My grandmother was mentally ill and most likely had been abused by her father. All seven of her kids were affected by having her as a mother in various degrees of dysfunction, the most profound being my youngest aunt – an alcoholic, probably borderline personality disorder sufferer. Her younger son is a heroin addict who just got out of jail for theft last week.
I used to be but I’m reformed. In immediate family I can’t think of anyone now. However everyone is fucked up and a fuck up to some degree from what I know of people in general. However, nobody in my immediate family seems deeply fucked up. Extended family (cousins, uncles, aumts,etx) yep. I’m sure that is true of most people. You get fifty+ people together you’ll get some fucked up people.
I have a cousin who is an in-denial alcoholic and pot head who has been chronically unemployed for years because he cannot control his temper in the workplace (every manager he’s ever worked for was a complete idiot and needed to be informed of that, etc. – lather, rinse, repeat). His dear wife was able to hold everything together, but she passed away two years ago (I believe from the stress of living with him.*) It’s especially sad because he has a physically- and mentally-disabled daughter living with him (she can’t live on her own) and I strongly suspect that she’s not getting the social stimulation that she needs. Every one of the cousins has reached out to him and been soundly rebuffed, so we regretfully have decided to let him go his own way.
*He got caught up in one of those you-don’t-have-to-pay-your-mortgage schemes, ultimately the bank foreclosed on his nearly paid for house, the family moved had to move and, two weeks later, his wife dropped dead of a heart attack.
Have I ever mentioned that my mother is nucking futs?
Mental illness runs rampant on my mother’s side of the family. It doesn’t run - it gallops. Not going to go into private details here, but I think I have sufficiently conveyed the extent of the screwed-up-ness of my family.
I’m rather screwed up in the head, but luckily seem to have gotten some good genes from my father’s side of the family, or else I’d be even farther out mentally.
Alcoholic, xenophobic aunt with PTSD who denies that she’s ever drunk alcohol. Xenophobic, leech cousin, daughter of previous aunt. Paternal alcoholic uncle (deceased) married to member of political branch of terrorist organization - said organization at one point had all people bearing our lastname in their list of targets (yes, that includes this aunt and uncle’s two children). Mother who has problems comprehending that the rest of the people in the world aren’t merely extras and props in her life; sexually-overloaded maternal grandfather who never really saw other people as people. Maternal grandmother whose denial would have a basin larger than the Amazon’s, if it was a river.
Makes my paternal uncle and aunt who’ve been depressed since their firstborn died some 7 years ago look healthy by comparison. My paternal side isn’t normal and doesn’t claim to be, but at least most of us live in the same universe as the rest of humanity; the maternal side, not so much.
I have an Idiot Brother. He’s a Teapublican who doesn’t believe in government handouts, but who’s been living with my dad for the better part of twenty years. He currently lives there with his wife, kid, and his wife’s kid.
He says he’s really smart and has “a business”, but never has any money. He also works a regular job and doesn’t have money. He can’t afford a car for himself and his wife, even though he literally doesn’t pay any normal adult bills (rent, utilities, insurance). They have 1 car, and it’s a huge pain in the ass for my parents. I don’t know why they put up with it. I hope they kick the lot of them out when my nephew turns 18.
He’s been in and out of legal trouble for years. He’s a bully and screamed at me and got very physically confrontational during a conversation about insurance. Seriously, *health insurance. *
After my parents pass away, he will not be my next of kin. That would be my cousin, who is a brave woman who’s worked her butt off, served her country, and has a lovely family.
I have an in-law that is a cousin-level relation of my wife. Considering that he is in prison for murdering other family members, yes.
Yeah, me too.
BTW, I wonder if crazy family members are like suckers. If you look around the table and can’t spot one, it’s probably you.
Uh have you read threads about my now dead mom?
She was what I am guessing was a narcissistic hoarder, and my father was her co-dependent enabler.
It was an enormous shock to me as an adult to realize that my parents who I assumed were subsistence level poverty, were actually at one time close to the 1%! My whole life growing up they denied me everything, even dental and medical care and constantly hammered into me we were poor as poor can be,
I realized it was all my mom’s compulsive hoarding, and then my dad’s compulsive gambling, he had a plan to blow a quarter of a million bucks and then commit suicide but chickened out.
If you add up their property, savings, income, and unrealized income due to hoarding, they had to be worth around 4-5 million dollars. When my mom died recently there was nothing left except three grand in her savings account from social security and three houses hoarded to the roof inside all with tax liens GREATER than their value.
Mind boggling.
Where do I start? Although most of it is drug,alcohol or both connected there is a lot of messed up people.
A quick snapshot. A few years back at my grandmother’s funeral I was sitting next to one of my nephews who was on the verge of crossing the line between childish/teenage shenanigans and things that could land him in jail. I told him there where some relatives sitting around the room he may want to talk with. I pointed out the four uncles and two aunts that had done time for assault,armed robbery,burglary and even one bank robbery. Then I pointed out the aunt who had a son in for manslaughter, for killing his brother with the trunk of an artificial Christmas tree, over the last beer.
Yeah, we got some.
There was the great grandfather who abandoned his family in favor of drinking. There was also an alcoholic aunt who died of diabetes although alcoholism was probably a factor. There was my alcoholic uncle, though he eventually sobered up, and an alcoholic grandmother. Guess what I like to do in my spare time if I’m not careful.
There was the aunt who told people Ronald Reagan had been killed and replaced by a Hollywood stuntman. She was a very sweet woman but never functioned well before that and only barely functioned afterwards.
And then there’s me.
Are you kidding?
that would be me
I have one cousin who sort of “snapped” when he was 11 or 12…according to my mom, he destroyed all of his possessions and ran away from home. He was located, but he was never quite the same afterwards. He lived with his parents for a long time, and was finally able to transition into some kind of group home. I’ve never known him when he wasn’t heavily medicated.
My extended family also includes quite a few extreme racists and bigots. People wonder why I don’t attend family reunions… >.<
My (extended) family is basically a smorgasbord of mental illness. A tad of OCD over there, some debilitating bipolarity to your right, in the small white dish is a nice schizophrenic sauce, a large skillet of clinical depression to the far left, take however much alcoholism you want, the whole table is sprinkled with a dash of anxiety . . .
My nuclear family is pretty sane, though, which is all that really matters in the end.
Aren’t you missing an option?
[ul]Most or all of my family members are seriously messed up[/ul]
In my family, the crown for being the most messed up person is a tight race. It’s currently held by my younger sister, who is in prison for borrowing a car and crashing into a tree when her driver’s license was revoked. The judge agreed to give her a reduced sentence if she did a year of rehab. She complied, and then went off on the judge when he gave her a six month sentence.
She is now serving five years.
Care to say why?
I think for many baby boomers who grew-up watching movies and TV shows like ‘Leave it to Beaver’, it gave a very false sense of what family life is like. Because of that, if your family experience was anything less than the TV ideal, you were made to feel that something was terrible wrong with your family and have shame. As evidence of this Poll so far, 75% have a messed up family. The very idea of the father always wearing a tie to dinner and the mother wearing pearls and heels all day while making cookies in the kitchen is some twisted sense of reality dreamed up.
This is a good Poll and thread to start. I think it helps people realize that they aren’t alone.
I would also like to add, that when you talk with people and they always paint this perfect situation with their family and how everyone is doing just great, it is highly likely a mask they project to the world. The worst offenders in this regard are those who send out the annual Christmas letter packed with nothing but glowing things everyone is doing. I imagine anyone who feels they must send out a newsletter to the world about their accomplishments on an annual basis has a serious problem all by itself.
Peace to you and your families. Remember, you didn’t select these people, they are family members. Who they are and what they do doesn’t have to define you or reflect on you.