Comments that stay with us

[whatacrapusername2306]

DD came home one day last week and said someone at school had called her ‘greasy hair’ She hasn’t btw, I am a hairdresser and wouldn’t allow her hair look a mess. She is still talking about this comment a week later. This has really flagged up some emotion in me from my school years. I remember every single nasty comment that was made to me. It can still bring me to tears when I think about it. Mostly comments on my appearance, size (I was small and thin) trampy clothes, squinty eye, nobody fancys you etc etc. It’s stupid I know, but has anyone else had a comment stay with them into adulthood?

I remember being 6 or 7 and children on the estate not playing with us because they could play with us as we didn't have a dad, (abusive dad had left my mum, took everything with him and left her with a load of rent arrears, I don't think even she realised that he was never coming back...whole other story). We moved from the estate but where we moved wasn't much better, with a lack of male presence our family was always a target.

In hindsight I can see the issues my mother faced in her life moulded her behaviour towards us. I was never the brightest star in the sky but my mother would always compare my progress to my siblings. I remember we were reading once and I kept getting the same word wrong, my mother just went ballistic grabbed my face squeezed it then bit my face, tears streamed down my face but I tried so hard not to cry out loud. When we finished reading I ran upstairs to the bathroom, climbed onto the bath to reach the cabinet mirror to look at my face, it was red and sore but she'd never leave any questionable marks. I remember holding on to my mouth and crying silently and just scratching my face. I have never forgotten that and always cry when I do.

My teens and early adulthood wasn't much better , mother calling me everything under the sun for the smallest of things. If I was late from school, im a slag. I was always made to wear frumpy clothes even my uniform was frumpy but id still get shouted out and told I was dressed like a slag. I wasn't allowed to remove any hair, so had a pretty dominant upper lip and just hated it so much. I remember a guy at college teasing me about it. Eventually when I did do it, the same old crap was spouted, im a slag and all the rest.

I remember the week i gave birth to dd i had come home doing it alone as her dad found a new gf and being exhausted but genuinely thought i was doing well I ordered myself a takeaway as hadn’t had a decent meal since i left hospital.
The menu was noticed by relatives who visited a couple of days later.. a few days after that one came back round specifically to sit me down and tell me that look we saw you had a chinese and we’ve decided im the one to tell you that your fat since having the baby (6 days ago) and you need to not order yourself that kind of food and not to use a newborn as a reason to order it.
It was one chinese as i was really hungry and yes i know I’ve always been a larger lady but I actually lost weight in pregnancy as id been trying to change for my dd and it really knocked me.
Not long after that one of the relatives died and it has disturbed me to this day nearly a decade later that the last conversation they sat and had together was about how fat i am.
It did not help and I’ve tried over the years to change but theres this constant torment in my head about how gross everyone thinks i am anyway then i comfort eat and the cycle continues.
They probably cant even remember saying it now and you know what maybe sometimes people do need to be told things as a kick up the ass but theres a time and a place and abit of thought to my situation would of shown that was neither. To this day it brings tears to my eyes but also reminds me how shit some people are not once did they think to invite me for a homecooked meal or bring something healthy for me to warm up or say i was doing well doing everything alone they had to pick the one meal i had ordered and slaughter me for it.

@spingly, Thankyou so much for your comment. I won’t be contacting him. Your father should build you up, not knock you down

Betsy that's awful! I had a cousin say "you still look pregnant" 5 days after my c section for 11 pound Dd1! I was a size 12 but swollen. The cow.

The worst things were from my own mother.

She once told me I should be sectioned - I had an eating disorder but was still eating enough and was not in danger from it.

When I was about 11 she told me I had huge feet, big eyebrows, hairy legs, basically saying things that implied I was ugly, made so many comments on my appearance and it was very very damaging what she said. That's only some of the abuse she put me through. It did stay with me a long time but mid - twenties I cut all contact with her and that sort of made those comments not matter anymore. I'm much more confident and happy these days. Oh and not one healthcare professional has ever told me I need to be sectioned!! She's just a woman who should never have had a child. A very mean abusive woman.

An elderly lady once stopped me in the street to tell me I looked, ‘as pretty as a picture’. That has stayed with me in a nice way.

My ‘friends’ said I would never get a boyfriend unless I straighten my hair and wore more make up. I’ve actually been in a relationship and married longest so more fool them

Teachers at school told me numerous times I wouldn't amount to anything... After awhile you start to believe it.

The worse thing tho happened a few weeks ago and I'm struggling to get passed it and forget it... My daughter called me a bitch and a whore and wished I was dead.

My sister did a number on my self esteem with her backhanded compliments and "constructive" comments. My shoulders are too broad to be feminine is one that stands out to this day. Lots of comments telling me that I wasn't feminine or my body shape wasn't feminine enough. Also the constant implying that I was fat (I wasn't, I was a size 10 but I believed her), my dad also took great joy in telling me I was fat last Christmas, I was 5 months pregnant so you can see where the fat obsession comes from! Sister also likes criticising food that I make, doesn't like the fact that I can actually cook! But one comment she made sticks with me, intended as an insult as she was very anti sweets, she said that I was good at making sweets whilst she was a good cook. Irony is my best sweet was fudge and I stopped making it as I got bored of the comments but the past two years she's made it!

My mum got my hair cut short in an awful style when I was in year 5 or 6 and I got called mowgli for a long time after that, it followed me into high school as well. That hurt a lot. I recently read the books and love them but the association still stings a bit.

Also being told by my manager that I was unbearably loud and sounded angry, it was constructive but it made me realise that my mother's way of talking was not normal and people weren't fans of me because of it (I had been complained about by service users). I had another employer who was batshit but they really destroyed my confidence, I was too common, I was stupid, I wasn't good at my job, etc etc.

It's all kind of flowing back I to my mind now!

When I was a teenager my mam insisted that I needed a size 14 shirt because I "have a really big bust." I don't, I have always been either 34b or 34c (except while pregnant and after birth) and have never been remotely close to a size 14.

I wore the wrong size clothing until I was in my 20s because I was convinced I needed bigger clothes.

My father would make remarks about my belly every single day. In hindsight it was not that bad, but it's led to a lifetime of self esteem issues.

His other favourite targets were two beauty spots and my badly discoloured crown tooth, nothing I could do anything about at all!

I got called a junkie at school when other kids found out I had to inject everyday for my diabetes. Always felt self conscious since and avoid telling others!

Two from my mother:

Who's looking at you anyway? (As a teenager, every time I took too long to get ready)

I can't help it if no-one likes you (to 10 year old me crying about being bullied)

Don't have children you're not the type (and other similar ways of saying the same thing repeatedly for years)

She was a charmer. I'm in my 40s now and still struggle with making friends, and am pretty insecure about how I look. Also no DCs. Thanks mother.

user1474542454 - I will never understand how some mothers cannot have some compassion or insight when their daughters have babies. Unless they were a bunch of superwomen? I am thinking especially of those that insist on coming round straight after the birth either at hospital or home and expecting the poor woman to run around after them.

If I was you I would have said "Remember how insensitive you were when..."

@BillHadersNewWife what a cow people are so thoughtless!! Things really do stick in your mind people need to think before they speak!x

We went out for a walk with some family friends when I was 12. The terrain was challenging, and I was a fast worker, so I ended up keeping pace with the boys my age rather than the very sedate pace of my mum and older sisters. We had walked a while when one of the boys said 'look how fast she's walking just to get a can of Coke'. I didn't even know we were stopping off for a drink! Now i know that they were annoyed a merr girl was keeping pace with them but it hurt for a long time.

*fast walker
*mere girl

1980s deprived Edinburgh scheme and the only black in the village

Darkie, N*er, monkey were all part of the accepted norm of language but the day when I was 17 the school bus driver who wasn't much into his 20s and who I really fancied gave me a banana because "that's what monkeys eat" destroyed me.

30+ years on and it still makes me sad.

Children and adults can be very cruel.

My nickname at primary school was Paki, kids would sometimes sing what they called ‘the Paki song’. My English was a bit crappy at first so they would encourage me to say all sorts of awful things. By the end of year 5 school had finally banned the word Paki so instead kids would scream curry, darkie and chocolate boy.

Kids were far less blatant about it at secondary school so day to day school was generally okay, I played rugby at school and at a big teams development squad. Kids from my school used to shout PB when I was in play, PB stood for Paki bastard. I’m a prop and people would always tell me I was a prop so the other lads could ‘fuck you right in the arse’ and they used to say that I tried to wank everyone off in the showers.

We lived in a very white area, I don’t remember seeing any other ethnicities where we lived, sadly some of the parents were a bit ignorant and their children were banned from playing with us as we were darkies.

Randomly I fairly recently saw one of the worst offenders Dad had been banned from teaching due to racism and calling kids the C word! He used to teach me and if I was off school he would ask the other kids where the ‘ethnic’ was, so it didn’t surprise me.

In primary school I had specs and my teeth stuck out. Got called ugly and “goofy” all the time. At secondary school had braces put on my teeth. Got called ugly because of that too. Kids can be horrible.

I was an unattractive, underweight,socially awkward and anxious but tried hard not to appear shy,eager to please bright working class kid in a relatively desirable right wing area . Over the years everything was thrown at me about my appearance, my interests, the general way I was. At the time, it was the comments about my ugliness, not really being a girl - often said in front of huge groups of people amd the fact that my 'friends' were the amongst worst perpetrators that really got to me. As I get older it's just the general memory of it that stays with me - the fact that the general culture was so poisonous, that I had little respite from.it and that I didn't deserve it. I had CBT for social anxiety on my 20s which helped and I am very lucky about who my friends are now. I do occasionally get flashes of individual things that were said which hurt. Occasionally I'll get random comments about my appearancefrom people in public, (often if they have to stop.for me on a zebra crossing strangely), passing strangers or in disagreements with people particularly on nights out and they still get to me and take me back . Often 'standing up.for yourself' seems to make things worse.

On the plus side, as an escape from the insults I escaped into a love/interest in culture which has been my salvation e en to this day . I think without it I would have very severe mental health issues

I have ginger hair so got called all the names to do with the colour ,carrot top ginge ,red ,matchstick head ,my stbxh calls me the ginger whinger (one of the many reasons we not together) the worst thing I was ever called was just after the 1984 miners strike finished we had just moved house and I was the new girl at junior school ,everyone knew why we moved to the little village and name calling started straight away I walked home from school with a girl who said she wanted to be friends but when I got to my house she called me a scabs bastard ,think I saw red over her calling my dad a scab and drew back my fist and punched her Square in the nose ,she ran off crying but next day called for me to go to school said her dad had given her a telling off and smacked her bum for what she said ,she didn't know what it meant was just repeating what she had heard and could we be friends 32 years later we are still friends

Me: I got 85 out of 86 on my English test today!
Mum: what one did you get wrong?

I've never felt good enough or like anything I have achieved is 'enough'. Perfection is impossible because there is always something more you can do, or do do better. Everything can be improved upon. I don't know how to even recognise my own successes, let alone learn how to celebrate them.

DS was a difficult baby who cried almost all the time, however I loved him beyond words from the moment he was born. I knew that I wanted a second fairly quickly but sadly miscarried. I overheard a gem from my uncle 'it's a good job that she lost that baby, she can barely cope with the one that she's got.' A lot of the rest of my family then stood around agreeing.

And just last night, my DM, who I'm certain has long term undiagnosed mental health issues including way off the scale health anxiety commented that I'm never really interested when she is ill (she's not) but it's OK because it's probably just because I'm not a very nice person!

Honestly, I know it sounds big headed but as a result I work so, so hard to be the absolute best mother and friend that I can be. And it's rewarded, I have lovely DC, DH and loads of friends which I think she is mainly jealous of. And she wonders why I'm low contact!