u/Financial-Monk9400

So unfortunately I let my parents trick me in letting them take me to dinner. Usually they are at their best with others around so I wasn't worried. But the restaurant close by was full so now they are picking me up and we are driving for 1.5 hours. So they have all the time to "talk" to me privately. I already know how this going to go, they are going to blame me for a lot of stuff, they are going to tell me everything I am doing wrong in life in their opinion etc. I am really starting to get stressed about it now. And don't really know how to handle this tbh.

So.. this is actually really hard for me to even talk about. I (32M) heard about the "the easy child" and glass children 2 weeks ago. And all of a sudden so much of my life started to make sense. Before I start, english is not my native language so I hope everything I say is clear.

So, my younger brother and sister were always fighting, and when I mean always I literally mean always. Fights were often loud, hard and literally about nothing. My parents were not good at handling this. My father has always been hot tempered. He got mad easily as well and when he did he yelled. He never beat me physycally, though he has hit my brother and sister once or twice when they just kept fighting and didn't stop. My mother often tried blaming my father for making the fights worse because of the way he was. However in hindsight my mother was also often the cause. She has always been good at manipulating me, my siblings and even my father to do or say something she actually wanted to be said but didnt want to say or do herself. She often did this to me specifically by trying to make me feel guilty. This dynamic was extremely toxic. At the time I didn't pick up on all of it, but instead I thought it was mostly my brother and sister fighting while my father couldnt handle this. To make the small amount of moments where either one of them wasn't home, or when they were not fighting, as good as possible I did everything I could to not get them mad at me. So I wouldn't really tell them about the problems I had. I tried to fix everything myself no matter what it was, as I didn't want to be another problem.

After a while when I got a little bit older my parents tried to fix the fighting. What happened mostly is that they tried everything they could to make my brother and sister happy (not that it really worked). So for example my father tried with everything he had to not get mad at my brother or sister. Which he did do a bit. But what happened because of that is that if I did something that was even a small mistake, he exploder fully on me. Got extremely unreasonabably mad at me and yelled etc. Which made me try even harder to do well at everything.

My mother did simular things, but more in a way of trying to help them with everything she could. So for example my mother has written almost all of my brothers school project for him because he wasn't good at school. While for me she didn't want to do anything. Even my final thesis at school she didn't want to read or check even though I had never asked her to check anything in years. And I actually knew beforehand she would say no but as my girlfriend and people at school said it would be good if multiple people would read it I still tried this.

She went to all of the sports and theater performances of my siblings but only went once a year to mine. Often she guilt tripped me to go to their performances as well. When I finally quit a few years ago and said I wasn't going anymore because I didn't enjoy it and they never came to mine either I was a bad brother, child, and for some reason it was "different" and I should just go to theirs (they really said that almost word for word).

When my brother said, jokingly or not, that he was good at something or would just do somthing, my parents always said that they agreed and he could achieve it. However when I made a jokie saying I was going to score 50 points in my next basketball game, they said I wasn't good enough for that.

These are just a few examples from the top of my head but these kind of things where constant when i was younger.

At one time I met my still current girlfriend. She has multiple chronic illnesses which was never really problem for me. However this meant I had to make a few decision and there were certain things we just could not do. My parents not just found this hard but just dont seem to understand, neither do mu siblings. Multiple problems came from this in our relation. At one point it got as far that if I knew my parent where coming over a few days later, and a few days after they just visited I felt really bad and basically just llayed on the couch with a massive headache.

At one time about 3 years ago I decided that it was enough so I sent a message to them explaining how i felt and that I wanted them to support me. As ai kinda expected That did not really land well and our problems got even worse for a while. Especially with my siblings who have basically become the same type of people as my father and mother. Eventually this got a little better, especially and mostly because I don't see them that often anymore. However I still had problems within myself.

I have struggled with a lot since than and for the last year or so i I had been in a bit of a haze. My life just went on, I was kinda on autopilot. Though the autopilot was a bit wrong which made me to make many mistakes that year. Which I didn't even realy notice I was making. My business which I ran didn't do well, to cover that up I started investing in crypto, lost a few thousand on that way more than I should as I needed to make the money. Lucklily I didn't go as far as get into depth or something like that but it is far from ideal. I didn't tell anybody about thos not even my girlfriend (she knows now and Luckyly reacted very well to this). I started eating way more bad unealthy shit. Didn't really talk and didn't want to do anything anymore. Was tired all the time.

2 weeks ago I came across an article about "the easy child" and glass children and this helped me a lot. Ot explained a lot and for the first time in probably over a year I see things more clearly again. My girlfriend and my in laws have been great and have really helped me a lot so far in the process of getting back to becoming myself again.

Edit: forgot to mention that because if this I became I highly competitive, perfecionist person. When I do somthing I always want to do it right and be the best at it. Even when playing a simple game with my friend or somethong like that. Even if it goes to far sometimes.

All my life people have called me easy going. Which I always liked, and thought it was a good thing. But I now realize that I just really struggle with setting boundaries for orher people. That I often just do what they want to do so I am not a burden. Even though I am still seriously struggling with how to tackle this.

So normally wouldn't post this but I would like to be todays copium.

So I have had a recurring dream this season. And had this dream again last night. It was a very weird and specifi dream that is the same every time. It was about the playoffs and us winning the championship this season. And while this is probably something a lot of us dream the specifics are really.. interesting.

So basically it had us beating the rockets in 6. Had us coming back from down 3-0 vs the thunder. Had us beating the wolves in 6 and than the knicks in 5 in the finals.

The weird thing was that the dream showed lebron bringing us back, not luka, with luka mostly being showed in the finals vs the knicks. I never understood that but the injury made it more logical irl. Now I normally wouldn't believe in these kind of things. Wouldn't have picked the knicks to come out of the east and would not have gone with the wolves over the spurs. But tbh the way the playoffs are folding out with wemby potentially suspended. The knicks already being in the conference finals right now it is kinda insane how close these finals have followed my dream so far. And it had been a dream I have had since the start of the season in oktober.

So. Yeah. Just wanted to share this. Lakers in 7

This is nearly exactly what the rockets did last year against the warriors. They are a decent team but get down big in the series. Than give it all they have for a few games to Battle back. Than eventually don't have enough to keep that up and lose the series. I AM DEFINATELY not panicking yet. This game was very winnable and almost nobody played well.