Ask Lemmy

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.

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.

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

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.

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"

After my mother passed, I spent more time with my father than before, just because I thought it was the right thing to do (and my siblings really did not care that much). I realized why I did not have a lot if contact before, he us a classic toxic boomer narcissist.

Spending more time with him did not mean that we grieved my mother's loss as a family, it was just him monopolizing the grief and needing an audience wallow in self pity. I had no say in any aspect of the funeral, he did not listen to anything I said, he never even once asked how I was, and when I talked about stuff from my life (because someone else asked), he started talking over me, making the conversation about him again. Classic narcissist parent playbook.

At some point i was fed up, and told him as much, which of course did not go over well. Complete disbelief, he acted as if I had insulted him, yelling, accusations of being ungrateful, all the bells and whistles. Not a single thought that this behaviour might have been wrong. I just left and cut contact. After a week or so he wrote me what I think was meant as an apology. What he "apologized" for was that because of his greatness, he was always the center of attention which of course emphasized my insignificance, which he can see made me feel bad. It was so grotesque that I burst out in manic laughter, my wife was seriously worried.

The good thing about this, it made me slowly unwrap what I now realize is a lot of childhood drama (which I thought was normal), and understand why my siblings basically don't want anything to do with him. Still struggling to take the step to seek professional therapy (which I know I need), but I already feel better starting to understand that how my father treated me was not because I am worthless, but because he was a really bad dad.

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.