12 ms·
After my dad died, we found the love letters
- haritha-j 11mo agoThats so sad, and good reminder that we shouldn’t force others onto lifestyles that we want.
- justinclift 11mo agoYet ever increasing housing prices in the west force many into lifestyles they don't want. :(
- haritha-j 11mo agoI'm not sure I follow
- justinclift 11mo agoClearly?
- mac-attack 11mo agoA very adept writer.
- npinsker 11mo agoYes, one of the best pieces I've ever read posted here.
- yzydserd 11mo agoAgreed. I just hope they repair their Shift keys soon.
- zdc1 11mo agoI don't know the age of the author, but interestingly, Gen-Z doesn't seem to use that key
- nojs 11mo agoIt’s ironic because you have to go to additional effort to turn autocorrect off, which contradicts the “i dont even care” effect they’re going for
- popularrecluse 11mo agoIt's a lot less effort than changing every nth word because of an aggressive autocorrect.
- Esophagus4 11mo agoBaby boomers have used up all the capital letters on Yelp reviews and Facebook rants, unfortunately, and have left none for future generations.
- esafak 11mo agohttps://www.ling.upenn.edu/~beatrice/humor/clinton-deploys-vowels.html https://www.ling.upenn.edu/~beatrice/humor/clinton-deploys-v...
- impure-aqua 11mo agoThis is not really anything new, back in AIM and SMS messaging days, people would type "wuu2" or "whats up" to a friend, but to express the same idea in an email, you would probably be sending some variant of "What are you up to?" There is massively different subtext between the two. Autocapitalization and autocorrect represents a limit on the subtextual bandwidth you can communicate along with a message. Restrictions on subtextual bandwith are not ideal when your generation relies on text-based communication for evermore intimate interactions - that "whats up" message might be the start of you asking someone out on a date, I don't want it formatted the same way as a message I would send my boss.
- pja 11mo ago> “He wasted his entire life, my mom said to me, the evening we found the love letters. His entire life, and mine as well.” What a burden of expectations to lay on both yourself & your own family. I’m glad the author was able to put those aside & live her own life more authentically than her father did.
- arpinum 11mo agoThe author may be unduly harsh on her father. He got to be publicly married and have a private gay life. He didn't have to live with his wife much. He liked the idea of having a daughter. Given the hand he was dealt it's a pretty good outcome for himself. Grossly selfish, but not a waste for himself.
- ivape 11mo agoSome don’t fully understand that the universe does not owe you any camaraderie in your affairs. Not even a small mouse to talk to. Many live the same paths we live entirely alone. While life took from her a real romance, it did not take from her partnership. Friends along your travels is not guaranteed, neither are best friends, or the bestest of best friends. Make do, seriously.
- noduerme 11mo agoWho's to say the mother didn't have an affair or two along the way? People usually do know what they're marrying into.
- lazide 11mo agoYup, though often will deny it if it comes out. The ‘subconscious’ part is not often fully unknown forever, even if it may be uncouth to acknowledge such awareness.
- prmoustache 11mo agoThis, I do think parents have a right to secrecy. Kids don't have to know everything. Even the idea that our partners/spouses/SO should know everything about us is waaaay too extreme. I think that as long as we love and don't hurt each others and we respect the rules we set between each others it is ok to keep some things secrets. From what I understand from the author's post, the whole marriage was a big lie to begin with so it is not like authors parents really loved each others. While we can criticize his father for not accepting divorce and thus allowing his mother to rebuild a life, we can hardly call him cheating. And I don't think kids have a right to know everything. I know my parents have had at least one major crisis when I was a kid without knowing the specifics but I have no right nor need to know why. It was between them. A lot of couples only stay married because it is easier from an organisationnal, social and economic point of view than divorcing anyway.
- inglor_cz 11mo agoI like the storytelling, but the sentences without caps are pretty hard for me to parse. The constant search for the beginning of the next sentence destroys the emotional experience for me; I just can't dive into the text and feel "submerged".
- rjdj377dhabsn 11mo agoAgreed. I normally find the complaints about formatting to be petty, but for a long form writing piece like this, all lowercase is just a bad choice with no discernable upside.
- mierz00 11mo agoI’ve come to love this style of writing. While not quite the same, Tim Winton’s Cloud Street felt similar. Just raw thoughts, no rules.
- inglor_cz 11mo agoThey still respect writing rules, in fact - except for the capitalizations. If they wrote, say, phonetically instead, the text would become utterly unreadable, even though the raw thoughts in one's head aren't expressed in written English.
- nkrisc 11mo agoCapitalization would not change the content at all, but would make it easier to read. People reading English have expectations are capitalization. Breaking those expectations makes the text more difficult to read and feel less effortless.
- mierz00 11mo agoIt’s a stylistic choice, it doesn’t have to cater to peoples expectations.
- 11mo ago
- mettamage 11mo agoOne of the few posts where I was happy to not see any comments yet, lest I would just read all the comments and not the story
- cyanmagenta 11mo agoI love all the unexpected twists in this. And it’s very beautifully written and sobering. > the most important thing was to find xin fu in life, not to live your life in accordance to the expectations of anyone else That is why I write all of my code in uncommented C. Your expectation of a maintainable program that doesn’t segfault all the time is just your expectation. > he wasted his entire life, my mom said In some ways, she did too by listening to her mother and not just getting divorced as she had wanted to. But I recognize that going against your family’s core beliefs is easier said than done.
- lazide 11mo agoThere is no path without some things missed, or regretted. Some people will always see the regrets, some will always see the positives. That it is any other way is just something we tell ourselves to try to provide more foresight or potential meaning than is really available.
- apples_oranges 11mo ago"He wasted his life", sounds so dramatic, but what does it really mean. It's just an emotion like regret triggered by made up standards. If things were different and in the end they would have said "he lived his best life", what difference would it make except a few different words, differently arranged. Not sure what my point is, but perhaps being too much into Buddhism and similar things made me lose touch with more normal human emotions.. or I live in regret myself and push it aside, ha.
- ninalanyon 11mo agoThe waste is that he, and I too, could have lived a happier life had we had the courage and opportunity to come out earlier.
- tossandthrow 11mo agoThe thing is, that This is speculation (with all respect). I, on the other hand, do not lack courage to do hard things. But I have learned that it is a strawman - it does not make you happier to quite you job, leave your spouse, go for your passion in a startup, etc. Luckily I fucked up everything in that fever dream early enough that it did not have substantiel impact on my life.
- dbancajas 11mo agotell us your story
- tossandthrow 11mo agoSo many people are telling this story. Ryan Holiday, Mark Manson, Michael Easter, Marcus Aurelius.
- appreciatorBus 11mo agoThere is no way that any of us, including the man and the author, know that he would have been happier had he made different decisions.
- james-bcn 11mo agoIt mentions “boskovitch's installation”. I looked it up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_Fan_(Feel_It_Motherfuckers) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_Fan_(Feel_It_Motherfu...
- harry8 11mo agohttps://x.com/handbarfs/status/1741365674008559962 https://x.com/handbarfs/status/1741365674008559962
- skylurk 11mo agoThere's a follow-up posted already too. https://www.jenn.site/my-dead-deadbeat-gay-dad/ https://www.jenn.site/my-dead-deadbeat-gay-dad/
- Mistletoe 11mo agoYeah kind of wish I hadn’t read that one. But the whole truth is always best to know. Somehow makes his story so much more sad. Edit: Oh my goodness didn’t realize this was the same Dad from: https://jenn.site/my-dad-could-still-be-alive-but-hes-not/ https://jenn.site/my-dad-could-still-be-alive-but-hes-not/
- moralestapia 11mo ago[flagged]
- James_K 11mo agoGross.
- moralestapia 11mo agoHmm, idk man, you shouldn't say such things. The author has suffered enough and you call xir that on top ... be more considerate of xir situation.
- noobermin 11mo agoOk... This is writing about a real person. I certainly hope you don't see yourself as so one dimensional, why should others be?
- Mistletoe 11mo agoWhat?
- 11mo ago
- djohnston 11mo agoThis is a sad story but I don’t like that the onus is entirely on the father to have ended things and lived his best life. He also was under pressure. He also had a family and was trying to juggle things the best way he knew how. It is tragic to live this way but I cannot consider him a villain of any sort.
- dtech 11mo agoThere's a follow up linked a few times in the thread, and unfortunately he looks to be pretty villanous
- lazide 11mo agoThe person who ends up making decisions which underpin what actually happens, almost always does. It’s easy to throw them under the bus, but the followers generally always know what’s going on - when they aren’t actively avoiding it anyway.
- lr4444lr 11mo agoPeople are rarely anything less than complicated.
- appreciatorBus 11mo agoNone of us here ever knew the man, and the only reports we have on his life are from a pseudo anon author who admits that they also did not know him very well. That any of us, including the author, are justified in calling him "villanous" is a big stretch in my opinion. It feels more likely that the author, and perhaps you, simply disagree with the decisions he made. Which is fine, but a far cry from villainy.
- fragmede 11mo agoWe don't have a 24/7/365 video feed of the man's life with which to throughly judge him on, this is true. So casting him as a villian based on this shadow caricature version of a story we've been told might be unfair to the actual person. We're not Michael at the heavenly gates or Osiris or Anubis though, we're just going off of what's been written. Do the actions of that man as described not qualify as villainous to you? It’s small, affecting only the lives of those in his immediate vicinity. But it’s still not good. Maybe little V villainy not big V villainy like Voldemort?
- ChrisMarshallNY 11mo agoEven though many of us might not relate exactly to the circumstances, we can relate to the feelings. She’s an excellent writer. Some of her other essays are good. Many years ago, I read The Bridges of Madison County. This reminds me a bit of that.
- omg2864 11mo agoI barely comment but this is time it is worthwhile - please read the article first, it is worth it and the comments might spoil it.
- cinntaile 11mo agoRead the follow-up too, there are some unexpected twists. https://www.jenn.site/my-dead-deadbeat-gay-dad/ https://www.jenn.site/my-dead-deadbeat-gay-dad/
- Vinnl 11mo agoThank you both, I'm glad I ended up reading these first.
- Dumblydorr 11mo agoWow, driven to a lifetime of harmful decisions by an extremely regressive society. Would he have settled down and been faithful if he could have started off right in his teens, open and truthful and honest? Lies become a habit and I’ve known others who couldn’t break themselves of the cheating/lying habit and lost whole friend groups for it.
- Permit 11mo agoIs there anything he could have done that you would not excuse by the society in which he was born?
- delecti 11mo agoThat comment explained what led him to be that way, but I don't think it justified his actions.
- mensetmanusman 11mo agoIf he killed all of society, it would be hard to blame society for that.
- frankdenbow 11mo agowhen my mom died i found a bunch of letters she wrote to people but never sent. Theres so much to peoples lives that you can never fully know and some of the things really shocked me. Appreciate you sharing your story, many parallels that I can appreciate through reading.
- NoboruWataya 11mo agoInteresting follow up post, published the same day: https://www.jenn.site/my-dead-deadbeat-gay-dad/ https://www.jenn.site/my-dead-deadbeat-gay-dad/
- gritten 11mo ago[flagged]
- stavros 11mo agothats quite the strong response to what is, in essence, a matter of preference
- inglor_cz 11mo agoCommunication conventions aren't "just" a preference in the sense that they actually lower the friction inherent in any communication. It may be pretty hard to understand other people even if you use the same conventions to write down your thoughts. It becomes harder when the conventions aren't kept: the extra processing necessary has non-zero cost. Imagine Debian maintainers releasing a slightly incompatible TLS library because of their preferences.
- stavros 11mo agoRight, but if this piece was clearly optimising for something other than efficiency of transmitted information, and that's why it was good.
- inglor_cz 11mo agoI feel that this piece was trying to convey some quite profound emotions, and quite successfully so, but the insistence on non-capitalization was just getting in the way of this main effort.
- ninalanyon 11mo agoThat made me cry. I don't suppose I shall ever read it again but I have saved it in my cache of personal web pages. I'm so glad I finally came out to my family and friends.
- 0dayman 11mo agowho doesn't love dota :)
- 71bw 11mo agoIf we mean the game - then me. I never got over the lack of automatically moving camera, I prefer league simply because of that.
- quitit 11mo agoFrom reading both posts, there's a few things that come to my mind: - It seems this is how the author is processing her father's passing, and it's not really up to us to make moral calls on the content of the posts. They are thoughts with gaps of missing context against a real life of highs and lows which is not readily condensed into a blog post. - I'm peering into the life of a private person, that feels like a violation. Even though they have passed, the people around them are very much alive. - We can't makes guesses at what a person truly values, neither positively nor negatively. What can be seen as promiscuity can also be seen as seeking validation, human motives and emotions exist in the grey area. - This is a person who was deprived of the sort of genuine sexual and emotional attention that we take for granted from puberty age. They lived as a type of outsider in school, work, and their daily norms. The integrity of their actions shouldn't be evaluated against our own values which were likely built from a different life experience. - It's ok not knowing or judging. One has to practice a type of "radical acceptance" when reviewing these sorts of life matters.
- noduerme 11mo agoI agree with all of what you say, and while I thought the author was very good, I think calling him a coward was an unnecessary stroke of vanity and bitterness. For the same reason that no one can ever know what's inside another person's mind, much less a child understand their parents.
- pwillia7 11mo agoIt ain't all waiting on you. That's vanity.
- anon84873628 11mo agoSo when can we judge someone a coward then?
- ang_cire 11mo ago> I think calling him a coward was an unnecessary stroke of vanity and bitterness. I think given that the writer, who lived in the same culture with the same dangers and expectations, decided to accept the risks by coming out, I don't think it's vanity. They did what their father was too afraid to do. It is absolutely bitterness, but I don't think you're in any position to judge the appropriate level of bitterness for a child to have towards their deadbeat parent.
- shevy-java 11mo ago> he wasted his entire life, my mom said to me, the evening we found the love letters. his entire life, and mine as well. People need to seriously plan and manage a marriage if they decide to go through with it.
- degamad 11mo agoSome people don't really get to "decide" for themselves. FTA: > my parents were not a love match. at 27 and 26, they were embarrassingly old by the standards of their small chinese port town. all four of my grandparents exerted enormous pressure to force them together.
- dartharva 11mo agoInteresting anecdote, but for the life of me I can't understand what relevance this blogpost could have here on HackerNews
- darrenf 11mo agoQuoting the “what to submit” guidelines: If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
- vacuity 11mo agoI find it very hard to judge whether I'm fulfilling that part of the guidelines. I only have a few submissions, and I think I'm good there, but I'm more conflicted when it comes to upvoting or engaging in other people's submissions. For example, earlier today I saw a thread on German laws on date rape drugs. I upvoted the thread. Do I think it's important for people to talk about date rape drugs? Certainly. I'm not sure if it falls under satisfying my "intellectual curiosity", though. Is HN "the right place" for this conversation? I'm not sure, though I think the reality on the ground would say "yes". Most likely, all of this is an organic adaptation that HN has experienced.
- MomsAVoxell 11mo agoDon't be a phony. Be true to yourself. Don't let your life be governed by the mores of others. This article isn't about sexuality. It's about honesty and the impact that artifice can have, not only on your own life, but also on the lives of others. Quite applicable to the HN crowd.
- Invictus0 11mo agonot everything in life is databases and ai
- _yb2s 11mo agoI see these comments on most HN threads that aren’t about tech stuff, but to me these are the best part of HN. I think it should include things people in tech who are also humans find interesting and want to discuss, like this, not just discussions of the latest cpu architecture or whatever. If you don’t find it interesting ignore it, and the algorithm will make it go away on its own if most people agree!
- siva7 11mo agoDid it ever occur to her that he wanted a child with his wife? That he loved his wife - even though not romantically? And still had a happy life as a father of her? The author seems to have many misconceptions about gay people..
- pcthrowaway 11mo agoThe author mentions in the follow-up that she is gay herself.
- astura 11mo agoShe also mentioned it in TFA too.
- moralestapia 11mo agoOf course!
- James_K 11mo agoIt does not sound as such if you read the content of the post. It's hardly a misconception to suggest that gay men do not generally fall in love with women.
- chimeracoder 11mo ago> It does not sound as such if you read the content of the post. It's hardly a misconception to suggest that gay men do not generally fall in love with women. Aside from the fact that this premise is incorrect, it's also inapplicable, because, as far as the essay mentions, the father never said he was gay.
- James_K 11mo agoHow do you know the father never said he was gay? He may well have said that to the man he enjoyed dating as opposed to the wife whom he clearly didn't like very much.
- throwaway142351 11mo agoI'm a dad too, and I'm in a somewhat similar situation. My son is under five, and it feels like I'm still at the very beginning of his story. I've known I was gay since high school, probably even earlier, but I kept choosing whatever seemed like the easiest path. It felt easier to stay closeted. Easier to date a woman. Easier to move in together, propose, get married, and even have a child than to face my truth. I love my wife and my son, and I feel loved by them in return, but I'm also painfully aware that the version of me they love is someone I constructed. I lie constantly: about why I don't want sex, about my affairs, about my feelings, about my motivations. No one really knows me, and I don't get to be myself, not even in the relationships where I should feel safest. I've read The Courage to Be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi and other similar books, and I'm trying to build the courage to finally do something about all of this. It's incredibly difficult. But I refuse to use my son as an excuse to keep postponing coming out. This blog has pushed me even further in that direction. They'll be angry (well at least my wife). Their lives will be upended. But at least they'll have the chance to ask questions, to understand. They'll see me taking responsibility for the consequences of my choices, and maybe just maybe, in some way, that clarity will be a relief for all of us.
- pfdietz 11mo agoI'm straight and love my wife of 44 years. But I long ago made the thought experiment of what would happen if she were in the same kind of situation you were in: what if she decided I was a mistake, or that being in a relation with a man was a mistake, and that she needed to do something else. I decided that would require I support her in that. How can you love someone and not want what is best for them, even if that has a cost? I don't know your wife, and I don't know if she would feel the same way. Maybe she would?
- 71bw 11mo agoI can relate to this probably the most out of everything I've seen on HN so far. My fiancee is pansexual and overall seems to prefer women, so I surely am quite a bit of a surprise in her life (to the point where her family laughed at the fact that I 'fixed her' the first time I met them...) as a straight man. I know she loves me, I love her with all my heart but I am aware that at some point she may want to change me for someone of the opposite sex. I have therefore decided that as long as this does not happen behind my back I will support her, even if that means I have to endure a lot of pain.
- pkrotich 11mo agoMan… the battle between cultural expectations and our true selves is humanity’s oldest conflict. A few people get lucky. Most of us survive in the cracks. No capitalization was as surprising as the narration itself… not sure how to feel about it! Counter culture?
- webdevver 11mo agohonestly ive had it with the shift key myself. just a nuisance. besides, the text looks much nicer and 'even' when every letter is broadly the same height, but that is ofcourse subjective. it would be good to track down the 'etymology' of capital letters.
- wizzwizz4 11mo agoCapital letters came first.
- jll29 11mo agoSIC·EST
- nkrisc 11mo agoCapital letters at the start of sentences makes reading easier for those who are used to reading languages where that is customary. The absence is a noticeable reduction in ease of reading. > it would be good to track down the 'etymology' of capital letters. Easy: Latin script. The more interesting question is the source of lower case letters which appeared much later.
- adi_kurian 11mo agoI drop case with everyone I know well and feel comfortable with. I find it intimate. And her writing is very intimate.
- forinti 11mo agoAlthough I feel that many countries have transitioned to a time of liberty, when people can live as they truly wish, some people are afraid to embrace this freedom. Of course, families can be a powerful force. But, as my father once told me: family are those who are near you [not necessarily those you share genes with].
- lazide 11mo agoSometimes, people make the decisions they do because others they saw before them made the opposite decision too - or they made the decision they did because they felt the consequences of making it any other way would be worse.
- lvl155 11mo agoIt’s always surprising to me how so many people believe in ideals. Finding love. Living happily thereafter. These are ideals and you’d be truly lucky to have it in your life. One in a billion. Life is ephemeral. We are innately fickle beings shifting from one equilibrium to another. Yet we long for a mirage of permanence.
- tsol 11mo agoJudging by the follow up that reveals he was cheating on his lover as well and had been doing it for years he seems to agree with your last two lines. He got the most out of life, but hurt his lover, wife and daughter in the process
- tired-turtle 11mo agoYou don’t find love: you build it together.
- mensetmanusman 11mo agoIt’s obviously part of the human condition to yearn for the ideal/divine/essential.
- begueradj 11mo agoAt least he hid a part of his nature because of social pressure. Nowadays people live in disguise at will.
- pavlov 11mo agoOuch. This hits incredibly hard. I’ve been this dad who sits frozen at the TV every evening. I had the affairs with the emotionally unavailable men, and became one myself. Before you judge the man in this story too harshly — and there’s certainly much to judge, especially given the follow-up post — consider the environment he and I grew up in. Being gay as a young teenager in the early 1990s could feel literally like a death sentence. AIDS panic was everywhere. Gay men in movies were comedy sidekicks or dying wrecks (“Philadelphia”). There was a real threat of violence from other kids. If you could pass as straight, why wouldn’t you give it your best shot? The alternative was to be a laughing stock and die alone in a hospital where nurses don’t dare touch you. (This is literally how I imagined gay life at age 13.) I still feel like I’m barely getting started on the therapy journey to recover from those decades. Seems like the man in the story never had the chance for professional help (or didn’t seek it). The compartmentalization can be extremely taxing. He disappointed many people, but that doesn’t mean he was a bad person.
- crossroadsguy 11mo agoI have heard this play out too many times. Most recently here, a college junior's wife revealed four months after marriage that she is actually a lesbian (she didn't share it – he caught her in their bedroom with a colleague of hers when he returned home early from the office), and he would be free to do what he wants; she should be too. Hit him hard, but he said they should go for an annulment— out of question; a divorce— out of question. Her point was if she had to do all this, why would she have agreed to a marriage in the first place! It was to get society off her back and her parents. Well, he filed for divorce, and it resulted in false dowry cases (yes, it's that part of the world), cruelty.. a long list. He was in lock-up for almost a month and a half, his almost 80 father and 70 mother was in a case of beating her up - (they met her exactly once – two days after marriage for a day when they went to his native village and after that they barely even talked to her on phone when they came back to they city they worked in), he lost almost everything he had, and finally, he just broke down in court and, against his lawyer's advice, just told the judge to give her whatever the judge wanted and just grant him a divorce. This was after almost three or four years of struggle. This guy is damaged now. We were in two sports team together in the college. One of the gentlest people I know. He had a minor stroke recently. He has sleeping issues. He is still fighting to just stay alive. It's difficult for him to get jobs because there's police record against him. He worked for a major MNC bank and he was fired summarily. No, this is not an isolated cruel example of extreme and from the hinterland of the world - this is an example of people fucking others over, mercilessly. No, this is not fighting to stay afloat in the water. It's like kicking someone off the boat because they were closer to the life jacket on the boat by few feet of another available lifeboat that the person could have taken instead. No, it's actually worse! I am sorry for how the world treated you and him, but no, fuck no! Life fucked him – or could have fucked him, so he gets to fuck others, right? Awesome! > but that doesn’t mean he was a bad person. No, he is a bad person! Ffs.
- anovikov 11mo agoHomophobia sucks massive dick. It doesn't take being gay to despise people who's collective "wisdom" subjects millions to lifelong suffering like that.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- mattmaroon 11mo agoIt’s amazing to me all of the way homophobia also victimizes straight men and women and we don’t even realize the collateral damage we take from it.
- Der_Einzige 11mo agoStraight women brought this on themselves. Straight, especially supposedly egalitarian or leftist straight women hate bisexual men.
- mattmaroon 11mo agoI’m not really sure straight women are entirely to blame for homophobia but interesting take.
- lordnacho 11mo agoSo, what should you do if you know someone trapped in this kind of situation? I currently know someone like this. He's not homosexual, so it's not quite the same issue. But he's gotten himself trapped in a relationship, and worst of all, cannot admit it to his friends. The only reason I know is that the one friend he did tell, has told the rest of his friends. We've known each other since childhood, yet he doesn't ask me for help. Which is up to him, of course, but he also doesn't know that I know that he is keeping a remarkably straight face about his situation. In a way it would be easier if I hadn't been told. So now, I have to pretend like I think he's just a single man about town. He just shows up to everything when I'm around, and chats to me like he always has throughout the years. We'll meet another old friend, yet his life update is that he's just like any other bachelor-for-life, just enjoying his video games and freedom, while the rest of us are having kids and worrying about school bills. It's very odd. What would HN do?
- nemomarx 11mo agoHow is he trapped, and could you expand a little on the situation? I'm not sure I understand the social expectation at play for it. Does he actually have kids in his relationship that he doesn't want to talk about or admit to in public? Is his partner being neglected, or children?
- lordnacho 11mo agoIt's a "partner" who uses him for his wealth. No kids, and there won't be any, because I know how those are made and you have to do certain things that are not being done. When you talk to the guy, everything is great. Not even a sign that he has gotten hitched to this lady, or is dating, or that anything has happened at all. Yeah it's weird. I was incredulous when I was told.
- fragmede 11mo agoSo your friend has a sugar baby and you feel awkward about it?
- randallsquared 11mo agoI'm saddened by the followup, when she asserts that the fantasy of seeing her dad happy, settled, and domestic was a "stupidly heteronormative fantasy".
- draw_down 11mo ago[dead]
- mallets 11mo agoGrace and Frankie (tv show) deals with some of this, don't think I'm the target audience but I enjoyed it as 20-30 year old.
- zduoduo 11mo agoSuch a good article!
- stOneskull 11mo agoi'm very impressed with her writing. she's got the skill!
- manthangupta109 11mo agoemotional
- simianparrot 11mo ago[flagged]
- Dumblydorr 11mo agoWhy is this comment here? Downvote the post and move on, don’t come in to gripe about it amongst people actually making conversation.
- jrootabega 11mo agoThere is no downvote. There is only flag, and people are hesitant to use it, if it's even available to them in the first place.
- pwthornton 11mo agoJesus Christ capitalize the start of sentences. Tech bros, stop butchering language to feel cool.
- tedk-42 11mo ago10 years ago people like you were called 'grammar nazis' - a term clearly out of fashion but the sentiment remains. An excellent article, to be nit-picked for a dumb reason as this
- pwthornton 11mo agoA grammar nazi thing to do would be me complaining about you using an en dash when you meant to use an em dash. Or using single quotes when you should be using double quotes. But I don't really care because you're just making a short Internet comment. Capitalizing sentences is basic usability and readability. We should care about usability and readability.
- Invictus0 11mo agoVery well written. Many here in the comments seeking to find sense in this matter or pass judgment; a wise person would simply nod in acknowledgement, understanding that things simply are the way they are.
- wodenokoto 11mo agoI don't feel like this entry is harsh on authors father. I think it is nuanced and forgiving. It seems most commenters disagree with me on that. Regardless, it is a well written article with an emotionally strong impact. Thank you for sharing.
- poisonborz 11mo agoReligion and tradition, the two things that elevated humanity, yet also been the source of much of its suffering.
- krupan 11mo agoThere is no life without pain and suffering. It's as much a law of nature as gravity. Life needs something to push against, to struggle to overcome. Without that there simply is no life. If life doesn't struggle and suffer against things it never even starts. Once started, if life stops struggling and suffering, it quickly dies. Religion and tradition have elevated humanity and it's good to acknowledge that. They never could have eliminated suffering, only changed the sources and types of suffering. It is helpful for many of us to have things like religion and traditions to give the suffering more meaning, sense, and purpose.
- mensetmanusman 11mo agoThose are both embodied expectations of idealizations. When people like the father never find the courage to speak, they will be harmed/destroyed/etc. in exactly the way those traditions would warn against.
- ninetyninenine 11mo ago[flagged]
- gk1 11mo agoThis comment is sickening. If this is coming from a personal hardship, I hope you find peace soon.
- GaryBluto 11mo agoI don't see what's so sickening. He made his bed, now he needs to lie in it.
- Tagbert 11mo agoWhy? How is it helpful to him, to his wife, or their son to live this lie of unhappiness. The lie will be more damaging than facing the truth.
- ninetyninenine 11mo ago[flagged]
- _dain_ 11mo agothis is quite unhinged. and unfair -- the wife must endure a loveless marriage, because the husband cheated?
- ninetyninenine 11mo ago[flagged]
- apaosjsja 11mo agoI share this sentiment. Most in the west (especially on HN) have been conditioned to believe mercy must always be granted and justice is evil. You can’t have one without the other or society falls apart. As a child of a mother who cheated and ruined our family, I complete agree with you. This story filled me with disgust, and I want to live in a culture where people like this feel guilt at what they did. The sibling response here is happy to tut-tut you with the weight of progressive cultural authority behind them, as only a short sighted ideologue could. Lying of this level is bad for the family and bad for society. Protecting it is akin to protesting the removal of a cancerous tumor.
- shark1 11mo agoThe deliberate choice of committing such a basic mistake of lower-casing the beginning of all sentences is an insult. I am afraid of reading it, becoming desensitized, and starting to do the same.
- gk1 11mo agoIt’s not a mistake, it’s a choice. Quite a common one among younger people who grew up using Slack at work and iMessage everywhere else.
- ReluctantLaser 11mo agoWhy is that important to you? The way you write about it feels like you're going to be infected by it, altered by it, if you read it fully. Seems like an odd reaction.
- shark1 11mo agoTotally. It really annoys me. I get distracted. The writer misses to accurately transmit the piece of information at its full extent.
- ahf8Aithaex7Nai 11mo agoCapital letters come from Roman script. Lowercase letters come from a medieval administrative script (Carolingian minuscule). So you could say that we are mixing two completely different scripts. This becomes very clear when you look at a text written entirely in lowercase letters: the typeface is so uniform that I, at least, find it very pleasant to look at. Unfortunately, this is not the norm. Instead, I am condemned to live in a world where I have to look at writing consisting of two obviously thrown-together scripts day in and day out. Schopenhauer was right: the world is a vale of tears!
- socrateswasone 11mo ago[dead]
- gumboshoes 11mo agoOh, my heart. This is difficult and lovely and so complex. I want to wrap them all up in my own love.
- KronisLV 11mo agoI read the linked post as well: https://jenn.site/my-dad-could-still-be-alive-but-hes-not/ https://jenn.site/my-dad-could-still-be-alive-but-hes-not/ > i learn the story afterwards. dad went upstairs for a lie-down after dinner, but was awoken by severe chest pain. he vomits, which is a thing he never does, and asks mom to call 911 immediately. she does and provides all the symptoms, the dispatcher tells her that they've sent for an ambulance, and they should get ready to go. > so they get ready, and then they wait. they wait for 15 long minutes, my dad in an extreme amount of pain, and nothing happens. > mom calls 911 again and asks if they have an ETA. the dispatcher responds that don't have visibility on that. she asks if she should just drive my dad to the hospital and is advised that the best thing to do is to keep waiting. > so they wait another 15 long minutes, and still no one shows up. the house is in a car-oriented suburb, 5 minutes away from a major highway, a ten minute drive from the hospital. > mom decides that they should not keep waiting. she and my brother help dad into the car, and they drive him to the hospital. > they arrive at the emergency room entrance. dad gets out of the car, takes two steps, lurches forwards, and dies on the front steps of the hospital. What the fuck, that's horrible. My dad's house is in a rural area of the country. He sadly passed away a week ago, I found him in his bed while coming to visit, he didn't pick up the phone that day, despite us having talked just the day before. When I found him, I called the emergency number and they still sent an ambulance, it was at the house in like 15-20 minutes, they confirmed the situation and did some paperwork and helped me with the next steps. I can't imagine how horrible the circumstances in the article must feel and I'm not even sure what "justice" would look in a case like that, how the fuck can an emergency line dispatcher not have "visibility" on an emergency call, that's their one fucking job!
- treis 11mo agoThis is something I've noticed with EMTs & Ambulances. They don't actually move all that fast and I'm sure they have their reasons. But it's always seemed like driving to the hospital would be better and I wonder how much truth there is to that.
- krupan 11mo agoWriting, journaling, is such a good way to process thoughts and emotions and this is a great example. I'm grateful for this person sharing her very personal journal entries with us even though it is not required at all. It sets a great example of what to write about and how. It also reveals that people and the lives they live are incredibly complicated and messy. The longer I live and the more people I get to know the more I believe that nobody is as simple and "good" as they seem on the surface. If your life has been simple and relatively pain free up to this point, just wait, and try not to judge others in situations more difficult and complicated than yours too harshly. There is much you do not yet know.
- ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 11mo agofor all the lowercase complainers: document.querySelectorAll("p").forEach(p => p.textContent = p.textContent.replace(/(^\w)|([.?!]\s*\w)|( i'? )/g, m => m.toUpperCase()));
- kwar13 11mo agoOne of my best friends took his own life growing up in Iran. I will never forgive religion for what it made other people do to him.
- donatj 11mo agoThere is also a part two apparently for anyone curious: https://www.jenn.site/my-dead-deadbeat-gay-dad/ https://www.jenn.site/my-dead-deadbeat-gay-dad/
- blueredmodern 11mo ago[dead]
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- gurumeditations 11mo agoStraight people will never understand the crushing suffocating binding evil of straight supremacy. They call a gay man a coward when they and their kind are murderers of ours.
- silexia 11mo agoAI generated?
- acjohnson55 11mo agoI love the occasionally very surprising submission on here. Sometimes, something with nothing to do with technology touches this group of jaded techies enough to bring it to the front page.
- beanjuiceII 11mo agothe guy was a shitbag and he ruined his wife's life and was very hard for his children all because he was weak
- bdangubic 11mo agoyup, but interestingly enough, I was imagining that if this was turned into a movie the audience would symphatize with him…
- cleandreams 11mo agoThis is great. Thanks for sharing. Should be a book someday.
- ropable 11mo agoOoof. Occasionally you read something that hits different in the feelings, and this article was one for me. The regret at all the lost time and opportunity for all concerned. The might-have-beens. Sometimes, the shackles placed on us by our society, our family and ourselves are unbreakable.
- greenspam 11mo agoVery touching writing. Reminds me of Brokeback Mountain.
- llsf 11mo agoComing out in the late 80's was not easy in most places (maybe easier if you grew up in Manhattan or San Francisco) and AIDS was a death sentence. Lots of lives have been wasted because of the stigma and the disease. Somehow related, I had to go through my father in-law papers after his death, and I have seen papers that probably were not meant to be seen ever. I am now part of this secret. The weird part is that I feel that I cannot talk about it to anyone in the universe. For the first time in my life, I feel the burden of keeping secret until I die. There is no therapy for it. Now, I understand how some people when tragedy strikes, have to bury it deep, to the point where they forget about it, as it is too painful to even think of it. I am at a point where I do not want to impair (drunk, high) myself and reveal the secret. I thought my life was simple, but man some unfortunate events can flip entire lives... I was a firm believer that talking the truth/facts was the best solution, and now I realize that some things better stay buried as it would generate more pain than anything. So, some papers might not be good to keep, as you never know what it could unleash after you pass away (and that can happen anytime).
- saghm 11mo ago> Somehow related, I had to go through my father in-law papers after his death, and I have seen papers that probably were not meant to be seen ever. I am now part of this secret. The weird part is that I feel that I cannot talk about it to anyone in the universe. For the first time in my life, I feel the burden of keeping secret until I die. There is no therapy for it. I obviously can't know what exactly you found, or how it might affect you or others, but with a few specific exceptions like knowledge of imminent harm to yourself or others, there isn't really something that's outside of the purview of what you can talk to a therapist about. You'd still need someone you feel you can trust with being open with your emotions with, and that's a difficult thing for a lot of people even without as giant secrets as you seem to be burdened with, but in a lot of ways when it comes to stuff like this, there isn't really therapy "for" specific things as much as just a general practice of how to deal with things that are tough emotionally in general. I'm not sure if your reference to previously believing in truth and facts being the best solution is intended to mean that therapy is something you would have considered in the past, or if it's conveying something closer to a "radial honesty" type approach, but if there's any chance you've ever considered talking a therapist before, I'd urge you to consider if it's really out of the question for what you're specifically going through. I'm of the firm opinion that pretty much everyone in the world likely would benefit from some amount of therapy, and a good therapist wouldn't just immediately insist on you revealing the intimate details of your pain to be able to start helping you through it (and it's possible that depending on specifically why you feel the way you do, it may not even be necessary for them to ever know them in order to help you learn to live with it in a way that's less painful).
- ls-a 11mo ago[flagged]
- pyuser583 11mo agoThank you for this article. You’ve censored out some names as “redacted” but it’s pretty easy to fill in at least one name by other articles in the site. If you want anonymity, consider doing a broad review. I’m not trying to dox you - it’s totally up you what to share. But some of the articles seem to be private, while others seem very public.
- MillionY 11mo agoDo you remember the story of Alan Turing? He was a gay man, and he suffered from unfair treatment due to his sexual orientation.