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

Aw bless you all, how can people be so horrible.
Sending a virtual hug to each and every one of you.

Mine is nothing in comparison to the cruel remarks you have suffered but it has stuck with me for the 20 years since it happened.

I was painfully shy about my crooked teeth. I didn’t smile and if I laughed I would cover my mouth. No one ever mentioned that until one day a I was in a shop taking to my ‘friend’ and her 3 year old son. And out of know where she pointed at the Nesquik rabbit and said “oh look Ben, that rabbits as goofy as my name”
I was mortified and it felt like I’d been punched in the stomach. I had to fake a laugh and get away as soon as possible. I was so gutted

Age 9 I went to church and when the collection plate came around I couldn’t find the coin my auntie had given me to put in. I was desperately searching in my pocket and was there but I just couldn’t get it. She accused me of stealing and stoped money out of my pocket money to send to the orphans via Oxfam

I was an only child. My mum (looking back with hindsight) had severe, undiagnosed depression. I was brought up with classical music and didn't know what Radio 1 was.

I was bullied mercilessly for being "posh" and "snobby" for 7 long years. I still cannot (or couldn't because... Covid!) walk past groups of youths.

I'm so far into middle age, I can see old age but I'm still terrified. It's affected my friendships, my life, my work, and, until I my my amazingly lovely DP, my relationships.

I remember an occasion when I was about 14-15 and i was at a friend's house.

I had known her pretty much my whole life and our mums and her Aunt were good friends too.

I remember her Aunt telling me what a horrible, bratty little kid i was and how she would go out of her way to avoid me. And she criticised my mum's parenting too, which I will never forgive or forget.

I've got a lump in my throat just thinking about that, now...

Why would anyone speak to a kid like that?

Oh, and @Eeeemac - can I suggest you reread this thread, and try to be a bit sympathetic to the real pain in the stories here, and maybe consider apologising for trying to make people in this pain feel even worse, on purpose!

When I was quite a timid and unconfident student, a random fellow student walked by me in the street and appeared to say 'God you're ugly', seemingly directed at me. I have never entirely got over that horrid slight from a stranger - it did wonders for my confidence not and just seemed so randomly uncalled for. .

As a more savvy adult, I would say anyone who says something really mean is saying it more about themselves than the person to whom they appear to be addressing their insult.

@Clackyheels

My dad's mum (my grandma) didn't have much to do with us as we were growing up. When my mum got cancer my dad reached out to her and they fostered some kind if relationship. My mum died and in the year after me and my brother would accompany my dad to visit her. He was lonely etc and wanted the companyon the trips. We were 18, and 20. I've always been fat and sensitive about it at the time I'dlost a fair bit of weight but she would often make comments whenever I ate anything. I tried to just let it not affect me. But one morning when we woke up, we sat down at the dining table for breakfast. She made everyone a full english breakfast but didn't give me anything. So I'd sat at the table, and she served everyone but just ignored me. Just made a snide comment about losing weight as they tucked in. It was so humiliating. My brother obviously shared his with me. It doesn't sound like much but it still stings.

Did your Dad give her a bollocking?

@MrsGulDukat my peers voted me ‘most likely to sell the big issue’ I complained about it and I was assured it would be changed. It wasn’t, I burnt the yearbook on the p.e field in some form of protest and got booted out of school for the last few months.

Worth it

Oh OP that's horrible. I think the horrible things can stick mch harder than the nicer things too.

My dad died at the start of my GCSE courses and we had no support or bereavement counselling so I didn't do as well as I'd hoped to in my GCSEs. Then my mum met someone new who turned out to be an abusive alcoholic during my post 16 course so that also had an impact. I went for a consultation with a teacher about applying to uni. I'd taken an A level alongside a vocational course (which I'd passed with a merit). He only looked at my A level mark and then my GCSEs and commented "you're not good enough for university and with GCSEs like that you shouldn't have been allowed to do A levels". It shattered what little confidence I had and I spent months unemployed and then a series of low paid jobs. Luckily I eventually got a job where I could work up through the company and now have a good career but I constantly feel the need to prove myself and never feel good enough.

As a fat child who turned into a fat adult, I’ve had more unkind things said to me than I can even remember. The ones that stick in my mind the most though are comments my mum and gran made to me throughout my life about my body, especially in front of other family members when I was a child which was so upsetting and humiliating. I love them both dearly and they love me but women’s bodies and especially fat women’s bodies are ALWAYS up for discussion. I don’t have children yet but when I do I will never, ever comment on their bodies. It is so damaging and stays with you forever.

I wonder...do you ever remember the times you have done something that could have been construed as unkind?

Yes, indeed. I remember times when I've fucked up, said things I've wished unsaid, and nearly bitten my tongue out. I remember having been tactless. I've been impatient sometimes, and there are certain situations with which I have no patience or sympathy and will be unrepentantly terse (victim-blaming being the big red rag for me), I have huge regrets about failing older members of my family when they were dying, having just lost my own mum, and simply not knowing how to deal with it. I'd give anything in the world to go back and put that right.

I have never, knowingly, been wilfully cruel, shouted cruel comments about people, called them fat, four-eyes, or ugly. I have never ganged up with other kids against someone in the playground. Ever.

I'm well aware of my own shortcomings, thanks. And they are plenty. I also grew up the daughter of a fucking sadist, whose antics I won't bore people with here.

Being aware of how others' past cruelty has affected us does not mean we have no insight into own behaviour. Perhaps, also, others might read this and think twice about doing this to someone else. Might.

Primary school, a local music competition. Very surprisingly the other kids in my year voted for me to compose and lead our school's contribution. I wasn't popular, but I was good at music, and I was so happy. I picked my players and we practised really hard. Then the teacher's pet kicked off about not being involved, and the teacher called me up to the desk and told me I wasn't tall enough for the other children to be able to see me conducting at the concert, so the other girl was doing it instead, and I didn't mind, did I? I was too polite to say that I did mind. I bit my cheek so hard to avoid crying, and when I sat back down the girl across the table from me, who had overheard, said "That's not right, you know it's not" and I couldn't hold the tears back any more. I got told off for being spoilt. That evening the whole sorry story came out at home and my mum was sympathetic but refused to intercede. She said life was hard and you had to fight your own battles. The lesson I took from that was that adults can be unbelievably cruel, but much worse is when your own mother doesn't think you're worth standing up for. She didn't want to rock the boat, I guess, but I have never forgotten it and despite being very happy now with a lovely family of my own I have never forgotten the day my suspicion that I was the second best child was so painfully confirmed.

It's awful the little unkind things that sticks in your mind isn't it... My grandmother died when I was about 14 years of age.. I didn't go to her funeral as I didn't really know her but I remember crying my eyes out in the school toilets about her I think I would have been a good grand daughter to her if she would have let me

My aunt laughed when someone shouted racial abuse at me in the street when I was a teenager

A couple of things stick in my mind -
Receiving my (quite poor) A level results from the headmasters office in the early 90s - I had studied hard and was a bit of a swot, but had bad anxiety/exam technique. A ‘friend’ asked me what I’d got, I told her and she shouted out ‘yes I did better than Thewishing chair’. Maybe not intentionally unkind but made me feel so rubbish.

Also and worse, doing some post graduate training and being told in a written report that I was a liability rather than an asset. 25 years on, every time I hear the word ‘liability’ my stomach still sinks a little.

My Mum always told me I should never have children because “you aren’t cut out for being a mother”. I sometimes blame myself for my youngest’s autism but then give myself a good shake. Fortunately my children, my DH and the people I care about think I’m a good mother. Being a mother has made me realise what an abusive childhood I actually had....

When I got my A level results (which were better than my older brothers results, never mentioned by me) my mum said that A levels had got much easier since my brothers took them. It was unkind and unnecessary and she knew I'd worked v hard. She said some awful stuff about me later in life, she'd never wanted anothet child, it was dads choice etc. She had dementia then, but I still feel that she meant it all, deep down.

Some sad stuff on here 😞

A couple of mine...teacher smacking me across the legs when I was trying to show her my work, for a minor transgression, was humiliating.

Some boys saying I looked like an ‘overgrown tart’ and when I told my mum she agreed with them. I was 14.

In my last job, the whole team went out for lunch and didn’t invite me.

I was 9, in an after school science club, during which the teacher gave out a custard cream biscuit and a little cup of juice as a snack. I looked forward to this biscuit every week.

On this particular day, I was really hungry. I was always hungry, because at home, I didn't get fed. My mum considered the free school lunches we got at school to be sufficient until breakfast (a bowl of cereal, if she'd bothered to buy milk, otherwise nothing) the next day, and that was it. That's all we ate, unless we went round to the neighbour's house and she gave us stuff because she felt sorry for us.

There were leftover biscuits on the plate once she'd handed them out and I saw them, and I thought, that might be the last thing I eat today, I should see if she'll let me have another one, so I asked her quietly if I could.

She not only told me no, she shouted at me until she was red in the face and I was a sobbing mess, called me a 'greedy girl' and made me sit at the back of the class for the rest of the session.

Writing this has made me feel so ashamed, even 20 years later. She knew about my home circumstances, she was my form tutor and aware of social services intervention because of neglect

Place marking

My mother left me and my sister and moved 300+ miles away when I was 4 or younger (Dad had an affair but thats NOT the point). As an absolute, 100% Mummys girl, every time my dad would take me up to visit I would beg her to keep me with her. My dad tried his hardest to encourage her to keep me, not because he didn't love me (he could and did an damn good job of supporting me) but because I was a little girl who needed my Mum, and that feeling stuck with me well into my twenties.

Every time I visited, after around the age of 7 when we could be left alone, she would talk badly about my dad to me and my sis. It was usually mild stuff like "your dads an arsehole and he did me wrong". Fine, he didn't treat her well and I get that. Not mine and my sisters problem but she was our mum and we were young enough to just kind of get on with it.

It wasn't until my late 20s she threw some real shit at me. She was drunk, because by this point she had been a full blown alcoholic for 20 years. We were relaxing and watching TV when she blurted out that my Dad had, apparently out of hate for me, told her when she tried to leave that she could take me but she was NOT taking my sister.

Needless to say it was bullshit (with documentation to prove it was) but the fact she could be so nasty really stuck with me.

Sorry, I know thats really mild compared to everything else here. What I will say to anyone struggling with the harsh phrases of other is that, despite how cliche it is, it comes from a hatred deep within them towards themselves, women, daughters, sons, husbands or wives in general. It is never (usually) something you have personally done.

I hope one day you can all come to terms with what was said to you. I have to a certain extent and try my best now to focus that energy elsewhere.

Two things. The first Christmas DH and I were married we stayed with his parents as did his two sisters (big house). One of the days MIL and the two SILs went out for a 'girls day' - lunch, wine, nails done, shopping, all that - and didn't invite me. Of course they were entitled to spend time just the three of them but it really stung at the time.

Also a previous boyfriend once said to me 'it's a shame, you've got really small tits for a fat girl'. This was over 20 years ago and I've never forgotten it.

I remember being early teens, my mum and her friend telling me I looked like man mountain in a new jacket I had saved for ever to buy. Never wore it again. Brother was the golden boy literally - tall, blond and slim, could do no wrong but my God he was a horrible bully. Mum long dead, brother still arrogant, I'm still fat and ugly but married with lovely children. But probably still harboring an unhappy soul.

@thesockmonster

That seems a really good way of reframing things. I'll remember that.

@vampirethriller that story is horrific. There was a boy in my class whose mother was an alcoholic. He brought in a note from her one day and the teacher held it up in front of everyone like it was contaminated and put it in the bin. I was maybe 6 or 7, and I felt so heart sore for him.

I found him online recently and he's made an (outwardly, at least) lovely life for himself.