Dave: Mary, no. I am your father.

[ckrit]

There's actually something to say in favour of being exposed to manipulative people with personality malfunctions at some point in one's life, btw. Namely that the next time around, you'll spot them a mile off. In my case it has saved me from potentially very bad situations a couple of times now.

This in no way makes up for whatever happened the first time around, of course. Also, trusting people is harder this way. Which probably obviously explains why you keep people at a distance.

(Me, I trust my closest family (parents, siblings) almost without reservation, but outside of that, I still can't help keeping people at a distance, and that's not something you do away with. Not sure it's really an altogether bad thing, either.)

[Squeamous]

I just feel really sad after reading all that. It makes me sad to think you went through everything you did when you were little, Mary. I just want to give you a big hug, but you'd probably just start bashing your ears and screaming

It sounds like your dad is a fantasist and a narcissist, and it sounds as though he was attracted to women with problems who might possibly be weak enough to provide him with validation and purpose in life. Your mother probably did her best, but she was found wanting too. Then you, your brother and a number of other offspring wandered innocently into the midst of the mess.
You obviously are able to forgive, because you and your mother have reconciled your differences and she has admitted her failings. Although, her failings seem to be those of neglect rather than abuse, which I think are far easier to forgive.
I understand now where the lack of desire to have children comes from anyway

[mjmacky]

You obviously are able to forgive, because you and your mother have reconciled your differences and she has admitted her failings.

What'd you say 'bout my mama? I probably should have mapped out that story a little more clearly as well as my relationship with her since it was the only positive influence in my life.

My mom's been through a lot of shit in her life. I'll map it out in phases:
1) She was kicked out of her house at 14, married with a kid at 16, graduated college at 18 while working and raising my sister, all the while her husband at the time was very violent, broke her back once (literally broke). She was not a subservient women, which I guess really frustrated the men she was with. Her husband commits suicide when she was still 18, leaving her alone with her daughter. His family blames her for it and starts a long campaign of planting seeds of vengeance within her daughter.

2) Gets engaged to a dentist and converts to Judaism, being the unapproved Shiksa, who then forces her to carry out two abortions. She leaves the Jew.

3) Starts dating my dad who has sons from his first marriage, gets knocked up, I attend their wedding. We all move to Florida and she pops out my brother, my dad abandons her and all 5 of us children while she fends for herself and raises us. My dad comes back a little less than a year later and collects his sons, leaving behind me, my brother and sister.

4) She gets together with another man, who has 2 of his own sons and a daughter. Basically was a common law marriage situation. He pilfers money out of the accounts over a couple of years while my mom works as an accountant to pay all of the bills and household expenses, he was responsible only for the mortgage (which he wasn't doing apparently). Something happens between my step family and my sister so she goes to live with her aunt and uncle in New York. Her common law husband puts the house in her name and then takes off (not sure of the specifics on the property) when she gets diagnosed with cancer. House is foreclosed on, she hustles us up to Massachusetts, and my brother and I are eventually left in my dad's care

5) We visit her on school breaks and such without quite understanding why we don't just live with her. From her perspective she was preparing for death, making sure that we got used to living with our father while she was still alive. We would confess to her the misery of living with our father and all the shit that goes down while living with him, breaks her damn heart it does. She pushes on and enrolls in a host of experimental programs to finance cancer treatments she couldn't afford. She goes colorblind as a side effect from one of the procedures. Beats cancer and goes into remission. Up until the moment she got the good news, my father would phone her every day to ask what the prognosis was. Once the doctor confirmed her status, my father decides to get us the fuck out his house (he couldn't wait).

6) We are driven back down to Florida, reunite with our mother knowing that we'll be living with her permanently. Best fucking day in our lives. We get a cat and name her Trinity. Start living in a couple of ghettos, literally becoming the only two white boys in every neighborhood we lived in. After a year or two, our dad decides he wants us to visit. We stay with him one summer, during which he starts pressuring me to convince my mother and brother that we should move back in with him. What's the opposite of buyer's remorse, where you wish you didn't take the item back to the store? I tease him along for the rest of the summer, he wises up to the game after we get safely back to Florida. He tells us to fuck off and have a nice life.

7) She gets together with her current husband, who had just left his crazy stripper wife. Well ex-stripper, it was the only job that psycho bitch ever held. Nothing against strippers. First guy in her entire life to treat her right, he also has a couple sons, he's a real decent guy. Goes through the most fearsome custody battle for his kids, as the crazy stripper ex-wife starts banging an 80 year old psychiatrists financing an entire circus of lawyers and legal proceedings. Wins the custody battle after about 3 years of fighting, things are pretty much copacetic for several years. Meanwhile, the ex-wife continues with crazy antics during visitations, eventually wrecking her children's psyches and my brother starts really acting out. My brother goes off the map, and I move off to college. As for the step brothers, eventually they decided the mother would do far less damage to the children if they just lived with her permanently, the decision really fucked up their dad in his head. My mom and her man move up to a remote location in the mountains, he get rejuvenated and they struggle on.

And that pretty much cuts the whole backbone of it right there. There is not a person on this earth that I have more respect for than my mother. The mountain people have started influencing her political views, but other than that we get right along. She's the reason I'm a feminist, the reason I have an interest in clever writing, the reason I'm open-minded, all of that. If she didn't intelligently counsel me through so much shit that I was dealing with, I would have ended up in as bad a shape as my brother. If I didn't have to watch her struggle through so much, I wouldn't have the downright humble appreciation for the simplest of things and such a distaste for excesses.

[mjmacky]

To combine two other points you two made, how could I want children if I don't want to be close to anyone?
/rhetorical

Transitional periods, I think I'm in one.

[Snee]

We should all swap secret origin stories some time.

I heard dave got bitten by a radioactive plank and got the proportional cunning of one, for example.

[mjmacky]

In 20 years we can move our brains and existence to the internet, I'm just doing the legwork.

/scifi

[mjmacky]

Fucking Dave will be a BSOD

[Artemis]

We should all swap secret origin stories some time.

I heard dave got bitten by a radioactive plank and got the proportional cunning of one, for example.

[[

[manker]

I read all the posts in this thread this morning, including the one that was addressed to me, but I didn't have time to formulate a considered reply and didn't want to be flippant.

Now I've more or less forgotten it all and can't quite work up the impetus to read it again. Can someone please remind me tomoro that I have to do this.

[mjmacky]

I read all the posts in this thread this morning, including the one that was addressed to me, but I didn't have time to formulate a considered reply and didn't want to be flippant.

Now I've more or less forgotten it all and can't quite work up the impetus to read it again. Can someone please remind me tomoro that I have to do this.

You were meant to retract that my father was a decent fellow.