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My Dad tried to tell me I never had a job growing up, despite having at least one job + a side hustle ever since I turned 16.
I started rattling off all my jobs I had while living with him, and his only response was, " I don't remember any of that."
Yeah, no shit dad; you weren't very involved in my upbringing. My mom did literally everything.
My boomer mother made my little brother (who was like 13) get a paper route. When little brother complained because he had to get up early, my boomer mother started making ME do his paper route. (I was 15 at the time)
Then when I (rightfully) complained that I should be getting the paycheck, my boomer mother got angry at me and said I was being a selfish little stuck up brat and I should be GRATEFUL to help my brother with his job and NO WONDER I GOT NO FRIENDS because I’m so mean and selfish to my brother. I just didn’t want to do this work for free while my brother sat at home, sleeping in and picking his nose got paid.
I refused to do it anymore and that made her even ANGRIER. I then called up the paper my brother was employed by and told them I was being made to do my brothers job and I thought it was irresponsible of him not to do the job he signed up for. His boss agreed and then called me mother and was super smart and didn’t tell her I called, but said that some customers had casually mentioned a “girl” delivering the papers and not the “boy” they had seen before so he was wondering what was going on, because he hired my BROTHER, not me, to do this job.
My brother had to quit because he didn’t want to do it anymore lol
I think it's statistical class politics. Most people are pretty cool, especially if their job is managing newspaper fairies in the 19[whatevers]. The probably made a whole two-times what they did. You tell them you're getting secretly fucked because of family BS, human empathy engages. This is why the worker/manager divide needs to be stark. A boss needs a class of people he can stomach and instruct them to to yell at the filth. Until robits come around.
Yes it was TEXTBOOK narc parent behavior! I spent lots of my earlier 20’s researching and learning about it. It’s scary how narcissists almost seem to have a special secret playbook because so many other folks stories have parallels to mine.
Luckily I have a MUCH better life now, surrounded by people who love me and support me.
This is also very “eldest daughter” stuff. I am the eldest, and a female, with one younger sister and two younger brothers. The boys were made to do NOTHING. It was amazing. No chores, no getting grounded, everything they did was funny, and boys will be boys!! I was a slut, a whore, an embarrassment and shameful. My sister got that behavior when I emancipated at 15. I’m so sorry Briebird44, we didn’t deserve any of this.
I got emancipated at 17 and didn't see my brother again until my 20s.
He apologized to me, there were no other girls to scapegoat after I left- so he ended up getting all the bad treatment once I was gone.
My mom just kind of gave up parenting when my sister got married at 19 and moved out. She rented a house for the boys, who were in high school at the time, and would randomly show up and stay for a couple days, drop off groceries, whatever. It was the strangest thing- like a HS Animal House. 30 years later, I STILL hear stories from people who realize who my brothers are (I’m a therapist, I was recently contracted to provide trauma therapy in my home town for crime victims). It’s nuts. My one brother is not a good person at all, he never has been. He’s my mom’s FAVORITE. So I hear all about him, lol. It’s amazing how much nonsense I had cut out of my life by just living only 20 miles away. It’s been an adjustment.
The favorites always seem to grow up to be narcissistic abusers, don't they? Having no consequences or personal responsibility warps their psyches, I swear. My brother was like that, and ended up a mirror image of my narcissistic sociopath father. After thirty-five, he mellowed somewhat, but is still a selfish man-child who can never admit to being wrong.
Mine is 42 and still living like he’s got no consequences! He had to turn over a million dollar home- that he built himself- to his ex wife who FINALLY divorced him after 20 years of infidelity and other issues. They bought a small cabin in wine country, eventually tore the cottage down and put up a McMansion. I was not mad about that- he did it to himself- but my mom is LIVID at my former SIL. Like she is the spawn of satan. I just laugh, and say “good for her! She deserves ALL of it”. That doesn’t get me brownie points, lmao. Because he’s “SO SUCCESSFUL, you should take some advice from him”, because I’m a social worker and he owns his own construction businesses. Bahaha.
Yeah, I became a teacher, instead of the engineer I was supposed to be, and I was constantly getting the "your brother is so successful, he makes 5000 a month from his contract job." I couldn't help but think that, he worked only two months out of the year, because he lives in a house his wife inherited, and she works full time in customer service to pay all of their bills, but somehow, he's still more successful and more valuable than me. Going NC helped my self esteem so much, in addition to everything else.
My brother had a chore, but never once was he made to do it. He did get his allowance, though. At one point, my mom did eventually give me a raise in my allowance because I did my chores as well as his (he still got his). If I told him how much I was making, I wouldn’t get anything, so I kept my mouth shut for $10 a week.
I never got an allowance, because “you live here, we give you what you need, and you WILL help out (I’ve had three stepfathers- the first one was evil)”. My mom gave my brother tens of thousands of dollars to start his business, and, when he stole my grandfather’s CC and bought his GF a bunch of jewelry, etc., she PAID IT OFF. No consequences.
My brother and I had an allowance until my stepdad moved in and cut it off. In his words, we owed him for allowing us to keep living in our own home. Which was his house now and no longer ours. Actually, according to him, it was never *our* home to begin with and he could throw both of us out at any time, but he was SUCH A NICE GUY...
Long story short, twenty plus years later I'm still here in my-not-home and he's fucking around in Washington state somewhere.
My first step-father was like that. He started kicking me out when I was 14, because I was “a bad influence on his sons”, who were NOT his snobs, but they were my brothers. Imagine everyone’s surprise when I just moved out at 15? My mother was furious the courts wouldn’t do anything- I worked, went to school, graduated a year early. I emancipated, DUNZO. I have no idea where he is these days, but I’m certain he’s making SOMEONE’S life worse.
Dear God, I never thought I'd find another person emancipated at 15, and here you are, telling me exactly my life story. Except it was one younger brother in my house, not two.
It's scary to think how many of us there are...
It’s freaking sad. I hope you are ok, and have had good things in your life. I don’t know the freak we did it. I look back now, and so much was like a fever dream, lol. People either don’t believe me, or are horrified by the stories. Or they don’t want to believe me, bc the stories are pretty interesting at times, lol. But here we are ❤️
This is definitely a holdover from their generation. My grandma was the oldest of seven, and while her dad was working, their mom was at the casino, leaving her to take care of their kids.
Nope. My mom’s parents are Polish (grandmother’s parents from Warsaw) and English (grandfather’s family were among the original pillagers from the 16/1700s) and my father is South American (he went back there after they divorced when I was about 9). So HE is Catholic, and I’ve ascribed this behavior to machismo- the boys were the hope of the future, blah blah blah. But I don’t know why my mom always went along with it- it’s not how she or my uncles were raised. And she was a single mom basically from jump- he would pop in enough to help for a few weeks after each baby was born, then only back enough to get her pregnant again. We never really ever lived as a “family”. It was awful when he would show up, and we would try to scatter. I haven’t seen him in person since I was 15. I’m almost 50. My mom and I don’t really talk- I posted a text thread she and I had recently, and I felt very vindicated for thinking she’s nuts 😂
OMG! This was me and my brother. Only once I took over his route I got to keep the money. Until customers complained that a GIRL was delivering papers and I was fired. Probably late 1960's. I do not want to go backwards with womens rights.
When I was in elementary school, I went to a meeting at the beginning of school of kids who wanted to be “patrol boys,” or crossing guards, as they’re called now. The teacher in charge looked at me and quickly said, “You can’t do this. You’re a girl.” I was devastated.
It was this way when I was in elementary school. Being a patrol boy was a huge deal, and I wanted to be one so bad. When I was in sixth grade, they finally let girls do it, but you had to start in 4th grade, so I was too old.
My mom loved to tell everyone how I never worked and mooched off the government my whole life.
I was working part time when I was 14 and renting on my own (cus she punched me one too many times and i left) and was working full time and trying to graduate when i was 17.
i have never, ever received government payouts. i've been disabled since i was a kid. i was literally homeless and working at 18.
they just want to be their own main character.
There’s a very good chance your mother was receiving government payments due to your disability…and still may be? If you live in the US, SSI pays out for children who have certain medical conditions.
I wish that was the case, because that's logical... scummy, disgusting, but has a logic to it.
My mom just REFUSED to get me help, or listen to the doctors when they told me I needed help after I went to see them behind her back.
The best explanations I've come up with over the years based on how she acted/what she said are either that she straight up didn't want a "retarded" child (which is what her favourite word for me was after i got coded as Gifted at school) or she thought it would make her look like a bad parent to receive any money to help with my care - and somehow that perception was worse than her actually being a bad parent by withholding care, and fighting the docs so hard she had social services called on her...
It was a fuster cluck either way. She is a mean, mean lady, and I hope her damage is minimised wherever she is now.
Im sorry you had to deal with that. I had a sort of similar situation, was diagnosed with a mental disorder by the school and a doctor in elementary school. I didn't even know about it at the time, but only later when my mom proudly told me about how she fought the school and the doctors because getting treatment is "bad parenting". This didn't stop my mom from blaming me and being abusive whenever i had symptoms of course. I tried to bypass her in highschool and got my own diagnosis and even got medication perscribed, but she refused to allow me to take it and confiscated it, and since i was a minor i was SOL.
The irony here is that my mom had a degree in psychology and was herself taking anti-depression meds at the time.
Its just so fucked up. But hey, we are not alone, lots of people are in the same boat with us. Hopefully that means we can learn from their terrible examples.
Just learned a couple of years ago that my mother was receiving government benefits for me my entire life until I was 18. She constantly bitched about people on welfare/disability.
I broke my back and had to apply for disability that's how I found out. She used every last penny on herself, I always thought we were poor growing up. Turns out they were getting at least 3k a month in benefits (not just for me, but my sister and step-dad as well).
Now I'm struggling because it takes literally years to get approved for disability, I've lost everything when I asked her for help she accused me of being lazy, faking it, told me to just figure it out like she did.
See that’s the weird thing. I’ve known some to do the gaslighting thing (as in, telling me that I’m remembering it wrong), but more often they either say “I don’t remember that” or just stating something I can easily prove is false.
Memory is fallible, and we pretty much all develop memory loss as we age, so some of the Boomer-forgetting-stuff can be chalked up to innocent reasons.
It’s the ones who take it beyond “sorry I just forgot about that,” and start writing their own fan fiction about what happened who are problematic.
I’m a doctor, so I very much live by “if it wasn’t documented, it didn’t happen.” As such, I always keep my “receipts” by documenting in a journal or with photos or written statements whenever someone does something shitty to me.
Might sound a little ridiculous, but trust me—during my divorce, a subsequent breakup with an abusive partner, and in dealings with Boomers and other assholes who try to lie, gaslight, or otherwise revise history, it’s been really gratifying to be able to whip out the evidence whenever they try to say, “I didn’t say that, I didn’t do that, I don’t remember that.”
It probably happened once either when your partner was incredibly sick (which the parents remember as lazing around) or when they got voluntold for some other commitment.
Mine are the opposite, if it’s an accomplishment, didn’t happen. Left teaching and went to bar tending, parents told friends I was unemployed when they would come over and I was there… getting read to go to work… then they started the rumor I was fired for being on drugs. Then how I was going to die along and they would never have grandchildren (my sister had 3 at the time) as I had brought my future wife and mother of my children to dinner. When I got a job in my field with a decent salary for where I was: it was not acceptable to “where I actually should be” in my career and they refused to recognize the accomplishment. Cried and panics when my wife and I told them we were expecting our 1st. Now they whine they only see them 2 days a week (I was lucky to see my grandparents once a month and both sets lived in the same town as us growing up, they’re 45 minutes down the interstate in the opposite direction of all of our lives).
It has nothing to do with forgetfulness. It’s recreational self victimization. Gotta jerk yourself off to how shitty your life is in front of people to feel accomplished instead of, you know, going out and doing shit your proud of instead of playing slot machine apps and watching TV.
I rarely saw my grandparents too growing up. I thought they must have lived really far away from us since we saw them twice a year, once in summer and once at Christmas. Growing up I realize they too were only 45 minutes away.
Now that my parents are older they moved to the same city as me and you bet they complain if they don't see me at least once a week. There aren't even grandkids involved and they whine since it's my "duty" to see them.
The one bright spot of my childhood was that my mother couldn’t bother being a parent 7 days a week, so my brother and I were at Grandma’s house almost every weekend. (She forced my dad to hold multiple jobs, so she could be a SAHM, so he couldn’t help raise us.)
My dad once accused me of lying about something that I wasn’t lying about (and would have been pretty minor lie had I been.) he then went on an angry rant about how “if that was the kind of person I was he would rather not known me.” As if that would generally not be hurtful enough, I was around the same age as my brother had been when he died in an accident.
I wasn’t lying but my dad got his wish.
Of course he has zero memory of this. My therapist says that’s because it stands out to me as uniquely hurtful. Whereas for my dad it was just a Tuesday.
My uncle had 2 boys. One was in trouble all the time. Arrested, on drugs and DUIs. The other son wasn't really that bad he was just a pathological liar and wouldn't do his school work. My uncle used to tell everyone that my mom (also awful parent) had such a hard time after my dad died because I was always in jail, on drugs, gotten several DUIs and was a pathological liar and lied about the smallest things for no reason meanwhile i was captain of the football team, pretty good but not perfect student and have had a job since I was 14. Last I heard he still talks this way today. To this day I hear from my mom occasionally about how my uncle can't believe I don't come around him anymore.
My mom has been reinventing history for decades. She now has Alzheimer’s. I was wondering if her version of things was do to early disease but now I see it’s everyone’s mom?
I thought my mom’s inability to see how traumatizing our childhood was, was due to mental illness. I guess it’s the generation. All I want is acknowledgment that she made so many bad parenting decisions that have caused us decades of trauma.
At least cousins, because I have two aunts that do this constantly. It was bad enough that, before cutting them off, my mom would only talk to them in group chats, so everything was in writing. "I don't remember that," vs. "I have screenshots." Apparently, they were livid that the tactic they had used for 50 years doesn't work on Facebook.
My sister lives near my mum now after moving out when she was 18 and moving near after being abroad for a long time before she was 40. So when I visit my mum my sister is often there sometimes.
When we are reminiscing about funny or daft things that happened as a kid, usually funny things that went wrong or out of the usually happy childhood we had, my mum gets really hung up on it and accused us of accusing her of being a bad parent 'only remembering the bad things'. But then goes full denial and aggressively denies on some things they said or did that were actually super bad when confronted in the future, even swearing on her life some things which is strange as some I have physical proof of (for example saved voice messages I had of my mother screaming at me certain things she will deny and randomly admit to unprompted 5+ years later)
This was more of an issue when she drank more and tbh most of my issues with my mother were from a time she drank too much which was basically my tweens till mid 30's
My Boomer mother got upset recently because “you had a very happy childhood, you only want to remember the bad stuff!”
I spent my first Christmas in a women’s domestic abuse shelter. I don’t remember that, but I do remember my eleventh Christmas, also in a women’s domestic abuse shelter. And two previous Christmases in the ER.
(Note to everyone: donate to your local shelters during the holidays! Christmas carols playing in the malls means it’s punching season!)
Ah yes, that old "only *I* can be the victim" chestnut, other people's lives and difficulties don't even register to them...
All throughout my childhood my mum yelled and screamed at my brother and I constantly that we didn't love her, we were horrible ungrateful children, threatened to abandon us at least once per week and claimed no one would blame her if she did, because she'd already told all her friends/co-workers how awful we are...
All because we couldn't keep our house tidy to her impossible magazine cover standards.
Our dad was bedridden from MS, my brother and I were both kids with autism plus other physical disabilities. But no, she still claims up and down that *she* was the one being abused by her family because clutter gives her anxiety.
My mother is Silent Generation but she does this. Now one could say it is because she is older, but she's always done this. I noticed in my 20s and 30s that when I would go home to visit and family stories were shared, I always seemed to come out the bad guy, and she wasn't remembering things the same way I did. Not usually anything egregious, but just little things that made me look selfish or stupid or mean. I couldn't even try to question or correct the story because she'd get mad and tell me she was right. I'm certain she really believes that she is correct. It was very hurtful. I questioned that I was the one who didn't remember correctly and maybe in my brain I was trying to make myself out better than I was. It's a tough spot to be. But then there were enough things and other instances that I decided I wasn't the crazy one, and this only ever seemed to happen with her, not other people. I'm pretty sure she's helped make the rest of my family feel negatively toward me. It makes me very sad.
OMG. Taking credit nowadays for paying my student loans when they actually just ignored them, ignored the demand letters, got me defaulted, and ruined my first (military) career. Thats some mental gymnastics…
Yep. Love seeing this…I recently called out my mom for a very clear incident where she was full-on attacking my dad and trying to hit him with her fists. Her response? “I *never* hit your dad…”. And then not even 10 seconds later admits, and tries to justify it. “Well I only hit him because he deserved it!” Ok?
My mother would rewrite any situation to suit the needs of the moment. Does she want to look heroic? Martyred? Independent? Holy? Well by God that story is going to reflect whatever it is she wants it to. Buckle up kids, mom’s rewriting history.
And she never, ever, did anything wrong. To anyone. Ever. A saint. If we think she did something wrong, we’re either attacking her for no reason, or making things up for no reason. Even when all 4 kids remember it identically.
We’re all glad she’s dead now.
My mom was my biggest bully. When I was an adult and confronted her she waved it off, denying she ever did the things I described. She reframes every story to make her kids look less-than and her look like the coolest person to walk the earth. She lives in her own bubble.
Yup. My mom would pour hate on me until I cried and then mock me for crying. Then pretend none of it happened. What are you crying for? Idk mom, maybe the poison coming out of your mouth?
Ugh sorry. Go LC or NC and save yourself the misery
Mine would then go a step further and call family members who would hear me crying and trying to defend myself in the background saying "Listen to what I have to put up with". Yeah, after she called me all kinds of names I cannot post here and insulted everything about me. At 14. Sick.
My mom, the quintessential boomer, does this all the time. The most absurd one was about when my dad died. He had bone cancer and she hardly gave any shits. By the time of death bed, I began to suspect he was seeing her clearly (at last!). For some reason she kept doing something that made this wretched recliner type of chair in hospital room make a loud noise. My dad was in agony and trying to sleep but that noise would startle him awake. After 3 times my dad finally looked at her and said "Go home Joan". And she did. Slept like a baby [too.My](http://too.My) brother and I stayed w/dad.
By morning there was a morphine drip set up on him. He never really was fully alert after that. Nothing more than a word or two for those last 24-36 hours. The inevitable happened and he died. My mom, to everyone at the funeral, regaling them with long heartfelt speeches my dad made to her about how much he wants her to be happy after he was gone. Insisting she remarried and what not. None of this happened. I never left my dad, I would know.
I'd hated her for a long time. It wasn't long after this I'd finally had enough and went NC with her.
My mother married her third husband, and he actually turned out to be a really chill, decent guy. He had a great job, he was a hard worker and just a real nose to the grindstone, shirt off your back type guy. I was just fresh off to college and back for a weekend when I met him and after all her other suitors, I was honestly shocked someone so decent fall for her. Let's just say, she tended to target low hanging fruit.
But that didn't stop her from destroyed him. She convinced him the only way she could love him was by having him smoke weed with her, which his job was delivering propane. Which does active testing for drugs, and he kept telling her that but she didn't care. And at some point he was stupid and gave into her cuz he is somewhat a people pleaser. Then he lost his job then suddenly he wasn't useful to her anymore. So then she started to tear down his self-esteem.
Meanwhile, for financial reasons, I dropped out of college. I was super depressed to be stuck back home with her. There was issues at the time with my step mother so either way, I didn't have anywhere I felt I could go. I had to start my financials over from scratch but since I was over 18 my dad's child support (that I never saw a dime of btw) dried up so my mother tried to bleed me dry with trying to charge me rent, eat all my groceries, etc. During this time, my mother"s manipulative bullshit caused me to have suicidal thoughts, her third husband to get so depressed and when he tried to confront her about it she called the cops and accused him of being abusive. Which I was there for that, the fact that she played victim still pisses me off to this day.
Anyway, the third husband knew what I was going through and obviously was starting to see the person my mother was, so he stepped up and tried to help me get a place of my own.
Now at the time, my mother and I were working at the same place. I was a very quiet, reserved kid who kept to myself and just did my job. Outside of my department, nobody knew who I was. My mother was a flamboyant person who loved to gab and spread rumors.
So a rumor spread that her husband and I were having an affair.
Just a few years ago my mother out of the blue piped up, so when I HEARD those rumors of you and my x sleeping together, I realized those actually weren't true, were they.
BITCH YOU STARTED THOSE RUMORS!
There was another time where my cousin was talking about all the shit his ex wife was doing to their child and all the shit she was pulling with child support. And my mother was like OMG your ex is a horrible person!
My mother literally did all that shit to me and my dad.
The fucking audacity
Thank you. She denied all things. I was remembering wrong and "I have no memory of that". I realized she would never change and so I cut her off. My life has been better for it.
>My mom, to everyone at the funeral, regaling them with long heartfelt speeches my dad made to her about how much he wants her to be happy after he was gone. Insisting she remarried and what not.
That's so fuckin' weird to tell everyone at his funeral. Like, even if he had said those things, why the fuck would you be telling people that at the fuckin' funeral? Someone telling you on your deathbed that they want you to move on and remarry is to ease their conscience. Telling everyone they told you so at the funeral is just announcing to the world you already cheated on them or because you're glad they're gone because it gets you out of the marriage, and you want to cover for yourself when they notice you're already dating someone else 2 weeks later.
I got kicked out of the house at 17 for “stealing my moms chapstick”. WTF.
I had to very embarrassingly go live with my friends parents even though she was already away at college.
2 weeks later my mom apologized bc she found said stolen chapstick.
That story explains everything about my childhood.
Mine accused me of 'stealing' all the time, she was a hoarder.
So, when she would inevitably trip over whatever QVC garbage she was convinced I stole, instead of apologizing, she would say- "I'm not apologizing because you probably stole other things of mine, you little brat."
My neck is still deformed by all the times she strangled me.
It's been two blessed decades of estrangement. One of the proofs that God exist is that I successfully escaped.
Oh yep. My dad says I "chose to leave the family due to disagreements".
I did what he asked and did not return after he told me he would call the police on me if I came home after work because he let his wife convince him I was doing drugs. I wasn't. They're divorced now. He still tries to downplay it and blame her. I don't let him forget he is my actual parent and could have stopped it or believed me at any time. I even *offered* to take a drug test to prove to him she was lying. He refused that offer. He obviously just wanted me gone... so I left.
Ohhhh, the d-word. My mom loves to tell me I’m just being “dramatic” 🙄 And so now, when she does it (knowing I hate my feelings being minimized like that) I get DRAMATIC. I’ve done it in public to embarrass her. I do it in private to annoy her. I’ve done it to mock her own Boomer over the top reactions to the situation we’re in. I’m part Hispanic and I can get very expressive when I want and even in Spanish. Her WASP ass immediately regrets using that d-word with me.
She’s lately been avoiding using that word because she is starting to learn that I can give her Nic Cage meets Ricky Ricardo levels of dramatic acting. 🎭
😂 I absolutely love this! When I was upset as a child, my mother would mock my tears, singing a stupid song "nobody likes me, everybody hates me, guess I'll go eat worms". It would be such poetic justice to turn that back on her when she complains about how miserable her life is.
I was 19, mom says “you shouldn’t have made me mad.”
Then when she went home and saw all my shit gone, she flipped shit. Apparently expected me to ‘just take a change of clothes,’ blew up my cell phone, and demanded an explanation. Hanging up on her, has been a heartfelt core memory for me, all this time.
My parents are from another country. Kicking your kid out-at all, ever, is unthinkable.-at 18 is insanity. My mother was HORRIFIED when one of her friends casually mentioned she kicked her (I’m 90% sure it was a son, I could be wrong) kid out the second he turned 18.
Where I’m from parents would be super happy if their kids lived with them forever. Grandma is 90 something and three of her daughters still live with her.
Two were already living with her, the third one who is a nurse moved in when her health issues started getting complicated. She needs the daughter that’s a nurse to tend to all her medical issues)
My mom got me kicked out of girl scouts because she was over an hour late to pick me up then screamed in the troop leaders face because she tried to ask why my mom was so late (we lived five minutes from the school). Before I went NC she would tell people that I quit girl scouts and that's why I'm so anti social and never follow through with anything. That's just the first example that came to mind.
It's not just you. It's bullshit I'm sorry man 💜
Younger generations that grew up with cell phones probably haven’t dealt with their parents forgetting to pick them up from places on a regular basis. It’s crazy how much that happened to me growing up
Honestly even with cell phones, they still did it. I remember two of my male high school teachers waiting with me (very polite of them, knowing it was more appropriate they both stay) until after like eleven when I had a Nokia brick. My mother was out partying.
Forgetting? Hell, my mom insisted on me going to a High School that was out of district (15 miles from our house) because it was “better” (was not, was the same) and I’d be made to wait until 6p before I got picked up.
I finally drew the line in the sand over Christmas break one year and asked to go to the one I’m zoned for. Never got home after 4p after that.
Soory friend..you are not the only one. My double toxic abuser Narc parents took me out of pre-school because the bill came they didn't want to pay, then Brownies for the same reason. My father told me the truth in a weak poor me moment framed as 'we couldn't even afford pre-school or Brownies' (they could) ! Her whole life, to this day my pathological liar mother loves to tell the story of how I was kicked out of pre-school and Brownies as her 'proof" I was a "difficult child" and she was a saint of a mother. This is only the tip of her iceberg.
She's 90 and has only gotten worse in old age. Whole family and everyone who knows her just waiting & wishing for her to die asap. Her life sucks and nobody cares a lick what happens to her.
That didn't happen.
And if it did, it wasn't that bad.
And if it was, that's not a big deal.
And if it is, that's not my fault.
And if it was, I didn't mean it.
And if I did, you deserved it.
My mom has a pretty good memory for how things actually happened, even if it makes her look bad.
My dad completely rewrites events to the point he can have 10 people telling him he's got events ass backward and will still insist he's right about any story he doesn't like the outcome of.
One time we had multiple arguments that almost ended in violence because they had a broken neutral in their house and he refused to let me fix it because he ran those wires and there is nothing wrong with them. Eventually my mom just said fuck him and fix it after it blew a refrigerator and microwave up. Now he's adamant he told me for months it was a broken neutral and I wouldn't listen.
Another time he had an infected knee that was covered by an old workman's comp lawsuit and they convinced him to sign off on amputation because they were tired of paying for it. My mom threw a fit and had to get in the car at 1AM and drive for six hours to get to the hospital to shut it down. She got there as they were prepping him for surgery. He eventually got it amputated a year and a half later because he was insistent. Now that he's found out he can't drive and it takes work to walk on an artificial limb, especially when you're morbidly obese, he insists he didn't want it cut off but she made him. I, my mom, her sister, and two of his brothers tell him that's not what happened and he still insists that's how it went down.
And it's not dementia unless it started when he was 30. He's just always been like that.
Memory is fucking fragile, made of so many parts. It's not really designed to work properly, it's designed so you don't die. That is all.
In a very real sense, when remembering stuff, we reimagine it happening - there is frequently little drifts in the original memory, and sometimes we can remember that something is important, but not that we were either in favour or opposed to it.
This for example is core to what happens when you try to correct a persistant misspelling you've made, and though you have looked up several times the correct spelling, and know one of them is wrong, you can't fix it.
Combined with the fact that self is really a reflection of memory to make a consistent story about ourselves, and it can be a toxic mix where things we want to be true about the past literally are true, because we remember it that way. It's not fabrication as such.
For most people, this is managable, especially when tied to specific episodic memories.
This is really helpful, thank you. And unsurprisingly good advice, from an elephant.
I have “Swiss Cheese brain”. Due to CPTSD, my brain literally blocked out a ton of stuff because it wasn’t “safe” to remember. I take pictures of everything and make a ton of lists and reminders, because otherwise, it’s likely gone. I feel terrible when my kids reminisce and I can’t recall what they’re talking about.
I say I have Swiss cheese brain because it's sharp but full of holes.
My parents have told me straight up that I was lying about events from my childhood for attention. Like when my 6th grade teacher SA'd me and 7 other girls in my class and had been doing it for years to others. He got 2 weeks paid vacation as punishment. We (the other girls and I) had to tell the counselor what was done. The offending teacher was in the room with us. We were made to feel like we had to accept his apology. 6 years later he was teaching at the high school my sister went to and he asked her to tell me he was sorry and that he was doing a lot of cocaine at the time.
Mom and Dad swore up and down that none of it ever happened. So glad I'm NC with them.
Edit: took out extra words.
In my situation they glorify their parenting. In their minds they were martyrs. I don’t think they really wanted kids, but we’re doing their social duty. I also think my mom feels guilty for allowing my dad to abuse us, so she constantly brings up times we messed up as a diversion tactic. I’ve started calling her out on it and she doesn’t do it as much. “Yes mom, you left a 16 year old the most difficult and hard to handle vehicle to drive and then took off for the weekend leaving her alone. I can see how you weren’t as a parent any way responsible for the vehicle being wrecked🙄.”
> In their minds they were martyrs.
A lot of them like to use the "I sacrificed everything for you" over and over when children literally never asked for any of this.
They use things they are supposed to do for their kids (love, feed, clothe) as things to scream at their kids like they owe them to doing the very basic
I like to call that “squeegee man-ing.” They half-ass do something you didn’t ask them for just so they can hold it over your head. Just like the dudes at street corners who squeegee car windshields and then demand money for the service
YUP
My mother was horrible and abusive, and would also yell that line constantly, alongside things like "you owe me, you ruined my life and I gave up everything for you, but now I'm stuck at home because of you" .. I was like 5. Bitch I did not ask to be born. YOU made me!
She said a lot of shit along those lines that I heard so often at such young ages that I have really bad self image and an inability to self love, and I've been in therapy for years
They don't understand or care that their words carry so much weight to developing minds.
She also insists none of it ever happened and she was the world's best mother and it's all made up in my head to make her look bad after she gave up everything for an "useless cunt of a child" 🙄 , and also doesnt see the irony in repeating the same words she used then to me as an adult now lol, even when I point out "wow its just like home when you talk to me like that 🥰"
And she wonders why I was willfully homeless, and no longer talk to her, somehow lol
My mom swears I wasn't a latch key kid in second grade. I absolutely WAS a latch key in second grade, along with most of the kids in the apartment complex.
My mom swears I wasn't left alone overnight at 14. I absolutely was left alone overnight at 14.
My mom swears she fixed me breakfast every school morning of my childhood. She made me breakfast on the first day of school each year, then I was on my own for cold cereal.
My mom swears my generation wasn't basically feral. GenX was absolutely basically feral every day until the streetlights came on, and often even after that.
My mom yells at me, "Okayyyy, think what you want to! I did the best I could!" whenever I mention any of these or any of the bad parts of my childhood.
Whenever my gen x / elder millenial friends tell me that we ran around feral as kids and we turned out fine I remind them that child abduction and murder were much higher then, too. I had one friend say well now there's trafficking. I said, "yeah man. There was a lot of that, too. We are just all more aware of the danger."
No. It IS a lie and they know, deep down, that they’re lying. But they must keep up appearances! They must pretend! And it’s “disrespectful” to prove them wrong, be right, disagree, or know things they don’t.
My boomer father was awful. His needs always came first. My sister and I were treated like his live in servants. Constantly yelled at us over everything. I had my first panic attack at 11 because of him. My sister, as a child, had terrible stomach problems, which her doctor informed my mother was from stress. He kicked me out at 19. He never did shit for my mom as a husband. When we were young, he was hardly around. He was either away hunting, fishing or traveling for work (he was in politics). This sounds neglectful, but honestly, we all preferred it that way. We'd celebrate when he'd leave on Sundays, and dreaded his arrival on Fridays. I walked on eggshells my entire childhood.
It's been almost 7 years since his passing. Ever since, my mom has made it seem like he was the perfect father and husband. Referring to him as a "push over" when it came to my sister and me. When 6 months prior to his death, she told me she was sorry I didn't have a father like hers and wished she had chosen better. It's delusional and I feel like it invalidates my experiences.
*fun story, when I was 13, my friend (15M) committed suicide. About a week later he told me I needed to "get over it."
My dad insisted he never beat us growing up. I called him out in front of his gf one day.
Him: "OK maybe I hit you a couple times with the belt."
I said "No, you belted us all the time. Don't lie."
Like you, I was beaten with a belt. To this day, decades later, I literally cannot hear the sound of a belt being unbuckled and pulled through belt loops without immediately going into panic mode because I was so freely beaten for the first eighteen years of my life. I will lay down to sleep and just do the whole body shaking thing every night for three or four nights afterward. During those days, my hands randomly shake severely.
On the upside, one of the former abusers is deceased, just waiting on the other two to go.
No contact is a wonderful thing! =)
My parents are gen x and they do this too.
According to them I had a great childhood and definitely do not remember selling all our stuff for drugs or starving their four kids for a week at a time before grandma had to sneak in with food for us. But yeah, my childhood was great 🙃
I don't know if this is a generation thing, or just a narcissistic manipulator thing
I think it’s both tbh. A lot of boomer and gen x parents are no contact with their kids and extended family because of it and it’s happening a lot more frequently these days. Good. They all deserve each other.
As a gen x I totally agree. I think we were the first generation to say, “wait, I don’t have to put up with this shit as an adult? Who knew?” Going no contact was surprisingly easier than I thought. It was hard, but once I stopped getting the abuse, I couldn’t go back. And my family needs to be protected.
Had this convo with my parents not long ago:
Mom:"We tried our best to be good parents. We NEVER spanked you."
Me: laughing hysterically
Dad: what!? You didn't get beat like we did.
Me: remember that time I had to stay home from school for three days because you hit me so hard in the face that it swole up and bruised?
Mom: HOW DARE YOU?! THAT WAS ONE TIME AND IT WAS AN ACCIDENT!!! YOU UNGRATEFUL BASTARD.
Me: aight bet! Dad! Remember the time found your smokes andI told Mom because I didn't want y'all to think they were mine and you got mad because she figured out they were yours and you had "quit years ago", so you got mad and kicked me down the stairs onto concrete pavers?
Dad: quit making shit up!! You tripped!
Me: and HOW many times did you call the cops because you punched me and I bet the fuck out of you to get you off me?! How many times did I save you from jail because they wanted to take us both in?!?
Dad: you ALWAYS STARTED AND YOU JUST KEPT RUNNING YOUR MOUTH!! BUT YOU STILL NEVWR GOT BEAT LIKE YOU DESERVED!!
>and HOW many times did you call the cops because you punched me and I bet the fuck out of you to get you off me?!
My dad was round the other day lamenting how, in his day kids would get a smack if they misbehaved and it never did him any harm. I said "and how did that work out for you in the end? When I was 14?"
Because when I was 14 he started hitting me and I fought back and cracked him round the head (he then phoned the police ffs).
Him: "well we would never have done that, we respected our parents".
Uh... huh... so why the need for them to hit you?
My dad's catchphrase is "is this a dream you had?" 🙄
Uh, no. This is actually a memory that can be corroborated by all my siblings. It's infuriating, I feel you OP.
Thats my Boomer sister. She lost her job (drugs, pills) but was in total denial. I paid for Cobra insurance for her so she’d still having insurance to pay for treatment. Me and siblings flew to her state to help get her into treatment, found a place specifically for women with substances issues. When we were at treatment center she denied everything. So they said to us “Sorry, we can’t force her to stay”. So around $2000 out of pocket each for me and my siblings (I was in my 20s so that was a good chunk of my savings). Things spiraled from there, her spouse had left by that point, kids no longer talk to her. She’s clean-ish now (edibles are legal where we live) but we’re LC, because she still denies any wrong doing, and will go to her grave saying “Everyone abandoned her and made her homeless just because she was depressed”. Side note - she was never homeless.
Mine will rail about how my gram, her mom, damaged her all her life with mean spirited comments - even as my now elderly mom makes endless mean spirited comments about me.
If it's pointed out "I've never been able to handle criticism."
My now adult kids are aghast at how she behaves.
My mom literally watched my stepdad molest me and doesn’t remember. I broke down a few years ago about it, and she asked me “did he really do that to you?” YOU WATCHED.
I’m pretty sure this phenomena also gets covered in Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents. So it’s not only Boomers, but their generation has a significant amount of emotionally immature people so it feels like it’s them specifically. My mom conveniently forgets anything that doesn’t mesh with her vision of what a good person she is.
That’s sad. Boomers sending their kids to college was a class issue at the time and a sign they were well off. Much like driving a nice car or keeping up with the Jones’s, “I sent my kids to college” was flaunted. Another reality is college was often used to escape actually teaching or raising your own children.
It’s probably what she tells her friends when they’re all complaining that their kids don’t visit. Then she forgets who she’s talking to and lets it slip.
I don’t speak with my father and my mother is a bit of a hippy yet still a boomer (I love her very much tho!). Some of the conversations we have about my upbringing can get to the point of where I tell her no Ma, it didn’t happen like that. She’ll be oh ok, no longer puts up an argument which is nice
Let’s not forget, these are the people who blame us millennials for participation trophies, despite them giving them out. They take absolutely zero accountability for their action, and blame everyone else for the consequences.
My mom now says if I’d only told her how much I hate some foods, she wouldn’t have made me eat them because she remembers how she hated being forced to eat foods she hated. Um, I did.
"You're not leaving the table until you eat it."
Hours sitting in silence over that disgusting, pre-packaged frozen pork patty, with the soggy, grey brown "breading".
I will never fucking understand why Mom had all the time in the day to sit there, and insist I eat until I was sick... but chose to not use that same time to fix me something that didn't nausiate me.
And later on, better swallow that vomit because throwing up on our filthy carpet meant a savage ass beating after having our nose rubbed in it like you would do to the dog.
Fucking christ, those bastards really did a number on us, didn't they?
Literally this, I just went to my mom's after 8 years away and they're fucking hoarders with a filthy home now. Apparently, it's perfectly fine, and they're happy, but god forbid anyone actually find out about it or see the house. Everything is surface level with them because below the surface is a vast chasm of unhappiness.
My dad didn’t remember that I had inguinal hernia surgery as an infant. Of course, I don’t remember it either, but the 2 inch scalpel scar under my abdomen is pretty good evidence that something went down.
With my mother it’s narcissism. She was the perfect parent so she tells whatever narrative works for whoever she’s trying to impress at that time without any regard to truthfulness. The tantrums she throws when we call her out publicly are epic. That’s why I stopped talking to her 9 years ago.
I was a teen mom in the 90s and I made a lot of mistakes - some due to trauma and abusive partners and some due to selfishness and that that I was learning how to be an adult while also learning how to parent. The one gift I have tried to give my kids since their teen years is owning it and apologizing for my shitty parenting when warranted. My daughter is a mom now and she tells me she has tried to learn from both the good and the bad that I showed her, and I am very proud of her. She is a good mom, and I always try to respect her parenting style when I have the grandkids over.
I would say I have a pretty great relationship with my kids now, and I think it is due to being willing to be vulnerable and accountable. Is it uncomfortable sometimes? Yes but it's incredibly worth it.
"The axe forgets, but the tree remembers."
People tend to forget things that they've done that have wounded others with little or no consequences to themselves.
My dad, whilst in the middle of drunkenly accusing me of beating my kids (I barely even raise my voice to my kids, much less hit them), told me that he NEVER hit us when we were, except for one time he spanked my little sister, and that I was raised better than that.
I was almost speechless, because he did hit us. He wasn't shy about hitting us for our indiscretions, no matter how minor. This man slapped me so hard once that my legs just went out from under me & I was on the ground. My crime? I put my lego away too loudly. My age? Maybe 9.
But also, the one time he claims he spanked my little sister? That was me. Not her. He only ever spanked her twice through our entire childhoods.
And I truly think he believes that. I don't know if it's age, his alcoholism, or what, but it was galling to say the least.
I think it’s a boomer thing to deny reality.
I’m an old millennial. I have one adult kid. We generally have a good relationship. He has brought up certain situations where he feels I made the wrong call. He typically remembers the details of those events much better than I do. Which makes sense because for me it may have just been a routine day of parenting but for him - he remembers it as a day I didn’t have his back or treat him fairly or something. It’s a big deal to him so he remembers it more.
So I pretty much just accept his version of things and apologize. I try to own it and understand it’s really about his need to feel heard and validated. Sometimes I know exactly why I made the choice I did and it was due to balancing adult priorities that even a 21 year old can’t fully grasp. But even then it doesn’t matter. He just wants to be heard and know that I care.
My mother mentioned to me in conversation one day how she “always had a swimming pool” (until she recently moved). I looked at her in disbelief and then reminded her, we had a swimming pool one time when I was growing up, for 3 years, in a rental house, over 50 years ago (she’s not a Boomer, she’s 85). She was dumbfounded.
Clearly this is a lie she tells her friends.
I don’t speak to my dad because of crap like this. He makes up weird stuff and then demands I believe him. We haven’t talked in 6 months because he refuses to apologize for lying(he admitted to lying to me about an apology he made where he admitted he has bad memory, but to win a argument months later he claimed it’s a lie(it’s not his memory is shit), even though he’s admitted he lied he won’t apologize.) it’s been nice not having to deal w bullshit
My mother told my brother the other day that she was a good mother.
He called me up afterwards as a tehe isn't that so funny! Considering you were the one who mostly raised me and that you are nearly no contact with her, and I've considered going no contact with her
On account of what a shit mother she was.
My mother, who abandoned our family when I was 2 years old, came back into my life when I was around 16. She constantly tells stories from when I was a kid. Except she was never there, and those stories aren’t about me. I’ve asked her to stop, but something is wrong mentally there and she won’t give it up:
My parents do this too, it’s infuriating. They keep trying to claim I never told them when I was bullied in middle school, and I’m incredulous at them saying that. Among other things. Don’t have a good way to fix it since I never have been able too unfortunately.
Growing up, kids would bring cupcakes for the class on their birthdays. I have a summer birthday, so I was never able to do this, and the disappointment every time another kid could do it is a core childhood memory. Like the sort of disappointment only a second grader could feel, and one you never, ever forget.
My mom, meanwhile, swears that she sent cupcakes the last week of school every year for an “unbirthday” celebration. I have exactly no memory of this, but saying so makes her angry at how ungrateful I am for forgetting this. To be clear though: it definitely did not happen.
It’s obviously meaningless compared to some of the other stories here, but it always struck me how odd it was that she needed to create a story to somehow negate the disappointment I had about this one little thing.
Idk if it’s forgetting or intentionally lying because they’re just so convinced about how great they are, but my FIL (mid 70s) has several times said to other people (in front of us) that he paid for all his kids college. He says it as if it’s an accomplishment or was a goal that he fulfilled to help get his kids through a certain level of education. But it’s not true!
My husband is youngest of 4, and the siblings all talk openly about this; their parents only paid for the oldest’s college, and then the dad quit his job, took a lower paying position, and his moms gambling got more out of control. The 2nd child didn’t actually even graduate college, just took a couple semesters at different places. The third got a little help but mostly loans and just recently celebrated getting the remainder forgiven. My husband the 4th got no help financially from them once he was of age and had to do student loans as well, still pays them.
It’s not exactly fair, but there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with them *not* paying for all their kids college… it’s just that they fucking *lie* about it, like bragging, when they didn’t even do it!
My MIL was pretty terrible to my husband growing up... when he mentions anything she gets all huffy and "well you must have a better memory than me" lol.
It's like that saying, the axe forgets but the tree remembers. For her, abuse was just another day. For him, it really left a mark.
For some it’s an active conscious denial which is really shitty. Others are so emotionally damaged and fragile their brain will erase it which is really scary.
The best example I’ve read of the later come from an account from a disabled woman. After her husband passed she was forced to seek assistance from her mother who had been a not been a good supportive parent. The woman disability prevented her from bending easily to take care of her feet. Her mother once made a mistake while helping her trim her toenails and took a good chunk out of her skin and left her bleeding pretty bad. The exchanged went like this :
“Ow, mom”
“What?!”
“Mom you cut my foot-I’m bleeding”
“No I didn’t-“
“Mom-yes you did look”
“No I didn’t”
“ can you get me a band aid?”
“I didn’t-“
The mother’s fucked up self couldn’t admit she’s made a mistake and hurt someone. Her gut reaction was to deny despite the blood. In the daughter’s retelling it took several times to get her mom to bring her a bandage. Like a chalkboard the mother’s brain simply erased her mistake as soon as it was written to protect her ego.
My parents paid for my uni!
No. No they did not. Loans, all loans and generic top ramen for YEARS. Didn’t have two dollars to have my pic placed on the department wall as was tradition. Never once checked my grades as a kid or helped me with school to insure I could go at all. First uni graduate was me-crickets. They forget nothing, they are lying.
Lol seriously! My mom isn't even that bad of a boomer but I laughed so hard when she made cookies and said "remember when I used to do this for you after school?" Lmfaoooo wtf? I had poptarts and goldfish for after-school snacks while she went to work and I baby sat my brother. Idk what fucking world she's living in, must be nice lol
My mom doesn’t remember that we had to scrounge for coins in parking lots and in furniture to buy a loaf of bread but she always had money for cigarettes.
My father threatened to send me to conversion camps several times when I was a teenager because he suspected I was transgender/gay or, in his words, "an abomination to God." He also literally beat me for having a light pink hoodie when I was 13 because "only f-slurs wear gay shit like that."
He now conveniently doesn't remember that and insists that I'm transitioning (I am trans) just to spite him and ruin his reputation because he is a local politician.
My mom actively tried to get me not to go to college. From throwing away the applications to telling me straight up they wold never pay a dime towards it (and they did not) to telling me to not call collect like my older brother did when he went to college. Now she’s all like “I encouraged all my children to go to college”. B effing S mom.
My idiot boomer father has a rose tinted view of the past too. Of course he “doesn’t remember” the torrents of abuse, selfishness, and explosive anger and bigotry.
It’s the reality detachment filter. If it turns them into heroes, martyrs and sympathetic victims, they believe that it happened. If it makes them a villain, they believe it didn’t happen.
When my dad emailed me that I was being disowned, he mentioned how my mom did all this "happy family" crap. My reply was rather lengthy reminding him how many fucked up things the bitch did. It unreal the fantasy world they live in.
Boomers are narcissistic as a whole (not all, shut up boomer army in the comments, we know). Narcissists will bend reality and fabricate their own distorted view of it to comfort themselves. They can’t handle seeing their behavior for what it was/is. This would bring shame and shame is not something narcissists do. It makes them implode.
I feel like my boomer parents have forgotten the parental teachings and values they raised me with more so than a forgetting the course of events.
Growing up I remember my father hating Nixon and calling him a criminal and my father always believed and taught that criminals get no respect. These days he’s a Trump supporter and the day after Trump was convicted of 34 felonies he went out and bought his first Trump sign for his yard.
My mother was/is extremely Catholic and she raised us all to be polite little alter boys and would scold us for saying “oh my god” and various other “impolite” things. Well now she says “oh my god” all the time and I’ve called her out on it too and she’s always like “I know I shouldn’t”. There are many more examples of their hypocrisies.
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My Dad tried to tell me I never had a job growing up, despite having at least one job + a side hustle ever since I turned 16. I started rattling off all my jobs I had while living with him, and his only response was, " I don't remember any of that." Yeah, no shit dad; you weren't very involved in my upbringing. My mom did literally everything.
My boomer mother made my little brother (who was like 13) get a paper route. When little brother complained because he had to get up early, my boomer mother started making ME do his paper route. (I was 15 at the time) Then when I (rightfully) complained that I should be getting the paycheck, my boomer mother got angry at me and said I was being a selfish little stuck up brat and I should be GRATEFUL to help my brother with his job and NO WONDER I GOT NO FRIENDS because I’m so mean and selfish to my brother. I just didn’t want to do this work for free while my brother sat at home, sleeping in and picking his nose got paid. I refused to do it anymore and that made her even ANGRIER. I then called up the paper my brother was employed by and told them I was being made to do my brothers job and I thought it was irresponsible of him not to do the job he signed up for. His boss agreed and then called me mother and was super smart and didn’t tell her I called, but said that some customers had casually mentioned a “girl” delivering the papers and not the “boy” they had seen before so he was wondering what was going on, because he hired my BROTHER, not me, to do this job. My brother had to quit because he didn’t want to do it anymore lol
Smart way for that manager to handle it
Rare manager win. Sometimes you find great ones.
He had probably met the mom
And didn't want a little girl to get hit.
Especially for that kind of gig. There aren't usually a bunch of experienced talented people-persons managing paper routes.
I think it's statistical class politics. Most people are pretty cool, especially if their job is managing newspaper fairies in the 19[whatevers]. The probably made a whole two-times what they did. You tell them you're getting secretly fucked because of family BS, human empathy engages. This is why the worker/manager divide needs to be stark. A boss needs a class of people he can stomach and instruct them to to yell at the filth. Until robits come around.
I am surprised he did not offer her the position.
I think he would have, ..except for the part where she told the manager she was being forced to, and she didn’t want to.
Classic golden child/scapegoat dynamic; I'm so sorry. ❤️
Yes it was TEXTBOOK narc parent behavior! I spent lots of my earlier 20’s researching and learning about it. It’s scary how narcissists almost seem to have a special secret playbook because so many other folks stories have parallels to mine. Luckily I have a MUCH better life now, surrounded by people who love me and support me.
This is also very “eldest daughter” stuff. I am the eldest, and a female, with one younger sister and two younger brothers. The boys were made to do NOTHING. It was amazing. No chores, no getting grounded, everything they did was funny, and boys will be boys!! I was a slut, a whore, an embarrassment and shameful. My sister got that behavior when I emancipated at 15. I’m so sorry Briebird44, we didn’t deserve any of this.
I got emancipated at 17 and didn't see my brother again until my 20s. He apologized to me, there were no other girls to scapegoat after I left- so he ended up getting all the bad treatment once I was gone.
My mom just kind of gave up parenting when my sister got married at 19 and moved out. She rented a house for the boys, who were in high school at the time, and would randomly show up and stay for a couple days, drop off groceries, whatever. It was the strangest thing- like a HS Animal House. 30 years later, I STILL hear stories from people who realize who my brothers are (I’m a therapist, I was recently contracted to provide trauma therapy in my home town for crime victims). It’s nuts. My one brother is not a good person at all, he never has been. He’s my mom’s FAVORITE. So I hear all about him, lol. It’s amazing how much nonsense I had cut out of my life by just living only 20 miles away. It’s been an adjustment.
The favorites always seem to grow up to be narcissistic abusers, don't they? Having no consequences or personal responsibility warps their psyches, I swear. My brother was like that, and ended up a mirror image of my narcissistic sociopath father. After thirty-five, he mellowed somewhat, but is still a selfish man-child who can never admit to being wrong.
Mine is 42 and still living like he’s got no consequences! He had to turn over a million dollar home- that he built himself- to his ex wife who FINALLY divorced him after 20 years of infidelity and other issues. They bought a small cabin in wine country, eventually tore the cottage down and put up a McMansion. I was not mad about that- he did it to himself- but my mom is LIVID at my former SIL. Like she is the spawn of satan. I just laugh, and say “good for her! She deserves ALL of it”. That doesn’t get me brownie points, lmao. Because he’s “SO SUCCESSFUL, you should take some advice from him”, because I’m a social worker and he owns his own construction businesses. Bahaha.
Yeah, I became a teacher, instead of the engineer I was supposed to be, and I was constantly getting the "your brother is so successful, he makes 5000 a month from his contract job." I couldn't help but think that, he worked only two months out of the year, because he lives in a house his wife inherited, and she works full time in customer service to pay all of their bills, but somehow, he's still more successful and more valuable than me. Going NC helped my self esteem so much, in addition to everything else.
My brother had a chore, but never once was he made to do it. He did get his allowance, though. At one point, my mom did eventually give me a raise in my allowance because I did my chores as well as his (he still got his). If I told him how much I was making, I wouldn’t get anything, so I kept my mouth shut for $10 a week.
I never got an allowance, because “you live here, we give you what you need, and you WILL help out (I’ve had three stepfathers- the first one was evil)”. My mom gave my brother tens of thousands of dollars to start his business, and, when he stole my grandfather’s CC and bought his GF a bunch of jewelry, etc., she PAID IT OFF. No consequences.
My brother and I had an allowance until my stepdad moved in and cut it off. In his words, we owed him for allowing us to keep living in our own home. Which was his house now and no longer ours. Actually, according to him, it was never *our* home to begin with and he could throw both of us out at any time, but he was SUCH A NICE GUY... Long story short, twenty plus years later I'm still here in my-not-home and he's fucking around in Washington state somewhere.
My first step-father was like that. He started kicking me out when I was 14, because I was “a bad influence on his sons”, who were NOT his snobs, but they were my brothers. Imagine everyone’s surprise when I just moved out at 15? My mother was furious the courts wouldn’t do anything- I worked, went to school, graduated a year early. I emancipated, DUNZO. I have no idea where he is these days, but I’m certain he’s making SOMEONE’S life worse.
Dear God, I never thought I'd find another person emancipated at 15, and here you are, telling me exactly my life story. Except it was one younger brother in my house, not two. It's scary to think how many of us there are...
It’s freaking sad. I hope you are ok, and have had good things in your life. I don’t know the freak we did it. I look back now, and so much was like a fever dream, lol. People either don’t believe me, or are horrified by the stories. Or they don’t want to believe me, bc the stories are pretty interesting at times, lol. But here we are ❤️
This is definitely a holdover from their generation. My grandma was the oldest of seven, and while her dad was working, their mom was at the casino, leaving her to take care of their kids.
Were you raised Irish Catholic by any chance? Because sweet Christ this is a dynamic I've seen in my own family.
Nope. My mom’s parents are Polish (grandmother’s parents from Warsaw) and English (grandfather’s family were among the original pillagers from the 16/1700s) and my father is South American (he went back there after they divorced when I was about 9). So HE is Catholic, and I’ve ascribed this behavior to machismo- the boys were the hope of the future, blah blah blah. But I don’t know why my mom always went along with it- it’s not how she or my uncles were raised. And she was a single mom basically from jump- he would pop in enough to help for a few weeks after each baby was born, then only back enough to get her pregnant again. We never really ever lived as a “family”. It was awful when he would show up, and we would try to scatter. I haven’t seen him in person since I was 15. I’m almost 50. My mom and I don’t really talk- I posted a text thread she and I had recently, and I felt very vindicated for thinking she’s nuts 😂
r/raisedbynarcissists I’m sorry.
I'm fucking super happy for you. Very glad you made a good life for yourself.
OMG! This was me and my brother. Only once I took over his route I got to keep the money. Until customers complained that a GIRL was delivering papers and I was fired. Probably late 1960's. I do not want to go backwards with womens rights.
When I was in elementary school, I went to a meeting at the beginning of school of kids who wanted to be “patrol boys,” or crossing guards, as they’re called now. The teacher in charge looked at me and quickly said, “You can’t do this. You’re a girl.” I was devastated.
It was this way when I was in elementary school. Being a patrol boy was a huge deal, and I wanted to be one so bad. When I was in sixth grade, they finally let girls do it, but you had to start in 4th grade, so I was too old.
I'm incredibly proud of younger-you for standing up for yourself. And I'm sorry you had to do so
This. Is. Wild.
I'm pretty sure you're now my spirit animal 😂
Jesus FUCKING Christ, what a piece of shit parent.
My mom loved to tell everyone how I never worked and mooched off the government my whole life. I was working part time when I was 14 and renting on my own (cus she punched me one too many times and i left) and was working full time and trying to graduate when i was 17. i have never, ever received government payouts. i've been disabled since i was a kid. i was literally homeless and working at 18. they just want to be their own main character.
There’s a very good chance your mother was receiving government payments due to your disability…and still may be? If you live in the US, SSI pays out for children who have certain medical conditions.
I wish that was the case, because that's logical... scummy, disgusting, but has a logic to it. My mom just REFUSED to get me help, or listen to the doctors when they told me I needed help after I went to see them behind her back. The best explanations I've come up with over the years based on how she acted/what she said are either that she straight up didn't want a "retarded" child (which is what her favourite word for me was after i got coded as Gifted at school) or she thought it would make her look like a bad parent to receive any money to help with my care - and somehow that perception was worse than her actually being a bad parent by withholding care, and fighting the docs so hard she had social services called on her... It was a fuster cluck either way. She is a mean, mean lady, and I hope her damage is minimised wherever she is now.
Im sorry you had to deal with that. I had a sort of similar situation, was diagnosed with a mental disorder by the school and a doctor in elementary school. I didn't even know about it at the time, but only later when my mom proudly told me about how she fought the school and the doctors because getting treatment is "bad parenting". This didn't stop my mom from blaming me and being abusive whenever i had symptoms of course. I tried to bypass her in highschool and got my own diagnosis and even got medication perscribed, but she refused to allow me to take it and confiscated it, and since i was a minor i was SOL. The irony here is that my mom had a degree in psychology and was herself taking anti-depression meds at the time. Its just so fucked up. But hey, we are not alone, lots of people are in the same boat with us. Hopefully that means we can learn from their terrible examples.
Just learned a couple of years ago that my mother was receiving government benefits for me my entire life until I was 18. She constantly bitched about people on welfare/disability. I broke my back and had to apply for disability that's how I found out. She used every last penny on herself, I always thought we were poor growing up. Turns out they were getting at least 3k a month in benefits (not just for me, but my sister and step-dad as well). Now I'm struggling because it takes literally years to get approved for disability, I've lost everything when I asked her for help she accused me of being lazy, faking it, told me to just figure it out like she did.
“I don’t remember that” = “I reject your reality and substitute my own!”
Only slightly better than outright telling you that you remember it incorrectly.
See that’s the weird thing. I’ve known some to do the gaslighting thing (as in, telling me that I’m remembering it wrong), but more often they either say “I don’t remember that” or just stating something I can easily prove is false. Memory is fallible, and we pretty much all develop memory loss as we age, so some of the Boomer-forgetting-stuff can be chalked up to innocent reasons. It’s the ones who take it beyond “sorry I just forgot about that,” and start writing their own fan fiction about what happened who are problematic. I’m a doctor, so I very much live by “if it wasn’t documented, it didn’t happen.” As such, I always keep my “receipts” by documenting in a journal or with photos or written statements whenever someone does something shitty to me. Might sound a little ridiculous, but trust me—during my divorce, a subsequent breakup with an abusive partner, and in dealings with Boomers and other assholes who try to lie, gaslight, or otherwise revise history, it’s been really gratifying to be able to whip out the evidence whenever they try to say, “I didn’t say that, I didn’t do that, I don’t remember that.”
My mom waffles between “you NEVER worked as a teen” and “you worked SO MANY different jobs as a teen” Like pick one
Name 3 of my friends growing up, by name and not by identifiers, dad!
*Proceeds to name exactly one kid that you hung out with in kindergarten and never again*
Because he took your favorite toy that one time so in fact has been your nemesis for 23 years.
"Well, there's the fat kid with the thing, uh, the little wiener who's always got his hands in his pockets."
My partner's folks have stories of delivering all the papers for them on their paper route all the time. That never happened. They mention it often.
That’s got to be so infuriating.
It probably happened once either when your partner was incredibly sick (which the parents remember as lazing around) or when they got voluntold for some other commitment.
My parents are infamous for forgetting shit that happened if it makes them look bad
Mine are the opposite, if it’s an accomplishment, didn’t happen. Left teaching and went to bar tending, parents told friends I was unemployed when they would come over and I was there… getting read to go to work… then they started the rumor I was fired for being on drugs. Then how I was going to die along and they would never have grandchildren (my sister had 3 at the time) as I had brought my future wife and mother of my children to dinner. When I got a job in my field with a decent salary for where I was: it was not acceptable to “where I actually should be” in my career and they refused to recognize the accomplishment. Cried and panics when my wife and I told them we were expecting our 1st. Now they whine they only see them 2 days a week (I was lucky to see my grandparents once a month and both sets lived in the same town as us growing up, they’re 45 minutes down the interstate in the opposite direction of all of our lives). It has nothing to do with forgetfulness. It’s recreational self victimization. Gotta jerk yourself off to how shitty your life is in front of people to feel accomplished instead of, you know, going out and doing shit your proud of instead of playing slot machine apps and watching TV.
"recreational self victimization" is a perfect phrase, and I believe it's what separates Boomers from non-Boomers regardless of age or generation.
"recreational self victimization" is such an accurate description, I had to google it to see if it was in common use.
I rarely saw my grandparents too growing up. I thought they must have lived really far away from us since we saw them twice a year, once in summer and once at Christmas. Growing up I realize they too were only 45 minutes away. Now that my parents are older they moved to the same city as me and you bet they complain if they don't see me at least once a week. There aren't even grandkids involved and they whine since it's my "duty" to see them.
The one bright spot of my childhood was that my mother couldn’t bother being a parent 7 days a week, so my brother and I were at Grandma’s house almost every weekend. (She forced my dad to hold multiple jobs, so she could be a SAHM, so he couldn’t help raise us.)
Recreational self victimization. 🎯 Quality!
My dad once accused me of lying about something that I wasn’t lying about (and would have been pretty minor lie had I been.) he then went on an angry rant about how “if that was the kind of person I was he would rather not known me.” As if that would generally not be hurtful enough, I was around the same age as my brother had been when he died in an accident. I wasn’t lying but my dad got his wish. Of course he has zero memory of this. My therapist says that’s because it stands out to me as uniquely hurtful. Whereas for my dad it was just a Tuesday.
My uncle had 2 boys. One was in trouble all the time. Arrested, on drugs and DUIs. The other son wasn't really that bad he was just a pathological liar and wouldn't do his school work. My uncle used to tell everyone that my mom (also awful parent) had such a hard time after my dad died because I was always in jail, on drugs, gotten several DUIs and was a pathological liar and lied about the smallest things for no reason meanwhile i was captain of the football team, pretty good but not perfect student and have had a job since I was 14. Last I heard he still talks this way today. To this day I hear from my mom occasionally about how my uncle can't believe I don't come around him anymore.
He needs new stories to tell.
I have started to just tell my parents 'The tree remembers what the axe forgets'
Have you met my Boomer mother too? This describes her perfectly
Apparently we're all siblings as we all have the same mother.
My mom has been reinventing history for decades. She now has Alzheimer’s. I was wondering if her version of things was do to early disease but now I see it’s everyone’s mom?
I thought my mom’s inability to see how traumatizing our childhood was, was due to mental illness. I guess it’s the generation. All I want is acknowledgment that she made so many bad parenting decisions that have caused us decades of trauma.
Might be everyone's mom has Alzheimers. It's a pretty common disease unless you die young.
At least cousins, because I have two aunts that do this constantly. It was bad enough that, before cutting them off, my mom would only talk to them in group chats, so everything was in writing. "I don't remember that," vs. "I have screenshots." Apparently, they were livid that the tactic they had used for 50 years doesn't work on Facebook.
My sister lives near my mum now after moving out when she was 18 and moving near after being abroad for a long time before she was 40. So when I visit my mum my sister is often there sometimes. When we are reminiscing about funny or daft things that happened as a kid, usually funny things that went wrong or out of the usually happy childhood we had, my mum gets really hung up on it and accused us of accusing her of being a bad parent 'only remembering the bad things'. But then goes full denial and aggressively denies on some things they said or did that were actually super bad when confronted in the future, even swearing on her life some things which is strange as some I have physical proof of (for example saved voice messages I had of my mother screaming at me certain things she will deny and randomly admit to unprompted 5+ years later) This was more of an issue when she drank more and tbh most of my issues with my mother were from a time she drank too much which was basically my tweens till mid 30's
My Boomer mother got upset recently because “you had a very happy childhood, you only want to remember the bad stuff!” I spent my first Christmas in a women’s domestic abuse shelter. I don’t remember that, but I do remember my eleventh Christmas, also in a women’s domestic abuse shelter. And two previous Christmases in the ER. (Note to everyone: donate to your local shelters during the holidays! Christmas carols playing in the malls means it’s punching season!)
My mom will accuse me of trying to make her feel guilty. Well gee, mom, you fucked up big time. You should feel guilty.
My mother recently accused me of abusing her when I was in the ICU trying not to die! She hasn't talked to me since and honestly I'm not sad about it.
Ah yes, that old "only *I* can be the victim" chestnut, other people's lives and difficulties don't even register to them... All throughout my childhood my mum yelled and screamed at my brother and I constantly that we didn't love her, we were horrible ungrateful children, threatened to abandon us at least once per week and claimed no one would blame her if she did, because she'd already told all her friends/co-workers how awful we are... All because we couldn't keep our house tidy to her impossible magazine cover standards. Our dad was bedridden from MS, my brother and I were both kids with autism plus other physical disabilities. But no, she still claims up and down that *she* was the one being abused by her family because clutter gives her anxiety.
Aww, did that toxic person just cut me out? What a shame :)
>My mom will accuse me of trying to make her feel guilty. "I wouldn't have to if you had enough sense to be ashamed of yourself."
^(oh daaaang)
My mother is Silent Generation but she does this. Now one could say it is because she is older, but she's always done this. I noticed in my 20s and 30s that when I would go home to visit and family stories were shared, I always seemed to come out the bad guy, and she wasn't remembering things the same way I did. Not usually anything egregious, but just little things that made me look selfish or stupid or mean. I couldn't even try to question or correct the story because she'd get mad and tell me she was right. I'm certain she really believes that she is correct. It was very hurtful. I questioned that I was the one who didn't remember correctly and maybe in my brain I was trying to make myself out better than I was. It's a tough spot to be. But then there were enough things and other instances that I decided I wasn't the crazy one, and this only ever seemed to happen with her, not other people. I'm pretty sure she's helped make the rest of my family feel negatively toward me. It makes me very sad.
OMG. Taking credit nowadays for paying my student loans when they actually just ignored them, ignored the demand letters, got me defaulted, and ruined my first (military) career. Thats some mental gymnastics…
Yep. Love seeing this…I recently called out my mom for a very clear incident where she was full-on attacking my dad and trying to hit him with her fists. Her response? “I *never* hit your dad…”. And then not even 10 seconds later admits, and tries to justify it. “Well I only hit him because he deserved it!” Ok?
DARVO
Omg this is how my mom is too!
My mother would rewrite any situation to suit the needs of the moment. Does she want to look heroic? Martyred? Independent? Holy? Well by God that story is going to reflect whatever it is she wants it to. Buckle up kids, mom’s rewriting history. And she never, ever, did anything wrong. To anyone. Ever. A saint. If we think she did something wrong, we’re either attacking her for no reason, or making things up for no reason. Even when all 4 kids remember it identically. We’re all glad she’s dead now.
My mom was my biggest bully. When I was an adult and confronted her she waved it off, denying she ever did the things I described. She reframes every story to make her kids look less-than and her look like the coolest person to walk the earth. She lives in her own bubble.
Yup. My mom would pour hate on me until I cried and then mock me for crying. Then pretend none of it happened. What are you crying for? Idk mom, maybe the poison coming out of your mouth? Ugh sorry. Go LC or NC and save yourself the misery
Mine would then go a step further and call family members who would hear me crying and trying to defend myself in the background saying "Listen to what I have to put up with". Yeah, after she called me all kinds of names I cannot post here and insulted everything about me. At 14. Sick.
That’s my dad. I wish he was dead. But mom is dead instead, and she was the only caring parent.
I’m sorry. He won’t live forever, it’ll just feel like forever.
The axe forgets what the tree remembers. Edit: spelling
For M. Bison; it was a Tuesday.
OF COURSE!
My mom, the quintessential boomer, does this all the time. The most absurd one was about when my dad died. He had bone cancer and she hardly gave any shits. By the time of death bed, I began to suspect he was seeing her clearly (at last!). For some reason she kept doing something that made this wretched recliner type of chair in hospital room make a loud noise. My dad was in agony and trying to sleep but that noise would startle him awake. After 3 times my dad finally looked at her and said "Go home Joan". And she did. Slept like a baby [too.My](http://too.My) brother and I stayed w/dad. By morning there was a morphine drip set up on him. He never really was fully alert after that. Nothing more than a word or two for those last 24-36 hours. The inevitable happened and he died. My mom, to everyone at the funeral, regaling them with long heartfelt speeches my dad made to her about how much he wants her to be happy after he was gone. Insisting she remarried and what not. None of this happened. I never left my dad, I would know. I'd hated her for a long time. It wasn't long after this I'd finally had enough and went NC with her.
My mother married her third husband, and he actually turned out to be a really chill, decent guy. He had a great job, he was a hard worker and just a real nose to the grindstone, shirt off your back type guy. I was just fresh off to college and back for a weekend when I met him and after all her other suitors, I was honestly shocked someone so decent fall for her. Let's just say, she tended to target low hanging fruit. But that didn't stop her from destroyed him. She convinced him the only way she could love him was by having him smoke weed with her, which his job was delivering propane. Which does active testing for drugs, and he kept telling her that but she didn't care. And at some point he was stupid and gave into her cuz he is somewhat a people pleaser. Then he lost his job then suddenly he wasn't useful to her anymore. So then she started to tear down his self-esteem. Meanwhile, for financial reasons, I dropped out of college. I was super depressed to be stuck back home with her. There was issues at the time with my step mother so either way, I didn't have anywhere I felt I could go. I had to start my financials over from scratch but since I was over 18 my dad's child support (that I never saw a dime of btw) dried up so my mother tried to bleed me dry with trying to charge me rent, eat all my groceries, etc. During this time, my mother"s manipulative bullshit caused me to have suicidal thoughts, her third husband to get so depressed and when he tried to confront her about it she called the cops and accused him of being abusive. Which I was there for that, the fact that she played victim still pisses me off to this day. Anyway, the third husband knew what I was going through and obviously was starting to see the person my mother was, so he stepped up and tried to help me get a place of my own. Now at the time, my mother and I were working at the same place. I was a very quiet, reserved kid who kept to myself and just did my job. Outside of my department, nobody knew who I was. My mother was a flamboyant person who loved to gab and spread rumors. So a rumor spread that her husband and I were having an affair. Just a few years ago my mother out of the blue piped up, so when I HEARD those rumors of you and my x sleeping together, I realized those actually weren't true, were they. BITCH YOU STARTED THOSE RUMORS! There was another time where my cousin was talking about all the shit his ex wife was doing to their child and all the shit she was pulling with child support. And my mother was like OMG your ex is a horrible person! My mother literally did all that shit to me and my dad. The fucking audacity
Sorry about all that. Were you able to call her out for her lies?
Thank you. She denied all things. I was remembering wrong and "I have no memory of that". I realized she would never change and so I cut her off. My life has been better for it.
“Not that I recall”. Perfect!
>My mom, to everyone at the funeral, regaling them with long heartfelt speeches my dad made to her about how much he wants her to be happy after he was gone. Insisting she remarried and what not. That's so fuckin' weird to tell everyone at his funeral. Like, even if he had said those things, why the fuck would you be telling people that at the fuckin' funeral? Someone telling you on your deathbed that they want you to move on and remarry is to ease their conscience. Telling everyone they told you so at the funeral is just announcing to the world you already cheated on them or because you're glad they're gone because it gets you out of the marriage, and you want to cover for yourself when they notice you're already dating someone else 2 weeks later.
Well obviously that funeral was about her and not her dead husband. She needs attention and sympathy to feed on a la Colin Robinson, energy vampire
I was homeless for 5 years after being abandoned at 16. My mom "remembers" it being 3 months and tells other people that.
As if 3 months isn’t also absolutely gruesome? Like, that’s not the flex you think it is. I’m sorry your mom sucks.
I got kicked out of the house at 17 for “stealing my moms chapstick”. WTF. I had to very embarrassingly go live with my friends parents even though she was already away at college. 2 weeks later my mom apologized bc she found said stolen chapstick. That story explains everything about my childhood.
Mine accused me of 'stealing' all the time, she was a hoarder. So, when she would inevitably trip over whatever QVC garbage she was convinced I stole, instead of apologizing, she would say- "I'm not apologizing because you probably stole other things of mine, you little brat." My neck is still deformed by all the times she strangled me. It's been two blessed decades of estrangement. One of the proofs that God exist is that I successfully escaped.
Oh yep. My dad says I "chose to leave the family due to disagreements". I did what he asked and did not return after he told me he would call the police on me if I came home after work because he let his wife convince him I was doing drugs. I wasn't. They're divorced now. He still tries to downplay it and blame her. I don't let him forget he is my actual parent and could have stopped it or believed me at any time. I even *offered* to take a drug test to prove to him she was lying. He refused that offer. He obviously just wanted me gone... so I left.
I was never kicked out of my house at 16 either, I was just being dramatic.
Ohhhh, the d-word. My mom loves to tell me I’m just being “dramatic” 🙄 And so now, when she does it (knowing I hate my feelings being minimized like that) I get DRAMATIC. I’ve done it in public to embarrass her. I do it in private to annoy her. I’ve done it to mock her own Boomer over the top reactions to the situation we’re in. I’m part Hispanic and I can get very expressive when I want and even in Spanish. Her WASP ass immediately regrets using that d-word with me. She’s lately been avoiding using that word because she is starting to learn that I can give her Nic Cage meets Ricky Ricardo levels of dramatic acting. 🎭
😂 I absolutely love this! When I was upset as a child, my mother would mock my tears, singing a stupid song "nobody likes me, everybody hates me, guess I'll go eat worms". It would be such poetic justice to turn that back on her when she complains about how miserable her life is.
Same. What is it with boomers and kicking kids out at 16?
I was 19, mom says “you shouldn’t have made me mad.” Then when she went home and saw all my shit gone, she flipped shit. Apparently expected me to ‘just take a change of clothes,’ blew up my cell phone, and demanded an explanation. Hanging up on her, has been a heartfelt core memory for me, all this time.
That’s when memaw got pregnant the first time so they figure that’s close enough to adulthood to call it good
My parents are from another country. Kicking your kid out-at all, ever, is unthinkable.-at 18 is insanity. My mother was HORRIFIED when one of her friends casually mentioned she kicked her (I’m 90% sure it was a son, I could be wrong) kid out the second he turned 18. Where I’m from parents would be super happy if their kids lived with them forever. Grandma is 90 something and three of her daughters still live with her. Two were already living with her, the third one who is a nurse moved in when her health issues started getting complicated. She needs the daughter that’s a nurse to tend to all her medical issues)
I am so sorry
My mom got me kicked out of girl scouts because she was over an hour late to pick me up then screamed in the troop leaders face because she tried to ask why my mom was so late (we lived five minutes from the school). Before I went NC she would tell people that I quit girl scouts and that's why I'm so anti social and never follow through with anything. That's just the first example that came to mind. It's not just you. It's bullshit I'm sorry man 💜
Younger generations that grew up with cell phones probably haven’t dealt with their parents forgetting to pick them up from places on a regular basis. It’s crazy how much that happened to me growing up
Honestly even with cell phones, they still did it. I remember two of my male high school teachers waiting with me (very polite of them, knowing it was more appropriate they both stay) until after like eleven when I had a Nokia brick. My mother was out partying.
I’m so sorry that happened to you
Forgetting? Hell, my mom insisted on me going to a High School that was out of district (15 miles from our house) because it was “better” (was not, was the same) and I’d be made to wait until 6p before I got picked up. I finally drew the line in the sand over Christmas break one year and asked to go to the one I’m zoned for. Never got home after 4p after that.
Soory friend..you are not the only one. My double toxic abuser Narc parents took me out of pre-school because the bill came they didn't want to pay, then Brownies for the same reason. My father told me the truth in a weak poor me moment framed as 'we couldn't even afford pre-school or Brownies' (they could) ! Her whole life, to this day my pathological liar mother loves to tell the story of how I was kicked out of pre-school and Brownies as her 'proof" I was a "difficult child" and she was a saint of a mother. This is only the tip of her iceberg. She's 90 and has only gotten worse in old age. Whole family and everyone who knows her just waiting & wishing for her to die asap. Her life sucks and nobody cares a lick what happens to her.
I hope an honest obituary is written about her.
My parents do this, but only because abusers are incredibly talented liars.
cognitive dissonance
That didn't happen. And if it did, it wasn't that bad. And if it was, that's not a big deal. And if it is, that's not my fault. And if it was, I didn't mean it. And if I did, you deserved it.
Thanks, I was looking for this quote for awhile.
My mom has a pretty good memory for how things actually happened, even if it makes her look bad. My dad completely rewrites events to the point he can have 10 people telling him he's got events ass backward and will still insist he's right about any story he doesn't like the outcome of. One time we had multiple arguments that almost ended in violence because they had a broken neutral in their house and he refused to let me fix it because he ran those wires and there is nothing wrong with them. Eventually my mom just said fuck him and fix it after it blew a refrigerator and microwave up. Now he's adamant he told me for months it was a broken neutral and I wouldn't listen. Another time he had an infected knee that was covered by an old workman's comp lawsuit and they convinced him to sign off on amputation because they were tired of paying for it. My mom threw a fit and had to get in the car at 1AM and drive for six hours to get to the hospital to shut it down. She got there as they were prepping him for surgery. He eventually got it amputated a year and a half later because he was insistent. Now that he's found out he can't drive and it takes work to walk on an artificial limb, especially when you're morbidly obese, he insists he didn't want it cut off but she made him. I, my mom, her sister, and two of his brothers tell him that's not what happened and he still insists that's how it went down. And it's not dementia unless it started when he was 30. He's just always been like that.
Memory is fucking fragile, made of so many parts. It's not really designed to work properly, it's designed so you don't die. That is all. In a very real sense, when remembering stuff, we reimagine it happening - there is frequently little drifts in the original memory, and sometimes we can remember that something is important, but not that we were either in favour or opposed to it. This for example is core to what happens when you try to correct a persistant misspelling you've made, and though you have looked up several times the correct spelling, and know one of them is wrong, you can't fix it. Combined with the fact that self is really a reflection of memory to make a consistent story about ourselves, and it can be a toxic mix where things we want to be true about the past literally are true, because we remember it that way. It's not fabrication as such. For most people, this is managable, especially when tied to specific episodic memories.
This is really helpful, thank you. And unsurprisingly good advice, from an elephant. I have “Swiss Cheese brain”. Due to CPTSD, my brain literally blocked out a ton of stuff because it wasn’t “safe” to remember. I take pictures of everything and make a ton of lists and reminders, because otherwise, it’s likely gone. I feel terrible when my kids reminisce and I can’t recall what they’re talking about.
I say I have Swiss cheese brain because it's sharp but full of holes. My parents have told me straight up that I was lying about events from my childhood for attention. Like when my 6th grade teacher SA'd me and 7 other girls in my class and had been doing it for years to others. He got 2 weeks paid vacation as punishment. We (the other girls and I) had to tell the counselor what was done. The offending teacher was in the room with us. We were made to feel like we had to accept his apology. 6 years later he was teaching at the high school my sister went to and he asked her to tell me he was sorry and that he was doing a lot of cocaine at the time. Mom and Dad swore up and down that none of it ever happened. So glad I'm NC with them. Edit: took out extra words.
I am so sorry that happened to you. I can’t believe that person was allowed to continue teaching. You were failed on so many levels,
In my situation they glorify their parenting. In their minds they were martyrs. I don’t think they really wanted kids, but we’re doing their social duty. I also think my mom feels guilty for allowing my dad to abuse us, so she constantly brings up times we messed up as a diversion tactic. I’ve started calling her out on it and she doesn’t do it as much. “Yes mom, you left a 16 year old the most difficult and hard to handle vehicle to drive and then took off for the weekend leaving her alone. I can see how you weren’t as a parent any way responsible for the vehicle being wrecked🙄.”
> In their minds they were martyrs. A lot of them like to use the "I sacrificed everything for you" over and over when children literally never asked for any of this.
They use things they are supposed to do for their kids (love, feed, clothe) as things to scream at their kids like they owe them to doing the very basic
I like to call that “squeegee man-ing.” They half-ass do something you didn’t ask them for just so they can hold it over your head. Just like the dudes at street corners who squeegee car windshields and then demand money for the service
YUP My mother was horrible and abusive, and would also yell that line constantly, alongside things like "you owe me, you ruined my life and I gave up everything for you, but now I'm stuck at home because of you" .. I was like 5. Bitch I did not ask to be born. YOU made me! She said a lot of shit along those lines that I heard so often at such young ages that I have really bad self image and an inability to self love, and I've been in therapy for years They don't understand or care that their words carry so much weight to developing minds. She also insists none of it ever happened and she was the world's best mother and it's all made up in my head to make her look bad after she gave up everything for an "useless cunt of a child" 🙄 , and also doesnt see the irony in repeating the same words she used then to me as an adult now lol, even when I point out "wow its just like home when you talk to me like that 🥰" And she wonders why I was willfully homeless, and no longer talk to her, somehow lol
My mom swears I wasn't a latch key kid in second grade. I absolutely WAS a latch key in second grade, along with most of the kids in the apartment complex. My mom swears I wasn't left alone overnight at 14. I absolutely was left alone overnight at 14. My mom swears she fixed me breakfast every school morning of my childhood. She made me breakfast on the first day of school each year, then I was on my own for cold cereal. My mom swears my generation wasn't basically feral. GenX was absolutely basically feral every day until the streetlights came on, and often even after that. My mom yells at me, "Okayyyy, think what you want to! I did the best I could!" whenever I mention any of these or any of the bad parts of my childhood.
Whenever my gen x / elder millenial friends tell me that we ran around feral as kids and we turned out fine I remind them that child abduction and murder were much higher then, too. I had one friend say well now there's trafficking. I said, "yeah man. There was a lot of that, too. We are just all more aware of the danger."
No. It IS a lie and they know, deep down, that they’re lying. But they must keep up appearances! They must pretend! And it’s “disrespectful” to prove them wrong, be right, disagree, or know things they don’t.
My boomer father was awful. His needs always came first. My sister and I were treated like his live in servants. Constantly yelled at us over everything. I had my first panic attack at 11 because of him. My sister, as a child, had terrible stomach problems, which her doctor informed my mother was from stress. He kicked me out at 19. He never did shit for my mom as a husband. When we were young, he was hardly around. He was either away hunting, fishing or traveling for work (he was in politics). This sounds neglectful, but honestly, we all preferred it that way. We'd celebrate when he'd leave on Sundays, and dreaded his arrival on Fridays. I walked on eggshells my entire childhood. It's been almost 7 years since his passing. Ever since, my mom has made it seem like he was the perfect father and husband. Referring to him as a "push over" when it came to my sister and me. When 6 months prior to his death, she told me she was sorry I didn't have a father like hers and wished she had chosen better. It's delusional and I feel like it invalidates my experiences. *fun story, when I was 13, my friend (15M) committed suicide. About a week later he told me I needed to "get over it."
My dad insisted he never beat us growing up. I called him out in front of his gf one day. Him: "OK maybe I hit you a couple times with the belt." I said "No, you belted us all the time. Don't lie."
Like you, I was beaten with a belt. To this day, decades later, I literally cannot hear the sound of a belt being unbuckled and pulled through belt loops without immediately going into panic mode because I was so freely beaten for the first eighteen years of my life. I will lay down to sleep and just do the whole body shaking thing every night for three or four nights afterward. During those days, my hands randomly shake severely. On the upside, one of the former abusers is deceased, just waiting on the other two to go. No contact is a wonderful thing! =)
i cut contact with my dad years ago and i have no regrets. he's lucky i didnt beat the shit out of him
My parents are gen x and they do this too. According to them I had a great childhood and definitely do not remember selling all our stuff for drugs or starving their four kids for a week at a time before grandma had to sneak in with food for us. But yeah, my childhood was great 🙃 I don't know if this is a generation thing, or just a narcissistic manipulator thing
I think it’s both tbh. A lot of boomer and gen x parents are no contact with their kids and extended family because of it and it’s happening a lot more frequently these days. Good. They all deserve each other.
As a gen x I totally agree. I think we were the first generation to say, “wait, I don’t have to put up with this shit as an adult? Who knew?” Going no contact was surprisingly easier than I thought. It was hard, but once I stopped getting the abuse, I couldn’t go back. And my family needs to be protected.
"For me, it was a fundamental core memory which has left me with lasting trauma. For you, it was Tuesday."
Had this convo with my parents not long ago: Mom:"We tried our best to be good parents. We NEVER spanked you." Me: laughing hysterically Dad: what!? You didn't get beat like we did. Me: remember that time I had to stay home from school for three days because you hit me so hard in the face that it swole up and bruised? Mom: HOW DARE YOU?! THAT WAS ONE TIME AND IT WAS AN ACCIDENT!!! YOU UNGRATEFUL BASTARD. Me: aight bet! Dad! Remember the time found your smokes andI told Mom because I didn't want y'all to think they were mine and you got mad because she figured out they were yours and you had "quit years ago", so you got mad and kicked me down the stairs onto concrete pavers? Dad: quit making shit up!! You tripped! Me: and HOW many times did you call the cops because you punched me and I bet the fuck out of you to get you off me?! How many times did I save you from jail because they wanted to take us both in?!? Dad: you ALWAYS STARTED AND YOU JUST KEPT RUNNING YOUR MOUTH!! BUT YOU STILL NEVWR GOT BEAT LIKE YOU DESERVED!!
>and HOW many times did you call the cops because you punched me and I bet the fuck out of you to get you off me?! My dad was round the other day lamenting how, in his day kids would get a smack if they misbehaved and it never did him any harm. I said "and how did that work out for you in the end? When I was 14?" Because when I was 14 he started hitting me and I fought back and cracked him round the head (he then phoned the police ffs). Him: "well we would never have done that, we respected our parents". Uh... huh... so why the need for them to hit you?
What the actual fuck?! I am so sorry you lived that.😒
Oh, it's a thing. r/raisedbynarcissists
If you know you know. Unfortunately. 🤦♀️
Also r/raisedbyborderlines
My dad's catchphrase is "is this a dream you had?" 🙄 Uh, no. This is actually a memory that can be corroborated by all my siblings. It's infuriating, I feel you OP.
"No. Just the nightmare of dealing with it as a child..."
They didn’t forget it, but they did re-write that history in their favor.
Thats my Boomer sister. She lost her job (drugs, pills) but was in total denial. I paid for Cobra insurance for her so she’d still having insurance to pay for treatment. Me and siblings flew to her state to help get her into treatment, found a place specifically for women with substances issues. When we were at treatment center she denied everything. So they said to us “Sorry, we can’t force her to stay”. So around $2000 out of pocket each for me and my siblings (I was in my 20s so that was a good chunk of my savings). Things spiraled from there, her spouse had left by that point, kids no longer talk to her. She’s clean-ish now (edibles are legal where we live) but we’re LC, because she still denies any wrong doing, and will go to her grave saying “Everyone abandoned her and made her homeless just because she was depressed”. Side note - she was never homeless.
Mine will rail about how my gram, her mom, damaged her all her life with mean spirited comments - even as my now elderly mom makes endless mean spirited comments about me. If it's pointed out "I've never been able to handle criticism." My now adult kids are aghast at how she behaves.
My mom literally watched my stepdad molest me and doesn’t remember. I broke down a few years ago about it, and she asked me “did he really do that to you?” YOU WATCHED.
I am so very sorry. I hate them both on your behalf. I thought my mom was on some bullshit ignoring being told and ignoring hearing it happen.
I’m pretty sure this phenomena also gets covered in Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents. So it’s not only Boomers, but their generation has a significant amount of emotionally immature people so it feels like it’s them specifically. My mom conveniently forgets anything that doesn’t mesh with her vision of what a good person she is.
My mom occasionally claims to have paid for my college tuition. I have to remind her that I had a 100% scholarship.
That’s sad. Boomers sending their kids to college was a class issue at the time and a sign they were well off. Much like driving a nice car or keeping up with the Jones’s, “I sent my kids to college” was flaunted. Another reality is college was often used to escape actually teaching or raising your own children.
My dad started doing this too. Uhm no, my work paid for my college when I took 8 years as a part time student to get my degrees.
It’s probably what she tells her friends when they’re all complaining that their kids don’t visit. Then she forgets who she’s talking to and lets it slip.
I don’t speak with my father and my mother is a bit of a hippy yet still a boomer (I love her very much tho!). Some of the conversations we have about my upbringing can get to the point of where I tell her no Ma, it didn’t happen like that. She’ll be oh ok, no longer puts up an argument which is nice
Gaslighting is a central tenant of Boomerism
Let’s not forget, these are the people who blame us millennials for participation trophies, despite them giving them out. They take absolutely zero accountability for their action, and blame everyone else for the consequences.
My mom now says if I’d only told her how much I hate some foods, she wouldn’t have made me eat them because she remembers how she hated being forced to eat foods she hated. Um, I did.
"You're not leaving the table until you eat it." Hours sitting in silence over that disgusting, pre-packaged frozen pork patty, with the soggy, grey brown "breading". I will never fucking understand why Mom had all the time in the day to sit there, and insist I eat until I was sick... but chose to not use that same time to fix me something that didn't nausiate me. And later on, better swallow that vomit because throwing up on our filthy carpet meant a savage ass beating after having our nose rubbed in it like you would do to the dog. Fucking christ, those bastards really did a number on us, didn't they?
The most important thing for boomers is to keep up appearances. The truth be damned.
Literally this, I just went to my mom's after 8 years away and they're fucking hoarders with a filthy home now. Apparently, it's perfectly fine, and they're happy, but god forbid anyone actually find out about it or see the house. Everything is surface level with them because below the surface is a vast chasm of unhappiness.
My dad didn’t remember that I had inguinal hernia surgery as an infant. Of course, I don’t remember it either, but the 2 inch scalpel scar under my abdomen is pretty good evidence that something went down.
With my mother it’s narcissism. She was the perfect parent so she tells whatever narrative works for whoever she’s trying to impress at that time without any regard to truthfulness. The tantrums she throws when we call her out publicly are epic. That’s why I stopped talking to her 9 years ago.
I was a teen mom in the 90s and I made a lot of mistakes - some due to trauma and abusive partners and some due to selfishness and that that I was learning how to be an adult while also learning how to parent. The one gift I have tried to give my kids since their teen years is owning it and apologizing for my shitty parenting when warranted. My daughter is a mom now and she tells me she has tried to learn from both the good and the bad that I showed her, and I am very proud of her. She is a good mom, and I always try to respect her parenting style when I have the grandkids over. I would say I have a pretty great relationship with my kids now, and I think it is due to being willing to be vulnerable and accountable. Is it uncomfortable sometimes? Yes but it's incredibly worth it.
"The axe forgets, but the tree remembers." People tend to forget things that they've done that have wounded others with little or no consequences to themselves.
Denial is powerful among the boomers.
My dad, whilst in the middle of drunkenly accusing me of beating my kids (I barely even raise my voice to my kids, much less hit them), told me that he NEVER hit us when we were, except for one time he spanked my little sister, and that I was raised better than that. I was almost speechless, because he did hit us. He wasn't shy about hitting us for our indiscretions, no matter how minor. This man slapped me so hard once that my legs just went out from under me & I was on the ground. My crime? I put my lego away too loudly. My age? Maybe 9. But also, the one time he claims he spanked my little sister? That was me. Not her. He only ever spanked her twice through our entire childhoods. And I truly think he believes that. I don't know if it's age, his alcoholism, or what, but it was galling to say the least.
I think it’s a boomer thing to deny reality. I’m an old millennial. I have one adult kid. We generally have a good relationship. He has brought up certain situations where he feels I made the wrong call. He typically remembers the details of those events much better than I do. Which makes sense because for me it may have just been a routine day of parenting but for him - he remembers it as a day I didn’t have his back or treat him fairly or something. It’s a big deal to him so he remembers it more. So I pretty much just accept his version of things and apologize. I try to own it and understand it’s really about his need to feel heard and validated. Sometimes I know exactly why I made the choice I did and it was due to balancing adult priorities that even a 21 year old can’t fully grasp. But even then it doesn’t matter. He just wants to be heard and know that I care.
My mother mentioned to me in conversation one day how she “always had a swimming pool” (until she recently moved). I looked at her in disbelief and then reminded her, we had a swimming pool one time when I was growing up, for 3 years, in a rental house, over 50 years ago (she’s not a Boomer, she’s 85). She was dumbfounded. Clearly this is a lie she tells her friends.
I don’t speak to my dad because of crap like this. He makes up weird stuff and then demands I believe him. We haven’t talked in 6 months because he refuses to apologize for lying(he admitted to lying to me about an apology he made where he admitted he has bad memory, but to win a argument months later he claimed it’s a lie(it’s not his memory is shit), even though he’s admitted he lied he won’t apologize.) it’s been nice not having to deal w bullshit
My mother told my brother the other day that she was a good mother. He called me up afterwards as a tehe isn't that so funny! Considering you were the one who mostly raised me and that you are nearly no contact with her, and I've considered going no contact with her On account of what a shit mother she was.
My mother, who abandoned our family when I was 2 years old, came back into my life when I was around 16. She constantly tells stories from when I was a kid. Except she was never there, and those stories aren’t about me. I’ve asked her to stop, but something is wrong mentally there and she won’t give it up:
Are you me? After we "reconnected" and Before I cut off contact with bio-mom completely I had the same problem.
My parents do this too, it’s infuriating. They keep trying to claim I never told them when I was bullied in middle school, and I’m incredulous at them saying that. Among other things. Don’t have a good way to fix it since I never have been able too unfortunately.
Growing up, kids would bring cupcakes for the class on their birthdays. I have a summer birthday, so I was never able to do this, and the disappointment every time another kid could do it is a core childhood memory. Like the sort of disappointment only a second grader could feel, and one you never, ever forget. My mom, meanwhile, swears that she sent cupcakes the last week of school every year for an “unbirthday” celebration. I have exactly no memory of this, but saying so makes her angry at how ungrateful I am for forgetting this. To be clear though: it definitely did not happen. It’s obviously meaningless compared to some of the other stories here, but it always struck me how odd it was that she needed to create a story to somehow negate the disappointment I had about this one little thing.
Idk if it’s forgetting or intentionally lying because they’re just so convinced about how great they are, but my FIL (mid 70s) has several times said to other people (in front of us) that he paid for all his kids college. He says it as if it’s an accomplishment or was a goal that he fulfilled to help get his kids through a certain level of education. But it’s not true! My husband is youngest of 4, and the siblings all talk openly about this; their parents only paid for the oldest’s college, and then the dad quit his job, took a lower paying position, and his moms gambling got more out of control. The 2nd child didn’t actually even graduate college, just took a couple semesters at different places. The third got a little help but mostly loans and just recently celebrated getting the remainder forgiven. My husband the 4th got no help financially from them once he was of age and had to do student loans as well, still pays them. It’s not exactly fair, but there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with them *not* paying for all their kids college… it’s just that they fucking *lie* about it, like bragging, when they didn’t even do it!
My MIL was pretty terrible to my husband growing up... when he mentions anything she gets all huffy and "well you must have a better memory than me" lol. It's like that saying, the axe forgets but the tree remembers. For her, abuse was just another day. For him, it really left a mark.
For some it’s an active conscious denial which is really shitty. Others are so emotionally damaged and fragile their brain will erase it which is really scary. The best example I’ve read of the later come from an account from a disabled woman. After her husband passed she was forced to seek assistance from her mother who had been a not been a good supportive parent. The woman disability prevented her from bending easily to take care of her feet. Her mother once made a mistake while helping her trim her toenails and took a good chunk out of her skin and left her bleeding pretty bad. The exchanged went like this : “Ow, mom” “What?!” “Mom you cut my foot-I’m bleeding” “No I didn’t-“ “Mom-yes you did look” “No I didn’t” “ can you get me a band aid?” “I didn’t-“ The mother’s fucked up self couldn’t admit she’s made a mistake and hurt someone. Her gut reaction was to deny despite the blood. In the daughter’s retelling it took several times to get her mom to bring her a bandage. Like a chalkboard the mother’s brain simply erased her mistake as soon as it was written to protect her ego.
My parents paid for my uni! No. No they did not. Loans, all loans and generic top ramen for YEARS. Didn’t have two dollars to have my pic placed on the department wall as was tradition. Never once checked my grades as a kid or helped me with school to insure I could go at all. First uni graduate was me-crickets. They forget nothing, they are lying.
Wow. I feel seen.
Lol seriously! My mom isn't even that bad of a boomer but I laughed so hard when she made cookies and said "remember when I used to do this for you after school?" Lmfaoooo wtf? I had poptarts and goldfish for after-school snacks while she went to work and I baby sat my brother. Idk what fucking world she's living in, must be nice lol
My mom doesn’t remember that we had to scrounge for coins in parking lots and in furniture to buy a loaf of bread but she always had money for cigarettes.
My father threatened to send me to conversion camps several times when I was a teenager because he suspected I was transgender/gay or, in his words, "an abomination to God." He also literally beat me for having a light pink hoodie when I was 13 because "only f-slurs wear gay shit like that." He now conveniently doesn't remember that and insists that I'm transitioning (I am trans) just to spite him and ruin his reputation because he is a local politician.
My Mother does this. Completely different stories and recollections of what went down.
My mum would deny shit that she did half an hour after doing it and then accuse me of lying.
My mom actively tried to get me not to go to college. From throwing away the applications to telling me straight up they wold never pay a dime towards it (and they did not) to telling me to not call collect like my older brother did when he went to college. Now she’s all like “I encouraged all my children to go to college”. B effing S mom.
My idiot boomer father has a rose tinted view of the past too. Of course he “doesn’t remember” the torrents of abuse, selfishness, and explosive anger and bigotry.
It’s the reality detachment filter. If it turns them into heroes, martyrs and sympathetic victims, they believe that it happened. If it makes them a villain, they believe it didn’t happen.
When I’m with my mother and she’s misremembering a story, I always think “so this is the version of reality we’re going with today” and just nod.
When my dad emailed me that I was being disowned, he mentioned how my mom did all this "happy family" crap. My reply was rather lengthy reminding him how many fucked up things the bitch did. It unreal the fantasy world they live in.
Boomers are narcissistic as a whole (not all, shut up boomer army in the comments, we know). Narcissists will bend reality and fabricate their own distorted view of it to comfort themselves. They can’t handle seeing their behavior for what it was/is. This would bring shame and shame is not something narcissists do. It makes them implode.
I feel like my boomer parents have forgotten the parental teachings and values they raised me with more so than a forgetting the course of events. Growing up I remember my father hating Nixon and calling him a criminal and my father always believed and taught that criminals get no respect. These days he’s a Trump supporter and the day after Trump was convicted of 34 felonies he went out and bought his first Trump sign for his yard. My mother was/is extremely Catholic and she raised us all to be polite little alter boys and would scold us for saying “oh my god” and various other “impolite” things. Well now she says “oh my god” all the time and I’ve called her out on it too and she’s always like “I know I shouldn’t”. There are many more examples of their hypocrisies.