Apparently small things from your past that make you feel awful-anyone else?

[DannyWallace]

Just wondering if anyone is the same as me? Maybe you've done something by accident, but someone thought you meant something else and got insulted and you have no way to make amends. Does that make sense? 

So, my story is I was sitting outside a pub on a beautiful afternoon/evening with my 2 sisters. As a back story, we have a great, quite jokey relationship. DS1 is VERY into her looks, spends a lot of money on clothes/makeup but it's a bit of a running joke (no pun intended) that she keeps signing up for fitness events/personals trainers and only ever manages 1 session as she gets bored. She would rather stick to a strict diet than do any exercise, and fully admits that.

Anyway, we're sitting outside this pup. DS1 sitting opposite me and DS2 next to me. DS1 looks past us into the distance and says "her! Behind you! That'll be me soon". DS2 and I turned around and saw a woman out for a run. The woman looked fantastic-very slim, running very fast but didn't look like she was struggling....in fact she looked great. DS2 and I both burst out laughing, and we all had a joke saying that we'd actually pay DS1 to take up running as she just never sticks with things like that.

Anyway, as the runner got to us she gave us the finger and looked so upset/angry. She was wearing headphones and was obviously thinking we were laughing at her. This was around 6 years ago and I still feel absolutely awful!! I run quite a bit, but I'm definitely not a confident runner and think I would hide away if someone was openly laughing at me. But she ran off and I obviously had no way of finding her.

I actually feel a bit better for writing it down though. Anyone else?

I have a whole series of these...and when I'm in exactly the wrong mood, they all play through my mind on loop.

I think they are the things you did that you cannot make fit with your internal self image IYSWIM. So I know that (by and large) I am a sensitive kind compassionate person...so accidentally being horribly rude doesn't match my template...so when it happens...as its bound to...it really REALLY jars. Like data that simply will not compute. This means you think about it a lot more than you normally would and it will still come back to haunt you decades after it happened.

You simply don't remember all the times you held the door open for a college, but you do remember the time you let it slam on purpose because you thought it was your best mate following you and thought i'd be funny, but actually it was a poor upset looking student half your age....

When I was 18, my boyfriend of two years finished with me suddenly despite having talked days before of wanting to spend his life with me. I was devastated and bewildered and thought I'd never recover. The next day, I visited neighbours with my parents to try to take my mind off things (neighbours were having a get-together for their anniversary) and I got talking to a 90 year old lady, the woman's great aunt. She mentioned wistfully that she'd never married. Still smarting from being dumped, I said "you had the right bloody idea". She looked offended/sad and said sharply, "there's no need to be kind, dear". She obviously found my remark patronising, but it was heartfelt at the time, if ill-judged. I genuinely thought it was better to be single.