My dad is an asshole. He’s controlling. He wants everything his way. He wants you to be dependant on him. He’ll accomplish this by sabotaging you, and any life progress you’ve made.
He had a seizure. He fell down, and he banged his head on a table at a laundromat.
He was in the hospital for 2 months. He had a heart attack 3 weeks after the seizure, and required double bypass surgury. He would have been released 3 days later, until he had the heart attack. So his total time in the hospital was 2 months instead of 3 weeks.
I was there. Every day he was in the hospital. I was there. He complained about how terrible the hospital food was. I brought him freah fruit straight from the market. I cooked him a daily meal. I approved everything wish his doctors.
He doesn’t remember that. He has no memory of his hospital stay. When he came out of the hospital, we BEGGED him to stay with his mother for a few weeks. He had lost use of one of his eyes. He had no balance. And his mom lived in a building made for the elderly. My aunt at the time semi lived there, taking care of my grandma. So to take care of him too would be no problem. Plus, there was no stairs. He could barely move two feet without wobbling.
But he demanded to go home. He yelled at me for trying to help him. He wouldn’t let my aunt into his house to cook him meals. He wouldn’t let me in to help with cleaning and laundry. He pushed us all out. I reminded him that we’ve been helping him for months. He argued that we hadn’t. I told him “I’ve visited you every day before work. I’ve brought you meals. I’ve brought you a rotating set of clean clothes. Why do you think you had a laundry basket in your hospital room?”
And his response…“Well who asked you to do THAT?”
That was the moment that really hurt. The moment when all you want to do is help, but you’re being insulted for your efforts. To know none of it was appriciated. And that no further efforts would be appriciated.
My point in response to what you said is, sometimes we want to help those in our life, but they’ll insist they know best. Even when their mental capacity is diminished. Even though it hurts, sometimes all you can do is wash your hands of the situation.
I’ve washed my hands of it. He’s my dad. I’ll be there for him if he ever realizes he needs help. Until then I’ve resigned myself to knowing that I’m not the problem. I’m not able to help him, because he won’t accept help. He has a mental block on being able to accept that he’s in his 70s, and he’s getting older, and his 41 year old son, that 30 years ago was his little boy, is more capable physically than he is right now.
He can’t accept that I can fix plumbing because I can bend down. He can’t accept that I can shovel snow without pulling my back. All because he can’t accept that he needs me now. Not the other way around. And I’m happy to help him. But he’s not happy to accept that it’s 2024. Not 1994. Which I get. 1994 was awesome. Green Day had just relesed Dookie. I could still wear those bead thing necklaces that washing tub plugs use as a chain. And yin yang bracelets. The Sega Genesis was awesome. Jurassic Park had just come out on VHS and wasn’t ruined by the sequals yet. The countrys political spectrum wasn’t a raging dumpster fire. 1994 was pretty great. I wish we could ALL go back…but we can’t. We have to live in 2024.
So the most I can do to move on is not take it personally. Try to make my 40s something enjoyable, ya know? We sll went through covid together, and just as everyone was getting back to a sense of normal, I was diagnosed with cancer. I spent a year of my life kicking cancers ass, and I won. Shout-out to Dr Crawford, and the MetroHealth medical system. In the midst of all that, Gram died. She was 103, but whenever you lose your hero in life, it’s ALWAYS too soon.
And NOW a year later I’m getting back to normal. The dust has settled. Those events with my dad in the hospital were 3 years ago. 3 years seems relatively short, but I swear we’re on some different timeline right now. I swear it feels like 20 years ago. Calanders and logic tell me that it JUST happened recently, but I swear it was a lifetime ago.
And now…trump…
So I’ve decided that in order to find peace, I’m just going to mentally check out here for a while. I’m going to buy my first house. I’m going to go to work. And I’m going to concentrate on me. Because mentally these last few years have broken me. And the next few years look scary as hell. I can’t drink, because I used to be an alcoholic, and that gave me cancer. I can’t smoke weed, because my job tests. I’ve lost friends. I’ve lost family. I feel isolated. I feel stressed. So I’m going to buy a run down house, and fix it up. I’m just going to spend all my time either working, or sawing, or drilling, or sanding. Just really taking my mind off shit. Just concentrate on me. Which is not in my nature. I’m not used to being selfish. But…I just need to work on me, as I work on a house.
I’m sorry if this came off as a long winded rant, but I just needed to vent.
Tomorrow is a new day. For me, both literally and metaphorically. And for me, I’m taking me first step to buying a house.
Fuck yeah dude. Looking out for other people only can put you in a pretty deep hole. It took getting clean from opiates for me to finally accept that. Believe it or not I literally told myself yesterday, if no one else is going to give a shit, I’m just going to have to direct all my energy towards myself and my SO. Its really exhausting, but I hope it works out for us.
Too many friends and distant family, from marginalized communities telling me “They don’t mean me, I am a legal American citizen”
My dad is an asshole. He’s controlling. He wants everything his way. He wants you to be dependant on him. He’ll accomplish this by sabotaging you, and any life progress you’ve made.
He had a seizure. He fell down, and he banged his head on a table at a laundromat.
He was in the hospital for 2 months. He had a heart attack 3 weeks after the seizure, and required double bypass surgury. He would have been released 3 days later, until he had the heart attack. So his total time in the hospital was 2 months instead of 3 weeks.
I was there. Every day he was in the hospital. I was there. He complained about how terrible the hospital food was. I brought him freah fruit straight from the market. I cooked him a daily meal. I approved everything wish his doctors.
He doesn’t remember that. He has no memory of his hospital stay. When he came out of the hospital, we BEGGED him to stay with his mother for a few weeks. He had lost use of one of his eyes. He had no balance. And his mom lived in a building made for the elderly. My aunt at the time semi lived there, taking care of my grandma. So to take care of him too would be no problem. Plus, there was no stairs. He could barely move two feet without wobbling.
But he demanded to go home. He yelled at me for trying to help him. He wouldn’t let my aunt into his house to cook him meals. He wouldn’t let me in to help with cleaning and laundry. He pushed us all out. I reminded him that we’ve been helping him for months. He argued that we hadn’t. I told him “I’ve visited you every day before work. I’ve brought you meals. I’ve brought you a rotating set of clean clothes. Why do you think you had a laundry basket in your hospital room?”
And his response…“Well who asked you to do THAT?”
That was the moment that really hurt. The moment when all you want to do is help, but you’re being insulted for your efforts. To know none of it was appriciated. And that no further efforts would be appriciated.
My point in response to what you said is, sometimes we want to help those in our life, but they’ll insist they know best. Even when their mental capacity is diminished. Even though it hurts, sometimes all you can do is wash your hands of the situation.
Godamn this is sad.
A lot of this reminds me of my dad, down to the non functioning eye due to stroke. He’s an asshole, controlling, etc, but not quite this bad.
I really do hope you’re able to make peace with this if you haven’t already.
I’ve washed my hands of it. He’s my dad. I’ll be there for him if he ever realizes he needs help. Until then I’ve resigned myself to knowing that I’m not the problem. I’m not able to help him, because he won’t accept help. He has a mental block on being able to accept that he’s in his 70s, and he’s getting older, and his 41 year old son, that 30 years ago was his little boy, is more capable physically than he is right now.
He can’t accept that I can fix plumbing because I can bend down. He can’t accept that I can shovel snow without pulling my back. All because he can’t accept that he needs me now. Not the other way around. And I’m happy to help him. But he’s not happy to accept that it’s 2024. Not 1994. Which I get. 1994 was awesome. Green Day had just relesed Dookie. I could still wear those bead thing necklaces that washing tub plugs use as a chain. And yin yang bracelets. The Sega Genesis was awesome. Jurassic Park had just come out on VHS and wasn’t ruined by the sequals yet. The countrys political spectrum wasn’t a raging dumpster fire. 1994 was pretty great. I wish we could ALL go back…but we can’t. We have to live in 2024.
So the most I can do to move on is not take it personally. Try to make my 40s something enjoyable, ya know? We sll went through covid together, and just as everyone was getting back to a sense of normal, I was diagnosed with cancer. I spent a year of my life kicking cancers ass, and I won. Shout-out to Dr Crawford, and the MetroHealth medical system. In the midst of all that, Gram died. She was 103, but whenever you lose your hero in life, it’s ALWAYS too soon.
And NOW a year later I’m getting back to normal. The dust has settled. Those events with my dad in the hospital were 3 years ago. 3 years seems relatively short, but I swear we’re on some different timeline right now. I swear it feels like 20 years ago. Calanders and logic tell me that it JUST happened recently, but I swear it was a lifetime ago.
And now…trump…
So I’ve decided that in order to find peace, I’m just going to mentally check out here for a while. I’m going to buy my first house. I’m going to go to work. And I’m going to concentrate on me. Because mentally these last few years have broken me. And the next few years look scary as hell. I can’t drink, because I used to be an alcoholic, and that gave me cancer. I can’t smoke weed, because my job tests. I’ve lost friends. I’ve lost family. I feel isolated. I feel stressed. So I’m going to buy a run down house, and fix it up. I’m just going to spend all my time either working, or sawing, or drilling, or sanding. Just really taking my mind off shit. Just concentrate on me. Which is not in my nature. I’m not used to being selfish. But…I just need to work on me, as I work on a house.
I’m sorry if this came off as a long winded rant, but I just needed to vent.
Tomorrow is a new day. For me, both literally and metaphorically. And for me, I’m taking me first step to buying a house.
Fuck yeah dude. Looking out for other people only can put you in a pretty deep hole. It took getting clean from opiates for me to finally accept that. Believe it or not I literally told myself yesterday, if no one else is going to give a shit, I’m just going to have to direct all my energy towards myself and my SO. Its really exhausting, but I hope it works out for us.