What is the most crushing thing anyone has said to you?

It's hard to really pick one crushing thing that was said to me, but either way they're all from my dad.

When I was about 8 I got really sick for a week or two. I would be asleep from exhaustion for a few days straight while having a fever of 105.6. My dad would never let my mom get me vaccinated as a child because he thought they caused autism, so needless to say my immune system wasn't exactly up to snuff. She wasn't allowed to take me to the hospital either. My dad would tell me every night (at least the ones that I wasn't already asleep) that I was sick because I had sin in my life that I haven't asked to be forgiven for. He told me "You're going to die if you don't beg for forgiveness. You can choose to die in sin or live to serve God." I would lay in bed for days on end begging God to kill me for whatever I have done. I figured that was the only way out. Needless to say, I'm not dead. My father thought I made peace but in reality my mother had me take a few ice baths to lower my fever. Those were some of the most painful things I've ever felt.

The second comes from when I was 12 and I asked my dad why he and my mother just got divorced. It was also around this time when I finally got smart and started to deviate from my dad's beliefs and be my own man. He told me that they got divorced because he felt like he lost control of his household and that I especially was starting to stray away from him. He said "I don't feel like I am a father to you anymore and if that is the case then I might as well not be your mother's husband." Seeing the effect that the divorce had on my mother and siblings and knowing that it was somewhat my fault, I tried to kill myself. Obviously, the plan had failed. It was due to a lack of knowledge about how human bodies work. I was still forced to spend time with my dad through a "week on, week off" system through my parents joint custody.

The third and final instance is one day when my father tried to kill himself in front of me a year and a half ago. The backstory to this one is that one night my father was stabbed outside of our apartment. He claimed that it was a hitman who was sent by my mother. Police told us that the exact placement of the wounds fit where someone could only be injured if they were self-inflicted. Their theory was that my father tried to stab himself to death and slit his wrists in order to frame my mother. There were many more reasons that point to the incident being caused by my dad, but I digress. The actual instance of the attempted suicide comes from one day where my father and I were talking about what happened to him. He kept contradicting himself and he started to realize that it was evident to me that I didn't completely follow his story. He started to sob uncontrollably. This was a shock to me because he would whip me as a kid for crying, no matter what the reason (injury or emotion). So seeing a man that I've hated my whole life just break down caused me to start crying as well (it was the first time I've cried in years and I haven't cried since). He, crawling on the floor talking about how alone he is, opened his closet and pull out his shotgun. I rushed over to him and tried to wrestle the barrel out of his mouth as he pawed at the trigger. The words that really hit me was whet he said, crying with a mouth full of shotgun barrel "I don't wanna live like this anymore, I don't wanna live." I finally got control of the gun just as I could hear the trigger about to click. I still hear his cries whenever I get anxious or get shocked by loud noises, but they always end in a loud boom. He sat on the floor still crying. I stood up, called my brother who lived about an hour away and I walked my father down to his truck and we drove to my brother's place. We didn't speak the entire trip. Once we got to my brother's, I got out of the truck after my dad and I said that we'd talk later. We didn't speak for a few weeks after that. Then I eventually went back home and we acted like nothing happened. We haven't spoken about that day since. The year following involved lawsuits between my parents for various, pointless reasons. My dad went right back to his old self, blaming my mom and his kids (me and my siblings) for everything that happened to him. I decided to run away from home about 10 months ago. I am now living in a different town with some family.

Looking over this comment, I realize how long it is. I apologize if this got in the way of anyone's reading. I see now that there were probably better ways to go about writing this. I don't often talk about these things to anyone, so it's hard to really monitor what I'm writing on here. I put this here so that people can know that there's a way out of bad relationships. Sorry again for the length of my ramblings.

/r/AskReddit Thread