Who and what destroyed/disillusioned you?

Question

what's your first memory regarding the question? who and what had the most impact? is it simply due to lack of strength to resist or was it due to innocence and you didn't know otherwise?

Answer 1

Oh boy! That would be Dad. My earliest memory of him is an angry and impatient man with nothing kind to say to us kids or Mom. Through the years he got only worse. Mom often had black eyes from "falling" and I still hear the shouting matches that lasted for hours after my brother and I would go to bed. My sister made the mistake of wanting to get married so he threw her out of the house and forbid anyone to see her. That drove the family friends away. I still remember the day he took the family dog (my sister's dog) for "a walk" and shot it to death. I recall watching him walk away with her (Chee Chee was her name, a Japanese Terrier) and knowing what he was going to do. He didn't bother to try to hide the .22 rifle.
I was the youngest and by the time I graduated from high school the family was destroyed. I left home immediately and everyone else scattered. I only saw him one more time after that. I hated him. We all hated him. Ironically he developed Alzheimer's and my sister and brother-in-law (they are still happily married after 33 years) moved him from Oregon back to their home in Alaska and he lived with them until he died in his sleep. I stayed with them the night before the funeral and I slept in the bed he had died in a few nights before. What an odd feeling that was.

I visited his grave alone a year later and told him all the things I had needed to tell him for years. It helped me heal. It helped me at least feel some pity for him.

Dad taught me alot about what not to be. He taught me to respect and appreciate women. He taught me to not scream and curse at people. He taught me to offer things to others first, then worry about myself. He taught me to give others a chance to breath. He taught me that it's not necessary to beat women to get your way. And he taught me you shouldn't kill a kid's dog just to get even with someone who dared disobey you.

Finally, he taught me that even after all of that, his daughter still loved him enough to give him a place to live his last months surrounded by family and a place to die in his sleep with dignity.

Answer 2

The move of the Brooklyn Dodgers from Brooklyn to L.A. in 1957. A loss of childhood innocence and learning that the world was a cruel place with little regard for sentiment or feelings. Yes, all this from the move of a baseball team.

Answer 3

i became totally disillusioned and hopeless after 9/11. What this country did was so horrifying to me, I could not believe that the USA could be so bloodthirsty. My heart permanently broke when it became clear that there were no WMDs in Iraq and the war started anyway. The realization that everything that I was taught about American greatness and dignity is all bullshit shattered me into tiny pieces, never to recover.

Answer 4

Loving another person.

First my father who was never there and when he would make a rare appearance he would do something to hurt my mom, and use me to do it.

My husband who never did understand that I loved him. I put 20 years into a marriage that ended with him telling me that the only reason I ever did anything was because he "Made" me do them. With that one statement he effectively devalued everything I had ever done, sacrificed and given to him in love. I finally just gave up.

Then recently I fell in love with a man who met all of the impossible things I was hoping to find in a man. And I fell really, really hard. But he couldn't love like that and it ended after a very happy year of wonder and shared experience. I am still trying to come to grips with the loss.

In each case it was my own love for them that kept me in a position to be hurt. I wish I knew how to stop loving so much.

Answer 5

The American voter....in 2000 and 2004, though there's always enough evidence to make you think both national Elections were rigged to put the (World) Village Idiot in the White House. In any case, 8 years of Dubya is pretty saddening for many Americans and beyond....

Answer 6

Since childhood I noticed that the people who claimed to be moral and righteous, and/or who were in the business of helping or caring for others (i.e. law enforcement, the clergy, the educational field) were the first to condemn, blame, accuse, backstab, humiliate, mock, deceive, etc. This had a powerful and lasting influence on my feelings towards religion as well as towards other things.

Answer 7

I'll answer this in regards to politics. Every election in california roughly 40% or more vote republican for presidency and yet every year every one of our electoral votes goes to the democratic canidate. I just feel a little disenfranchised, though I'm not necessarily a republican, I just hate the 2 party system. It seems every year we have a choice of two presidents who have no qualifications beyond being appealing enough to the public to get votes.

Answer 8

The a**hole I got involved with at 17. He was able to destroy/disillusion me because I was innocent of the fact that there could even be such a person .

Answer 9

Somewhere along the way I realized that the majority of people are selfish idiots. This meant that any real change to our society was still eons away from actuality. I decided not to wait around any longer for people/mankind to grow up/evolve, and just became jaded and cynical...

Answer 10

being molested by a family member at the age of 9...