Ask Lemmy

My da told me "God does not forgive people who curse his name."

I asked "But God forgives people who sexually abuse kids?"

"If they ask for forgiveness, yes."

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wHy DoNt YoU aTtEnD cHuRcH aNyMoRe??? lmao shut up.

I’m American: my dad told me a couple years ago that immigrants were “unclean.” I’m almost 40, and that was the first time he’d ever used that phrase. That’s probably the first time I realized how “mainstream” extremism had become, since he has virtually zero online presence.

I went on a trip to another country. Unfortunately, I had an accident (involving a fucking hurricane) that almost killed me.I had insurance so they covered all the medical expenses, including tickets and accomdations for one of my parents (aka: one of them could come free of charge). They decided that it was a good opportunity to visit the country since one was coming "for free" and they only had to pay for the other one.

Years later, my father told me that they are still paying the debt for the money they spent "because of me" when I had that accident so it was my fault they were in debt.

Yes. My mom, unprompted one day, said:

"Did you guys know that Elon Musk's Dad owns an emerald mine?"

Followed by me saying "yes, did you also know he used slave labor in apartheid South Africa to build it?"

"Well I don't really care about any of that. I just thought it was cool."

When I was little, I did something bad (I don't even remember what it was), and my mom got angry with me about it, and I was already crying, and I asked her "Do you still love me?" and she said "I don't know", and that shit has stuck with me forever and I'm sure contributes to the fact that I don't truly trust anyone. If I brought it up to her now, she'd 100% deny it.

I found out my parent's computer had a lot viruses because they are dumb and bought a McAffee subscription. I told them, they answered that they knew better than me, I replied that I had a degree in computer sciences, and my father laughed like the fucking idiot he is.

Let's say we don't talk about my job or computer anymore. Also I reduced the visits and phone calls that they had because I'm tired with their bullshit.

While writing my master thesis my professor suddenly left the university. Noone ever really knew why and there was no official statement other than a short sentence on the website that Prof. XYZ has left the department. My master thesis was on hold while I had to find a new professor. My mother, who has always accused me of being lazy and lying, insisted that it was all a lie. When I pointed out the news on the university website, she said: "I don't know how you hacked the website and got it to display your lies, but I'm not falling for your deceit." I am not a computer science major, I studied linguistics.

Back when Wicked, the musical, was brand new & the hot topic & it was just so so cool culturally speaking -- my high school choir was going to take a field trip day to go & watch it live in a big city. 🤩 Time off of school, going to this cool musical, it's a no-brainer. Right?

My parents told me I couldn't go because there was a 20-25% chance of snowfall. Combined with a significant 2+ hour commute, there was a chance I wouldn't make it back home by 6:40 PM on a Wednesday night, and that would cause me to miss the hour long 7 PM Wednesday night church services. 🥴🥴🥴🥴

Not even Sunday morning, most of everyone's day of rest. Wednesday. Night. Services. Couldn't even take a chance on missing that. That was...."special".... 🙄 Religious brainwashing at its finest!

The day my niece was born, my mom had asked me to wake her up so that she could be there after the birth.

Apparently, me actually doing what she asked me to do turned out to be a grave insult.

She ended up yelling and screaming at me, which triggered me, so I started yelling and screaming at her, and then she hit me with the only thing she could think of to actually hurt me.

See, from before I get into that, I've got to explain that from the time I was 15 until I graduated high school at 17, my mom and my stepdad essentially locked me in my room and only let me out for punishment, which was digging up stumps in the backyard or picking up a rock from one pile and hauling it to another pile, picking up a different rock from that pile, hauling that one to the third pile, back and forth. for eight to ten hours a day, And for going to school, just enough to prevent CPS from being called on them.

There was also a healthy dose of corporal punishment on top of that, being beaten for half an hour or longer for the smallest infraction.

It really messed with my head because I honestly thought like at some point they would come to their senses and realize how absurd the entire thing was and apologize and they never fucking did.

Anyway, now that we've got the groundwork in place, my mom decided she would say the thing that she could think of to hurt me, which was to tell me that her mother, my evil grandmother, had convinced her to do all of those things because otherwise no one would ever love me.

And why is it that otherwise no one would ever love me?

because I'm not white

My mom had shamed the entire family by marrying a Native American and giving birth to his child, And my grandmother, who is evil for multiple reasons, and I'll be glad to go into those, cause may she rot in piss, was a terrible person, had decided that the only way to cleanse the family of the stain of my existence was to psychologically induce my own mother into tormenting me in every single possible way she could.

And so every single time I think about all the opportunities I missed out on and all the times my mom wasn't there for me and all of the times that I was neglected and abused throughout my entire childhood, it all rolls back to my grandmother being a racist cunt, and my mother somehow not realizing that for what it was, and just being a good little flying monkey and doing whatever her mother told her to do with her own fucking child.

So yeah, I was abused because my grandmother is racist, and I didn't find out about that until I was 23 years old.

I had moved away a few years and my mother was homeless due to her own choices and lack of effort to do anything. My wife and I were in town visiting her family, and we decided to take my mother out to dinner. During the meal she was (rightly) complaining about the perils of being homeless and having to watch out for the pigs. I suggested that she look into getting into some government housing. You know her response?

"I don't want to be the light in he dark."

If you're as confused as I pretended I was, she means she didn't want to live with/around black people. Which was really fucking surprising to me, considering we had lived with, around, and had been friends with all kinds of POC growing up (as you you tend to do in poor and mixed neighborhoods and when you have to rent out rooms to get by). That level of racism was rather surprising, but she had become toxic as fuck in the years before I moved, so it shouldn't have been.

My dad, the tech genius that he is, has been against every minor step forward since the 90's:

"Why do i need an answering machine, if they need me, they'll call back." He worked for himself as a handyman, so this is plain ridiculous. Finally, someone gives him an answering machine and suddenly it's "This is awesome! I never miss a call! I've got so much work!" Later it was "Why do I need a debit card? I can just write a check!" which evolved to "It's so convenient! I can get gas, even when they're closed!" He repeated the answering machine argument when cell phones arrived, and repeated the results when he finally got one.

It's a running theme in his life. The one that really gobsmacked me was when he proudly declared "the Internet can't hurt me if i don't get on it!"

Parent told me I shouldn't hold it against my older sibling who abused me when I was younger because the older sibling also remembered my birthday and got me toys when I was younger

I was talking to my father about the war in Palestine (my family and I are Jewish so its not unusual). I said "hey maybe peace is a better way of combatting terrorism", he responded that concentration camps should be built to combat terrorism and strip the Palestinians of their culture and identity.

I told my mom I'm suicidal, she told me she regretting giving birth to me for "being ungrateful", and now I'm even more suicidal and perhaps even a little homicidal.

I'll forgive you if you come back to God. My crime was finally standing up to her abuse and her insane religious bullshit (at 16) and moving out (at 18). Conditional love, just like Jesus preached lol

My mother did the slitty eyed gesture and said that there were too many chi*ks here, in the car part for a large asian grocery store in the local chinatown that she had chosen to go to, to buy asian food. Yes other people heard and saw what she did, including asians. This was more than twenty years ago so not linked to the current rise of more overt racism.

"We shouldnt have accepted east germany. They just get out money." And that its their fault for getting a dictatorship

"I hit and abused you because i was overwhealmed because of you" (i have adhd and autism)

We dont talk. She doesnt understand why.

My dad recently buult a new garden shed in the garden for tools and gardening stuff. He now started refering to the gazebo in the same garden as "the old shed" for some fucking reason. We were doing something that required power and ge asked me to plug in an extension in the shed. I do that and a couple minutes later he berates me and says he meant the old shed. When I asked if he meant the gazebo, he looked at me as if I had slapped him in the face. We've had the gazebo for about 15 years now I think and nobody ever called anything but that.

My relationship with them was already in very thin ice due to repeated trust issues over the years, but what finally sealed it was my coming out to my dad and his response being "it's all because of this woke generation". Coming from someone who I thought had a very left leaning stance, therapy over the following years made me realize just how shitty and homophobic they really were. Turns out I'm probably more bi than gay (also ace), but it still stands.

one time when I was little I heard my mum making weird noises in her room. i didn't go check why. the next morning i asked her why were you making weird noises? she said "I was imagining eating Chinese food that was so good"

As they got more and more out there on pre-MAGA conservative media, the unhinged hits just kept on coming. But probably the most unhinged was their belief that "90 percent of Black males are in a gang." Sad.

Two weeks after I explained to my father why I had an abortion ... and he calmly said he understood my reasons ... he told me I'd murdered his grandchild.

He was a real winner, my dad.

I was pregnant as the oldest daughter- three month later my sister told us she's pregnant too. My mother (having a boyfriend of my age at that time): "Oh wouldn't it be fun if I get pregnant too now?"

I couldn't believe what I heard (she is an abusive parent, only 2 of her 9 children contact her at all now, the other have gone non-contact)

Reading through this I totally get why the world is the way it is.

Most people are actually really fucking dumb.

My mother used to call me a son of a bitch until I one day replied "I know".

Or

"I don't believe in god because of the things He has done to me, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't believe in Him"

She also talked about her "schizo friend" quite a lot, as if the events were recent, even though there was no chance she had seen the person in over a decade.

We don't speak anymore.

My parents are good people, but my mom doesn’t know anything about technology. There was an incident where something was wrong with her computer. I had to go over and fix it. She said she couldn’t get the screen to come on no matter how much she moved the mouse.

The mouse was unplugged, cord hanging off behind the desk.

She said the mouse had somehow popped itself out and asked if there was one that couldn’t do that.

My mother telling me I should not think that she makes any money with me. (Backstory: Was living with her, dad paid ~~alimony~~ child support). I was baffled, because even when I lowkey suspected that, it was not even a relevant thing for our conversation at this time.

A few years later, when I wanted to move out for studying it was suddendly a problem, because she could not make the full payments for her house without the ~~alimony~~ child supprt from my dad. So I stayed.

Some more years down the line I finally wanted to move out, as I had a full time job in sight and wanted to live with my boyfriend. I was in my mid-twenties. Basically the conversation was the same as before, she could not pay for her house without me. She could not answer my question how she thought this would work out. Was she expecting me to live with her until she paid for the house? Because this would be up until my forties, maybe longer. The house is not big enough for two families, so it was never an option for me and my bf to move in. Of course I moved out.

I was like always told to respect them before beating me and telling me how much of a dumb, useless piece of shit I am and that I should be thankfull they did not abandone me and decided to put up with such an eyesore.

I guess they never heard that you have to actually earn the respect and now wonder why I won't call them more than once a week.

A few days ago my mom made a "joke" that clearly having good kids skipped a generation right after commenting about how well behaved my kids were.

With my own kids now I've been realizing how many of the "behaviors" my parents would complain about and expect me to improve upon were just normal kid stuff

After my mother passed, I spent more time with my father than before, just because I thought it was the right thing to do (and my siblings really did not care that much). I realized why I did not have a lot if contact before, he us a classic toxic boomer narcissist.

Spending more time with him did not mean that we grieved my mother's loss as a family, it was just him monopolizing the grief and needing an audience wallow in self pity. I had no say in any aspect of the funeral, he did not listen to anything I said, he never even once asked how I was, and when I talked about stuff from my life (because someone else asked), he started talking over me, making the conversation about him again. Classic narcissist parent playbook.

At some point i was fed up, and told him as much, which of course did not go over well. Complete disbelief, he acted as if I had insulted him, yelling, accusations of being ungrateful, all the bells and whistles. Not a single thought that this behaviour might have been wrong. I just left and cut contact. After a week or so he wrote me what I think was meant as an apology. What he "apologized" for was that because of his greatness, he was always the center of attention which of course emphasized my insignificance, which he can see made me feel bad. It was so grotesque that I burst out in manic laughter, my wife was seriously worried.

The good thing about this, it made me slowly unwrap what I now realize is a lot of childhood drama (which I thought was normal), and understand why my siblings basically don't want anything to do with him. Still struggling to take the step to seek professional therapy (which I know I need), but I already feel better starting to understand that how my father treated me was not because I am worthless, but because he was a really bad dad.

There's too many.

Off the top of my head, a fav dark one might be their serious quoting the Bible to me about how any child that isn't respectful or submissive should be killed.

Some fucked interpretation of Deuteronomy about stoning a child in public or something.

"Dinner's only a couple of hours away. Why don't you wait?"

Because I had just finished a sponsored fast for charity and hadn't eaten for two days.

"I love you, but I don't always like you"

Cool. Thanks. Feels just amazing.