To ask of your 'If I could go back in time' moments

[MissionItsPossible]

Thread title doesn't explain it properly but I mean those moments looking back, no matter how soon or long ago, you wish you could have said/did/acted differently looking back in hindsight.

My most regretful one was when I was aged 8 in 1994 and I had gone to my friends house and his dad said "I've got no problem with your lot, it's the paki's I can't stand" and ugh, I remember feeling pleased he had no problem with my skin colour but looking back what an ignorant and horrible statement to make especially to a child and looking back, as an adult, wish I could have said something back to him.

Another one was when an old boss told me I was useless and pointless. Wish I'd told him exactly how useless and pointless that he was in running a business when all the staff hated him but I was 15 and didn't have the confidence and just accepted it meekly.

Yours?

[Aquamarine1029]

I never waste time on what could have been. There's no point. I deal with the here and now and the ways I can improve myself.

[Zaberwocky]

I try not to dwell too hard on what might have been! But when you go through periods of feeling a bit low, it's hard to fight sometimes.

If I could go back in time, I'd do everything in my power to get a doctor to take my 'period' seriously. Maybe then, I'd have had my endometriosis diagnosed when it was at a more manageable level, maybe I wouldn't have miscarried so many times, then maybe I'd have enjoyed my wedding night rather than sobbing my way through another loss in the bath! Maybe our TTC journey would have been easier. Maybe I wouldn't have spent the last 16 years in crippling pain.

It's a regret, but it's a lot of maybes. It may not have made a difference if I'd gotten sorted at 14, 18, 20...

[hellobonjour]

I split with my long term boyfriend aged 23 and three months later met an absolute horror of a man who I gave two and a half years of my life to. Not long after we started the ill fated relationship my ex contacted me to say he thought we'd made a terrible mistake. I thought I'd teach him a lesson and told him where to go. I often wonder if I'd gone back what would've happened. I'm married now with children but it does sometimes cross my mind that i could have had a different life. My ex has never been in a relationship since. We're 33 now.

[hellobonjour]

I also didn't marry the horror of a man! We split and and I was completely broken by him and his emotional abuse.

[BrightonBelleCat]

I can pinpoint it exactly to being 19. Changing job led to me meeting my ex-husband. I would change it in a heartbeat.

[mzhan]

Loads

I wish I'd been able to 'see' my mums alcoholism. I thought drinking those amounts was normal and it killed her.

I wish I'd stuck up for myself more generally.

I wish I hadn't turned my back on some supportive women a few years ago.

[AGnu]

When I was a teenager my friend told me he'd cry if I went out with someone else. He said it in a jokey way so I laughed & said I didn't believe he would. A mutual friend has since told me that he actually really liked me too so if I could redo that moment I'd have kissed him.

That "someone else" was my DH so changing that moment would probably have changed my entire life, which is something I wouldn't want to do. It could have been such a romantic moment though!

[buttonhead101]

I wish I'd had more self respect. I do now. But in past I've not respected myself, I've made choices that weren't the best for me and I didn't realise at the time what it was I was lacking. Sadly - although we get on well- ish now - I blame my parents for all their derogatory remarks about how I looked and my life choices. I didn't look that bad and I tried to make sensible choices that worked for me. It is not a mistake I am making with my children. I am teaching self respect at all times and empowerment. However their negativity has only made me relentlessly positive! So it worked out in the end.

[DreamingOfAFullNightsSleep]

I wish I had had more self confidence. I actually quite often wish I hadnt married my dh. I don't really want to get divorced, but I wish I'd had my eyes open and not shrugged off the doubts when we were dating. He's not an awful husband, or person. But with hindsight it's obvious he is so much less sociable than me, has a different attitude to money, etc. We argue a lot.

[DreamingOfAFullNightsSleep]

But then again, if I hadn't I wouldn't have my dc and I don't for a second regret them.

[sobeyondthehills]

For me personally a lot of the shit, has made me into the person I am today, if I could of avoided them and still become me, then like hell I would, but I think the one main thing I would do, is go back to my 16th birthday and slap that fucking cig out of my hands, and told me my dad actually knew what he was talking about.

Its been 4 years and I still have the urge to mug someone for their cigarette

[PinkSparklyPussyCat]

I wish I could go back to before my Dad died so I could spend more time with him and actually talk to him. He told my Mum that he knew I didn't love him - how wrong he was.

I would also spend time with him the day before he died. He was terrified of hospitals and we were waiting for an ambulance for him and I couldn't look him in the eye so I avoided him and that guilt will live with me forever. He died unexpectedly the next morning on his own in a hospital ward

[NothingRhymesWithOrange]

Pink for you

I wish I hadn't wasted my twenties on trying to be the cool girl. Can't pinpoint one moment that was a conscious choice though.

[BlueThesaurusRex]

I would FORCE my mum to get help for her drinking. I know they say that an alcoholic will only be healed by themselves but I think if I stopped her earlier she'd still be here today

[hellobonjour]

Pink that's really sad to hear. I'm sure wherever he is now he's sure of the fact that you do

[RoryPowers]

I once told someone something about my sister I shouldn't. It then got my sister in a situation she didn't deserve. To this day my sister doesn't know about it and I still feel shame about it. We were 11 at the time.

[Imbeingunreasonable]

I would have avoided an accident I had in my early teens that left me with physical scars. If I could build a time machine I'd go back to that point and side-step it.

I would have broke it off with the only person who I believed ever truly loved me. I did it because I was young when I got with him and after 4.5 years of being together I wanted to 'find myself'. Incidentally I've 'lost myself' within shit relationships ever since. I compare every relationship to this one. I don't think I'll ever find another like it.

Garrr what's wrong with me?

[PinkSparklyPussyCat]

Thank you bonjour and orange

[NurseButtercup]

If I could I would turn back the clock to my 19 year old self, when I met my exbf. I stayed with him for 8 years, I should have dumped him 6 weeks after we got together. I bumped into one of his friends when I was about 35/36 and he confessed that my ex had cheated on me throughout the 8 years, often with multiple women on the go at a time. His friend said " I've wanted to tell you for years, I feel so much better now."

[AlmostAJillSandwich]

Just turned 14, a previous primary school friend transferred to my highschool. Spent the first three days talking about herself and she was someone i absolutely wanted nothing to do with. Underage drinking, smoking, trying drugs, underage sex, and quite nasty. She must have sensed my unease, as from day 3 onwards, she started bullying me, really badly, to the point it was day in day out relentless, at school and being told all about the stuff they were saying about me to each other out of school etc. It got to the point i had no friends, was majorly suicidal and had to drop out of school which due to the sudden disappearance of all routine, caused a pre existing anxiety disorder and depression to spiral out of control, and to this day it's never stopped. I became housebound, unable to finish school, never mind college or uni, never been able to work. It completely destroyed my life and 13 years on, i'm still exisiting rather than living.

My "If i could go back" was a week or two after the bullying started, as the fat, nerdy unpopular kid who was ridiculously shy, i asked my best friend if she would just stand with me and back me up if i confronted the girl and told her to stop, only wanting the friend to say she agreed the way she was treating me was wrong, but my "friend" refused, and went on to stand by and watch and laugh along with what followed for the next 14 months until i dropped out because i broke, told my parents i was walking in front of cars every day on my way to school hoping to get hit.

I wish so, so much, i'd just had the courage to stand up for myself even if i was doing it alone, even if i got a physical beating (her abuse was all verbal) maybe, just maybe i could have stopped her. Especially as an online confrontation at 18 she admitted to me i never did anything wrong, she just thought it was fun to see how far she had to push me to react, and if i'd stood up to her she would have stopped. I followed the advice everyone always gives, ignore them and they'll get bored and stop. It only spurred her on to more extreme things (like telling the entire gym changing room of half the girls in my whole year that i was a lesbian mid changing) to try to make me react, and it very nearly killed me, and then destroyed my life.

[AlmostAJillSandwich]

Of course it's possible my illness would have gotten worse at some point anyway, but it was the bullying that tore me apart and caused so much anxiety, depression and the suicidal thoughts that i dropped out of school, and i was the best student there, all A's i could have had an amazing life, a career, been somebody and contributed to society, not be a hermit dependent on disability benefit who has to take to survive and can't give anything back.

[Iwasjustabouttosaythat]

I would have kissed Dean that night under the stars when I was 17. He was too sweet and shy to make a move and I wasn't sure enough of myself. It was nice years later when he said he liked me that way, but our lives had moved on. I know it wouldn't have lasted forever and I like to think I would still have ended up with my DP and DC, but if I'd taken the chance he wouldn't be the one that got away.

[Mulberry72]

I wish I'd worked harder at school and done more with my brain (I know my DF is still dissapointed that I didn't go to Uni, I'm 44 now).

That I'd never agreed to go out with a drug dealing, woman beating, jail bird when I was 17 and wasted 10 years of my life in him.

[DJBaggySmalls]

I wish I'd turned ex DH down, or never met him.

Its sad you blame yourself for not standing up to nasty adults when you were just a child. Its easy to think what you would do now, as an adult. but you weren't an adult back then. and those people won't be fixed by one quick comeback.