“I’M YOU FROM THE FUTURE! YOU HAVE TO STOP CYBERDYNE FROM MAKING SKYNET! FIND SARAH CONNOR BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE! THE ROBOTS ARE ALREADY HERE! DON’T HAVE CHILDREN! YOU ARE A TEXTBOOK NARCISSIST!”
Then I’d grab a Choco-Taco.
this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2026
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Mental Health
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I would tell her how much her son would feel emotionally attached to her (I guess people call this attachment "love") and how much he would value the time they spend together but:
FOR THE LOVE OF GOD STOP BEING SO HARSH ON YOUR CHILDREN. Do you want you kids to be constantly fighting each other and ending up depressed af by the early 20s because of you? Fix ur biplar ffs, don't tell your children "I regretted giving birth to you" in a fit of anger... jeez wtf... even saying "I love you" 1000 times doesn't undo the emotion scars cause by that one moment.
(Sometimes I wonder how they'd do if they never had me.... like would they be happier without this "trouble kid" like me?)
"don't tell your children "I regretted giving birth to you" in a fit of anger... jeez wtf... even saying "I love you" 1000 times doesn't undo the emotion scars cause by that one moment."
My mom was (is? Idk, we haven't spoken in years) a depressed drunk, and I remember one time, she was weeping about how if she knew how I would turn out (a depressed autistic kid), she would've gotten an abortion, and I had to sit there and console her about her regret.
This situation is quite different to what happened to you, but it's the same in how it leaves irrevocable scars. I ended up having to cut off my mom, so all my wounds from her are old ones, but that just highlights how a scar like this never really heals. I think this memory will hurt until the day I die.
I'm sorry your mom said something so awful to you. You didn't deserve that — no-one does. Maybe you'd have still been a "trouble kid" if they'd been the perfect parents, but because they saddled you with these unfair emotional scars, you'll never get to know. That's not your fault. All we can do is try to heal as best we can.
I cuddled with her just now...
Oooh it feels so good, she told me she loves me...
I just wanna hug so tight and never let go... adulthood is so scary 😭
I think with time, trauma can get covered up... it fades...
But the problem now is that I'm not a kid anymore and there are expectations/responsibilities
It used to be that we'd just not say anything sad... like for example she might be like "do you wanna travel somewhere?" or like "what do you wanna be when you grow up?"
But the "what do you wanna be when you grow up?" now just makes me cry... because the "when you grow up" part is now "what is your plan for the future?" as in... "what are you gonna do this year", not "a decade into the future"... I haven't even fixed my deppression just yet... and its partly caused by her... and she's already accusing me of being lazy and "faking depression" and told me to stop "using depression as an excuse", sometimes the "adulthood" talks come up as we're cuddling...
So I get a mix of happiness and nostalgia and the crushing reality of aduldhood and her disappointment...
So its what I'd call a "bittersweet cuddle" (this should be an official dictionary term lol)
I think you have it worse tho, since you had to go no contact.
Idk what ever the fuck even is our relationship anymore...
I was just hugging her so tightly and she was like: "do you just never wanna grow up" lol
Idk what's with her, she seems to likes me more when I do cuddling... and she be like "I love you" and then asks "do you love me" every day... idk what to even say...
I think she's seeking validation for her decision to give birth to me. I think me being "successful" is one of the ways she feels that she didn't "waste" all this time on me... or you know... the cuddling to feel loved so that she still feels like she made the right call to give birth to me...
(just rambling...)
"I think you have it worse tho, since you had to go no contact."
Nah, I don't think it's productive to directly compare experiences in a quantitative way like this. That often just ends up with us telling ourselves that we're not allowed to struggle just because we think other people have it worse. Even if that were true, diminishing our own struggles doesn't do anything to help the other person to carry their burden.
I prefer to think of people's struggles as being so qualitatively different that it's often nonsensical to compare two experiences and say that one person has it better or worse than the other — it's neither, just different (and sometimes relatively lightweight struggles hit us especially hard if they happen to require skills that we aren't great at, or if all of our life challenges are draining the same fuel tank at once).
For instance, being no contact with my mum means I have the space that I can love and appreciate all the good she did for me, whilst healing from the hurt she caused. I'm not good with uncertainty, so although it stings that I had to do that, it was a lighter burden than trying to hold up her mental health on my own. At the time, making the choice to cut her off felt like something I had to do because I was too weak to endure the ways she hurt me, but to a friend whose parents are similar to mine, I seem incredibly strong because I did something that she wishes she could do, but she feels too weak to take such decisive action (meanwhile, I am impressed by the strength she shows in trying her best to maintain her boundaries while keeping her parents in her life). It's all relative, is my point.
I think the only reason why I would ever want to put two experiences side by side to compare is when it's being done in a manner to relate better to other people. It's like I said in my original comment: the concrete specifics of your situation are quite different from my own, but despite that, I found your original comment highly relatable. There's a few vibes in your more recent comment that are relatable too. I found that interesting, and it made me feel a sense of solidarity with you — which often helps me to bear the pain of my own struggles.
Shit's messy, but at least I'm not the only person in the world who gets what it's like to have the baggage of a fucked up upbringing
Man, this hit hard.
My mom is actually remarkably well adjusted, considering what she went through in her own childhood. In addition to enduring severe mental and physical abuse, she was also heavily parentified; when she was still a child herself, she was expected to look after her extremely young siblings — which included having to teach her 2 year old brother to conceal food when shoplifting, due to that being the only way that she could acquire food for her and her siblings when they were expected to occupy themselves out of the house for an entire day. As a result of this, she wanted nothing more from life than to be a mom — she wanted to give it a proper go at it, and do a better job than her parents did with her.
She did succeed at that, but that's an extremely low bar. It's quite tragic how, despite her desperation to rise above the circumstances of her childhood, the trauma she endured followed her into adulthood, until a ghost of it was transferred to me.
I haven't spoken to her in years, but I still feel a mess of emotions:
- Resentment for how I was a suicidal teenager who had to be her emotional support pillar
- Unconditional love, despite all that
- Respect for what she did manage to overcome;
- Gratefulness for all the ways that her efforts did pay off and she was a good parent
- Grief for the life that both she and I could have had (Things might've looked quite differently if she could've gotten therapy before having kids)
- Pride for the progress I've seen her make from afar (she seemed a lot happier after getting a dog, and she seems to be on better terms with her sisters nowadays)
- Hope that she will continue to improve.
I don't expect we'll ever reconnect, even if she does improve a lot. That's the thing about going no-contact — it's pretty final. I tried doing low contact, but she didn't respect boundaries and I ended up having to block my little brother's Xbox live account because she even messaged me on that to tell me about how much I had hurt her. I suppose I might consider it, if I knew that she had been 100% sober for multiple years — but alas, I'm unlikely to ever find this out, even if she does reach this point.
I still wish her all the best though. I can't go back in time, and neither can she. But we can both do our best to heal, loving each other from afar.
Some of y'all have legit bad parents but some of y'all out here hating on your folks just trying their best.
Like there's a difference between your parents trying and failing and your parents not giving a shit.
0 parents go into parenthood prepared for parenthood. It's just not how parenthood happens.
Suppose I would really like to learn to throw knives well, so I go to a schoolyard and try my best to throw a knife at a log without hitting the children running around behind it.
Am I responsible if my knife hits a child? I genuinely tried my best and failed.
You can't prepare for every eventuality, but parents are definitely capable of negligent or deliberate recklessness even when they try their best in the moment.
I understand if people decide to have children when oppression means choosing between that and submitting to economic genocide. But those people should then acknowledge the violence the system inflicts on them and their children, so they should be radical leftist.
It is fine to have children in a suburban hellscape if you participate in trying to overthrow the system so your neighborhood can legally be redesigned to allow your 8 year old child to safely explore the outside world without adult supervision. If you support an economic and legal framework that forces your child's dependence on you, you are culpable in that oppression.
I also understand if people decide to have children in traumatic material deprivation without underlying oppression. Rare now, but it used to be more common and with climate change it may be again. The same logic applies and parents should participate in trying to improve their neighborhood's material conditions.
In your example everyone is throwing knives. Not throwing knives gets you shunned where you might starve to death. Leaders repeatedly make speeches about how children who get hit by knives are a tragedy, but we're already doing our best! This is explicitly to ease social guilt and confound the morals of everyone who doesn't have the luxury of being able to sit down and study the system.
I can't blame the people in that system for hitting kids with throwing knives. In fact the ones who hit kids are doubly traumatized because they have to live with the consequences of actions they were coerced into performing. This is especially true if they were also hit by a knife as a kid!
I blame the system and the people running it. You should too. It's deeply childish to assume everyone shares the privilege required for having a proper leftist worldview in a system that literally criminalizes it. Someone is facing 20 years in jail for having a leftist zine with a feminist review of midsommar right now and you expect every parent to have a critical understanding of economic and social coercion???
There is a difference between hate and blame. It's perfectly reasonable to hate someone for trauma they inflicted in a way they can't constructively be blamed for. Hatred is a way to create psychological and physical distance so the trauma and accompanying schemas can heal, or at least not be triggered as often. Something has to prevent your love for your parents from getting you in harm's way time and time again. And expressing hatred can help process it, as you've helped me do just now.
Because you're right, I did muddy that difference in my mind while writing the comment. It's not that they should have been leftists, but that they should have been leftists.
I would say you don't even need to hate. If someone hit you with a knife, and is still unrepentant throwing knives and defending knife throwing, then you should rightly get away from that person for your own safety.
Just because they can't be blamed for participating in the system doesn't mean you have to accept them as they are or forgive them when they hurt you. It's like free speech, you can say what you want but I don't have to stay here and listen.
It's cool you considered what I said. Most people, often including me, just like to argue. I really enjoyed reading your reply and interpretation.
Your example is absurd and hyperbolic on purpose and in so purposed it fails miserably.
It assumes:
- Becoming a parent is inherently reckless
- The risk of harming a child is obvious and extreme
- People could easily avoid the situation entirely
- Harm is probable, not merely possible
You're position is ridiculous. I'm not going to engage with you on this topic as it is clear your position is emotional and not based on reason.
Have a nice day.
It is neither absurd nor hyberbolic to argue from a position which assumes that becoming a parent is inherently reckless, harmful, and avoidable. You simply don't agree with such a perspective- that doesn't make your position the "reasonable" one and the other "emotional." I'd like to challenge you to refute the position with reason, but I don't think you can, and I think that scares you
"A baby isn't going to fix your marriage but an abortion will improve both of our lives. Your kid will be born with something that's really not good to grow up with in the 90s where you live. Neither of you are equipped to handle it."
I would hell her to divorce my Dad ASAP instead of waiting until I'm 18. Growing up with no father would've been better than what I got.
And stop being with men who remind you of your father. He was a bully, just like mine.
buy stock in Apple Computer
I'd probably convince her to register x.com and create a payment platform on it. I feel like if that one guy never did that the world would be a better place.
Points at my father: Leave that cunt now! I don't care if I'm not born, LEAVE THAT CUNT NOW!
The solution to serious mental health problems is self-sterilization. MOM. DAD.
Having severe depression I choose this path.
Your children thank you.
That I don't have a learning disability and don't let them place me in any remedial classes, ever.