Killing gods and monsters, so that I can live.

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The Klingons had gods, "but they became inconvenient, so we had to kill them."

I had to kill my parents when I was a kid.
To somehow reject them from my mind.
I could not have become a person without doing this.
Being an emotional orphan, alone on the streets, was better than being at their mercy.

My father was easy to kill. He was a monster by anyone's standards.
Had I complained properly, they would have literally thrown him in jail.
Just knowing that made it easy to reject him from my mind.

My mother was more subtle, although just as bad.
As a kid, I found some way to reject her from my mind that I can not explain today.
Eventually, I needed to make an excuse for her, to find a model, and I found my model in Hedda Nussbaum: http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cg ... &GRid=2196
Every time I had to look at her, I thought of Hedda. "Pity the fool. She has problems, too."
It was not true, but it worked for me. I've been carrying this excuse around with me for two decades.

The fact that I was able to kill my parents was a good thing.
Otherwise, I would be sitting in an institution right now, rocking and drooling.

Ouch... Did you ever find a mentor or somebody who was willing to help you grow up? Having to emotionally reject both parents isn't good for a kid--even though, like you said, it's probably better than leaving yourself open to all the emotional effects of abuse.

I had a pretty bad home life, but my grandparents were generally there for me--especially my grandfather, who gave me my first introduction to philosophy, ethics, and debate. This is probably part of the reason for my own survival.

Nope. Just kids. The other rejects.
Unless you count people I knew after I was 16 and emancipated.
(Literally, legally, physically...)

Kiling your own mother? That's cold.

A double homicide is nothing to joke about. You are the monster.

I emotionally rejected my parents at an early age (read: before first grade). I pretty much viewed as people whose power I had to submit to in exchange for food, clothes, and shelter. They punished me very frequently, and I was super-sure that they enjoyed the punishing. It just seemed like the natural order of things: a family is a pecking order where the strong punish the weak just for existing.

I remember when I first read the story of Noah's Ark, all I could think was: "He's going to be in the ark with his family for 40 days in a row? They're going to yell at him and punish him all the time." I also thought that if a massive flood ever came, I'd build two arks: one for myself and another for my family; the animals would be divided fairly among the two arks.

The day I moved out of my parents' home was one of the happiest days of my life. Now, I talk to them sometimes and even visit them occasionally, but my heart is just not in it. I view the visits as a fair exchange: they get the benefit of knowing that I'm still alive, and I get the dinner leftovers they give me.

You are not a monster. Sounds like you are tired of being treated like crap. So am I. I understand you are speaking metaphorically. I don't like to think in terms of death, I would rather think in terms of my freedom. I want to be free.

Mine are dead. don't miss em. they never were 'family' to me anyway.

I had to emotionally detach from my father at 6. It was rough, at first, but not cause I missed him.

It was cause all the other kids I knew and hung out with HAD a dad. I just got the lucky draw and ended up with a sperm donor.

He had power in the system, and systematically beat me until I finally convinced him, at 17, that it was his idea to kick me out. The only good thing that came from all that was I was able to protect my sister. But, through saving her, I lost myself.

Now, at 21, I have no idea what to do. All those years I missed growing up are coming back full force. It's only been in the last year or two that I've been able to laugh, joke, do anything normal. I'm always fearful, I always hold myself back. I wish I could get around that, but after so many years, it'll be just as long if not longer to unlearn all the abuse.

In a way though, I'm kinda glad things turned out the way they did. I never give up, not on anything, and after ten years of complaining to the system, I finally got someone to listen. Kinda taught me about perserverence. And I was able to save at least a part of my sister. She was always the baby, the weaker of the two of us, she never deserved what happened.

It makes everything worth while to see her and see someone with a future, with a chance. I may not get s**t out of this life, but at least I did my damndest to make sure she could.

So, I understand your pain. Don't worry about what you did. To be able to look back on it, and see why you did it, and know that even now the situation you escaped was harmful... you did the right thing. Don't ever let anyone tell you that what you did wasn't in your best interest.

It's the state of the world we live in that children have to learn to fend for themselves. It's sad, but it's not the end.

I just thought of it as a way to keep up with the siblings. But free food -- why not?

I still can't handle the pecking order. I tried some serious butt-kissing at the last job, but it wasn't enough. I learned that it's a two-part rule. You need to take it AND you need to dish it out to hold your place. I still can't do the second part.

The younger siblings were my wake-up call.
I couldn't get mad for my own sake, but seeing them abused made me realize that I was, too. At least I helped them to some extent.

It gets better. It takes a long time, but it gets better.

I was abused physically and emotionally until my mother finally threw me out of the house when I was 18. I'm 35 now, and I've put it behind me; at least as much as someone can put something like that behind them. It took a lot of time and lot of emotional struggle. I'm sorry; I know I'm not putting this very well, but it's difficult to talk about. It's not your fault; no one is ever responsible for their abuser's behavior. The abuser has no excuse and you don't need to make any excuses for them. Everyone is in control of their own actions; being abused is not an excuse to abuse someone yourself. People will tell you that you should forgive them and continue to be around them because "they're family". Don't listen to that; "family" is more than just a biological relationship. Real family would not treat you like that. The best thing you can do when you're being abused is to get as far away from the abuser as possible. People like that rarely change; if you don't distance yourself from them the abuse will continue and will often escalate. If they don't kill you physically, they will kill your soul. After I got away from my parents, I started to heal; it was a long, difficult process, but I started to heal. I didn't heal entirely until I got away from all of my family (they're all dysfunctional at best and abusive at worst). You have to learn to love yourself and to stay away from negative and abusive people. It's been a long difficult, process, and I been through absolute hell at times, but it's made me the strong, confident person I am today. However, I envy anyone who didn't have to go through this.

Please stay strong, and talk to caring people as much as possible. Don't keep it bottled up inside. And don't blame yourself; you are not a bad person just because someone was bad to you.

That's why I'm here. The shrinks are certainly worthless.

I was good for a long time.
But everything started falling apart again in the past few years.
And recent events have torn everything wide open.
I feel like I’m picking out shrapnel that’s been festering for years.
Like I can’t put myself back together until I finish the job.

All without the benefit of anesthesia. Again.

Yeah, events, sometimes even small things, will bring it all up again. You have to keep working through it. Believe it or not, it does get easier over time.

I agree, shrinks are useless. I went to one when my brother was in a sort of rehab for running away. The shrink couldn't even figure out we were being abused. She told me it was my fault I was unhappy.

Not always useless. Some of them are good to bounce ideas off, if you need to talk. Any actual work, you do yourself; but having somebody willing to listen and give advice is pretty useful. I've found that the less formal therapy education they have, the better; the most help I've gotten were from a nurse-practitioner and a social worker. Both of them had good levels of common sense. If you're religious, you could get similar sort of listening/advice style therapy from a pastor (or whatever your faith calls them); if not, I'm pretty sure some of the more relaxed types (especially unitarian universalist, which is based on figuring it out for yourself) won't mind giving advice to someone who doesn't share their religion. Of course you could always try a friend or a teacher or whatever... go have coffee together, talk about life.

He wasn't talking about physically murdering them. He was talking about murdering the connection to them. This is a metaphor... for those of us who think very literally... it's a shocking metaphor, but it's got nothing to do with actual murder.

Forgive me for not understanding the metaphor. It's a pretty crazy thing to say, even figuratively.

It's the ultimate opposite of crazy. It's the only way to sanity. I would never have become a person at all if I had kept them as my parents.

It's like a controlled demolition, so I can rebuild.
I'm doing it again now.
Straight up, raw, without benefit of anesthesia, again.

I can't be expected to understand if I don't know you from Adam. You don't know me from Adam. If a stranger reads about how you had to kill your parents, what do think his first thought will be?

Too bad I'm not a member of the I-Killed-My-Parents Club.