Ask Lemmy

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.

The monster that raised me was a real piece of work.

Context: she adopted me and 3 others. The other 3 were adopted when she was a single parent.

• “I didn’t want you. did.”
• “Stick to your own kind.” (In front of my mixed-ethnicity siblings, when I introduced a girl I was seeing to her)
• ”Ain’t no son of mine is going to be a ” (all 3 of my siblings had developmental disorders, I only asked to be tested)
• “I don’t want that in my house no more, I don’t want AIDS”
• “If you really hate me that much go back to your whore mother, she didn’t want you either”
• ”Nobody wants you, I don’t even want you.” (She used this one a lot)
• ”Where would you be if I didn’t take you in?” (Also used this one a lot)
• ”Read. My. Lips.” (I had moderate to severe hearing loss back then, and she refused to learn sign language. She would also get right in my face when she did that)
• ”You a now?” (When I pierced both of my ears)
• ”If you move out don’t ever come back, don’t call me, don’t talk to me, don’t ask me for diggity shit”

That last one was fun. I met my partner and snuck out in the middle of the night to fly across the world just to get away from her. She reported me as kidnapped multiple times even after I contacted the detectives AND her to let her know I was only following instructions. Then she denied she ever said that. That was the last time I spoke to her, over a decade ago.

I’m in therapy twice a week for the past few years, was recently diagnosed with adhd and autism, and non-binary transfem. My partner is Indonesian. She can rot in piss.

yeah. the majority of stuff they'd say was like that, in fact. it's part of why i don't talk to them anymore lol

• you are pathetic
• you make me want to vomit
• you are disgusting
• you are a disloyal, condescending asshole
• you are sickening
• I can’t wait until I no longer have to be around you

Borderline Personality Disorder is not a ride I ever asked to be on.

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

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."

My grandparents came to the US from Germany. Upon hearing my dad say black people that don’t like trumps (1.0) America should go back to Africa, i reminded him that most of them are way more American than we are. I could hear his brain break through the phone

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.

My step father told me about the time he told my biological father that he had slept with my mom.

I was a small child and we were all living in a house together, my mom, biological father and step father(my bio dads bff at the time). Step father took my bio father out and told him what they had done. My bio father was so happy to hear the news he shook my step father's hand and thanked him profusely. He then proceeded to tell my step father how he wanted to burn the house down with me and my mom in it so this is the best news he could possibly get.

After my step father told me this story he followed it up with "at that moment I should have known and left your mother" 🫠

My dad said various things about “dirty Mexicans”, eugenic stuff about black people or people with severe mental handicaps, and always had some offhand extreme solution for non-conformists who rocked the boat.

He kept it mostly under wraps when I was younger, but as he got older and the Fox News worm ate into his and his social circle’s brains it started leaking out a lot more.

Being sent off to “military school” was an occasional threat. Like that was going to magically fix things.

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.

Reading this makes me realize how many people had really fucked up childhoods. I feel sorry for all of you, don't give up hope for humanity, and choose (if you can) how to live your own life. There are better people out there.

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!"

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.

The money thing is such a fucked up thing to say. “Do you know how much money you cost?!” As if the price of raising children is something a 6 yo is responsible for!

If I was gay I’d have to be lobotomized, not would or could, I’d have to be.. and he’d do it himself. 10 yo and wanted my dad dead.

And the insane gaslighting! He’d stink of cigarettes, reeeeek! Clearly he’d been smoking, but would deny it with the shittiest lies: person X blew smoke in my face! I walked past someone who smoked!

Or when I got a bicycle, dad would guilt trip me af for having spent money on it. And whenever I couldn’t cycle, meaning it would take 10 yo me an hour to get there (20ish KM), he’d be fuming and say he’d sell the bike since I’m not using it..

I’m firmly a believer that having children shouldn’t be allowed for everyone. Some people are terrible and should be sterilized and enslaved. I just don’t know how to implement it, yet!

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.

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!

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.

I was eating dinner with my dad a year ago when he told me about how he believes jews secretly run the world and that there’s something fishy about the Rothschilds. I burst out laughing thinking my dad had suddenly developed a very modern online sense of humor, but unfortunately no.

I’ve never known my dad to be antisemitic, and he even explained that regular jews are a different group from the ones in control.

I straight up told him it’s ridiculous and that he needs to get off the internet, but he never agreed with me. I still don’t know how to handle the situation really.

Oh and my mom went borderline sovereign citizen a few years ago, but I don’t remember what insane thing she said first.

Let me add to that, this is something my own mother said while being of sound mind:

• parents should have the right to kill their children if they become unruly (She said it twice)

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"

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.

Yeah my dad has said so many things that have left me stunned. I have had to explain tax brackets to this man so many fucking times. He keeps thinking if he goes up a bracket the overall tax % will increase and therefore he will actually have less money.

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)