AITA for responding to my father’s request for a relationship with a detailed PowerPoint on why he will never be forgiven?

A Redditor shared how she responded to her estranged father’s request for reconciliation after years of neglect. She sent him a detailed PowerPoint presentation featuring excerpts from her personal journals, documenting her feelings of abandonment and hurt. While her family believes her response was unnecessarily cruel, she feels it was a fair way to explain her perspective. Read the full story below:

‘ AITA for responding to my father’s request for a relationship with a detailed PowerPoint on why he will never be forgiven?’

My (24F) mom died when I was 7 from leukemia. I have very few memories of her from before she was sick and I didn’t get to spend a lot of time with her in her last year but she was an artist and until she couldn’t anymore she would make me little collages when she was in the hospital with drawings and photos and messages for me.

My grandmother put them all in a book for me after she died. I wanted to be like my mom and my counselor thought it would help, so I started a journal where I would do kind of a similar thing and I’ve done at least one page a week all these years ever since my mom died, more when I miss her or have something hard going on.

So, I have kind of a unique record of my mental state over the last 16 years. My father remarried when I was 9. My step-mother really leaned hard into the “I’m your mom now” and my father didn’t stop her. It improved when they had my half-brother because she basically forgot about me then. Unfortunately he got cancer when he was 3.

And I pretty much ceased to exist for my father, he was either working or gone with my brother and I spent all my teen years mostly at home alone or with my grandparents. The mantra was that my brother needed to be the focus because he might die so I needed to not be selfish since I was healthy. I stopped trying to talk to him when I was 16 and it was a dark time.

I moved out when I was 18 and cut them off completely. My grandparents let me know that my brother died a couple of years ago but respected my desire to remain NC with my father. He recently reached out to them because he wants to see me and talk.

I went through my old journals and made him a PowerPoint with images of the entries where I had talked about being frustrated and feeling abandoned and unwanted, some with literal quotes of things my dad had said to me during arguments. Even the really dark stuff from when I was seriously depressed.

Then I ended it with a photo of one of my mom’s collages where she had written “Remember that your dad and I are always here for you” and I wrote “You failed. Go away.” underneath. I felt like him being able to see it from my literal perspective would communicate why I don’t want him back better than I could.

Evidently it worked, but a little too well because I’ve been bombarded by family telling me that it’s understandable that I don’t want to see him, but what I sent gutted him and he’s completely fallen apart after reading through it and it was unnecessarily cruel. Maybe it was, I know my bar for that is kind of weird sometimes, so AITA?

Here’s what people had to say to OP:

Current-Read −  NTA, i have a saying “If the truth about your conduct paints you in a bad light, the problem isn’t with the truth. Its with your conduct.” If the truth hurts your dad its his own to deal with and not on you.

Edit: Thank you all for the many awards! I wasn’t expecting it to blow up the way it did ❤️ For those loving the saying and planing on using it happy to help! Its been a very handy saying and its helped me lots, hope it helps you all too.

Ch-Ch-Ch-CherryBomb0 −  NTA in the slightest. You told your dad how you felt and it made him have to confront his failures as a parent. It is not your fault he neglected you. He is upset because he knows what you put in the PowerPoint is the reality of how he treated you when you were just a child.

Now that the truth is out and you have reestablished NC, I hope you are able to let go of some of the anger you have at him and know that you did nothing to cause how he treated you. I’m no contact with my dad and have been able to find a lot of peace in the life I have built without him. I hope for the same for you.

Wrong-Construction40 −  NTA he failed. He’s gutted because he’s had to look at the actual consequences of his actions- the paain he caused his child. Yea that probably sucks, buy maybe he should have been a better dad.

Lazuli_Rose −  Evidently it worked, but a little too well because I’ve been bombarded by family telling me that it’s understandable that I don’t want to see him, but what I sent gutted him and he’s completely fallen apart after reading through it and it was unnecessarily cruel.

It was unnecessarily cruel of him to completely abandon/ignore you when your half-brother got sick. You already lost your mom, you would lose your brother, too, but he didn’t think you needed any support or help?. **NTA.**

Paulie_Knuckles −  Holy s**t. NTA but that was brutal. I pictured the “You Failed” popping up at the end like when you die in Dark Souls.

[Reddit User] −  NTA. Was it harsh? Yeah. Was it a lot of effort when simply have telling him “go away” would have accomplished the basic goal? Probably. But this was your lived reality, and he wasn’t interested in hearing or helping you when it would actually have made a difference.

If it’s only now dawning on him how lonely and rejected you must have felt, he’s just going to have to live with that. (Also, one does have to question whether he’d be this gutted or even reaching out at all if your brother were still here.)

crockofpot −  That was painfully harsh to read, but I still think NTA. Your father *did* fail you repeatedly, even before your brother got sick. He should never have married a woman who tried to push out the memory of your mom. And he should never have tolerated you being “forgotten about” as soon as your half-brother was born.

Your brother’s illness and passing were a tragedy and your dad and stepmom could perhaps be forgiven for a “doing their best but fell short” type of parenting. But they clearly didn’t even reach that level. People will convince themselves of all kinds of delusions about why a close relationship went bad. You destroyed any such delusions your father had and spoke your truth.

If he wants to have any hope of repairing his relationship with you, that can’t happen until he honestly faces what he did to you. (I am not saying that to push you into repairing your relationship with him — that’s your call to make. Just that *IF* it were to happen, that would be an important element.) He could start by calling off the family members who are hassling you.

FreeRustProofing −  NTA at all. How dare your “family” expect you to sugar coat your feelings for your awful awful father. How. Dare. They. REAL family would apologize to you for letting you suffer in silence and not being there to help you, a child yourself, with the things you needed to grow up emotionally healthy. REAL family would ask how they can help you now.

Real family wouldn’t minimize the problems because they are inconvenient for their narrative. These people want to play happy family and pretend everything is not as bad as it is. This situation is exactly karma for your dad’s absolute failure as a father. He brought this on himself. I am soooo angry for you.

They don’t get to decide what is necessary and unnecessary for you. Don’t you dare let them talk you out of what you feel because they don’t like how it makes them feel or look. Your power point didn’t “work too well”, it worked. Period. I’m proud of you for finally getting to say things in a way that got your point across.

Now go be awesome on your own. You don’t owe them a lift up after they let you down. And please don’t listen when they tell you to “be the bigger person”. It just means eat their abuse. I think you need to face the reality that you have better coping mechanisms and understanding of what it means to be a functional adult than your father and family. They may be older, but they are not wiser.

You are adult and you get to decide what that means. You get to decide what works for you. I’m so sorry this was your childhood reality. I hope you continue to do your art therapy, and make up for your n**lect with a great life. NTA. At all.

benfranklin-katniss −  NTA. You’re the GOAT!!! His and stepmother’s behavior was extreme! Having 1 sick child doesn’t cause other children to cease to exist. Demanding that you shrink yourself and n**lect/belittle your wants/needs/experiences because you were healthy is beyond cruel and toxic.

You gave him 10 minutes to learn how you felt about his n**lect and cruelty. He’s had, what, a week or two of feeling the hopelessness and supposedly suffering. You’ve had at least 12-15 years of suffering??? That’s what I would text back to every person who has criticized you: you suffered depression, n**lect, and cruelty for 10-12 years.

You’re father hasn’t suffered those things, he inflicted them. He’s is experiencing the consequences of his actions, and it’s only been 2 weeks. The fact is you did not make that PowerPoint to cause pain, you made it to explain why you feel the way you do, and that you don’t want anything to do with him, ever.

Then ask those people if they ever held him to account for him abdication of parental responsibility and insist he straighten up. Unless they confronted him during that time period he abandoned you, they don’t have a duck in the hunt and need to bury their heads in the sand just as they did back then.

Your mom sounds like she was amazing. Your weekly collection of collages sounds awesome and I’d definitely buy a big glossy book from a person who showed them off and told the stories of that period of time. So, that means you’re awesome. Which is why you’re the GOAT.. Keep being rad. Btw, I finally went no contact with my narcissistic mother when I was 40.

KSknitter −  NTA but it seems he not only shoved you aside, he stole any chance you had to have a relationship with your brother. You don’t need that in your life.

Reconciliation after years of hurt is never simple. Did the Redditor go too far in her delivery, or was she justified in holding her father accountable for his past actions? Share your thoughts below!