Notch, if you're reading this, my deepest sympathy. I understand the devastation of losing a parent; I lost my mother about a year ago. I'm still not "back to normal" and don't know if I ever will be.
I used to do art, music, and comedy, and even practiced my religion, often just for her. I loved to make her laugh and it was so easy to make her proud. In the past year, I have done none of that stuff and don't know when or if I ever will.
Programming is one of the few things I've ever done that I never did just to say, "Hey Ma! Look what I did!" She never understood it. So in the past year, it's one of the few things I've been able to do. I've written a ton of code and taken great comfort it in.
I won't even attempt to give advice; none of the advice I've received from well-intentioned others in the past year has been helpful. I just hope you, me, and others like us find comfort in the wonderful memories of beloved parents and find a way to move on with our lives.
My mom passed away when I was 10, 14 years ago now (she was 37, brain aneurism, even if the docs had known nothing could have been done to prevent it), and I know that it affected me, and it has affected what I do. What is considered normal though? After 14 years I still miss her, I still think about her, and even-though I am not religious and logically I know she is no longer here, and can't feel or see the things I do, I do hope she is proud of me.
In all honesty there really is no "normal", you attempt to go on with your life, the reminders become less and less yet at times you will look at something and instantly have a flash back.
I wish you the best of luck, losing anyone close is terrible, so far I've been incredibly lucky that I still have my grandparents on both side of the family, and my dad, and my three younger siblings, and that we've all shared the same experience makes it easier to slowly attempt to move on.
I for one, salute you for having the awareness to know that snippets of advice won't help and having such a thoughtful response. I often feel like the stock advice given in these situations just makes me feel worse.
I'm constantly impressed by people that have the ability to share their personal life with the world in an honest way that reveals the vulnerabilities we all share as humans. It is so much more refreshing than the opposite, where we pretend our lives are perfect and we never experience moments of doubt or melancholy.
It is rare to see someone make a post like this. This is precisely what makes it so refreshing and beautiful.
I agree with being impressed, but I am not sure the opposite of being able to share is pretending we are perfect. Maybe, it's just being unable to.
My dad passed away eleven months ago, no day goes by without thinking of him, and I may be able to get to the end of this without crying, but I can't manage a blog post.
But let's not fall into the trap of "honest, open sharing" is better than pretending, that pretending is bad, or that either is better than not sharing at all. Lots of people make their lives better by pretending enough so that it becomes so. Lots of people also aren't interested in sharing at all. Lots of what appears to be open honest vulnerability sharing is also posturing and pretending, but it's hard for an outsider to know.
It may be refreshing, but people aren't drawn to it. It's the same idea as to why people are drawn to assholes, why people respect someone who speaks their mind more than someone who is a poeple pleaser etc. You speak like this for long enough around people, and they just wont want to be around you.
Every now and then, like you said, it's refreshing.
I am very happy that my parents are married to each other, and my alive grandparents too, and that they don't have issues like this (what my father "abuse" is coca-cola, he rarely drinks, and noone smokes).
And I am very sad to see that all other families are crumbling.
I am seeking a girlfriend that wants to be a mother, and I am not finding, most of them are self-centered, and come from divorced families, the only girl that ever became my girlfriend (and is still a good friend) was the only one that I found that still had married parents.
You must be quite young. To me, what defines a good relationship (in terms of having a partner) is not necessarily that what you have in common with the other is a strong desire for stability, family life & kids. I've seen people get married because of this desire, and the people I've observed doing that don't necessarily seem very happy. On the contrary, actually. After a while they just become jaded. Like people in a job that they don't enjoy but that they need to do to pay the mortgage. I think these situations are quite unhealthy, and ultimately unsatisfying.
What defines a good relationship, in my opinion, is two people that know what they want out of life, that chase their own goals and have their own dreams, and then decide to do that together. It's much harder though, because sometimes these goals clash, but I wouldn't want it any other way.
Coming from a broken home impacts everyone differently, and particularly when you end up raising yourself (and your siblings). The idea that someone doesn't want to be a mother because they're self-centered is very far from the truth. They are more likely to be aware of their vulnerabilities and the fear that they will end up like their parents. Worse, they may have long-term damage (or mental health issues that plagued their parents as well) that they don't feel would make them strong parents. I consider that responsible, not self-centered.
If you want to have kids and want a partner that is into that, that's fine. However, being self-centered and wanting to be a parent aren't mutually exclusive, as I have met adults whose parents were/are extremely self-centered and that factored in heavily into the abusive situations those adults lived in when they were children.
> And I am very sad to see that all other families are crumbling.
I'm not really sure what you are talking about, families have always had issues with abuse, divorce, etc., that is nothing new (even if people may have hidden those things more often in the past, but that really depends on when and where you grew up).
Try to appreciate your family for as long as you can, since you'll never know when they're gone.
In 2004, when I was 23 years old, I lost both my parents and a sister in a car accident. We had a really nice family and great parents, never expected this to happen. It caused me a depression that lasted almost 7 years.
Personally I wouldn't want a girlfriend that wants to become a mother, the pain of losing someone very dear to you is intense and I wouldn't want another depression that lasts as long as my previous one.
While I'm sad that you cannot find this ideal girlfriend (which I am also looking for) it's not a bad thing that you are at least finding out that they are self-centered. You want to find someone like yourself who looks forward to having a stable family.
Can you imagine marrying someone who's self-centered and you finally have kids? That could be disasterous. There could be lots of regret that you can't undo and you end up going down the path of divorce or worse.
My uncle hanged himself after years being an alcoholic, the alcohol destroyed his family and pushed him away from everybody.
Near the end of it all he was acting delusional, lying to his bar friends about how good his life was, just stright up making stuff up, like having a huge barbecue in his non existant farm, or so I heard through my dad.
He killed himself between christmas and new year. His son spent christmas in my house, and I had the idea to go visit him, and days later he killed himself.
For the longest time I blamed myself, I kept thoughts like "maybe if I had gone...", I kept believing that maybe the wanting to go see him was God's way to stop the tragedy from happening. I no longer blame myself, though I do wonder if having gone there would have changed anything.
My father has substance abuse problems too (alcohol dependency for 20 years) and it has destroyed his relationship with my siblings and my mother, he's going to lose what little he has left very soon and I genuinely fear he's going to do something very similar to what is mentioned here. I am the only child that will talk to him without contempt and I have long since left home. He lost his own father very recently and that pushed him deeper.
What do I do? How do you deal with a situation like this?
I dated a woman from a family like this. Her dad was in Vietnam and his squad was ambushed and he managed to find a hiding place from which he was able to witness the entire rest of his squad murdered in cold blood. 3 days later he got the balls to leave his hiding spot and the alcoholism began when he got home after being discharged. Classic PTSD case.
Your dad needs to see a counselor to help treat the alcoholism and a therapist to try to eliminate any underlying psychological issues that might be feeding into the alcoholism if there are any.
My uncle died of essentially alcoholism.
You have the right to tell your dad, dead in the eye, that you fear for his life and that he does not have to continue this downward spiral. He will need to summon a will in order to beat it, though. It might help to also remove him from the environments that contribute to his problem, such as moving to a dry town.
It still amazes me that I used to drink more (was always moderate) but really tapered off lately for multiple reasons (most related to health) without much difficulty at all, yet some people get completely addicted to this thing. (I have nearly all German and Czech ancestry which might help.) Yet there is a game called WoW that I can't seem to tear myself completely away from, and there is a woman on this planet that is impossible for me to not have amazing sex with when alone (she shares the same vulnerability) who I unfortunately cannot be anywhere near anymore because we are not right for each other and must focus on other people...
AA's founder originally believed that LSD had potential to cure substance abuse, and although he later stepped away from that belief to make religion a bigger aspect of it, researchers believe that it is far more likely to help than even AA itself. There was additional information (along with personal experiences) in a recent Reddit TIL that may be of interest to you - http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/14mpow/til_bi...
If that's an option you think he'd try out, perhaps there's a facility nearby that could help.
Edit: If you're going to downvote, do so because something is legitimately wrong and prove otherwise, not because you don't agree with it. This topic is a big deal and my response is equally as serious.
I'm in no way qualified to give you a professional answer, but from a human perspective, I'd start by talking to him and expressing the very fears you just described. Make him understand that it concerns you, and that you're there for him should he ever feel that inclination. Just being able to talk about things with other people can be a tremendous help when dealing with stressful situations. Make sure he understands that he's not completely alone.
Short answer is - you don't, really. There's very little one can do to help a grown-up person with a history of substance abuse. Unless you believe in God: but the efficacy of that approach is, clearly, impossible to scientifically verify.
I've never met Markus Persson, but its obvious from reading his tweets and posts that he is a good person. If anyone deserves the success he's had, its him.
I'm not so sure that he is entirely a good person or worth this level of praise. He spends a lot of time apologizing for Twitter drama that he invents, and it seems like he has the tendency to shoot first and ask questions later.
The Yogscast debacle comes to mind. For those that are unaware, Yogscast, one of the biggest promotional engines sending traffic to Minecraft, went to Minecon on their own dime and did an autograph panel. Notch responded by eviscerating them on Twitter for, among other things, wishing to be helped out financially for their appearance (which cost them quite a bit, and, let's be honest, Mojang is not broke; Mojang also sold the rights to broadcast Yogscast's own show without asking). This was all based upon drama invented in Notch's head, and he had to profusely apologize later.
It seems like Notch goes out of his way to find drama. However good of a person he is tends to be undone by his occasionally childish behavior.
This hit pretty close to home. My father just moved in with me after calling me last week and telling me he was going to kill himself. I managed to calm him down and convince him to move in with me for a while, so hopefully this is the beginning of the road to recovery.
Reading the comments helps to know there are others helping to carry the burdens of their own families. Thanks to everyone for sharing your stories.
A lot of readers will probably have some self-reflection after reading this. It might even push some to give their parents a call, or sort out some issues. Even someone with a perfect family will remember that nothing lasts forever. Enjoy your time friends.
I've had the misfortune of personally knowing at least 3 people who have killed themselves while mixing medication with alcohol. One of them was on antidepressants, but the other two weren't being treated for any sort of mental condition.
There seems to be an awful lot of people out there who think the warning labels on medication are to be taken about as seriously as the tags on a mattress. I promise you, the warnings are there for a reason. You can be an otherwise perfectly happy person and end up shooting yourself in the face if you have a bad reaction. If you are taking any sort of medication that prohibits alcohol, please follow the directions. Your friends and family members don't want to read your obituary.
This story hits close to my heart. I lost my mother a little over a year ago due to chronic alcoholism. She had been drinking for years, battled post-natal depression and one day we convinced her she was really sick and needed to go to the hospital. Her liver was in the process of shutting down, she was so dehydrated and malnourished her veins had shrunk making it difficult for doctors to take blood or put in drips. I remember the day that she went to hospital I forced her to go to the doctors and every test they ran came back red, her cardiogram yielded a weakened heart rhythm and it was at that point she realised she needed to go to the hospital, little did we know it was too late to help her.
The doctors were shocked at the state she was in. He offered to call an ambulance, but my mother wanted to be driven to the hospital instead. I knew she would try and talk her way out of it by refusing an ambulance, but finally convinced her there was no way she wasn't going. She was obviously scared and we all told her that going to hospital meant she'd get better and she probably wouldn't be in there very long, I didn't expect she would be dying in hospital two days later.
As soon as she was admitted she went straight into the emergency ward. She was under watch 24/7, hooked up to machines that monitored everything. She was still very much with it, just not as energetic. She could hold a conversation, she just looked aged but wasn't delirious or anything. We thought she was going to get better, she was in emergency for one day before being moved to a ward where she wasn't being monitored as carefully. I think it was a mistake moving her to a ward so soon.
She never told anyone she was scared or needed help. Apparently she would call my dads sister and cry to her when everyone was asleep saying she was afraid of dying. My dads sister tried to take her to the doctors repeatedly, but I think knowing something was wrong and being scared stopped her from wanting to go to the doctors until it was too late.
She was on 4 saline drips (one in each wrist and one in each knee) to try and hydrate her body. I still remember seeing her lying there with 4 drips, I didn't even know they could do that. She started showing signs of recovery, was more level-headed, but tired and lethargic. She actually seemed like she was getting better, her pulse was getting stronger and the hydration she was getting was helping her, and then at 3am one morning after being in the hospital for 2 days we all got a call that she went into cardiac arrest and they tried to resuscitate her for 1 hour before giving up.
I often wonder if she would have lived longer if she didn't go to hospital. Part of me thinks that her body couldn't handle four drips pumping saline into her body 2 days straight constantly, she had a weak pulse and the fact her veins had shrunken to me thinks she should have stayed in the emergency ward for a couple more days.
She left behind her son (me) and 5 daughters one of which only just turned 8 years old. It's made my dad incredibly strong, I've never seen him cry before. I still remember that day vividly, he's had his fair share of alcohol related problems and has been battling depression and a nervous disorder his entire life due to being abused as a child but I think he's stayed strong for us. I am worried that one day a switch might flip in his head and he'll have a breakdown, but I don't really want to think of that.
I know how you feel Notch, you never quite get over losing a parent. I partially blame myself for my mothers death. She had a drinking problem for years and I did nothing. She was obviously in decline and although everyone tried to get her to go to the doctors, she wouldn't. Did we try hard enough?
Thanks for sharing your story Notch, I think there are many who have lost a parent due to an alcohol incident like yourself. It's hard to tell people you lost a parent to alcohol, let alone talk about losing a parent in such a horrible way.
People say drugs like marijuana are bad, alcohol is the worse of them all.
Thanks for sharing your story, its very moving and wish the very best for you, and all your siblings.
>People say drugs like marijuana are bad, alcohol is the worse of them all
Totally agree. I have seen, my close friend (from college) totally disintegrate because of alcohol abuse. He did a lot of very nasty things to the persons he loved. Lost his job (several times). Got a job after a long time with difficulty and then lost it again. It became so bad, that he became delirious, and started hallucinating about some people being present when he was alone. And being the raw and powerful person he is, its very difficult for anybody to help him, unless he himself cooperates.
After seeing him at close quarters, and trying to be of help, I can say that alcohol abuse is the worst kind of evil. Now a days, in India, they show a lot of mandatory ugly-cigarette warnings before showing a movie. Every time I see those, I am reminded, that there can be none worse than alcohol abuse. Cigarette smoking is known to cause cancer, and is bad. But alcohol abuse is like cancer of the mind. Where the person himself/herself becomes a cancer for their close family.
Abuse of anything is bad, but I am with you on the alcohol versus marijuana debate. The destruction wrought by alcohol is more obvious to me year to year. Friends and colleagues caught up in its abuse and the damage it does is terrible to watch.
That was a touching story, and I'm sorry to hear about your father's death. My best friend's father was an alcoholic. I watched as my best friend struggled trying to build a relationship with him. I don't think he ever had any of the touching moments you described with his father, and I think it still affects him to this day.
It sounds like you have good memories about him, and knew that he loved you. And for the most part that's all we can ask from our fathers.
We have to stop pretending our professional lives are divorced from our personal - they grow out of one another, and in programming like other forms of writing the end result depends hugely on who we are as people - Hemmingway would never have written about a boy wizard.
Notch's work flows from who he is, and that flows a lot from who his father was.
While there are sympathetic ears, I thought I would share my own story, just so I can let it out.
I'm the son of immigrants who worked hard to get me the best education that they could afford. My family have been through hard times and good times, and back to hard times recently since the housing bust.
Money had always been a thorn for as long as I can remember.
Some time during college, while tasting such freedom (education afforded by grants and loans from my father), I began to experiment and grow more distance from my parents. My mother was having a hard time for various reasons, and she was very disappointed that I didn't call her every week as she had asked.
I stopped calling, and sometimes ignored the calls. The relationship began to sour, with hateful messages left in voicemail, admonishing me for something or another.
It wasn't always bad. I would go back for holidays and such, but they would always say, that I need to visit every Christmas and Thanksgiving, because that is the right thing to do. It was always like that: I need to do something because it is the thing to do. I can't be friends with someone at school because they had a quarrel with my friend's parents, and it is the right thing to support your parents. I have to break up with my girlfriend (way back in highschool) because I need to focus on my college education. I need to repay them when I become rich because they provided for me.
I haven't seen them in 3 years now. I'm afraid my father is forever doomed to be guilted into providing for my mother, who forever states how she hates my father being inadequate in so many ways. She says she can't leave him because she has no way of sustaining herself. He says he loves her, and that she is ill and doesn't mean what she says to me and him, but I can't tell if he's lying to himself because the alternative is too sad to contemplate, him having cut off his relationship with his own mother and family because she compelled him to do so a long time ago.
Anyways. There's too much to this story. I can go on but the details don't matter.
I wish I had a cool story about my dad saving a dog in the ice. I don't. But I did have a loving family once. It got ripped apart by money and lies and insecurities, and I've been left with estrangement and a sense of longing for over three years now. I could give them a call, as I've done before, but I've been there once and it didn't help -- I feel like I'm healthier this way.
I'm thankful for my dad who continues to say that he believes in me, through sparse email correspondences. I'm thankful for my mother who insisted that I be educated well. I wish we had it better, and I wish this guilt doesn't last forever.
As someone else whose story has some similarities, I can only encourage you to stand your ground. I'd recommend that, before you try again, build a support network of friends who are aware of the details of your story and at least mostly agree with you. The way to stay emotionally healthy when resuming contact is to have people to fall back on when things don't turn out well, to have people who'll support you whichever direction you jump.
One of the most honest, deep, meaningful and moving posts I've seen here in my short history in HN. I wish you'll never know sorrow again, my deepest condolences.
As humans we tend to place a lot of purely human ideals/ideas on the non-human world, but they're all actually things we've just made up.
Goodness/badness/fairness/unfairness aren't "real things" existing in nature; they’re just something humanity has created in our minds and societies. No things has an inherent goodness or badness, we as humans just think/decide it is.
Don't get me wrong, it's essential for human well being to have such things in place, but it's not something we can subject non-conscious things to.
Gravity doesn't care, and can't care or know in any way, whether the guy soon to die from a coconut hit to his head falling from a tree was a child rapist or a humble "saint" always bringing happiness to other people.
Haven't seen it mentionned a lot in comments, but it also happens that drugs are not the culprit. Your brain might be, or more largely your DNA. Drugs and alcohol are just ways (self destructive) to try and cope with the fact of simply being alive.
I had such an alcohool problem when i was 26 or so (some serious, drink alone thing). Only 10 years afterwards was i diagnosed with a problem in neuro-trnamitters, which another drug (medecine) just made disappear. I've been living 6 years in a world without fear and mental pain, since, something i've never experienced before. My brain was the main culprit.
I just wish we could advance our understanding of the brain so as not to serve people anymore of "god hate you" / "it's your fault" bullshit.
I'm gonna kick some creeper's asses tonight in memory of all the suffering ones (yeah, creeper's are good scapegoats, i know it's not their fault either;). Thx all of you for sharing, i've spent an interesting evenig reading the whole thing.
Thank you for sharing, it helps you and all of us that have lost a loved one. I lost my father to liver cancer this past January. He was my best friend. Almost every day I replay wonderful memories of conversations, funny moments, and life events we experienced together. I now seek for ways to connect to him and keep those memories alive. I am working on writing them down, so that I can somehow show my toddler some day the wonderful father I had. I collect the tools that we shared to work on electronic projects and cars. The thought of holding something that my dad held in his hands makes it easier.
Keep loving your dad, and each time you replay a memory in your mind, write it down... It'll keep you two connected.
[+] [-] edw519|13 years ago|reply
I used to do art, music, and comedy, and even practiced my religion, often just for her. I loved to make her laugh and it was so easy to make her proud. In the past year, I have done none of that stuff and don't know when or if I ever will.
Programming is one of the few things I've ever done that I never did just to say, "Hey Ma! Look what I did!" She never understood it. So in the past year, it's one of the few things I've been able to do. I've written a ton of code and taken great comfort it in.
I won't even attempt to give advice; none of the advice I've received from well-intentioned others in the past year has been helpful. I just hope you, me, and others like us find comfort in the wonderful memories of beloved parents and find a way to move on with our lives.
More about my mother here: http://edweissman.com/betty-weissman-1930-2011
[+] [-] X-Istence|13 years ago|reply
In all honesty there really is no "normal", you attempt to go on with your life, the reminders become less and less yet at times you will look at something and instantly have a flash back.
I wish you the best of luck, losing anyone close is terrible, so far I've been incredibly lucky that I still have my grandparents on both side of the family, and my dad, and my three younger siblings, and that we've all shared the same experience makes it easier to slowly attempt to move on.
[+] [-] nollidge|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ryguytilidie|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jbail|13 years ago|reply
I'm constantly impressed by people that have the ability to share their personal life with the world in an honest way that reveals the vulnerabilities we all share as humans. It is so much more refreshing than the opposite, where we pretend our lives are perfect and we never experience moments of doubt or melancholy.
It is rare to see someone make a post like this. This is precisely what makes it so refreshing and beautiful.
[+] [-] riffraff|13 years ago|reply
My dad passed away eleven months ago, no day goes by without thinking of him, and I may be able to get to the end of this without crying, but I can't manage a blog post.
[+] [-] rsl7|13 years ago|reply
But let's not fall into the trap of "honest, open sharing" is better than pretending, that pretending is bad, or that either is better than not sharing at all. Lots of people make their lives better by pretending enough so that it becomes so. Lots of people also aren't interested in sharing at all. Lots of what appears to be open honest vulnerability sharing is also posturing and pretending, but it's hard for an outsider to know.
tl;dr- don't judge.
[+] [-] diego|13 years ago|reply
http://longposts.com/1990082
[+] [-] chimeracoder|13 years ago|reply
EDIT: Here it is: http://web.archive.org/web/20101214221345/http://diveintomar...
[+] [-] gxs|13 years ago|reply
Every now and then, like you said, it's refreshing.
[+] [-] swah|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] speeder|13 years ago|reply
And I am very sad to see that all other families are crumbling.
I am seeking a girlfriend that wants to be a mother, and I am not finding, most of them are self-centered, and come from divorced families, the only girl that ever became my girlfriend (and is still a good friend) was the only one that I found that still had married parents.
[+] [-] akie|13 years ago|reply
What defines a good relationship, in my opinion, is two people that know what they want out of life, that chase their own goals and have their own dreams, and then decide to do that together. It's much harder though, because sometimes these goals clash, but I wouldn't want it any other way.
[+] [-] mnicole|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] king_jester|13 years ago|reply
> And I am very sad to see that all other families are crumbling.
I'm not really sure what you are talking about, families have always had issues with abuse, divorce, etc., that is nothing new (even if people may have hidden those things more often in the past, but that really depends on when and where you grew up).
[+] [-] wsc981|13 years ago|reply
In 2004, when I was 23 years old, I lost both my parents and a sister in a car accident. We had a really nice family and great parents, never expected this to happen. It caused me a depression that lasted almost 7 years.
Personally I wouldn't want a girlfriend that wants to become a mother, the pain of losing someone very dear to you is intense and I wouldn't want another depression that lasts as long as my previous one.
[+] [-] Yhippa|13 years ago|reply
Can you imagine marrying someone who's self-centered and you finally have kids? That could be disasterous. There could be lots of regret that you can't undo and you end up going down the path of divorce or worse.
[+] [-] pekk|13 years ago|reply
However, it's not correct to imply that women with divorced families are worse somehow.
[+] [-] chris_p|13 years ago|reply
What does this have to do with the rest of your sentence? Are you implying that people who come from divorced families are more self-centered?
[+] [-] killnine|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] steferson|13 years ago|reply
Anyway, powerful blog post
[+] [-] redad|13 years ago|reply
What do I do? How do you deal with a situation like this?
[+] [-] lectrick|13 years ago|reply
Your dad needs to see a counselor to help treat the alcoholism and a therapist to try to eliminate any underlying psychological issues that might be feeding into the alcoholism if there are any.
My uncle died of essentially alcoholism.
You have the right to tell your dad, dead in the eye, that you fear for his life and that he does not have to continue this downward spiral. He will need to summon a will in order to beat it, though. It might help to also remove him from the environments that contribute to his problem, such as moving to a dry town.
It still amazes me that I used to drink more (was always moderate) but really tapered off lately for multiple reasons (most related to health) without much difficulty at all, yet some people get completely addicted to this thing. (I have nearly all German and Czech ancestry which might help.) Yet there is a game called WoW that I can't seem to tear myself completely away from, and there is a woman on this planet that is impossible for me to not have amazing sex with when alone (she shares the same vulnerability) who I unfortunately cannot be anywhere near anymore because we are not right for each other and must focus on other people...
[+] [-] mnicole|13 years ago|reply
If that's an option you think he'd try out, perhaps there's a facility nearby that could help.
Edit: If you're going to downvote, do so because something is legitimately wrong and prove otherwise, not because you don't agree with it. This topic is a big deal and my response is equally as serious.
[+] [-] uptown|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alexakarpov|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tharris0101|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] huhtenberg|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jspthrowaway2|13 years ago|reply
The Yogscast debacle comes to mind. For those that are unaware, Yogscast, one of the biggest promotional engines sending traffic to Minecraft, went to Minecon on their own dime and did an autograph panel. Notch responded by eviscerating them on Twitter for, among other things, wishing to be helped out financially for their appearance (which cost them quite a bit, and, let's be honest, Mojang is not broke; Mojang also sold the rights to broadcast Yogscast's own show without asking). This was all based upon drama invented in Notch's head, and he had to profusely apologize later.
It seems like Notch goes out of his way to find drama. However good of a person he is tends to be undone by his occasionally childish behavior.
[+] [-] thispassisweak|13 years ago|reply
Reading the comments helps to know there are others helping to carry the burdens of their own families. Thanks to everyone for sharing your stories.
[+] [-] recycleme|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lectrick|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] evanmoran|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] skeletonjelly|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] phaus|13 years ago|reply
There seems to be an awful lot of people out there who think the warning labels on medication are to be taken about as seriously as the tags on a mattress. I promise you, the warnings are there for a reason. You can be an otherwise perfectly happy person and end up shooting yourself in the face if you have a bad reaction. If you are taking any sort of medication that prohibits alcohol, please follow the directions. Your friends and family members don't want to read your obituary.
[+] [-] DigitalSea|13 years ago|reply
The doctors were shocked at the state she was in. He offered to call an ambulance, but my mother wanted to be driven to the hospital instead. I knew she would try and talk her way out of it by refusing an ambulance, but finally convinced her there was no way she wasn't going. She was obviously scared and we all told her that going to hospital meant she'd get better and she probably wouldn't be in there very long, I didn't expect she would be dying in hospital two days later.
As soon as she was admitted she went straight into the emergency ward. She was under watch 24/7, hooked up to machines that monitored everything. She was still very much with it, just not as energetic. She could hold a conversation, she just looked aged but wasn't delirious or anything. We thought she was going to get better, she was in emergency for one day before being moved to a ward where she wasn't being monitored as carefully. I think it was a mistake moving her to a ward so soon.
She never told anyone she was scared or needed help. Apparently she would call my dads sister and cry to her when everyone was asleep saying she was afraid of dying. My dads sister tried to take her to the doctors repeatedly, but I think knowing something was wrong and being scared stopped her from wanting to go to the doctors until it was too late.
She was on 4 saline drips (one in each wrist and one in each knee) to try and hydrate her body. I still remember seeing her lying there with 4 drips, I didn't even know they could do that. She started showing signs of recovery, was more level-headed, but tired and lethargic. She actually seemed like she was getting better, her pulse was getting stronger and the hydration she was getting was helping her, and then at 3am one morning after being in the hospital for 2 days we all got a call that she went into cardiac arrest and they tried to resuscitate her for 1 hour before giving up.
I often wonder if she would have lived longer if she didn't go to hospital. Part of me thinks that her body couldn't handle four drips pumping saline into her body 2 days straight constantly, she had a weak pulse and the fact her veins had shrunken to me thinks she should have stayed in the emergency ward for a couple more days.
She left behind her son (me) and 5 daughters one of which only just turned 8 years old. It's made my dad incredibly strong, I've never seen him cry before. I still remember that day vividly, he's had his fair share of alcohol related problems and has been battling depression and a nervous disorder his entire life due to being abused as a child but I think he's stayed strong for us. I am worried that one day a switch might flip in his head and he'll have a breakdown, but I don't really want to think of that.
I know how you feel Notch, you never quite get over losing a parent. I partially blame myself for my mothers death. She had a drinking problem for years and I did nothing. She was obviously in decline and although everyone tried to get her to go to the doctors, she wouldn't. Did we try hard enough?
Thanks for sharing your story Notch, I think there are many who have lost a parent due to an alcohol incident like yourself. It's hard to tell people you lost a parent to alcohol, let alone talk about losing a parent in such a horrible way.
People say drugs like marijuana are bad, alcohol is the worse of them all.
My mother was 48 years old.
[+] [-] rehack|13 years ago|reply
>People say drugs like marijuana are bad, alcohol is the worse of them all
Totally agree. I have seen, my close friend (from college) totally disintegrate because of alcohol abuse. He did a lot of very nasty things to the persons he loved. Lost his job (several times). Got a job after a long time with difficulty and then lost it again. It became so bad, that he became delirious, and started hallucinating about some people being present when he was alone. And being the raw and powerful person he is, its very difficult for anybody to help him, unless he himself cooperates.
After seeing him at close quarters, and trying to be of help, I can say that alcohol abuse is the worst kind of evil. Now a days, in India, they show a lot of mandatory ugly-cigarette warnings before showing a movie. Every time I see those, I am reminded, that there can be none worse than alcohol abuse. Cigarette smoking is known to cause cancer, and is bad. But alcohol abuse is like cancer of the mind. Where the person himself/herself becomes a cancer for their close family.
[+] [-] lostlogin|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chubbard|13 years ago|reply
It sounds like you have good memories about him, and knew that he loved you. And for the most part that's all we can ask from our fathers.
[+] [-] lifeisstillgood|13 years ago|reply
We have to stop pretending our professional lives are divorced from our personal - they grow out of one another, and in programming like other forms of writing the end result depends hugely on who we are as people - Hemmingway would never have written about a boy wizard.
Notch's work flows from who he is, and that flows a lot from who his father was.
Keep on flowing
[+] [-] tinok|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] singleserv|13 years ago|reply
I'm the son of immigrants who worked hard to get me the best education that they could afford. My family have been through hard times and good times, and back to hard times recently since the housing bust.
Money had always been a thorn for as long as I can remember.
Some time during college, while tasting such freedom (education afforded by grants and loans from my father), I began to experiment and grow more distance from my parents. My mother was having a hard time for various reasons, and she was very disappointed that I didn't call her every week as she had asked.
I stopped calling, and sometimes ignored the calls. The relationship began to sour, with hateful messages left in voicemail, admonishing me for something or another.
It wasn't always bad. I would go back for holidays and such, but they would always say, that I need to visit every Christmas and Thanksgiving, because that is the right thing to do. It was always like that: I need to do something because it is the thing to do. I can't be friends with someone at school because they had a quarrel with my friend's parents, and it is the right thing to support your parents. I have to break up with my girlfriend (way back in highschool) because I need to focus on my college education. I need to repay them when I become rich because they provided for me.
I haven't seen them in 3 years now. I'm afraid my father is forever doomed to be guilted into providing for my mother, who forever states how she hates my father being inadequate in so many ways. She says she can't leave him because she has no way of sustaining herself. He says he loves her, and that she is ill and doesn't mean what she says to me and him, but I can't tell if he's lying to himself because the alternative is too sad to contemplate, him having cut off his relationship with his own mother and family because she compelled him to do so a long time ago.
Anyways. There's too much to this story. I can go on but the details don't matter.
I wish I had a cool story about my dad saving a dog in the ice. I don't. But I did have a loving family once. It got ripped apart by money and lies and insecurities, and I've been left with estrangement and a sense of longing for over three years now. I could give them a call, as I've done before, but I've been there once and it didn't help -- I feel like I'm healthier this way.
I'm thankful for my dad who continues to say that he believes in me, through sparse email correspondences. I'm thankful for my mother who insisted that I be educated well. I wish we had it better, and I wish this guilt doesn't last forever.
[+] [-] saraid216|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eranation|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Aco-|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gprasanth|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kristofferR|13 years ago|reply
As humans we tend to place a lot of purely human ideals/ideas on the non-human world, but they're all actually things we've just made up.
Goodness/badness/fairness/unfairness aren't "real things" existing in nature; they’re just something humanity has created in our minds and societies. No things has an inherent goodness or badness, we as humans just think/decide it is.
Don't get me wrong, it's essential for human well being to have such things in place, but it's not something we can subject non-conscious things to.
Gravity doesn't care, and can't care or know in any way, whether the guy soon to die from a coconut hit to his head falling from a tree was a child rapist or a humble "saint" always bringing happiness to other people.
[+] [-] buttscicles|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] peterhost|13 years ago|reply
I had such an alcohool problem when i was 26 or so (some serious, drink alone thing). Only 10 years afterwards was i diagnosed with a problem in neuro-trnamitters, which another drug (medecine) just made disappear. I've been living 6 years in a world without fear and mental pain, since, something i've never experienced before. My brain was the main culprit.
I just wish we could advance our understanding of the brain so as not to serve people anymore of "god hate you" / "it's your fault" bullshit.
I'm gonna kick some creeper's asses tonight in memory of all the suffering ones (yeah, creeper's are good scapegoats, i know it's not their fault either;). Thx all of you for sharing, i've spent an interesting evenig reading the whole thing.
[+] [-] jggonz|13 years ago|reply
Keep loving your dad, and each time you replay a memory in your mind, write it down... It'll keep you two connected.