Yesterday I walked out of my suburban neighborhood and into the desert. I found a hidden area with tall cacti and bushes to keep me hidden as I drank myself into a mess. I wanna change. I want to be normal. I want to stop being afraid of people. I want to learn how to trust humans but I’m so afraid of them.
I can’t even talk to my own family members without feeling socially anxious anymore. It’s bizarre how that happened. I used to be so close to my 5 siblings and parents. Now I’ve changed so much. I’ve changed in some good ways but I changed in some bad ways too and the bad far outweighs the good in me.
My family members worry about me but I’ve been distancing myself from them. I don’t have a wife or kids. When I say “family”, I’m referring to the one I was born into.
I’m becoming bitter and it stings. I’m learning more and more that my parents were wrong about some of the things they taught me. Like my father who just loves being a victim. Every time he asks me to hang with him he makes a scene at restaurants and gets hostile with people. He’s so convinced that white people are out to get him that he builds a barrier around him in public everywhere he goes. He uses me and my brothers as his only social circle but we’re grown now. We left the nest and he keeps trying to use us as his social network. He needs to stop thinking so negatively of white people.
We’re Hispanic by the way. I don’t know what has my dad so distrustful towards white people but I refuse to adopt his beliefs. He’s wrong about society. I hate hanging around him but I do so every once in a while to tame his loneliness because I pity him.
I sometimes have to pretend to be someone else when I’m with him because our beliefs are so different nowadays that we mostly sit in silence when we’re in each other’s presence. I got a DUI and so I’m at rock bottom. He thinks I’m desperate for human interaction just because I’m at rock bottom. He’s wrong. I’m a master at isolation. I can do just fine on my own. I’m not desperate enough that I’d consider going out of my way to hang out with someone like him.
He’s a toxic human being. The way he makes white people to be the bad guy disgusts me and I want nothing to do with that. All he does is complain about people when I’m hanging with him.
The old man should’ve never immigrated to the US if all he’s gonna do is be distrustful towards white people. I fucking hate him for raising me the way he did. So many opportunities to build bonds with my classmates were ruined thanks to him. All because they were white. Fucking idiot! Then he wonders why I didn’t thrive in school and in life.
It’s only recently that I’m beginning to challenge his beliefs. It’s only recently that I’m beginning to trust people. So many years wasted on distrust and fear. All because of my ignorant father.
My mother had poor taste in men.
7 comments
okay, so two different tacks, alcoholism and racism…. I feel better equipped to discuss the racism part, if that’s okay with you
I’ll get to the alcohol issue, don’t worry, it’s just….. I have a lot more complicated emotions about it, and that’s kind of impressive, given where race relations are right now.
Written in the context of today, I think you might be giving your dad a harder time than he deserves specifically about mistrusting white people. Not that it justifies his actions, he could have found another way to express his mistrust. We’re dealing with the white supremicist culture coming out as proud, yet at the same time unwilling to deal with the crimes of the past. Literal whitewashing history because “some things are too awful to talk about”….. that’s all the more reason to talk about them.
Looking at American history with non white population, ESPECIALLY how not sorry many people are, I wouldn’t endorse white people as a demographic, despite belonging to it. It’s a similar thing I run into talking to women about men, especially white men (which is again, what I am, but I don’t identify with what it stands for)…. I can’t blame them. Making a bet against those demographics, that they’re more likely to exploit you than help you…. statistically, historically, there’s a lot of evidence backing that up as sound thinking.
so maybe, in his twisted way, he thought he was protecting you? IDK…. there’s a lot of talk on the right of the political spectrum about a prejudice being formed against white people….. and I’m not convinced that’s the wrong choice…. we kind of have it coming, especially as long as we endorse the monstrous acts of our ancestors.
you do what you feel is right, I just wanted you to know this one white guy kinda gets why the world hates white guys. The world should hate white guys, more than the currently do.
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Ah, alcohol. I thought discharging some of my white guilt would help….. I guess I’ll never know what would have happened had a chosen to ignore it. I come from alcoholic stock, at least three members of my family have died to alcoholism. I’ve seen it up close, in coworkers, in friends…..
it’s a tough demon to beat. The best thing I’ve seen for it is a medication that makes alcohol make you want to throw up. That’s got a really high success rate.
but… especially considering your alienation…. that’s going to add to the difficulty. I only know two “recovered alcoholics” out of a few dozen people I’ve known with the problem. There are a few others who claim it…. but they aren’t fooling anyone.
Death by alcohol though, is often one of the most painful. ODing appears relatively easy, what with it being legal, but that’s the least common death…. more often you beat your heart and liver so hard that one or both give up. Something that always kept me on the straight and narrow is that alcohol is a kind of sugar, so extreme drinking often leads to having to go on a diabetic diet. That’s a bleak outlook to me, because I do love my sweets.
The people I’ve known to die of alcoholism started heavy drinking in their 20s….. and it taking between 20 and 40 years to kill them. You can get the same kind of outcome by not exercising and eating a diet consisting mainly of meat…. not that I endorse that either. but the meat is going to only hurt you, while the alcohol will take so much more.
have you heard of the carnivore diet? meat isn’t bad for you- eating BAD quality meat (like Big Macs, fast food, sick chicken raised in factory farms, etc), that’s what’s bad for you.
Many ppl who have severe allergies have tried carnivore diet and do well on it. Many people (like my sister) have lost shitloads of weight on carnivore diet.
Hell, factory farmed seafood- fish, shrimp, especially shrimp- are the worst. Same with vegetables. Most things grown here are sprayed with pesticides, and so fruits and vegetables aren’t healthy anymore. Trust me, I’m someone with TONS of allergies, thanks to Monsanto and Big Pharm.a and all the factories that produce toxic foods. Trust me, I get WAY more sick from plant food than meats.
So it’s not about meat vs vegs. It’s about factory farmed vs small farm. It’s about plants sprayed with pesticide vs not. It’s about eating cheap food. Cheap food is toxic. When I was on an expensive diet for 3mo- it was SUPER expensive food- food that I cannot afford, most of my allergies went away or were reduced significantly. I can’t afford that kind of diet so going back on a SAD (Standard American Diet) all my food allergies came back -_-
Anyhow, you are being lied to about meat being bad. Meat from factory farms where the animals are sick is bad. Plants sprayed with pesticides are bad. Most meat and produce in America are bad for you. Our food is toxic.
well, there are pesticides and there are pesticides. For example DDT was incredibly effective but also incredibly toxic, so we stopped using it. I have one I used in my garden, for an example on the other side, which isn’t toxic at all. It’s method of action is that it interrupts the formation of specific proteins that insects need to reproduce. In humans… it doesn’t have anything to react with.
then there are fruits and veggies, and fruits and veggies. Strawberries need a lot of pesticides, and having grown them I can tell you that makes a lot of sense, because strawberries are one of the hardest crops I’ve tried to cultivate in terms of pests
meanwhile, figs. Have I gone on my how amazing figs are rant? Figs are fantastic. They’re not overly sweet, so they are enjoyable without anything added. The fig tree that I eat off of has never had anything done to it apart from trimming. It’s 50 years old. It’s easy to get to the fruit before pests, and what “pests” it attracts are usually birds who eat insects who would otherwise be problems.
My elderly neighbor actually owns the land that it is on, and he has said he doesn’t care how many I eat. The tree was planted by his dad, who’s been dead at least 15 years.
likewise, as you say there’s meat and there is meat. My problems with meat in the United States have at least as much to do with how it is made as the content. Tyson is one of the least ecologically and safety wise companies on the planet, and they control a vast majority of the meat market. The way they treat farmers….. it’s doubtful that any of their meat is responsibly raised.
Meanwhile, chicken. I love the taste, and cooking with it, but I couldn’t go without noticing that the pollution from chicken farms is the largest pollution problems in the agricultural industry. To produce at the scale to make chicken as cheap as it is (and eggs), it relies on being able to release massive amounts of waste into the water supply. If you try to isolate your chicken waste from the water supply…. it makes it so expensive that you can’t sell enough of it.
Finally, while I’m on the food rant; organic, natural and other “healthy” labels are essentially meaningless theater to make people feel better about their food. Arsenic is natural, and organic, and it’ll kill you, but it’s NATURAL….. pffft. I’ve started to distrust any product that goes on about how sustainable it is….. because often as not, they aren’t, they just want to charge more.
but at least we have the FDA….. in China they’ve been known to reconstitute cardboard and add flavoring to simulate food…. as awful as the American food system is….. I haven’t seen that in it…. YET, because you know these deregulation idiots want to be able to sell cardboard as food. “the market’ll sort it out”….. it doesn’t, we have history and massive amounts of evidence that health and market forces are directly opposed to each other.
pffffffft market forces….. hand wavey jedi mind trick to pretend that economics is more important than health, and it isn’t.
lol FDA…to that I say “pffft”
They are not as bas as whatever they have in China, but that’s not saying much.
FDA is corrupt as fuck. Take industry money. Take lobbyiest money. Things labeled as harmful in the EU and banned in the EU are being sold on millions of American shelves…bc $$$ and corruption.
Anyway, the whole meat this is all about shitty contaminated sick meat from sick animals laden with hormones and antibiotics that makes us sick. My point is, meat in of itself is not unhealthy- which is what the whole vegan and vegetarian movement is trying to make.
Yes, the conditions factory farm animals are in is disgusting. But so are all the toxic pesticides and whatever else they’re spraying our produce. I have so many allergies to fruits and vegetables and plants and all that shit. Why? Bc of all the toxins they sprayed in. So are any of our foods “healthy”? Fuck no. Not unless you go to another country that better regulates their food. And even then, it’s only “better” not fully “clean” of toxins.
anyhow, my point of my post was just to say that meat by itself is NOT bad for us. We’ve been lied to, and many ppl believe meat is inherently bad, which is not. Especially demonized is red meat. Hell, red meat is MUCH better for us than “white meat” which is chicken, and factory farmed chicken are sick and bad for us. I mean, fried chicken is delicious- I still eat them despite knowing it’s bad for us. Why? bc it’s VERY hard to eat anything healthy and free to pesticides or hormones unless 1- you have shit tons of money or 2- you grow them yourself
Many of the ppl I know believe the lie that meat is bad for us. And at this point, maybe I should just give up trying to explain to ppl it is not, and that we are being lied to and propagandized.
In all fairness to your dad, you do not know what kind of interactions he’s had with white ppl and if some white ppl had been horribly racism to him. I’m a minority myself (no I do not hate white ppl) but as soon as I immigrated to America at the ripe old age of 5, I saw and felt racism IMMEDIATELY. Actually, the racism wasn’t coming from just white ppl, but also another minority group. That group was the worst, they were physical. The whites were more like using the “pen” rather than the “sword” to discriminate and screw you over.
Someone can tell you to not trust so and so groups- and my parents did- but I never listened to them bc the stuff they said seemed so racist and stupid. I had friends that were white and other ethnicities growing up. Actually, most of my closest friends were white as a kid.
There’s shitty people in every group- white, nonwhite, my own ethnic group, etc. And there’s good people in every group. Also, currently, my worldview is that most humans are pretty shitty.
There IS a lot of racism in America- I’ve lived in a bunch of states and moved quite a lot. I also drove xcountry and there are some places where they literally want to lynch you, just bc you’re not white.
If your parents told you bad things about white ppl, it’s bc they have their own prejudices. You can’t change THEIR views, but you can change yours. And you can choose who to interact with. You can choose to make friendships with white ppl now. There’s nothing stopping you.
What is stopping you is you becoming bitter- trust me- I’m at this point where I am so bitter about humans- not necessarily due to racism- due to everything that’s happened to me- I rather dislike ALL humans as a whole.
If you can stop your bitterness (I’m not sure how) I would suggest you do so. You don’t want to be angry and bitter like I am.
So go, make friendships with white ppl. There’s nothing stopping you but you now.