I realized every time my mom worked in the evenings it was always a great day for me.
Also we were brought up Catholic, BUT also to love accept queer and trans people (and I’m 50 so back then trans people weren’t really part of the conversation hardly at all), but also my brother is gay, and when it became clear that was a fact, my mother launched an underground campaign to try and pretend he wasn’t, including inviting a beard date for him to go with on my destination wedding.
Finally realized how absolutely nasty and manipulative she is, and how she just regards me as a reflection of her. I can’t be around her because I feel like she’s constantly scrutinizing every inch of me and criticizing my appearance, because that’s what she values and nothing else, and how she likes to drop bombs into the middle of family gatherings just to get negative attention, like deciding to make fun of my father over a chubby girl he had dated 40 years before, which my spouse honestly came close to clocking her in the teeth for.
Borderlines are nasty the older and more entrenched and untreated they are, they get really malignant behaviour. Just last fall my aunt who she is mostly estranged from had surgery for bowel cancer, which she didn’t share with her since she drinks drama like it’s her poisonous life blood, and yet despite this she got her friend who works in the OR to tell her the date and time, showed up at the last minute while she was waiting on a stretcher to go in for surgery, shoved her face in my aunt’s face and yelled “HI!”, and immediately my aunt was rolled down to the OR, and never visited or did anything else. The whole point was to let my aunt know she KNEW and that my aunt couldn’t keep it from her. She violated her confidentiality and I’m pursuing it through the hospital privacy office…
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.
Omigod. Do you still talk?
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”.
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.)
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.
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.
Appreciate the well-thought out response.
Will readily admit my theory is folk psychology as opposed to anything that could withstand scientific rigour. Just subjectively, have you not personally experienced the sensation of the years passing by more quickly as you age?
Edit: Forgot to mention that I also agree that psychedelics can be like hitting a reset switch. I believe there are scientific papers which describe synapses lighting up in unusual patterns in clinical trials, which corresponds with the subjective experience of people seeing things with a “fresh pair of eyes” or whatever.
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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…
I saw two of my friends joking with their father and realised they weren’t afraid of him.
😲
Mom always thought she was a good person and not racist. The cracks started to show when she’d express options on Facebook, like that sure, black people go to jail for much longer that white people for the same crimes, but it’s their fault for being criminals.
Lots of little things like that. I started therapy in my late 20s for anger management. A couple months in, my parents and brother came from out of state to visit. It was a Bad Time. My mom and brother kept needling me constantly. They mocked my opinions. They told me I was wrong about local facts. They asked a local for directions then mocked him for having a Boston accent. In Boston.
The several-day visit ended with me driving them back to their hotel room and my mom telling me the whole trip had been a waste, we were probably the sort of family that should only see each other at funerals, preferably hers.
Poor dad was hard of hearing, so missed a lot of what was said. He apologized for any part he played in it.
A few years later in December 2020, my mom brought COVID home from what she described as a mandatory work Christmas breakfast potluck. My dad caught it from her and spent a month in hospital. I don’t know how mandatory that potluck could have been, tbh–she retired a few months later after my dad died. She was all shocked Pikachu that my dad, who was known to be immunocompromised, could die from COVID.
She also lamented to me, the week before he died, that dating as a widow sucks. Either you date too soon and everyone thinks it’s inappropriate OR you don’t and everyone thinks you’re sad. (Not saying she shouldn’t have thought ahead to her widowhood, but don’t say these things to your kid.)
Anyways, she sucks and is blocked on my phone. She could email if she cared. My dad was the Good Parent and he had his warts, but he at least tried to relate to me and explain things instead of just assuming I could read minds.
Geez, is your mom my stepmom?
Probably not (I don’t think she’s remarried yet), but maybe my aunt is. My aunt and my mom hate each other because they’re almost the same person.
Anyways, I’m sorry your stepmom sucks. I hope you’re able to get away from that unhealthy relationship.
I’m so glad you escaped, that is so sad to read, you sound nice.
Thanks. The scars are still there, but things are getting better.
The best thing to come out of my dad’s death was me becoming closer to his sisters. They’re mostly lovely. Like, they have blind spots, but they’re minor and sometimes adorable. (Example: one of them kept talking about her daughter and her daughter’s roommate. After a couple months of this, I asked directly “are they dating?” Yes, yes they were. They’re now married. My aunt was just awkward about saying her daughter was dating a woman because she lived through times when that could have been a fight, and I think it was habit.)
I was bemoaning the lack of action on global warming, and how all of civilization was at risk if we didn’t take action now, and my boomer mom replied,
“Why should I care? I’ll be dead by then!” 😞
my mother, also a boomer, had the exact same response when we got onto the conversation of electric vehicles (she wanted to buy a new car; i recommended electric).
i didnt really know how to respond. i still dont understand why one would want to leave the world worse than how they found it.
conservatives will assume that your empathy for others is fake, that it must have been brainwashed into you. basically they think you’re an idiot. sorry
Did you ask your Mom whether she has any kids who might still be around?
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.”
My father worked as an environmental engineer for an oil company cleaning up oil spills and messes. He wanted a certain quality of life, so we only ever lived in southern or messed up states. Texas, Missouri and 7 years in Utah. Going to elementary school with the racist bigot Mormons was hell. Long story short he is a Neo-Liberal Boomer that helped the oil industry with his efficiency and diligence cover up issues and increase profits. A money hawk and penny-pincher, who wouldn’t move to blue states because of higher prices, believing in American Exceptionalism, and has zero regrets working for a company that helped destroy the world. I admit he’s not the worst by a long shot. But I would have preferred being broke and poor in another country and him not working for mankind’s enemies.
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
