To wonder what nasty things have been said to you that have always stuck with you?

[GuessWhosBackBackAgain]

I grew up with very abusive parents and when I was about 12 I was ill with glandular fever and afterwards was still unwell and it was mentioned by the GP that I might have ME (now called Chronic fatigue I believe?). My mum and dad told me that if I did have ME they wouldn't be looking after me and I'd need to go into foster care.

As it turned out, I didn't have ME but then years later my mum said to me that if I ever had an accident and was left injured or ever got a long term illness I'd be on my own!

I'm not NC with them both BTW and have been for many years.

These nasty things have stuck with me, especially now I have my own children whom
I'd do anything for.

Another thing that's stuck with me is at secondary school I was quite badly bullied, and also obviously had a shit home life. After one English lesson where I'd been given a really hard time by a nasty queen bee and her cronies, the teacher called me to one side and told me I was the most unpopular girl she'd ever met and I needed to change! Again her words have stuck with me all my adult life and I can't guarantee I wouldn't give her a mouthful if I ever encountered her as an adult.

Many many years ago when I was about 10 I was on the bus with my mother and very pretty sister. Another passenger said to my mother "What a pity one's plain and the other so pretty!"

Next day I went crying to my grandmother that life wasn't fair making me ugly and my sister so pretty. My grandmother was a very pragmatic woman who always "told it like it was". She told me I was not ugy, but plain. She went on to explain that plain means ordinary (not ugly) and that she had been a plain child. In her young day makeup was not considered respectable for a young woman of her background, it was only for prostitutes. However nowadays (it was the 1950s when we were speaking) a plain young woman could make a lot of herself with the right hair style, make up and clothes.

My gran went on to point out that some of the greatest film stars of the day were not beautiful. Bette Davies was really quite plain and Barbara Stanwyck was an ugly woman with a big mouth and nose. However these woman had their props, clothes and makeup when they acted in films. They also had their talent as actresses to make people think they were beautiful.

I never forgot my grandmother's wise words.

When I was pretty young (can only have been 7 or 8) my mum gave me money to get her something from the shop. When I got back there was some muddle with the change (don't remember what, it was aeons ago and see above how young I was), and my mum accused me of trying to, in her word, 'diddle' her.
I don't think I understood at the time what had happened, and I certainly hadn't done any such thing deliberately.

When I was older and it was clear that I was quite academic and I got interested in A levels and uni, my mum was furious and would tell me 'education's not for the likes of us' (working-class background, no money), 'who do you think you are' and 'you've got ideas above your station'. I'm uni-educated and in a professional job now but that has really stayed with me and I feel like a fraud. I'm always acutely aware, surrounded as I am in my field by 'real' middle-class people whose parents always assumed they'd go to uni and supported them, I am a real oddity.

A PE teacher once put in my report that I needed to see an educational psychologist because of my attitude towards PE, particularly cross-country.
I think of that a lot now, but in an amused way; I took up running a few months ago and keep wondering what she'd think if she could see me sploshing through mud and going out on freezing mornings and enjoying it

"A shame my first grandchild is going to be a bastard" just one of the delights my dear papa (sarcasm) came out with.

Well, my mum told me that I 'don't have a good heart' because I couldn't overlook the fact that her partner has sexually abused his own daughters. It's no surprise that we are now NC.

That said, on a more uplifting note perhaps, when I was about 10, I was in the process of sitting exams for private schools. I was not confident in maths at all. I completely bombed the maths exam at one particular school and the head himself met with my mum and I to give me the results and to tell me that I wouldn't be offered a place and that 'I'd be unlikely to ever finish school with results like that'. Well, fuck him, because I got a place in another school the next year, I ended up completing two years of maths in one (I was in lessons with my year group and also the one above). I finished secondary school at the top of my class and I now have a PhD in a scientific field.

Some of these are absolutely crushing 😔 especially the ones from parents.
For everyone 💐

As for @Zebraaa bore off no one is interested in what you have to say.

Some of the comments on here from parents are just awful. I love my adult and teen dc so much. I could never speak to them like that, it would just destroy them.

In fact I’m going to tell them how much l love them more than ever ( although l may get accused of being needy!)

"No-one likes you" - I was a teen & didn't need reminding that I wasn't massively popular. I never even asked anyone to like me, I just wanted them to tolerate me being in the same room as them so I wasn't always alone. Nearly 20 years later I still just assume no-one really likes me & they just pretend they do to be kind.

@PitchImperfect my dm said that to me 9 years ago when she was complaining that my db hadn't got a wedding invitation.
I said I hadn't either
Her reply
Well, nobody likes you.
I was in my 50 s.
She certainly doesn't like me.

Talking to my mum about who got the two spaces to see me get my degree at graduation. She said give it to my friend, she went last time (to my HNC) and she'd only be bored anyway.

Telling my mum her husband just propositioned me (I was 14). She said he didn't mean it ignore him. Then she told me he wanted me out by my 18th birthday because I wouldn't sleep with him.

So so many.........

When I was ~12, I had a teacher (who knew I was getting support for poor mental health) say in front of the entire class that no one should date me, and essentially that I was too disorganized to be worth loving.

My mother gave me an enraged speech when I was about the same age. It started when she was downstairs and I was upstairs and I couldn't hear her so said "what?" as I'd started to walk towards her to let her know I'd heard her call me but not what she said. She came flying up the stairs, threw me around and hit me on my bed, and went on a rant on what a burden I was - a physical burden, an emotional burden, a financial burden, and on and on and that I was unlovable and the only happiness or pleasure I give others is the pleasure of me leaving and being gone. I did a lot of foolish things when I was younger trying to prove her wrong, and every set-back with friends or relationships made me wonder if she was right, even now I sometimes wonder if people would be happier that way.

Also, when I was 13-14 and had to drop out of dance training because some of my joints were fucked up from years of overtraining, she told me "Well, at least you've done enough to be a stripper." I was worried about whether I was going to walk without pain again and even now I struggle to wrap my mind - especially when she was the one who put me in dance when I was tiny in the first place and pushed me into it all - where that comment came from.

My mum believed in humiliation as the way to bring me up and get me to 'learn'. She believed in screaming at me in front of everyone so that I would be embarassed and 'want to prove her wrong'.

She's never learned to this day that when you scream at a child all you do is make that child feel like absolute shit on earth. I'm talking around 3 years old upwards. My earliest memory in life is of her leaning over me, screaming in my face.

She's said so many evil things to me, hypercritised me down to my soul, told me to die once when I was sick. Told everyone how stupid I was and what she had to deal with. She even criticised me TO MY OWN SCHOOL FRIENDS!! Honestly humiliation is just what I grew up with.

All this was out of 'love' of course. If I take offence it's because I'm ungrateful at all she did for me and I take things the wrong way. I should "know by now" that she was only doing her best. And if I'm upset it's my own fault because I'm so stupid.

@PitchImperfect

"No-one likes you" - I was a teen & didn't need reminding that I wasn't massively popular. I never even asked anyone to like me, I just wanted them to tolerate me being in the same room as them so I wasn't always alone. Nearly 20 years later I still just assume no-one really likes me & they just pretend they do to be kind.

Ah yes, my DF saying 'I dont understand how you can have any friends'. I was actually reasonably popular up to then... Also telling my DM that a friend had come out as gay. 'He's not saying that because you're running after him?'

"It's not the same though you're adopted" My sister explaining why I was not really the youngest of her siblings.

"talking about baby elephants, are you okay Dontbe" a "friend" in college speaking to me in front of about 10 people all laughing at me and my weight. (5 ft 4 nine stone at the time)

"My co-workers are awful, they pick on a person's weakness and keep on at them about it" My partner explaining why nobody in his workplace knew about me( we were together 15 years, he had worked there for 10 years and when he saw someone from work in our town he walked away and pretended he didn't know me) of course it also made it easier for him to cheat on me with one of those co-workers.

I’m adopted. I used to get comments like that. Although not from my family.

One neighbour didn’t speak to me because l was adopted. I remember my friend telling me😮

My mum believed in humiliation as the way to bring me up and get me to 'learn'. She believed in screaming at me in front of everyone so that I would be embarassed and 'want to prove her wrong'.

Oh God @NeedanIdea that really resonates with me, my mum was a single mum between me being 18 mo and 6yr, and she was so intent on me not being 'a kid from a broken home' stereotype, out causing havoc she was very harsh, step dad at 6 was young and had no experience of children and parenting and was very authoritarian and possesive. *My wife/house/food" was his mantra.
She used to slate me constantly to the family, I was singled out as naughty and disruptive when I was just being a child and she sort of fulfilled her own prophecy, by making me out to be a disruptive trouble causer when I wasn't. Strange behaviour. Everything was my fault.
Remember having something urgently wrong that needed surgery (she's a nurse btw!) And when the clinical signs became so obvious that I couldn't be faking (which I'd been accused of to that point) I was taken to a&e, where she was all embarrassed I'm front of her colleagues, and taken for surgery. Her last words to me as I was being wheeled away were "If they cut you open and find nothing wrong, I'll kill you!"
Surgery that should take a couple of hours took more like 6 and you'd normally only spend one night in hospital after that OP, I spent a week in, on IV antibiotics because it had got that bad.
Apparently I was 'lucky' I had been so ill, after taking up resources she clearly didn't think I should be, and it was my own fault that she had thought I was faking because I was 'always' faking.
I'd had this issue grumbling on for about 2 years before hand. I just think she didn't like being proved wrong and after all her carrying on about how I was probably faking (how you fake clinical signs like high temp, bp, pulse and blood work) is anyone's guess, I think she then blamed me for actually being ill and contradicting her.
Of course though, I was just being too sensitive and ridiculous when we've talked about it since.

@Maverickess So strange, my mum was a nurse too! At least she was before she had kids. She had to give up due to illnesses. I think she was always bitter about that.

She used to slate me constantly to the family, I was singled out as naughty and disruptive when I was just being a child and she sort of fulfilled her own prophecy

Yep, yep, yep. All the things I was criticised for being (because she was trying to 'mould' me into her perfect child) didn't work - I turned out worse than if she'd just accepted me the way I was.

My parents had no conception of the value of education in bettering oneself. To them being a student was lazy and wasteful. I can remember back in the late 1950s when I was studying for my GCE I had to hide in my bedroom or study in the library or a friends house. If my father saw me with a book open it seemed to anger him. Once when I was reading and my mother was in the kitchen preparing a meal I heard my father say "Go and help your mother in the kitchen you lazy slob".

When I was older and taxed him with this he denied he ever called me a lazy slob. I later realised that my father was quite an intelligent man but had been made to leave school and begin work at 14. He never had a chance at anything other than manual work. Right up until the 1970s it was a common working class attitude that children should start work and contribute to the family budget as soon as possible. If they wanted anything different or better it was seen as have ideas "above your class".

My (D)H said I was “as stupid as I looked”. I can’t quite remember what we were arguing about but he said it with such spite it made me really tear up. We were in public so I held it together but it has stayed with me and think it always willl. I appreciate my common sense can sometimes be lacking but I don’t think I am stupid/look stupid but it definitely dented me confidence.

My female parent told me that the reason "Uncle" Derek sexually assaulted me was because she'd turned him down, so he went after me. I was 9 years old.

My adopted mother said to me more than once ... always in temper and accompanied with a slap ‘you should never have been born, your whore of a mother should have had had an abortion’. This was one of many examples. No wonder I’ve had a life long problem with my self esteem.

An ex boyfriend knew that I was having problems with my dad and said in a drunk argument "your dad doesn't love you, your dog doesn't even love you, no one loves you". Odd statement (have you spoken with my dog?) but intended to inflict pain and it's stuck with me.

One that particularly sticks in my mind is my bitch of an English teacher telling me I wouldn’t get the grade I needed to study A-Level English (despite it being my favourite and one of my best subjects). I stopped trying after that but still got a B (enough to study at A-Level). 23 years later I still can’t believe that a teacher could actually say that to a pupil, when it goes against the very nature of their job! 😡

A group of girls at uni wrote me a group email while I was travelling in Australia with my boyfriend (who was at uni with us) and told me to not bother coming back, no one liked me, no one wanted me here and I should just stay there. When we came back they had a welcome home party for him and didn’t invite me. He went. I dumped him. When Facebook arrived 7 years later, they all tried to friend me and wrote me messages asking how I was and gave me run downs of their lives. I never responded.

People who do that kind of thing are deliberately trying to inflict pain. If someone does that to you get the hell away from them because if you accept it once you have let them know that you will accept it again.

@igotdemons

One that particularly sticks in my mind is my bitch of an English teacher telling me I wouldn’t get the grade I needed to study A-Level English (despite it being my favourite and one of my best subjects). I stopped trying after that but still got a B (enough to study at A-Level). 23 years later I still can’t believe that a teacher could actually say that to a pupil, when it goes against the very nature of their job! 😡

My English teacher said the same to me but I didn’t have the recourse to be able to demand I be allowed to take it. Instead my parents and the teachers all advised me to do physics. It was one of my worst subjects and dragged my two other a level subject grades down because I spent all my time concentrating on that. A levels are never the happiest time in your life I expect but I think I think that ruined studying and my self confidence for 20 years in judging my own ability.

I've had some cruel things said to me, but they pale to insignificance beside some people's experiences. I can't help wondering what goes through a mother's head when after nine months of pregnancy, etc. etc. she sets out to destroy the child she brought into this world.