To hate my former self?

[LittleMissLateForWorkAgain]

I m made the big mistake of reading my own teenage diaries and oh God I want to go back in time and slap my former self!

Whiny, selfish, moaning about a (perfectly ok) part time job. Lazy.

Moaning about being asked to babysit younger siblings while my parents were at work.

Completely taking for granted nice parents and a big house in the country. I moan about the lack of buses and the highlight of my week seems to be going to town and drinking as much as possible with my friends.

I moan CONSTANTLY about my A Level coursework and say I don't want to go out with a perfectly nice boy because he has spots! I then virtually throw myself at the good looking "bad boy" of the sixth form

Arggghhhh it's in the bin now.

Aibu to cringe and hate my rotten little self?

I promise I grew up into a much nicer person!

How do you feel about yourself now @LittleMissLateForWorkAgain ?

and do you truly think grieving adult dc would think badly of you if they found your teen diary after you’d passed?!

I think I m a good person now. I actually work in a school with sixth formers but they all seem nice.
Maybe they too have a dark side I don't see.

I think my adult dc have always thought I was always this strong resilent person so they would be surprised.

@heresatwist It isn't. I meant my students might also write terrible thoughts in their diaries and I wouldn't know because they always seem nice at school.

Just like I did as a teenager.

But toddlers think they’re being perfectly reasonable when they throw themselves on the ground screaming because you put the wrong shoe on first! They think this because their brains are still developing. So are teenagers’.

YWBU to read the diary, you should have thrown it out without reading it to avoid cringing to death.

But YAL (you are lucky) if you only cringe about your teenage years. I cringe thinking of what I was like five years ago, and I'm 40! Why did I do that? Say that? Wear that??

YANBU, give yourself a break. What you describe is probably 99% of teenagers. They are basically overgrown toddlers with better vocabulary.

We all think we're Samuel Pepys at that age. The thoughts are normal, just most kids don't create a record of it. At least, they didn't back then. Nowadays there's social media but that's curated for public display, which may or may not make the content even worse to look back on.

People say not to chuck them but I'm so glad I destroyed mine. The ridiculous narcissistic teenage drama shite was bad, the stuff about the abusive and totally fucked up home was worse. Can absolutely see where my PND came from. Never wanted my children to see either. No benefit at all, quite the opposite.

Unless there’s more to this… you don’t write “terrible thoughts”. You fancied a boy and was self centred - very normal through teen years.

What perhaps isn’t healthy is to “hate” yourself after a reading your teen sorry from decades ago, and worry about how your adult dc would judge you if they read .

I read my teenage diaries not long ago and I have put them all in the recycling. Honestly, maybe I'd like to look at them when I was 80, but I genuinely don't want anyone who survives me to read them, least of all my DC! I was an absolute idiot. So pleased to no longer be a teenager and would not return to those years if you paid me!