Questions: Family & Friends

To me, the idea of eating with others is far more foreign than eating alone could ever be to most people, or at least that's the vibe I'm getting.

As a kid, my father got home 2-3 hours before my mother did, leaving my brother and I to eat with my dad. My father provided for me, but that's all he did, he never helped raise me, teach me, all he did was insult, threaten and scold me and my mother at every opportunity.

My brother was the son he wanted and I'm the one he wishes he didn't have, that's how he's made me feel every day since I was born.

For this reason, I started taking food to my room to stay away from him. In school, the noise and frequent rejection from others pushed me to find a teacher willing to let me and a few others eat in a room away from the cafeteria. Even then, I never went to talk, I went because I didn't like my classmates and didn't like being around them.

I never felt welcome or belonging, only 2 people ever made me feel anything but unwanted. For all these reasons, eating alone was pretty much the only way to eat.

It has been 16 years since I sat at a table with just my parents and brother, and I will never eat with my father alone, and I'm sorry to say that I really do mean that.

In high school, I ate at the table closest to the door, I ate fast, usually just a couple minutes. I didn't talk to anyone, I just ate, took my enzymes and went to the courtyard to throw the football. I'd accepted that aside from throwing a football outside, me and others just weren't ever going to have any kind of relationship, discussion, we were never going to spend time together, so I kept to myself, and frankly, I was as annoyed with their presence as they were with mine. So the hatred was very mutual

As you've noticed, I've been more open but still, I have no shortage of hesitation to change eating from a necessary refueling of the body to a social environment.

But I'll get there. Is eating a social event for you?

I've done some thinking and I've realized that my parents never raised me. They provided all the time but they didn't teach me things, spend time with me and when they did, my father never had 1 nice word, and when I say not 1 nice word, I mean not 1 nice word.

Every time, he scolds me over the tiniest thing and side-eye's at me, praying he finds something to scold me for again.

My mom is entirely submissive to him and joins in, despite her actually showing that she cares for me, unlike my dad who if my mom left him, would've been more than happy to leave me and my brother to fend for ourselves.

For this reason, it has been 16 years since I ate at a dinner table with them. I always took food to my room to avoid my fathers threats to beat me, him yelling at me me to shut up when I asked how his day was, and since my mom always got home hours after he did, he could treat me as bad as he wanted.

Once I grew and started going to the gym, his threats stopped. But his scolding remains, I dream of punching him in the face and telling him he's the worst father in the world.

I'm at my wits end with my father, I hate being around him, he's angry, he never says one nice thing and he's even gone as far as to ask my mother if I even need my medicine for my Cystic Fibrosis.

I am only just now realizing on my own, all that I missed out on from them giving up on me making it to 20 years old when I was born with Cystic Fibrosis. I love my mother, she's stood by me through everything but she just didn't have it in her to raise me at all.

She never even tried to raise me, she just insulted me until I was too big. And once I became a gun owner, he became afraid of me.

He should be, he pressed his hand against my head, calling me an embarrassment of a son and warning me not to test him as his breath reeked of beer one night camping when I was 11. If he did that again now, I'd show him who the weak one always was: Him

Did your parents raise you?