Private

8th Grade

I was bullied mercilessly in 7th grade. When I went home for the summer, I thought about what to do to improve my situation. I figured out the hierarchy of popularity and then went about figuring out how to go from the bottom to the top. By the end of my 8th grade year, using foul language, bribery, lewd art, and psychological warfare, I was no longer a nerd.

Abandoning Responsibility

I finally put something into words that I hadn’t been able to before. My Mom and Dad were able to opt out of their responsibilities as parents for months or even years at a time.

Dad did it early in our lives, like when we had to live in our homeland for a year and then starting back again when he went to work overseas when I was 16. He was able to live like a bachelor for months and even years. I didn’t hear from him that often when he was oveseas. He called maybe once or twice a month. Turns out that he was busy romancing a woman at the. office. He’s still in a weird relationship with her. Who has the time to talk to kids when love is in the air?

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Accept Things As They Are

I had to accept that my parents weren’t going to change at their age. The question then became whether I wanted to associate with them if they remain the way they were, rather who I’d aspire for them to be. It was a no from me.

Big Sean

Humans have to be resilient in the face of adversity.

The following lyric from Big Sean really resonates with me and Emily:

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CPTSD Roots

From Threads:

Having CPSTD I can remember the day, where I was at, roughly how old I was ( child.) When that seed of CPSTD took root. I remember the pain of that small child crying out to a imagined “god” figure. Asking WHY. Why did you put me on this earth if I was just made to suffer. WHY was I made so incorrect. I wished for the final end. I prayed for it. Then I remember the feelings that washed over me as I felt. I wasn’t going make it out of that house alive, it would be because of them.

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CYA

Background:

  • It was the 2nd year I’d worked on this huge mailing project my team worked on from June until November. It was to send legally required regulatory notices to retirement plan participants.
  • This was in the middle of when I was trying to dig myself up from the PIP I was on.
  • My team had to work with these client facing people called the communications strategists (comm strats) to get the clients approval on the print pieces that were being sent out to their employees.
  • There was another team that dealt with getting the pieces actually printed and mailed.
  • I was working pretty closely with a member of the print team named Sara, since she was assigned to do the printing for most of the clients my comm strats were assigned to.
  • There was a comm strat named Tina who was awful to work with. She had a habit of not telling us about approvals or changes until they’d piled up. She’d then dump them all on us at once and leave for the day or on vacay. This year, she pulled her most egregious stunt: she dumped a crazy amount of work on me and Sara and told us she’d be OOO the rest of the day because she was getting snow tires. For the next 5 years, when me and Sara saw each other, if one of us said snow tires, we’d both narrow our eyes in anger at Tina.

The situation:

  • Tina wasn’t a fan of submitting tickets via our workflow system to get work done. She’d always try to email or IM. Me and Sara knew the deal, so every time she asked one of us, we’d tell her to submit a ticket via email and then cc the other person.
  • In early December, my boss came to me and said there was big trouble with TJ Maxx, one of Tina’s clients.
    • Tina had kept emailing and IM’ing me or Sara to get an address list for TJ Maxx. That required a ticket to be submitted.
    • She ended up getting some other dope to send her the address file in Excel. What she didn’t realize is that TJM also wanted emails sent to some of their people. Including all the heads of their benefits department.
      • There was an alternate print vendor that could be used for one-off mailing projects and emails, which is what Tina did.
    • When those people didn’t get their notices, they asked what was up. It was then discovered that like 25% of their people didn’t get them because Tina hadn’t provided that list to the vendor.
  • I knew Tina was going to try to pin it on me and Sara, so I got all the emails me and Sara had sent her and put them in a Word file.
  • We had a call where the CEO of our division, the head of the comms department and other bigwigs were trying to figure out what had happened. Tina and I were asked to explain what happened.
  • The CEO opened it and explained what TJ Maxx told him.
  • Tina then tried to speak, but I said, “Hold one second. Everyone, please check your email.” I sent the Word file to everyone at the meeting.
  • There was silence for like a minute, and then the CEO said, “Thank you. This is very thorough.” And then told Tina to start explaining.
  • She’s stammering and trying to figure out how to wriggle out of this, because her plan was to throw me and Sara under the bus.
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Excel Errors

I had 2 different incidents where I messed up some filters in Excel when creating an address file for a mailing.

After the second incident, I took a deep look inside and tried to figure out how I could be better at this stuff.

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False Accusation

When I was a young boy, my family used to go to Bangladesh to visit falling every summer.

In 1987, I was accused of stealing some money that had gone missing from my mom’s purse. She did everything short of water boarding me to get me to admit that I was a thief.

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Grudges

I’ve been told by many people that these grudges take up real estate in my brain, that I’m only hurting myself, etc. But, I only think about this stuff when it comes up. It’s more like a mental checklist of people who I want to see meet negative ends.

Like there was this guy in high school who liked to bully me. Like 18 years later, I saw that he and his dad had been indicted by the Feds for loan fraud. Never really thought about the dude, but it closed the chapter for me to see that happen. Plus, he looks like he’s smoked 3 packs a day since we were in gym class together.

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Hot Stoves

Just read something that described some people as hot stoves. Every time you try to interact with them, you get burned. I’d never heard that, but makes a lot of sense.

Israel

For a number of years, I’ve accepted the mainstream view that any views that speak against Israel in any way is anti-Semitic. I’m the farthest thing from that. I believe that Jewish folks should have a homeland. I believe the Holocaust occurred. I’m not OK with the dog whistles people on the far right employ by talking about “globalists” who control banking..

Israel’s actions after the October 7 attacks are a genocide. I don’t agree that retaliation was unwarranted. But, the far right Netanyahu government took it as an opportunity to put their worst plans in motion. They’re much more powerful than the Palestinians. They’ve got the full might of the US behind them; the Palestinians might as well be fighting with spears.

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Man Stands Up To Toxic Family

This is an inspiring tale of a man standing up to his toxic family:

I 23m was repeatedly stuck playing the part of helper and babysitter on family outings. I had to move out of my parents’ house because I kept being forced to help watch my three nephews. Last year we took a family vacation in summer to the coast. I rode along with my parents, and they paid for my hotel room. Only, I had to share that room with three rowdy boys because my sister and her husband wanted a room to themselves. I was promised time to do my own things on the vacation. But instead I ended up having to help with these kids. I complained to everyone about it, and was reminded I was there for free. And then we pretty much just did only one thing I wanted to do. Which was tour an art gallery. I like doing this whenever I’m at the coast. But the kids find it boring.

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MeFi ADHD

I didn’t get diagnosed till age 51. But I was definitely having emotional dysregulation (“oversensitive”), problems with focus (“need to buckle down”) etc. as a kid.

I developed coping mechanisms that mostly involved reading constantly, never telling people what I was actually thinking about, and having extremely good manners so that authority figures gave me passes.

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Meeting Yourself

From Threads:

I feel like the people in my life cannot comprehend what it’s like to “meet yourself” for the first time at 29 years old. Like - getting my ADHD diagnosis & recognizing that many of my debilitating traits also align with autism (seeking assessment, not diagnosed) is changing my entire life. It’s not just about having a name for it - it feels like someone (finally) gave me the answers I need to actually live my life.

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Men Don't Tell

When this movie first came out, my mom recorded it. She and my two sisters then made a habit of watching it together every afternoon (this was in the summer) for the next month or so. I began locking myself in my room until my dad got home, as it seemed that such a movie could only put me, the only boy in the house, in danger.

I was scared mainly because my mom hated my dad, and as an extension, me. She would often speak badly of him, and referred to a desire to murder him in a graveyard. This movie, with Angela Bower going crazy on Peter Strauss, could only amplify this feeling.

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Metafilter Snippets

Is forgiveness overrated?:

“In a 2008 essay in the journal In Character, history professor Wilfred McClay writes that as a society we have twisted the meaning of forgiveness into a therapeutic act for the victim: “[F]orgiveness is in danger of being debased into a kind of cheap grace, a waiving of standards of justice without which such transactions have no meaning.”

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Morality

I think having a moral basis is good. But I can’t say you need religion. I had to work through this stuff myself when I was young because I wasn’t getting any real guidance on this stuff. I didn’t really consult any holy books. I just thought about what kind of person I wanted to be.

I think it was mainly feeling bad about the reactions people had to me because I would misbehave and act out. So it started with trying to figure out how to avoid that. Then, as time went on and I encountered new things, I’d sit in my room and have to think them through. I’m almost jealous of people who had their parents or religion just tell them how to be. It was a shortcut I didn’t have.

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My Life

I can’t form attachments to places. I don’t have a sense of home.

7-11

  • We were in Saudi Arabia during this period. I mostly remember being very anxious all the time.

1986

I fell behind on homework in science class. I remember feeling more and more overwhelmed as the quarter went on. I can’t remember how the situation was resolved, but it must have been.

1987

  • I got a sewing needle stuck in my foot. I tried to tell Mom and Dad that my foot really hurt. They wouldn’t believe me and told me to stop pretending.
    • It got to the point that I began dragging my foot behind me and sort of hopping to get around because it hurt to put weight on it
    • When I finally got taken to the hospital, the needle came up on an x-ray.
    • I was scheduled for surgery. I can remember Mom coming to my hospital room and making a big show of how concerned she was. She even hugged me, which was odd, because I had never really been shown any type of physical affection prior to this that I can remember.
  • During a visit to Bangladesh, Mom accused me of stealing money from her purse and hit me when I wouldn’t admit it. I hadn’t stolen it. Turned out that the money was in a different bag.
    • When I brought the fact that I was innocent up, I was met with defiance and a refusal to apologize from my mom.

1988 or 1989

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Nostalgia

One time, my dad was talking to some other “uncles” at a party about how great it was back “home”. As they kept talking, the insults of how godless and goodbye the US was started.

After a few minutes of listening to this nonsense, I asked, “If it’s so great back home, them why are all of you here?” All the uncles were incensed about my rudeness. I was told to go to my room.

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Not Remembering

Neurotypicals don’t get it. Jessicca will act like I intentionally don’t remember stuff. I have to keep saying, “Do you think I’d make my life more unpleasant on purpose?”

Old, Abusive Parents

Abusive parents: What do grown children owe the mothers and fathers who made their childhood a living hell?:

Loved ones and friends—sometimes even therapists—who urge reconnecting with a parent often speak as if forgiveness will be a psychic aloe vera, a balm that will heal the wounds of the past. They warn of the guilt that will dog the victim if the perpetrator dies estranged. What these people fail to take into account is the potential psychological cost of reconnecting, of dredging up painful memories and reviving destructive patterns.

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Optimism

I think people always highlight what they’ve done well. There are tons of times I feel like I got outfoxed.

But, the thing that keeps me optimistic in the face of any struggle is that I’ve made it this far, and outlasted a lot of the people who got over on me.

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Oversharing

Oh for sure. I think I had a tendency to overshare before. I think it’s partially what you said above, trying to establish a friendship, but also because no one really listened to me back in the day, so it just all comes out when I feel like someone shows an interest.

Some peeps are definitely not OK with vulnerability. I think it’s because they have things about themselves they don’t want to face, and seeing us be so open shames them.

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Presents

Around 30 years ago, my family moved to the US from overseas.

In the country we came from, Mother’s Day wasn’t celebrated. When we got here, my 2 sisters and I thought it would be nice to get our mom something for the day. We went to K-Mart and found a purse we thought she’d like. After pooling our allowances together, we were just able to afford the purse.

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Rushing Neurodivergent Person

Many neurodivergents process sensory information more intensively due to their unique and often heightened neural connectivity patterns. This sensitivity means that rapid changes or high-pressure situations can be overwhelmingly stressful. Furthermore, they typically benefit from structured and predictable environments. When these routines are disrupted by the need to rush, it can lead to significant anxiety and difficulty in functioning effectively, due to the need for thorough processing.

The Limits Of What's Tolerable At Work

In 2019. I felt forced to work almost 80 hours a week for 8 months to get a new workflow system launched.

I had a vacation scheduled in May, and my coworker said she could get the director to make me cancel the trip because they couldn’t afford to have me not working. I told Jessicca that I was going to quit if that ultimatum was made.

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The NYTimes Ethicist on Abusive Parents

The NY Times Ethicist column talked about how to deal with abusive parents’ bad conduct:

My parents maintain relationships with many friends and relatives both domestically and overseas. Many people think fondly of them, and when they are in public they imitate friendly and kind people.

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Waiter

My mom once tried to make me circulate with appetizers at a party she threw. I told her there is no world where I’m going to be a waiter in my own house.

What's For Dinner?

This happened when I was 15. I’m in my 40s now.

My NMom was undiagnosed bipolar at the time (she’s a terrible person even with that diagnosis. She’d gone back to her home country because her behavior got too out of hand. We were told it was so she could rest. This was the second time it happened, the first coming when I was 13. The previous time, I ended up having to take care of the house chores because my NDad refuses to do anything he feels is beneath him.

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Wil Wheaton on His Dad

Father’s Day is tough for me. I don’t have a dad, because the man who was my father made a choice, when I was a child, to be my bully, instead.

For my entire life, this man was implacable, inscrutable, and entirely unwilling to have any kind of relationship with me … yet he still felt entitled to my adoration an attention. Every day was a new puzzle to be solved, a new set of circumstances I had to figure out, so I could somehow evade his wrath and his cruelty.

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Work Errors

Back in late 2014, I made a huge error at work. I was sorting records In Excel and messed up the filtering. It caused mail to go to the wrong addresses, addressed to other clients. Then, in early 2015, I was asked to provide a file to a communications person to give to a client who wanted to know how many addresses were outdated. I made the mistake of providing both the old and new addresses. She gave them the file with only the old addresses.

After the second incident, I took a deep look inside and tried to figure out how I could be better at this stuff.

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