Grieving the loss of your loved one impacts the dynamics of relationships within a family gravely. Those bereaving the loss of loved ones can sometimes take years to heal from trauma stemming from personal loss. Some people leave voids that are so difficult to fill that it impacts the foundations of the closest relations in life. In one such grim situation, a user asks on Reddit if she is wrong for replying to her father with a PowerPoint presentation with personal snaps from her journal on why she believes he shouldn’t stay in touch with her to recline the relationship.
The 24-year-old woman, with username u/throwaway_1028585, posted about her dilemma by introducing her family’s story of loss and misfortunes since her childhood. “My mom died when I was 7 from leukemia…. my mom died,” and she started journaling her feelings, “more when I miss her or have something hard going on,” she writes. “So, I have kind of a unique record of my mental state over the last 16 years,” she adds.
“My father remarried when I was 9. My stepmother really leaned hard into the “I’m your mom now” and my father didn’t stop her. It improved when they had my half-brother…. Unfortunately, he got cancer when he was 3. The mantra was that my brother needed to be the focus because he might die so I needed to not be selfish since I was healthy,” the 24-year-old woman writes as she became distant from her father. “I stopped trying to talk to him when I was 16 and it was a dark time. I moved out when I was 18 and cut them off completely.”
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The girl’s brother passed away a few years back which was informed to her by her grandparents and her father approached her as he filed for divorce with his second wife, about which she was unaware. Talking about the recent incident she stated, “He recently reached out to them because he wants to see me and talk. I made him a PowerPoint with images of the entries where I had talked about being frustrated and feeling abandoned and unwanted, some with literal quotes of things my dad had said to me during arguments,” she explains as she concluded the PowerPoint with a photo of one of her mom’s collages reading “Remember that your dad and I are always here for you” and wrote “You failed. Go away” with it.
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The author accepted that it may have gone up to a great extent but she had never communicated to him about what she went through and believed this was the best way to share what she has felt. Her family believes it was too harsh on her father. Some users came forward and replied by saying, “Memories are easy to dismiss and say "it's in the past, you've remembered it wrong. It wasn't that bad. It's not so easy to brush over cold hard facts,” affirming her feelings while others sympathized with the dad but didn’t say the writer was wrong.
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Relationships tend to see such strains when communication dies, the daughter may have gone to such an extent due to non-disclosure of such heightened emotions with her father. It may have taken the right direction if the father communicated with her and accepted the past as it was and worked towards bettering their relationship for the future. Sharing about it with the family members kind of ruined the situation for worse as the ways of communication may further narrow due to extended family's involvement.
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Reference:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/comments/zh2g3s/aita_for_responding_to_my_fathers_request_for_a/
Cover Image Source: Getty Images | Oliver Rossi
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