This is a rant about personal things.
It’s seems like I can never talk to my Dad without him bringing up my Mom. They divorced decades ago. My mom has some horrible psychological issues. My Dad blames the divorce on her issues, and blames her issues on my grandfather (her dad) who raped her continuously as a teenager. He says things like, “She got so bad that a psychologist told me to divorce her or else *I’D* go crazy myself”, or, “If it wasn’t for your grandfather, we would’ve never got a divorce.”
While it’s true that my mom has significant issues because of her father, I think my Dad’s just been manipulating me this whole time. From my perspective, she divorced him because of HIM. My Dad had anger issues. He would get violent, yell at the top of his lungs (even in public, embarrassing the rest of us for causing a scene), he would break things, and he would threaten people. He called my mom demeaning names. While married to my mom, he cheated on her tons of times. He is a lawyer, and is good at playing mind games.
She divorced him because of him, and her issues and depression got worse because of him. And either he’s too selfish to see it, or is manipulating the rest of us.
Now that he’s gotten older and weaker, he’s mellowed out, but he still says this shit. And it pisses me the fuck off. I’ve never really had the courage to stand up to him, and truth be told, even though my actions are my own fault, I suspect a lot of my own mental struggles are because of him. But I’m tired of holding back my true feelings from him. I’m tired of nodding my head and pretending that the propaganda he pushes on me is true. I think it’s about time I confront him. Because I think a lot of who I was got erased by him…and then the other half got erased by myself.
I dont know if ive ever felt genuine love for him. Its mostly been fear, or anger. I dont know if he knows how to love. Im not sure that I do either.
5 comments
Family stuff is tricky. Especially generational trauma. Your dad sounds like a prick, if you don’t mind me saying. What does intrigue me is your own admittance that only part of your problems stems from him. A lot of people would easily blame everything on their parents. I on the other hand have a hard time seeing my own defects as anything but my fault. I don’t really know how I got them though. Anyways back to you, I hope you’re able to really say your piece to him.
Someone once told me that what happens to you is 10% of life, and that your reaction to those things is the other 90%. The good news, I believe, is that who you are today doesn’t have to have anything to do with who you were in the past. Even if “the past” means yesterday. Every day has its own opportunities.
I do struggle still, and I haven’t always acted in prosocial, empathetic ways. But I’d like to change that. And I know that this change can’t happen without owning up to my own part in things.
How we got to be the way we are isn’t as important as how we decide to be moving forward.
Thank you for your input. I wish you well along your own journey
“How we got to be the way we are isn’t as important as how we decide to be moving forward.”
I agree that we should move forward. However…
>The problem is that whatever happened to us becomes us, and alters our view of life and thus our choices and actions.
>>And what if we’re too depressed to move forward?
>>>Depression is a terrible killer of moving forward bc being depressed means we’re too depressed to even help ourselves get back up and fight, or to do all the necessary things required to have a better life. Depression = lack of action. Lack of action = rot.
How can we move forward when we lack the energy and determination to do so? I know moving forward is what we *should* do, but depression is the 1000 lb rock on our shoulders keeping us back/stuck. No one who is depressed wants to stay stuck and depressed, but we are also victims and perpetrators of keeping ourselves stuck. I wish I could “un-stuck” myself, but I haven’t been able to…
Your parents instill a lot of behaviors into you, some right, some wrong. The way they raise you as a person tends to influence your own outlook on life and the relationships you make with people.
I was raised differently than my brother, and it took my brother telling me a lot of how he was treated to me for me to fully understand what he meant.
Familial bonds and relationships can be odd. I’d like to think that patents, the imperfect people they are, try to raise their kids in certain ways to prevent some mistakes or misteps that they’ve made, or overcompensate on something they’ve lacked.
Now, as an adult, the decisions you make are on you, and it’s important that we keep that in perspective, but our parents shape us into the type of person we become regardless, so they aren’t blameless either.
It’s as you said though, we are all capable of change, sudden or gradual. I would Ike to think we all want to live the best possible lives we can for our own selves. But life’s a *****, and isn’t easy, so we all struggle and can take things out on others undeserving as well.
It’s just an odd balance to me.
It’s weird, being on the other side of it. I grew up in a world sanitized of divorce, apart from in books and movies. I think when I was younger I would have been more sympathetic towards your position, not that I’m less sympathetic, I just understand what it feels like to be divorced, to have gone through a bitter divorce. It…. does things to you.
It’s like you watch movies about awful things, then experience them, it’s different. Child neglect, to pick a totally random example. Awful things that happen, and you don’t think you’ll ever see them, then one day you’re looking down at the evidence…… I had to use something relevant to me, sorry. I tried to think of the least awful thing.
Anyway, I used to think my ex wife was a horrible human being. It was easy to feel that way, after all I went through. To be fair to myself, she did do some awful things. To be fair to her, I might have too.
I don’t know though, if that would have been possible if both of us weren’t mental health professionals. IE, we’re required to work on ourselves, A LOT. or at least I have been. I’ve seen more trauma in my professional life than I ever saw in my personal life. So if I hadn’t been required to work on myself, for my career, to advance in life, I don’t know if I would have gotten around to admitting that maybe she isn’t a monster.
In fact, she’s probably a pretty nice person, if I were to meet her and not have all the baggage. She cheated on me, remarried and had three kids with the new guy and that took a lot for me to learn to be okay with. I really thought she deserved to move to a trailer park and develop a meth habit….. but life doesn’t work like that. That’s cartoons.