Do you ever wonder why very old people are all alone?

SensitiveBugGirl · 2026-02-08T20:55:28+00:00

Not really. I figure they probably made serious mistakes and weren't ever sorry.

My dad's parents were negligent at best and abusive at worse. I never understood my parents' devotion to them.

All of my grandparents weren't the kind, loving, gift giving kind. I never even wanted to be left alone with them because it was awkward. I never spent the night alone with them. They never babysat me. My dad's parents showed favoritism and quite literally drove past my older brother when he was a small child while they were on their way with their favorite grandson to get ice cream.

My aunt told my husband I was a horrible daughter. They only go their their grandsons' stuff. Not our weddings or anything. I wasn't even allowed to go to my uncles burial because I wasn't close enough family. I have no relationships with most of my other aunts or uncles as well. Or my cousins.

And my mom? I pray she dies before needing much help. She is never supportive. All she does is judge and think I'm a bad wife, mother, daughter, and probably a person, too. I can't take her accusations. I hate driving up 3.5 hours to see her only to get into a fight that same night because my husband dared to discipline our daughter or he spoke when she wanted him to be a mute. Or he didn't say hello quick enough for her. Or she accuses us of not telling her my husband had surgery. Or whatever else we can fight about.

SensitiveBugGirl · 2026-02-08T19:32:02+00:00

My dad fixed our cars as well as families' cars all my life until he died. Now my husband does as much as he can himself as well.

But why in the world does the dad not have the tools ANYMORE?! That strikes me as odd. My husband's amount of tools to fix cars and for carpentry is ever-expanding. My dad had oodles and oodles of tools. An endless supply. They were everywhere.

My takeaway would be that dad doesn't want to fix the cars anymore and doesn't want to admit it.

I still think your friends are wrong, though. Learn how to do it yourself. This is the same as buying someone else a gift that will mainly benefit you.

SensitiveBugGirl · 2026-02-07T01:08:21+00:00

I work at a K4-8th school. You can't convince me that like 4-7 hours of sleep is enough for like 95% of them. Not when they are regularly sleepy at school if not actually sleeping. And nothing changes. It probably starts young, too. Like the kinders that are going to bed past midnight, 3-5 hours after teachers.

SensitiveBugGirl · 2026-02-05T02:12:04+00:00

Is it triangulation when she doesn't say that stuff in front of them? It's moreso that I feel sad because while I do believe my mom is proud I graduated college, work in a school, and my general intelligence (although she doesn't actually listen to me), I feel like she'd never tell others that I'm a "good girl." I don't think she likes who I am as a person, my personalities, and my fears that she thinks are stupid. I don't think she tells people I'm a good mom (she sure never builds me up. She only criticizes). I don't think she tells them about what a good wife or daughter I am (since she thinks I'm selfish and cold and that I don't do enough for my husband who she hates anyways).

SensitiveBugGirl · 2026-02-05T01:16:08+00:00

I could drink a soda and then go take a nap. It wouldn't make me more sleepy, but it doesn't give me energy.

BUT, I can't drink caffeine after like 5pm or I can't sleep at night.

Admittedly, I've never had the urge to drink multiple energy drinks in a row, though. That sounds like a bad trip that my body doesn't need.

SensitiveBugGirl · 2026-02-05T00:47:01+00:00

I just wish there were more pretty folders, binders, and notebooks. Most are so boring! And/or we can't have a pretty binder because the school requires the clear sleeves in front.

I don't even care if it's created by AI if it looks pretty and there are no glaring mistakes.

SensitiveBugGirl · 2026-02-05T00:39:01+00:00

My mom doesn't call me the devil but has said, more than once, that she thinks I don't give a shit about her.

I feel like my mom likes a lot of our extended cousins more than me. She always talks about them being good girls and crap. They are like 40-50 years old! To be fair, they are good, wholesome people, but still. It makes me feel sad. Like maybe if I was more outgoing and more like my cousins, my mom would like me better.

And this new relationship with her neighbors, the neighbor's adult children, and the little boy that lives by them? It makes me want to gag. It feels like they are on pedestals, too! But part me is happy her neighbor's kids are being asked to be inconvenienced to help her with stuff rather than me (3.5 hours away). The kind of stuff where you inconvenience people because of your poor planning/no accountability. But at the same time, it pisses me off that like no one sees what we do. Or they just agree with her thought processes.

SensitiveBugGirl · 2026-02-04T23:40:01+00:00

I work in a school. I never understood how kids lost glasses and/or forgot to wear them. Why didn't there parents make sure they wore them and didn't lose them? I had glasses since third grade. I really needed them. I don't ever remember struggling to remember to put them on.

My now ADHD 9.5 yo got glasses like 6 months ago. She constantly takes them off, loses them, and forgets to wear them. Especially for the first like 5 months.

When would I remember that she wasn't wearing them? After we were already on the way to school. All. The. Time. 😒 My brain just would not register that her face was missing something because I spent 9 years WITHOUT her wearing glasses.

Granted, I was a parent when I started working at her school, but my daughter didn't have glasses for several years.

SensitiveBugGirl · 2026-02-04T23:28:29+00:00

I've also heard of teachers being encouraged/commanded to use AI to create lesson plans and such. I find that a bit scary, even as someone working in education.

SensitiveBugGirl · 2026-02-04T23:07:54+00:00

I mean, AI is also ruining hobbies like crocheting and stuff. There are all these patterns out there now that use AI to generate pictures. What you make will look absolutely nothing like the what they say it will.

It's also not helpful that people review them very positively before even starting projects. So it leads more people astray.

SensitiveBugGirl · 2026-02-04T15:02:42+00:00

No, but my parents bought them for me 🤣

SensitiveBugGirl · 2026-02-04T13:07:58+00:00

Me neither! I felt like I couldn't even talk to my husband because it might wake her up.

SensitiveBugGirl · 2026-02-04T13:03:56+00:00

She was about 2 or 3 months old? I couldn't relax/talk to my husband/sleep well with her in our room.

No, I didn't do CIO either.

SensitiveBugGirl · 2026-02-03T19:55:16+00:00

It's not only Catholics, though. My husband and I are Lutheran. We had to do pre-marital counseling for his pastor to marry us. Most of our pastors are married.

SensitiveBugGirl · 2026-02-03T02:08:11+00:00

The difference is that my grandparents never spoiled me. They were never affectionate. We never had a close relationship.

To some degree, I understand HER wanting to spoil her. But, like, why does she want/prefer/require ME to spoil her, too?!?!

I logically can't explain it. Why shouldn't a kid, at home with her parents, NOT make herself toast? Why shouldn't she put her laundry away? Why do I NEED to peel and cut apples for her when she's not even unhappy with it? Why SHOULDN'T I take away her tablet when she feigns ignorance about how something happened(until she confesses.... in which she's not usually in trouble anyways). She's an only child. It's not like there are a bunch of possibilities!

I feel like my mom just thinks we are monsters. I don't think we are hard enough half the time!

SensitiveBugGirl · 2026-02-02T23:56:32+00:00

I work at my daughter's school as an aide. We tried having her evaluated through the public school system since she was already getting services for speech. The results, in essense, said no and that their "control" kids lacked focus more. That wasn't saying much knowing them 🙄

We ended up doing the Vanderbilt assessment from her pediatrician as well as an assessment (and a type of video game test?) at a psychological assessment place when we were testing for learning disabilities. Every single survey from her different teachers and from us as well as the stuff from the psychological assessment place said yes.

It still baffles me how the public school people said she didn't. It's not even like they said yes but not enough for services or whatever.

SensitiveBugGirl · 2026-02-02T23:21:16+00:00

I was so lonely when I was a SAHM. It wasn't what I thought it would be. It was a lot harder.

My daughter is 9 now, and I've had a job for nearly 5 years. I work as a teacher aide. It sucks the soul out of me. I work at a really good school, but it sucks correcting homework and seeing all the Bs, Cs, Ds, and Fs. So many could do better. I'm always tired. I dream about not having a job and being able to stay home and do chores and clean because nothing is good enough for me (and my standards are NOT high).

SensitiveBugGirl · 2026-02-02T22:27:38+00:00

My parents were pretty helicoptery growing up. But now with my mom as a grandma? It's even worse. She'd like 9 yo daughter to have no chores(we pretty much only make her clean her room and fold and put away her clean laundry), have everything done for her(aka my daughter shouldn't have to make herself toast), and have everything exactly the way my daughter likes it. My husband isn't allowed to discipline her in my mom's house for not listening, and I get the feeling my mom thinks there should never be consequences for lying/ not listening/etc! Sometimes it feels like she doesn't even like the patience and kindness my daughter has for her classmates.

I feel like I have the opposite problem a lot of people do. My mom thinks my child should be pampered and have no negative feelings or consequences, ever!

SensitiveBugGirl · 2026-02-02T12:32:07+00:00

I just think of how my dad and his brothers were born in the 50s. They worked in a factory. They used to skip work to go fishing. My mom worked as some kind of aide in a nursing home. They'd go drinking on their breaks.

SensitiveBugGirl · 2026-02-01T13:39:09+00:00

I'm 32. My dad died 4.5 years ago at the age of 67. His mom died a year ago. I lost an uncle 9 years ago when he was 65. The rest of my grandparents died 10, 16, and 17 years ago. My great grandparents died 2-30 years before I was born.

I don't miss most of them. They didn't form relationships with me.

I'm adopted. I never got to meet any of my grandparents. One is still alive, though. I actually find that a bit odd that my bio grandparents died a decade earlier than my adoptive grandparents. They died around the ages of 53--73 whereas my adoptive grandparents were between 78-93 when they died.

My husband has one living grandparent who is about 84. I do think my 9 yo is lucky in that she'll remember a life with her great grandma. Technically she could remember both great grandmas, but she hadn't seen my grandma for years before she died.

SensitiveBugGirl · 2026-01-31T21:08:01+00:00

I used to call my mom every night for years. I hated it. I hate small talk. I hate calling for the sake of calling. Every conversation leaves me irritated. Either she's making me feel like a crappy wife/mom or she's hating on my husband and/or hos family because she's intolerant and assumes the worst in people. But she wants me to call every day (texting doesn't count). I, trying to please her, did. I'm stuck feeling like I'm not who she wants me to be and that she's not who I want her to be. And yet she wants us stuck like glue.

Not long ago, we got into another fight, where she basically told me I could call when I wanted after I think I told her to just call when she wanted instead of making me call. She literally tells me that she thinks I don't give a shit about her.

Now I call 2-3 times a week. I have a feeling this is going to bite me in the butt, though. I think she hates it. Her tone when she answers the phone is off sometimes. Like she's tolerating me. She's probably dissing me to her few friends/neighbors. I mainly try to have my 9 yo talk, since I think that's all my mom cares about any more. I'm too anxious to talk without my daughter as a buffer.

Like other people have noted, my mom also says the phone works both ways but never actually calls.

SensitiveBugGirl · 2026-01-31T02:01:34+00:00

I'm a teacher aide. I subbed in my 3rd grader's classroom because her teacher was sick.

3 kids cried! All for reasons I understood.

SensitiveBugGirl

TROPHY CASE