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.
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…
Your mom had plumbing installed to run the washer in your room?
Yup, right into the back of the closet. They removed the doors and tucked the machines in there.
That’s a lot of work. Why did they do that?
For some reason she didn’t enjoy going downstairs, and I guess this was their ideal spot for it upstairs lol
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.
Interesting how experiences shape us. Glad it sounds like you have mainly positives with respect to your parents.
Yes, no regrets there.
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
I do have hobbies and enjoy them, but I tend to hide everything from them, even meaningless things.
What pisses me off mostly is how much I missed out on when I was younger for her stupid ideas, things like “you want a wife from your city”, “but she’s black!” (yes, I’m into black women), “he’s gay, if you go out with him everyone will think you’re gay”, “the trip is too long”, shit like that…
That’s horrible and a great way at making sure your child hides their love life and possibly makes impulsive and dangerous decisions.
My parents pulled out a pack of condoms from my toiletries bag one time I visited for the weekend during university and my dad mocked me for having them.
That first paragraph pretty much summarizes my love life, fortunately I’m not one for dangerous but plenty of stupid.
I’m sorry that happened to you. I know the feeling :(
Really doesn’t sound bad at all compared to most people out there. Especially without concrete examples.
This isn’t a contest. OP asked what was the worst, and this is it for me. It’s damaging enough for me, and it’s very hard to give concrete examples because it was damage over time. Personality also plays a role; it’s possible that other kids in my shoes wouldn’t have felt this as something too damaging, everyone is different.
Both my parents have been very supportive and nurturing in almost every other aspect but those I mentioned. I know there are some horrific stories out there, I hope yours isn’t one of them.
Birthed me. Then they had the audacity to celebrate it each year there after.
On the bright side, life is a terminal STD with 100% mortality rate
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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
I suppose it’s a matter of perspective. Some would say the joy and enrichment from being alive and caring about others outweighs the sadness from loss.
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…
What the?!
Why would someone even do that?
I’ve pondered that question a LOT… Did he think it would somehow make me go out of my way to spend time with him out of some sort of primal urge to compete with my brother? Is he a psychopath? Is his brain so fucked he thought it was real?
Sad part is, I bet he doesn’t even recall doing it, and he was just bored at the time.