My aunt used to show up at family gatherings with brand-new things—a Mini Cooper, expensive fur coats, shoes that cost more than my rent. Nobody said a word because she was the one taking care of my 96-year-old grandfather. We all figured she’d earned the perks. Then one day my mom went over to check on him and found the apartment in shambles.
My grandfather was sitting in a chair, covered in his own waste. It had clearly been a long time since my aunt had bothered to clean him or help him get to the bathroom. My mom started cleaning him up, and he told her he couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a shower. He said it felt good to feel the water on his body again.
That was bad enough. But the worst part came later, when my grandfather fell and went into a coma. That was the perfect moment for my aunt to take a trip to the beach with her friends. My grandfather died the day after she left.
He would have died completely alone if my father hadn’t dropped everything at work, caught a plane, and made it to his side in time to say goodbye. I haven’t spoken to that woman since. She spent every dime of my grandfather’s money on expensive nonsense and then left him to die by himself. I hope she dies alone too.
When I was about twelve, we went down to Fresno to visit my cousins for a few days. On the last night, around three in the morning, I woke up to my brother screaming that our sister was missing. My mother was hysterical, crying and pacing, and it took the cops about fifteen minutes to show up. Eventually we found out what had happened.
My uncle, the one who was in the Air Force, had tried to rape her. When she refused, he threw her out of the house, and she ran off into the night. I used to look up to that man. I lost every shred of respect for him that night.
And I gained a little respect for my sister, who was strong enough to say no and walk away. I went to an AA meeting the other day. The speaker spent almost the entire hour talking about how much his life had changed, how he was a completely better person now. Fifteen minutes after the meeting ended, I watched him back into another car in the parking lot and drive off without stopping.
At least I knew his full name if anyone wanted to report him. A few friends of mine once decided it would be funny to tape me to a bed while I was sleeping. They used almost an entire roll of duct tape, going underneath the bed and everything, taping me down at the head and feet. I couldn’t move.
Then they told me they’d let me go if I ate a cup of dog food, wet and dry mixed together. I did it. I cried the whole time. No one does that to another person.
Not even to an enemy, let alone a friend. My dad remarried when I was three. My stepmother was physically, emotionally, and verbally abusive. My grandparents and my biological mother had spent a long time scouring stores to find me the hard-to-find action figures I wanted—the rare Tracy and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles ones.
Shredder, Krang, the Technodrome. They weren’t easy to track down. My stepmother threw them all away one weekend while I was at my mother’s house. She said she did it because we didn’t need their handouts.
In the grand scheme of things, they were just toys. But how do you do that to a five-year-old? My mother isn’t computer savvy at all. She asked me to help her email pictures from her beach vacation to her brother in Korea.
It turned out the man she was emailing wasn’t her brother. It was the man she was cheating on my dad with. I can’t believe she dragged me into that. I had an amazing professor in college.
He was someone whose career I wanted to have, someone who told me I’d be great in his field. I took every class he taught, earned honors grades, participated constantly, even traveled with him on semester break trips for credit. At the end of my senior year, I scheduled a meeting to ask what steps I needed to take to build a career like his. At that meeting, he made a move on me.
When I turned him down, he told me I wasn’t smart enough or dedicated enough to ever make it in his field and that I should stop wasting his time. I lost respect for him as an educator, but worse than that, I lost confidence in myself. I never pursued those goals again. I had a similar experience with my own professor mentor, except he went after my girlfriend of three years.
It made finishing college almost impossible. They ended up married, and she’s miserable because he’s old and she cheats on him. I have an amazing wife and a good life now. So I suppose I came out ahead.
When I was fifteen, my best friend and I planned to see the new Harry Potter movie on opening day. He was collecting money from everyone so he could buy tickets. I gave him mine. Later that night, my parents dropped me off at the theater, and I was excited to meet up with my friends.
I called him to see where he was. He didn’t answer. After about five calls, he finally picked up just to tell me he’d given my ticket to someone else, then hung up. I kept calling back until someone else answered his phone and started mocking me.
The show was sold out. I had to call my parents to come back and pick me up. How could anyone, especially your best friend, be that cruel? I’ve never been on the receiving end of it myself, but I saw it happen constantly when I was younger, and still see it now.
It’s embarrassing to watch a group of friends in their late twenties randomly decide they don’t like someone and make them the target of their jokes. Congratulations, you outnumber them. I don’t want to hang out with you guys anymore. Growing up, one of my childhood best friends had a pet rabbit she adored.
Our families spent a lot of time together at each other’s cottages, and that rabbit was always a part of those gatherings. It was playful, well-behaved, and clearly loved and trusted her completely. Flash forward to when I was in my late teens. I heard from my parents that my friend, who had owned the rabbit for eight or nine years, had announced she didn’t want to take care of it anymore.
She also didn’t want to give it away. So she had decided to kill it. Her parents tried to change her mind, suggested giving it away or at least taking it to a vet to be put down humanely. She refused.
She took the rabbit out to the shed, started up her car, piped the exhaust inside, and stood stone-faced at the window watching the pet she’d grown up with struggle and slowly die. I lost all respect for her, and for her parents too, for allowing it. My older siblings and I were close for most of my life, until my elderly mother got Alzheimer’s and other terminal health problems. I was the only one willing to step up and care for her.
Everyone else made excuses. The pressure of having her live with my family nearly crushed me. I couldn’t have done it without my wife, who took on a huge share of the responsibility—and I felt guilty about that, because it wasn’t her mother. When my mom finally died, my siblings could only think about themselves.
What her death meant to them. Their loss. They never once recognized that my mother was the one who had needed comfort and care before she died. Their pain was selfish, not empathetic.
Not once did they think about what my mom went through. I still keep in touch with them. But I think they’re full of crap. My little brother used to be my best friend.
Then he stole my MacBook—with all my music, pictures, and college papers—and pawned it. He stole my entire DVD collection and my prescription pain medication that I needed for real pain management. He even tried to steal my girlfriend, and somehow got her to go along with it. The next morning, after I’d held him while he cried and screamed and swore, I finally lost all respect for him.
I had to let him go for my own sanity. I have two elderly aunts, A and B, who are like grandmothers to me. They lived together their whole lives, never married, never had children. They went well above and beyond for us.
Truly amazing people. Aunt A passed away a few years ago and left a little bit of money in savings. The two of them came from a large family with a number of other siblings. Aunt B lives on disability, on a strict, limited budget, and still tries to help everyone she can.
The other siblings aren’t as kind. They’re all filthy rich—millionaires—and they demanded that the money Aunt A left go to them, for some ridiculous reason. They harassed my poor aunt day and night until she finally gave in. To this day, I won’t speak to or interact with those siblings.
I don’t consider them family. I hope they all burn. How do you justify taking money from someone on a limited income when you’re stinking rich? It boggles my mind.
That’s why you make a will, no matter how little you have, and make sure the beneficiary is the sister you love, not the vampires you’re related to. My mom stole $2,000 from me. It was every dollar I had saved for college. She never owned up to it.
She dated my ex-stepdad in secret for six months, thinking my brother and I wouldn’t find out. And last Thanksgiving, she left my grandma’s house to stay at a friend’s place because her sisters confronted her about her drinking problem and she didn’t want to deal with it. I thought a teacher I worked with was like me. I thought he cared about the kids and wanted them to succeed.
But the truth is, he judges them by their appearance and makes fun of them constantly. The first time he did it in front of me, I told him how classless I thought it was. I have no respect for him at all. You hear the worst things in teachers’ lounges.
I generally eat by myself in the library. When Metallica came to town, my friend said his boss had given him two tickets and he wanted to take me. I was over the moon. The day of the concert, he told me to be ready at a certain time and he’d pick me up.
I sat on my front porch for hours, calling him over and over. He finally answered, said he was sick, and apologized. I said, “No worries, hope you feel better. ” The next day, a mutual friend posted pictures of my friend and his boss at the concert, having the time of their lives.
When I was around ten, my father took me and my little brother, who was five, on a strange trip to the mall. I had no idea why we were going. My mother had gone there a few minutes before us. We were on the expressway and I spotted her car.
“Look, Dad, there’s Mom. ” We followed her to the mall. She went inside, and we just waited in the car. I was confused—I thought we were meeting her.
But no, Dad wanted to wait near her car. Eventually she came out, and I clearly remember her walking out with some other guy in a suit, holding her bags. By then my father was already starting the car to leave. We got home before she did.
The rest is history. I lost all respect for her that day, and for other things she did later. When I turned twenty, I found out my dad had fathered a son right before he married my mother. A paternity test came back positive, but he claims it only proves he could be the father, not that he is.
He says it was more likely his own father. The thing is, the guy—we call him Brotherman—looks more like my dad than I do. My dad refuses to take a newer test to prove anything. He won’t talk to or about Brotherman.
He won’t even be in the same building as him. We recently had a death in the family, and when Brotherman showed up to pay his respects, the rest of the family treated him as the cousin, nephew, grandson he is. My dad left the funeral home. My best friend and I went to hang out with a girl he was interested in, and he spent the whole day making fun of me to impress her.
It felt awful. I hate it when people act differently around certain people than they do when it’s just the two of you. When my ex-wife and I got into a fight in my workroom, she picked up a mid-pipe from a car exhaust and hit me in the side of the head twice. Knocked me out cold.
She’s a first-grade teacher who routinely gives talks about conflict resolution and non-violence. When I was a churchgoing kid, my youth pastor was a cool guy everyone liked and respected. He hosted pool parties and luaus at his house. One day I heard him casually mention that his kids didn’t want to take care of their dog anymore.
So they drove the dog out somewhere far from the house and left him by the road. He clearly saw nothing wrong with it. I never looked at him the same way again. A few years back, on Christmas, I found out my mom was having an affair because my dad told me out of spite.
He said his Christmas was ruined, so why shouldn’t mine be? I hadn’t gotten much for Christmas, which I believed was because we were having money trouble. Turned out my mom had bought the daughter of her boyfriend all kinds of candy and gifts, using the excuse that the girl’s parents had just divorced. I called the guy and told him to back off from my family, that he’d already ruined my Christmas and was going to ruin my parents’ marriage.
I wasn’t very threatening—I was a crying fourteen-year-old girl. But then he started sending me harassing messages on Facebook and calling my dad to harass him too. Once he called while I was home, and I could hear him screaming through the phone that he was going to drag my dad behind his truck down Broadway Street, because that’s what he’d done to the last guy who interfered with his relationships. We called the cops and filed a restraining order.
A few months later, I found emails between my mom and him. Then my dad ruined our computer trying to install software that would track everything she typed. I’d say all three of those adults did the worst thing I’ve ever seen, and I respected two of them. My parents recently did something I’m not sure I’ll ever understand.
My grandmother is eighty-six. Last year she went to the grocery store alone, slipped in an aisle, and had a stroke. She’s never been able to go home since. When it became clear she needed a nursing home, my parents made her a ward of the state so she wouldn’t be their financial burden.
She ended up in the grossest, most overcrowded nursing home in our town. For some people, that’s the only option. But not for my parents. They’re not millionaires, but they do very well.
Two months after my grandmother’s stroke, they put a $150,000 addition onto their already large house. That money could have bought her a few years in a decent place with her own room. Instead, she’s in a place that smells like urine, sharing a closet-sized room with another woman. She has dementia, but she’s not that far gone.
Every time I see her, I feel horrible. She left her house to get milk and bread and never saw it again. And I’m too poor to do anything to help her. It bothers me to see my parents in this light.
I always thought they were family-oriented. At least when it counts, they’re not. I watched the woman I love slowly become a drug addict. I stayed with her and tried to help her get clean.
She did. Then she relapsed and quit, relapsed and quit. But if you’ve quit popping pills three times and now you’re shooting up, you can’t stay sober behind the wheel, you nod off while driving, and you lie to my face about it—I’m done. I used to be really close with my cousin.
We’d go to parties together, hang out every weekend, talk about everything. Until we went to the same school. I wasn’t one of the popular kids, so she pretended I didn’t exist to avoid being embarrassed. I heard her say I wasn’t her real cousin, that I was adopted.
She talked crap about me to everyone in the family. I lost contact with all of them. When I do see them at forced gatherings, they talk to me like I’m mentally challenged. If I mention anything about school, they act like I overcame some great obstacle.
At the last gathering, I punched out a male cousin who told me, in the most disgusting way, that she’d told him I was gay. “No wonder you can’t get a girlfriend and no one in our family likes you. ” Respect wasn’t the only thing I lost that day. I had a great friend for five years.
Earlier this month, my girlfriend dumped me, and she was cruel about it. She’s the best friend of my friend’s girlfriend. My friend took her side, taunting and insulting me while I was already miserable. Then last night he had a threesome with his girlfriend and my ex, texted me a picture of them, and bragged about it.
We never had an argument in five years. And then suddenly this. I knew a girl who was married with a new baby and planning to have an affair with a married man. To make it worse, her husband was the nicest, kindest guy, always trying to give her everything.
She thought he wasn’t good enough for her because he had an honest blue-collar job. I tried to talk her out of it. Then I just tried to avoid her. My mom’s friend came with her to pick me up at the airport once and kept making racist comments.
I tried to ignore it out of respect for my mother, but eventually I couldn’t take it. I told her to shut her mouth and never talk like that around me or my kid again. I’ve never had to be around her since. My wife’s parents liked me right up until I proposed.
I even got their permission first. I guess they thought I meant twenty years from now. So I proposed, my girlfriend said yes, and they took back their blessing. They demanded a budget for how I’d provide for her.
They used their own bad marriage as an example of why marriage sucks. They refused to help financially with the wedding. They denied the bride access to the chapel even though they were going anyway. They insulted me during a speech at the reception, got drunk and belligerent, and hired a professional photographer to document only themselves.
And that was just the wedding. My wife got pregnant three months later. They told their other kids not to tell anyone. They advised us to abort the child we chose to have.
They refused to be called grandparents and told their daughter that having kids ruined their life. These people had their first child at sixteen, out of wedlock. And they’re lecturing us. I used to work for an awesome company that paid me to live in different US cities and remodel stores.
I was always the youngest on the crew, and often the only woman. In 2006, I was flown to Boston for work over the winter. When I arrived at Logan Airport, my boss was there waiting for me. He was middle-aged, charismatic, motivating—the kind of boss everyone wishes they had.
He drove me to the hotel I’d be living in for the next few months. I was surprised to see I’d been given a suite on the top floor, but I didn’t think much of it. After unpacking, I realized the only thing I’d forgotten was my underwear. It was late, I had no car, so I asked my boss to drive me to a store.
He gladly did. He said he’d walk around while I shopped, but at one point I saw him watching me between the racks. I didn’t think much of it—figured I was just taking too long. On the ride back, he told me he’d need an extra key to my room because I was getting a roommate.
I said I’d give the key to the roommate when they arrived, but he insisted the roommate would come in late and shouldn’t have to wake me. Reluctantly, I gave it to him. A few hours later, he texted me that the panties I’d picked were incredibly sexy and that he’d love to see me model them. I replied, “Mister, I don’t think the company would approve, nor would your wife or newborn child.
” I thought that would end it. Instead, he kept pushing, saying his wife and child weren’t my concern, that the company didn’t have to know, and that when I grew up—I was eighteen—I’d understand what a great opportunity this was. I called the front desk, cancelled my room keys, had new ones made, and asked them to monitor my hallway. They obliged once I explained.
Then I texted my boss that if he didn’t fly back to headquarters in the morning, I would, and I’d tell them everything. He left the next day. I should have reported him for sexual harassment. But I was young and didn’t want conflict.
He was supposed to be someone I could trust, and he made it very clear that I couldn’t. I remember playing at my grandma’s house in NYC, hanging out on her stoop with the neighbor kids. There was a kid named Kyle, and Kyle was Black. My grandma yelled out the window that lunch was ready, and I asked if Kyle could eat with us.
She asked which one was Kyle. When I pointed to him, she screamed out the window, “No! No goddamn darkie is stepping foot in my house. Run on home now, little n*gger.
”
I was eight years old. My dad was the only child in that house who grew up and grew out of that hate. Why, Grandma?
Why?