This feels quite minor compared to most of the stuff here, but something that has stuck with me.

I was on holiday with my parents when I was younger - maybe around 12 or 13. We were on a short boat trip, and I noticed my dad was wearing a baseball cap. In my mind I had this cute scene of me taking the hat off his head and putting it on myself, and all of us laughing. Kinda wholesome. But the second I reach for the hat he whacks me hard around the back of my head. I was more confused than anything - why did he instantly resort to violence? I hated the injustice of it; the image in my mind of doing something fun, something you'd see other families doing, but then the actual result being the complete opposite. I never understood it, but then I've never had much in common with my dad.

Well, mine both died, so there's that.

But prior to that they voted for Brexit.

Refused to acknowledge cystic fibrosis is actually a real difficult struggle that I needed help and support with

Me - "if you can't uld go back and change your divorce from Mom, would you change anything?"

Dad - "no"

The man left and I mean LEFT. When I told him about how much that had damaged me, I asked him this. This is merely a crumb of how little a shit he gave about me. Die alone, fuck face.

Metaphorically speaking, but putting the boot down on the neck that is the form of my individuality. They both did a terrible job in preparing me for life. Their idea of readying you for life is going on tireless banters about themselves and maybe a couple lessons dropped in between. There's just no recovery when parents just do not prepare for you for life, leaving you into a life full of struggle and improvision.

Calling me heretic and deviant in my early teens, Getting enormously angry when I try to challenge their viewpoints (once they said that even if we are wrong, you have to say that we are right, upon which I remained silent and they get angry), Being against other religions and ideologies, mocking them and calling LGBTQ+ a mental illness (luckily, I did not come out to them), Being angry and thinking I am arrogant if I choose not to talk to them and to be in my own space, Forcing me to eat and drink a lot more than I want, Comparing and belittling me yet still saying "We love you", Not letting me go outside and now they complain why I don't go outside, Always saying, "We did not even beat you or did anything physical. We give you so much comfort but you disappointed us, you pimp, dog, bastard", Saying I am not masculine just cuz I am extremely careful not to neglect my sunscreen, I get sick here and now and so I trust medicine over the pseudoscientific remedies, and many other things which made me lost trust in them and entire humanity and even myself sometimes. I will not forgive them.

I adopted a baby from a different race and my father only talks about the white one, refused to meet the other kid.

father in law posted KKK shit on his Facebook page.

we'll just prune those two branches now....

Called my partner a gold digging whore (hilarious, considering she was earning 3x as much as I was at the time) and outright said I should marry the woman (daughter of a family friend) that they liked for me and keep my partner around as a side piece because "a real man knows how to make everyone happy".

I don't speak to them any more.

Remembering all the times growing up when teachers suggested I get tested for ADHD and my mom would refuse because she "wanted me to be me, not a zombie" but was wildly disastrous for my future. Now she claims she has it too.

Then she voted for trump 3X.

Probably variations of

"I'm going to kill myself cause of you."

And

"You have to love me or you have to leave."

We left.

My mom told me that she heard my soon-to-be-wife say some really horrible things about her and my kids behind my back.

Whatever she thought that would accomplish didn't work, because I had already told my wife to start recording her interactions with my mom. (Clearly not my first rodeo)

Mom wasn't real happy when I told her I'd listen to the audio.

Used the fact that he named me after himself to commit fraud using my name.

Told my friend that he's like the son he never had, in front of me.

My mom and dad divorced soon after I was born because my mom had cheated on my dad and gotten pregnant with my little sister from her first husband. So I have the privilege of having an older brother and a younger sister that have the same dad and mom and me in the middle with a different dad and a different skin color.

Life was what it was, but then my dad, who was a huge Trump supporter and refused to mask up, got the 'rona and died from it. To this day I have no idea why my dad was a Trump supporter, Trump stood for everything that he personally hated, but for some reason just the delulu had gotten a hold of him.

His wife, my stepmom, put an obituary paper out and named my older brother and me but left my bastard younger sister off of it because my older brother had realized his dad was a piece of shit and asked my dad to be his dad in his place, which my dad agreed to while my younger sister had explicitly told my dad to forget that she exists, to fuck off, and to never speak to her again, to which my dad said, okay.

My mom called me up to bitch me out that my little sister was not included on my dad's death notice, and in the middle of bitching me out, told me she wishes she had divorced my dad sooner, and even though she didn't say it, she was implying that she wished she had divorced him before she had gotten pregnant with me.

I called her a cunt and blocked her completely for three and a half years, unblocked her to chew her out when I saw that even though I had her block she was sending me links to TikToks which I don't use TikTok to show me videos that say "I don't know what to say to you".

I am finally reaching the point where I can be rationally angry instead of irrationally angry when I think about it.

This is not the first time I've cut my mom out of my life. The first time was when I was 17 and I chose to be homeless for years rather than to enable her to enable her abusive husband to abuse me.

The only reason I ever opened the door again and allowed her back into my life was because my dad pleaded with me to do so.

So when she cursed his dead body, and implied that the child that she had with him should never have been born, despite the only reason she was in a position to do that was because the dead man had vouched for her, out of love, was fucking a bridge too far.

And I also have blocked my sister. She should be fucking ecstatic that my dad did precisely what he asked her to do.

going into my backpack and stealing my HRT while i was in the shower, and refusing to give it back

Does it count if it's the parent of my kid? When our daughter was around 1yo my ex-wife got mad at her for being too selfish. I found her pouting not wanting anything to do with our 1yo because she was "not nice to her". That really opened my eyes to her personality.

For context: I had an uncle who was an alcoholic/addict, with his addiction being the result of immense trauma he suffered as a kid. He was fired from his job in the medical field after writing himself scripts, and made a genuine effort to turn his life around. He went to AA and other therapy, brought his sponsor/buddy to events where there would be alcohol, and generally took it seriously and worked to improve.

A few years later, we got a call in the early morning. He had overdosed and died after an argument with my aunt. It's unclear whether it was a relapse or if the overdose was intentional, and to be honest it didn't matter. My aunt was distraught, he was dead, and their kids now had no father. It was a horrific tragedy.

When I got up to ask what the phone call was for, my mother had a huge smile on her face. She thought his addiction was a moral failing that automatically made him a bad person, but she also judged him badly for needing AA and the buddy syatem to stay on track. She told us, with glee in her voice, that he had "finally killed himself".

It took everything in my power to not lay into her, which I didn't do only because I knew she would never change her mind. It was just the latest and worst example of her horrid behavior. I never told my aunt, but I did tell other members of my extended family when they asked why I didn't talk to them anymore.

Cheated on my mom with a vile woman who had vile children (most much older than me) Let her push my sister and I around and eventually away. Stood there and did nothing while her entire family belittled and emotionally abused my sister on a near daily basis and had the balls to ask us why we don't reach out to him. There is a lot but that's the tldr.

I’m reading this at the moment. It sounds like you might have active abuse rather than detached neglect (which I believe is also abuse).

This stuff impacts us and those around us in the future. From personal experience it’s well worth talking to a pro about it.

Choosing to invite my Jan 6er uncle to family events knowing I would never break break with an insurrectionist traitor.

First, I stopped attending family events. Eventually went no contact. Now my happiest recent memory of my mom is when my daughter couldn't remember her name.

Despite countless requests to not, they sent me to a parochial school where I was physically and sexually abused.

I'm gay but like, the kind that almost got murdered in the 90s for coming out in a rural high school (I know Judy Shepard well). Fast forward to my mom telling me she's conservative in every way "except she belongs to the log cabin republicans" and I just lost it. "God gave you a gay kid so you could realize everything else they're saying is a lie, too, but you're too stupid to get that."

And that's when I suddenly realized she had been outright abusive and manipulative my whole life, and it was just this idea of a perfect mom that clouded my vision on it. She weaponized her kids against our dad, his family, anyone she didn't like. Because she was too much of a victim to fight her own fights. Emotional incest. Lots of therapy fodder.

Buying a brand new car when I didn’t have a bed to sleep on

During covid my dad would not wear a mask willingly.

It shattered my perception of him, that probably will not ever go back to what it was.

She got drunk and was crying about her regret about not aborting me. She came from a larger family and wanted more kids than she ended up having, but my dad's personal limit was 2-3 kids — and kid number three was only to try for a daughter if kid number 2 ended up being another boy. Me being a girl meant that she could only have two kids, and the fact that I was pretty fucked up means that she felt like she'd "wasted" a kid on me, so to speak

I don't blame my mum for having these thoughts, as awful as they may be. At the time, I had not long since been diagnosed with autism, and my mental health was pretty awful too, which must've been a lot of stress for a parent to handle. What I do blame her for is being deeply depressed and having her teenage daughter be her primary (and basically only) emotional outlet.

Whilst I am theoretically open to having a relationship with her in future, if she ever got sober (though that seems unlikely I'd learn of her being sober, as I went No Contact with her years ago), I'll never be able to forget how much she hurt me. She wasn't the root cause of my mental health problems, but she certainly made them a hell of a lot worse. And given that she never remembered the stuff she said when she was this drunk, I'll never get the closure of a genuine apology.

What's especially tragic about my mum is that she's actually pretty well adjusted, considering the awful childhood she had. The main thing she wanted from life was to be a mum, and to do a better job than her own mum had. I do think she achieved that, and there are so many things that I feel appreciative of her for. Unfortunately, no amount of good can make up for the hurt that she caused when she'd get drunk and pile her grief onto me. Most of the time her drunken tears were far less hurtful, but it's still a heavy burden to put on an already struggling teenager.

It's a shame, because I think she could've been an incredible parent if she'd been able to get therapy in the few years after she moved out but before she fell pregnant.

Sent me a registered letter requesting I reply in kind and explain why he should keep talking to me.

20 years later he had no regrets, saw nothing wrong with what he said and did. Thinks we should carry on from where left off. He is also now disappointed with me because I never told him I have another kid. He wanted nothing to do with my other two but I should run around seeking his approval.

My mom poured bleach into the enclosures of my brother's pet tarantulas when she was kicking him out over laundry or something.

He's a better person than i cause he still cares about her

• entering my flat multiple times without my consent/knowledge and not leaving when asked to (thanks for the 3h meltdown where I was completly locked inside my brain and couldnt do anything but repeat a few words over and over and rock back and forth on the couch, really liked that one)

• ignoring obvious signs of mental/neurological issues in their child (because somehow children cant have those??)

• treating our relationship as something transactional

• forcing me to do activities i really dont want to, trying to argue away my fears and thinking they "won" after i shut up

I might talk to them again if they write a letter apologizing for atleast something. I havent told them this and i realise that its kind of unfair to set a condition that the other party doesnt know about, but if they dont come to this conclusion themselves then it doesnt feel genuine to me. It really sucks because I have no other people to rely on (emotional and material) but it also kind of was like that before I stopped talking to them, because every favour needs to be repaid or might be used in an argument against me and every fear and concern is argued away.

edit: oh and i realise that some of this is my fault because i really am sometimes difficult to deal with and very stubborn and i try to take responsibility, but at the same time it often feels like I have to work with both of my hands tied behind my back and I wasnt given the tools as a child to do better.

It wasn't just one big thing (although there were plenty of those), it was death by 1000 cuts. In the end it was something relatively small. I asked her to remove me from her regular right-wing email blasts and she refused to do so. What kind of asshole refuses to do something so small for a complete stranger, much less a family member? A malignant narcissist asshole.

If you haven't read up on narcissistic family systems there's a lot of good content out there. Here's a short article.

My father controlling me up to the age of 18, and preventing me from doing anything I wanted at home or at school (it was a prison, not the regular "school is boring"). The result is that I did nothing at school because I had anxiety 24 hours a day.

When I became an adult, I didn't knew what money or taxes were, I didn't knew that I had to take showers (because homework is more important), and I didn't knew how to use toilet paper. I used to take a bath once every two weeks because why not instead of taking daily showers. It took me 10 years to learn basic stuff like cooking or washing my ass.

Now that he's old and dying, he wants me to listen to his advice and help him with his phone and computer. I don't answer to such demands. And I'm pretty sure that when he dies, I'll only be sad for my mother, not him.