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How to come to terms with your parents being horrible people
unknowncrash
Registered User new member
Registered User new member
Let me preface this by saying I have fairly routine therapy appointments. I am seeking professional assistance with this.
This has been a rough year. My parents have continued their already precipitous decline and in doing so I've been reflecting on a lot of experiences in the past.
In the past few weeks it's become kind of undeniable that they are just not good people. I may also be a bad person but I'm dealing with that on its own merits.
I can go over and over a million little niggles and what not, several signs of them just not giving a shit about my existence growing up, but I think it all kind of culminates into a single action: When I was 24, I overdosed on prescription pain killers and they just left me in my bed for 2 days. This was my first time ever overdosing on anything (even including alcohol) and for so long I didn't really recognize the significance of what had happened: They dragged me out of the shower and put me in my bed, didn't say a single word to me about it after, and in my mind now it kind of feels like they left me to die. Or didn't think it was worth even calling an ambulance.
And despite this and NUMEROUS other things happening when I was growing up (I could go on all day) and even more current things, I still feel a huge twinge of guilt when I say out loud that I don't like them. As people.
My mother had a stroke in 89 and my dad had one a few years ago. Neither of them are at full mental capacity anymore and it's entirely possibly my father has dementia. But the bad goes back much, much farther. And I feel fucking stupid for feeling bad for saying I don't like them.
How in the hell do I even cope with this? I'm asking a lot of different people and hoping to get a lot of different answers because it feels like I traded one thing for another: Finally admitting out loud that I think they're horrible people has lifted some kind of weight that I guess I had been carrying for decades, but now I feel guilty for thinking this way and my brain keeps going back to the 1-2 good times I think I had as if that's supposed to make up for years of neglect.
I'm just really, really confused right now and I feel like I needed to get this off my chest and maybe even get a viewpoint I hadn't thought of before.
This has been a rough year. My parents have continued their already precipitous decline and in doing so I've been reflecting on a lot of experiences in the past.
In the past few weeks it's become kind of undeniable that they are just not good people. I may also be a bad person but I'm dealing with that on its own merits.
I can go over and over a million little niggles and what not, several signs of them just not giving a shit about my existence growing up, but I think it all kind of culminates into a single action: When I was 24, I overdosed on prescription pain killers and they just left me in my bed for 2 days. This was my first time ever overdosing on anything (even including alcohol) and for so long I didn't really recognize the significance of what had happened: They dragged me out of the shower and put me in my bed, didn't say a single word to me about it after, and in my mind now it kind of feels like they left me to die. Or didn't think it was worth even calling an ambulance.
And despite this and NUMEROUS other things happening when I was growing up (I could go on all day) and even more current things, I still feel a huge twinge of guilt when I say out loud that I don't like them. As people.
My mother had a stroke in 89 and my dad had one a few years ago. Neither of them are at full mental capacity anymore and it's entirely possibly my father has dementia. But the bad goes back much, much farther. And I feel fucking stupid for feeling bad for saying I don't like them.
How in the hell do I even cope with this? I'm asking a lot of different people and hoping to get a lot of different answers because it feels like I traded one thing for another: Finally admitting out loud that I think they're horrible people has lifted some kind of weight that I guess I had been carrying for decades, but now I feel guilty for thinking this way and my brain keeps going back to the 1-2 good times I think I had as if that's supposed to make up for years of neglect.
I'm just really, really confused right now and I feel like I needed to get this off my chest and maybe even get a viewpoint I hadn't thought of before.
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http://www.issendai.com/psychology/estrangement/summary.html
If you're up for reading a book/listening to an audiobook, then Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents was also helpful to me.
Aside from that, it's just time and getting used to the idea, I think.
But fuck you — no, fuck y'all, that's as blunt as it gets"
- Kendrick Lamar, "The Blacker the Berry"
Just know it's a normal feeling and not one you should feel bad about. You're already in therapy which is ahead of where I was when I realized the same about my parents. You're on track to a happier and healthier life, and that's what you should focus on. Addressing these complicated feelings head on is a real bitch sometimes but it sounds like you're on the right path. I've bogged myself down with guilt and stress over my parents to the point where it affected me not just mentally, but physically as well. I stopped taking care of myself entirely because I kinda figured I was already a fuck up in the eyes of those whom I cared about.
In the end, you only get one set of parents, but you also only get one life. If it means being happy and loving yourself, cutting them off or whatever you feel is needed can save you. I left my home as soon as I was 18 and supported myself with basic jobs. It was some of the hardest times of my life, but I successfully got out from under parents that made my life hell and didn't seem to really care. To this day I still harbor resentment towards my mom and stepdad for things they've done and never once apologized for. You just have to be the bigger person and acknowledge that sometimes, walking away (even temporarily) is the right thing to do.
Whatever you chose to do, talk to your doctor(s) and friends because it's important to have that network. I was alone a lot through my hardest times, and I didn't have to be.
It's also okay to feel like you don't owe them anything and like you should walk away. You can't always dodge the way your emotions hit you, but whatever you are feeling is okay. Family relationships can be complicated and difficult to navigate, and you don't need to love them or hate them any more than you need to feel that they've always done right by you. You don't need an excuse.
When she died, the sense of pure relief he felt screwed him up pretty badly for about a decade. He never tried to get any help and it made things a lot worse. So I guess I just want to echo ceres and Local H Jay and say it's OK to be feeling this. If you owed your parents any appreciation or loyalty it sounds like they've long ago squandered it., but that doesn't stop feeling empathy for where they are now.
Working through this means that if and when you become a parent yourself, it's going to be a lot easier not to pass the bad shit on to your own kids.
She has never experienced a happy marriage and is married to a man she despises exclusively for the money. I got with a social worker and a Tawkify matchmaker to redouble my efforts in learning about healthy relationships.
I've heard about that book, I'll buy it.
I want to say my parents were more neglectful than actively abusive. I still remember my senior year in high school when I found the open letter from my school on the kitchen table saying I missed 45 days of the semester but they never said a word. And when I was enlisting, we found their number (they moved without telling me, but to be fair I was homeless at the time) and called them for something or other and their first comment to me was "We thought you were dead," but they had never opened a missing persons report. My birthday was regularly forgotten. I never had "the talk" about anything, really, and was often told I was being dumb for worrying about certain things (like when I was younger and the concept of death first really sunk into my head, they just literally laughed at me when I told them).
My dad told me at 12 years old that I was allowed to do whatever I wanted, as long as I stayed out of trouble... which just turned me into a good liar and a manipulator. These are things I'm still struggling with to this day.
It's good to know that it's both not normal, but also not super unusual either.
This makes me go o_O Who knows if they tried to tell you? My guess is they didn't, because the pattern from what you're saying is that they wouldn't, but this isn't work that you need to do. It's fine to be hurt by that.
She did go to his funeral, although only to "witness the fact that the old bastard is actually dead" as she put it.
I came clean and just told him exactly how I've been feeling. Before I could even get to why, he muttered "Oh thank god."
Apparently it's been something he's been living with for 14 years, since they're 2 minutes apart.
He's a navy vet and has some pretty serious PTSD. Apparently one day my dad lit up a bunch of black cat firecrackers and threw them under my bro-in-law's chair at a family barbecue. Says he hasn't been back to their house since.
Wow, what an absolute piece of shit. Even leaving aside PTSD that could end in someone getting seriously injured or worse.
That said, do your parents have someone looking after them? It sounds like they both need some kind of assistive care, and if they've burned so many bridges, that might be hard to get.