I just spent the last hour typing up a post to put in !squaredcircle@lemmy.zip about how I observed a beautiful moment with a father and his 3 year old son.
The son was a fan of a wrestler named L.A. Knight. And he was set to make his grand entrance, and have his match, live in front of 57k people.
We were in the stadium, in line for merchandise. The line was really long. So the dad realized they would miss L.A Knight’s match.
Logically the smart thing to do is bring your son back to your seats. Give up your place in line, and try later. Or evdn online later.
Instead, this dad, who was clearly also a fan of L.A Knight, and wanted to see him asked his son: “Do you want to stay in line? Or go see L.A Knight?”
And the kid picked staying in line. The dad confirmed with him “If you stay in line, you’ll miss L.A Knight in the ring. He’s coming out now.”
And the kid chose to stay in line to get L.A Knight merch.
And the whole moment was beautiful to me. The idea of a dad respecting his kids opinion is foreign to me.
I grew up with my dad telling me to shut up and do it his way. Always his way. Still to this day, it’s always his way. My mom left him because he was controlling. My sisters (who are not his kids, but he helped raise them) don’t talk to him because of how he treated them.
I’m 40, and now he’s elderly, and I barely talk to him. Sometimes I feel guilty until moments like this. Where I’m reminded that still to this day I don’t speak up when I should. I don’t ask for help when I need it. I just suffer in silence, just as I always do.
There have even been times in the past where calling 911 for someone else having an emergancy was the right thing to do. Hearing gunshots on your street. Seeing a woman hanging out of a car screaming for help. But not calling 911, because nobody wants to hear what I have to say. Nobody wants to hear from me.
And at Summerslam, I see this kid saying he wants to stay in line. And the dad just confirms, and explains the consequences that he’ll miss L.A Knight, but the kid insisted on staying in line. Despite it not being the smart choice. It was the “wrong” choice. If I were in that position, my dad would have ended it with zero input on my end. But here this dad was respecting his sons choice. His three year old son.
And as I typed to a wrestling community what I intended to be a beautiful story, I realized it’s only beautiful to me because of my own repressed perspective. Everybody else just would hear a story about a normal dad doing normal dad things. Loving his son. Respecting his son.
And nobody would get why that would make me cry.
So I deleted the story before I posted it, and began to realize that even though I’m 40, and should be past all this, it still hurts, and I’m a deeply broken person.
And now I’m wondering, has anyone else had these moments where they realize that they’ve just been repressing pain for 30 years to the point where a normal loving relationship can cause jealousy, but also an intense heartwarming moment?
I don’t know how to describe it. That moment was just 10 minutes out of this kids life that he’ll not remember. The dad won’t deem it important, so he won’t remember this by now. It was a meaningless moment that in a loving relationship happens everyday. But to me, the idea of a dad respecting his son making a “wrong decision” had me supressing anger, sadness, and heartwarming joy, but also knowing how weird I was for that. And so I shut up, and repressed it. Only in trying to retell a heartwarming story did I realize it was coming across as bitter and jealous, and thats when I realized thats MY issue. And I don’t know where to go from here.
Have you ever had a moment like this?
I have had a similar expierence with this, my mother would mostly ignore my input if I didn’t or did want to do something or if I knew she was wrong she would still ignore me and then find out she was wrong and rarely acknowledge I was right.
I never thought about this affecting me until I was watching an interview with a psychologist about 2 years ago and I really resonated with part of it but it never left my mind. Recently I rewatched it and part a different part of it resonated deeper when the guy talked about disagreeing with his parents even though they thought they were right and they listened… I was unsure of what exactly that part was resonating with so I listened to it again. I decided to mix up drink shake mixture but I couldn’t bring myself to do it for some reason I was just locked up about making the drink for like 10 min even though I know I wanted to make the drink. While trying to get myself to do it.
I noticed that there were internal voices that sounded different one was saying
do I want to go thought the effort to clean the shaker though
The other one though was saying
do you even want the drink
AND THEN IT HIT ME LIKE A TRUCK–THE 2ND WAS MY MOTHERS VOICE
Then I was hit with and started processing all the anger, sadness, and anxiety that I felt and didn’t realize I had pent up because of her ignoring me and brushing me off.
Its a tough thing to process and work through, I still am, but I feel better as a person now and more in control of my actions after the realization.
If I had to recommend anything to help, I would say let yourself feel those feelings you were repressing let them out in safe manners like writing down how you feel about stuff or hell I just let myself cry for like an hour after the dam burst it made me feel a lot better. Of course a therapist could help you too but the above two can help otherwise.
Also HealthyGamerGG is a really good YouTube channel with a lot of resources about mental health, it’s where the interview I was watching happened.
I wish you the best on your journey
You aren’t broken. It sounds like a broken man raised you.
I grew up without a father; no positive male influence. It took me a long time to reach a point where I could accept it wasn’t me that was broken, it was the negative thought cycle I was habitually stuck in.
Taking a step back and seeing the good in the world, the small moments, for what they are (which I think you are doing?) Rather than viewing positive moments as a reflection of my own negativity, I am learning to view these positive moments as positive. Realisations of what I didn’t have but knowing I am living my life better than the ones that came before me.
A deeply personal anecdote - I am an alcoholic. I’ve been in AA for a while now, and have been sober for that time. I’ve grown and moved on from needing alcohol to feel normal.
My fathers side of the family, including him when he was alive, are unrepentant alcoholics. I don’t feel bitter or hateful anymore - instead I see it as being the only one in that family tree to actually break out of that cycle.
I have needed to spend a lot of time in therapy to help me reach this point.
Best of luck - you aren’t broken. just hurt
FWIW, that father may have grown up with a father just like you. He just made different choices. Just like you can see that those are different choices. You could and probably will make different choices too, it’s the only way we ever change. It’s not by retroactively having perfect circumstances. It’s by choosing to be better each day moving forward.
Also, as a 40+ year old myself it’s always important to take a clear stock of the ways you’re similar to your parents (I find more every day) and also the myriad ways you are your own individual.
I’m soon gonna turn 42 this September. My father passed away a little over 10 years ago ☹️
But guess what? Me and my roommate decided to adopt Brownie the stray dog!
Someone else adopted Patches as well.
I can’t tell if you adopted your late fathers dog, or decided to get a dog because of his passing
We adopted a stray dog from our city park. It’s only more or less coincidence that it’s right after the 10th anniversary after my father’s passing.
I know my father would have done the same, he’s a really good pup, very well behaved and pretty smart too. I believe he used to be someone’s service dog.
That’s awesome. My dog has helped me mentally so much. She’s smart but stubborn. Still wants to do what she wants even though she knows the commands
As a 41yr old childhood trauma survivor myself I have found a lot of help thru a specialist that is a survivor themselves, I’m not trying to promote them unless you’re interested but do know that you’re seen, valid and these moments will happen. Try to find your joy🫶🏻
When I read the story, I thought Dad left a three year old alone to hold their place in line while he ran off to catch the match.
I now realize my mistake, but at first, I was thinking “That’s not good, that’s horrible!”
It took reading your comment to realize that they stayed in line together. I was horrified reading the post - thinking they were choosing who would stand in line and who would go to the seats. I think there are many people who can relate to this, as parenting has become (for many) much more progressive and gentle than it was in the past. There’s a greater focus on mental health and less “do what i say” or “because i said so”. I grew up with just my mom in what i thought was a strict home. Then i met my husband who was part of a military family that followed a strict chain of command. We were probably more controlling than we should have been, but less than we grew up with in the 70’s. If my kids have kids, i hope they’ll be better. We all take what we experience and hopefully do better when it’s our turn. What kind of childhood did your dad have?
You had a moment of clarity where your true Self was able to be present and witness the good in the world. This is huge and you should know that a random internet stranger is proud of you for noticing. It is the first step to starting to heal your own inner parts who are still carrying that trauma from decades ago. The next step is to try to bring that enlightenment and understanding inside yourself. Congratulations on your new wisdom!
I’m happy that despite deleting the original post and not posting it in the wrestling community you decided to post it here after all. There are so many people in the world and even so many different people on Lemmy. Of course there will be people who appreciate your story! I, for one, was moved by it, because what you describe as a normal loving relationship is not as common as I would wish it to be. There will always be people with a troubled past like you or troubled in a different way or people that are ok and interested in other people’s life experiences. All of them can benefit from hearing your story! Don’t hesitate to talk about your life. It can be very good both for you and for others.
This is /nostupidquestions, not /readmylifesstory. Lemmy isn’t your therapist. Especially not the community that also answers “what laptop charger should I buy?” and “why is anime obsessed with maids?”
Discouraging and shitting on a repressed person is definitely the way to go. Good job! You’re nothing like OPs dad!
I’m glad I’m unable to read their comment. This is not the fucking place for negativity
My man - thanks for sharing your story with us. You made my day better for it.
And as I typed to a wrestling community what I intended to be a beautiful story, I realized it’s only beautiful to me because of my own repressed perspective.
It was a wonderful story even without the full context. I don’t know what the online wrestling community is like, but unless they’re a bunch of jerks they’ll enjoy it too; whether you decide to share it with or without your personal context.
We would enjoy that story, I can assure you
What a lovely post. Thank you for sharing it.
I’m 60 years old, my father passed many years ago. I have still not come to grips with all the complexities of our relationship. My wife knows that if we ever see a film or TV show where a parent, but particularly a father shows any form of approval for something their son did, I will turn into a blubbering mess.
That said, more rational me knows that there were many ways in which my father was a good dad, if am willing to take the time to look for them.
I have three sons and a daughter, my greatest hope in life is that they won’t have the same issues with me as a father that I did with my own dad.
Thanks again for this amazing story about how even small things we do can have a great impact, and not necessarily on those we expect them to.
I had a similar experience growing up, it sucks. It has ruined my ability to interact with and form relationships with other men.
As a father myself, I am striving to create moments like you witnessed, I refuse to let my children suffer the way I/we have.
I’m I’m my early thirties and almost teared up. I have the same type of father as you. He knows best, he’s always right, so it’s always his way. Stay strong friend, you aren’t alone
Those who break the cycle are often the only ones aware of its existence in the first place. We aren’t broken, friend; we merely bear the weight of generations of broken men who’ve been falling downwards on top of those who come after.
It’s important to remember, though, that everyone has their demons. Childhood trauma caused by an abusive parent who was broken because of the war. Stuff like that. It’s an echo.
A few weeks ago, a mom was at the hardware store with her young son – he was about five years old.
For some reason, we crossed paths a few times, And each time she was talking with her son about the things they were buying in the projects that they were buying them for. But what Caught my attention first was he asked her ‘What if we can’t do it?’ and she responded with ‘Well then we learned how because we can figure it out.’
This woman was endlessly, encouraging towards her son, and it was clear that she was setting him up to have an attitude of feeling like he was capable of tackling things in life. Which is something that I didn’t get us a kid - I was often told that I couldn’t do things or the things were beyond my capability and that if my mom didn’t know how to do something that it was basically impossible for me to figure out how to do it as well.I was so impressed by their interaction, that when I saw her later while I was checking out, I actually said something to her and after she figured out I wasn’t trying to pick her up, she took a moment and like… just looked satisfied. I was happy with the interaction.
Beyond the fact that I mostly grew up without a father and my mother was very self focused to the point that it was pretty detrimental to me, I also grew up with undiagnosed ADHD that I only learned about in my early 40s. I am constantly discovering ways that I feel broken in the world, so you are not alone.
