Yeah dad, my father-in-law is better than you.

He asks me what I would like for lunch. Hell, he didn't have to ask me what my favorite food is. One day he just came by the house and brought my favorite food.

We talk about bikes a lot. From changing oils, to replacing parts. I learned a lot.

We do house repairs together. We're close.

How about you? Nothing.

You're drunk. Everyday. When you're not drunk, you find a way to get drunk.

You gave us problems, debts, trauma.

Even in my wedding, you're still good damn drunk.

I had my son, and guess who was there to congratulate me when i first saw my son at the hospital? Yeah, my father-in-law because you're drunk.

If I need help with something I'm not familiar with. I call him, not you.

I tried talking to you about it but I can't find the right moment when you're sober.

But thank you, I learned from you. I learned not to be like you for my son. I became a man without your help. And I swear I will be dad the i never had.

Hey dad (is that how I open this? I dont know what I'm doing) So, first off, this is my first time posting something on reddit, so if its a mess, sorry, I'll take it down if it causes any issues (if I can even do that on reddit, I dont know).

I'm a guy, the middle child with two brothers, living with my mom and dad, love them both (won't say my age for saftey reasons, but I'm still in Highschool). I have a great relationship with my mom and I love my dad we just... dont get along, we have completely different personalities, and I feel really uncomfortable when its just the two of us or when I have to talk to him alone.

I've always been a really emotional person, crying over the smallest things, getting super stressed out over small or unimportant mistakes, worrying about everything and anything. The rest of my family, is not like this, my dad espeically is really bad with his emotions, which makes it really hard to talk to him about this, so Idon't have any male rolemodles for how I should act with how I feel, because I don't want to just bottle it up like he seems to do.

I used to be really open with it, crying in front of my parents and telling them when I'm stressed out and what not, but as I got older, it felt more and more out of place, like I should've grown out of this, like I shouldn't let something so small bother me like it does.

And no other guy I know is such a mess with there emotions. Am I too sensitive? I dont know and I feel so wrong for being this way. Everyone else seems to have it so much put together than I do. Is that normal? am I doing something wrong? Why do I feel so wrong for being so much more emotional than everyone else?

Hi Dad.

This is my first post here, and kind of a long one. I'm sorry about that. But I'm just really in my feelings about it today after hearing how much one of my coworkers loves his kids.

I guess to start, my bio dad is alive and so spiteful and hurtful that I cut off contact with him recently. When I was younger, I thought he was the coolest: tattoos, motorcycles, played in a band, helped me question religion. But as I got older I started noticing things, and developed my own opinions. He had always made comments when I was little, but it wasn't until I was in my 20s that I realized how racist and misogynistic he was. He made jokes about how he beat my mom, and that was something I never knew until he said it. My mom still wanted me to have a good relationship with him, despite what he did to her.

I tried. I really, really did. But last year before I landed my current job, I was unemployed after a layoff and was really hard up for money to keep my lights on. I swallowed my pride and asked him for help because my mom barely makes enough to keep her own bills paid. 200$ and I would pay him back out of my first check. He asked why I wasn't asking my ex or my friends for a loan, and I told him to just forget I asked and I'd figure it out. For some reason he called me every name in the book after that and called me a disrespectful teenager. I am in my 30s and just needed a little help.

My mom ended up helping me and cried with me when I told her what happened. For the last year, I haven't spoken to him, and even though it's been more peaceful in some ways, I still miss the person I thought he was. I miss having a dad who I thought loved me unconditionally.

Does it get easier? Will any of it feel better eventually? Sometimes I hear music from my favorite bands and think about how much he'd like them, too, and then I remember that I can't talk to him to protect myself. It sucks so much to know that he's not the man I thought he was.

I don't know. Maybe I just needed to get it off my chest after listening to my coworkers talk about loving and supporting their kids. I wish it were me.

Sometimes I sit in the corners of my mind,
It’s not really a choice…
But neither am I looking to be found.

For the dust has settled,
And the light is low,
This peace that follows,
Is all I want to know.

A wallless room,
No noise, no time,
A place that doesn’t exist,
A place that’s all mine.

It almost feels safe…
Comforting and real,
But this world has no patience,
For things that aren’t fuelled.

So I wiggle my toes,
And name the things I can see,
I return to reality,
And I hope the stillness waits for me.

Hi Dad.

My own dad is alive and well but my mom passed when I was a teen, which was where it kinda went uphill and downhill. If you’re ready to hear this I’d love to just, hear what you’d gotta say.

I dropped out of a good junior college a few years back, and have been regretting my decision to get a creative arts degree. I spent six years on a degree that gave me slightly more time to look after three siblings in a dysfunctional family, and my oldest sibling is a special needs person. I wasn’t thinking of money at the time, just my siblings. I love them and they’re like my kids. My dad remarried to another person, and even though we were okay with this, she ended up projecting a ton of her insecurities onto us and my dad sided with her arguments. I had to step in and defend my siblings from them. I also tried to validate the struggles my own grandmother was going through at the time she was looking after us. When my stepmother and dad failed to help my grandma with the chores (who was looking after us at the time), I just decided to help out. We had a three storey house, and she had convinced my dad to let go of the maid that was helping my grandmother after her old vintage plates were broken accidentally. Not only was she disrespectful to her mother in law and her own mother who enabled her, she also wasn’t exactly in the right frame of maturity either to look after a bunch of teens. Both my dad and stepmom focused on their own lives while I did my best to look after my siblings and the house. used to wake up early To cook her breakfast and she would throw a tantrum at me occasionally and tell me she didn’t want to eat. Eventually my grandma left our house a few years ago to go for knee surgery and all duties were passed on to me…never felt so alone. I never felt so scared knowing I had to deal with the loss of another important figure’s presence in my life, my dad who barely listens and my stepmom who projected onto us, and dealing with a special needs older sibling while having to make sure my two other siblings were okay through all this. It felt like I lost two more people, my dad and grandmother.

Last year, I turned 21. And my dad got himself into a scam where we lost our house and car. We’re now in a rented. My extended family has blamed me for causing politics in the family and causing my dad to fall into the scam. Basically his mother, aunt and sister blamed me for it. So my grandaunt, grandmother and aunt. I want to emphasise I wasn’t perfect in doing so - I have an elder sibling with special needs and it used to be so difficult hearing her meltdown and throw tantrums in the house while I was doing my work. I had dropped out of college a year prior because of the trauma, burnout and stress from being in IP, my fear of failure and also because I saw my grandma and siblings needed help. I took a degree in arts and it’s essentially kinda useless, but it made me a better person than I was before.

Moving on to the present, my really kinda toxic aunt who was helping my dad with the banks had actively tried to chase us out of the house during house viewings, and shamed me indirectly in the family group chat, and rallied my cousins to confront me too. I’m grateful to her but she kept hanging the things she did for us over our heads…it didn’t help that over the years, she had mocked my family for the way we dress, the way we do things, the way we act. We weren’t perfect. But we do what we could do after my mom died. His entire family had to get involved and financially they gave us money too to cover for him. They also told me to look after my dad because he might commit suicide - not the first time: he tried to do it when my mom passed. They asked me why I couldn’t help more with my dad - because he refused to tell me anything or let me help him, and it was incredibly difficult to reach out to him when my stepmom was so abrasive and immature. My late mom also was a helicopter parent and it led to me just…being the way I am today. I feel guilt from once being so spoiled as a child, and now I feel even worse knowing I am a college dropout, and I should’ve just stuck to the school curriculum. I kind of severed so many connections because when I dropped out I felt so much shame I didn’t tell anyone except a few. I don’t know who I am, I don’t know why this is happening, I considered s**cide but could not because I didn’t want to leave my siblings behind. But I’m still thinking of it, of just turning off the light permanently. I sometimes wish they weren’t born so they didn’t have to suffer through the toxicity of years of family drama. I see the effects of the family dynamics and trauma on them and my heart breaks. I don’t care that we really lost the house, or the car. I really just wanted a normal stable functioning family like others. I tried to be independent and take on more responsibilities to be seen as less dependent, but now I think I have undiagnosed OCD too. My grandma, grandaunt and my aunt and my stepmother gossip about me behind my back (Heard on phone calls, messages. It’s not hard to believe they are still doing this. In order to protect my siblings during the scam and after, I told my dad (who agreed to) to just make sure his relatives don’t visit or stay over at our house. We did this for my aunt as well a few years ago because she would not stop judging and mocking us for the way we were, even in our own house. I felt incredibly guilty and I accept her hatred of us but I kept her and some people away from our house for my siblings.

I don’t know where to go in life right now. I’m not trying to feel sorry for myself but like in less than a decade, I lost my mom, had to lose my dad metaphorically, had to lose myself defending my siblings, had to be seen as the villain in my family. I don’t have friends who I am able to open this up to without them telling me how I should feel or them trying to justify my dad’s actions. I didn’t tell anyone except two of my closest friends about the scam. My friends in college had apparently not liked my trauma dumping and talked behind my back previously, and actively do it sometimes in my presence because they think I’m slow. I’m just leaning on God right now. Sorry, this is really heavy. Thank you to whoever takes the time to read this long message. Thanks to the Dads here who listened.

I was going to make a throwaway but I don't even care. This is a scream into the void about how unfair life feels right now. I know I will move on in an hour but I just need to pour it out and for someone to hear me.

The shadiest cruelest girl I've ever met got engaged. When I happened to see it online, I was so overwhelmed with grief and anger and "this isn't fair." Not at all because she's engaged, but because there were pictures of her hugging family and friends. It sent me. A younger version of me was screaming inside and throwing things, because, what do you mean, the worst most abusive people you've ever met always have a support system and people who celebrate every shit they take, but I don't.

I have no family support. They were abusive my whole life and have not changed their ways. They continue to find new ways to live in delusion and unhealth. My mom talks about me like I died and garners sympathy instead of even trying to fix the relationship. I had to move states away from my family to survive. Went into the world primed for abuse, went through several awful relationships, wasted years I should have been learning who I am. Now I have the most wonderful partner in the world, and it's no small thing, but even the best relationship doesn't replace a village.

I have had no success at finding real, good friends. It has been years. I can make friends, but they've been shallow and drifted or they've gone out in a blaze when I tried to set boundaries or do anything other than pour into them. It's like my love just rolls off them and doesn't sink in, or they don't see me as a real person. They just haven't been my people. I have so much joy and love, so much zest for life, yet I am absolutely starving for safe friendships. It never ends up being safe.

I have been through a lot, and this is the safest, most secure time of my life, yet I have never felt so alone. I don't even know why I'm posting this. I guess I am just so deeply sad. I am so grateful for each day and I have a smile. But it feels like I have landed somewhere off the map of life that isn't rendering. I'm just walking around in empty space with no one to guide me, no quest markers, no storyline. I'm just here. I thought by now I would have found my people or my purpose. I am so grateful every day for my partner, but it's just.. if we got married now there would be no one in the wedding party. No one in the pews. It would be a quiet, empty ceremony. Yes, there is peace. But I spend a lot of time alone.

Some days I feel like I ruined it all. I broke the game, I chose the wrong option, one that wasn't even supposed to be an option, and now I'm floating and can't reload the game. Like maybe I should have stayed with my shit family and finished college. Like I shouldn't have left the church and I should have just kept lying about who I am and then maybe I wouldn't be alone. Like my family is right and I am a worthless walking talking problem and that's why there is no one around me. I don't believe that, and usually I do a good job fending off these thoughts but it gets hard sometimes.

There is a very hurt angry teenager inside me who reminds me life isn't fair and she deserved better. I tell her she is right and I see her, but I can't offer her more. I don't know where life is headed and I am just afraid to waste it. I'm tired of being alone.

Hey dad,

I just had to cut you off because you chose my pedophile mother over me and your grandkids.

I need a dad who will call me his son proudly.

Can anyone say this to me because my own father refuses to.

Thanks

The last few years have been the most difficult in my life. I've always struggled with my mental health, including C-PTSD. I finally went no contact with my parents a year ago after a lifetime of being treated horribly.

There were reasons I had to stay in contact, it was for the sake of someone else in the family who needs support, otherwise I would have cut contact a long time ago. It eventually got to a breaking point when my suicidality reached peak levels, and I got very physically sick at the same time. I had to cut contact, because staying alive was almost impossible.

For the first time in my life, I chose me. I won't be any good to that family member that needs support if I don't stay alive. So I chose to change my life. When I am stable and have my life together I will be more prepared to help that family member.

I've gone back to school as a mature student, and got really good marks all year! I have more schooling to go. I've confronted some of my severe childhood trauma and I've made a lot of progress. I do have some older family members cheering me on, but it just feels so lonely to not have parent give genuine parental care.

I don't really know what that feels like. I see parents with their children and I've always longed for that type of connection. I remember as a child desperately wishing that there was some sort of mix up when I was born and I went home with the wrong people. That one day my real family would realize and bring me home.

Right now I am the brokest I've ever been. To the point that leaving my roommate arrangement to go to a shelter doesn't sound like such a bad idea. I have a summer job, thankfully, but I'm still trying to catch up on my bills and I dont even know if I will be caught up before school is in again. My employment is also not guaranteed to continue past the summer.

I can't help but think if I had actual parents that I'd be able to stay with them while I finished school. Or any form of help or encouragement, really.

My entire life has been a fight. While I've had a lot of good happen in the last year, I still struggle every day. With the conditions I have I will always struggle, but if I keep working on it I will at least struggle less. My soul is tired. I just hope I'm making the right decisions and that I'm going in the right direction.

Thanks for listening, Dad.