It isn’t easy to walk away though. And you just said why. Most family retains ties, and when you walk away you become a major outlier in society and people want to know why. If you’re not doing anything for Father’s Day people want to know why. We have a major societal push to maintain that relationship no matter how bad it is.
If you’ve never been in that situation, or had people close to you in that situation, first could yourself lucky, and second accept that you simply do not get it. One of the interesting parts about dysfunctional vs functional families is that people in dysfunctional families totally understand life in a functional family because they are called upon so often to mimic it, while people in functional families just don’t freaking get it. They cannot understand what it means to live in a world where a parent is the enemy, where one of the most basic and important human relationships is exactly the opposite of what it should be. Try and imagine if every single happy memory of one of your parents was the opposite, every time you got praise you were instead told you were a disappointment, every time you got love you instead got violence, every time you were encouraged you were instead discouraged. If instead of your parents having the goal of raising you to be an exemplary human being who can succeed on your own, they had the goal of keeping you tied to them helpless forever.
Your whole life is different, your whole concept of self is different. It’s a long hard climb to get to anything resembling normal adulthood. And multiple times along the way you’re going to have to say “dad you’re a rotten SOB who tried to ruin my life”, maybe even in dad’s obit.
I hear you. Been there done that. I had a father who didn’t do his damn job. THough I had no problem forgetting the past when I walked away from him in my twenties it wasn’t for any past sins, rather, it was because the vicious bastard WOULDN’T STOP being a vicious bastard. Most people will struggle along to keep family together but there are limits...
discostu understands some of us. I am happy that you had a loving and supportive family.
If your obituary describes someone’s mental illness, it’s low down to discuss their behaviors.