Something unkind which has stayed for you forever 😟

[Heartbrokenstill]

My grandmother who I never saw from year to year.. I was about 7 when my mam and dad took me to hers at Christmas (I never ever got a Xmas gift or card/birthday card/gift from her) I was a shy quiet child and she had a real Christmas tree in her sitting room and I put my hand underneath a beautiful tree toy just to look.. not taking it off the tree or anything and she smacked my hand away.. mam and dad was drinking tea and never saw she died years ago but I still feel the sadness of the little 7 year old I was all them years ago .. Don't know what I want from this post but lockdown really makes you feel low... I am nearly 60 no just to give you a idea how long ago it was

When I was a teenager, my father died very suddenly of cancer. Between diagnosis and death was a matter of days. I was understandably distraught. I was talking to my seemingly close friend about it, when she turned to me and said, with obvious annoyance, "could you shut up going on about your Dad's death. It's sooooo boring!"

1. My mum saying 'You're weak. Just like me.'
2. My mum saying she hated me and my sisters and that she wished she had a family friends daughter as her own.
3. An online 'friend' writing a horrible blog post about me and then leading me to it.
4. Being told by a colleague that if I had a makeover I would look much better
5. A manager telling me she needed to help me get some backbone.
6. Peers at school laughing at the clothes I wore on mufti days as they were not designer.
7. I used to have a fringe at school and my peers would laugh about it.
8. Being told I was thick and lacked common sense. Again, by my mum.

Plenty more.

I felt fabulous in my tutu in the school play and someone said I shouldn't be playing a fairy as fairies weren't fat i stopped baker after that. I think I actually feel better getting that out into the universe.

I hope you feel better getting your bad memory off of your chest too op. UMNH

Kind of silly but I was quite a shy underconfident, awkward teenager and also a bit of a geek. Never messed around in class, always worked super hard (I actually didn't especially need to as I was academic naturally but I was convinced I would fail if I didn't revise loads). We had this awful Biology teacher who would just read out from a sheet in a monotone for an entire double lesson. I'm not sure why but I'd annoyed her somehow and she said

'InTheDrunkTank no one thinks you're especially clever, you shouldn't be so arrogant, I'm not the only one who thinks so, it's been discussed in the staff room'

It sounds ridiculous but both my parents worked really hard and weren't really around. I had an eating disorder that no one had noticed and I relied quite alot on positive attention from teachers at school so at the time the idea that teachers had been discussing how arrogant and unintelligent I was in the staff room was horrifying to me. I already felt like a fraud but that kind of confirmed it and really dented my confidence.

A boy once followed me home from school with his friends and they pelted me with bits of gravel. I was going through my "awkward phase" and knew I was ugly, but I didn't know until then that I was so worthless that I deserved to be physically punished for it. I had never even spoken to him before. It does stick with you.

There's a few I remember vividly.

All from my Mum😩

One was when I was about 7/8 I used to decorate my bedroom door with drawings I had drawn. I remember mum saying I had too many drawings up, so to take some down. This was the only place I had pictures displayed, I wasn't allowed to stick on my walls or anywhere else in the house. I took a few pictures down and left the rest up. I woke up one morning and my door was bare, and when I looked in the bin later that day they were all there, scrumpled up. She never told me she did it but I know it was her.

Another time I was asked to make us supper, and I was putting butter and jam on scones I had made earlier that day. I remember accidentally slicing one scone wrongly, so it had a huge thick side and a thin side that was crumbling away. I decided to keep that wrongly cut scone for myself as I didn't want anyone else in the family to have a crumbling scone, since it was my mistake. To hold the thin side together, I used a little more butter/jam than was on the other people's scones, so I admit it appeared that I had just given myself heaps of jam and only a little to everyone else.
I served the scones and got a row for being greedy, in front of everyone, and she wouldn't let me explain my reasoning behind why I had done it.

Every Sunday my older brother and I used to have the job of making tea. We used to make toasties or sandwiches. Mum used to say she loved Salmon sandwiches so we made them, for quite a few weeks. One Sunday Mum came through for her tea and upon seeing the table set for tea, exclaimed "oh no, not salmon sandwiches again!" And refused to eat what we had made!

There's many more examples. But I feel I would only get even more carried away so I'll stop now.

Oh and being told I looked like a man and had a pointy nose like a witch. All from school/early 20's.

When I was a teenager and taken by my abusive mother to abort a baby I desperately wanted to keep (second trimester)
I cried and begged with her and a nurse heard, but she scolded me harshly for 1) being noisy and upsetting other patients and 2) being disrespectful to my mother

I have suffered for over 20 years now with ptsd and I often think why didn’t she step in and help me because it was clear I was being forced. I don’t talk about it much but this week I have been so upset about it

Mine is horrible grandmother story too. When I was about 7/8, I somehow got a biro Mark on their new cream leather sofa (easily cleaned). I was severely punished. Same as when I broke her decorative jug (not valuable). My own DC accidentally marked our sofa with a pen last week. It made me think what an awful overreaction my grandmother had over a small accident. Haven’t spoken to the old witch for 21 years. She’s still alive apparently. I feel a lot of anger towards her even though the accident was 35+ years ago

A 'friends' birthday party when I was 8. All the girls in my class were invited. We had the party and then at pickup time my mum was the only person there to pick me up. It turned out every other girl there had been invited to stay for a sleepover. Out of the 15 or so girls, I was the only one who hadn't been invited to stay the night. I just remember feeling so humiliated as I left the party while everyone else stayed. I felt particularly betrayed that my best friend knew about this beforehand and didn't tell me. Looking back now I just feel baffled as to why she invited me to the party in the first place just to send me home while everyone else stayed. I wouldn't have minded not being invited as much as the humiliation of everyone knowing I was the only one she didn't like enough to let stay over.

My mum told me she never wanted me, she used to push her finger on my bruises to cause me pain, she never told me she loved me, she would smack me and my brothers for no reason and use full force. Now she acts like super gran and forgets what she is really like.

None of us bother about her now, we only see her when we see our dad.

We’d walked into a restaurant once and a man laughed at my mum’s gorgeous wig (madly curly with purple streaks) and said “didn’t know it was Halloween already”. She was wearing it because she had cancer. She didn’t say a word but when we went home she packed it away and never wore that one again. I was only about 16 at the time so didn’t have the backbone to say anything to him, but I think about it from time to time and it still makes me cry almost ten years later. I would never wish evil on anyone, but it makes my blood boil that people like him are allowed to live their lives when my mum’s dead. I so wish I’d socked him in the face.

Reading this thread has brought a tear to my eye. It is hard to comprehend such heartless people exist.
I always say that cruel people who set out to hurt others probably should be pitied...it must be awful to go through life so bitter and twisted that your only focus can be to cause hurt...to everyone that was on the receiving end of these individuals remember that everyone of you are beautiful people who did not deserve their nastiness...im sure your lives are a lot more fullfilled than theirs ever were or will be.

I went to a party when I was 14. There are boys there I didn't know and one of them said "you're really ugly". It's still with me

These stories are so sad. I can't bear people being unkind to anyone but especially children. I feel so sad when I hear people yelling nastily at their kids in the supermarket for doing nothing more than being inquisitive children. It makes me wonder how they treat them at home. 😥

Ex boyfriend laughed when I was singing along to a song on the radio and said that I was out of tune and terrible at singing. I'm actually quite good and have been singing in choirs most my life but I always doubt myself since he said that.

This is my first post and I’ve never told anyone this before. When I was about 14 I went to visit my grandmother (we were close) and as it was raining when I left her house after tea, she insisted I wear a slightly old-fashioned cagoule to walk the short distance home to my parents. It was getting dark by this time.

The cagoule wasn’t very flattering, admittedly but when I got home and told my mother I had had to wear it because of the weather etc., she said “Well, yes, it’s not terribly flattering but no one would want to rape you anyway.”

I was so shocked (although sadly she made comments like this without any thought and continues to be very unkind on occasion), that I didn’t know what to say. Now I have two daughters I am sad and appalled that any mother could say anything like that. It’s just wrong on so many levels.

It's funny how things stay with you for years.
When I was 15, I overheard some of the bitchy girls at school saying my coat was cheap and made me look ugly. Yes, it was cheap- we were poor- but it was warm and perfectly nice! But it was just such a nasty and unnecessary comment, made me cry at the time because I knew my parents had brought the best and warmest coat they could afford. Over 15 years ago and I still feel "bad" for my split second of wishing I had different, richer parents!

As an awkward teen I had times that I didn’t fit in or have many friends. Whenever my mum disagreed with me or was shouting at me she’d say “no wonder you don’t have any friends.”

In my late 30s I have lots of friends. A couple of years ago we were disagreeing about something minor. She said it again with a smirk.

I stopped and looked at her and said “we both know that’s not true, I have plenty of friends. That was nasty, and you know it. I’m sure I could think of nasty things to say to you, but I don’t.”

She’s never said it again

In my first job, aged 16 in a supermarket, we used to collect our wages in the canteen during our lunch break. I was on the till and not relieved from there until after the finance manager had gone back to her office and was told to go there to collect my wages - her team finished at 5 and I finished at 6 so I couldn’t do it after work. She screamed at me in front of a room of finance staff (after I’d knocked on the door and asked her politely for them ) and I remember trying to hold back the tears before I scuttled out. She knew she was in the wrong and sent for me later in the afternoon but couldn’t bring herself to apologise when she handed over my wages - she was clearly uncomfortable but too arrogant to say sorry. Like other posters, I’ve never forgotten the shock and humiliation - or the weakness of the others there who did nothing or didn’t say something kind to a teenager afterwards. What I did take from it was what sort of person not to be and I sincerely hope I’ve never made someone else feel like that, especially in my role as a teacher. It’s one of the experiences I’ve had that makes me step in when others are being bullied or humiliated.

I have loads of these type of memories OP and when I think about them, I feel my stomach drop. I know I should really just move on but it still upsets me that people can be so unnecessarily harsh on children. I think it's made worse because as a child, I was obsessed with being the perfect angel and never putting a foot wrong, so when someone found a reason to criticise me it felt like the end of the world and I had totally failed.

If I'm honest, I'm still like that as an adult...

I was a young student working as a barmaid. A male customer said to me “you talk very loud but say very little”.

I didn’t know him, he was obviously a nasty misogynist who’d saved that up to use on a young woman he didn’t know, who he just fancies bullying. It’s stayed with me though. I should have poured a pint over him.

Misogynist pig.

I remember a story my mum told me about her awful grandmother, who used to look after her when they were working in their shop. She used to lock her in a cupboard for any misdemeanour and once when my mum wouldn't eat the greasy bacon and cheese loaf she'd made, it was recycled cold for breakfast and she wasn't allowed to do anything until she'd eaten it. Awful, awful woman.

@LivingOnTheVeg I'm so sorry that happened. Reading that has given me absolute rage. Some people are absolute arseholes

I was about 7 and my DM decided I was old enough to walk to the shop by myself. She sent me off with 30p to buy a newspaper. I walked all the way there clutching the 30p so tightly in my hand, feeling so grown up and proud. I got to the shop and walked up to the counter and confidentially said “hello, please can I have a newspaper?” and the man was so patronising and said “no, you cannot have a newspaper. They do cost money you know. You have to buy a newspaper if you want one. I won’t just give it to you!”

I felt so small and embarrassed, and that he must have thought I was a stupid little girl who didn’t know how shops work. I can still feel that feeling of humiliation in my stomach over 25 years later!

I know this is quite a lighthearted one compared to some of the other stories, but it really stuck with me.