u/Glittering_Run_4470

Long story short, I'm little contact with my dad and it usually involves a quick swing by for 10-15 mins a few times a year. Yesterday would have been my first time seeing him since Christmas and I was outside washing my car. Prior to this meet up, I always suggest we get breakfast which he ignores any invitation for intimate conversation. Anyways, he came by as I was washing my car and started helping out. Not in a good way but in a rushing way. I enjoy to wash my car so I like to go over it with soap a few times and he was already getting the hose out. Haven't even hit the mirrors or the rims. The whole time was us saying, "how are you?" I'm fine, how are you, "I'm good" so no real conversation is happening here. So now we're doing and I'm putting things up and he says, "come with me to get a sandwich." I declined because dinner is cooking and that was not apart of my plans. The conversation was already dead so I was confused why he wanted to prelong the awkwardness. He looked shocked that I said 'no', and manage to ask me 3 more times which was starting to make me nervous. I told him we can sit and chat but I'm tired and not hungry. So as we sit he was just doing a lot of involuntary twitching and stuff and it was making me really uncomfortable.

Eventually he left and I was telling my maternal grandmother about it and she said that he was going to take me to his family's house 😲. She's right. It's been almost a decade since I went over there and it happened just like this. I was visiting my dad at work and somehow he got me over there to visit his mother then other people started showing up and I was stuck for hours being interrogated about my life and what everyone else is doing as my dad just sit back and watch. I googled his body language and Google said that it could be a sign of stress and anxiety. I think he was mad that I said 'no' and was trying to keep his composure.

Not to mention that my car is new and I didn't lift the window wipers up because I didn't know how. Ask we were washing my car, he said I should lift them up and I said, they don't go up because the hood blocks it. He said, you might have to turn the windshield on and left it at that. Didn't help me turn them on or figure it out. Randomly, I thought about it and googled it and found out that there's a setting to making the windshield wipers stay in a upward position to lift and change them. He would rather me struggle to figure it out on my own or damage the paint on the hood of my new car than to EVER give me helpful advice.

I really want to go 'no contact' but I know I'll get so much shit from everyone in my family for doing so😔. I'm just so tired.

I'm going to keep this brief. I'm a black American and one of my long time close friends is from the Caribbeans. For the most part, I navigate our relationship as if we're all black Americans because at the end of the day, we ARE black in America and treated as such but every blue moon they will 'other' themselves. For example, we were talking about dating and they said, "I would prefer to date a Caribbean or Latin because of our culture"...um okay. Recently they sent me a post about some podcast saying that Caribbeans and Africans are more alike than black Americans and they have more self esteem than Americans and we have more confidence or something like that. I was turned off by that post because with everything going on in this country, I'm not trying to hear about diaspora wars. Lastly, I was traveling the day of the Spirit shutdown. I wasn't on Spirit but I was on standby so I got bumped because my airline was prioritizing Spirit passengers. My return flight also got cancelled so when we were texting I was saying that I was *bummed instead of *bumped about not being able to get on my flight. I guess they thought that was the perfect opportunity to tell me about how privileged I'm acting. I immediately called it out that I wasn't upset and knew the risk of flying standby but I'm still entitled to be annoyed about the airport chaos. They trying to laugh it off and say, "well I just responded to your typo" but deep down I feel like they said how they feel. I'm the only child and grandchild so I had a lot of pressure growing up and nothing about my upbringing was privileged. I worked hard to get to were I am and I literally had to get it out the mud so that term is very triggering to me. My therapist told me to express this to them but honestly, we've been friends for so long that I don't feel like I need to defend everything from my childhood to persuade anyone. Nothing about growing up in the city to a single mom gives privilege to me. They feel like Americans have it so easy but my grandparents are still alive and well to tell me about Jim Crow laws and was determined enough to leave the south to give us a better life 🥺. I haven't responded to my friends text messages because I feel like I will go off and it's not going to be nice but the more days I let pass, I'm wondering if I'm blowing this out of proportion.