Sometimes in my posts I sound like I reached a good level in life, not at all…I still have a long way to go.
I always used to think of myself as the “nice guy”…not the passive-aggressive/user type, I mean a genuine nice guy. Anyways, I thought I cared about family but I realized I didn’t as much as I thought I did or should’ve.
My siblings and I lived with my mom until we all grew up and went off to university or started working…it seemed to happen so fast. My mom suddenly found herself alone, though I’d visit her a lot.
The loneliness was destroying her, she even asked us to stay with her for a night or two….it seemed she was experiencing some mental problems…she had trouble sleeping.
I mean I could see right in front of me that she was having issues because of the loneliness and yet I had no interest in helping her out. I guess I was selfish and liked my comfy place-I was living with my dad at the time which was in another city near my job.
Eventually I moved her to the same city so we could be closer…. She seemed to adapt; I’d call her nearly every night. But this really isn’t me and I look back and I’m eaten with guilt for bailing on her like that. She had been living alone for 8 years.
In my culture as the oldest, I’m expected to look after my parents…but it just didn’t really dawn on me. Not that I’d care about tradition either, normally I’d want to help her out anyways. But I was stuck in my own life and I could barely give much thought to someone else.
Then one day it hit me as I visited my mom…I realized her health was getting worse as she was aging….and I guess it was sort of an epiphany that loneliness is doing this to her. At the same time, I wondered how I could’ve been so dumb as to abandon her…. since I myself hated being alone, for the times that I was. Anyways soon after that I moved out and lived with my mom since then.
It’s strange we think we’re “good people” who care for others…but then realize we’re really not doing as much as we actually could. She’s doing ok now for her age (in her early 70s)…but I let her suffer alone for 8 yrs… It’s an awful thing to do to someone.
Ofc it happens all the time out there…parents leaving kids, vice versa, couples breaking up…but I just don’t know how it’s possible for anyone to live by themselves without friends/family to support them. It’s a cruel thing to do esp. to family members…kids or parents unless the situation is truly dangerous and irreconcilable.
It still bothers me that I did that…when logically not only would it have been better to stay together but financially, I have no doubt we could’ve afforded a house together…then I’d search for my future spouse after. I wish I had wised up ages ago…now I’m in my 50s and everything seems so pointless.
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quirk of human psychology; we backfill and the past seems unavoidable, and so it becomes so much easier to regret not seeing it coming….. I wish I could better describe or understand why the human brain creates this misery for itself. I’ve also never gotten a response from telling someone about this. People are just…… stunned into silence I suppose. I don’t have a similar structural understanding for why now seems so pointless.
Maybe that most people don’t seem to expect to last much longer. Life is long. I was just pontificating on it. That my great aunt was ancient when I knew her, she recently died at 106. Imagine if she made changes in her 50s, over 50 years to reap rewards, seems worth it to me.
I’m in my 30s, have at least another 40 or so years to go if actuarial tables are anything to go by. So, I’m convinced anything is probably worthwhile. Also, I distrust my own perception, so I correct for my own apathy.
but what makes a good person? we’re all works in progress. You can’t judge someone until their entire life passes. You might get an impression of how it’s going, but impressions and perceptions are often incorrect.
I’m an old pirate myself, but with a heart of gold. I’ve done awful things and wonderful things, and all along the spectrum. I don’t like the prison of being good. I can be kind, that’s about it. But I’ll whisper subversive ideas, I’ll think perverted thoughts, and now and then I’ll have a murderous impulse. It’s what I do with those that matters. If you seek to be kind, that’ll be the outcome you’ll get.
HV…well it’s bothered me off and on since I realized I could’ve done more for my mom. I think I hold myself to a certain ethical standard of how I treat others, esp. people close to me.
Not that I’m consumed by it all the time, but on occasion when I look back and things I have done or should’ve (or should not have) done, then I find myself regretting my poor choices.
Truthfully nobody really cared much for my mom, they just used here, esp. my scummy dad to get ahead. My sisters both have their own gripes with her…so they all basically left her to her own devices once they felt they could move on.
She also had a heart of gold, she’s compassionate and I think that’s where I get it from. My dad’s more selfish and uncaring but fortunately he cared just enough to help with important things in our life and that’s all I could’ve really asked for though he could’ve done more for us.
Ya I guess we all try to do the best we can at certain points in our lives…I was trying to get myself to a better place but found myself trapped in my job at the time. It was exhausting work…I didn’t have the energy to hit the gym after, though I tried many times.
What I should’ve done was to continue to try to find better work than get trapped in one hellhole. But I am a creature of habit and don’t enjoy changing often.
Anyhow, at least I wised up, though it took many years…better than just leaving her on her own….but she would’ve ended up homeless because her health was failing, so my timing was spot on. She struggled to work for about another year, until I got a decent job and then she was able to retire (from nursing) for good.
It’s just another story in life that for me reinforces the need of having Maid available to anyone at any time for the asking. If it was available, my mother could’ve maybe avoided having kids so that we wouldn’t suffer like they did and she could end her life sooner when it wasn’t worth going on.
I’d rather not have been born, knowing I came close to having a good life but couldn’t because of money problems or not measuring up in other ways or dealing with social problems.
do your sisters have legitimate gripes against your mom?
maybe you’re better to your mom bc she was better to you than your sisters. also, moms tend to treat their sons better than their daughters. that’s a universal fact of life, sadly.
It may be the case in general…but not in mine. Actually my dad favorited the youngest (Mary)…and as mentioned in my post below my mother fav’d Jane.
I mean overall it was ‘ok’…both parents treated us well in general, but in some situations they got preference…but nothing too major. My mom was pretty fair to me on the whole.
Compared to other kids I think we’re about in the middle…’normal.’
most mothers favorite their son and most fathers favorite their daughters (except in countries where boys are favorited and daughters always get screwed).
in my case, i got doubly screwed- both my parents favorited the boy- which is ok IF they treated the rest of us decently- but no. I wasn’t even asked to be treated well- just not to get beat up on or shitted on every day. Got the shittiest parents. Ruined my life. I never had much of a chance to begin with.
I am sorry to hear that you weren’t treated well by either parent.
Yes culture is a big influence-partly (maybe mostly) I blame religions that treat males as superior and females as inferior.
At the very least they should be treated equally.
There’s good and bad people in both sexes but I appreciate the best of females and I think they’re better than males.
I mean men are good at building things, solving problems…but nothing compares to being in the company of a gorgeous girl/woman.
Dare I say, to me that’s the closest thing to being with ‘God’ or that experience that some people have when they feel they’re in the presence of the divine. Esp. when you ‘click’ well with that person.
I guess I’m biased and wired to think this way….but I don’t see a better answer.
And it bothers me to no end to see girls-the weaker sex to be hurt and abused by their families and spouses.
I wasn’t going to mention it, but I think this examples nails my point. I saw one vid of a very young girl, she looked like a child maybe 10-12 yrs old, marrying a much older man…maybe in his 40s.
This was their ‘wedding’ and he smacked her, she started crying and the girls/women around were cheering…totally evil and disgusting. It was some middle-eastern ceremony.
Their age difference was bad enough, but the abuse was unaccepable. This isn’t a marriage, it’s a master/slave relatioship, rather a psychopath and his victim. And this is considered ‘normal’ in some parts of the world.
you keep focusing on how middle eastern culture is bad- and i am not defending this shit since i’m against patriarchy- but it wasn’t that long ago that the SAME shit happened in the US and Canada and UK and the rest of the world. Only after women began working during WW2 is when the west ended this shit- and it wasn’t bc of culture or bc the west was better- it was purely due to economics- bc women were now working, they didn’t have to put up with shit husbands that beat them, so white men had to stop that doing that shit. Prior to that, American men and Canadian men and British men all beat their wives too. And there were plenty of men in their 40s marrying 18yo’s as well.
Well holy shit- So I just looked this up- apparently child marriage is STILL legal in the US- only 12 fucking states have banned it without except. Holy fuck. Only 12.
“When was child marriage banned in the US?
As of April 2024, 12 states have banned underage marriages, with no exception: Delaware (2018), New Jersey (2018), Pennsylvania (2020), Minnesota (2020), Rhode Island (2021), New York (2021), Massachusetts (2022), Vermont (2023), Connecticut (2023), Michigan (2023), Washington (2024) and Virginia (2024).”
We haven’t come very far either. Just bc we ended patriarchy and DV a few decades earlier places like the ME doesn’t mean the west is SO much better and moral and just. We were doing this shit just like the ME just a few ago.
OH- and it’s not like women had equal rights here for very long either. Women still couldn’t vote until 1965. Heck, black men could vote but women still couldn’t.
And I’m younger than you but I remember growing up in the 80s and 90s where ALL the positions of power were male dominated- ex- teachers were women, secretaries were women, but all the superintendents, principals, deans, etc were men.
The west likes to think they’ve come SO far, when within a person’s lifetime, say your mother’s lifetime, she couldn’t vote, or divorce, or hold whatever job she wanted.
Again, I’m not defending ME- just saying that the “west” isn’t so high and moral. We just happened to have ended that shit a few decades before the ME- and again- that was due to economics- not bc the white man’s culture is SO much better. If women were not allowed to work and thus able to leave shit husbands, women would still get beaten just like the women in the ME.
i mean yes your mother was able to divorce- but i meant in her early childhood years, i’m sure that wasn’t allowed. idk when Canada allowed divorce, but all that shit was fairly “recent” that women had more “rights.” Certainly in your grandmother’s time, she wasn’t allowed to divorce.
In the US, even though divorce was legal, even in the 90s, divorce was not that common and very frowned upon. I know bc I grew up with everyone having both parents, I had shit parents but 2 of my friends had single mothers (out of ALL the kids in school) and it was so unusual back then. Even though it was legal, VERY few women did bc it was highly frowned upon. And the 90s weren’t THAT long ago.
From a female perspective, we haven’t come very far. Not far enough and took WAY too fucking long.
>>do your sisters have legitimate gripes against your mom?
Not at all, she was overall a good mother…in fact her favorite was the ‘middle sister’ (let’s call her Jane) we don’t really get along with-she was the trouble child.
My mom would let her get out of doing work because she thought that my youngest sister (call her Mary) and I would gang up on Jane…which was untrue, we were trying to make her realize she needs to pitch in with chores like the rest of us.
That was a dumb move on my mom’s part, because Jane then became a spoiled brat who only cared for herself. And despite being treated as the favorite she still disliked my mom-well all of us. Her dream was to get away from us and live on her own and she did as soon as she could.
She made a mess of her own life….and the rest of the family had to bail her out.
It’s just really fortunate she met the guy she did (and married)…while they struggled for a few years, eventually he got a good job in banking and made 6 figures in time…now they’re doing extremely well.
Had this sister even once considered helping myself and my mom out, despite all we’ve done for her? Not once….she’s a pretty rotten person.
“If it was available, my mother could’ve maybe avoided having kids so that we wouldn’t suffer like they did and she could end her life sooner when it wasn’t worth going on.”
Exactly. However, my mother was never the depressed type so she wouldn’t have opted to. But fuck, 3 out of 4 of her kids wound up fucked up, bc of BOTH her and father. I personally would have never wanted to have been born with too. So FML.
Ya we get hit with a double-whammy in the face, being born….because first we’ve had a taste of how good life could actually be…if the conditions were right.
But then second-we had terrible lives…that prevented us from becoming wealthy or just middle-class to be able to have a good life, if not the greatest.
I think that hurts more…to know you could’ve had an amazing life, but because of parents, money, bullies, education, or accidents, health issues, we’re kept out of the party.
Like going to a club and the bouncers stop you from going in and you know it’d be a lot of fun if you could get inside.
In that case I’d just rather never even know how good life can truly be…the amazing times people can have, if I can never have that myself.
Like I’ve dated the wrong girls and I know if I dated the right ones, I would’ve been over the moon….but now I’m older and don’t get the opportunities I once did as an example.
I’ve always found the perception of good and evil interesting.
As many have put it, we are all shades of Grey. Some darker than others, some lighter. We all have the capacity for good and evil. As human beings, we all have the capacity to care for others. Our society would not exist if we did not care for our families and friends at all.
The thing is, we are all wired so differently in out heads. We all have definitive experiences. Hell, we all go through the same things as people but we’re wired so differently that we react differently, which changes a part or our fundamental being…
The biggest thing with people is we can have certain visions about what our futures look like, but the problem is that the present is the only tangible thing that we have. We can only really make decisions in the now. The past is gone, the future in not within our grasp (either not existing or multiple versions all exist at once until we make a choice to set us down a specific path). All we can do is reflect on the past, and use it to make better decisions now, to try to steer us to a future that we prefer.
I’m not a parent, and might not ever be one, but the main thing parents want more than anything (the ones that care I mean), are for their kids to have better lives than them, and they tend to sacrifice a lot for their children. You may feel a ways for “abandoning” your mom then, but in the bigger picture, it sounds like you’ve been supporting her for a good while now. Parents tend to appreciate that.
Indeed and thanks…yes I’m sure she probably never thought anyone would’ve helped her out. She deserves better…my close sister is like a watered-down version of me when it comes to compassion…she cares, but she’d only go half as far to help my mom, while I’d do whatever it takes to make sure she’s doing ok in life.
Not that I feel I should live to serve or help others-obviously I have my own life to worry about…but you can’t put a price on what others have done for you.
For instance it’s because my mother worked like a dog to keep a roof over our heads that I was able to hang out with friends/go to parties, get a great education, have more free time when I was younger…and I took it all for granted and only realized what she had to go through when I got older…most kids have no concept of money unless they had a really tough life.
So I’m grateful to my mom for that…but even if she was a crab-apple, I would’ve still helped her out…she’s still family and I can’t hold her attitude against her….of course to a point…but in my case I’m fortunate she’s a decent person overall.