could go on and on but the first sentence is your answer. I would like to add they were physically abusive up until I was fourteen. At that point I was absurdly strong for my age due to being my dads ‘slow gaited mule’ in his scrap business. He never passed up a chance to tell me I wasn’t good enough. I just wish I would have realized how badly they feared me after I picked something up that few could and put it in the back of a truck. I did this because he was having a full meltdown and I was scared of him.
Mom was a bully and enabler. Dad was a pedo. I learned that having authority does not mean somebody deserves respect before I learned how to divide.
Decades later, one has died of an aneurysm, and the other’s trying to make amends. Doesn’t matter which is which. I’m just glad they’re out of my life.
They use minor slurs against minorities and are obsessed with fox news…and now are fully brainwashed :(
When my best friend started crying hysterically and begging to sleep over at our place because she knew she’d be severely beaten at home that night (for losing a hat at school that day). Not only was she not allowed to sleep over, but I was told off for asking. They did nothing about the abuse she told us about.
If I hadn’t known then I’d have known 2 years after when she screamed at me for going out of my way to save a kitten.
It was when they whole heartedly supported Trump. Then they bitched about existence level “DEI” things.
Same. There were other things in the past that I look back on and think “hmm that was not great of a decision”, but yeah Trump support is a dealbreaker. That makes you officially “not a good person.”
Father was a systematically abusive pig.
Mother allowed it to happen for far too long.
I cut contact after finding out the latter was on the mailing list for the Nazi Regime of America. (Republicans, Students for ‘Life’ etc.)
Around the time my kids were graduating from highschool, she always made it seem like being a mom was this monumental task that no reasonable person could ever do well, just unbearably difficult so to cope you’d need to scream at and emotionally abuse your children or you’d never survive. There are two modes of mothering, ignoring your child or screaming at your child. My mom kept me fairly isolated and wouldn’t drive me anywhere despite living in along distance to nothing but other houses mostly filled with older couples so I never really got to see how “normal” families work or how other kids interacted with their parents, if I ever did manage to get an invite to a new friends house or an after school activity was forbidden from participating. Raising kids though, wow, such an incredible eye opener to just how easy kids are to love, how easy it is to raise children when you’re a sane and consistent parent. Motherhood isn’t inherently a screaming match between you and a child who never asked to be there that you hate because of their mere existence. Sure not everyone is cut out to be a mom, of course, but to present abuse as both normal and justified is evil. I don’t care how bad she had it as a kid, she was obligated to protect me from that just like I was obligated to protect my kids from the things she did to me. She was an early childhood education teacher and I’ve come to realize it’s because anyone over the age of ~4 is too much of a human being for her to handle, she only wants completely subservient, physically small children around because she can dominate them and any other social interaction that she’s not dominating the other person is intolerable to her. She’s a pathetic person truly
When I got to know my gf’s mom and realized I didn’t have massive levels of stress and anxiety around her like I do with my mom.
Remember my dad spilling strong acid ruining the living room which I later found out was intended for my mom.
To this day I can’t help but cringe when people equate middle eastern issues to western issues. This shit is not even the same planet - the whole region is like a century behind at least despite all the money and development and is fundamentally a failed culture.
what ultimately happened with your dad? is your mom ok
Mom and I left and she’s doing well now but no idea about dad or anyone from that side of family. Though, I’ve heard that karma caught up with everyone eventually.
My mom ran into one of the dads friends who arranged the acid a few years back and it turns out he got almost fully blinded in an accident of his own and flipped his personality 180° and started doing charity work. It kinda goes against this pop culture idea of bullies being fixed by “understanding and love” when in reality it’s usually a catastrophe like this that really sorts them.
I’m sorry you experienced that moose, it’s rough. Would you mind explaining how it’s a failed culture?
Thanks it sucked but we made through and the world is all that brighter now!
As for my view on middle-east culture - it might appear like I’m being mean or reductionist with this view but since Quran is literal “word of god” and not interpreted text like in every other religion it has developed this culture that is incapable of growth or nuance since the very base layer is unquestionable obedience. It’s a fundamentally broken world model that cannot be redeemed without an absolute revolution that has to come from within the community but you can probably clearly see the catch 22 here that makes it not possible. Thus a failed culture with no clear path to growth.
That makes perfect sense thanks for explaining! How come it’s not interpretatable surely that’s debatable?
Because it’s believed to be “literal word of god” revealed to Muhammad by an angel word-by-word. Since Allah is perfect and all knowing his word is considered to be flawless and eternal and not open to interpretation or doubt. The theological argument is that imperfect human reasoning will lead to misguidance and thus corrupt the religion so only literal interpretation is acceptable.
So it’s like a constitution that cannot be amended but it’s from over 2 millennia ago when most people didn’t even know how to read or write. It’s a dead end.
Ahhhhh I see thanks for explaining
Finding the Trump coins while helping her move. She’s asking me for money after sending hers to a racist conman.
That, and teaching my young daughter the N-word.
i started realizing more and more that my father’s jokes were racist. then i started noticing that his normal speech and interactions were racist.
i was brought up with this racism as a norm, so it took me a long time to realize we were a racist family (longer than i would like to admit).
then after a realizing how racist we were, i put two and two together… my father is a police officer.
Bro that twist. Hahaha
A twist would be something unexpected
Bruh…
When it was a younger sibling getting the beatings. When it was targeted a me, I always justified it thinking I must have done something to deserve it. But watching the attention turn to the younger, I realized there was nothing us kids could do to be “good enough”.
People on here would probably think my parents are evil but I just think they are from a different generation. There’s only so much adaptation a human brain can do in a lifetime and at some point your views will be set in stone if you’ve been alive since the 1950s.
why
I suppose it’s related to my view of memory. Like I subscribe to the view that you have a fixed amount of memory when you become conscious at 2-3 years old and then you just cram more years into that set amount of memory each passing year. At a certain point your capacity to take in new information and hold it in your brain diminishes so I hold them to a different standard to someone who is not aged 70+.
Edit: A good example of this is my partner has an immediate family with a lot of neurodivergent traits. My partner was basically their carer while she was growing up. We’ve been dating since 2011, our families have started to mix more in the past 5 years. Parents have been alive for 75 years so that’s like 1/15th of their memory taken up with this information. It’s only recently that they have really cottoned on to how disabled my wife’s family is. Something needs to be immediate and persistent for an extended period of time to sink in for older folks.
None of this is universally true. The answer to the posts questions, for you is literally that you haven’t yet. You’re still in the excuse making stage and might be actually be perpetuating the behaviors.
You wouldn’t judge a 35 year old and a 75 year old by different standards when it comes to being informed about current societal attitudes?
Edit: Also like, what is the standard for evil? That’s become relevant to the conversation now. I don’t know if this is a US specific thing but I was spuriously saying a lot of people on here would seemingly consider them evil for being right-wing by today’s standards. I was jokingly alluding to that because it’s preposterous to call someone “evil” for having right of centre views.
I feel like you are on the route to a good concept, but you haven’t quite made it there yet.
I believe over the next seven to ten years you will continue to refine this concept until it is actually a good concept and something that you can share proudly with people, But right now it’s not well thought out enough, or cohesive enough to stand on its own.
The brain does not fill up with information. It has more than enough storage for a 120 year human lifespan.
Rather, people tend to rely on their previously acquired information because there’s no novelty attached to refining your previously acquired information, and by default, human minds are novelty-seeking devices.
Another thing is that there’s the possibility that the use of psychedelics can restore the novelty effect, Which would not erase previously acquired information, but rather put a new tint on them.
I imagine that we as a society would be much happier if we had a process where we could do something like that on a regular basis, every five to seven years or so just to reset our minds inside of a structured ceremonial system, Just to help prevent us from becoming too bored, our neurons too tarnished, our minds too inured with ennui, to enjoy life.
When i borrowed my mom’s car long ago and the radio was on Rush Limbaugh
I knew they were shitty to me and my brother, but rationalized most of it as being the product of a different culture and time. What really sealed the deal was finding out how shitty they were being to my elderly frail grandmother who was living with them. They made her last years on this Earth so miserable. I have lost all respect for them, I will never forgive them, and I’m glad to be hundreds of km away from them.
