There’s probably stuff that’s a lot worse in a vacuum, but tbh my dad giving me the talk about his own childhood trauma and the cycle of abuse. He concluded it by telling me to remind him of “the cycle” next time he’s raging.

Even as a kid I knew that telling a large, angry man with a belt in his hand and daddy issues, “hey, you’re acting like your father” would just make the beatings harder.

Second runner up is that apparently he convinced my brothers and sisters that I was the favorite and he never abused me like he did them. That meant they hated me and abused me too.

Third runner up is probably the hoarding or the 24/7 black mold exposure or maybe the animal hoarding, or possibly when he assaulted a woman in front of me (although technically not something he did to me)

My mother not loving me and saying it to me outloud at an early age. It was a very heavy burden no child should ever carry. Also she would put on a show for other people going on and on about how much she loved her kids and how she loved being a mom while continuing the abuse behind closed doors. It was maddening.

Taking myself to therapy as a young adult so I could heal, saved my life.

My mom died.

My father taught me to hate myself.

My parents weren’t bad parents. They did their absolute best to raise me coming from trauma themselves. They still don’t even know they suffer from it. Their trauma made me feel like I was not good enough. However, I will pass intrinsic value and compassion on to my kids.

One day, you’re going to die. Unless you are fortunate enough to die suddenly, you’re going to experience the terror and the pain the comes along with dying. Anyone who cares about you is going to be saddened by your passing.

None of that would be true if you had never been born. Your parents, every parent, has condemned their children to death and has ensured sadness for anyone who comes to care about them.

The worst thing my parents did? Not using protection or having an abortion. Conceiving a child is the most selfish act any person can do.

Nitpicked and poked fun at almost anything i watched/read/did/listened to, and anybody i interacted with, to the point that I sometimes struggle to find enjoyment in things, typically prefer to have a wall behind me and eyes on an entrance (they liked to sneak up and surprise me), almost exclusively use headphones for any form of audio, and struggle to form friendships with anyone.

Birthed me. Then they had the audacity to celebrate it each year there after.

When my brother and I were both in university, we lived in cities about an hour apart. We grew up about another hour away, so to visit my brother my dad had to drive through the city I lived in, passed the campus for my university, to get to the city my brother lived in. You could literally see the buildings on campus from the interstate through the city.

He would call me about once a month to tell me about the awesome weekend he just had visiting my brother and seeing one of their school football games. He would rave about how much fun it was and always say “you should come down too next time”. I would always tell him I probably would if he would tell me about it before the trip instead of after…

I started to resent my brother being the “obvious favorite”. For years we barely spoke. We reconnected like a decade later when we happened to live in the same city. One night around a few beers, we started hashing out old shit, and I brought up him being dad’s favorite and all the trips dad made to visit him.

That’s when I found out my dad made it all up. Our dad only visited my brother’s campus twice, the day he moved into the dorms and the day he graduated…

They died. At very crucial points in my life. My dad 4 years ago, i mom 1.5 months ago.

Its litterally the worst thing they ever did.

My mother has BPD and is pretty vicious, but I think the worst moment was when she told me it was my fault my brother is gay. She HATES the fact he is gay despite really not hating gay people at all and we were raised to love and accept them, and since she hates me she thinks it’s my fault. BPD leads to a lot of disordered thinking.

Mom divorced my abusive alcoholic father and married a man from England. I was 14 but she figured I had the maturity to know it would be ok if I stayed with him instead of moving to England with her and my brother. I was angry at her because I was 14 and dumb. She left me in the US and gave me no end of guilt for making my choice once a grew up a bit and realized I made a mistake. Once she and her husband moved back to Oklahoma I took a position in California and now I’m guilted for that at the age of 42 because she can’t see my daughter whom she never bothered to spend anytime with anyway because of her constant depression about having married another different kind of abusive man.

Their struggles with alcoholism led to me becoming an alcoholic, which nearly killed me multiple times, and did end up killing my mom before she was 60.

Fortunately I got sober a year before she passed. I’d have almost certainly drank myself to death had I not.

My dad faked having brain cancer when I was 9 to cover up a drug problem. He sent me to live with my mom to party while I believed he was on the brink of death.

We have a strained relationship now.

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My mother passive aggressively bullied me regarding potential love interests to the point I was absolutely terrified of even mentioning boys from my class as dealing with her unfounded teasing was unbearable. This didn’t help at all with my romantic relationships, I was always lacking in support in the area as I turned the topic into a taboo during my adolescent years, at home in particular.

As for my father it’s not much what he did but what he didn’t do. He’s one of the smartest men I’ve ever met, he is good at managing his finances and networking yet he never gave me much support or pushed me to achieve anything in these areas - when he did it was briefly in the form of criticism. Again, this also snowballed into an adulthood problem I’m still grappling with.