Depression is funny that way, though. You KNOW it’s not you sometimes, but you can’t help how you FEEL.
It’s like I’m Obsessive Compulsive. I KNOW my fear is irrational. That doesn’t make it go away.
That doesn’t make it hurt any less.
I wish G all the luck in the world. Poor guy.
I suspect that obfusciatrist is like many others who can skillfully point out the irregularity of others lives and the inadequacy of their decisions. That is, I suspect his own life isn’t less than satisfying, and that he has huge chasms between him and the people he cares about.
Why do I suspect this? Because I share the same tendency to ruthless analysis, and I know accurately how my life is just as fucked up as anyone else’s.
The only difference is that experience has taught me not to behave like a prick. I’ve learned that human beings can be forgiven for being irrational, even valued despite it.
irishgirl, as you probably know, you will find all shades of opinion here, and some will help less than others. I am sure your concern for your friend will make a difference. Good on you, and best wishes to him from afar.
Redboss
I can forgive them for being irrational, but that doesn’t mean I have to encourage its continuance.
Actually, my life is pretty damn good, with no significant flaws at the moment. No signficant chasms between me and the people I care about. Why? Because I took responsibility for my own feelings and made it good.
Yes, it is hard to do this, but it is necessary at some point. If saying so makes me a prick, so be it. However, if I grow tired of my prickishness I hope to follow in your footsteps and replace it with sanctimony.
I hope that irishgirl’s and A’s concern helps G. However, if the only reason it helps is that he replaces a need for his parent’s approval with a need for theirs, he is still going to be fucked up.
I’ll have to second Bricker’s second of obfusciatrist’s
perspective on this. Redboss’s notions aside I have trouble seeing where obfusciatrist is being a non-empathetic prick for making what seems to be a commonsense observation with respect to how a grown man should grapple with an intractable problem.
As an IRL example my mother loved us but she was a chronic and serious alcoholic from about her thirties onward (but functioned superbly for her job as an exec. secy very high up on the food chain at a major hospitality corp). I wound myself up over this continuously until about the age of 18 when, after one particularly nasty exchange, my uncle (her brother) took me aside and said "Look… your mother is an alcoholic and barring a miracle will likely be one until the day she dies. You will not change her and if you want to live your life with any degree of peace you’ve got to accept it and move on.
It wasn’t easy and I didn’t do it overnight but ultimately I had to do it if I wanted to get on with life.
Regardless of their insensitive vileness, if G’s parents are not going to change anytime soon he had best deal with it as a grown man and move on.
Redboss if you have a better real world action plan than the one outlined by obfusciatrist (ie “His parents are jerks, accept it, deal with it, suck it up and move on”) for helping a 21 year old adult man deal with bigoted, non-changing parents please give us the benefit of your perspective.
Moderator’s Notes: I don’t know how I missed this thread before. It most certainly belongs in the Pit. And if I had any doubts, obfusciatrist’s posts should erase them.
Here’s a piece of advice for general consumption. If your OP contains the words
or their functional equivalent, your thread belongs in the Pit. If anyone replies to any thread with the words
your reply belongs in the Pit.
I’m confused. Wasn’t this already in the Pit? If this was in another forum and I somehow missed that fact then I apologize for the word choice (but not the opinions being expressed). But I would have sworn up and down that this has been in the Pit all along.
Paying your own way through university is not the norm in the UK, so it is much more difficult to do than it is in the States. For example, there are fewer employment opportunties for students on campus and we do not (yet) have the flexible credit accumulation systems that operate in the US, though they are being introduced. Most undergraduate degree courses are usually taken as three consecutive years of full-time study, with very little flexibility. Some universities still forbid students from working during term-time and require them to seek permission to work in the vacation (though these rules are widely flouted, they can still be invoked at the whim of the individual’s tutor).
We do have a lot more Government assistance for students (e.g. tution fees are mostly paid by the state and special loans are available) but the vast majority of people still rely on their parents to some extent to meet their living expenses.
After the age of 18 there are no legal restrictions on what you can drink and where in England & Wales, and you are considered to be an adult for all legal purposes. But 21 was the legal age of majority until IIRC the late 1960s so it is still regarded by most people as being a significant birthday. It is also the age at which most people graduate university, another significant milestone.
Just thought I’d highlight what I see to be the main point.
Carry on.
This was definitely in the Pit all along; I know this for a fact since the Pit is the first forum that I read. Perhaps a software glitch dispatched it to Unc’s forum.
It may be that I’m confused. I “fairly” certain I found it in MPSIMS, but I’ve been wrong once or twice before. Anyway, carry on.
And apparently the software will let me “move” a thread to the same forum in which it currently resides. It remains a mystery.
[Edited by UncleBeer on 08-02-2001 at 02:55 PM]
I have a whole different set of circumstances, but I’ve had to finally accept the same conclusion.
I am responsible for my own happiness.
I have finally accepted the sad truth that my mother (my only parent) is not a good parent. She may be a decent person but she flat sucks as a parent. So I have learned to stop banging my head against her wall. She will never want her older children, and will likely never speak to either of us again. I’ve learned to accept this as fact, as much as I hate it, and want to be able to talk to my mom sometimes.
As Astro said: "You will not change her and if you want to live your life with any degree of peace you’ve got to accept it and move on. "
While my heart goes out to G because of his parents anti-gay stance, I too have difficulty feeling vast ammounts of sympathy for the $ situation. While I may have been misinformed, I was lead to believe that public univerities in Europe are considerably cheaper than in the US. My school, a public state university, for example cost $11,500 dollars a year (give or take $200 over four years) which according to a currency translator is something in the neighborhood of 8,000 pounds a year. Although, to be entirely truthful, recent reports say that now that it’s gone up to $12,000 a year, it’s now the most expensive public university in the US, but there are some with tuitions half as much, I’m sure. My parents have never been in the position to help me out much, so I’ve paid for it myself through loans and working. If he’s getting help from the government, I don’t see how that makes him worse off than I was. Granted, it’s nice to have mom and dad foot the bill, and I feel some envy towards those of my friends who are now debt-free after graduation, but not all of us are that lucky.
I hope G does learn to move on, though, and stops letting his parents hurt him, though. He has a better shot at that than his parents do at learning acceptance, unfortunately.
It’s more of a £ situation than a $ situation. 
The arrangements for student support in the US and the UK are, and always have been, totally different. The experiences of a US student paying his or her way through university have little or no bearing on those of a British student.
The UK student support system is in transition at the moment, and it’s difficult to describe without going into a lot of boring detail, but suffice it to say that the British system has always been based on the assumption that those parents who can afford to pay will do so. How much support a student receives is based on his parents’ income, whether or not they actually contribute anything. This leaves people whose parents can afford to pay but refuse to do so in a very difficult position.
The opportunities to work to pay your way are not the same as they are in the States. As I said, my own university explicitly prohibited this and one of my friends was penalised, by being required to take extra examinations, when his tutor discovered that he was working in a pub three nights a week. Nor is it easy to take time out of a course to get the money together to complete the next year.
I think this whole thread poses one big question: if parents can’t love their children unconditionally, should they have any in the first place? Last I heard, having kids meant you were their parents for life, not just for as long as they continue to please you. It’s not like taking something back to the store because it turns out that it doesn’t do what you thought it would.
More than anything, I hope that G will move on to find true happiness, and that his parents will live to bitterly regret their actions. Living well is the best form of revenge (for want of a better term) against those who have wronged you.
This topic really hits home with me…
I came out to my parents when I was about 20… From the time I told them, my mother’s favorite word was STUPID…
When I told her that I was discriminated against for being Gay, she told me I was stupid…
When I told her that my first lover was sick with AIDS, she told me that I was stupid…
In fact for about 18 years I put up with being called stupid every time I mentioned anything about being Gay… And my mother called EVERY Saturday for 18 years… and told me I was stupid for being Gay…
In 1998, at 38 I told my parents that if they couldn’t listen to me without calling me stupid, that they didn’t have to be part of my life…
I never heard from them again…
My father died in March, and I only found out because my cousins called me… I was not invited to the funeral…
It’s too bad… They lost their son over their ignorance…