A Brief History

I was 23 when I started my first job outside of my family's catfish bait company. I remember feeling a sense of independence for the first time in my life. Until then, I'd never really done anything that my family didn't have jurisdiction over.

At the beginning of that year, I'd told my father that come hell or high water, I was not going to be working for the family by the year's end. The 9 months preceding that were hell. My grandparents regularly ridiculed me for wanting to work somewhere else. My brothers, who also worked at the family business, could not believe I was actually trying to leave them. My mother cried in mourning. Almost every day, my father tried to talk me out of leaving, trying every angle he think of. It was made abundantly clear to me that my leaving was not approved of by anyone.

I was applying to jobs desperately. I originally wanted a software job, and then I broadened my search to anything in IT. To my dismay, it seemed that no one was interested in hiring a 23 year old home-schooled bait mixer. I had no degree and no real IT experience. I was 23 and already feeling like I was stuck in a miserable, inescapable situation.

The only thing that kept me grounded was my faith in God, and that's true to this day. Despite whatever's going on around me, I'm a hopeless optimist. Things will get better. The path will probably not be easy. But it will get better, and it will be worth it.

I ultimately landed an entry-level IT Helpdesk position at a local credit union. Transitioning from a job where my family was an omnipresent force to a job not only absent them, but in a field I actually enjoyed, was almost unbelievable. It was nirvana.

I finally had space to breathe and orient myself for the first time in my life, and with that came some realizations about my own life, and subsequently my family, that set us on a multi-year collision course.

This would ultimately end with me ending all contact with my parents, and the rest of my blood relatives ending contact with me because of that.

What, Why, and How

When people ask about what exactly happened between me and my parents, I tell them the most palatable answer, which is that our lifestyles were no longer compatible, which is true. I've found that divulging any further details either makes people uncomfortable or inspires them to try and convince me to change my mind about everything.

Yes, our lifestyles were no longer compatible. But it's not because they're morning people and we're not. It's because my father expects me to submit to him in all things. He expected to retain the same level of power over me that he had while I was a child in his home. He expected my loyalties to remain solely to him, despite me being married and having children of my own. He even said the Scripture (Genesis 2:24) that reads "...Man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh" did not mean that I no longer had to answer to him.

None of this is hyperbole; these are all things he's explicitly told me time and time again. I remember when I was 21, just a few months after I'd gotten married to my wonderful wife, that I had to sit him down and tell him how things were different. That I'll always love and respect him, and when he has something to say to me I'll listen. However, just him telling me to do something did not mean I had to do it. Ultimately, things were between me and God now, and I had to fulfill my calling now to be the head of my new family, who were my wife and any future children we had.

In response, he took a moment and told me he was beginning to think he raised me wrong. When I asked what he meant, he repeated himself.

He then spent the next several days thoroughly explaining to me that if I'm upset about what he said, it's only because I misunderstood him. All he meant was that he and my mother were always supposed to be the most important people in my life. Regardless of my marital status or if I have kids. They raised me, they gave me everything I had, they sacrificed years of their life for me. As such, any idea of me being loyal to anyone else besides them was sinful and blasphemous.

This was seven years before I ultimately had to go no-contact with them. After years of talking, and talking, and talking, and seemingly making some progress, and backtracking, and talking... it eventually became pretty clear to me that something had to give.

By the time I was 27, I had my firstborn. By the time he was one and a half years old, I could no longer justify even being around my parents, if for nothing else then for my son's sake.

I had my last conversation with them at the end of June in 2023. Immediately after, almost all contact also stopped between me and other members of my family. In September of 2023, both of my brothers told me not to contact them any longer over it all.

Conclusion

Now, in January of 2025, I've living on a private little acreage with my two young kids. I've had a lot of time to reflect on things I've been through. There are so many things in my head that I feel the need to write them down. I also know many people with similar experiences. While this blog will be more cathartic for me than anything else, hopefully it will help others with similar upbringings make some sense of it all.

I think I just barely made it out in time. If I had known what exactly I was up against, I would have made certain decisions much sooner than I did, and probably made some different ones as well.