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?

[memyselfandisolodjsjajaj]

This is such a sad & heartbreaking thread for me as I came to the conclusion that I would change so many thinge. But maybe today I'm too tired & things are not going exactly right in my life so I have a tendency for drama just now

[Goingtobeawesome]

Fuck. So much I'd say. So much I'd do. So much I wouldn't say and wouldn't do. Can't think much beyond that or I'd get very depressed.

[Singyourheartout]

Silly thing.
Wished I never accepted a job at a bar. Lasted 2 weeks. Wasn't trained properly and treated horrifically. But made me fell pathetic, and keep over thinking it. But I will get over it, just one minor bump in the long road.

[Justbreathing]

I would have chosen the man who really loved me who I "friend zoned" 15 years ago. Instead I chose someone who I spent 10 years being unhappy with.
my friend went on to meet someone else and is in a functioning but not happy relationship which he doesn't feel he can leave due to kids.

But I love him, I was just young and had no awareness of what it was liked to be truly loved, and he did truly love me. I have distanced myself from him because it all hurts too much.
I think we both regret the choices we made all those years ago.
I don't know if i will ever find someone now.

[sufficatedsue]

I would go back to the day we booked a holiday. I had panic attack on the flight. My life hasn't been the same since

So I'd go back and not book that holiday!!!

[ElfrideSwancourt]

I would have left my husband when he cheated on me- with hindsight I would have been fine without him. I didn't think I would ever meet anyone else- I was young and beautiful with a good career and I could have moved on. Now I'm old and have a chronic illness and need him in a practical way. But then I wouldn't have my gorgeous DD2....

[CadnoDrwg]

If I could have one jaunt to the past to change anything I'd delay my cousin from taking a trip that would kill him as a teenager. Had he been with just one person instead of rushing ahead in eagerness of a promised brilliant day he would have survived.

His death tore us all to pieces and some of us are still in pieces almost 15 years later

Everything else good or bad I can chalk up to experience but I'd love to have been able to spare those I love that pain.

[WarwickAlice]

I was about 15, at school and being endlessly bullied by a girl named Jenna. I accidentally knocked a ceramic pot off the side in an art class, and found out later it was Jenna's. she cornered me in a changing room later and totally humiliated me in front of everyone else there. I can see it as if it were yesterday. She asked me, "don't you think I deserve an apology?", and I wish I had stood up for myself and said something like, "yes, but only when you start treating me with some respect" or something like it. It took me years to build up my self-esteem and put the bullies behind me.

[JoshLymanJr]

I would have suggested starting TTC for our second child a few weeks earlier, so my Dad could have met her.

I would also have taken that year in Dublin when it was on offer.

[RiversrunWoodville]

Not gone out that night a week before my 18th birthday when I had my drink spiked and was raped which totally wrecked my self esteem and mental health and allowed me to end up with controlling xp who was mentally and physically abusive for 5 years.
However I met my now DH through the business xp started so perhaps I had to put up with it all

[Ohyesiam]

@pinksparklypussycat you can still term him now. Sit quietly and " tune in " to him, then tell him all you need to
Someone encouraged me to do this, and it changed my life for the better

[theshitcollector]

I was a rather shy child/teen/young adult and was very wary of anyone who wanted to spend time with me (clearly some sort of defence mechanism). I think my life could have been more interesting if I'd taken a few more chances on letting people in. Specific moments are:

• When I was about 13 and being mocked by a group of boys on the way home a girl from another school stepped in to tell them to get lost and walked home with me. She asked if I wanted to meet up sometimes (nowadays I suspect she'd have said 'hang out'). I was so shocked I didn't answer so she mumbled something like 'that;s OK, I know you've probably got friends already' and that was that. I think if I had believed that she was just another lonely teen I would have felt less isolated.
  

• Several occasions in my late teens/early teens when perfectly pleasant, sober, attractive men asked me out but I assumed they were either secretly odd and unpleasant or having a laugh at my expense. If I'd said yes to them I probably wouldn't have wasted time chasing after men who treated me badly. I did eventually work out that saying yes to someone who seems nice but may turn out to be odd was better than going out with someone who didn't even seem very nice, but it took a while!

[MissCherryCakeyBun]

I would have never accepted a drink from the guy I met through friends who went on to become husband ( now ex thankfully) I lost nearly 10 years of my life 2 teeth and suffered innumerable times at his fists and attitude. I tried to take my own life just to escape as I couldn't see a way out.....in the end I lost my beautiful home ( that I had when we met) and most of my possessions, I sadly also lost all contact with my 7 step grandchildren....and at 48 live in a bedsit and suffer with terrible anxiety

However I'm alive and I have my wonderful daughter (25) and a very caring loving kind man who I adore in my life and I vow everyday that I will enjoy my life and do one act of kindness everyday to help me feel good about the world

[BeachyKeen]

The only 2 real things I would have done differently would both be when I was young.
I'd tell my very little self to tell my mum about the sexually abuse I was suffering.
And I'd track down my 12 year old self and smack the cigarette right out of her mouth. It took me 20 years, thousands and thousands of dollars, and much grief to slay that dragon.

[RoseVase2010]

Nothing. The Butterfly Effect.

All the bad, horrible, wrong and embarrassing things mixed with all the happy, proud and wonderful things have got me where I am today.

[MumBod]

I would have stood up when Dale took me by the hand, and gone with him.

I would have gone through with breaking up with M even though he cried.

I would have kissed D properly.

But then I might not be with DP, the best person I've ever met, so it's all fine.

[TheSecretMrsFairbrother]

Sometimes I wish I'd never opened the Pandora's box that is my bio family.

I spent a long time wishing that I didn't know about my bio parents, siblings and circumstances of my birth.
In the end it made me appreciate my adopted family so much more and I've at least broken the cycle in regards to my DC.

But meeting my bio mother. I cannot put into words how bad a decision that was.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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."

[PinkSparklyPussyCat]

Thank you bonjour and orange

[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?