RicksNerdLife
Considerate
- Joined
- Apr 11, 2025
- Messages
- 860
@TENIME
My man.
Let me tell you a little something about myself that I don't divulge much: I have had a life that not many people would be able to stomach.
I grew up with a mentally handicapped sister. From an early age, I have had to take care of her. Which, on its surface, fine...we've all had to take care of family.
But when I was 7 years old, my uncle, my mother's brother, committed suicide. My mother lost her mind as a result. She cheated on my father during this time period. Multiple times with multiple men.
My father, grief stricken, trying to find my missing mother, would take us out at 2-3 in the morning to the house of the man that she ultimately left my Dad for. He did it to get answers, but brought us to make sure he wouldn't leave us home alone--something my mother didn't care about, by the way, because she would abandon me and my sister for hours, days on end. Just disappear without a clue where she went, no numbers memorized to call anyone to get help.
Anyway...yes, our 3 AM trips to "Brian's" house...
Regardless, not something a child should ever witness, but I don't blame my father for that. He was lost in his head because my mother was out doing God knows what, leaving him to deal with the aftermath of not only the loss of his brother in law, but now an adulterous wife, and continuously traumatized children.
I had to listen to screaming matches, the walls being punched, I ran into the bathroom and fell to my knees, begging my father not to stab my mother, only to realize that I was begging him not to plunge the knife into his own chest.
Now, my mother. She was abusive. Couldn't tell you the amount of fingers in my face, backings into walls, slaps, ear pulls, hits, etc. that I had to endure. She would have bouts where she talk to me as if I were her dead brother. And in between that, she was paranoid and would tell us that the Lebanese mafia killed her brother, and that they threatened her if she didn't stop talking about it, and mentioned specifically that they would kill me and my sister--so, I walked around with that fear. And of course, the aforementioned disappearances.
Oh, and should I mention the two times my sister up and ran away while no one was home?
All of this before I was the age of 10. And that is but a sampling of shit.
I am a broken man, to this day. I live with depression and anxiety, panic attacks. I was diagnosed clinically with PTSD. We aren't talking "Aw man, I have PTSD from the service at this restaurant". I'm talking full blown, 'Nam like PTSD. I have God awful abandonment issues. And I'm sure all of this contributes to the things I spoke about previously with my temper, my need to control things, my trust issues...
I could hate everyone and everything and I think be totally justified in it. Especially if you knew even half of my life, you'd understand that being cynical would be too many people's only option.
And that's not to downplay my headspace. I am fucked up. I am. My wife constantly says she's surprised I'm not more fucked up than I am, when she hears some of the things I went through. I hear about her childhood and her upbringing and I get jealous because I think "Oh, that's how a mother SHOULD be, I guess. Oh, you didn't get hit upside the head for not liking the soup she made?"
But the thing is, I still TRY. I try every single day to make sure that I don't let these things dictate who I am or how I'm going to treat or view people. I'm not going to fall back on those things as excuses for why I react a certain way, because ultimately at some point, I have to take responsibility for it. Yes, my mother, my upbringing contributed to the many things I have wrong with me--but at 43 years old, I can not keep giving myself a pass for that. At some point, I have to work on myself and stop taking pity on myself and try to fix ME. Instead of pointing my fingers at all of these external factors.
And I STILL to this day try to work on my relationship with my mother. After all of that, I still try. It's not great, she continuously says and does abhorrent, hateful things and it makes me step away and break contact for a while. But I always make the effort to reach out, because one day, I won't have a mother and I do remember the good times in between the bads.
But at the end of the day, I can only control how I handle things. I can only control how I speak to others, and how I treat folks.
The responsibility lies on you, my friend.
My man.
Let me tell you a little something about myself that I don't divulge much: I have had a life that not many people would be able to stomach.
I grew up with a mentally handicapped sister. From an early age, I have had to take care of her. Which, on its surface, fine...we've all had to take care of family.
But when I was 7 years old, my uncle, my mother's brother, committed suicide. My mother lost her mind as a result. She cheated on my father during this time period. Multiple times with multiple men.
My father, grief stricken, trying to find my missing mother, would take us out at 2-3 in the morning to the house of the man that she ultimately left my Dad for. He did it to get answers, but brought us to make sure he wouldn't leave us home alone--something my mother didn't care about, by the way, because she would abandon me and my sister for hours, days on end. Just disappear without a clue where she went, no numbers memorized to call anyone to get help.
Anyway...yes, our 3 AM trips to "Brian's" house...
Regardless, not something a child should ever witness, but I don't blame my father for that. He was lost in his head because my mother was out doing God knows what, leaving him to deal with the aftermath of not only the loss of his brother in law, but now an adulterous wife, and continuously traumatized children.
I had to listen to screaming matches, the walls being punched, I ran into the bathroom and fell to my knees, begging my father not to stab my mother, only to realize that I was begging him not to plunge the knife into his own chest.
Now, my mother. She was abusive. Couldn't tell you the amount of fingers in my face, backings into walls, slaps, ear pulls, hits, etc. that I had to endure. She would have bouts where she talk to me as if I were her dead brother. And in between that, she was paranoid and would tell us that the Lebanese mafia killed her brother, and that they threatened her if she didn't stop talking about it, and mentioned specifically that they would kill me and my sister--so, I walked around with that fear. And of course, the aforementioned disappearances.
Oh, and should I mention the two times my sister up and ran away while no one was home?
All of this before I was the age of 10. And that is but a sampling of shit.
I am a broken man, to this day. I live with depression and anxiety, panic attacks. I was diagnosed clinically with PTSD. We aren't talking "Aw man, I have PTSD from the service at this restaurant". I'm talking full blown, 'Nam like PTSD. I have God awful abandonment issues. And I'm sure all of this contributes to the things I spoke about previously with my temper, my need to control things, my trust issues...
I could hate everyone and everything and I think be totally justified in it. Especially if you knew even half of my life, you'd understand that being cynical would be too many people's only option.
And that's not to downplay my headspace. I am fucked up. I am. My wife constantly says she's surprised I'm not more fucked up than I am, when she hears some of the things I went through. I hear about her childhood and her upbringing and I get jealous because I think "Oh, that's how a mother SHOULD be, I guess. Oh, you didn't get hit upside the head for not liking the soup she made?"
But the thing is, I still TRY. I try every single day to make sure that I don't let these things dictate who I am or how I'm going to treat or view people. I'm not going to fall back on those things as excuses for why I react a certain way, because ultimately at some point, I have to take responsibility for it. Yes, my mother, my upbringing contributed to the many things I have wrong with me--but at 43 years old, I can not keep giving myself a pass for that. At some point, I have to work on myself and stop taking pity on myself and try to fix ME. Instead of pointing my fingers at all of these external factors.
And I STILL to this day try to work on my relationship with my mother. After all of that, I still try. It's not great, she continuously says and does abhorrent, hateful things and it makes me step away and break contact for a while. But I always make the effort to reach out, because one day, I won't have a mother and I do remember the good times in between the bads.
But at the end of the day, I can only control how I handle things. I can only control how I speak to others, and how I treat folks.
The responsibility lies on you, my friend.
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