On Fathers Day 2017, I took my dad out for lunch. We hadn't spoken in about three months, I'll spare the long part of it, so the Fathers Day lunch was to try to clear the air for us both...
My dad is really my stepfather (older brother's bio), but he was around most of my youth and ultimately took my older brother and I in. I'm named after him, because he was married to my bio mother when I was born...
Somehow our lunch turned really emotional, I was telling him it was tough growing up under him with the practices he allowed my stepmother to get away with, and with him driving a wedge between our bio mother and us. I told him I resented him for that...
The most painful words anybody has ever said to me have come from three of my four parents, and on that Fathers Day, here I am 28 years old, my dad responded to everything I was saying with, paraphrasing: "I'm sorry I wasn't a perfect dad, okay? I did the best I knew how to do with you guys, I didn't have a father to show me how to be a father. But do you really think you were a perfect son? You're not the son I wanted, either"...then proceeded to list the characteristics and experiences I'd had that i didn't get from him and that he didn't condone...
shyt hit like a muhfukka and after we parted ways I went home and had a good, long cry. Never heard that from him or knew he felt that way...
I'm saying that to say this, I don't blame the parents here, I get it. I'm not sure I would say the same, so I'm more indifferent to it than anything. When my parents took us in and moved us east, we lived in a two parent home in the suburbs with two people who weren't involved in illegal activity nor condoned or glorified criminal behavior. Alota people looking in from the outside didn't know those werent my/our real parents or our background, and outside looking in, too hard working, loving parents, looks like we were in as good a situation as kids can get...
What people are never privy to is your personal life if you don't allow them there, so while my parents weren't involved in illegal shyt, ask me if they were involved in immoral or unethical shyt and you'll get a different answer. When I started straying towards the streets they spoke out against it and tried to save me, to an extent, but of course there were a host of other influences, one of the more underrated being it's hard to buy into hypocrites in the moment who try to save you, but also created and cultivated an unhealthy and dangerous environment that helped build poor behavior...
I don't think the parents should be automatically regarded as great parents who did everything they could do, because there is a wild variance between what you see from people and what you don't. My heart goes out to them because they didn't encourage that lifestyle with him and they lost a child, though. So overall I'm indifferent...
Ultimately regardless of rearing, everybody eventually has the ability to make their own choices. His choices aren't their fault but his behavior quite possibly could be the result of parenting, so I get how some people can see this as a selfish and manipulative, grandstanding post...