My (39M) father used to sh*t on the floor

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I am a father of four now and I frequently wake up at 3-4am (as I did this morning) and can't get back to sleep because I focus on negative things. Often I think about how messed up my childhood was.

My mother died of pancreatic cancer when I was almost 7. There were 4 of us brothers left in his care. My father got an "undocumented immigrant" (illegal) to live with us and take over his parenting duties. He was a rocket scientist and his ego was sky high. He didn't bathe regularly and thought people should worship him for how intelligent he was.

He always thought other people were stupid and it took me a long time to see how messed up it was that he also thought his kids were stupid. It took me a long time to realize he had low self esteem narcissism and needed to knock down others to make himself feel better. I made excuses for him well into my 20s.

He wanted to marry the woman he got to live with us but she was horrified by him. She left in anger a few years later and after she left, the full extent of his "oddities" became apparent. For example, he would often s**t on the floor in the bathroom and just leave it there. The toilet he used was disgusting and he never cleaned anything, ever. I was the only one of the brothers that had enough and would clean it out of embarrassment.

My older two brothers were 6 years older and fraternal twins. One more or less ran away at age 17 and never came back. The other stayed and lived with my father until he died of a non cancerous brain tumor at age 25 in 2002. His death was very difficult for me to accept, and especially as the reality set in that my brother had gotten sick for 9 months and showed very visible signs of illness yet my father more or less did jack squat. I had moved out the year before to go to college and I never forgave myself because I knew he was completely incompetent as a parent.

I distanced myself from my father over the years, culminating in no contact a few years back. I knew growing up that being around him was walking on eggshells. He always had to be correct. In his stories of his day, he was the hero and everyone else was the dumbass.

I remember when I was 10, he said the population of Japan was 76 million. I got an atlas (this was the 90s, you didn't google things then) and showed him it said the population was ~126 million. He said the atlas was wrong! Not even joking or sarcastically, he just said "its wrong."

I knew even then you had to appease his ego and he couldn't handle it being punctured.

In high school, I had to warn my friends and my friends parents that met him that he would likely introduce himself as "Dr. F___ from Harvard." He did not have a PhD and never went to Harvard. I told them just to ignore it. I had to prepare them because I knew that he could not handle any ego puncture.

So when I got kids of my own and especially as I got more confident in life, I realized I did not care about appeasing his ego anymore. The lies he continued to tell got more insane. At my wedding he was telling guests that he was an award winning photographer for a top magazine. I mean, he owns a camera... thats about it. He told my wife's parents that our ancestors fled Stalin. Thats just... what? Not even close to true. Best one - he told my wife that when he was 12 he shot a bear dead with one shot that was charging at him.

When he told a lie about one of my kids, I got tired of it and called him out on it. I said I didn't want to talk to him at that moment in an email, and that I was getting tired of his BS. I punctured his ego by bringing up my brother's death, and said that as I got kids of my own I look back at that very differently.

He disappeared right then and there. Haven't heard from him since. I mailed him pictures of the kids. I punctured his ego and I know he can't handle that, so his ego demands I am gone from his life because I threaten it.

I knew it would happen if his ego was punctured. But the difference is, me at 39 does not give a s**t about appeasing his ego.

That's really unusual. My (66F) father has never shat on the floor.

Last edited by RetroGamer87 on 19 Jan 2023, 6:52 am, edited 1 time in total.

What does (39M) mean?

When I can't sleep I make myself get up and do some cleaning.
Stops rumination and I get a clean house.

It denotes the age and sex of the person proceeding the brackets.

In the OP's case it's 39 and male.

In RetroGamer87 ^ comment, he is saying he is a 66-year-old female

Stratozyck was really unlucky in life. But he became a very smart guy as a result. His father was a trip.....glad I just had a "regular" dad. But I'm not really smart because I'm complacent.

My mother had a very tough life as a child.....that's why she became a psychoanalyst. She was very smart, but very hard to deal with.

Are you sure being a rocket scientist wasn't just another lie?

Sounds like a terrible childhood.

Yeah neither has mine and I myself try to avoid sh*****g all over the floor whenever possible.

Even my tenant who was the worst the letting agents seen in years didn't s**t on the floor, rather he pissed on the floor instead which is easier to clean.

OP, did nobody ever critical of the fact he had the hygiene levels similar of baby born to a drug addict?

There was a woman here who never shat in front of her front door.

I wonder where she went…..

!	magz wrote:
	A reminder that this thread is in The Haven and The Haven Rules apply.

OP: I feel for you, making sense of a whole life growing up with a parent with a personality disorder.
It has always been his problem and it has never been your problem.
That's what I learned in my therapy. Sometimes it helps put a disordered person in the right place and establish healthy relationship with them. Sometimes it's impossible and only no contact helps. But either way - you are never responsible for your father's sick behaviors. They are his problem. You are responsible for your own life.
You have your own life and your own kids to care about. And I'm glad you don't carry on your father's disorder. That's great and gives a lot of hope for your children

Thats messed up. I salute you for surviving all that (both literal and figurative) s**t. What the ferret said is good advice...clean house if you wake up in the wee hours.

Sorry you had to go through that crap (no pun intended).

But think of where you are now, despite the way your dad treated you.

My mother, like I said above, was treated badly, too. But she made out well in life, and lived to be 88 years old.

Nah, I don't think I was all that unlucky.

Its far more common to be born into a poor country with no prospects.

We live in a time where losing a parent and a sibling before age 20 is considered rare, but it wasn't that long ago that it was far more typical.

What made it strange was having to live in a world of people who grew up with relatively calm childhoods and having to be judged by standards made for them.

Nah that one is true. He worked on infrared seekers for anti ballistic missiles. To pull that lie off would have been more impressive than actually being a rocket scientist.

Hah well, I am sure people did. I know his mother had to cut his nose hairs for him every time we visited because he had like a second hairdo coming out of his nose.

He just thought he was above it. He thought cleaning was beneath him. In his ego, he should have others do it.