fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2813 ]

[ SECRET POST #2813 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2813 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.

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02.

[Vocaloid]

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03.

[Homestuck]

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04.

[Luke Evans, Dracula Untold]

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05.

[Guardians of the Galaxy]

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06.

[John Green]

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07.

[Ace Attorney: The Adventures of Ryunosuke Naruhodou]

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08.

[Legend of Korra]

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09.

[Paul Hollywood of The Great British Bake-Off]

Notes:

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Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
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I've been thinking lately about how much of the messed-up stuff in my stories comes from my extended family. All my immediate relatives are basically okay, but the distant relations are like a V.C. Andrews novel. What I'm wondering is, how does this compare to other folks? Is my family unusually nutty, or do you have similar relatives?

Some of the stuff is potentially triggery, so I'll give details in my second post, just in case.

I definitely have a pretty crazy family. We google my relatives to find out which jail they're in. Or another relative tried to kidnap one of my older relatives and have him sign over all of his money to her. I'm used to crazy relatives.

What really struck me was that we represent almost every possible way in which parents can abuse, neglect, or exploit their children. A sadistic parent who toyed with his children . . . An emotionally needy parent who stunted one of her sons and made him dependent on her . . . A cool, trendy parent who had a kid because all her friends were doing so, and essentially left the child to be raised by nannies and tutors . . . and that's not even half of them! To my knowledge, we haven't had anyone who financially exploited their child, and you have to go back four generations to find someone who impregnated his daughter, but there really are an amazing number of variations on the basic theme.

In addition, we have a significant history of alcoholism, mental illness, and alcoholism as self-medication for mental illness, plus a few folks who ruined their lives with harder drugs. In many causes, this was a factor in the abuse or neglect, ranging from apparent sociopathy to violent mood swings combined with memory loss. I only have a handful of relatives who weren't in some way impacted by this. (For instance, my father's mother was so needy that he escaped by joining the military and doing everything he could to become self-reliant, so he still has trouble telling people that he loves them or cares about them.)

Edited 2014-09-15 23:52 (UTC)

You are not alone. My family also has many of those things. VERY V.C Andrews (btw, that's a FANTASTIC term for it!) It's so bad that I've done a complete and permanent sever from most of my family.

What I wonder is how just one relatively small group of people can get SO fucked up. Like, what are the odds? Yeesh.

I think some of it comes in cycles. For instance, my aunt with violent mood swings and paranoia was raised by my sadistic grandfather, and my mother thinks some of her trust issues started in her upbringing.

Though that brings up another question, which my mother has never been able to answer: why did she turn out okay when her sister didn't?

Well, my family has the first cousins that married each other and divorced about a month later, my dad's father who ruthlessly abused his nine children emotionally (and possibly physically? he was dead before I was born, so I've never gotten the details), plus all the resultant abuse that comes from being raised that way sometimes. My father, for instance, is so determined that things will be "pleasant" (as opposed to what he grew up with) that he refuses to discuss anything emotional ever and shuts down any conversation that he decides is not "appropriate" (as in, makes him have a feeling, maybe? His criteria has never been clear to me). He copes with unwanted emotions by drinking until he doesn't feel them anymore. I cannot recall him ever displaying emotion openly except when he got so drunk that he couldn't hold in his anger. He once told me that the answer to depression is to "stop thinking about depressing things".

And on my mother's side, oof. When my mom was 21, her father left their family for a woman a year younger than her (his OWN DAUGHTER). While that alone was scandalous at the time, it was eventually revealed that he had been sleeping with that girl since she was either 14 or 15. Their wedding invitations were out before his divorce from my grandmother was even finalized. He and his wife now live in florida with their daughter who is a couple of years younger than me. I have met the man once, when I was about 14.

Also, my parents are also probably like 5th cousins, since both families have been in the area forever and there are quite a few shared last names among the earlier generations.

Probably doesn't compare to your experience, but I think every family has their skeletons in the closet.

Edited 2014-09-16 00:39 (UTC)

Re: eh

diet_poison - 2014-09-16 01:41 (UTC) - Expand

AN EPIC TALE THAT IS ACTUALLY PRETTY DEPRESSING

tyger66 - 2014-09-16 02:08 (UTC) - Expand

Re: AN EPIC TALE THAT IS ACTUALLY PRETTY DEPRESSING

diet_poison - 2014-09-16 16:34 (UTC) - Expand

Re: eh

(Anonymous) - 2014-09-16 02:26 (UTC) - Expand

I come from a line of batshit insane, on both sides. Apparently my dad's grandma was the eccentric kind of nuts - she chased her third husband around with a gun, and locked him in the closet on at least one occasion. She once whipped a guy for whipping a horse, and went out in half-finished clothes.

One of my great-aunts on the other side chased people with an axe. My mom's great-grandmother used to barricade herself in her own home and would climb up a table if she saw a mouse.

More seriously, my uncle is mentally unfit for work and is basically sort of fed by my aunt because he's on some meager disability stipend.

I could be considered stable compared to some of them.

Edited 2014-09-15 23:57 (UTC)

My cousin killed her baby with meth. The father of the child was possibly killed by her brother, or by gang members. Nobody's sure. She's a prostitute now, with another kid.

Older brother is emotionally abusive and a general piece of shit.

Other cousin killed himself with meth.

Uncle is a Communist.

You are not alone. Families be cray-cray.

I'm not sure if intentional, but having "Uncle is a Communist" in the same line-up as meth sort of made me crack up.

Re: The nuts in your family tree

iceyred - 2014-09-16 00:22 (UTC) - Expand

Re: The nuts in your family tree

feotakahari - 2014-09-16 01:55 (UTC) - Expand

Re: The nuts in your family tree

(Anonymous) - 2014-09-16 02:24 (UTC) - Expand

Re: The nuts in your family tree

diet_poison - 2014-09-16 01:42 (UTC) - Expand

Wow, are we related? My dad's family is rife with meth addicts and Communists too.

Re: The nuts in your family tree

iceyred - 2014-09-16 01:48 (UTC) - Expand

That's awful about your cousin's kids. Well, and awful about your cousin too, but that whole situation sounds tragic.

Addicts. Addicts everywhere. Of all kinds. Which is why I don't drink/smoke/try drugs.

Most of my family are criminals/addicts/mentally ill/abusive or any variation of those things, so you really aren't alone.

Not as crazy as some of the other families on here...

but it seems like most of the women in my family marry shitty husbands. grandpa's a cheating narcissistic douchebag. the other grandpa is much better (but has a drinking problem.) one of my uncles is again, a narcissistic douchebag who looks down on the rest of the family. one is a workaholic who essentially abandoned his kids and moved to another city so he could work more. and one is an abusive drug addict who liked to set stuff on fire as a child.

my great grandma had the worst time with men by far, though. when her mother died, her abusive father moved them all to our country, where she had no one to help her. she was basically a domestic servant for her father and brothers. there's hints she may have been sexually abused as well as physically/emotionally. then she married, and that guy turned out to be an abusive drunk. after he died she didn't remarry and i don't blame her.

i think my dad and his brother are the only two semi-decent men in the family.

on the female side, you've got a lot of mental health issues. one of my grandmas is terrified of germs. she only drinks filtered water, spends the entire year cleaning her house in a complicated process, and covers the sofa and appliances in plastic.

the other grandma i am 90% certain has some kind of social anxiety, because she barely leaves the house.

I have an aunt who loves to buy decorative things from flea markets and all that for me and Mom. For my mom, it's mostly those copper jello molds you can hang on walls. she has so many of them now, we could probably beat them down flat and cover nearly the entire roof of my parent's house with them.

For me, I am decorating my downstairs bathroom in butterflies. She's sent me a ton of butterfly stuff, none of which I can actually use in the bathroom, including a large circular tray with matching coasters, and what I'm pretty sure is a cake plate.

I've heard about some really off, and creepy people on both sides of the family, but I don't know any details because no one wants to talk about them.

Edited 2014-09-16 00:41 (UTC)

Wow, compared to a lot people in this thread, my family is actually really 'sane'. We do have some skeletons as well though, because who doesn't? Like on my maternal side there is a whole lot of alcoholism, but as far as I know not the abusive to others kind and more like the "get so drunk that you trip and hit your head on the fireplace"-kind. I'm actually surprised my maternal grandfather is still alive.

On my paternal side there is my grandmother's father. I have no idea who he was as my grandmother won't talk about as it's "too painful". What I do know is that my grandmother and her siblings were all born out of wedlock and that my great-grandmother never married. I also think my grandmother's older sister has another father, considering that there is a fairly large age gap between her and the rest of the siblings, but my grandmother has never confirmed it. My great-grandfather apparently married some other woman and had two or three children with her, I think. Most of this I only know due to my grandmother mentioning it in passing as she really does not want to talk about in-depth. I do know it was very hard for her growing up, which was only worsened by WWII.

My grandfather (the alcoholic) was also born out of wedlock, come think of it, but that was only due to his father dying in a mining accident around the time my great-grandmother got pregnant, so less drama there really.

I know next to nothing about my father's side of the family, but from what Mom told me, Dad was left on Grandpa and Grandma's stoop shortly after he was born. Supposedly, he was the bastard child of Grandpa.

My grandmother dated Nazis. Not one, and not for like a fling or something (did that even happen in 1941?) but serially.

No, she wasn't German.

My aunt (non-fatally) stabbed her first husband in the back with sewing scissors.

My mom has a lot of stories because she was homeless for a few years after turning 14, and a homeless girl in the 60s gets a lot of stories. (ie the time she broke some of her nails digging them into a mugger's neck, etc etc.)

My grandmother used to start brawls for fun (at sporting events and the like) and once ground out her cigarette on the back of a man's neck cause he was bothering my grandfather.

My great grandmother's husband used to beat her so one night after he passed out drunk she sewed his clothes to the bed then, when he woke up, beat him with a cast iron skillet until he passed out so he would never beat her again.

Basically my family is. Pretty eventful I guess.

(I'm sure there are stories about male relatives of mine but I don't know as many of them.)

My great grandmother's husband used to beat her so one night after he passed out drunk she sewed his clothes to the bed then, when he woke up, beat him with a cast iron skillet until he passed out so he would never beat her again.

I don't mean to make light of this, but sewing his clothes to the bed is equally brilliant and fucked up at the same time.

One aunt and uncle decided many years ago to become Jews for Jesus which is offensive on so many levels, mostly to actual Jews and to Jesus.

A second cousin decided he knows who he's reincarnated from: a kamikaze pilot who died in World War 2. He brought a history book with the man's photo in it to a family get together. This went over very well with my Fundamentalist Protestant family.

The same second cousin and his wife have inexplicably decided to go toothless. It's not a poverty or insurance issue, I don't think. They just decided not to get the partial or whatever and have lots of missing teeth.

There's plenty of skeletons on both sides, IMO.

Recently, my maternal grandmother was murdered in her sleep by one of my cousins, who tried to dispose of the evidence by burning the house down (she failed and was caught). It happened because the cousin was adopted, and Gran never really considered her part of the family. Though it doesn't excuse her actions, it's sad, because all she wanted was acceptance, and now she's taken one life and ruined her own.

One uncle drunk drove a motorcycle into a tree, killing himself.

I don't have many other details about that side, but let's just say my mother had no issues with traveling some continents over to get the hell away. Of course, she wasn't much better. A textbook narcissist who blames me for all her problems, is manipulative, emotionally abusive/incestuous, and physically abusive during my younger years, and violated a thousand boundaries with both her children. (I'm also anon who spoke of the abused dog in an earlier F!S post)

I don't remember much about Dad before he got sick and died, except that he yelled a lot. Supposedly both of my parents were sexually abused as children, my father by an older male member of the family. This male may or may not have been the young man who later committed suicide over the self-loathing he had due to being either gay or a pedophile (I don't know which, honestly, didn't get enough details).

I found out my other grandmother was an oops baby and her family never let her forget it. She was treated as a "lesser" member of the family and called not very nice names. Cousins... well... a mix of religious and religious nuts. Another cousin drunk drove and crashed... giving himself a nasty head injury. He may have killed a friend too, but I don't remember. He lost his life later, ironically, being hit by a car.

I suppose my brother turned out decent. He was nice to me when we were by ourselves but had no problem teaming up with other kids to ridicule me or treat me like garbage, or letting one of his abusive friends hit me. It's really weird, though. I'm not even angry about that, but I feel no real need to keep in contact with him either. Both he and my mother wonder why I never call them. I dunno. To keep my sanity? Until I can find people who don't tear me down or won't stand by while others treat me like shit? Maybe all of that. I'm still figuring it out.

In the meantime, I've pretty much sworn not to have children. I kind of sense I'm the black sheep of the family in the way that I won't keep in contact with everyone else. I'm not saying I won't ever contact other family members, because some of them are actually sane, but I think a lot of it is that I don't want to be exposed to the potential crazy, and I certainly don't want to add to the crazy.

Most of the crazy in my family appears to be concentrated on my immediate family. The extended family is so nice it's crazy. But I have one sister who's had two kids by two failed marriages so far, and shows no signs of stopping. It scares me honestly, she keeps picking people who turn out to be abusive assholes. She's lucky to have not gotten any broken bones or other serious injuries yet. And I'm genuinely afraid of how the kids are going to turn out.

My other sister is a party animal college dropout who is usually drunk, high, or drunk + high at least four nights a week. She's currently couch surfing a thousand miles from home. She seems to have a handle on the situation to a certain extent, but it worries me.

Uncle was an alcoholic, now dry. Brother is an addict who keeps losing his jobs because of really stupid shit.

A cousin of my mother had depression an killed herself. Depression is a thing in my family in general.

My father's family is strange, I think his grandmother took in the child of another woman and pretended it to be her own (without her husband's knowledge) and nobody really knows the whole story.

And then there's the Great aunt who thought she was the Grand Duchess Anastasia.

the Great aunt who thought she was the Grand Duchess Anastasia

You know, I think I would love to have met her.

Re: The nuts in your family tree

(Anonymous) - 2014-09-16 13:47 (UTC) - Expand

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