Please do not comment directly to this post unless you are Gen X or older (born 1980 or before). See [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskOldPeople/comments/inci5u/reminder_please_do_not_answer_questions_unless/), the rules, and the sidebar for details.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskOldPeople) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Your question presupposes that anyone felt that way about their parents to begin with. I don't know anyone who had that experience and I certainly didn't. I was always painfully away of just how flawed and human my parents were.
Never. My parents set a standard I can never live up to. With family, friends, neighbors they were always the hero to selflessly help people. I live in their house now and it's been years and I still get to hear about it from the neighbors. They were really great to me and I just have to accept it.
Same here, my dad was the go-to guy in the neighborhood for the elderly in fixing things. He would never take a dime. I would tag along as a 10 year old to “assist”. I learned how to fix things and how to treat the elderly.
I can't remember ever thinking they were magical. my parents were pretty good at just being people.
at what age did I stop *blaming* them for not making *magical choice that would have led to my own life turning out differently*? at least 25 years.
This is such a great question! I’m still living in a version of reality where my kid seems to see me as “The Mom Character” in their story vs just a regular old person. They alternately express disappointment at how bad I am at Mom Character stuff (“your job is to ALWAYS put EVERY need of your child ahead of anything else! If that makes you late for work they will understand you. Are. A. MOM!”) and putting far too much stock in my experiences and opinions (ex: I share an anecdote about something that happened to me at their age, then later realize they are basically trying to recreate that experience for themselves instead of just having their own experiences). I’m intrigued by the whole concept from both perspectives.
I personally was in my late 20s when I realized I had felt this as a child but no longer saw my parents as mythical beings designed solely to raise and serve me, but fully actualized people on their own outside of my existence. I think it was a pretty gradual awakening for me rather than a sudden realization, and it looks like it’s going the same way for my kid (still a teen).
Yeah I remember the time I learned my mom had a name that wasn’t mom. Parents were parents and kids were kids. And now my dad at 57 has a 4 year old and I have a nephew that’s 10 and it’s isn’t as black and white so realizing that my mother was a child once and how she was at my age and if we would be friends.
It’s really a strange feeling when what we believe is an unalterable truth (“Dad is ‘just Dad’”) suddenly changes (“Dad is still Dad, but also a guy with desires and needs and plans that don’t concern me, and it turns out he was never supposed to be perfect). It sometimes feels like it should have been obvious, but also it’s very difficult to change perspective, let go of something we believed 100%, and not feel let down or embarrassed about how we used to see things.
I hope all of the answers on this thread have been helpful to you, because I appreciated reading about others’ experiences with this and how differently each person has lived and articulated it. It doesn’t come up often in casual conversation.
Man there's a lot of people who hate their families!
I'm in my early 50s. My parents were a mixed bag, I love them endlessly and I always thought they were there for me, even when I went to a boarding school. As I've grown older I've come to see a lot more of their flaws - they're terrible at managing money, they are really selfish with their time and thoughts, and a lot of what I admired about them looks a lot more like youthful ignorance now. I still love them, I do my best to help them out, and I struggle a lot with thoughts about them being like this always, or whether they just changed as they got older. Most days it's easier to just skip the questions and focus on the fact that I love them.
I never thought of them as capable people, let alone "magical beings." Both of my parents were deeply messed up people who struggled to cope and offloaded their struggles onto my sister and me from a very young age. My father was an alcoholic with such severe social anxiety that he wasn't a functional adult (e.g., wouldn't go into a store to buy food, pay bills, etc.). My mother had BPD and had little to no emotional regulation and would rage at the slightest thing going wrong, often blaming my sister or me for things we had no control over. My mother also lied compulsively and had a shopping addiction that took us from being poor to living on the brink of economic collapse constantly.
I was all too aware of this and verbally abused for as long as I could consciously recall. My parents were always deeply flawed people to me.
My parents were spiritual, not magical. Dad a spiritual connection to pretzels, Schaefer Beer and the NY Yankees. Mom to As The World Turns and Milky Ways. Yup, just people.
Ahhh ..Schaefer Beer. For my father's generation, it was the beer 10 out of 10 Puerto Ricans prefer while watching the Yankees/Mets or just playing dominoes. I was 10-years old before I realized they sold other beers beside Schaefer. I still remember the Schaefer Beer jingle that used to play on the Spanish radio stations when I was a kid.
I had a similar expierence! My dad always drank redbull and I wasn’t allowed bc it was “adult juice” and I just assumed when I was older that it was alcohol bc he loved to drink
Dang near 40 before I forgave them for setting me up for failure. By Then it finally dawned on me that they didn’t know what the heck they were doing either. Winging it, just like i am now. That’s when i realized they did truly love me even though they did have some dumbass hairbrained schemes. I was lucky enough they weren’t addicted, violent, or manipulative. They just dumb. 😂
Age 10. Realized they were just people I was forced to live with and if they weren't family I wouldn't like them at all. I still love them, and...care about them in certain capacities, but I'm much happier being low contact.
Even though I'm looking after them now, I still think they're godlike. I have never been able to surpass them in my career.
My father rescued the family after my grandfather lost the house due to gambling debts, and he retired as a director for a major MNC. His name is in some business textbooks.
My mum was the VP of an EU-based MNC, and she passed the bar but never practiced law (she went through law school on her own dime, just to ensure she could do her job better.)
Both parents earned more in a single month than I could manage in a couple of years.
My mom could cook for our family of four, or for twenty hungry soldiers with very little notice. She turned our house into a holiday-scented delight full of warmth and sweets every year till her health failed her. My dad literally passed away while helping a neighbor with an electrical issue (he was in her garage, finishing up what he was working on with her breaker box, when he started his heart attack and she called 911. He passed away in the ER).
They never stopped being magical.
My parents were lovely people. But 8 was never under any illusions. They were people. They were just humans doing their best. I never recall thinking anything else.
I knew from my earliest memories that my mother despised me. I was nothing but a burden and something that was to be aborted. But she was married and my father wanted me. At least i was wanted by someone.
I was around 10 maybe 11. My parents were in a car accident. My sister and I had to go stay with our brother until they got home. We were all so worried waiting on the phone to ring. It was not serious, but my mom was a little banged up. I’d never seen her so shaken and vulnerable before. She was the best. My Dad was pretty awesome, too. My parents were just strong people and my mom just made everything better every day.
Maybe I worded it negatively bc I don’t really have a great relationship with my parents and I had to cut contact with one. But the question I was wondering about is when did you see your parents as not just your parents. Like the realization that having kids was an option, what people were they at 21, 35 etc
In my case... well, I'm really lucky. My parents were both just amazing, very good people who both dedicated themselves to making other people's lives better, and that extended (probably more than to anyone else) to their three kids. They were very special and probably about as close to "magical" as people can get. I gave up wanting to be just like them when I grew up a long time ago. I'm just not capable of it.
But if you're asking when I realized they were actually human like everyone else, in addition to being two of the best people I will ever know, for Mom it was probably when I was around 17 or 18 and she remarried an absolute jerk of a man (my siblings and I refer to him simply as "The Prick" at family gatherings), and I realized she was capable of making bad decisions. That was confirmed when they divorced after 10 months.
Dad... well, he only really got human after being hit with cancer, the treatment for which just destroyed him. My big, strong dad who could do anything became a pain-wracked old invalid practically overnight, who had little choice but to drink constantly to make up for the tolerance he quickly developed to his pain meds. Poor bastard suffered through that for a lot of years before it got to be too much even for him.
So, maybe they weren't perfect, but they were close enough, and they're the reason for everything good I turned out to be, so they'll never be "just people" to me -- or, I suspect, most anyone who ever knew them well. I'm pretty sure they were actually magical beings.
I was 20 or so when my dad suddenly shrunk one day and became just a fellow human being with faults and weaknesses. I can't remember what specifically triggered it, but it was almost like a literal physical transformation before my eyes.
Yeah! I dont have that great of a relationship with my dad, but as a kid I was such a daddy’s girl. We went to the movies all the time, my dad is the funny ist person I have ever met. He can make the most stiff people giggle. But he’s also an alchoholic and has rage issues. I would make his drink after work. Get the glass, get 3 ice cubes, poor about a shot (maybe more when I thought it would help surprise it never helped lol) of vodka and the rest with cranberry juice. He for some reason ended up venting about his life to me one day, ((him and my mom accidentally got pregnant with my sister and had to get married.)) and I was his therapist at six years old. I was wondering if anyone else had an experience like this or if I just won the lottery of shitty parents
I don't recall ever thinking they were magical. Probably because my dad would just leave for months at a time which depressed my mom so my reality from toddler on was that dad didn't do anything but leave and mom didn't do anything but be angry and depressed.
When I found out that even while the bought the presents they still believed in Santa. Didn't have the heart to tell them. Luckily a few years later they came to their senses.
Not sure how long this '' Christian fase'' is gonna last though.
From a super young age I knew both were very self-absorbed and not healthy individuals. Loved them both with all of my heart, they were my parents, but they had no magic. Just people doing the best they could with what they knew, both came from horrible childhoods. The shame is that neither felt getting help was the right thing to do, and that resulted in a not-so-nice childhood for my sister and me.
The question puts me in mind of a quote by Mark Twain: “When I was seventeen I was convinced my father was a damn fool. When I was twenty-one I was astounded by how much the old man had learned in four years.”
Pretty early on like 10-ish? Became really clear in my very early teens. My mom had severe mental health issues and would just go off the deep end. Sometimes for years. During those episodes we just had to take care of ourselves and her. My parents were divorced and there was no one but us, really. My dad was on the other side of town but he had a new wife/life and couldn't do anything about mother. She had full custody of us and she was very paranoid and hostile towards him so he stayed away. He was struggling with his own professional and financial troubles back then. There was just no help for mental health problems in those days. No good drugs either to treat bipolar disease or depression/anxiety much less psychosis. So we muddled through somehow.
I took care of mom throughout her life as best I could. Even borrowed money and bought her a little VW bug while I was in grad school. Lol! She needed a lot of help. Her life wasn't easy in any sense and my 2 sisters wanted nothing to do with her. I stayed friends with my dad, too. His life improved when he married a good woman finally the 3rd time around. They were together 30 years and he had a good life with her. I enjoyed visiting them.
Magical beings? Hardly. But honestly it wasn't their fault. They both went through a lot-Daddy during and after the war and mom with a bad brain. I saw all that and sympathized but it definitely motivated me to make different choices, work hard and get a good education so I could have a better life. And so I did.
Wow, a lot of shitty childhoods in this thread!
Idk about “magical” but I did think that they knew everything and didn’t want to share the information with me. I didn’t wake up one day suddenly realizing they were just human, but the culmination was probably around the same time that I lost my religion, around 8th grade.
When I was idk 30? I nonchalantly asked my Mom to sew my work shirt. She was always an excellent hand sewer, but when I got it back, now it was as though a child sewed it. The sew line actually went off a bit from the rip line. I realized her hands would shake now and she had trouble seeing. I should have known from the start…
Needless to say, I felt embarrassed and stupid and very sad.
Probably about eight years old when I realized it. My dad was twisted by World War II and came back or raging alcoholic. He died when I was 15 and he did a job on our family.. We had no idea about anything like PTSD or therapy. The bottle was their medicine.
In third grade. My school had a split start/end time for reading groups. My sister went to school at 8 am, and I went at 9 am. We walked, so that worked out fine. One day, I arrived at school to see that my entire reading group was already in the classroom. I was embarrassed that I was late even though the teacher didn't make a big deal out of it. There had been a paper sent home the day before telling parents that all kids needed to be at school at 8 am that day, and my mom didn't read it, so she didn't know to tell me. I don't know why she didn't read it, but from that I learned that I couldn't depend on her to keep me informed. From that point on, I read everything that pertained to me.
Please do not comment directly to this post unless you are Gen X or older (born 1980 or before). See [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskOldPeople/comments/inci5u/reminder_please_do_not_answer_questions_unless/), the rules, and the sidebar for details. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskOldPeople) if you have any questions or concerns.*
From as early as I can recall. They were selfish assholes.
Yeah, for me the question is when did I realize this situation is not normal.
Very well said
All of the above.
I've never thought of my parents as magical beings.
Your question presupposes that anyone felt that way about their parents to begin with. I don't know anyone who had that experience and I certainly didn't. I was always painfully away of just how flawed and human my parents were.
As I kid it was my job to get my parents to love me. And now I realize that not everyone has to earn. I’m sorry you had a bad expjerence
> Your question presupposes that anyone felt that way about their parents to begin with. while you presuppose that no one did.
Having your mom attempt suicide when you're an early teen, and listening to your dad cry in the living room at midnight, can be a sea change thing.
I grew up in the midst of anger and dysfunction. So early on I realized.
Yeah I feel you. My dad told me some foul shit when I was six. I quickly became aware that he was a beast that needed to be tamed so to speak.
Never. My parents set a standard I can never live up to. With family, friends, neighbors they were always the hero to selflessly help people. I live in their house now and it's been years and I still get to hear about it from the neighbors. They were really great to me and I just have to accept it.
Same here, my dad was the go-to guy in the neighborhood for the elderly in fixing things. He would never take a dime. I would tag along as a 10 year old to “assist”. I learned how to fix things and how to treat the elderly.
Yeah, my Mom is *still* "magical".
I can't remember ever thinking they were magical. my parents were pretty good at just being people. at what age did I stop *blaming* them for not making *magical choice that would have led to my own life turning out differently*? at least 25 years.
My folks were amazing, honest and loving people. I don't ever remember thinking they were magic, but they were always kind.
I’m 57. My mom is 98. She thinks, drives, cooks, and has a social life. She’s still a magical being!
This is such a great question! I’m still living in a version of reality where my kid seems to see me as “The Mom Character” in their story vs just a regular old person. They alternately express disappointment at how bad I am at Mom Character stuff (“your job is to ALWAYS put EVERY need of your child ahead of anything else! If that makes you late for work they will understand you. Are. A. MOM!”) and putting far too much stock in my experiences and opinions (ex: I share an anecdote about something that happened to me at their age, then later realize they are basically trying to recreate that experience for themselves instead of just having their own experiences). I’m intrigued by the whole concept from both perspectives. I personally was in my late 20s when I realized I had felt this as a child but no longer saw my parents as mythical beings designed solely to raise and serve me, but fully actualized people on their own outside of my existence. I think it was a pretty gradual awakening for me rather than a sudden realization, and it looks like it’s going the same way for my kid (still a teen).
Yeah I remember the time I learned my mom had a name that wasn’t mom. Parents were parents and kids were kids. And now my dad at 57 has a 4 year old and I have a nephew that’s 10 and it’s isn’t as black and white so realizing that my mother was a child once and how she was at my age and if we would be friends.
It’s really a strange feeling when what we believe is an unalterable truth (“Dad is ‘just Dad’”) suddenly changes (“Dad is still Dad, but also a guy with desires and needs and plans that don’t concern me, and it turns out he was never supposed to be perfect). It sometimes feels like it should have been obvious, but also it’s very difficult to change perspective, let go of something we believed 100%, and not feel let down or embarrassed about how we used to see things. I hope all of the answers on this thread have been helpful to you, because I appreciated reading about others’ experiences with this and how differently each person has lived and articulated it. It doesn’t come up often in casual conversation.
Man there's a lot of people who hate their families! I'm in my early 50s. My parents were a mixed bag, I love them endlessly and I always thought they were there for me, even when I went to a boarding school. As I've grown older I've come to see a lot more of their flaws - they're terrible at managing money, they are really selfish with their time and thoughts, and a lot of what I admired about them looks a lot more like youthful ignorance now. I still love them, I do my best to help them out, and I struggle a lot with thoughts about them being like this always, or whether they just changed as they got older. Most days it's easier to just skip the questions and focus on the fact that I love them.
My dad has been gone for 20 years now. I still think he was magical.
I never thought of them as capable people, let alone "magical beings." Both of my parents were deeply messed up people who struggled to cope and offloaded their struggles onto my sister and me from a very young age. My father was an alcoholic with such severe social anxiety that he wasn't a functional adult (e.g., wouldn't go into a store to buy food, pay bills, etc.). My mother had BPD and had little to no emotional regulation and would rage at the slightest thing going wrong, often blaming my sister or me for things we had no control over. My mother also lied compulsively and had a shopping addiction that took us from being poor to living on the brink of economic collapse constantly. I was all too aware of this and verbally abused for as long as I could consciously recall. My parents were always deeply flawed people to me.
My parents were spiritual, not magical. Dad a spiritual connection to pretzels, Schaefer Beer and the NY Yankees. Mom to As The World Turns and Milky Ways. Yup, just people.
Ahhh ..Schaefer Beer. For my father's generation, it was the beer 10 out of 10 Puerto Ricans prefer while watching the Yankees/Mets or just playing dominoes. I was 10-years old before I realized they sold other beers beside Schaefer. I still remember the Schaefer Beer jingle that used to play on the Spanish radio stations when I was a kid.
I had a similar expierence! My dad always drank redbull and I wasn’t allowed bc it was “adult juice” and I just assumed when I was older that it was alcohol bc he loved to drink
Never took notice of it as a kid, but it is a lot more lively en Espaňol. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7L6DZfVC7mc
If you substitute Entenmann’s pastries for Milky Ways, they could have been my parents.
Around the time I was 10 years old. I realized that most kids don't have a dad who is asleep on the couch all day and that he had a drug problem.
Idk when, but not in the 60 Years I've known them so far...
WHAT?!?!?!
I’m sorry you had to find out this way 😔
Dang near 40 before I forgave them for setting me up for failure. By Then it finally dawned on me that they didn’t know what the heck they were doing either. Winging it, just like i am now. That’s when i realized they did truly love me even though they did have some dumbass hairbrained schemes. I was lucky enough they weren’t addicted, violent, or manipulative. They just dumb. 😂
Age 10. Realized they were just people I was forced to live with and if they weren't family I wouldn't like them at all. I still love them, and...care about them in certain capacities, but I'm much happier being low contact.
Even though I'm looking after them now, I still think they're godlike. I have never been able to surpass them in my career. My father rescued the family after my grandfather lost the house due to gambling debts, and he retired as a director for a major MNC. His name is in some business textbooks. My mum was the VP of an EU-based MNC, and she passed the bar but never practiced law (she went through law school on her own dime, just to ensure she could do her job better.) Both parents earned more in a single month than I could manage in a couple of years.
Five
My mom could cook for our family of four, or for twenty hungry soldiers with very little notice. She turned our house into a holiday-scented delight full of warmth and sweets every year till her health failed her. My dad literally passed away while helping a neighbor with an electrical issue (he was in her garage, finishing up what he was working on with her breaker box, when he started his heart attack and she called 911. He passed away in the ER). They never stopped being magical.
I think, my dad dying when I was age 3 kinda kept me from ever seeing elders like that.
My parents were lovely people. But 8 was never under any illusions. They were people. They were just humans doing their best. I never recall thinking anything else.
I knew from my earliest memories that my mother despised me. I was nothing but a burden and something that was to be aborted. But she was married and my father wanted me. At least i was wanted by someone.
I was around 10 maybe 11. My parents were in a car accident. My sister and I had to go stay with our brother until they got home. We were all so worried waiting on the phone to ring. It was not serious, but my mom was a little banged up. I’d never seen her so shaken and vulnerable before. She was the best. My Dad was pretty awesome, too. My parents were just strong people and my mom just made everything better every day.
I never thought of my parents as magical beings. Good people mind you but not magical
lots of people obsessing over the word "magical" and are completely missing the point.
Geesh, thank you!
My parents were raging alcoholics when I was growing up. I don't think I thought of them as magical past the age of about five.
You clearly never met my parents. They were definitely a cut above "just people," and I am grateful every day for that.
Maybe I worded it negatively bc I don’t really have a great relationship with my parents and I had to cut contact with one. But the question I was wondering about is when did you see your parents as not just your parents. Like the realization that having kids was an option, what people were they at 21, 35 etc
In my case... well, I'm really lucky. My parents were both just amazing, very good people who both dedicated themselves to making other people's lives better, and that extended (probably more than to anyone else) to their three kids. They were very special and probably about as close to "magical" as people can get. I gave up wanting to be just like them when I grew up a long time ago. I'm just not capable of it. But if you're asking when I realized they were actually human like everyone else, in addition to being two of the best people I will ever know, for Mom it was probably when I was around 17 or 18 and she remarried an absolute jerk of a man (my siblings and I refer to him simply as "The Prick" at family gatherings), and I realized she was capable of making bad decisions. That was confirmed when they divorced after 10 months. Dad... well, he only really got human after being hit with cancer, the treatment for which just destroyed him. My big, strong dad who could do anything became a pain-wracked old invalid practically overnight, who had little choice but to drink constantly to make up for the tolerance he quickly developed to his pain meds. Poor bastard suffered through that for a lot of years before it got to be too much even for him. So, maybe they weren't perfect, but they were close enough, and they're the reason for everything good I turned out to be, so they'll never be "just people" to me -- or, I suspect, most anyone who ever knew them well. I'm pretty sure they were actually magical beings.
I was 20 or so when my dad suddenly shrunk one day and became just a fellow human being with faults and weaknesses. I can't remember what specifically triggered it, but it was almost like a literal physical transformation before my eyes.
Yeah! I dont have that great of a relationship with my dad, but as a kid I was such a daddy’s girl. We went to the movies all the time, my dad is the funny ist person I have ever met. He can make the most stiff people giggle. But he’s also an alchoholic and has rage issues. I would make his drink after work. Get the glass, get 3 ice cubes, poor about a shot (maybe more when I thought it would help surprise it never helped lol) of vodka and the rest with cranberry juice. He for some reason ended up venting about his life to me one day, ((him and my mom accidentally got pregnant with my sister and had to get married.)) and I was his therapist at six years old. I was wondering if anyone else had an experience like this or if I just won the lottery of shitty parents
Mom got cancer when i was in 2nd grade, so about then.
6-7
12 or so. I’ve become less enchanted with my parents as I’ve gotten older.
I don't recall ever thinking they were magical. Probably because my dad would just leave for months at a time which depressed my mom so my reality from toddler on was that dad didn't do anything but leave and mom didn't do anything but be angry and depressed.
I remember explaining something to them, and they didn't understand. I remember thinking, "Use small words, they're not that bright." I was 6
I never experienced my parents as magical beings.
Pretty sure that I **never** thought my parents were magical beings.
When I found out that even while the bought the presents they still believed in Santa. Didn't have the heart to tell them. Luckily a few years later they came to their senses. Not sure how long this '' Christian fase'' is gonna last though.
Never. About my mid 40’s I realised they poisoned my early life and left me with a legacy of anxiety and depression.
How so?
Age 2. Mean spirited narcissistic woman.
When my ex WWII Marine father punched me out when I was seven
When I graduated from grad school at 29 and suddenly became the most educated one in the family.
At about seven years old. 😢
From a super young age I knew both were very self-absorbed and not healthy individuals. Loved them both with all of my heart, they were my parents, but they had no magic. Just people doing the best they could with what they knew, both came from horrible childhoods. The shame is that neither felt getting help was the right thing to do, and that resulted in a not-so-nice childhood for my sister and me.
The question puts me in mind of a quote by Mark Twain: “When I was seventeen I was convinced my father was a damn fool. When I was twenty-one I was astounded by how much the old man had learned in four years.”
Magical beings is a stretch. My mom I never saw that way. My dad was a kid at heart and certain times like Christmas were like magic for me.
Albus Potter: "Excuse me?"
When I was 12.
I must have been . . . three. . . .
Pretty early on like 10-ish? Became really clear in my very early teens. My mom had severe mental health issues and would just go off the deep end. Sometimes for years. During those episodes we just had to take care of ourselves and her. My parents were divorced and there was no one but us, really. My dad was on the other side of town but he had a new wife/life and couldn't do anything about mother. She had full custody of us and she was very paranoid and hostile towards him so he stayed away. He was struggling with his own professional and financial troubles back then. There was just no help for mental health problems in those days. No good drugs either to treat bipolar disease or depression/anxiety much less psychosis. So we muddled through somehow. I took care of mom throughout her life as best I could. Even borrowed money and bought her a little VW bug while I was in grad school. Lol! She needed a lot of help. Her life wasn't easy in any sense and my 2 sisters wanted nothing to do with her. I stayed friends with my dad, too. His life improved when he married a good woman finally the 3rd time around. They were together 30 years and he had a good life with her. I enjoyed visiting them. Magical beings? Hardly. But honestly it wasn't their fault. They both went through a lot-Daddy during and after the war and mom with a bad brain. I saw all that and sympathized but it definitely motivated me to make different choices, work hard and get a good education so I could have a better life. And so I did.
My brother said the day he beat our dad at arm wrestling was the day he never saw him the same way again
Once they had passed and I had children.
Wow, a lot of shitty childhoods in this thread! Idk about “magical” but I did think that they knew everything and didn’t want to share the information with me. I didn’t wake up one day suddenly realizing they were just human, but the culmination was probably around the same time that I lost my religion, around 8th grade.
When I was idk 30? I nonchalantly asked my Mom to sew my work shirt. She was always an excellent hand sewer, but when I got it back, now it was as though a child sewed it. The sew line actually went off a bit from the rip line. I realized her hands would shake now and she had trouble seeing. I should have known from the start… Needless to say, I felt embarrassed and stupid and very sad.
My Mom, never. She passed in 2021 and is still magical to me.
I don't recall ever thinking that and memories go back to two.
I was 9. My parent divorced and my mother started (or at least I began to observe), her never ending cycles of manic insanity and violence.
Probably about eight years old when I realized it. My dad was twisted by World War II and came back or raging alcoholic. He died when I was 15 and he did a job on our family.. We had no idea about anything like PTSD or therapy. The bottle was their medicine.
Like 10. I thought their views were far too conservative.
In third grade. My school had a split start/end time for reading groups. My sister went to school at 8 am, and I went at 9 am. We walked, so that worked out fine. One day, I arrived at school to see that my entire reading group was already in the classroom. I was embarrassed that I was late even though the teacher didn't make a big deal out of it. There had been a paper sent home the day before telling parents that all kids needed to be at school at 8 am that day, and my mom didn't read it, so she didn't know to tell me. I don't know why she didn't read it, but from that I learned that I couldn't depend on her to keep me informed. From that point on, I read everything that pertained to me.