Hm, not sure I feel bad for someone who signed up voluntarily to go kill my family 🤷
My grandparents both lost children. It sounds weird to specify, but they were children from different marriages. They shared this coincidence. My grandmother had this sort of incident with the body; I think my grandfather only received the news. Both developed illnesses now suspected to be caused or worsened by stress: cancer and Alzheimer’s. They were sad people after their losses, very sad people. I do believe it slowly killed them. Just anecdotal evidence of the damage of losing a child…
I have suffered from suicidal thoughts and depression for longer than I can remember, my life has been sad and my family keep making it worse. Honestly I don’t want to think about how much they would miss me when my own mother has told me she would consider me dead if I became non religious.
I am alive because I am simply too angry to die and I will keep living on even if the pain keeps tearing me down
I think its what i fear the most with my son. He’s a toddler, but life goes by fast and one day he’ll be grown with his own problems to solve. I just give him everything i can, from love to time to entertainment, and i wish i’ll do a good enough job for him to come seek refuge to me rather than with the tool to end his life.
I love him so much, just sharing because this anon shook me with this story.
I don’t have kids. But in pondering questions like this, I would take some solace that people have always been having children. ALWAYS. Pick the most horrific events and eras in history; there were people having kids and trying to find the most happiness they could for them and their children. The Black Death? The Bronze Age Collapse? The sacking of entire cities by Mongol hoards? People living in literal death camps in the Holocaust? There were people there having children. And when they did, they did their best to give their children as good a life as they could, same as you do now.
The best you can do is teach him the tools with which to deal with and celebrate life.
I like ABA Naturally in terms of helping you practice getting into the mindset for “I want to understand why my kid is doing this, and teach them how to navigate life.”
deleted by creator
Meta comment, but I like that Lemmy can have these threads, and it’s probably mostly real.
It’s some human 4chan anon, whether they’re making it up or not.
Maybe the majority of comments here are legit.
Meanwhile, when I stumble into a Reddit thread like this (mostly when I miss old.reddit.com and get bombarded with weird engagement bait), it’s… mostly bots?
It’s either obvious, or very suspicious and likely engagement bait.
And if it’s a Tweet OP is referencing, well, that’s probably fake or bait too.
I’m sure this place will get flooded with bots, eventually, so we remake it again. The cycle continues.
Lost one of my boys a little over a year ago. Still get crippled with grief from time to time - maybe every other day now instead of multiple times a day. It gets easier, but never easy. In the process of getting a ring with some of his ashes built into them and I think that’ll be pretty special to get to bring him everywhere I go.
Not looking for condolences, just wanted to put this perspective out there in a sea of folks who seemed to have bad relationships with their parents. To those: I’m sorry. I can’t imagine.
Thank you for sharing your experience. As someone who doesn’t have kids to begin with I can’t even begin to imagine
Sending love your way <3
A large part of my younger self wanted to be a paramedic. But I quickly realized I didn’t have the emotional resilience to be one.
I remember watching Nic Cage in “Bringing out the Dead” (Excellent film by the way) and that movie putting the big ol’ nope on that plan once and for all in the early 2000’s.
My uncle was a paramedic. It really messed him up.
As an old and retired paramedic myself, there are definitely parts of me, as a human being, that will never grow back. And I worked in a rural area where you work on neighbors, family, and friends mostly. It was never easy to explain to the family that might be present that not me or god could fix what was wrong. I also did a few suicides over the years. Never easy and they leave a mark that won’t grow back by morning.
The worst thing about any of it, was meeting a family member in a cafe or store in our small town. And they would invariably come up to me and give me a hug and tell me how grateful they were that I was there for them. Despite the fact I couldn’t do shit for the dead person beyond calling dispatch and telling them to send law enforcement to come and do their paperwork and secure the scene until the funeral home got there to haul the body away.
It ruined that scene in the The Princess Bride for me.
Do you hear that, Fezzik? That is the sound of ultimate suffering. My heart made that sound when Rugen slaughtered my father.
I’ve heard it to varying degrees, but the worst was the kid that shot themself by accident because dad got drunk and left his handgun out. Mom made it to the hospital and was obviously distraught … then she saw the body.
The noise she made is indescribable. An overcrowded, chaotic Emergency Department full of hardened nurses and doctors dropped into 5 seconds of complete silence and inactivity. Even other patients screaming in pain stopped.
It triggers some primal response in your brain you didn’t know exists until you hear it. It will stay with you for the rest of your life. The sound a mother makes she she sees her dead child is inarguably the worst sound in the world.
Yeah, only once have I heard the whole ER seemingly go silent. It was when we brought in a young trauma victim, (car accident). The pandemonium of a 6 people working all at once, the voices calm but tense and a bit louder, and the er Doc standing in the corner watching and directing the action. We worked the code for maybe 5 or 6 minutes before the Doctor called it. Everything just stopped. People froze from what they were doing. And the whole ER was dead silent for what seemed like hours, but was only a few seconds before everything came back to real time.
Only twice have I had to hear the agony of a mother. Once when I did a drowning. We were searching for the husband/father. I found him in about 6 feet of water. (my big toe went into his mouth-- a feeling I will never forget). My partner and I got him shallow water along the shore. And I did the math and estimated he’d been down 25 to 45 minutes. So we agreed to call it. So I started walking to the house, all soaking wet, to deliver the news. I can still hear her wail right now as I told her and her young son that daddy was never coming home again.
The other time was when we were paged out to a 4-wheeler accident. And an 11-year-old boy somehow drove too close to a drainage ditch and rolled in about 20 feet down. I went down with a rope and found him pinned under the 4-wheeler face down in about 3 or 4 inches of water. He had been dead long enough to be beyond anybodies help. I climbed back up the ditch and explained to the mother her 11-year old son was gone. To this day I pray to whatever gods there are that he was dead before he drowned pinned face down under that 4-wheeler.
The worst part of ALL of those moments was when you were done and driving away from the scene, and you still had that pager on, and you needed to get your shit back in a row and fast. The next call was going to happen at some point. You needed to be ready to 100% focus on that call with no time, or too much time, to process what had happened.
I think often just being there makes a big difference, even if there’s nothing that can be done.
I’m sorry, that sounds so hard. Handling logistics in a traumatic situation is such a hugely important task. Definitely don’t sell yourself short. Even is you didn’t do anything you’re “holding space”
perhaps he shouldn’t have sent his son to iraq ?
Aye, don’t send innocents to war, not their war, but fuck politic dumbasses. Let ppl gain some living salaries, nothing luxury, but something to live with, throw some respect if they do weirdo decision about themselves… don’t act like an assholes who know better how others should be. Don’t push anons to such stories, to no stories where they pick a shotguns and aim, anyone.
Does everyone in this comment section have a horrible relationship with their father??
What the hell, am I the only one here NOT hating my parents??
… this is the tame, fishbowl, lemmy version of 4chan community.
Yes, yes obviously most of the people here come from very fucked up families.
… do you think normal, well adjusted, happily raised children… tend to end up anywhere near 4chan?
There’s a reason 4chan has been repeatedly targetted and 4channers have been repeadtedly weaponized by extreme right wing political groups.
4chan’s demographic is primarily fucked up young men/boys.
I think it’s survivorship bias. People with functional relationships with their parents (myself included) probably don’t feel much need to weigh in.
People’s families are complicated, and sometimes they need to vent. I (generally) don’t see a problem with giving them space to do so.
This is the exact reason I’m choosing to just scroll past some of these comments that are missing the bigger picture.
My own relationship with my family is incredibly complicated. But it’s not really about the family. It’s about the fact that somebody will miss you. But when you’re that deep into depression, it’s really hard to see.
Cherish that fact.
People rarely feel the need to talk about how good their relationship with their dad is. Well except for one friend of mine, but to be fair to her her dad sounds exceptionally good.
But yeah, my father and I haven’t been on speaking terms in a decade.
I feel like there’s no human relationship that doesn’t experience strain and parental ones can be tough.
Even though my parents are wonderful people we still have our stresses, mistakes, a few scars, and our differences. They will never know I’m bisexual, they will never know I’ve done weed let alone hard(er) drugs, they don’t share my sense of humor - so we’re not “friends” - but we do love each other.
my folks my entire life thought I was gay. even though I had girlfriends my entire adult life… they just had such a stupidly narrow definition of straightness that things like reading books and liking school made them ‘suspicious’. my siblings, friends, and even gay friends, my entire life never ever once accused me of being gay or anything other than perfectly straight.
and i still meet so called ‘progressive’, adult women, who think this way to this day… esp because i cook and clean. because in their mind, no ‘really straight’ man can do these things… actually some of did they ‘well if you aren’t gay, you must be bi’.
some folks are just so weirdly obsessed with gender stereotypes in their head, and just totally reject anyone who doesn’t conform to them.
Have experienced similar. People love to speculate on this shit, for some reason. Ain’t they own sex lives interesting enough?!
They are afraid of how it would ‘reflect’ on them. That’s why they are so paranoid about it.
They are afraid of the shame and judgment of other people knowing their child is a sexual deviant.
I dunno, it don’t think most folks are different. I have hung out with plenty of self-identified queer/sexual open people… who also viciously judge other people for what they perceive as non-conformity to their own sexual expectations. Like, queer couples who live in fear their child will be ‘a straight’ or see being ‘cis’ as a negative thing. Folks just want you to be what they want you to be, and they are mad when you are not.
People generally just feel the need to police other’s sexual behaviors and gender identity, and a lot of people have hypocritical double standards around it.
Not me. Had a great dad who disappeared after my conception
Mine was not horrible, just exasperating. I warned him about every single thing that caused him issues, but he refused to listen, and that killed him.
Sometimes I wonder how many suicides are invisible, people start to skip medicines, they dont care about health etc
that isn’t suicide. suicide is the active act of killing yourself.
dying from neglect, or self-neglect isn’t suicide.
though both, are ‘deaths of despair’. in the sense they are entirely preventable and due to a lack of emotional/social connections.
That’s a semantic distinction that doesn’t add to the conversation. Read the room, friend.
actually that’s called “passive suicidal ideation” and is in fact exactly what it sounds like:
a kind of “if this happens to kill me, oh well, at least it’s over.” kind of mindset and it is an earlier stage in the process of suicide.
quick copy paste from the wiki:
Or “PDW” when I’ve got 2 minutes to write down your life story before moving on to the next patient in handoff. It’s not uncommon for me to scribble down something to the effect of:
“PDW w/o plan iso ++life stress” (passive death wish without plan in the setting of multiple life stressors)
…multiple times per assignment. Like out of a six-patient assignment for the night I’ll probably write that at least twice.
If it’s only one specific stressor or I’m not too pressed for time I may specify. Common specific stressors include:
- homeless (most common)
- job loss
- SO/mom/dad/sis/bro/pet/fam died (usually only one buuut)
- charges
- SUD (substance use disorder)
- chronic ill.
…but yeah people be checking into the psych ward for passive death wishes that all the time. 9/10 times the stressor is homelessness and realistically many are exaggerating a little for 3 hots and a cot but I probably would too tbh and I also really don’t wanna live in a world where we gotta question the validity of somebody’s expressed suicidal ideation.
TIL. I get this when I’m off my meds. Never knew there was a name for it.
You just love being wrong don’t you
My close person died in very young age. Cancer. That person knew that was something going on because of trumor, but tried to postpone doctors visits as long as possible. When was diagnosed, it was in last stage.
On average a person will rather share negative things than positive things.
yes.
people who don’t hate their parents are rare.
even people who had wonderful parents… i know tons of them… hate their parents for not doing more for them.
a lot of children are infinitely resentful of their parents for not giving them more than they could. like, my favorite example is I dated a lady once who was enraged her parents only gave her $50,000 as a graduate gift, and spent every other date going on about how terrible and awful her parents were to her despite them giving her an objectively awesome life. She was an only child. Met sooo many people like that, and they are so weirdly arrogant, they would lecture me on how my parents being poor and abusive was ‘more privileged’ than them…
and it’s also true, many of us had really bad parents. i think my parents tried they best, but their best was objectively shitty, and it was abusive. because well, all they knew was abuse themselves, they didn’t know any better or how to break the cycle of abuse. so i had to do that. my own siblings actually, actively admit my parents were objectively shittier to me than they were to them… and they said they never really could figure out why my parents hated me so much, even though i was a really good kid who never did anything bad or wrong. for whatever reason, esp my dad, just hated me for not being what they wanted me to be, and even though I got into Harvard, they looked down on me for it. even at my college graduation they were not proud, they were resentful. what my dad wanted was for me to be a state uni football player douche bro, and what i was was a massive nerdy sensitive theater kid.
oh, and my graduation gift? Was a $20 handshake, and a bill for my healthcare costs that was like $2,000, and my first student loan payment, which was $300. lol
I think in the bubbles that we are in, including Lemmy, people with bad parents are overrepresented. Simply because of sexual minorities, progressive or radical ideas, or just plain old not conforming to the norm in terms of behaviour and character.
Plenty of people never had an issue with their parents, but also, plenty of people never had to tell their parents that they are homosexual, think their political beliefs are stupid, and have ADHD, for instance.
Plus, I would say that lonely people tend to flock together, likewise, people with no strong family ties probably end up using the internet more.
i dont know, i know plenty of ‘normal’ people who are all over the internet. True though, they don’t really use reddit/lemmy sites, they use instragram, facebook, twitter. and IME their usage is actually way heavier than my own. but I’m only on here to kill time between tasks at work.
i think people here echo chamber themselves though a lot into beliefs that are not necessarily true. they don’t kind of stand back and question their emotions towards their folks (or anyone else at all, really), or see their parents as flawed/limited people who perhaps, were just making mistakes or could never really be the parents they wished they were. my own parents were totally incapable of being the parents I needed as a child, and like, can i really be perpetually angry about that? i simple vastly exceeded them in every capacity, and sadly they resented that, rather than were proud of it. but it’s who they were, they could be any different, and i’m kind of an asshole for wishing they were.
but then again, very few people ever do that. i def have met people who are grown 30 something adults, who idolized their folks and are still in a state of emotional and financial dependency on them… which you might say the danger of having ‘too good parents’. and form where i stand it’s just… i can’t seriously imagine a parent financially or emotionally supporting me… since mine basically didn’t.
That is a bit of a hen-egg question, isnt it? Do people in certain circles see their parents negatively because the circles echo such thoughts, or because such circles attract people like that? I have no definite answer, tbh.
Maybe it is because those circles make it easier to speak about such things?
Maybe because someone who experienced hardships themselves might turn to more “left” ideas to avoid this happening to others?
I personally am very grateful to my parents, they sacrificed a lot of potential happiness for their children. And yes, they are flawed human beings in a flawed world, who make mistakes, have some issues of themselves and so on. But psychology is messy, fuzzy, and hard to wrap in nice logical statements.
it’s easy to talk about such things in therapy, but a good therapist isn’t going to bias-confirm you, or engage you in escalation/exaggeration. online communities do that, inevitably.
your therapist also isn’t going to flip out at you and call you a ungrateful piece of shit when you complain about your parents. people online and irl will definitely do that.
there is a cultural default where you are not supposed to be critical or resentful towards your parents for sure, which I think forces almost all of us to internalize this stuff. personally i’ve never had a partner who i could talk to about my parental issues without serious blowback and judgement for what a shitty person i was for daring to say such things about my folks… but my siblings? yeah they are more than happy to be critical about my parents esp def to how difficult they were about elder care, which made us all angry and frustrated with them. and i had to keep point out to my siblings… my parents were like this their entire lives… they weren’t magically like more difficult as they got older, they had always been inflexible, stubborn, and refused to be proactive… so we basically had to do all that for them as they aged.
Obviously, people online and even good irl friends cannot replace professional therapy.
I’ve seen both, the “social default” of having a somewhat ok relationship with one’s parents, and people in certain circles who tend to assume that there must be at least some difficulties.
true, some folks relationships, parental or otherwise, are just… boring and staid and uneventful and they are fine with that. some folks want something deeper, or more dramatic.
but that’s also true of their own lives. I’ve def met people whose lives seem unfathomably boring to me, but I’m sure they were happy just not in any way that i would conceive of happiness, personally. But such folks often think my life is miserable for the same reason, because what I like is boring to them.
I like my parents well enough
No one consents to being born. Love my parents, even if they are MAGA morons. Even if they kicked me out of their house when they could. Even if they give me massive shit for how I live my life almost every time I see them.
Despite all that, I can see their intentions. My mom wanted a baby to love. My dad wanted me to be a wage slave master and not a wage slave.
While my relationship with father is bittersweet, I would by no means term it horrible. The man taught me most of the things I know when banks were crushing him.
My dad was a drunk and made sure I learned every racist term in the book before I was 12. I’m sure he’d be devastated if I managed to kill myself, without ever realizing how much he contributed to the desire in the first place.
My life has only gotten better since he died. Rest in piss old man, I’m glad you’re dead.
Edits: also, single moms rule — I’d fight a T-Rex for my mom. I’d lose, but god damnit I’d try.
I’d be willing to help you train to fight the T-Rex. You don’t have to lose.
My parents are crazy too but they’re drug free, which has always confused me. The problem is their personality, not an addiction. But I have thought about how they’d react - my mom would play the victim and my dad would play pickleball/tennis. That’s just what they’ve always done. I look forward to the day they die. When all of my grandparents died my parents became slightly more tolerable. I imagine my baseline will also rise….
A similar experience I had was when I saw my mom cry and pay respects to my grandpa for the last time as he was sent to be cremated.
I respected my grandfather but as we lived half way across the world, I wasn’t emotionally attached to him and didn’t feel very sad. But seeing my mom, usually a very silly lady and a very strong, loving grandma herself, turn into a daughter saying goodbye to her dad in tears for that split second broke my heart.
I saw my dad lose his best friend to suicide in my teens. I’ve struggled with suicidal ideation since before even that. I’m not close to my dad, I have lots of issues with the man, but I can never put him through that again, no matter what.
I’ve lost several people to suicide. The hardest was a good friend I’d known for years and who had been my roommate one summer.
That one was 25 years ago and it still hurts.
