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Hacker News Hacker NewsI’ve been this dad who sits frozen at the TV every evening. I had the affairs with the emotionally unavailable men, and became one myself.
Before you judge the man in this story too harshly — and there’s certainly much to judge, especially given the follow-up post — consider the environment he and I grew up in. Being gay as a young teenager in the early 1990s could feel literally like a death sentence. AIDS panic was everywhere. Gay men in movies were comedy sidekicks or dying wrecks (“Philadelphia”). There was a real threat of violence from other kids. If you could pass as straight, why wouldn’t you give it your best shot? The alternative was to be a laughing stock and die alone in a hospital where nurses don’t dare touch you. (This is literally how I imagined gay life at age 13.)
I still feel like I’m barely getting started on the therapy journey to recover from those decades. Seems like the man in the story never had the chance for professional help (or didn’t seek it). The compartmentalization can be extremely taxing. He disappointed many people, but that doesn’t mean he was a bad person.
- It seems this is how the author is processing her father's passing, and it's not really up to us to make moral calls on the content of the posts. They are thoughts with gaps of missing context against a real life of highs and lows which is not readily condensed into a blog post.
- I'm peering into the life of a private person, that feels like a violation. Even though they have passed, the people around them are very much alive.
- We can't makes guesses at what a person truly values, neither positively nor negatively. What can be seen as promiscuity can also be seen as seeking validation, human motives and emotions exist in the grey area.
- This is a person who was deprived of the sort of genuine sexual and emotional attention that we take for granted from puberty age. They lived as a type of outsider in school, work, and their daily norms. The integrity of their actions shouldn't be evaluated against our own values which were likely built from a different life experience.
- It's ok not knowing or judging. One has to practice a type of "radical acceptance" when reviewing these sorts of life matters.
I love my wife and my son, and I feel loved by them in return, but I'm also painfully aware that the version of me they love is someone I constructed. I lie constantly: about why I don't want sex, about my affairs, about my feelings, about my motivations. No one really knows me, and I don't get to be myself, not even in the relationships where I should feel safest.
I've read The Courage to Be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi and other similar books, and I'm trying to build the courage to finally do something about all of this. It's incredibly difficult. But I refuse to use my son as an excuse to keep postponing coming out. This blog has pushed me even further in that direction.
They'll be angry (well at least my wife). Their lives will be upended. But at least they'll have the chance to ask questions, to understand. They'll see me taking responsibility for the consequences of my choices, and maybe just maybe, in some way, that clarity will be a relief for all of us.
> the most important thing was to find xin fu in life, not to live your life in accordance to the expectations of anyone else
That is why I write all of my code in uncommented C. Your expectation of a maintainable program that doesn’t segfault all the time is just your expectation.
> he wasted his entire life, my mom said
In some ways, she did too by listening to her mother and not just getting divorced as she had wanted to. But I recognize that going against your family’s core beliefs is easier said than done.
What a burden of expectations to lay on both yourself & your own family.
I’m glad the author was able to put those aside & live her own life more authentically than her father did.
Not sure what my point is, but perhaps being too much into Buddhism and similar things made me lose touch with more normal human emotions.. or I live in regret myself and push it aside, ha.
I don't suppose I shall ever read it again but I have saved it in my cache of personal web pages.
I'm so glad I finally came out to my family and friends.
Somehow related, I had to go through my father in-law papers after his death, and I have seen papers that probably were not meant to be seen ever. I am now part of this secret. The weird part is that I feel that I cannot talk about it to anyone in the universe. For the first time in my life, I feel the burden of keeping secret until I die. There is no therapy for it. Now, I understand how some people when tragedy strikes, have to bury it deep, to the point where they forget about it, as it is too painful to even think of it. I am at a point where I do not want to impair (drunk, high) myself and reveal the secret. I thought my life was simple, but man some unfortunate events can flip entire lives... I was a firm believer that talking the truth/facts was the best solution, and now I realize that some things better stay buried as it would generate more pain than anything.
So, some papers might not be good to keep, as you never know what it could unleash after you pass away (and that can happen anytime).
No capitalization was as surprising as the narration itself… not sure how to feel about it! Counter culture?
Regardless, it is a well written article with an emotionally strong impact. Thank you for sharing.
Many years ago, I read The Bridges of Madison County. This reminds me a bit of that.
> i learn the story afterwards. dad went upstairs for a lie-down after dinner, but was awoken by severe chest pain. he vomits, which is a thing he never does, and asks mom to call 911 immediately. she does and provides all the symptoms, the dispatcher tells her that they've sent for an ambulance, and they should get ready to go.
> so they get ready, and then they wait. they wait for 15 long minutes, my dad in an extreme amount of pain, and nothing happens.
> mom calls 911 again and asks if they have an ETA. the dispatcher responds that don't have visibility on that. she asks if she should just drive my dad to the hospital and is advised that the best thing to do is to keep waiting.
> so they wait another 15 long minutes, and still no one shows up. the house is in a car-oriented suburb, 5 minutes away from a major highway, a ten minute drive from the hospital.
> mom decides that they should not keep waiting. she and my brother help dad into the car, and they drive him to the hospital.
> they arrive at the emergency room entrance. dad gets out of the car, takes two steps, lurches forwards, and dies on the front steps of the hospital.
What the fuck, that's horrible.
My dad's house is in a rural area of the country. He sadly passed away a week ago, I found him in his bed while coming to visit, he didn't pick up the phone that day, despite us having talked just the day before. When I found him, I called the emergency number and they still sent an ambulance, it was at the house in like 15-20 minutes, they confirmed the situation and did some paperwork and helped me with the next steps.
I can't imagine how horrible the circumstances in the article must feel and I'm not even sure what "justice" would look in a case like that, how the fuck can an emergency line dispatcher not have "visibility" on an emergency call, that's their one fucking job!
Of course, families can be a powerful force.
But, as my father once told me: family are those who are near you [not necessarily those you share genes with].
You’ve censored out some names as “redacted” but it’s pretty easy to fill in at least one name by other articles in the site. If you want anonymity, consider doing a broad review.
I’m not trying to dox you - it’s totally up you what to share.
But some of the articles seem to be private, while others seem very public.
I currently know someone like this. He's not homosexual, so it's not quite the same issue.
But he's gotten himself trapped in a relationship, and worst of all, cannot admit it to his friends. The only reason I know is that the one friend he did tell, has told the rest of his friends. We've known each other since childhood, yet he doesn't ask me for help. Which is up to him, of course, but he also doesn't know that I know that he is keeping a remarkably straight face about his situation. In a way it would be easier if I hadn't been told.
So now, I have to pretend like I think he's just a single man about town. He just shows up to everything when I'm around, and chats to me like he always has throughout the years. We'll meet another old friend, yet his life update is that he's just like any other bachelor-for-life, just enjoying his video games and freedom, while the rest of us are having kids and worrying about school bills.
It's very odd. What would HN do?
document.querySelectorAll("p").forEach(p => p.textContent = p.textContent.replace(/(^\w)|([.?!]\s*\w)|( i'? )/g, m => m.toUpperCase()));People need to seriously plan and manage a marriage if they decide to go through with it.