u/lumpycurveballs

As the title infers, I'm an only child. My mom suffered multiple miscarriages after having me and stopped trying because it was too hard on her.

my dad is the narcissistic parent, and I was essentially brainwashed by him for my entire childhood, not to mention the constant emotional/mental abuse. as a kid, I wanted siblings really badly because I was extremely lonely and isolated, and the few friends I did have all had siblings. I learned about sibling relationships through my friends ... I never admitted it to myself, but I also wanted a witness to what my dad was doing to me, because I was convinced nobody would listen, that there was something wrong with me that made people not want to listen to me.

looking back on it now, I am eternally grateful I don't have siblings. no child should have to go through what I went through, so I'm glad it was just me. not to mention having siblings would've made things worse, especially if I had a brother - my dad always said he didn't care what gender I was so long as I was healthy when I was born, and even though I was a tomboy and enjoyed doing the things he did (hiking, snowmobiling, camping, fishing, etc.), in retrospect, I know he would've preferred a boy because a boy might've been easier to manipulate. he always got along with his friends' sons better than he did with me, and I always wondered what they had that I didn't.

what sucks is that I was a "daddy's girl", and that unconditional love and adoration I had for him wasn't reciprocated.

I had to have a lot of dental work done as a kid, as my mouth was too small for all of my teeth. It was determined the best course of action was to remove both sets of my canine teeth - so, I ended up having 2 extractions done, one for the baby teeth and one for the adult teeth.

Before my first extraction, I was extremely nervous. I was just a kid, like 8 or 9, and had never had teeth pulled before. One of the hygienists told me she wanted to show me something, and brought me into the back where all the offices were. She brought me to the door to the office of the dentist that'd be extracting my teeth that day.

Taped to the door was a handmade card in the shape of a heart with my third grade hand writing, thanking him for something he'd done for me (I don't remember what it was, but it was some other dental procedure).

I had no memory of making that card or giving it to him, but the hygienist said that he was so touched by it that he hung it on his door so he would see it every day when he walked in for work. She said that he really cared about me, and even though he was already a really good dentist, he'd be extra careful and make sure I'd be okay.

It made me feel better at the time, both what she said and the fact that younger me had liked him so much that I gave him a card. The extraction went fine - he really was a good dentist - and I healed up well. He left that office a while after, and they told me that he took that card with him :)

This happened earlier this year, and it's one of the most stress-inducing butterfly effect type series of events I've ever experienced.

So, my university roommate is a self-described klutz, and she somehow managed to break her finger by tripping over her bedframe. Obviously it hurt, but she figured it was just sore and that it'd be fine eventually.

Fast forward a week, and it's gotten worse, to the point she can barely move her hand. She asks me to take her to the hospital, because I have a car and public transit is a nightmare.

Of course, I'm not gonna deny her a ride to the ER, so I take her. The hospital is right on the main road through the city, but unfortunately, there was an accident on that road that same morning, so it was closed off and traffic was rerouted. Even worse is that it's the only main entrance to the hospital, and neither me nor my roommate are overly familiar with the city's inner details, and I'm not able to find another way in.

The city our university is in is layered, so there's a lot of hills and steep inclines. I end up parking in a neighborhood above and behind the hospital, and she and I take a precarious hike down a massive hill to get there. She's admitted, and I stay with her until she says she'll be alright, and I make the return trek to my car.

By now, it's started raining, and I'm in sweats and a hoodie, so I start jogging to return to my car. This also means the previously precarious hill we'd shimmied down is now also wet - my shoes are not rain proof nor appropriate for hiking, but I don't really have a choice. So I pray to whatever force above is tormenting me to give me mercy and haul my ass up that hill.

It takes me ten minutes longer to get up the hill than it did to get down. I'm out of shape, so I look like I've just run a marathon by the time I get to the top, but I make my way back to my car. I'm sitting in the driver's seat texting my roommate to tell her I made it back when I get a tap on my passenger window.

I roll it down, and a lady walking her dog tells me that I have a flat tire. Internally, my brain is giving me an Error 404, but externally, I thank her, and she leaves. Once I reboot my brain, I get out of my car and sure enough, flat tire.

I stand there for a solid thirty seconds just staring at it before I put on my big girl pants ... and call my dad, who is 9 hours away in the next province over. I have an idea of how to change a tire, but my spare is what's called a "donut tire", and I don't want to risk my tire falling off on the highway. He advises me on what to do and gives me the phone number of a trusted roadside assistance company. Thirty minutes later, it's getting dark, my phone is at 20% and I'm seriously contemplating my life decisions when the roadside assistance guy pulls up. We chat as he fights with my car to change the tire, I pay him, and he leaves. I go to the grocery store and am sitting in my car about to go in when my roommate texts me and tells me that she's done.

So, I turn around, go pick her up and she tells me she broke her finger right near the base, which is why her whole hand was messed up. I drop her off at the dorms, go get my groceries, and arrange an appointment to get a new tire that I absolutely cannot afford, but I can't go over 50km/hr with the donut tire, and going even 5km under the speed limit is a cardinal sin where I live, apparently.

I go to the tire place and am told that they can't replace just the one tire - either I replace all 4 for over $500, or they can't do anything. So, I call my dad again, and he enlightens me with the world of sales, and tells me of another place I can get my car serviced.

That service appointment is where I find out that the ball join on one of my front tires is on its last legs ... like, it was ready to come apart at any moment, to the point I had to sign a paper saying that they weren't liable for any accident or damage that may result from said fucked up ball joint. The mechanic there said it the worst condition he'd ever seen a ball joint in that was somehow still intact. But they replaced 3 of my tires and rotated them around for me! And now I'm broke.

By this point, it's been a week since my roommate broke her finger, and I'm practically ripping my hair out with stress - did I mention this all was happening during finals week? I go to visit my aunt that weekend, who lives 45 minutes out of the city, and she gives me the number of a local mechanic in the town she lives in who won't bleed me dry to fix my ball joint.

I bring my car in that same weekend, stay the night at my aunt's place and go back to pick it up - they charged me a bit extra because the mechanic took one look at the remaining tire that hadn't been replaced, said "nah", and replaced it with a random spare he had on hand because apparently my rim was screwed six ways to Sunday. He was aware of my situation, so he kindly only charged me an additional $40.

So, thanks to my roommate tripping over her bedframe, I got mostly new tires, my front tire didn't detach from my car in the middle of the road, and I ended up owing my parents over $500 once I got home.

My coworker has been passive aggressively bullying me for the past few months. I have ADHD so I'm not the best at recognizing social cues - when she started doing it, I'd think "was that an insult?", then brush it off as me overanalyzing or overthinking.

This coworker isn't obvious about it, so I didn't classify it as bullying until recently when my other coworkers confirmed for me that not only does she passive-aggresively insult me to my face, but she talks shit about me behind my back to them - she does it to them too (has talked shit about them and our boss and supervisor to me), but they say it's mostly targeted at me. No idea why.

This morning, we were having a meeting with my boss via phone call, and my boss mentioned a problem about something that we'd previously addressed/worked on. This coworker and I had worked together on that problem, and my coworker said, "well, (my name) was supposed to be paying attention to that", despite the fact that she also was supposed to be paying attention to it. This was in front of my supervisor.

She's made several of these jabs at me, both while we're alone and in front of other people - it's a daily occurence at this point, and I just brush them off because I don't have the energy to entertain her bs.

I don't know what I've done to her ... I've been told I'm friendly and easy to work with, and I thought we got along fine. I frankly don't care what her problem is - she's been making a hostile/toxic work environment, and I've been dreading coming to work when I didn't previously. I'm not an angry person - if anything, I can be seen as passive, but I just pick my battles. I don't have the energy to put up with her shit, and I'm annoyed and frustrated that she's put me in this situation.

It's currently under investigation, so I basically just have to sit and wait it out and put up with her in the meantime.

Edit/update(?):

Not sure if this is how updates work, but I'm giving it a shot. I've found out that my supervisor and both of my other coworkers (we're a team of 4) will be gone tomorrow, so it'll just be me and my problematic coworker at work by ourselves. Yay.

This is one of those "wtf" moments in life where all I can really do is laugh.

Edit 2:

Today went fine. No commentary or negativity from my coworker ... I'm honestly kind of bewildered at how nice she's being, but I'm pretty sure it's because she knows there's a fire lit under her ass.

Anyway, it's the long weekend now, so I don't have to deal with her for a few days. August is my last month working this seasonal job, so she'll be gone from my life for good after we're done. From what I've heard, she won't be invited back, which is a relief.

Thanks for reading!

My aunt (my dad's younger sister) and my cousins came to visit grandparents for a week, and they stopped by to visit my mom and I before they went home - my mom often jokes she divorced my dad but kept his sister, because they're still really good friends. During that visit, my mom and I learned many interesting things about my father and his parents.

As the title says, my dad essentially booted his parents out of their own house. He moved back to live with them coincidentally after his ex girlfriend dumped him - he said he wanted to help them out because my grandpa was recovering from prostate cancer (which I didn't know about, btw). Shortly afterward, my grandpa and my dad refurbished a trailer together ... which my grandparents are now living in. On their own land. While my dad and his new girlfriend live in their house.

Neither of them are happy about it, and are realizing the consequences of their actions - every time something happened to my dad (including the divorce with my mom), he ran back to his parents and asked for help, which was usually in the form of money, and they gave it to him. Meanwhile, my aunt kept herself separate - she saw what her brother became long before their parents did and wanted nothing to do with it. She moved out when she was 18, and only ever asked for help from them once, and it was for money so she could get training to become a flight attendant. They did help her, but that was the only time she ever asked. Meanwhile, my dad knows that his parents will help if he or my aunt ask for it, and unashamedly takes advantage of them.

My grandma is the gentlest person I know, and she adores her kids and grandkids - my dad is still her boy, even though he's become a man nearly unrecognizable from who she raised him to be, and she's only recently begun to realize that she's screwed herself and my grandpa over trying to help him. My grandpa figured it out a while ago, but he leaves the emotional stuff to my grandma and follows her lead ... which includes unintentionally enabling my father to take advantage of them.

My aunt said that her and my cousins visiting them was kind of my grandma's "come to Jesus" moment, because she didn't have a good answer as to why she was letting her son take over her house while she lived in a camper on her own lawn as she's recovering from cateracts surgery. So now, according to my aunt, my grandma is going to snap any day now, which is practically unheard of, considering how my grandma is as a person - she dislikes my dad's girlfriend too, and overall, she's just had enough.

Meanwhile, my mom and I were under the impression that his parents weren't supportive of him, didn't value or love him, etc ... that was what he told us, and we now know it's all bs. My grandparents aren't perfect, but they're far from the characters my dad depicted them to be.

My aunt and cousins were appalled at how casual my dad and his girlfriend were acting, as though him forcing his parents out of their own house to live in a trailer in their own backyard while he and his girlfriend settled in was the most normal thing in the world. I have no idea how he accomplished that, but honestly, I don't think I want to know cause it'll just upset me.

I'm in university and live on campus. I pay a ridiculous amount of money to live there, and that includes a separate parking fee where I'm only allowed to park in one specific parking lot, which is the one closest to my dorm - if I were to park anywhere else, I'd be ticketed. I know because I was ticketed 3 times for parking near the dorm as I was settling in because I forgot to pay for the permit before I got there. Everyone who has a car hates the parking police for this reason.

Anyway, the worst time to get parking is between noon and 3pm, because that's when most classes are happening. The parking lot I'm permitted to park in is also one of the largest parking lots on the campus, so a lot of people who are just there for the day/don't live on campus park there too.

That's all fine and dandy until you're trying to find a parking spot between noon and 3pm and the parking lot is full. That's what happened the day this story takes place.

I had the day off, so I left earlier in the morning (like 10am) to run some errands, and came back to find the parking lot 100% full. Every single parking spot was taken, and that parking lot is roughly the size of a football field. I drove into that parking lot and spent the next hour and a half weaving through the rows of cars, literally driving in circles, searching for a parking spot/waiting for someone to leave so I could take their spot.

There was another guy in the same predicament as me, and we made eye contact as we passed one another a few times. I didn't want to think of him as my rival, but if I found the next available parking spot first, it was fair game.

I know I wasted gas weaving through that parking lot - in retrospect, I could've gone someplace else and come back later in the day when the parking lot would be free, but I didn't think about that at the time. I was afraid that, if I left, a parking spot would free up and I wouldn't be able to nab it because I wasn't there.

Thank goodness for YouTube, otherwise I probably would've lost my mind. When I finally got a spot (on the other end of the parking lot from my dorm building) and got back to my dorm, my roommate asked me what took me so long, and I told her that I'd spent the past hour and a half trying to park. She said that was the only time she was grateful she didn't have a car/didn't drive.

The next time I went into that parking lot, my car looked like it'd been abandoned because it was the only car on that end of the parking lot.

Edit: forgot to add NFather to the title, my bad

My Nfather invited me out to see a movie today - it was something we did all the time when I was younger, and he gave me an appriciation for movies.

I haven't seen him since December 2025, his birthday is in July, and I go back to school in August. Call me spineless, but I'd feel bad for turning down the invite.

I don't know why I feel like I should go, or why I even want to go. I know, ultimately, that nothing is going to change. It's been 8 years since we've had regular contact, and last December was the first time I saw him in person in those 8 years. We only ever texted before that, not even called.

I accepted the invite - it's at 12:30, and it's only a movie ... nothing I can't handle. I'll bring him a birthday and Father's Day card, just in case I don't see him again, which I probably won't.

Is this what low contact is? Not sure ... haven't really maintained a relationship like this before and don't really know what I'm doing. But I'm trying, and I guess that's all I can do.

Wish me luck.

Update: It went well - we saw Masters of the Universe. My dad grew up in the 80s so he's a big fan of the series. Anyway, turns out he was in town to pick up his sister (my aunt) from the airport, and I haven't seen her in a long time since she lives in another province, and he invited me to come greet her, so that's where I am now.

I work as a weed inspector whose job includes spraying weeds. There's 3 of us and we take turns. For deeper in ditches, we use backpacks with herbicide in them (everything is safe and secure, and I wore appropriate PPE) and walk in there to make sure the weeds get sprayed.

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Today was my first time spraying weeds with the backpack - my coworkers were in the truck driving alongside me as I walked in the ditch. I was fully decked out in PPE - tyvex suit, gloves, steel toed rubber boots, a mask and safety glasses. The backpack full of herbicide was really heavy, and the thing about tyvex suits is that they are NOT breathable, so I got hot real quick. It didn't help that I sweat excessively.

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About halfway through the ditch I was spraying, I got so worn out that I started dry-heaving. My coworkers convinced me to take a break.

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To avoid cross contamination, considering I'd been handling a herbicide, my coworker fed me a granola bar and water out the window - I felt like a wild animal you're told not to feed when going through a national park.

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That's when my coworker who was driving told me that she was surprised I lasted as long as I did, because I'd been "hauling ass like Terminator". She'd been driving alongside me on the road as I walked, and she'd looked at the speedometer and saw that they were moving at 10km/h when matching my walking pace. So yeah.

Edit: I've come to understand I do not, in fact, walk at 10km/hr. My bad everyone.

Anyone else ever see your narcissistic parent's mask? I don't mean it slipping, I mean seeing it in action.

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I met up with my narcissistic dad for the first time in person in 8 years back in December - we've never been fully no contact, just occasionally contacted each other through text and mailed one another gifts for Christmas, birthdays, etc.

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Anyway, him and I met for lunch, and I was honestly pretty stunned by the guy I saw and talked with. If he didn't have my dad's face, I could've sworn he wasn't my dad ... at least not how I knew him. We talked and caught up for about an hour, and during that entire hour, I was realizing exactly why nobody noticed the abuse I suffered at his hands.

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The guy I was talking to was polite and a good listener, an overall chill guy who was nice to talk to ... not at all the domineering presence that dictated my childhood. If I didn't know better, I could've been fooled into thinking he was a decent person. I can absolutely see why so many people like him, and why next to nobody has a negative opinion of him - in their mind, there's nothing not to like, and for the first time I could understand why.

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It was honestly kind of scary, because if I'm able to realize that, there's no way a person who doesn't understand how narcissists work would be able to see it.

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He also got a text message from someone while we were chatting, and I saw a heart next to her name. My immediate thought was "oh, that poor woman." For her sake, I hope he drops the façade soon so she can gtfo.

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Part of my job is driving around visiting different areas and inspecting properties owned by the county I work for. I've been working this job for two years (seasonal) and have had the same coworker. We developed a system where she drives and I work the map and write the notes on the iPad in our truck.

Since she drives, she gets dibs on the music. I don't mind - she has good music taste, and it's only fair, since she's driving all the time. One of the songs she has in her playlist is Without Me by Eminem.

Now, I have a bit of a history with Eminem songs. My cousin, who lived with me and my mom for pretty much the entire time we lived in that house (he was basically the older brother that lived in the basement) primarily listened to rap music, which included a lot of Eminem - him and I hung out a lot over the years, and so I got very accustomed to listening to his music, whether it was in the garage working on cars or his room playing video games. For a while, his favorite song was Without Me by Eminem. So, I listened to it a lot.

As a result, I've memorized the entire song. When it came on during one of our drives, I started singing along to it without even realizing it - once the song was in its final beats, my coworker said: "wow. I didn't know you could rap." I replied with: "I can't. I just know that song really well."

So now, whenever Without Me by Eminem starts playing in the truck, she cranks it up for me and I sing along to it. Usually she sings along to her songs, but she just listens to me for that one. It's a nice little routine we have.

My dad listens to rock music, and since he drove most of the time, the rock radio station was what was playing. As I grew up, there were two songs that I would always sing along to whenever they came on the radio - my parents would always turn up the volume when they heard it come on because I would always sing along to it.

Fast forward about a decade, and my brain has combined the two songs into one without me realizing. As a result, I cannot for the life of me remember the song - I have the tune in my head and what I think the lyrics are, but whenever I look it up, the music isn't the same.

This mystery persists for a few years, where I occasionally try to remember what my favorite song was as a kid and end up giving up because none of my researching gets me anywhere.

Then, about 2 years ago, one of the songs comes on the radio, and instead of singing the proper lyrics, I sing the lyrics to the other song ... and that's when it clicks. I had combined the lyrics of one of the songs to the beat/tune of the other song, and that was why I never found what I was looking for whenever I searched it up ... because it didn't exist.

The songs were We're Not Gonna Take It by Twisted Sister and We Will Rock You by Queen.

Considering I'm an adult with a job and other potentially professional endeavors in my future, it probably isn't the smartest idea, but I'm too attached to it to let it go.

Like the title says, I made my voicemail when I got my first cell phone - it was basically a glorified flip phone, an iPhone 5s with everything except for the notes app, camera app, calling and messaging systems disabled. I got it because I'd switched schools and would be walking to and from school as a result, and it was to keep in contact with my mom.

Anyway, part of setting it up was making my first ever voicemail. I originally tried to improv the whole thing and make it my own, but I have horrible performance anxiety - the end result was so full of pauses, random "ums" and "uhs" that I ended up choosing the option where it took my name, so it's just "you have reached [my name in my voice]".

For context, I'm a woman, but I have a pretty low voice. I've kept my voicemail the way it is because I am clearly a child in that recording - it had been recorded before I'd properly hit puberty. Not just that, but I sound like I'm being forced to say my name at knifepoint, and it's absolutely hilarious to me.

I wish I could share it without doxxing myself because it's hard to explain the charm it holds without hearing it. My coworker once approached me laughing her ass off because I'd missed her call and she'd been sent to voicemail, and was met with that recording as a result. I'm happy to known it's not just me that's entertained by it lol