u/Alternative-Mess297

My (28F) deadbeat dad’s go to for the past 15 years when asked about why he doesn’t have a relationship with his children has been that my mother has brainwashed both of his children against him.

He still says that to this day despite both adult kids having gone no contact with mom for the past 9 years. How can I still be brainwashed by someone I haven’t spoken to in 9 years?

I think anyone with brain cells would be able to see through that bullshit excuse, but maybe I’m overestimating their critical thinking skills. Does anybody else’s estranged parent use this same excuse?

have you ever heard Christians gossiping about a tragedy in someone else's life?

anytime something bad happens to someone they don't like, they are so quick to say that the incident was a punishment sent from God because that person didn't go to church often enough or did something months/years prior (not even to them directly) that the gossiping Christian didn't agree with. and it's kind of disturbing how they get so giddy about someone else's misfortune. but when something bad happens to them or someone they approve of, it's sent from the devil instead of being God's wrath???

Both of my parents were abusive in different ways. There was physical abuse, sexual abuse, verbal/emotional abuse, coercive control, medical neglect, and even financial abuse at times. Almost every kind of abuse you can think of.

As a kid, I just assumed they didn't know any better. I think it was my child mind trying to protect itself from the magnitude of my reality for the sake of survival, and also wanting to give my parents the benefit of the doubt because I love them. Surely no one would create a human being just to destroy them over and over again on purpose, right? It must have been an accident.

When I first became an adult, I was afraid to be around children at all or have any children of my own because I didn't want to abuse them "by accident". It wasn't until I reached my mid-twenties (after years of NC) that I realized that it's actually pretty fucking easy to not abuse children. And then it clicked that abusing anyone must actually take a lot of effort. Gaslighting, coming up with ways to verbally abuse children tailored to their specific insecurities, beating kids with belts, screaming at the top of your lungs for hours - all of that takes so much more energy than just NOT abusing the kid in the first place.

That realization triggered another wave of anger and grief within because the thought that my parents knew what they were doing to me was wrong the entire time was devastating, but it also set me free. I had been walking around thinking that I was a ticking time bomb that was going to inevitably explode and randomly abuse someone by accident some day. I carried around remorse for things I hadn't even done and would never do. It sounds silly now, but that was my unconscious fear back then.

Anyway. Being no contact is the best thing that ever happened to me. The happiest and most successful times in my life were only made possible by cutting those abusers off. I'm a better person than either of them could ever be. Being abusive is the choice that they made and the consequence is their own children revoking all access. And fuck them for making me carry all the remorse that they never felt.