5 ms·

> “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 la

• arpinum 11mo ago
  The 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 ago
    Some 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 ago
      Who'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 ago
        Yup, 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 ago
    This, 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.
  • tibbar 11mo ago
    Sometimes people use "waste" in the sense of "spent selfishly/frivolously." I enjoy evenings spent with prestige television and a tub of ice cream but, past a certain point, it's definitely a waste of time, especially if I have commitments to other people.
  • gwd 11mo ago
    > The author may be unduly harsh on her father. He got to be publicly married and have a private gay life. If his wife had been content in a low-intimacy marriage, then that would be one thing. Some people are -- they have security, they have children, they have approval of their family, they're fine. But his wife wasn't -- she wanted to end the marriage, to try to find romantic, sexual, and relational intimacy elsewhere. And he actively guilt-tripped her into staying with him, multiple times. He got to experience romantic and sexual intimacy the way he wanted, while preventing his wife from doing the same. He stole decades of the prime of her life from her. There is simply no justification for that.
• wiether 11mo ago
  Is the capitalization of the quote your own doing or was it displayed like it for you? There isn't a single uppercase letter when I open the article, it's impossible to me to read it because it feel like a single sentence and I can't breathe
  • hexo 11mo ago
    to me it has much better readability
  • noduerme 11mo ago
    The lower case "I" stands out very much in reading it as a self-annihilating affectation. However, the sentences are well formed. If you really want to lose your breath, try "The Autumn of the Patriarch" by Marquez. You really won't be able to put it down.
    • jll29 11mo ago
      Or Finnegan's Wake, for that matter.
  • Freak_NL 11mo ago
    The author obviously has this as an acquired habit or affectation, possibly for stylistic reasons. It's interesting that some people can read this just as well as normal prose, but to others it feels as if someone is pouring sand all over their well-oiled gears. I gave up after a paragraph as well. I fully support people writing in whatever way pleases them, but for broadly accessible article length text capitalisation is a must in English. Not because it is 'correct', but because many readers rely on capitalisation.
    • pcthrowaway 11mo ago
      Many readers rely on articles being written in a specific language, does that mean every writer is obligated to publish every piece in every language? Has it occurred to anyone who sees capitalization as a must-have for legibility, that an opportunity is being presented to train oneself to read text without traditional capitalization? Maybe it's because I studied poetry, or because I was a voracious reader of experimental writing when I was younger, but I've probably worked my way through thousands of pages of uncapitalized or unconventionally capitalized writing; I can empathize if it's more difficult for you to read (personally I would consider an absence of paragraph breaks a nearly-unforgivable travesty), and I wouldn't even deny you the opportunity to complain about it. But I think calling it "a must" for accessibility is perhaps overstating it a bit.