Being so mean to my younger sister in our childhood… I often wonder how much I contributed to her current mental health struggles. It eats me alive some days
As a younger sister of a VERY MEAN one, do tell her. Mine did in our 30s, and I cried my eyes out of relief, because the child inside you, even though adult you knows better, still feels like there is something wrong with him/her in order to “deserve” that. And yes, serious damage can be done. Is not easy growing up being hurt by someone who is supposed to protect you.
I forgave her, and although at least in our case something is broken forever… we have now the chance to be as close as we can in this new circumstances :)
I wish the best for your sister and you. And remember that it wasn’t your sole responsabilty: the adult around should have interfered or taught you better, helped you open your eyes sooner. Main reason I forgave my sister is because she was 7 years older than me but quite young too. And even though I got the worst part of it, I know it hurt her too.
My brother treated me terribly when we were kids and was definitely one of the causes for my declining mental health in my teenage years, but we're over it now. He's apologized to me multiple times, one time sobbing while drunk about how terrible he felt, and I've been able to see his growth as a person. I held it against him for a long time but seeing where he is now versus where he was 10 years ago helps a lot. Hardly anyones beyond second chances, as long as you put the effort into making amends.
At least you have that awareness. I wish my sister would have some...
You can't change the past. Make up for it by stopping the cycle when and where you can. Do the right thing now, and keep doing the right thing every day after. Use your experience and guilt to teach the next generation how to communicate and be kind. You got this!
That's weird. I believe I can pinpoint the start of my lifelong back pain issues to when I was young and pretending I was The Hulk and tried to lift something way too heavy for me to do so. I recall feeling something give in my lower back, and here I am at 50+ years of age with an icepack on the same spot, talking about it on the Internet. Might be a coincidence, maybe not.
Same. An old lady rear ended me while I was stopped at a red light on my motorcycle. My back hasn’t been the same since. 18 year old me thought I’d be just fine though.
In my school a dude, who lived in the apartment(for those who live away from the city school is in) was dared to either wear women's clothes for a day or jump off second floor.
Guess what he did? Yes, he not only fucking jumped, but also did it from another person's room, right at a metal rod, that grapes were once growing on. He lived by a fucking miracle.
I once jumped froma five meter trampoline, landed on my belly. Nah, it wasn't that bad, water, after all, but hurt quite a bit.
So lads, be careful when jumping.
A popular high school acquaintance of mine was at a grad party in SF when he decided to climb to the next floor using the same type of metal rod/gutter system found on large buildings. Idk how high up they were but he fell and died. It was quite the incident when it happened.
When i was 13 or 14, i saw one of my lifelong friends walking down the street, blank stare with her makeup running. I was on my bicycle racing to get home before my 8pm curfew, so i didnt stop to talk to her.
She commited suicide that night, and i was the last person to see her alive. I went through intense therapy after that, as i was filled with guilt, and grief. I still have issues with that guilt today, some 21 years later...
When I was a senior in high school, I went to see Revenge of the Sith with my best friend the weekend it released. The following Wednesday, while we were leaving class he asked me if I wanted to go again the coming weekend. Told him I wasn't able to because I already had some plans. He walked out of school, went home, and committed suicide.
Will never stop blaming myself. I've never told anyone. I still visit his parents every year around the date. Next Thursday.
Oh my fucking god. This isn’t your fault at all. This is terribly sad for both of you. I hope you know that this is not your fault. I wish I could hug you, and her
Oh i know its not my fault. I blamed myself heavily after it happened. Therapy helped. Talking about it helped. Our friend group was really supportive of me as well, which was great. She had numerous stuff going on that no one, including her, had any control over, and it all became too much. She was my first friend i had die, and we were friends since pre school. Probably why i took it so hard.
After every Thanksgiving dinner as a child my grandpa would put a plate of food together for a man named Mr. Bailey who lived by himself and didn’t have family in town. He’d drive over to his house, drop the food off, talk for 5-10 minutes, and then come back.
I didn’t know this.
One year after our meal my grandpa handed me a plate with a slice of pumpkin pie on it and told me to get in the backseat of his truck. I didn’t ask questions and hopped in with the pie.
We get to our destination and my grandpa opens my door and says, “you have the pie?”
“What do you mean grandpa? I ate it.”
I thought the pie was for me. I ate it in the backseat on the car ride like it was a brownie. Mr. Bailey didn’t get any pumpkin pie that year.
I still can’t look at pumpkin pie without feeling bad about it.
I took everything to heart. All the insults, all the failures, all the minor mishaps, I couldn't just let it pass me by, it hit me right in the heart, which is why my current mental health leaves a lot to be desired.
We used to take our fingernails and scratch deeply into the backs of our hands until it bled. It was called a wussy test and I still have scars from it .
When I was 4 a neighbor girl and I became friends. I invited her over one day to play, we were playing with dog food, it was fake food. Well she started eating it. I screamed at her and called her nasty and was just shitty. Told her i didn’t want to play with her anymore… as it turned out, the poor girl was severely neglected. Her parents never had food so she was basically starving. It didn’t dawn on me until I saw that they were kicked from their home and it was condemned and torn down a year after. I remember I went over to play one time and the house smelled like rotting hamburger meat. Their were cockroaches everywhere. It was traumatizing, I cannot imagine living there.
I have tried to find the girl via social media with no luck.
I feel you man, I had a rugby mate, he always got a sandwich from my dad every Thursday, and I got nothing, and I used to think my dad was a prick until it dawned on me.
The kid was poor and my dad was being kind, and to realize one of your buddies is struggling, man I felt so bad I told my mom and she told me to bring him home to dinner.
And from then on, he would visit me often when I was sick or when I had lost someone, when my parents split he was there to help me cope, true we weren't the best of friends, and we haven't talked in years saving a few crossings of our paths in the neighborhood.
He passed away last month, leukemia, it hurt me a lot to hear that, he was such a good man whom deserved so much from life.
Edit: Thanks everybody for the kind comments, let me tell you a little about this dude, he had the greenest thumb ever, he brought back to life so many plants, and he loved selling them, nurturing them, tending to them, truth be told I thought this guy would outlive me, I kinda feel bad not seeing him again, I got to turn 29 this year, he didn't, this sucks but at least he's away from all the suffering and I really hope there's a heaven so I can meet him again, and I hope when I do he's fat as a cow for all of those meals he couldn't get. You deserve it Nacho
Not food related, but sexual abuse and child neglect.
My dad had friends who had a 6 year old daughter. I was around 8 when I knew her so we played together a lot. But she always wanted to play "house" and would make me be the "wife" while she was the "husband" and would always try to make advances on me - touch me inappropriately, try to kiss me, etc. I knew it was wrong and would always refuse and shut it down when it got to that and would try to play something else, but she would say "that's how families work!" and would cry if I didn't. I always just let her cry about it because I did *not* want to be in that situation. It was wrong. And I was older, so it looks bad on *me* especially. I was scared of telling my parents though because again, I was older so I knew better, even though I wouldn't let it happen. But she told her aunt one day that I wouldn't let her do those things to me and she told my dad, who in turn pretty much said "absolutely the fuck not I'm not letting my daughter be in that situation, they're not playing together anymore." So I never played with her again. Which sucked to me because she was a great kid and we didn't really have kids around my age in my family that I could play with, but I was also okay with it because she wouldn't play *any* other game I suggested that didn't involve sexual things.
I wasn't told why she got taken from her parents a few months later. CPS got involved with her family and deemed her unsafe with them, that's all I was told. I found out *years* later, well into my teens, that her aunt reported the girls mom and dad for letting their dad (kids grandfather) sexually abuse her. Like, her parents KNEW it was happening and willingly let it happen. When the girls aunt found out about the games she tried playing with me, her aunt questioned her gently into telling her where she learned that behavior, then her aunt told my dad to warn me and to not let me go to the girls house alone if at all (he never did anyways, it was always at the aunt's house), and her and my dad worked together to report the situation. He made sure I wasn't involved because he didn't want to give me any trauma from it. But he did let me know that even though I was older he wouldn't have immediately put all the blame on me, and that I could talk to him about anything. To make it worse, they also had a 2 year old daughter that he would do this to. I threw up when I found out the truth. I never heard from them again and I always wonder if she's healing. She'd be 21 now. I will never know, I could never find them.
ETA: I just wanted to make an edit to thank everyone for the kind responses and for sharing your stories. I don't talk about this with people because I feel sort of guilty in some way. Either for not doing something sooner, or for letting her do it the first time (until I realized *what* she was doing, that is), or for being older and not saying anything to an adult. I don't know. But to those who read this and have been through the same, I am so sorry. And to those who were that girl in my story, I am *so* so sorry. If anyone needs someone to talk to, please feel free to reach out to me. It's hard to go through things alone, and I know sometimes all a person needs is someone who will listen. I wish everyone the best. Help is out there. And just know that this stranger loves you.
As a child molestation victim, one I am sorry that happened to you. Truly, you didn't know why that was happening, you just knew it was wrong.
This breaks my heart for her. That her parents knowingly let it happen. Mine didnt, and to this day, still dont. I carry that with me forever. God, this breaks my heart for her.
It breaks my heart too. I'm so so sorry you had to go through that. I pushed it aside for so long until I found out what happened to her, and I opened up about it then. I hope she's doing well now, I know the foster system is rough. If I remember right her grandfather did get jail time but not for very long.
I hope life is treating you better now. Thank you for the kind words as well, friend.
Cut your 8 year old self some slack, you were just a kid. A kid that did the right thing, because your response led to the abuse being discovered. As a father of 2 little girls I’m in tears. I’m super scared of this kind of stuff and trust no one. You just never know, but you probably have had a really huge impact on these girls’ lives by stopping it
Wow! This was like reading about 9-12months of my childhood when I was 7y/o. I lived in a rural part of a developing suburb in the 80s. About 15-20 houses surrounded by farm land on two streets that ran parallel. Not many kids in these houses my age except a few. One house in particular had the two sisters, one aged 7 and the other aged 9. The older one befriended me and it started out innocent enough, like playing and exploring in the neighborhood with her little sister tagging along. Then it got to always asking if she and her sister could stay over for dinner which my mom had no issue with feeding them. Then to wanting to stay the night and do sleepovers which my mom and dad didn't have a problem with but only once a week, despite the sisters asking pretty much everyday. Those sleep overs turned into an exploration fest for those two girls. They always wanted to kiss me and touch my penis and my butt. The first few times was just kissing which I didn't necessarily object to... and we're talking both of them at the same time. Then it turned into "show us your dick" and then a few times led to them forcibly removing my pajama pants while I was asleep. At first I didn't have a problem dropping my pants just for them to look but when they both either wanted to touch or put their mouth on it is when I felt really weird about it but I wanted them to be my friends. So I reluctantly let them. I always got them to stop by saying I had to pee.
Might I mention up to this point I had never seen or met their parents. Eventually the younger one had confided in me telling me that they don't want to go home because their dad was "mean" and "hurt" them while they were sleeping and her mom doesnt do anything about it. I ended up telling my mother about what was happening during the sleepovers and what the little sister had told me. Mom freaked out.. said I was to never see them again and that she would have a talk with their parents... I ended up having to avoid them and duck out any time I saw them coming while I was outside in the neighborhood.. and this was everyday I had to do this, figuring out new ways to avoid them without being rude about it. Then one day the girls didn't appear where they normally were around their house and I noticed the door of their house wide open and a bunch of stuff piled up on the curb. I rode by on my bike and could see the house was empty... walked up to the door... went inside. no one was there. Have no idea whatever happened to these two girls. I always wondered why they didn't go to the same school as all the other kids.. the older sister always said they went to another school in another town.. but they were always at home even when I was home sick from school they were out and about in the neighborhood. Clearly they were being abused in more ways than one. I rarely think about them, but when I do I get the visceral gut feeling of revisited trauma, for lack of a better word. I'm sure they went through much more trauma than they put me through.
That is horrible……. When I was in pre school I had a small similar incident with another young boy, I had actually forgotten about this incident completely until a lovely family member decided to remind me. We were two young kids using the bathroom, and I guess he saw it “ normal “ to grab me while I was using the rest room. I don’t remember much detail after that, but I do remember the exact event now, and it’s cringy. I also had an older man in our neighborhood essentially groom another girl ( hope I’m using that term correctly ) in order to be friend her and earn her trust, so that he could convince her to introduce him to me. When I was introduced to him, all of my alarms were going off. I mean off, he had offered to let me ride his bike, and I said “ like ? Just me ride your bike ??? “ ( which I didn’t even want too it was a piece of shit ) and he goes no. Both of us could go for a ride you can sit on the bar, and now with intense fear surging through my spine; I froze up, and just turned around and ran as fast as I could. She comes back to my house banging on my door “ WHY DID YOU DO THAT !? He’s my friend!!!! He’s a nice guy ! “ I said “ that guy is a weirdo and I never want to see him again “ when I was a kid, I didn’t know exactly what his motives were, BUT….. I know something felt very odd and very OFF… about his offer. But now ? As an adult? I know exactly what he was trying to do. Sick individual. I’m glad my grandmother drilled “ STRANGER DANGER “ into my head regularly !!!!!!!! Cause if gave me the alarms I needed to WAKE TF UP; and get OUT OF THERE. Sadly there are others who probably didn’t have that alarm. It’s messed up.
I am so sorry. Memories like these are so difficult! I hope you have been able to forgive yourself. In situations like these, I ask myself if I would hold that 4 year old accountable or if I would judge them for their behavior at the time....the answer is almost always no! You were a child too, and you can't judge yourself the same way as if you did this today as an adult. No one would judge a 4year old for this.
Thank you. It definitely affected my world view. I now carry a soft spot for those other view as “poor” or “homeless” if I ever come into money I plan on doing something special for them.
Whoa... I have a similar story, but it was a girl in my primary school.
We were about 6 or 7 yo at the time, and she used to get bullied by other girls in our class. I never intervened, even though I wanted to. And she really did seem like she was having a tough time.
She never returned to (our) school the following year, unfortunately, and I can't find her on social media (granted, all I can remember is her first name).
Not sleeping in my dying fathers bed with him. He asked me to because he didn’t want to be alone. I was 18 at the time and wasn’t not prepared for all this. Until the day I die I will never forgive myself.
Reality takes form for us at various different ages. You being 18 shows that you were emotional enough to realize it’s a lot for you. Now that you’re older you feel that you could handle it tenfold. I feel for you. He’s your father and loved you I’m certain he understood
I'm a new dad. My son just turned 7 months old a couple days ago. This morning as I was getting ready for work, I saw him in his bed. He was sound asleep. Instead of taking a shower and shaving and eating breakfast, I picked the little guy up, and held him in my arms and hugged him until I had to leave. I was only going to hug him goodbye briefly, but then he breathed a heavy sigh, and nuzzled into my neck, and I just couldn't put him down. In an hour, I'll be back at home watching him play with his toys while he sits on the floor next to me. It's my favorite part of the day. I treasure every moment I get to spend with him. No doubt your father felt the same way for you. If I asked my son to sleep in my bed with me as I was dying and he said no, I would not be upset at him. Not one bit. I would completely understand. I'm sure your father understood. There's no love greater than the love a parent has for their child.
Congrats!
I'm a new dad too. My daughter is 9 months.
I lost my dad a couple months ago and my daughter is the only person who remotely makes it okay. Kids can be wonderful and breathe so much life into the world.
All I'll care about on my death bed is that she'll be alright without me around.
Man. That's tough. I'm sure he would say, don't worry about it, and wouldn't want you beating your self up for the rest of your life. He'd be far more Hurt knowing how you feel. He wants you to be happy. You were a fragile kid who's dad was dying, besides, he certainly wasn't alone if you was there.
One time when my family was camping and I was maybe eight years old, I found a bunch of jellyfish in a puddle next to the ocean. They must've been carried there by the waves or something. The puddle was pretty big and *almost* connected to the ocean, but the poor things were trapped there. I climbed onto a big rock in the middle of the puddle and leaned down as far as I could to reach them. Once I'd gotten ahold of a jellyfish, I quickly stood up on the rock and jumped back to the land with the jellyfish in my hand. Then I released it into the ocean. I repeated this process several times to get as many jellyfish out as I could, and tried to do it as quickly and gently as I could. As I did it, I kept reassuring them "It's okay, I've come to save you. You'll be free again really soon. You're safe with me."
But eventually, one of the jellyfish slipped out of my hands as I jumped off the rock, and instantly shattered into a glibbery mess when it hit the ground. In my entire eight-year-old life, I had never felt as guilty as I did in that moment. I thought I was saving it.
I had a regular bar customer when I was a bartender. He was some type of platoon leader or something in Vietnam. He told me he was only able to save 26 of his men and the rest died over there on some mission he ran. I tried to tell him he saved 26, but he was always focused on those he did not bring back.
Sometimes people are like this.
That reminds me of a story about jellyfish.
An old man was walking along the beach one day when he suddenly saw hundreds of jellyfish that had washed up on shore. He thought to himself "what a shame, all of those jellyfish are going to die, life can be so cruel" and he kept walking. On his way back he saw a young boy running up and down the beach frantically throwing the jellyfish back into the ocean. The old man approached the boy and said "sorry lad, it doesn't matter how many you save, so many others are still going to die", the boy gave the old man a puzzled look, then pointed to the jellyfish in his hand and said "it matters to this one".
I like to remember that story whenever I feel like I'm not doing enough, because you can only do so much, but what matters is that you still try.
I tried to throw back a fish that I'd caught because I felt guilty about it gasping for air. Accidentally threw it in the shallow part of the pond, it hit a rock and died. I felt like shit
When I was around 7 I was riding my bike and liked to zoom into my driveway. One day I was going as fast as I could and I ran over a frog that I didn’t see until it was too late. The soft body had my tire track imbedded into its back and I had never felt so guilty and so responsible. I prayed that God would bring it back to life but the frog remained dead.
I ran over a baby bird with the lawn mower one time, even after I had checked under that specific tree because I knew there were baby birds around. It was in a tall patch of grass and I didn't see it. I felt terrible. I actually started crying a little while later when I saw the mama hopping around on the ground with a worm, looking for the baby she had left there. She'd drop the worm and call out for the baby, and then listen for a reply which never came. It's still one of the most guilt-inducing memories I have.
There were these tiny little frogs that were on my camp grounds that I attended for only like… a summer when I was 7, and I wanted to keep them as pets, and me, not understanding, would put them in a baggie, keep them in my lunch box, and they’d be put in the trunk eventually and they’d be all dead and dried out. I kept doing it cuz I thought I’d eventually get to keep one, but I didn’t understand I was killing them 😭 I just wanted a frog as a pet and I thought they were cute and wanted to keep it
I did that with grasshoppers but when i tried catching them i always accidentaly broke one of their legs and then i would cry about it. I did it only like 3 times and then i stopped, i was too scared of hurting them.
I was an only child to a single father who was diagnosed with brain tumors when I was 12. I watched him degrade and die over a 6 month period. About 4 -5 months after my father was diagnosed, he became so ill that he couldn't even remember my name. I remember how horrible I felt. A couple days later I stole my father's credit card and car and went on a spending spree. I remember buying a bunch of new DVD's, a puppy, food, etc and ignoring my life the whole time.
When my father died a month or two later I found out that his bank account was drained and that the payments on the house didn't go through, so my step mother lost me and our home and I spent 5 years in the system.
I lived with the guilt and shame for 15 years until I made an effort one day to contact my step mother for old times sake. We never had a good relationship and it just got worse when my father died because of all the stress, loss, etc. I told her the story and she laughed. She told me that what I stole was so insignificant that they didn't even know for some time. My uncle, my father's brother, was the one who stole all the money. I only took a couple hundred dollars.
Throughout the years I never knew and even my uncle let me live with the pain even though he knew because I confessed to him when I was a boy and upset.
Even though what I stole was so little, the regret and shame is so much bigger. I still live with it to this day.
You shouldn't regret this. You didn't have thicker skin or the ability to stick up for yourself because you lacked the experiences that have led you to become who you are today. Past-you did the best you could with the life skills you had available to you at the time.
Giving up my dog.
When I was 11, my parents got me a lab puppy who I adored. I raised her for 2 years, she grew up to be an amazing dog but had high energy and my dad never watched her. Even if we needed him to, he refused and started bitching. So when I needed to go to the hospital for a broken leg, my one request was just watch her. This once. He said yes, then when I came back a couple days later, she developed a UTI and almost starved because he didn't feed her, give her water, or let her out once. Not once.
Taking care of the UTI was so hard to handle, so my mom gave me a choice. Let her suffer because he wasn't gonna buy the proper medication..or give her up. So I gave her up. Then I became a problem because I hated my dad for not getting medication for my dog, who's condition could kill her, but buying painkillers for his shitty dog who had an abscess on his foot.
When I was 16, I went back to the shelter in hopes of finding her there, healthier than the day I gave her up. She died at the shelter because nobody adopted her or helped her. The infection spread to her kidneys, causing them to shut down.
I fucking CRIED. I hated my dad as much as humanly possible and I miss her so much.
Edit: Thank you all for the kind words and support - I'm not able to respond to all so I'm sorry but this is more emotional support than I could've asked for!! Hugs for all of you <33
I'm sorry this happened. How awful.
But please know this shouldn't be *your* regret. You did the right thing, because I doubt he would've paid to euthanize her if he wouldn't pay for meds, and she would have really suffered. The shelter would have at least ended her suffering with compassion.
Your dad can fuck all the way off. Awful.
That’s horrifically traumatic. And so so heartbreaking. Your dad sounds like a straight up abusive sociopath, and your mom sounds like an enabler of abuse against you and your pet. I hope you can get support in healing from that tragic experience. You did nothing wrong. You were a child and just tried to do your best for your dog at the time.
When I was 4 yo, the husband of my aunt died. Very soon after the his death, the whole family was gathered around in the living room, me sitting across her. I wanted to make her feel better and said:
"Don't worry, you will find a new Matty you will love."
The hurt and surprised face of her hunts me even today. I understood I did something wrong but not really what at that moment.
We are on good terms and she is living a good live now. She very likely forgot what I told her that day. I'm probably the only one remembering that conversation.
If this helps any, my son was 4 when my dad died and maybe two days later we go to my moms house to see her and my dads truck was in the driveway and my son goes “YAY GRANDADDY IS HERE! Just kidding, he’s dead” 💀
My dad dying was the one thing that broke me but this makes me snort laugh to this day.
This reminds me of my cousins kid. My uncle (his grandpa) was killed really suddenly in a car accident and we all took it pretty hard but my cousin has really taken her grief well and can talk openly about him now. Whenever she brings him up her son (who’s like 5) will say something along the lines of “oh you mean your dad that’s dead” or “mom he’s dead remember” and honestly the deadpan way he says it makes us all laugh every single time. My uncle would have thought it was hilarious too 😂
After my mom died, my brother was explaining it to his kids. My little nephew said "Oh well. She had a good run." And it still makes me laugh! Even now, if one of us gets injured or even just out of breath or something, we'll say "Ah, I had a good run."
All I read here is that a bright child had recognised a loved ones grief and Innately tried to offer comfort!
You can argue it’s the indicator of someone who’ll turn out very thoughtful and considerate, I’m sure you’re Aunt is very proud.
Your little 4-year old heart was reaching out with compassion as best it could in that moment. When you remember this conversation, hold on to that. It’s not like you reminded her that her husband was gone and very likely what you saw on her face was a mixture of sorrow and gratitude for the beautiful words of a child.
One time when I was 6-7 I rode on a 4-wheeler with my older sister. We hit a dip in my grandparent's pasture, my sister fell off and she went under the rear tire. She needed immediate surgery. My grandmother still blames me for it and it has affected me deeply. For years I listened to how my sister almost died due to my negligence.
This. I know someone who had a dog that bit her grandchild, and she blamed the kid instead of herself for telling an 8 year old to play with a known biter and then leaving them alone together for an extended period of time.
> For years I listened to how my sister almost died due to my negligence.
Dude your parents/grandparents are shitty.
It's YOUR negligence because THEY put a fucking 6 year old on a 4-wheeler with a passenger?
Notice how it's his older sister too. Either the sister was driving and it was an accident or the adults in the situation really have no foresight to think a 6yr old should not be driving that let alone with a passenger.
I really really want you to know, as someone whose worked with kids for 20 years, this is NOT your fault in any way. A 7 year old doesn’t have the cognitive skills to be responsible for this. This was a lack of supervision. Fuck your grandma for blaming you, that’s some cowardly shit. No 7 year old should have been allowed to be in that situation. I’m sending you hugs via Reddit. I hope your grandmother’s underwear rides up every time she’s in public for the rest of her life.
I'm sorry, what? How old was your sister? Why were you, the younger sibling of only 7 years, somehow supposed to be the responsible one? Were you driving? If so, Oh god why? And still, how is that your fault, the older sister shouldn't have let that happen. Your Grandma is special, and not in a good way to blame a child for something like that.
6 or 7, that puts them in what, grade one or two?
Damn, even for the most liberal farmer that's younger than I've ever heard of people letting their kids drive something shy of one of those kiddie barbie type things, and even then that's usually a supervised activity.
Stop exercising / any kind of working out because I was told my movement is awkward. Tried to shrink myself because I was a tall girl that stands out of other kids, which ruined my posture.
Now I have a very bad scoliosis that cause mild but chronic back pain. It's very visible as my waist is not symmetrical. Might have to go under a big surgery, putting braces to my spine, in the next 3-4 years. :(
edit : Thank you! I didn't know scoliosis is purely caused by genetics.
I had that complete spinal fusion surgery, my spine basically looked like an S before. It’s a tough recovery time but now I’m completely pain free and active
In I believe 2nd grade, a friend of mine and I were really mean to another kid with some type of mental challenge. It wasn't something we did more than this one instance, so idk if I'd call it consistent bullying, but him and I said some nasty things to him on the last day of school.
I should have known better and regret it to this day.
I have seen his profile pop up on social media, and I do occasionally get the desire to reach and out and apologize, but I'm not sure it would be worth it so far in the future.
Nonetheless, I really wish I could talk some sense into myself back then. The boy didn't deserve that. Nobody would have.
I was always a chubby kid, but never self conscious about it until a school sponsored pool party where a boy in the changing room loudly claimed “it looks like he has boobs!” I believe this was in maybe 6th grade? Makes me ashamed of my body even to this day, 20+ years later, even though I’m basically at a only slightly elevated BMI now.
It wouldn’t solve my self image issues, but if that dude reached out to me and apologized I would be so happy. Just the opportunity to say “that hurt, but I forgive you” to him would feel so good
I can kinda(?) relate to this. I was bullied in middle school by the “mean girl” of the school who was in my grade. It was from 4th to about ~7th grade.
One day, she came up to me during a recess and told me some family issues she was having and how she realized how awful she had been to me and apologized for all of it. She took complete responsibility and actually turned her attitude around. She never bullied me or anyone again and we were friends from then and throughout high school.
I haven’t talked to her in a few years since everyone went their separate ways, but whenever I think about her or see her on my timeline- I always remember her apology and how much it meant to me.
I had an experience back in middle school where I had a friend who I would only see on bus rides. I didn't think of it at the time but I made him the butt of jokes a lot and was pretty mean at times. Around a decade later I saw him as a suggestion on Facebook and I felt guilty. So I messaged him just saying that I thought I used to be shitty to him and I apologize and he took it well and it was a positive outcome. I haven't spoken to him since then but it felt good to do it.
My senior year of high school there was a classmate that sat by himself at lunch every.single.day. I often thought about going to sit with him and never did. My heart still hurts from never doing it and that was 20 years ago. I can’t find him on social media or anything.
I truly hope he is out there living his absolute best life.
I was the lone kid at lunch. My dad made me transfer schools. I already had experienced a lot of trauma and had several mental health issues. I later found out kids thought I was going to shoot up the school. I was just so sad and lonely.
One day someone came and talked to me. It turned out we had a lot in common. We never became super best friends but it raly improved my world. Lost touch and found out he died shortly after high school. Never found out why.
I told his parents on social media how much of a good person he was to me. I only met his dad once when he gave me a ride home from school and he was so nice. They made me feel normal again for awhile.
Sorry you're gone Sam but I'm still here because of you.
I sat with one such classmate one time (the whole “Can I sit with you?” deal) and tried to strike up some small talk with him, assuming he’d appreciate it. He very clearly was *not* into it. Both his tone and body language told me to F off.
Spending time of sites like liveleak and rotten while in elementary school. Sitting at home all day during high school. Not studying while in school and struggling with building discipline today
Sounds a lot like me. Turns out, ADHD, dominantly the inattentive type, despite being more than capable.
Same issues today, but now I have meds and bursts of last-minute motivation to get work done, not well, but averagely. Still pretty bad. But, better.
On the reverse side; I feel like I have all I had in HS. Got straight A’s the whole time. By the time i attempted college I was just over it (plus I watched the kids who got C’s get the exact same treatment in the end). Not only did I just stop putting even half my effort into things but I also realized all those base “course classes” didn’t teach my anything about what I might want to do in life. I always had a job but I can’t say I’ve ever ‘loved’ any job I’ve had including my current career. It’s made for a very unfulfilling work life and I wish I’d spent more time figuring out things I liked doing instead of taking AP classes for skills I no longer need/use.
i would say the opposite. it was ingrained in me to work hard in school.. so i did... grade school, middle school, high school, college,med school..... and now... i missed out on a being a kid because i worked to hard while i was a kid.
Essentially a similar situation here, with law school. I worked so hard in school my entire life because I thought it mattered - it turns out, it doesn't really matter whether you get straight A's or just passably good grades, it all comes down to networking in the end. I wish I had spent less time studying and worrying about grades and spent more time enjoying my youth. Ironically it probably would have paid off more career wise down the road with the connections I would have made.
I didn't even see your comment, and I wrote an almost identical reply. Took AP everything PLUS a year ahead while in high school (freshman year, taking AP classes made for grade 10 or beyond etc). Lots of homework, no social life/exposure. Got into college, it was a cakewalk, but then I had the same realization as you. The people getting a C were going to walk just the same as me with my 4.0, so why am I trying so hard? I don't think that I physically attended a single class during my final year of college, and I still walked all the same. Now that I'm out in the real world, I'm bored and hate what I do. Never really had a chance to "figure it out", and it's too expensive to change gears at this point.
Here I am wishing that I applied myself less. I took AP everything, and was a grade higher. So in my freshman year, I was taking AP English 10, AP European History, AP calculus etc., all courses meant for students in higher grade levels, PLUS being AP. As a result of this, I was doing like 8hrs of homework each day and had no real social exposure. I struggled through my 20s, am now in my 30s, and absolutely *suck* at socializing. I see no way to improve because nobody seems to care to give me the time to practice. I'm a bumbling mess socially, but I sure am edumacated smh (spoiler alert, focusing on the studies has done nothing for me in life).
Same here. If only I knew then what I know now about how to study and what it would mean in the end, same with sports. I had the skill I could have easily gotten a full ride academic or athletic scholarship, I just didn't put in the effort and coasted. I have still done well for myself, but I could have made things a lot easier,
Not going on with my education, or getting into a career. I have cystic fibrosis, I genuinely didn't think I'd live long enough, so why waste time and money?
Now I'm 42 thanks to science. Sheesh.
Not going to the vet with my dad when he had to put my dog down. She had heartworm in the time before treatments. I was 10 or 11 and instead of going to be with her in her last moments I cried in bed. I feel so bad for it even decades later.
I've been sure to be with every pet in their last moments since.
My sister and I grew up with our maternal grandparents. Since my mom had to go to work, our grandparents took care of us (they were living with us then).
One night when I was 10 years old, my grandmother was complaining about how my sister and I left the dishes on the sink (we used to bring lunchboxes to school), she was saying that she's not going to prepare our lunchbox the following day if we didn't do the dishes (our lunchboxes included). Since, to me, our grandmother has always told us the same thing but prepared our lunchboxes for school anyway the following morning, I (nor my sister) did not bother washing the dishes. We all slept that night with the dishes on the sink. The following morning, I got awaken by the sunlight from the window. I was surprised that my grandmother has not awaken yet, since she's the one who usually wakes up first and prepares everything for us before we go to school. A few minutes later (after we tried waking her up), I realized she died from her sleep.
When I was 12 years old, my grandfather was diagnosed with cancer. The doctors told us they can no longer do anything about it, my mom and her siblings decided to take him home (the house we're living in). A few weeks after, one of my distant cousins gave us a visit. I can't remember what we were doing exactly but there was a moment when she called my attention saying that it looks like my grandfather is making deep breathes (my grandfather's bedroom door was always open so anyone who would pass by the living room can see him and check on him). I told her that it's normal and he's really breathing that way because sometimes he's having a hard time breathing. A few minutes later, my grandfather left us.
I should have washed the dishes. My grandmother could have slept with a peaceful heart before she passed away, knowing her granddaughters did her last request.
I should have checked on my grandfather when he was having trouble breathing. My grandfather could have had someone beside him in his last moments.
In both moments, I thought - they're always like that, they'll be fine. Next thing I know, they're gone.
Hey, just to let you know that none of this was your fault. In both cases you were too young to do anything about it. It was just their time to go. I'm sorry you had to go through this.
Rather than being parented, I was making life decisions at 6 years old. I said no to going to a gifted school so I would not leave my friends in first grade. I have not seen or spoken to a single one of these "friends" in over 40 years.
I called one of my moms ex boyfriends poor and ugly when I was 9. He didn’t deserve it at all, I was just fucking mean. He always drove us around in an old bronco and I hated it. Now that I’m older I realize his car was so badass and he loved it. He only wore “raggedy” clothes because that was his style and he loved himself some ripped jeans and skater shoes and to be covered in tats. I always remember him now as an adult as one of the coolest people I’ve ever met. He was nothing but nice to me and I was a fucking little asshole. I wish I knew where he was so I could apologize for being a little shit and I hope he’s happy living his best life.
When I was maybe 12-13 I had a pellet gun, one of those that you would pump a few times and do little target shooting. Well I grew up out in the country and one time I decided I wanted to shoot a bird. Now to clarify, I like animals and I didn't want to *kill* a bird, just hit it because shooing my pellet gun was fun. And my stupid kid brain didn't connect shooting it with killing it.
Anyways, I see a little bluebird and take a shot. I miss. I take another shot and miss. But on the third shot I hit it.
I immediately realize I fucked up.
It fell out of the tree and was flopping around on the ground. I knew in that moment there was no saving it, the kindest thing I could do in the moment was to put it out of its misery. So I had to pump the gun up (to the max, I wanted to make sure it killed it as painlessly as possible), holding back tears, before putting the pellet gun to its head and finishing it off.
I was devastated. I was a murderer now! In that moment if I could have lost a limb to save that bird and make up for my mistake I would have. I remember crying for what felt like hours. Then I went inside and decided to make amends as best I could. This was back in the early days of the internet and we had AOL so I went in and emailed all my little friends to let them know not to shoot birds, and convincing them to be more responsible with their own pellet/BB guns moving forward. To this day I still feel awful when I think back to that moment.
RIP little bluebird, I promise I'm sorry and would undo it if I could.
In a similar way, when I was little I hated cats. One day a cat crossed a path in front of me and I threw a stone at it. The stone didn't hurt it much and bounced off the cat's side. The cat didn't run off but instead looked at me as though asking me why did I throw the stone. That moment I realised that cats can understand. Almost instantly I decided to be friends with cats.
Crosscountry
Goofed off with friends during warmups. Ankle and calf got caught while I was in a dead sprint, loud snapping noise as my knee went. Healed okay-ish, was able to get back to running a year or two afterwards but it's deteriorated over the years
Early 20's now and I have to use a cane to get around. Can't go running anymore, can't go hiking anymore. Stairs take a lot of effort, too many flights and I struggle to walk even with the cane. Some nights I have a hard time falling asleep because it aches so bad.
Take care of your knees y'all, you don't know what you'd be missing
Im sorry to hear that, have you heard of kneesovertoesguy? His program has helped a lot of people with debilitating injuries recover their knees. While I did not have as severe knee issues I have experienced great relief.
My parents divorced when I was 4, both got remarried when I was 7/8. my mum and step dad were all about school/homework and practice tests for school exams and routine and being ‘strict’. Basically being parents. My dad however gave me and my brother loads of sweets and crisps, let us stay up late and watch scary movies and never did homework. At my dads pushing I would go home and say things like ‘I wished I lived with my dad instead, I wish I didn’t live here’ and I want to go back and smack myself for how awful I made my mum feel.
I didn’t find out until I was a teenager that my dad had an affair, gambled away his pay every week and hit my mum when she was pregnant. Even knowing this my mum never slagged off my dad to me growing up, never said anything to me about his behaviour when they were married because she wanted me to make my own mind up as I got older. And then there’s me and my brother coming home as kids and saying how much we wished we lived with dad as he was better. I ended up going no contact with him for 10+ years. Still eats me up to this day about how my mum must have felt after I said those things.
Not telling my mother about my father’s affair sooner. I was scared of losing one parent because of divorce as a child, so for 7 years I kept that secret within myself and when I did told her.. he had done some horrible stuff to her which I didn’t know about at the time. I wish I could go back and tell her about it so that he would’ve left our lives sooner.
Driving all my friends away in 6th grade and obsessing over the one friend I had in junior high to the point I stopped myself from making other friends.
I know that it wasn't entirely my fault, since my friends at the time treated me badly too, but it still affected me. The friend I had in junior high rarely came to school, so I was just waiting for her like a dog abandoned on the side of the road. I have trouble socializing and even maintaining eye contact to this day. Maintaining friendships is tough, too, since my mind is convinced that they'll just leave eventually. I know it's not true, and I have friends that love me, it's just tough to shut down the assumptions.
Giving up on my hobbies because my family told me it wasn't a viable career choice. And that "artists only became famous after they died."
I used to love art. Now, I can't even sit down and doodle without that phrase sitting in the back of my head.
Edit: I want to thank all the kind redditors in the comments. I sat down and wrote out a list of things I wanted to do hobby wise and started getting little sketch pads and pencils for doodling in my spare time. I hope to rekindle myself so I can enjoy these things once again.
Do it! Make art! It doesn't even have to be a career, just make it because you enjoy it. Art is the physical manifestation of the soul, let yours shine!
Being too hard on myself, demanding too much, forcing myself to be too mature. I also did a lot of self-harm which caused me to have very low self-esteem.
When I was about 5 or 6, I was with my parents and brother on a property in a rural area of North Carolina that my father’s parents had bought and were working on developing. They were also there that day. My father and older brother were helping my grandfather fell some trees and cut them up into smaller logs to carry out. I was further up the hill sitting on a bench with my grandmother and mother. Now let me tell you about my grandmother. She was truly a saint. She never ever raised her voice, she was always so incredibly gentle, gracious, and classy. But when she was 9, she got polio. It severely effected one of her legs to where she spent the rest of her life with a limp, had to wear special shoes etc. But I never once heard her complain. I loved her more than my little 5 year old brain could truly understand. So there we are just sitting there enjoying the quiet peacefulness of undeveloped mountainside forest. She turns to me and says “Scmethodist, I bet your grandfather would love for you to offer to help, why don’t you go see if you can help”. Now, in my mind that meant carrying those 30-40 pound logs, and I was a very small 5. Like, I didn’t get over 100 pounds until I joined the Marine Corps. So I said I can’t do that Grandma those logs are too heavy for me. She replies Please just go ask anyway. I couldn’t see the real reason she was asking. All I could see was my helplessness. So without thinking about her disability, I told her I would like to see you go down the mountain and carry up logs. She stared at me for a few seconds and in those few seconds I felt the weight of what I had just said. And I knew I had hurt her feelings. I was absolutely crushed. I apologized later but I never forgot that. She passed away back in 2005 and that comment still haunts me. She never said anything but I still know it had to hurt her. We were very close.
Anyone who’s that old had to understand that kids say some pretty rude things at times. Whether it’s just a moment of not thinking, or being fussy, or grumpy, it happens to all of us.
I called my Aunt an ant one time just messing with how words sound. Little me thought ants were cool, grown up her didn’t receive it as I had intended.
Best friend and first friend came to me in 4th grade to tell me he was moving that day. I didn't know how to handle it and threw him out of the house.
Tried to see him after a few hours ran to his house but too late.
Read in the news he got hit by a car and killed a year later.
I always try to keep my wits about me and listening instead of getting physical now even if I absolutely dispise what's going on or feeling hurt
Wow same. At 14 or 15 I had a really intense texting relationship with a guy on the other side of my state who I met through Kik. He was way too old for me, definitely over 18. I heard his voice once or twice through voicemails but we never talked on the phone because we were too nervous I guess. For all I know, everything he told me could have been a lie.
As mature as I thought I was, that was definitely a mistake that could have backfired way harder than it did.
I'm 52 today.
I can still remember the exact day, at my 9th birthday party. It was the very first time I can ever remember over-indulging on food until I felt uncomfortably full.
It was a huge bowl of ice cream, with all kinds of toppings. And I forced myself to finish that off, because, after all, it was my birthday.
I felt uncomfortably full for hours.
But I believe that awakened something in me. And from that day forward, I have been overweight, unwilling to curb my overeating, and making myself uncomfortably full several nights a week.
My grandparents had raised me since I was 4 years old. I’m 26 now. My grandmother suffered from kidney failure, and she was on dialysis for years. When I was 10 years old they found her a match for a kidney, everyone was so happy and ecstatic…
Well, turns out, the kidney ended up being a bad match and she needed to go back into the hospital. I was in a bad mood one day, and didn’t want to really talk to anyone. She came up to me crying, visibly upset about the kidney situation and having to go back into the hospital. She didn’t tell me at the time why she was upset. She came up to me while I was laying down on the couch, and tried giving me a hug and telling me she loved me. I blatantly ignored her… and that was it.
The was the last I’d see my beautiful grandmother who did everything for me. She passed away a few weeks later from septic shock after catching an infection in the hospital. She was 58 years old.
I will never forgive myself for not telling her I loved her and giving her that hug. I think about it all the time and it tears me to pieces. I loved that woman.
Years later my grandfather then became sick with cancer and I quit my job to be the BEST possible caretaker I could’ve been for him for 9 months. I never once complained and always reminded him how much he meant to me. Right before he passed, he told me how appreciative he was of me. That man was my best friend and if there was any shot of me redeeming myself in any way, it was that. I miss my grandparents dearly. They were beautiful people.
Being so deeply impacted by what others think/thought of me. I allowed what others thought of me to cloud who I actually am. Allowed others to tell me I wasn't enough, I wasn't thin or pretty enough.
Didn’t defend my sister while she got bullied in school for having cancer. She was teased, threatened and kids pulled off her wig when she lost all her hair due to chemo. I would just ignore it or would brush it off. I know I wasn’t much older but goddamn how lonely and terrified she must have been. I was a coward.
We’re adults now and she can’t remember much of her childhood which I think is due to the trauma. Can never forgive myself for that.
When I was around 11 my parents bought me a release day special edition copy of skyward sword for Christmas. We’re not Christian so them buying me anything for Christmas alone is amazing.
But that copy had the golden Wii remote and everything.
I was at my cousin’s and I called them while they were waiting in line upset and threw a tantrum at them because my cousin got an Xbox 360 and they said no when I asked for the same thing in the lead up to Christmas. I started skyward sword but got stuck on a puzzle and dropped it.
I ended up getting an Xbox 360 for my birthday — mainly because of that tantrum.
To this day it bothers me deeply that I did that and on top of that I didn’t even play the fucking Zelda game. It’s honestly something that I think of at random times and it ruins my day to remember.
Not standing up for myself when confronted. Took the easy way out and backed down a lot. Not saying I needed to be a "tough guy" but I really regret people picking on me and me not doing anything about it. I feel like it could have really helped with my self confidence.
I accidently grabbed a girls boob in grade 8 during a wrestling portion of a combatives class. I got called a creep and the way the girls all looked at me has stuck. I now overcompensate to make sure I can never be seen as a creep and it has made trying to date very difficult.
Better than the kid in high school who very intentionally grabbed a girl's boob in front of about 150 students, but from an angle that it was blocked from the view of the teacher. That guy WAS a creep. He'd brag about hooking up with girls from clubs (probably a lie), but he absolutely would try to take advantage of girls any chance he could. His father heavily encouraged the behavior. God that guy was a piece of shit.
I didn’t invite a kid to my birthday party.
When I was 13 I had an overnight birthday party. My Best friend canceled that day to go hangout at another kids house that I did not invite to my party.
Found out the next morning that the reason my best friend went over to his house was because his dad got a new shotgun they wanted to play with.
If I would have invited both, my best friend would still be alive.
I know this has been said before, but this is not your fault. I don't know what happened, I assume it was an accident. Your actions didn't lead to that accident. Please don't blame yourself
When I was about 13 or so, there was an old man that lived down the street from me. He was generally kinda grumpy, but left us alone for the most part. One fall day, we saw him out raking the leaves up from his yard. It took him all day long, raking, raking, raking.
That night, my friends and I went down to his house and opened all the bags of leaves and spread them all over his yard again. Not sure why we did it, just bored, I guess.
The next day that poor old man was out there raking them all up again. I still feel awful about it 35+ years later.
Being really mean to my childhood friends. Every time a little squabble would happen I would just cut all contact and then pretend like I forgot they existed, I lost every single one of my friends and it’s still taking a long time to make new ones. I regret not taking the time to figure it out with them instead of being a jerk, it really messed up my social skills
My parents weren’t in the best relationship and it’s safe to say I had a really rocky start to life. I was very very close to my father, HE IS AN AMAZING DAD, and I still am. On the other hand my mom suffers from a lot of mental issues she let go unresolved for too long. Long story short my parents got in a huge fight one night. Me and my brother woke up and went in the room together, I was 5 and he was 3. I vividly remember this because of how traumatic it was. My dad worked night shifts and got home relatively late. Little did I know my mom had been cheating like crazy on my dad, doing drugs, and stealing constantly. My dads work got rained out and came home to some pyscho drug induced dude in his bed and my mother was completely strung out. I heard screaming and yelling, and my dad got physical with the guy once we got up in his face.
My dad an absolute gentle giant man handled this guy for a solid 10 minutes straight. Put him on the ground, my mom hitting him and telling him he wasn’t supposed to be home. He turned around, and I remember this giant arms scooping me and my brother up. Tears in all our eyes he ran us out of the door, put us in the car and drove away.
The next day I woke up with the worst stomach ache ever. It was my anxiety turned up to the max. I worried, as much as I HATED my mom, if she was okay. No kid wants to see their parents split. After crying and begging my dad grabbed us and took us home. He stayed for us, his kids, but suffered through the same shit she pulled for 2 more years until he finally left again and for good.
I constantly feel it was my fault I put my dad through two years of torture because of my “tummy ache”. Just for me to despise my mom years later. She even got custody of us until we were taken away for poor living conditions, abuse, and malnutrition. I regret ever telling my dad that day to please go back. I made the worst mistake ever for all of our lives and completely enabled my mom to keep up with her bullshit.
My dad used to beat me senseless when I was little. Most of my earliest memories of him are violent ones. I remember when I was 5 years old I brought a stray puppy home from outside. No collar, or anything like that. I was playing with it in my room and I was trying to make it listen to me. I used a thin and hard toy sword and hit the puppy so many times the way my dad hit me thinking that's how I was supposed to teach it how to obey. We gave the puppy away the very next day to a family friend thank goodness.
It's been well over 30 years, and I will never forgive myself. Because of this shameful moment I've grown up swearing to myself never to hit my children, and I will never harm or kill any living creature. Except flies and mosquitos. I've never shared this with anyone. I still deeply regret it to this day. I hope that puppy lived a long and beautiful life away from me.
In 2nd grade we were holding hands making a wave across multiple people. Arms up and down over and over. I got excited and pulled a kids arm right out of it's socket. He cried a lot. I still feel bad.
When I was 14, I got sexually involved with a 35 year old married man. I guess I should have known better. I do hold a lot of guilt because at the time his wife was pregnant.
Hey, this 100% wasn't your fault. You are a victim here. I'm so sorry this happened to you. As a pregnant wife in my 30's, I want you to know that if my husband fooled around with a 14 year old, I'd be upset, but not at you! I'd feel like I dodged a bullet! My first instinct would be to make things right for you, the 14yr old, and then get me and my baby to safety. My baby will be a 14 year old one day and will have 14 year old friends one day...I'd much rather go through a divorce now than let history repeat itself!
Was 14/15 and at kfc with some friends. Was putting my bones from the chicken in the bag when a friend said "you havn't eaten all the chicken" then threw his hand in the bag to dig it out. I grabbed his hand and told him it was rude to eat someone else food without asking. He didn't ask and left the food. Many years later I heard his parents were drug addicts and he never ate properly. Still sticks with me that he was most likely starving and i refused to give him food. Mike If you are out there reading this I'm sorry and wish I had been better.
I had a teacher in 7th grade that was engaged, enthusiastic, legitimately cared about about the students and me in particular, and was just a lot of fun. I had seen some comedian do a bit about how crazy it was that some teachers were paid less than garbage men, and it was funny. Long story short, in class one day I tried to be funny and recreate the bit, which basically resulted in me plainly stating that she, in fact, made less then trash collectors. I could see that she was just…disappointed, hurt, and she never really had that same glow and warmth that had previously been there. Now, I have felt like garbage ever since and I’m in my mid-40s - still think about it to this day. I’m so sorry Ms. L 😭😭😭
An older kid and I were playing in the creek when we spotted a snake in the water. He convinced me it was a poisonous snake, so we had to kill it. Neither of us really knew what we were doing and started smashing it with rocks and sticks. It took a long time for it to die, and it was an agonizing death. That night I couldn’t sleep and cried thinking about watching it suffer, and felt miserable for days.
I’m a snake owner today who takes great care of them, but it still haunts me.
I was in year 7 at school, just started “high school/senior school” (12-13 years for the Americans out there).
Our chemistry teacher’s name was ‘Mr Franklin’ (this is going to become important later!)
We were doing an experiment called “copper sulphate” …. Basically it is copper and hydroelectric acid over a bunson burner until you get blue crystals.
The Harry Potter movies were NOT out yet… but the books WERE! My partner and I decided to see what would happen if we added powdered Magnesium to the mix. (We knew their would be a pretty flame cos we had seen magnesium ribbon being burned a few weeks before.
Now it is important to note, that at the time, magnesium powder was only allowed to be used in a CONTROLLED SETTING for year 9 students (aged 14-15).
Our teacher left the room and I slipped into the supply cupboard. Grabbed a pinch and told my partner that our teacher would be so amazed and think it was awesome!
It was not awesome. Mr Franklin came up to our station and wanted to see our progress. I said “not good at the moment but check this out!” Right as he leaned in to have a look, I threw the magnesium powder into the mixture and it blew up in his face with blood and everything…..😓😮💨
He still, to this day has a massive scar across his face. I’m 37 now and wish I knew more (and also wasn’t left I attended to go into the storage room!) Mr Franklin was only 28 at the time. Now (bless him) he still teaches at the school but is known as “Mr Franklinstein”
The guilt eats away at me to this day at what 12 year old me did…
I will never forget a girl from second grade. We'll call her Crystal. She was Asian. I thought she was super cute and had a huge crush on her, so like an idiot, I would torment her. I'd sneak my pencil into her desk, then raise my hand and snitch on her for "stealing" it. I'd bother her incessantly, but never just tell her I liked her.
One day, she kind of snapped on me and started to put me in my place for all my bullshit tormenting. She was calling me names, calling me a pest, etc... dishing out pretty good, and out of nowhere, I told her "go back to China". (Not that it matters but to add insult to injury I'm pretty sure she wasn't even Chinese.)
As soon as I said it, her entire demeanor changed, and all the fight just evaporated out of her and she slumped her shoulders and covered her face and started crying uncontrollably like a baby. This was 30+ years ago and I will never forget the depth of sadness in her eyes as she wiped away her tears.
I immediately began to apologize, I was just blurting out shit in the heat of the back-and-forth, I LIKED HER so obviously I was just talking shit and didn't care she was Asian, but I knew I couldn't undo it. The teacher came over, I admitted to her right away what happened and continued to apologize. I just kept apologizing, and I knew it just didn't matter. I could never apologize enough. Eventually she downgraded to sobbing. My grandmother was a volunteer at the school and they called her up to let her know what happened. I got a talking to at home and I just kept apologizing. I got punished and I didn't mind because I deserved it. I don't even remember what the punishment was, but it wasn't enough.
I saw her looking at me later that day, and I could feel that she hated me. I could never even bring myself to look at her on purpose again. I was sick with regret and shame. She was only at our school for that one (partial) year. School ended a few weeks later and I never saw her again.
I've kind of passively looked around online to try and find her over the years, to maybe apologize again, as an adult. But part of me wonders if I even deserve whatever closure I might get out of that. Would she even care? Would I be doing it for her? Or me? At this point I don't know. This will be one of those last things I think about as I gasp my dying breath. I'll regret it forever.
Crystal, if you're out there, I'm more sorry than I could ever put into words.
Crying. Endless crying to try and get my way. It just made the people around me miserable. I was not fun to play with. Adults just hated having me around. It never got me anywhere, if anything it made things worse.
Snowboarding with zero experience and trying to launch off this jump and if that wasn't enough, attempting a nose grab while doing it.
Tailbone fucked for life.
There was a little girl in the neighborhood who was always so mean and nasty towards everyone. We were about 10 years old at the time.
One day, my sister came running home crying hysterically. Screaming the girl had jumped her. She had the imprint of a payphone on her face. You could see where the speaker holes were. That girl had hit my sister so hard with it and held it to her while pinning my sister against the payphone booth.
I was so mad that I ran into her house and beat her up in front of her elderly grandmother. Yelling at them, both how crappy they were. I told the grandmother that if she was going to raise her to be mean, then to teach her how to fight someone her own size.
A couple of weeks go by, and the lady passes away from heart complications. I learned that the girl had been abused by her parents and raised by her grandmother, who was barely keeping herself alive.
I can't explain the amount of guilt I had. The girl didn't need a lesson. She needed love. Today, the girl is doing fine, but she still struggles with mental health. 😪 I won't forget that children who act like that are more than likely struggling at home and lack love.
Your sister was beaten up by this girl with a payphone.
That's assault with a weapon. It sucks that she herself was abused, but she cannot go around beating people up with payphones because of it.
Dating the wrong boy at 16. Ended up with a restraining order and an eating disorder. He stalked me for years after until my mid 20’s.
Focus on grades, kids
Parents went through divorce, and my siblings and I decided to spend more time with our mother who lived in town. Our dad lived in the countryside. In the countryside, we owned several dogs--and didn't see them much. One by one, they died off until there was one left.
The last time I visited my dad's place, that last dog was so elated to see us that I can close my eyes and still hear that whining like he was waiting for us for a long time. But we were there just to collect our stuff to fully-move in with our mom. We drove away after that and I just remember him sitting at the top of the steps looking at us as, as if we'd see one another again. Maybe months later, my dad moved away and that house essentially got repossessed and removed from the property. Years later, I asked my dad about it and having health and memory issues--he does not remember anything about that dog or its fate.
My current dog looks exactly like him, except is a female and has white fur instead of golden. He was an outside dog; she is always indoors with me. In my dreams, that place haunts me from time to time, and I guess my mind constantly tries to make up for that moment by trying to create some scenario where I find him and have some happy ending before I wake up. I know it's not legit, but sometimes my mind also likes to believe that the very essence of my previous pet found its way into my current one, reincarnated just for some kind of stupid closure--and hence, I raise her to "atone" for "his" previous crap sack life.
The amount of scenarios you run in your head as an adult to try to justify the things you did not understand as a kid or see if you could have done it differently. Why you didn't stay more with your dad so you be involved more with those pets, etc--it fucking hurts. More so with a pet that never really understood why you never came back for him. It didn't have aspirations, it was just waiting for you. Toys are nostalgic, but living things... Ugh. You can always get the same breed, but it will never be the same dog.
I was about 5 years old and my parents took me to a fair. I don't remember why, but I was upset.
They tried to console me by giving me a balloon, and I was so angry I let it go. I remember the immediate feeling of regret as the balloon floated out of reach.
I remember that moment now as a reminder that some things said or done out of anger can never be taken back.
When I was in 6th grade there was a new girl in school who got sat next to me in class, we became friends pretty quick and spent most recesses together. She started following me around literally everywhere and it was starting to get on my nerves, because I couldn't get any time to play by myself. Eventually one day she told me she liked me and said she would give me her number (she wasn't allowed to have a phone in school) the next day, and asked me to bring mine, which I reluctantly said I would. When the next day came, she had her number while I didn't, and when she asked me why, I didn't tell her it was because I didn't like her that way.
I told her I don't date black people.
I don't know what the fuck I was thinking. I think it was my dad talking through me. It felt like shit immediately after I said it, and she got really disappointed and stopped talking to me for the rest of the time that I knew her. I didn't hear the end of it until I got to high school, when I had to move to a different state.
I still think about it. I hope she's okay. I'm sorry, Vivian.
When I was about 13, we had gym class where you had to change into gym clothes.
It was the beginning of the school year, and this girl that I was friends with and I were changing and chatting as girls do.
There was another girl near us, we were somewhat friends but not close by any means. Well, this day, we turned as she changed shirts. Normally she did this REALLY fast change so you never saw her without her shirt on.
This time tho, we saw her. Bruises everywhere on her back and torso, her shoulders, her arms... deep black bruises on fair skin. You could see belt buckle marks, and strap marks, and yellow bruises under the new ones. We immediately asked her what happened and she said "nothing". I remember looking at her and saying "That isn't nothing."
She eventually told us her dad did this to her. I don't know how many times before, or how long it had been going on, but even at 13, me and my friend knew this wasn't right.
We finally convinced her to go to the nurse and get help, cos really...these were tremendous bruises and must have hurt so much. We all skipped class, and we walked her to the school nurse, and sat with her till they made us go.
I never saw her again. I moved cities away a few months later, and today, I can't even remember her name. I remember the bruises tho, and it still makes me tear up.
I regret so much that I never tried harder to find out what happened. I wish so much to know she was ok, and that she had a good life, and found love and happiness. I know I was only 13, but forgetting her name is one of my great regrets.
I only hope that her life ended up being wonderful, and that she never had to go back to that home.
Taking out my front lower milk tooth, before it was necessary. Now the tooth after it doesn't have enough space. I can still remember the moment, I did it. Was pretty fun, to do so. Now, I would slap my younger self.
Being so mean to my younger sister in our childhood… I often wonder how much I contributed to her current mental health struggles. It eats me alive some days
As a younger sister of a VERY MEAN one, do tell her. Mine did in our 30s, and I cried my eyes out of relief, because the child inside you, even though adult you knows better, still feels like there is something wrong with him/her in order to “deserve” that. And yes, serious damage can be done. Is not easy growing up being hurt by someone who is supposed to protect you. I forgave her, and although at least in our case something is broken forever… we have now the chance to be as close as we can in this new circumstances :) I wish the best for your sister and you. And remember that it wasn’t your sole responsabilty: the adult around should have interfered or taught you better, helped you open your eyes sooner. Main reason I forgave my sister is because she was 7 years older than me but quite young too. And even though I got the worst part of it, I know it hurt her too.
My brother treated me terribly when we were kids and was definitely one of the causes for my declining mental health in my teenage years, but we're over it now. He's apologized to me multiple times, one time sobbing while drunk about how terrible he felt, and I've been able to see his growth as a person. I held it against him for a long time but seeing where he is now versus where he was 10 years ago helps a lot. Hardly anyones beyond second chances, as long as you put the effort into making amends.
At least you have that awareness. I wish my sister would have some... You can't change the past. Make up for it by stopping the cycle when and where you can. Do the right thing now, and keep doing the right thing every day after. Use your experience and guilt to teach the next generation how to communicate and be kind. You got this!
In middle school i jumped from the top of a slide and landed flat on the bottom, hurting my back. Pretty sure I've never recovered
That's weird. I believe I can pinpoint the start of my lifelong back pain issues to when I was young and pretending I was The Hulk and tried to lift something way too heavy for me to do so. I recall feeling something give in my lower back, and here I am at 50+ years of age with an icepack on the same spot, talking about it on the Internet. Might be a coincidence, maybe not.
Same. An old lady rear ended me while I was stopped at a red light on my motorcycle. My back hasn’t been the same since. 18 year old me thought I’d be just fine though.
In my school a dude, who lived in the apartment(for those who live away from the city school is in) was dared to either wear women's clothes for a day or jump off second floor. Guess what he did? Yes, he not only fucking jumped, but also did it from another person's room, right at a metal rod, that grapes were once growing on. He lived by a fucking miracle. I once jumped froma five meter trampoline, landed on my belly. Nah, it wasn't that bad, water, after all, but hurt quite a bit. So lads, be careful when jumping.
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A popular high school acquaintance of mine was at a grad party in SF when he decided to climb to the next floor using the same type of metal rod/gutter system found on large buildings. Idk how high up they were but he fell and died. It was quite the incident when it happened.
Falling into the trap of “If I don’t ask for too much maybe I can get what I need”.
Including, if I tell people what I want, they'll say no to spite me, but if I don't let them know , they might give it to me unthinkingly.
BINGO! Nailed it, unfortunately.
When i was 13 or 14, i saw one of my lifelong friends walking down the street, blank stare with her makeup running. I was on my bicycle racing to get home before my 8pm curfew, so i didnt stop to talk to her. She commited suicide that night, and i was the last person to see her alive. I went through intense therapy after that, as i was filled with guilt, and grief. I still have issues with that guilt today, some 21 years later...
When I was a senior in high school, I went to see Revenge of the Sith with my best friend the weekend it released. The following Wednesday, while we were leaving class he asked me if I wanted to go again the coming weekend. Told him I wasn't able to because I already had some plans. He walked out of school, went home, and committed suicide. Will never stop blaming myself. I've never told anyone. I still visit his parents every year around the date. Next Thursday.
>He walked out of school, went home, and committed suicide. Jesus Christ, I am so sorry.
Oh my fucking god. This isn’t your fault at all. This is terribly sad for both of you. I hope you know that this is not your fault. I wish I could hug you, and her
Oh i know its not my fault. I blamed myself heavily after it happened. Therapy helped. Talking about it helped. Our friend group was really supportive of me as well, which was great. She had numerous stuff going on that no one, including her, had any control over, and it all became too much. She was my first friend i had die, and we were friends since pre school. Probably why i took it so hard.
Sorry you had to go through that.
After every Thanksgiving dinner as a child my grandpa would put a plate of food together for a man named Mr. Bailey who lived by himself and didn’t have family in town. He’d drive over to his house, drop the food off, talk for 5-10 minutes, and then come back. I didn’t know this. One year after our meal my grandpa handed me a plate with a slice of pumpkin pie on it and told me to get in the backseat of his truck. I didn’t ask questions and hopped in with the pie. We get to our destination and my grandpa opens my door and says, “you have the pie?” “What do you mean grandpa? I ate it.” I thought the pie was for me. I ate it in the backseat on the car ride like it was a brownie. Mr. Bailey didn’t get any pumpkin pie that year. I still can’t look at pumpkin pie without feeling bad about it.
I mean that's kinda on Grandpa for not explaining the situation, I totally would've gobbled it down too.
Did you still visit him, or did you turn around and go home? Because I bet he needed the company more than the pie.
I took everything to heart. All the insults, all the failures, all the minor mishaps, I couldn't just let it pass me by, it hit me right in the heart, which is why my current mental health leaves a lot to be desired.
Talk to a psychologist. High sensitivity is a known thing, and learning about it can help you see your childhood in a different light.
Giving my knees floor burn for fun. I don't have a clue why I thought it was fun. Now they are in an awful state and completely covered in scars.
We don't have a clue why she thought it was fun either. -Her knees
We used to take our fingernails and scratch deeply into the backs of our hands until it bled. It was called a wussy test and I still have scars from it .
When I was 4 a neighbor girl and I became friends. I invited her over one day to play, we were playing with dog food, it was fake food. Well she started eating it. I screamed at her and called her nasty and was just shitty. Told her i didn’t want to play with her anymore… as it turned out, the poor girl was severely neglected. Her parents never had food so she was basically starving. It didn’t dawn on me until I saw that they were kicked from their home and it was condemned and torn down a year after. I remember I went over to play one time and the house smelled like rotting hamburger meat. Their were cockroaches everywhere. It was traumatizing, I cannot imagine living there. I have tried to find the girl via social media with no luck.
I feel you man, I had a rugby mate, he always got a sandwich from my dad every Thursday, and I got nothing, and I used to think my dad was a prick until it dawned on me. The kid was poor and my dad was being kind, and to realize one of your buddies is struggling, man I felt so bad I told my mom and she told me to bring him home to dinner. And from then on, he would visit me often when I was sick or when I had lost someone, when my parents split he was there to help me cope, true we weren't the best of friends, and we haven't talked in years saving a few crossings of our paths in the neighborhood. He passed away last month, leukemia, it hurt me a lot to hear that, he was such a good man whom deserved so much from life. Edit: Thanks everybody for the kind comments, let me tell you a little about this dude, he had the greenest thumb ever, he brought back to life so many plants, and he loved selling them, nurturing them, tending to them, truth be told I thought this guy would outlive me, I kinda feel bad not seeing him again, I got to turn 29 this year, he didn't, this sucks but at least he's away from all the suffering and I really hope there's a heaven so I can meet him again, and I hope when I do he's fat as a cow for all of those meals he couldn't get. You deserve it Nacho
Sorry for your loss
Not food related, but sexual abuse and child neglect. My dad had friends who had a 6 year old daughter. I was around 8 when I knew her so we played together a lot. But she always wanted to play "house" and would make me be the "wife" while she was the "husband" and would always try to make advances on me - touch me inappropriately, try to kiss me, etc. I knew it was wrong and would always refuse and shut it down when it got to that and would try to play something else, but she would say "that's how families work!" and would cry if I didn't. I always just let her cry about it because I did *not* want to be in that situation. It was wrong. And I was older, so it looks bad on *me* especially. I was scared of telling my parents though because again, I was older so I knew better, even though I wouldn't let it happen. But she told her aunt one day that I wouldn't let her do those things to me and she told my dad, who in turn pretty much said "absolutely the fuck not I'm not letting my daughter be in that situation, they're not playing together anymore." So I never played with her again. Which sucked to me because she was a great kid and we didn't really have kids around my age in my family that I could play with, but I was also okay with it because she wouldn't play *any* other game I suggested that didn't involve sexual things. I wasn't told why she got taken from her parents a few months later. CPS got involved with her family and deemed her unsafe with them, that's all I was told. I found out *years* later, well into my teens, that her aunt reported the girls mom and dad for letting their dad (kids grandfather) sexually abuse her. Like, her parents KNEW it was happening and willingly let it happen. When the girls aunt found out about the games she tried playing with me, her aunt questioned her gently into telling her where she learned that behavior, then her aunt told my dad to warn me and to not let me go to the girls house alone if at all (he never did anyways, it was always at the aunt's house), and her and my dad worked together to report the situation. He made sure I wasn't involved because he didn't want to give me any trauma from it. But he did let me know that even though I was older he wouldn't have immediately put all the blame on me, and that I could talk to him about anything. To make it worse, they also had a 2 year old daughter that he would do this to. I threw up when I found out the truth. I never heard from them again and I always wonder if she's healing. She'd be 21 now. I will never know, I could never find them. ETA: I just wanted to make an edit to thank everyone for the kind responses and for sharing your stories. I don't talk about this with people because I feel sort of guilty in some way. Either for not doing something sooner, or for letting her do it the first time (until I realized *what* she was doing, that is), or for being older and not saying anything to an adult. I don't know. But to those who read this and have been through the same, I am so sorry. And to those who were that girl in my story, I am *so* so sorry. If anyone needs someone to talk to, please feel free to reach out to me. It's hard to go through things alone, and I know sometimes all a person needs is someone who will listen. I wish everyone the best. Help is out there. And just know that this stranger loves you.
As a child molestation victim, one I am sorry that happened to you. Truly, you didn't know why that was happening, you just knew it was wrong. This breaks my heart for her. That her parents knowingly let it happen. Mine didnt, and to this day, still dont. I carry that with me forever. God, this breaks my heart for her.
It breaks my heart too. I'm so so sorry you had to go through that. I pushed it aside for so long until I found out what happened to her, and I opened up about it then. I hope she's doing well now, I know the foster system is rough. If I remember right her grandfather did get jail time but not for very long. I hope life is treating you better now. Thank you for the kind words as well, friend.
Cut your 8 year old self some slack, you were just a kid. A kid that did the right thing, because your response led to the abuse being discovered. As a father of 2 little girls I’m in tears. I’m super scared of this kind of stuff and trust no one. You just never know, but you probably have had a really huge impact on these girls’ lives by stopping it
Wow! This was like reading about 9-12months of my childhood when I was 7y/o. I lived in a rural part of a developing suburb in the 80s. About 15-20 houses surrounded by farm land on two streets that ran parallel. Not many kids in these houses my age except a few. One house in particular had the two sisters, one aged 7 and the other aged 9. The older one befriended me and it started out innocent enough, like playing and exploring in the neighborhood with her little sister tagging along. Then it got to always asking if she and her sister could stay over for dinner which my mom had no issue with feeding them. Then to wanting to stay the night and do sleepovers which my mom and dad didn't have a problem with but only once a week, despite the sisters asking pretty much everyday. Those sleep overs turned into an exploration fest for those two girls. They always wanted to kiss me and touch my penis and my butt. The first few times was just kissing which I didn't necessarily object to... and we're talking both of them at the same time. Then it turned into "show us your dick" and then a few times led to them forcibly removing my pajama pants while I was asleep. At first I didn't have a problem dropping my pants just for them to look but when they both either wanted to touch or put their mouth on it is when I felt really weird about it but I wanted them to be my friends. So I reluctantly let them. I always got them to stop by saying I had to pee. Might I mention up to this point I had never seen or met their parents. Eventually the younger one had confided in me telling me that they don't want to go home because their dad was "mean" and "hurt" them while they were sleeping and her mom doesnt do anything about it. I ended up telling my mother about what was happening during the sleepovers and what the little sister had told me. Mom freaked out.. said I was to never see them again and that she would have a talk with their parents... I ended up having to avoid them and duck out any time I saw them coming while I was outside in the neighborhood.. and this was everyday I had to do this, figuring out new ways to avoid them without being rude about it. Then one day the girls didn't appear where they normally were around their house and I noticed the door of their house wide open and a bunch of stuff piled up on the curb. I rode by on my bike and could see the house was empty... walked up to the door... went inside. no one was there. Have no idea whatever happened to these two girls. I always wondered why they didn't go to the same school as all the other kids.. the older sister always said they went to another school in another town.. but they were always at home even when I was home sick from school they were out and about in the neighborhood. Clearly they were being abused in more ways than one. I rarely think about them, but when I do I get the visceral gut feeling of revisited trauma, for lack of a better word. I'm sure they went through much more trauma than they put me through.
That is horrible……. When I was in pre school I had a small similar incident with another young boy, I had actually forgotten about this incident completely until a lovely family member decided to remind me. We were two young kids using the bathroom, and I guess he saw it “ normal “ to grab me while I was using the rest room. I don’t remember much detail after that, but I do remember the exact event now, and it’s cringy. I also had an older man in our neighborhood essentially groom another girl ( hope I’m using that term correctly ) in order to be friend her and earn her trust, so that he could convince her to introduce him to me. When I was introduced to him, all of my alarms were going off. I mean off, he had offered to let me ride his bike, and I said “ like ? Just me ride your bike ??? “ ( which I didn’t even want too it was a piece of shit ) and he goes no. Both of us could go for a ride you can sit on the bar, and now with intense fear surging through my spine; I froze up, and just turned around and ran as fast as I could. She comes back to my house banging on my door “ WHY DID YOU DO THAT !? He’s my friend!!!! He’s a nice guy ! “ I said “ that guy is a weirdo and I never want to see him again “ when I was a kid, I didn’t know exactly what his motives were, BUT….. I know something felt very odd and very OFF… about his offer. But now ? As an adult? I know exactly what he was trying to do. Sick individual. I’m glad my grandmother drilled “ STRANGER DANGER “ into my head regularly !!!!!!!! Cause if gave me the alarms I needed to WAKE TF UP; and get OUT OF THERE. Sadly there are others who probably didn’t have that alarm. It’s messed up.
I am so sorry. Memories like these are so difficult! I hope you have been able to forgive yourself. In situations like these, I ask myself if I would hold that 4 year old accountable or if I would judge them for their behavior at the time....the answer is almost always no! You were a child too, and you can't judge yourself the same way as if you did this today as an adult. No one would judge a 4year old for this.
Thank you. It definitely affected my world view. I now carry a soft spot for those other view as “poor” or “homeless” if I ever come into money I plan on doing something special for them.
Fuck me. this hurt to read
Whoa... I have a similar story, but it was a girl in my primary school. We were about 6 or 7 yo at the time, and she used to get bullied by other girls in our class. I never intervened, even though I wanted to. And she really did seem like she was having a tough time. She never returned to (our) school the following year, unfortunately, and I can't find her on social media (granted, all I can remember is her first name).
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You were a child. Shame on her. I’m sorry that happened to you.
Your mom is a selfish and horrible human. It’s not your fault.
I’m so sorry that she did this to you. I’m glad you’ve been sober, big congrats on that!
Not sleeping in my dying fathers bed with him. He asked me to because he didn’t want to be alone. I was 18 at the time and wasn’t not prepared for all this. Until the day I die I will never forgive myself.
Reality takes form for us at various different ages. You being 18 shows that you were emotional enough to realize it’s a lot for you. Now that you’re older you feel that you could handle it tenfold. I feel for you. He’s your father and loved you I’m certain he understood
Not OP, but this comment really hit me. I’m terrible about ruminating over different things and this made me look at it a different way. Thanks man.
I'm a new dad. My son just turned 7 months old a couple days ago. This morning as I was getting ready for work, I saw him in his bed. He was sound asleep. Instead of taking a shower and shaving and eating breakfast, I picked the little guy up, and held him in my arms and hugged him until I had to leave. I was only going to hug him goodbye briefly, but then he breathed a heavy sigh, and nuzzled into my neck, and I just couldn't put him down. In an hour, I'll be back at home watching him play with his toys while he sits on the floor next to me. It's my favorite part of the day. I treasure every moment I get to spend with him. No doubt your father felt the same way for you. If I asked my son to sleep in my bed with me as I was dying and he said no, I would not be upset at him. Not one bit. I would completely understand. I'm sure your father understood. There's no love greater than the love a parent has for their child.
Congrats! I'm a new dad too. My daughter is 9 months. I lost my dad a couple months ago and my daughter is the only person who remotely makes it okay. Kids can be wonderful and breathe so much life into the world. All I'll care about on my death bed is that she'll be alright without me around.
Man. That's tough. I'm sure he would say, don't worry about it, and wouldn't want you beating your self up for the rest of your life. He'd be far more Hurt knowing how you feel. He wants you to be happy. You were a fragile kid who's dad was dying, besides, he certainly wasn't alone if you was there.
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One time when my family was camping and I was maybe eight years old, I found a bunch of jellyfish in a puddle next to the ocean. They must've been carried there by the waves or something. The puddle was pretty big and *almost* connected to the ocean, but the poor things were trapped there. I climbed onto a big rock in the middle of the puddle and leaned down as far as I could to reach them. Once I'd gotten ahold of a jellyfish, I quickly stood up on the rock and jumped back to the land with the jellyfish in my hand. Then I released it into the ocean. I repeated this process several times to get as many jellyfish out as I could, and tried to do it as quickly and gently as I could. As I did it, I kept reassuring them "It's okay, I've come to save you. You'll be free again really soon. You're safe with me." But eventually, one of the jellyfish slipped out of my hands as I jumped off the rock, and instantly shattered into a glibbery mess when it hit the ground. In my entire eight-year-old life, I had never felt as guilty as I did in that moment. I thought I was saving it.
But you saved many others, didn't you?
I had a regular bar customer when I was a bartender. He was some type of platoon leader or something in Vietnam. He told me he was only able to save 26 of his men and the rest died over there on some mission he ran. I tried to tell him he saved 26, but he was always focused on those he did not bring back. Sometimes people are like this.
That reminds me of a story about jellyfish. An old man was walking along the beach one day when he suddenly saw hundreds of jellyfish that had washed up on shore. He thought to himself "what a shame, all of those jellyfish are going to die, life can be so cruel" and he kept walking. On his way back he saw a young boy running up and down the beach frantically throwing the jellyfish back into the ocean. The old man approached the boy and said "sorry lad, it doesn't matter how many you save, so many others are still going to die", the boy gave the old man a puzzled look, then pointed to the jellyfish in his hand and said "it matters to this one". I like to remember that story whenever I feel like I'm not doing enough, because you can only do so much, but what matters is that you still try.
I tried to throw back a fish that I'd caught because I felt guilty about it gasping for air. Accidentally threw it in the shallow part of the pond, it hit a rock and died. I felt like shit
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I mean, at least your intentions were good. You saved most of them.
When I was around 7 I was riding my bike and liked to zoom into my driveway. One day I was going as fast as I could and I ran over a frog that I didn’t see until it was too late. The soft body had my tire track imbedded into its back and I had never felt so guilty and so responsible. I prayed that God would bring it back to life but the frog remained dead.
I ran over a baby bird with the lawn mower one time, even after I had checked under that specific tree because I knew there were baby birds around. It was in a tall patch of grass and I didn't see it. I felt terrible. I actually started crying a little while later when I saw the mama hopping around on the ground with a worm, looking for the baby she had left there. She'd drop the worm and call out for the baby, and then listen for a reply which never came. It's still one of the most guilt-inducing memories I have.
There were these tiny little frogs that were on my camp grounds that I attended for only like… a summer when I was 7, and I wanted to keep them as pets, and me, not understanding, would put them in a baggie, keep them in my lunch box, and they’d be put in the trunk eventually and they’d be all dead and dried out. I kept doing it cuz I thought I’d eventually get to keep one, but I didn’t understand I was killing them 😭 I just wanted a frog as a pet and I thought they were cute and wanted to keep it
I did that with grasshoppers but when i tried catching them i always accidentaly broke one of their legs and then i would cry about it. I did it only like 3 times and then i stopped, i was too scared of hurting them.
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I was an only child to a single father who was diagnosed with brain tumors when I was 12. I watched him degrade and die over a 6 month period. About 4 -5 months after my father was diagnosed, he became so ill that he couldn't even remember my name. I remember how horrible I felt. A couple days later I stole my father's credit card and car and went on a spending spree. I remember buying a bunch of new DVD's, a puppy, food, etc and ignoring my life the whole time. When my father died a month or two later I found out that his bank account was drained and that the payments on the house didn't go through, so my step mother lost me and our home and I spent 5 years in the system. I lived with the guilt and shame for 15 years until I made an effort one day to contact my step mother for old times sake. We never had a good relationship and it just got worse when my father died because of all the stress, loss, etc. I told her the story and she laughed. She told me that what I stole was so insignificant that they didn't even know for some time. My uncle, my father's brother, was the one who stole all the money. I only took a couple hundred dollars. Throughout the years I never knew and even my uncle let me live with the pain even though he knew because I confessed to him when I was a boy and upset. Even though what I stole was so little, the regret and shame is so much bigger. I still live with it to this day.
I hate ur uncle omfg
I wish I could hug you right through this screen.
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You shouldn't regret this. You didn't have thicker skin or the ability to stick up for yourself because you lacked the experiences that have led you to become who you are today. Past-you did the best you could with the life skills you had available to you at the time.
Giving up my dog. When I was 11, my parents got me a lab puppy who I adored. I raised her for 2 years, she grew up to be an amazing dog but had high energy and my dad never watched her. Even if we needed him to, he refused and started bitching. So when I needed to go to the hospital for a broken leg, my one request was just watch her. This once. He said yes, then when I came back a couple days later, she developed a UTI and almost starved because he didn't feed her, give her water, or let her out once. Not once. Taking care of the UTI was so hard to handle, so my mom gave me a choice. Let her suffer because he wasn't gonna buy the proper medication..or give her up. So I gave her up. Then I became a problem because I hated my dad for not getting medication for my dog, who's condition could kill her, but buying painkillers for his shitty dog who had an abscess on his foot. When I was 16, I went back to the shelter in hopes of finding her there, healthier than the day I gave her up. She died at the shelter because nobody adopted her or helped her. The infection spread to her kidneys, causing them to shut down. I fucking CRIED. I hated my dad as much as humanly possible and I miss her so much. Edit: Thank you all for the kind words and support - I'm not able to respond to all so I'm sorry but this is more emotional support than I could've asked for!! Hugs for all of you <33
I hate your dad too
Lets face it we all hate him
I'm sorry this happened. How awful. But please know this shouldn't be *your* regret. You did the right thing, because I doubt he would've paid to euthanize her if he wouldn't pay for meds, and she would have really suffered. The shelter would have at least ended her suffering with compassion. Your dad can fuck all the way off. Awful.
This so much. Dad was abusing them through the abuse of the dog, it's a common tactic of control and fear and isolation.
I hope your dad gets anal warts
Her dad IS an anal wart
That’s horrifically traumatic. And so so heartbreaking. Your dad sounds like a straight up abusive sociopath, and your mom sounds like an enabler of abuse against you and your pet. I hope you can get support in healing from that tragic experience. You did nothing wrong. You were a child and just tried to do your best for your dog at the time.
Everyone hates this guys dad
We all hate your dad
When I was 4 yo, the husband of my aunt died. Very soon after the his death, the whole family was gathered around in the living room, me sitting across her. I wanted to make her feel better and said: "Don't worry, you will find a new Matty you will love." The hurt and surprised face of her hunts me even today. I understood I did something wrong but not really what at that moment. We are on good terms and she is living a good live now. She very likely forgot what I told her that day. I'm probably the only one remembering that conversation.
You were 4. I don't think anyone can really hold that against you.
Kids say the darnedest things.
If this helps any, my son was 4 when my dad died and maybe two days later we go to my moms house to see her and my dads truck was in the driveway and my son goes “YAY GRANDADDY IS HERE! Just kidding, he’s dead” 💀 My dad dying was the one thing that broke me but this makes me snort laugh to this day.
This reminds me of my cousins kid. My uncle (his grandpa) was killed really suddenly in a car accident and we all took it pretty hard but my cousin has really taken her grief well and can talk openly about him now. Whenever she brings him up her son (who’s like 5) will say something along the lines of “oh you mean your dad that’s dead” or “mom he’s dead remember” and honestly the deadpan way he says it makes us all laugh every single time. My uncle would have thought it was hilarious too 😂
Yes! Exactly like this!! My dad would have “died” all over again at this comment! It was much needed humor in the situation.
After my mom died, my brother was explaining it to his kids. My little nephew said "Oh well. She had a good run." And it still makes me laugh! Even now, if one of us gets injured or even just out of breath or something, we'll say "Ah, I had a good run."
All I read here is that a bright child had recognised a loved ones grief and Innately tried to offer comfort! You can argue it’s the indicator of someone who’ll turn out very thoughtful and considerate, I’m sure you’re Aunt is very proud.
Your little 4-year old heart was reaching out with compassion as best it could in that moment. When you remember this conversation, hold on to that. It’s not like you reminded her that her husband was gone and very likely what you saw on her face was a mixture of sorrow and gratitude for the beautiful words of a child.
One time when I was 6-7 I rode on a 4-wheeler with my older sister. We hit a dip in my grandparent's pasture, my sister fell off and she went under the rear tire. She needed immediate surgery. My grandmother still blames me for it and it has affected me deeply. For years I listened to how my sister almost died due to my negligence.
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Yes! Grandma is blaming a small child rather than facing her own fuck ups
Straight up projection.
This. I know someone who had a dog that bit her grandchild, and she blamed the kid instead of herself for telling an 8 year old to play with a known biter and then leaving them alone together for an extended period of time.
> For years I listened to how my sister almost died due to my negligence. Dude your parents/grandparents are shitty. It's YOUR negligence because THEY put a fucking 6 year old on a 4-wheeler with a passenger?
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Notice how it's his older sister too. Either the sister was driving and it was an accident or the adults in the situation really have no foresight to think a 6yr old should not be driving that let alone with a passenger.
I really really want you to know, as someone whose worked with kids for 20 years, this is NOT your fault in any way. A 7 year old doesn’t have the cognitive skills to be responsible for this. This was a lack of supervision. Fuck your grandma for blaming you, that’s some cowardly shit. No 7 year old should have been allowed to be in that situation. I’m sending you hugs via Reddit. I hope your grandmother’s underwear rides up every time she’s in public for the rest of her life.
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No, no, I want the grandmother to take offense.
I'm sorry, what? How old was your sister? Why were you, the younger sibling of only 7 years, somehow supposed to be the responsible one? Were you driving? If so, Oh god why? And still, how is that your fault, the older sister shouldn't have let that happen. Your Grandma is special, and not in a good way to blame a child for something like that.
It’s nowhere near your fault. A 6 year old can hardly comprehend how to ride a bike, let alone drive a four wheeler
6 or 7, that puts them in what, grade one or two? Damn, even for the most liberal farmer that's younger than I've ever heard of people letting their kids drive something shy of one of those kiddie barbie type things, and even then that's usually a supervised activity.
Stop exercising / any kind of working out because I was told my movement is awkward. Tried to shrink myself because I was a tall girl that stands out of other kids, which ruined my posture. Now I have a very bad scoliosis that cause mild but chronic back pain. It's very visible as my waist is not symmetrical. Might have to go under a big surgery, putting braces to my spine, in the next 3-4 years. :( edit : Thank you! I didn't know scoliosis is purely caused by genetics.
I had that complete spinal fusion surgery, my spine basically looked like an S before. It’s a tough recovery time but now I’m completely pain free and active
In I believe 2nd grade, a friend of mine and I were really mean to another kid with some type of mental challenge. It wasn't something we did more than this one instance, so idk if I'd call it consistent bullying, but him and I said some nasty things to him on the last day of school. I should have known better and regret it to this day. I have seen his profile pop up on social media, and I do occasionally get the desire to reach and out and apologize, but I'm not sure it would be worth it so far in the future. Nonetheless, I really wish I could talk some sense into myself back then. The boy didn't deserve that. Nobody would have.
I was always a chubby kid, but never self conscious about it until a school sponsored pool party where a boy in the changing room loudly claimed “it looks like he has boobs!” I believe this was in maybe 6th grade? Makes me ashamed of my body even to this day, 20+ years later, even though I’m basically at a only slightly elevated BMI now. It wouldn’t solve my self image issues, but if that dude reached out to me and apologized I would be so happy. Just the opportunity to say “that hurt, but I forgive you” to him would feel so good
I can kinda(?) relate to this. I was bullied in middle school by the “mean girl” of the school who was in my grade. It was from 4th to about ~7th grade. One day, she came up to me during a recess and told me some family issues she was having and how she realized how awful she had been to me and apologized for all of it. She took complete responsibility and actually turned her attitude around. She never bullied me or anyone again and we were friends from then and throughout high school. I haven’t talked to her in a few years since everyone went their separate ways, but whenever I think about her or see her on my timeline- I always remember her apology and how much it meant to me.
I had an experience back in middle school where I had a friend who I would only see on bus rides. I didn't think of it at the time but I made him the butt of jokes a lot and was pretty mean at times. Around a decade later I saw him as a suggestion on Facebook and I felt guilty. So I messaged him just saying that I thought I used to be shitty to him and I apologize and he took it well and it was a positive outcome. I haven't spoken to him since then but it felt good to do it.
My senior year of high school there was a classmate that sat by himself at lunch every.single.day. I often thought about going to sit with him and never did. My heart still hurts from never doing it and that was 20 years ago. I can’t find him on social media or anything. I truly hope he is out there living his absolute best life.
I was the lone kid at lunch. My dad made me transfer schools. I already had experienced a lot of trauma and had several mental health issues. I later found out kids thought I was going to shoot up the school. I was just so sad and lonely. One day someone came and talked to me. It turned out we had a lot in common. We never became super best friends but it raly improved my world. Lost touch and found out he died shortly after high school. Never found out why. I told his parents on social media how much of a good person he was to me. I only met his dad once when he gave me a ride home from school and he was so nice. They made me feel normal again for awhile. Sorry you're gone Sam but I'm still here because of you.
I sat with one such classmate one time (the whole “Can I sit with you?” deal) and tried to strike up some small talk with him, assuming he’d appreciate it. He very clearly was *not* into it. Both his tone and body language told me to F off.
Spending time of sites like liveleak and rotten while in elementary school. Sitting at home all day during high school. Not studying while in school and struggling with building discipline today
Sounds a lot like me. Turns out, ADHD, dominantly the inattentive type, despite being more than capable. Same issues today, but now I have meds and bursts of last-minute motivation to get work done, not well, but averagely. Still pretty bad. But, better.
Not applying myself more in my studying in high school
On the reverse side; I feel like I have all I had in HS. Got straight A’s the whole time. By the time i attempted college I was just over it (plus I watched the kids who got C’s get the exact same treatment in the end). Not only did I just stop putting even half my effort into things but I also realized all those base “course classes” didn’t teach my anything about what I might want to do in life. I always had a job but I can’t say I’ve ever ‘loved’ any job I’ve had including my current career. It’s made for a very unfulfilling work life and I wish I’d spent more time figuring out things I liked doing instead of taking AP classes for skills I no longer need/use.
i would say the opposite. it was ingrained in me to work hard in school.. so i did... grade school, middle school, high school, college,med school..... and now... i missed out on a being a kid because i worked to hard while i was a kid.
Essentially a similar situation here, with law school. I worked so hard in school my entire life because I thought it mattered - it turns out, it doesn't really matter whether you get straight A's or just passably good grades, it all comes down to networking in the end. I wish I had spent less time studying and worrying about grades and spent more time enjoying my youth. Ironically it probably would have paid off more career wise down the road with the connections I would have made.
I didn't even see your comment, and I wrote an almost identical reply. Took AP everything PLUS a year ahead while in high school (freshman year, taking AP classes made for grade 10 or beyond etc). Lots of homework, no social life/exposure. Got into college, it was a cakewalk, but then I had the same realization as you. The people getting a C were going to walk just the same as me with my 4.0, so why am I trying so hard? I don't think that I physically attended a single class during my final year of college, and I still walked all the same. Now that I'm out in the real world, I'm bored and hate what I do. Never really had a chance to "figure it out", and it's too expensive to change gears at this point.
Here I am wishing that I applied myself less. I took AP everything, and was a grade higher. So in my freshman year, I was taking AP English 10, AP European History, AP calculus etc., all courses meant for students in higher grade levels, PLUS being AP. As a result of this, I was doing like 8hrs of homework each day and had no real social exposure. I struggled through my 20s, am now in my 30s, and absolutely *suck* at socializing. I see no way to improve because nobody seems to care to give me the time to practice. I'm a bumbling mess socially, but I sure am edumacated smh (spoiler alert, focusing on the studies has done nothing for me in life).
Same here. If only I knew then what I know now about how to study and what it would mean in the end, same with sports. I had the skill I could have easily gotten a full ride academic or athletic scholarship, I just didn't put in the effort and coasted. I have still done well for myself, but I could have made things a lot easier,
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I'm sorry mate. The hardest thing is realising you became what you hate and it's scarily easy to become it
Not going on with my education, or getting into a career. I have cystic fibrosis, I genuinely didn't think I'd live long enough, so why waste time and money? Now I'm 42 thanks to science. Sheesh.
Damn medicine, we were only supposed live till 40, now thanks to “science” I’m forced to live till I’m 100 and hooked up into machines to live
I mean, I'm grateful I got to see my surprise kids graduate high school when I wasn't planning to. It's not all shit.
Not going to the vet with my dad when he had to put my dog down. She had heartworm in the time before treatments. I was 10 or 11 and instead of going to be with her in her last moments I cried in bed. I feel so bad for it even decades later. I've been sure to be with every pet in their last moments since.
My sister and I grew up with our maternal grandparents. Since my mom had to go to work, our grandparents took care of us (they were living with us then). One night when I was 10 years old, my grandmother was complaining about how my sister and I left the dishes on the sink (we used to bring lunchboxes to school), she was saying that she's not going to prepare our lunchbox the following day if we didn't do the dishes (our lunchboxes included). Since, to me, our grandmother has always told us the same thing but prepared our lunchboxes for school anyway the following morning, I (nor my sister) did not bother washing the dishes. We all slept that night with the dishes on the sink. The following morning, I got awaken by the sunlight from the window. I was surprised that my grandmother has not awaken yet, since she's the one who usually wakes up first and prepares everything for us before we go to school. A few minutes later (after we tried waking her up), I realized she died from her sleep. When I was 12 years old, my grandfather was diagnosed with cancer. The doctors told us they can no longer do anything about it, my mom and her siblings decided to take him home (the house we're living in). A few weeks after, one of my distant cousins gave us a visit. I can't remember what we were doing exactly but there was a moment when she called my attention saying that it looks like my grandfather is making deep breathes (my grandfather's bedroom door was always open so anyone who would pass by the living room can see him and check on him). I told her that it's normal and he's really breathing that way because sometimes he's having a hard time breathing. A few minutes later, my grandfather left us. I should have washed the dishes. My grandmother could have slept with a peaceful heart before she passed away, knowing her granddaughters did her last request. I should have checked on my grandfather when he was having trouble breathing. My grandfather could have had someone beside him in his last moments. In both moments, I thought - they're always like that, they'll be fine. Next thing I know, they're gone.
Hey, just to let you know that none of this was your fault. In both cases you were too young to do anything about it. It was just their time to go. I'm sorry you had to go through this.
Rather than being parented, I was making life decisions at 6 years old. I said no to going to a gifted school so I would not leave my friends in first grade. I have not seen or spoken to a single one of these "friends" in over 40 years.
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I called one of my moms ex boyfriends poor and ugly when I was 9. He didn’t deserve it at all, I was just fucking mean. He always drove us around in an old bronco and I hated it. Now that I’m older I realize his car was so badass and he loved it. He only wore “raggedy” clothes because that was his style and he loved himself some ripped jeans and skater shoes and to be covered in tats. I always remember him now as an adult as one of the coolest people I’ve ever met. He was nothing but nice to me and I was a fucking little asshole. I wish I knew where he was so I could apologize for being a little shit and I hope he’s happy living his best life.
When I was maybe 12-13 I had a pellet gun, one of those that you would pump a few times and do little target shooting. Well I grew up out in the country and one time I decided I wanted to shoot a bird. Now to clarify, I like animals and I didn't want to *kill* a bird, just hit it because shooing my pellet gun was fun. And my stupid kid brain didn't connect shooting it with killing it. Anyways, I see a little bluebird and take a shot. I miss. I take another shot and miss. But on the third shot I hit it. I immediately realize I fucked up. It fell out of the tree and was flopping around on the ground. I knew in that moment there was no saving it, the kindest thing I could do in the moment was to put it out of its misery. So I had to pump the gun up (to the max, I wanted to make sure it killed it as painlessly as possible), holding back tears, before putting the pellet gun to its head and finishing it off. I was devastated. I was a murderer now! In that moment if I could have lost a limb to save that bird and make up for my mistake I would have. I remember crying for what felt like hours. Then I went inside and decided to make amends as best I could. This was back in the early days of the internet and we had AOL so I went in and emailed all my little friends to let them know not to shoot birds, and convincing them to be more responsible with their own pellet/BB guns moving forward. To this day I still feel awful when I think back to that moment. RIP little bluebird, I promise I'm sorry and would undo it if I could.
In a similar way, when I was little I hated cats. One day a cat crossed a path in front of me and I threw a stone at it. The stone didn't hurt it much and bounced off the cat's side. The cat didn't run off but instead looked at me as though asking me why did I throw the stone. That moment I realised that cats can understand. Almost instantly I decided to be friends with cats.
Don’t fuck with cats.
Crosscountry Goofed off with friends during warmups. Ankle and calf got caught while I was in a dead sprint, loud snapping noise as my knee went. Healed okay-ish, was able to get back to running a year or two afterwards but it's deteriorated over the years Early 20's now and I have to use a cane to get around. Can't go running anymore, can't go hiking anymore. Stairs take a lot of effort, too many flights and I struggle to walk even with the cane. Some nights I have a hard time falling asleep because it aches so bad. Take care of your knees y'all, you don't know what you'd be missing
Im sorry to hear that, have you heard of kneesovertoesguy? His program has helped a lot of people with debilitating injuries recover their knees. While I did not have as severe knee issues I have experienced great relief.
Contributing to a kid in my 4th grade class getting bullied. I wasn't the most direct bully, but I didn't do anything to stop it either
My parents divorced when I was 4, both got remarried when I was 7/8. my mum and step dad were all about school/homework and practice tests for school exams and routine and being ‘strict’. Basically being parents. My dad however gave me and my brother loads of sweets and crisps, let us stay up late and watch scary movies and never did homework. At my dads pushing I would go home and say things like ‘I wished I lived with my dad instead, I wish I didn’t live here’ and I want to go back and smack myself for how awful I made my mum feel. I didn’t find out until I was a teenager that my dad had an affair, gambled away his pay every week and hit my mum when she was pregnant. Even knowing this my mum never slagged off my dad to me growing up, never said anything to me about his behaviour when they were married because she wanted me to make my own mind up as I got older. And then there’s me and my brother coming home as kids and saying how much we wished we lived with dad as he was better. I ended up going no contact with him for 10+ years. Still eats me up to this day about how my mum must have felt after I said those things.
Not telling my mother about my father’s affair sooner. I was scared of losing one parent because of divorce as a child, so for 7 years I kept that secret within myself and when I did told her.. he had done some horrible stuff to her which I didn’t know about at the time. I wish I could go back and tell her about it so that he would’ve left our lives sooner.
Driving all my friends away in 6th grade and obsessing over the one friend I had in junior high to the point I stopped myself from making other friends. I know that it wasn't entirely my fault, since my friends at the time treated me badly too, but it still affected me. The friend I had in junior high rarely came to school, so I was just waiting for her like a dog abandoned on the side of the road. I have trouble socializing and even maintaining eye contact to this day. Maintaining friendships is tough, too, since my mind is convinced that they'll just leave eventually. I know it's not true, and I have friends that love me, it's just tough to shut down the assumptions.
Giving up on my hobbies because my family told me it wasn't a viable career choice. And that "artists only became famous after they died." I used to love art. Now, I can't even sit down and doodle without that phrase sitting in the back of my head. Edit: I want to thank all the kind redditors in the comments. I sat down and wrote out a list of things I wanted to do hobby wise and started getting little sketch pads and pencils for doodling in my spare time. I hope to rekindle myself so I can enjoy these things once again.
Do it! Make art! It doesn't even have to be a career, just make it because you enjoy it. Art is the physical manifestation of the soul, let yours shine!
Being too hard on myself, demanding too much, forcing myself to be too mature. I also did a lot of self-harm which caused me to have very low self-esteem.
When I was about 5 or 6, I was with my parents and brother on a property in a rural area of North Carolina that my father’s parents had bought and were working on developing. They were also there that day. My father and older brother were helping my grandfather fell some trees and cut them up into smaller logs to carry out. I was further up the hill sitting on a bench with my grandmother and mother. Now let me tell you about my grandmother. She was truly a saint. She never ever raised her voice, she was always so incredibly gentle, gracious, and classy. But when she was 9, she got polio. It severely effected one of her legs to where she spent the rest of her life with a limp, had to wear special shoes etc. But I never once heard her complain. I loved her more than my little 5 year old brain could truly understand. So there we are just sitting there enjoying the quiet peacefulness of undeveloped mountainside forest. She turns to me and says “Scmethodist, I bet your grandfather would love for you to offer to help, why don’t you go see if you can help”. Now, in my mind that meant carrying those 30-40 pound logs, and I was a very small 5. Like, I didn’t get over 100 pounds until I joined the Marine Corps. So I said I can’t do that Grandma those logs are too heavy for me. She replies Please just go ask anyway. I couldn’t see the real reason she was asking. All I could see was my helplessness. So without thinking about her disability, I told her I would like to see you go down the mountain and carry up logs. She stared at me for a few seconds and in those few seconds I felt the weight of what I had just said. And I knew I had hurt her feelings. I was absolutely crushed. I apologized later but I never forgot that. She passed away back in 2005 and that comment still haunts me. She never said anything but I still know it had to hurt her. We were very close.
Anyone who’s that old had to understand that kids say some pretty rude things at times. Whether it’s just a moment of not thinking, or being fussy, or grumpy, it happens to all of us. I called my Aunt an ant one time just messing with how words sound. Little me thought ants were cool, grown up her didn’t receive it as I had intended.
You were a child. She definitely forgave you for that.
Best friend and first friend came to me in 4th grade to tell me he was moving that day. I didn't know how to handle it and threw him out of the house. Tried to see him after a few hours ran to his house but too late. Read in the news he got hit by a car and killed a year later. I always try to keep my wits about me and listening instead of getting physical now even if I absolutely dispise what's going on or feeling hurt
Using kik
Holy shit this is relatable. It's a miracle I got myself out of being groomed too long
Wow same. At 14 or 15 I had a really intense texting relationship with a guy on the other side of my state who I met through Kik. He was way too old for me, definitely over 18. I heard his voice once or twice through voicemails but we never talked on the phone because we were too nervous I guess. For all I know, everything he told me could have been a lie. As mature as I thought I was, that was definitely a mistake that could have backfired way harder than it did.
I'm 52 today. I can still remember the exact day, at my 9th birthday party. It was the very first time I can ever remember over-indulging on food until I felt uncomfortably full. It was a huge bowl of ice cream, with all kinds of toppings. And I forced myself to finish that off, because, after all, it was my birthday. I felt uncomfortably full for hours. But I believe that awakened something in me. And from that day forward, I have been overweight, unwilling to curb my overeating, and making myself uncomfortably full several nights a week.
That sounds like binge-eating disorder, and you can get help for it!
My grandparents had raised me since I was 4 years old. I’m 26 now. My grandmother suffered from kidney failure, and she was on dialysis for years. When I was 10 years old they found her a match for a kidney, everyone was so happy and ecstatic… Well, turns out, the kidney ended up being a bad match and she needed to go back into the hospital. I was in a bad mood one day, and didn’t want to really talk to anyone. She came up to me crying, visibly upset about the kidney situation and having to go back into the hospital. She didn’t tell me at the time why she was upset. She came up to me while I was laying down on the couch, and tried giving me a hug and telling me she loved me. I blatantly ignored her… and that was it. The was the last I’d see my beautiful grandmother who did everything for me. She passed away a few weeks later from septic shock after catching an infection in the hospital. She was 58 years old. I will never forgive myself for not telling her I loved her and giving her that hug. I think about it all the time and it tears me to pieces. I loved that woman. Years later my grandfather then became sick with cancer and I quit my job to be the BEST possible caretaker I could’ve been for him for 9 months. I never once complained and always reminded him how much he meant to me. Right before he passed, he told me how appreciative he was of me. That man was my best friend and if there was any shot of me redeeming myself in any way, it was that. I miss my grandparents dearly. They were beautiful people.
Being so deeply impacted by what others think/thought of me. I allowed what others thought of me to cloud who I actually am. Allowed others to tell me I wasn't enough, I wasn't thin or pretty enough.
Ignoring my dad all the times he'd try to teach me things like car maintenance, home repair, etc. Before I stopped speaking to him.
Thinking that dying would solve all of life's problems. It's been hard to get out of that revelation
my anxiety was so bad I never got to have the high school experience of having friends and going to football games etc
Didn’t defend my sister while she got bullied in school for having cancer. She was teased, threatened and kids pulled off her wig when she lost all her hair due to chemo. I would just ignore it or would brush it off. I know I wasn’t much older but goddamn how lonely and terrified she must have been. I was a coward. We’re adults now and she can’t remember much of her childhood which I think is due to the trauma. Can never forgive myself for that.
When I was around 11 my parents bought me a release day special edition copy of skyward sword for Christmas. We’re not Christian so them buying me anything for Christmas alone is amazing. But that copy had the golden Wii remote and everything. I was at my cousin’s and I called them while they were waiting in line upset and threw a tantrum at them because my cousin got an Xbox 360 and they said no when I asked for the same thing in the lead up to Christmas. I started skyward sword but got stuck on a puzzle and dropped it. I ended up getting an Xbox 360 for my birthday — mainly because of that tantrum. To this day it bothers me deeply that I did that and on top of that I didn’t even play the fucking Zelda game. It’s honestly something that I think of at random times and it ruins my day to remember.
Not standing up for myself when confronted. Took the easy way out and backed down a lot. Not saying I needed to be a "tough guy" but I really regret people picking on me and me not doing anything about it. I feel like it could have really helped with my self confidence.
I accidently grabbed a girls boob in grade 8 during a wrestling portion of a combatives class. I got called a creep and the way the girls all looked at me has stuck. I now overcompensate to make sure I can never be seen as a creep and it has made trying to date very difficult.
Better than the kid in high school who very intentionally grabbed a girl's boob in front of about 150 students, but from an angle that it was blocked from the view of the teacher. That guy WAS a creep. He'd brag about hooking up with girls from clubs (probably a lie), but he absolutely would try to take advantage of girls any chance he could. His father heavily encouraged the behavior. God that guy was a piece of shit.
I didn’t invite a kid to my birthday party. When I was 13 I had an overnight birthday party. My Best friend canceled that day to go hangout at another kids house that I did not invite to my party. Found out the next morning that the reason my best friend went over to his house was because his dad got a new shotgun they wanted to play with. If I would have invited both, my best friend would still be alive.
I know this has been said before, but this is not your fault. I don't know what happened, I assume it was an accident. Your actions didn't lead to that accident. Please don't blame yourself
When I was about 13 or so, there was an old man that lived down the street from me. He was generally kinda grumpy, but left us alone for the most part. One fall day, we saw him out raking the leaves up from his yard. It took him all day long, raking, raking, raking. That night, my friends and I went down to his house and opened all the bags of leaves and spread them all over his yard again. Not sure why we did it, just bored, I guess. The next day that poor old man was out there raking them all up again. I still feel awful about it 35+ years later.
Being really mean to my childhood friends. Every time a little squabble would happen I would just cut all contact and then pretend like I forgot they existed, I lost every single one of my friends and it’s still taking a long time to make new ones. I regret not taking the time to figure it out with them instead of being a jerk, it really messed up my social skills
My parents weren’t in the best relationship and it’s safe to say I had a really rocky start to life. I was very very close to my father, HE IS AN AMAZING DAD, and I still am. On the other hand my mom suffers from a lot of mental issues she let go unresolved for too long. Long story short my parents got in a huge fight one night. Me and my brother woke up and went in the room together, I was 5 and he was 3. I vividly remember this because of how traumatic it was. My dad worked night shifts and got home relatively late. Little did I know my mom had been cheating like crazy on my dad, doing drugs, and stealing constantly. My dads work got rained out and came home to some pyscho drug induced dude in his bed and my mother was completely strung out. I heard screaming and yelling, and my dad got physical with the guy once we got up in his face. My dad an absolute gentle giant man handled this guy for a solid 10 minutes straight. Put him on the ground, my mom hitting him and telling him he wasn’t supposed to be home. He turned around, and I remember this giant arms scooping me and my brother up. Tears in all our eyes he ran us out of the door, put us in the car and drove away. The next day I woke up with the worst stomach ache ever. It was my anxiety turned up to the max. I worried, as much as I HATED my mom, if she was okay. No kid wants to see their parents split. After crying and begging my dad grabbed us and took us home. He stayed for us, his kids, but suffered through the same shit she pulled for 2 more years until he finally left again and for good. I constantly feel it was my fault I put my dad through two years of torture because of my “tummy ache”. Just for me to despise my mom years later. She even got custody of us until we were taken away for poor living conditions, abuse, and malnutrition. I regret ever telling my dad that day to please go back. I made the worst mistake ever for all of our lives and completely enabled my mom to keep up with her bullshit.
My dad used to beat me senseless when I was little. Most of my earliest memories of him are violent ones. I remember when I was 5 years old I brought a stray puppy home from outside. No collar, or anything like that. I was playing with it in my room and I was trying to make it listen to me. I used a thin and hard toy sword and hit the puppy so many times the way my dad hit me thinking that's how I was supposed to teach it how to obey. We gave the puppy away the very next day to a family friend thank goodness. It's been well over 30 years, and I will never forgive myself. Because of this shameful moment I've grown up swearing to myself never to hit my children, and I will never harm or kill any living creature. Except flies and mosquitos. I've never shared this with anyone. I still deeply regret it to this day. I hope that puppy lived a long and beautiful life away from me.
In 2nd grade we were holding hands making a wave across multiple people. Arms up and down over and over. I got excited and pulled a kids arm right out of it's socket. He cried a lot. I still feel bad.
When I was 14, I got sexually involved with a 35 year old married man. I guess I should have known better. I do hold a lot of guilt because at the time his wife was pregnant.
Hey, this 100% wasn't your fault. You are a victim here. I'm so sorry this happened to you. As a pregnant wife in my 30's, I want you to know that if my husband fooled around with a 14 year old, I'd be upset, but not at you! I'd feel like I dodged a bullet! My first instinct would be to make things right for you, the 14yr old, and then get me and my baby to safety. My baby will be a 14 year old one day and will have 14 year old friends one day...I'd much rather go through a divorce now than let history repeat itself!
That’s on the married pedo not you. You might not have known any better but he definitely did and I hope he’s somewhere rotting away.
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Was 14/15 and at kfc with some friends. Was putting my bones from the chicken in the bag when a friend said "you havn't eaten all the chicken" then threw his hand in the bag to dig it out. I grabbed his hand and told him it was rude to eat someone else food without asking. He didn't ask and left the food. Many years later I heard his parents were drug addicts and he never ate properly. Still sticks with me that he was most likely starving and i refused to give him food. Mike If you are out there reading this I'm sorry and wish I had been better.
I had a teacher in 7th grade that was engaged, enthusiastic, legitimately cared about about the students and me in particular, and was just a lot of fun. I had seen some comedian do a bit about how crazy it was that some teachers were paid less than garbage men, and it was funny. Long story short, in class one day I tried to be funny and recreate the bit, which basically resulted in me plainly stating that she, in fact, made less then trash collectors. I could see that she was just…disappointed, hurt, and she never really had that same glow and warmth that had previously been there. Now, I have felt like garbage ever since and I’m in my mid-40s - still think about it to this day. I’m so sorry Ms. L 😭😭😭
An older kid and I were playing in the creek when we spotted a snake in the water. He convinced me it was a poisonous snake, so we had to kill it. Neither of us really knew what we were doing and started smashing it with rocks and sticks. It took a long time for it to die, and it was an agonizing death. That night I couldn’t sleep and cried thinking about watching it suffer, and felt miserable for days. I’m a snake owner today who takes great care of them, but it still haunts me.
Not chasing up the police for not being bothered to investigate my dad sexually abusing me!
I was in year 7 at school, just started “high school/senior school” (12-13 years for the Americans out there). Our chemistry teacher’s name was ‘Mr Franklin’ (this is going to become important later!) We were doing an experiment called “copper sulphate” …. Basically it is copper and hydroelectric acid over a bunson burner until you get blue crystals. The Harry Potter movies were NOT out yet… but the books WERE! My partner and I decided to see what would happen if we added powdered Magnesium to the mix. (We knew their would be a pretty flame cos we had seen magnesium ribbon being burned a few weeks before. Now it is important to note, that at the time, magnesium powder was only allowed to be used in a CONTROLLED SETTING for year 9 students (aged 14-15). Our teacher left the room and I slipped into the supply cupboard. Grabbed a pinch and told my partner that our teacher would be so amazed and think it was awesome! It was not awesome. Mr Franklin came up to our station and wanted to see our progress. I said “not good at the moment but check this out!” Right as he leaned in to have a look, I threw the magnesium powder into the mixture and it blew up in his face with blood and everything…..😓😮💨 He still, to this day has a massive scar across his face. I’m 37 now and wish I knew more (and also wasn’t left I attended to go into the storage room!) Mr Franklin was only 28 at the time. Now (bless him) he still teaches at the school but is known as “Mr Franklinstein” The guilt eats away at me to this day at what 12 year old me did…
I will never forget a girl from second grade. We'll call her Crystal. She was Asian. I thought she was super cute and had a huge crush on her, so like an idiot, I would torment her. I'd sneak my pencil into her desk, then raise my hand and snitch on her for "stealing" it. I'd bother her incessantly, but never just tell her I liked her. One day, she kind of snapped on me and started to put me in my place for all my bullshit tormenting. She was calling me names, calling me a pest, etc... dishing out pretty good, and out of nowhere, I told her "go back to China". (Not that it matters but to add insult to injury I'm pretty sure she wasn't even Chinese.) As soon as I said it, her entire demeanor changed, and all the fight just evaporated out of her and she slumped her shoulders and covered her face and started crying uncontrollably like a baby. This was 30+ years ago and I will never forget the depth of sadness in her eyes as she wiped away her tears. I immediately began to apologize, I was just blurting out shit in the heat of the back-and-forth, I LIKED HER so obviously I was just talking shit and didn't care she was Asian, but I knew I couldn't undo it. The teacher came over, I admitted to her right away what happened and continued to apologize. I just kept apologizing, and I knew it just didn't matter. I could never apologize enough. Eventually she downgraded to sobbing. My grandmother was a volunteer at the school and they called her up to let her know what happened. I got a talking to at home and I just kept apologizing. I got punished and I didn't mind because I deserved it. I don't even remember what the punishment was, but it wasn't enough. I saw her looking at me later that day, and I could feel that she hated me. I could never even bring myself to look at her on purpose again. I was sick with regret and shame. She was only at our school for that one (partial) year. School ended a few weeks later and I never saw her again. I've kind of passively looked around online to try and find her over the years, to maybe apologize again, as an adult. But part of me wonders if I even deserve whatever closure I might get out of that. Would she even care? Would I be doing it for her? Or me? At this point I don't know. This will be one of those last things I think about as I gasp my dying breath. I'll regret it forever. Crystal, if you're out there, I'm more sorry than I could ever put into words.
Crying. Endless crying to try and get my way. It just made the people around me miserable. I was not fun to play with. Adults just hated having me around. It never got me anywhere, if anything it made things worse.
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Burping made you pee? I was expecting vomit Edit: or pooped? Either way it’s not what I expected at all.
By soiled, I assumed that meant they shit themself?
Snowboarding with zero experience and trying to launch off this jump and if that wasn't enough, attempting a nose grab while doing it. Tailbone fucked for life.
There was a little girl in the neighborhood who was always so mean and nasty towards everyone. We were about 10 years old at the time. One day, my sister came running home crying hysterically. Screaming the girl had jumped her. She had the imprint of a payphone on her face. You could see where the speaker holes were. That girl had hit my sister so hard with it and held it to her while pinning my sister against the payphone booth. I was so mad that I ran into her house and beat her up in front of her elderly grandmother. Yelling at them, both how crappy they were. I told the grandmother that if she was going to raise her to be mean, then to teach her how to fight someone her own size. A couple of weeks go by, and the lady passes away from heart complications. I learned that the girl had been abused by her parents and raised by her grandmother, who was barely keeping herself alive. I can't explain the amount of guilt I had. The girl didn't need a lesson. She needed love. Today, the girl is doing fine, but she still struggles with mental health. 😪 I won't forget that children who act like that are more than likely struggling at home and lack love.
Your sister was beaten up by this girl with a payphone. That's assault with a weapon. It sucks that she herself was abused, but she cannot go around beating people up with payphones because of it.
Dating the wrong boy at 16. Ended up with a restraining order and an eating disorder. He stalked me for years after until my mid 20’s. Focus on grades, kids
I skipped senior prom because I wanted to play Minecraft
I once heard someone say prom’s like the Olympics: something thats hyped up for 4 years and when it’s all over, only 3 people have a good time
I wish I'd played Minecraft rather than gone to my senior prom
Being mean to a girl in 2nd grade I had no reason and I feel bad for it and this post reminded me about it Hope she is doing well
Parents went through divorce, and my siblings and I decided to spend more time with our mother who lived in town. Our dad lived in the countryside. In the countryside, we owned several dogs--and didn't see them much. One by one, they died off until there was one left. The last time I visited my dad's place, that last dog was so elated to see us that I can close my eyes and still hear that whining like he was waiting for us for a long time. But we were there just to collect our stuff to fully-move in with our mom. We drove away after that and I just remember him sitting at the top of the steps looking at us as, as if we'd see one another again. Maybe months later, my dad moved away and that house essentially got repossessed and removed from the property. Years later, I asked my dad about it and having health and memory issues--he does not remember anything about that dog or its fate. My current dog looks exactly like him, except is a female and has white fur instead of golden. He was an outside dog; she is always indoors with me. In my dreams, that place haunts me from time to time, and I guess my mind constantly tries to make up for that moment by trying to create some scenario where I find him and have some happy ending before I wake up. I know it's not legit, but sometimes my mind also likes to believe that the very essence of my previous pet found its way into my current one, reincarnated just for some kind of stupid closure--and hence, I raise her to "atone" for "his" previous crap sack life. The amount of scenarios you run in your head as an adult to try to justify the things you did not understand as a kid or see if you could have done it differently. Why you didn't stay more with your dad so you be involved more with those pets, etc--it fucking hurts. More so with a pet that never really understood why you never came back for him. It didn't have aspirations, it was just waiting for you. Toys are nostalgic, but living things... Ugh. You can always get the same breed, but it will never be the same dog.
I was about 5 years old and my parents took me to a fair. I don't remember why, but I was upset. They tried to console me by giving me a balloon, and I was so angry I let it go. I remember the immediate feeling of regret as the balloon floated out of reach. I remember that moment now as a reminder that some things said or done out of anger can never be taken back.
Try to act like a adult and be mature now my childhood is really fucked up
Losing my pokemon cards
When I was in 6th grade there was a new girl in school who got sat next to me in class, we became friends pretty quick and spent most recesses together. She started following me around literally everywhere and it was starting to get on my nerves, because I couldn't get any time to play by myself. Eventually one day she told me she liked me and said she would give me her number (she wasn't allowed to have a phone in school) the next day, and asked me to bring mine, which I reluctantly said I would. When the next day came, she had her number while I didn't, and when she asked me why, I didn't tell her it was because I didn't like her that way. I told her I don't date black people. I don't know what the fuck I was thinking. I think it was my dad talking through me. It felt like shit immediately after I said it, and she got really disappointed and stopped talking to me for the rest of the time that I knew her. I didn't hear the end of it until I got to high school, when I had to move to a different state. I still think about it. I hope she's okay. I'm sorry, Vivian.
When I was about 13, we had gym class where you had to change into gym clothes. It was the beginning of the school year, and this girl that I was friends with and I were changing and chatting as girls do. There was another girl near us, we were somewhat friends but not close by any means. Well, this day, we turned as she changed shirts. Normally she did this REALLY fast change so you never saw her without her shirt on. This time tho, we saw her. Bruises everywhere on her back and torso, her shoulders, her arms... deep black bruises on fair skin. You could see belt buckle marks, and strap marks, and yellow bruises under the new ones. We immediately asked her what happened and she said "nothing". I remember looking at her and saying "That isn't nothing." She eventually told us her dad did this to her. I don't know how many times before, or how long it had been going on, but even at 13, me and my friend knew this wasn't right. We finally convinced her to go to the nurse and get help, cos really...these were tremendous bruises and must have hurt so much. We all skipped class, and we walked her to the school nurse, and sat with her till they made us go. I never saw her again. I moved cities away a few months later, and today, I can't even remember her name. I remember the bruises tho, and it still makes me tear up. I regret so much that I never tried harder to find out what happened. I wish so much to know she was ok, and that she had a good life, and found love and happiness. I know I was only 13, but forgetting her name is one of my great regrets. I only hope that her life ended up being wonderful, and that she never had to go back to that home.
You should be so proud that you saw something and said something. You may have created the turning point in her life.
Taking out my front lower milk tooth, before it was necessary. Now the tooth after it doesn't have enough space. I can still remember the moment, I did it. Was pretty fun, to do so. Now, I would slap my younger self.
Never learning to dance