Hello, Reddit! First time poster in any community, relatively new lurker as well. I figured I'd dive in with my own 'insane' parent story. Or rather, stories. It's a bit long, so I would recommend getting a light snack.
Let me start by saying I don't think my mother is literally insane. I think she's just made some ridiculously over-the-top choices that, from any other viewpoint than her own, would seem crazy. And while this post will have a bit of teeth to it, I do appreciate the good things she has done in my life.
A little background. My biological parents divorced when I was 5; my bio dad died when I was 8 (drunk driving accident), and my mom didn't remarry until I was around 11 or 12. She essentially raised me as a single parent, bought and fixed up a house so we had a good home, and worked third shift in a factory to make ends meet. Honestly, those were the years when things weren't crazy. Really, things didn't start to go sideways until she started going (back) to church religiously (Assemblies of God, a fairly conservative, charismatic denomination.)
So let's take a trip through memory lane and let me reminisce on some of the more 'interesting' times.
The first one I can chronologically recall is when my mom discovered I was reading Piers Anthony's Xanth series - the book I was specifically reading was "Demons Don't Dream." As you can imagine from the religious aspect, the mere existence of the word "demons" in the title was enough for her to demand I return the book to the library and stop reading that author immediately. Naturally, I didn't, I just hid the book and read it at night.
In a similar vein, she got equally upset when I started reading other fantasy authors, because they were "evil" and "against God." When I made the argument the stories were just that - stories, and no different than reading about mythological gods, monsters, heroes, etc., she declared a blanket ban on anything "mythology." Naturally I disregarded, and got better at hiding my interests.
Flash forward a bit to when I got my first NES. I didn't have many games, but one of those I did have and enjoyed was Metroid. Well, during a trip to visit an old high school friend of hers, it turned out her friend's son also had Metroid. And for some reason, decided to announce to both his mom and mine the game was "talking to him." Rather than doing the rational thing and taking this as a sign this kid might be in need of some help, my mom declared Metroid "evil", and took the game away from me. For some strange reason, she didn't throw it out - she just hid it. Being a nerdy kid with way too much time on my hands, I found it and (again) just played it in secret.
Jumping forward a bit again, post-remarriage, my mom came home from a "church meeting" and announced I was no longer allowed to watch the (original) Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, because they referred to Splinter as "Master Splinter." Which was - wait for it - evil. Because why is he their "master"? She also announced the church had declared the Smurfs and Care Bears as Satanic, because of some allegedly hidden imagery in the cartoons. At this point, I just gave up trying to convince her that she was being insane. I was still a kid, dabbling in religion myself, and just agreed to make her happy.
Though I still 100% watched the Ninja Turtles in secret.
Moving forward a handful of years to the age of America Online, Prodigy, and other dial-up, pay-per-hour internet providers. It was during this time I discovered the joys of online free-form role-playing: specifically the BlkDragonInn channel on IRC, and the Red Dragon Inn on AOL. Many an hour (and a pretty penny) were spent weaving intricate and interesting story lines with people from around the country. Okay, in retrospect they probably weren't that interesting. I was still young. I foolishly let it slip about my online role-playing during a conversation, and my mom immediately went full Conservative Fundamentalist when I mentioned one of my characters was (shockingly) a vampire. I can still hear the unusually defensive and final tone in her voice: "There are no such things as vampires!" Seriously, she said it so sternly I sometimes wonder if she knows something I don't.
I ended up having to move my computer from my room to the living room so she could monitor my online activities. Given this was the age of dial-up and we only had one phone line, it made secret role-playing a problem for awhile. At least until I discovered tabletop gaming later.
High school. I don't remember exactly what class it was (I want to say it was Health), but we were learning about Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. My mom flipped her shit and called the school, demanding the teacher exclude me from those lessons, because she had somehow gotten it into her head that Maslow was Buddhist. How his personal religious leanings were important, I still don't know. That teacher, the very next day, pulled me out of class to tell me I was excused from the lessons. Now, at this point, I was well into defiant adolescence, so I insisted I was going to stay, and we just wouldn't tell my mom. Weird secret to keep, but you do what you have to.
Around this same time, and likely contributing to my growing defiance, I realized I was not exactly straight. I also discovered that the school library could order books from other libraries, that the internet was much broader than the narrow worlds of RP chat rooms, and that I was basically done with religion. So I dove headfirst into learning all about the LGBT community, reading basically whatever I could get my hands on. At some point, I got sloppy, and my parents deduced why I was being so distant. When they asked if I was gay, I was honest with them. That was a nearly all-night discussion ranging from "Maybe it's just a hormone imbalance" to "maybe your dad abused you during visits" to "Don't tell your grandparents - it will kill them." With lots of Very Fundamentalist Praying sprinkled in for taste. My mom also insisted I couldn't tell anyone else - no other family, no friends, not the church I was still being forced to attend.
Relatively normal for religious parents with a non-hetero kid, right? Then it got weird.
First, despite her insistence I not tell the church, she took it upon herself to stand in front of the assembly and announce it, asking for prayers, etc.
My parents had a church group over one night shortly thereafter. I was just chilling in my room, when suddenly I heard the very familiar sounds of "speaking in tongues" coming loudly from the living room. If you're not familiar with the concept... well, it's a bit alarming if you're not expecting it (and sometimes even if you are.) And suddenly, this small horde of church folk - my parents included - were running back and forth through the house, loudly "speaking in tongues", barging into my room and doing the same, and said they were "chasing the demons out of the house."
Yes. Chasing the demons out of the house.
I found out a few weeks later this same group had also convinced my mom to "anoint" my computer with holy water and oil, along with my pillows, sheets, and clothes, as a way to "drive away" the demons that were clearly making me think I was gay. Oddly, my mom got really mad when she found out I knew about this because my (much more reasonable) stepdad had told me. Apparently it doesn't work if I know about it?
Second, she also decided she was going to tell her sister (my aunt) about it. I got a phone call from said aunt whereupon she implored me to "be careful" and "just think about what you're doing." When I pointed out I had been dealing with this for a lot longer than the few days she knew about it, she told me not to talk back and hung up.
Apparently it was okay for my mom to tell my business to everyone, but I wasn't allowed to actually seek out support.
To her credit, however, she did eventually make a token effort to relate, and started reading some literature. Unfortunately, it was all conservative, religious-based literature that essentially boiled down to "your child isn't really gay, it's the Devil, but you should love them anyway because God." I tried to at least get her to attend a local PFLAG meeting, or read any of the other literature I had discovered from religious people arguing that being gay was not sinful - it was just a part of my nature, and that was that. (Side note, you may wonder why I went the religious literature route - I figured I had a better chance of bringing her around if I met her halfway, on semi-familiar ground.) She refused to do either, and we entered something of a cold war on the matter.
Tensions ran high for awhile, and she would occasionally send angry emails to anyone I was corresponding with about my sexuality, demanding they stop speaking with me (none did, thankfully.)
When I was old enough to move out on my own, things got better. Eventually they moved out of state. While I respect all my mom has done for me, I've learned that distance is a key factor in maintaining a quasi-good relationship with her. We still argue on the LGBT front - she occasionally sends links or literature about people who "found their way out of homosexuality", she remains convinced the Illuminati are pulling all the strings behind the scenes, and she went absolutely radio silent for TWO. WEEKS. when Obama was re-elected. Seriously, I couldn't reach her by phone, email, text, Facebook, anything - I was about to call for a wellness check when she finally returned my calls to say she had just been too depressed by the election to even function.
My parents suffer from a severe case of "I'm not racist, but."
I still sometimes get admonitions to "stay away from that Dungeons & Dragons game", and the End Times have been here for the last 20+ years, apparently - it's always something.
She actually unfriended me on Facebook (a move I jokingly refer to as being e-borted) because our views are so diametrically opposed.
Well. This was actually kind of therapeutic, and I appreciate the time of anyone who stuck around to read the whole thing. I'd insert some kind of TL;DR, but I don't think I can come up with one to do the story justice.
Cheers.
Hello, Reddit! First time poster in any community, relatively new lurker as well. I figured I'd dive in with my own 'insane' parent story. Or rather, stories. It's a bit long, so I would recommend getting a light snack.Let me start by saying I don't think my mother is literally insane. I think she's just made some ridiculously over-the-top choices that, from any other viewpoint than her own, would seem crazy. And while this post will have a bit of teeth to it, I do appreciate the good things she has done in my life.A little background. My biological parents divorced when I was 5; my bio dad died when I was 8 (drunk driving accident), and my mom didn't remarry until I was around 11 or 12. She essentially raised me as a single parent, bought and fixed up a house so we had a good home, and worked third shift in a factory to make ends meet. Honestly, those were the years when things weren't crazy. Really, things didn't start to go sideways until she started going (back) to church religiously (Assemblies of God, a fairly conservative, charismatic denomination.)So let's take a trip through memory lane and let me reminisce on some of the more 'interesting' times.The first one I can chronologically recall is when my mom discovered I was reading Piers Anthony's Xanth series - the book I was specifically reading was "Demons Don't Dream." As you can imagine from the religious aspect, the mere existence of the word "demons" in the title was enough for her to demand I return the book to the library and stop reading that author immediately. Naturally, I didn't, I just hid the book and read it at night.In a similar vein, she got equally upset when I started reading other fantasy authors, because they were "evil" and "against God." When I made the argument the stories were just that - stories, and no different than reading about mythological gods, monsters, heroes, etc., she declared a blanket ban on anything "mythology." Naturally I disregarded, and got better at hiding my interests.Flash forward a bit to when I got my first NES. I didn't have many games, but one of those I did have and enjoyed was Metroid. Well, during a trip to visit an old high school friend of hers, it turned out her friend's son also had Metroid. And for some reason, decided to announce to both his mom and mine the game was "talking to him." Rather than doing the rational thing and taking this as a sign this kid might be in need of some help, my mom declared Metroid "evil", and took the game away from me. For some strange reason, she didn't throw it out - she just hid it. Being a nerdy kid with way too much time on my hands, I found it and (again) just played it in secret.Jumping forward a bit again, post-remarriage, my mom came home from a "church meeting" and announced I was no longer allowed to watch the (original) Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, because they referred to Splinter as "Master Splinter." Which was - wait for it - evil. Because why is he their "master"? She also announced the church had declared the Smurfs and Care Bears as Satanic, because of some allegedly hidden imagery in the cartoons. At this point, I just gave up trying to convince her that she was being insane. I was still a kid, dabbling in religion myself, and just agreed to make her happy.Though I still 100% watched the Ninja Turtles in secret.Moving forward a handful of years to the age of America Online, Prodigy, and other dial-up, pay-per-hour internet providers. It was during this time I discovered the joys of online free-form role-playing: specifically the BlkDragonInn channel on IRC, and the Red Dragon Inn on AOL. Many an hour (and a pretty penny) were spent weaving intricate and interesting story lines with people from around the country. Okay, in retrospect they probably weren't that interesting. I was still young. I foolishly let it slip about my online role-playing during a conversation, and my mom immediately went full Conservative Fundamentalist when I mentioned one of my characters was (shockingly) a vampire. I can still hear the unusually defensive and final tone in her voice: "There are no such things as vampires!" Seriously, she said it so sternly I sometimes wonder if she knows something I don't.I ended up having to move my computer from my room to the living room so she could monitor my online activities. Given this was the age of dial-up and we only had one phone line, it made secret role-playing a problem for awhile. At least until I discovered tabletop gaming later.High school. I don't remember exactly what class it was (I want to say it was Health), but we were learning about Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. My mom flipped her shit and called the school, demanding the teacher exclude me from those lessons, because she had somehow gotten it into her head that Maslow was Buddhist. How his personal religious leanings were important, I still don't know. That teacher, the very next day, pulled me out of class to tell me I was excused from the lessons. Now, at this point, I was well into defiant adolescence, so I insisted I was going to stay, and we just wouldn't tell my mom. Weird secret to keep, but you do what you have to.Around this same time, and likely contributing to my growing defiance, I realized I was not exactly straight. I also discovered that the school library could order books from other libraries, that the internet was much broader than the narrow worlds of RP chat rooms, and that I was basically done with religion. So I dove headfirst into learning all about the LGBT community, reading basically whatever I could get my hands on. At some point, I got sloppy, and my parents deduced why I was being so distant. When they asked if I was gay, I was honest with them. That was a nearly all-night discussion ranging from "Maybe it's just a hormone imbalance" to "maybe your dad abused you during visits" to "Don't tell your grandparents - it will kill them." With lots of Very Fundamentalist Praying sprinkled in for taste. My mom also insisted I couldn't tell anyone else - no other family, no friends, not the church I was still being forced to attend.Relatively normal for religious parents with a non-hetero kid, right? Then it got weird.First, despite her insistence I not tell the church, she took it upon herself to stand in front of the assembly and announce it, asking for prayers, etc.My parents had a church group over one night shortly thereafter. I was just chilling in my room, when suddenly I heard the very familiar sounds of "speaking in tongues" coming loudly from the living room. If you're not familiar with the concept... well, it's a bit alarming if you're not expecting it (and sometimes even if you are.) And suddenly, this small horde of church folk - my parents included - were running back and forth through the house, loudly "speaking in tongues", barging into my room and doing the same, and said they were "chasing the demons out of the house."Yes. Chasing the demons out of the house.I found out a few weeks later this same group had also convinced my mom to "anoint" my computer with holy water and oil, along with my pillows, sheets, and clothes, as a way to "drive away" the demons that were clearly making me think I was gay. Oddly, my mom got really mad when she found out I knew about this because my (much more reasonable) stepdad had told me. Apparently it doesn't work if I know about it?Second, she also decided she was going to tell her sister (my aunt) about it. I got a phone call from said aunt whereupon she implored me to "be careful" and "just think about what you're doing." When I pointed out I had been dealing with this for a lot longer than the few days she knew about it, she told me not to talk back and hung up.Apparently it was okay for my mom to tell my business to everyone, but I wasn't allowed to actually seek out support.To her credit, however, she did eventually make a token effort to relate, and started reading some literature. Unfortunately, it was all conservative, religious-based literature that essentially boiled down to "your child isn't really gay, it's the Devil, but you should love them anyway because God." I tried to at least get her to attend a local PFLAG meeting, or read any of the other literature I had discovered from religious people arguing that being gay was not sinful - it was just a part of my nature, and that was that. (Side note, you may wonder why I went the religious literature route - I figured I had a better chance of bringing her around if I met her halfway, on semi-familiar ground.) She refused to do either, and we entered something of a cold war on the matter.Tensions ran high for awhile, and she would occasionally send angry emails to anyone I was corresponding with about my sexuality, demanding they stop speaking with me (none did, thankfully.)When I was old enough to move out on my own, things got better. Eventually they moved out of state. While I respect all my mom has done for me, I've learned that distance is a key factor in maintaining a quasi-good relationship with her. We still argue on the LGBT front - she occasionally sends links or literature about people who "found their way out of homosexuality", she remains convinced the Illuminati are pulling all the strings behind the scenes, and she went absolutely radio silent for TWO. WEEKS. when Obama was re-elected. Seriously, I couldn't reach her by phone, email, text, Facebook, anything - I was about to call for a wellness check when she finally returned my calls to say she had just been too depressed by the election to even function.My parents suffer from a severe case of "I'm not racist, but."I still sometimes get admonitions to "stay away from that Dungeons & Dragons game", and the End Times have been here for the last 20+ years, apparently - it's always something.She actually unfriended me on Facebook (a move I jokingly refer to as being e-borted) because our views are so diametrically opposed.Well. This was actually kind of therapeutic, and I appreciate the time of anyone who stuck around to read the whole thing. I'd insert some kind of TL;DR, but I don't think I can come up with one to do the story justice.Cheers. https://ift.tt/eA8V8J https://ift.tt/36L245z
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