Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. Protection built in.

Meet the Other Phone.
Protection built in.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
Mumsnet classics

Relive the funniest, most unforgettable threads. For a daily dose of Mumsnet’s best bits, sign up for Mumsnet's daily newsletter.

See all MNHQ comments on this thread

Original poster

Things that stay with you.

471 replies

penfriends · 04/06/2016 23:42

What random things have struck a chord with you?

Mine is a Postsecret card that said:

"Everyone who knew me before 9/11 think I'm dead"

I read it years ago but I think about that person. Family, parents, siblings.

Just one sentence but it's stayed with me fore years.

OP posts:
Reasonstostayalive · 07/06/2016 19:55

On hearing that i had never learnt to swim (I had nearly drowned at 7) my GM told me "you've always been a coward". I'd moved to London on my own not 8 weeks before. Knowing not a soul. Am obviously a big massive fat coward. Not.

Perpetualstateofchaos · 07/06/2016 19:57

Bring nominated as one of Cinderellas ugly step sisters by the teacher and whole class in year 5. Worked out well when 1 of the lads tried chatting me up on my 18th.

Pharmacist telling me to smile it can't be that bad the day after my brother was killed.

My lovely mum telling me off for not telling her I'd miscarried as I shouldn't have had to have dealt with it on my own. Dad had just had a heart attack and my other dB was going off the rails after db1's death a few monhs earlier.

MrsJayy · 07/06/2016 20:02

My nana would always says hen whits fir ye will no go by ye means what will be will be always sticks in my head and use it as a mantra

januaryblues11 · 07/06/2016 20:14

When I was 19 I was, or I thought I was, in love with this brilliant Indian boy. He was amazing. He was academically gifted and he was going to uni to study neuroscience. We dated for a while but I always felt I wasn't enough for him. When he left for uni he broke up with me, stupidly I thought we were going to do long distance. "I'm sorry" he said. "You just aren't intelligent enough for me" .... He's a renowned neuro surgeon now, married to a beautiful blonde. I'm glad it worked out for him but to this day I doubt my intelligence.

My dad when I was about 16. "Your sister is worth a hundred of you"

CPtart · 07/06/2016 20:15

At my grandmas funeral in February, my uncle who was particularly close to her was talking, "I'm not sad she's dead because she was ready to go. And I know she was ready because she told me".
The thought that my feisty 89 year old grandma who having flown alone to Spain on holiday just 18 months earlier before dementia set in was ready to die, was so so sad.

Fireflysingstheblues · 07/06/2016 20:22

I was twenty and still at university , one of my best friends from school / home town said I was pissing my life up the wall !

I thought if there is anytime in my life I should be having a good time . It's now .

Openup41 · 07/06/2016 20:53

Some of these posts are sad 😔

"No-one will ever want to kiss you" A boy in my year group at high school who enjoyed ridiculing me about my appearance. I am happily married and cannot cope with affection from my husband. I feel I do not deserve it.

"You are so weird" A so called friend.

"You are just a silly little girl" A tutor at college, obviously annoyed with a very reasonable question I had asked. It was said with an audience. I cried in the toilets but somehow had the courage to confront her. She apologised.

I overheard a college peer discussing me;
"Open does not have an opinion on anything". I did - I just did not have the confidence to share it or feel I mattered enough for anyone to listen to me. This cuts to this day - it was said over 20 years ago.

Openup41 · 07/06/2016 20:57

Now for the positive;

"I always knew you were pretty - you just needed to know for yourself"

"You have good leadership qualities - people listen to you"

"You know what you want in life"

"You look more beautiful than I ever could inagine" dh on our wedding day

HempMunchingVeganBore · 07/06/2016 21:02

When I broke my silence over years of my stepfather's sexual abuse of me (and my 'd'm was therefore forced to break up with him), she told my dad - who begged her to comfort me - "she doesn't love me and as far as she's concerned she only had one daughter" (my sister). It has never left me, neither has the look on my dad's face when she said it.

HempMunchingVeganBore · 07/06/2016 21:02

Sorry, just realised that wasn't a 'random' thing Blush

Puzzledandpissedoff · 07/06/2016 21:34

Aged 9, my father telling me he'd never wanted me in the first place

Aged 58, my ex MIL saying almost the same thing

On a happier note, though: My late beloved uncle, in a quiet voice from behind which I clearly wasn't meant to hear "I wish you were my little girl"

And lunch with a young friend, when the waiter mistook me for her mum. "No, she's not my mum" my lovely friend said "but I wish she was"

WhereBeThatBlackbirdTo · 07/06/2016 21:45

An ancient great-aunt I rarely saw told me I was a 'proper beauty' when I was about 8.

Bless her - I'm not but it stayed with me.

MidnightLullaby · 07/06/2016 21:48

"No one will ever love you"

"No one will ever want you"

They were right.

MarvinGorilla · 07/06/2016 21:53

I'm sure that's not true MIdnight xx

qualitystreet1 · 07/06/2016 21:59

I have no meaningful emotional attachment to you - XP on breaking up with me

beetroot2 · 07/06/2016 22:19

"You are a beautiful, kind wonderful girl and don't let anyone else tell you any different if they do tell them to fuck off"

Told to me by my father a week before he died. Bless him, I was 35 at the time so hardly a girl Grin

BotBotticelli · 07/06/2016 22:20

Feeling DS1 crowning - I was whacked off my face on gas and air and felt no pain. I put my hand down and felt his lovely hairy head!!!

Hearing ds1 say he first word around 13 months old: "mummy". It had been a tough year, I had PnD and found bonding with him/motherhood very hard. And yet I was his first word. Sniff.

Telling him I had a baby in my belly and he was gonna be a big brother - his incredulous smile was amazing.

Said little brother being lifted out of my belly by the surgeon and held above the screen - he looked so like his big brother! I just wept at the wonder of it all.

ReadyPlayerOne · 07/06/2016 22:27

Not said to me, but said about me: my mum told my sister when we were teenagers (and sis told me a while later) "Ready is the type of girl who'll end up in a violent relationship"

My mum snarling "pull yourself together" when I was crying in public aged 15 and she was embarressed. 15 years later she remarked on how stoic I was. I wonder how I learned to wall off my emotions in public, eh, mum?

However I love my mum and I know she's had her own things that have stuck with her. Her parents loved her, but her dad would often joke that "we had a son, a daughter and a mistake" and her mums oft used rebuke for mum was "don't be silly, ReadysMum".

(I know I have the same issue as her with regards to snapping or lashing out and I feel great shame for the times when I have snapped at my own daughter and my son. I do fuck up and hate myself for it, but I always apologise (which she never did) and acknowledge that I was wrong and I am trying to change.)

I will also never forget my mum, in tears telling me that dads OW had phoned my mum (who was recuperating from life saving surgery) and ranted down the phone at her. "She told me I was ruining her life"

Later on during the breakup, when my dad phoned me to explain that mum was being collected by an ambulance because of a suspected broken hip. She was howling with pain in the background of this call.

UptownFunk00 · 07/06/2016 22:35

A girl telling me her brother was sexually abusing her. I can't remember exactly but I think we were 8 or 9. I hope he rots in jail G.

When a group of 3 older guys I knew said I'd deserve it if I got raped.

A man who not only let us take the taxi he was about to go in but paid for our journey too.

mrsclooneytoyou · 07/06/2016 22:37

"If you are hungry, there is half of a onion in the bin for your tea"

Spoken by my mother after I got in from school age 13.
I never ate it, I washed it and fried it and then added it to a oxo cube so my brother had some kind of soup/meal.

UptownFunk00 · 07/06/2016 22:38

On the part of literature sayings The Lovely Bones book and the poem (not quite sure of the title) do not weep, for I have not gone.

Also the ending of the first Noughts and Crosses book by Malorie Blackman.

All 3 when read make me cry hysterically. I'm actually welling up writing this.

RainbowsAndUnicornss · 07/06/2016 22:42

I used to clean once a week for a lovely, jolly, vibrant lady in her 80s.
One time I knocked, she answered the door & we said hello etc but she had a really croaky voice so I asked her if she was feeling unwell - she said no, I've not used my voice since you left last week Sad
I was stunned, she hadn't spoken to or seen anyone to speak to in a whole week
That's stuck with me, she's passed now but I think about her regularly

UptownFunk00 · 07/06/2016 22:49

Nearly crying reading some of these.

Some truly disgusting things some people who are supposed to be friends and family have said.

honeyandmarmitesandwiches · 07/06/2016 22:58

"You're a cheap tart who had sex with the first boy who swung his willy at you"

  • my dad.

I'm in counselling atm actually and I've alluded to his past abusive behaviour but no idea how I'd even get those words out to try to discuss it. What's weird is we have a good relationship mainly, these days. I can't quite get my head around that.

honeyandmarmitesandwiches · 07/06/2016 23:01

Oh, and despite knowing I don't actually have to justify myself I feel the need to add that I was 17 at the time had been with my boyfriend for a year before losing my virginity to him. I was also nursing what felt like a catastrophically broken heart when said comment was made.