4 ms·

I feel nauseous when I accidentally stumble into Reddit shame and pity fests. I’m honestly terrified of what my children will blame on me some day. Just an ex

I feel nauseous when I accidentally stumble into Reddit shame and pity fests. I’m honestly terrified of what my children will blame on me some day. Just an example off the top of my head: “aita for cutting off my parents because they kicked me out of the house when I was 18?”, followed by thousands of comments digitally lynching the parent in question and wallowing in the terrible trauma the OP experienced. I wasn’t planning on kicking my kids out at 18, but the responses had me crying for the poor parent. There’s no nuance in internet discussion. People read a sentence, attach their own worst demons to it, then flay them alive for all to see. My own step sister has gone full q anon now, but before that repeatedly posted about her traumatic childhood with no real specifics. When pressed for details, the worst she could come up with was that her dad yelled sometimes and introduced her to a few too many girlfriends.

MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
edit: i guess my comment was a little too personal to state.
- tablespoon 5y ago
  How is this in response to the GP at all? Did you reply to the wrong comment?
- nkingsy 5y ago
  This sounds really hard. I guess my question to you is, what would be a helpful reply for your mental state? I could say “people like that shouldn’t have kids. They’re lucky you didn’t post their address or I’d go remove their ability to reproduce myself”. Would that help you? What if I said “what were their childhoods like?” We’re all doing the best we can. Sounds like in your parents case that wasn’t very good, but perhaps compassion and acceptance will help you do better if you choose to make the next generation. My mom is a raging narcissist, and until I accepted that in her, we had real problems. Now I just understand that I’ll never get an apology from her about anything, and enjoy the good parts. I mostly feel sorry for her that she lost her father to alcoholism at a young age and is sort of stuck at age 13 in some ways. She burdened me with a lot of stuff growing up that she shouldn’t have, but it’s relatively simple to trace that back through history and see that this was inevitable.

MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago

edit: i guess my comment was a little too personal to state.

tablespoon 5y ago
How is this in response to the GP at all? Did you reply to the wrong comment?
nkingsy 5y ago
This sounds really hard. I guess my question to you is, what would be a helpful reply for your mental state? I could say “people like that shouldn’t have kids. They’re lucky you didn’t post their address or I’d go remove their ability to reproduce myself”. Would that help you? What if I said “what were their childhoods like?” We’re all doing the best we can. Sounds like in your parents case that wasn’t very good, but perhaps compassion and acceptance will help you do better if you choose to make the next generation. My mom is a raging narcissist, and until I accepted that in her, we had real problems. Now I just understand that I’ll never get an apology from her about anything, and enjoy the good parts. I mostly feel sorry for her that she lost her father to alcoholism at a young age and is sort of stuck at age 13 in some ways. She burdened me with a lot of stuff growing up that she shouldn’t have, but it’s relatively simple to trace that back through history and see that this was inevitable.