Ugh, okay, brace yourself: “Don’t worry, you can totally trust me with that.” 😬 Yeah… turns out, sometimes you really, really can’t. Lesson learned the hard way.
“I’m sorry but I have to leave early, they scheduled me to work”
My Ex, who left my grandpas funeral early to go cheat on me with her co-worker. My grandpa was the rock of my life, the man I always looked up to, his death devastated me and I really needed her to be there for me and help. Instead she went and got railed by her co-worker and even bragged about it after we broke up when I found out she was cheating with a different dude.
Ruined my perception of dating for a long time until I met my wife who healed me.
“You are special and better than other kids”. Took me years to learn no one is born better than another, some discover their talents early, others do later in life. Please dont plant narcissism in kids.
Don’t be a bitch, try this
Led to years of buying friendships with drugs or paying for everything… and only being good enough or contacted when I had something To offer.
Please don’t read if the subject of eugenics, grooming, and cyberbullying is something you can’t handle right now. It’s bad.
>!Got groomed (not sexually groomed, but suicide baited) by Neo-Nazis over Roblox as a young teen. I didn’t realize they were eugenicist weirdos at first, and they kept suggesting that I should end my own life to spare the economy and my parents from the burden of my disability. I laughed it off because stupid kid me thought it was just a fucked up joke, but it got more insistent and they kept pulling me in and pushing me away with a mix of compliments (“one of the good ones” type of deal), and telling me I was completely worthless.!<
Then they dropped that they were blatant Neo-Nazis and I noped the fuck out of that friendship, but I spent the rest of my teens thinking I was fundamentally worthless due to being autistic. I don’t think people talk about how damaging this type of thing is, and how much these fringe groups go out of their way to hurt people. I highly suspect some sort of Kiwi Farms involvement due to the language they used but I can’t exactly verify that.
My ex wife told me it was okay for me to go camping one night with my friends. While I was camping she dropped our kids off with my mom and went and fucked a guy in a parking lot.
its silly but: “you wash your face like a caveman”.
for YEARS afterwards I could hear my wifes voice repeating that phrase over and over again in my head while washing my face every morning. I have ADHD, and I need to be left ALONE when I’m getting ready for the day – talking to me in ANY WAY could cause me to forget to brush my teeth or finish fixing my hair. She said this while I was getting ready one morning and it took YEARS for me to get it outta my head. I now LOCK THE DOOR when I’m getting ready.
“I could never date you… you remind me of my rapist.”
that was a hard one to hear… this was years before I met my wife. I had been friends with this amazing woman – had hung out a few times, played pool, had a few drinks with her and friends, etc. We got along great, had a lot in common, great conversation, had a blast together when we hung out. I felt like it was the perfect time to ask her out on a real date, to take her out to a nice dinner, etc. That was her response. It really fucking sucked because… well… I didn’t feel like I could even be friends with her after that. I didn’t want to make her feel uncomfortable.
“Well, you have degenerative disk disease, four herniated disks, and lumbar spinal stenosis, but it shouldn’t be causing you THAT MUCH PAIN.” ???? Boom, life forever altered for the worse.
I was at the peak of my eating disorder, had lost a third of my body weight, could barely make it up the stairs to the study space me and my friends used, let alone the English classroom 4 flights up. I’d been chubby before the weight loss so it was seen as a positive by people who didn’t know. The woman who said it, however, was a staff member at my 6th form college and worked with me closely to help me cope with my severe anxiety. She hadn’t been told explicitely “this girl has an eating disorder” but I was practically skeletal and many of my teachers had already figured it out. I lost all the weight in less than a year, too.
It was something I thought about a lot during recovery. I didn’t get complimented often, this was the first one I’d heard in a while, and it made me feel like I was only worthy of praise when I was skinny. 6 years on and I’m back to being chubby but my body image is probably at its best. Before the weight loss, I thought I didn’t deserve to wear fun things because it’d look bad on me, but I think dressing cute was a huge part of my recovery. I only wore plain black swimsuits because I expected to “look fat,” but now I feel much less insecure when I wear a cute swim dress with a boob-window lol
A friend was ordering ubers at a party and I wanted to go with my best friend. The friend ordering said he was going to do mine separately because I was going a different way. He waited until everyone left then I went through the worst assault of my life.
The problem was I was talented – and its “big fish, small pond” type stuff. I was gifted when you compared me to the kids in my class, maybe my school – but not in the wider world. And though she meant it with encouragement, it was a terrible thing to hear from a teacher. Expectation turned into self-loathing.
I’d never thought of it like that, but it wriggled beneath the security of my world view and undermined my sense of purpose, so now I fight the siren song of victim mentality.
“We’ve never seen this before, and neither has any institution we’ve contacted.” Said by nephrology and immunology team. Little did I know I’d hear this phrase well over 200 times in my life from specialists. I was laughing when I came to ER because my urine was black and looked like Coca Cola (was 11 but mysteriously sick since I was a baby.) Now I know it was a diagnosis of new disease not recorded in medicine and I’ve been studied for years. Didn’t know how serious it was as a kid and thought I’d recover lol. Still no treatments available. A couple years later they really sat me down and explained I’d be dying very young and probably soon, told my parents to say goodbye and sent me to hospice care center and then it clicked.
Not mine, but my buddy said on Twitter “by any means necessary…here I come” talking about getting a call of duty achievement that day. Somehow a feminism account with a big following saw it and retweeted it and he had dozens upon dozens of people accusing him of being a predator for a long time.
Hay I need to talk to you in my office. My boss out of nowhere fires me, the government bailed out the airlines because covid and they didn’t care. Even though the tax payers gave them billions they still fired around 5k people. But there is a silver lining the CEO of AA got his 10 million dollar bonus that yea so I guess I should be happy.
Me when I was battling suicidal ideations leading up to my second suicide attempt and I reached out to friends for support without explicitly saying I needed help. I just said, “Is it okay if I can hangout or talk right now? I kind of need to vent, you know?”
The above statement really told me who in my life actually gave a shit about me. So many “friends” were cut out after my failed suicide attempt.
When i told my ex we’d try to find a way to work without her having to distance herself from the guy she cheated on me with. Probably couldve fixed the relationship if she stop talking to that fucker
“She’ll be home soon. You can come inside and wait for her to come home so you can play together.”
Was told this by my friend’s Dad (who also was my brother’s baseball coach, btw, so someone I should have been able to trust) just before he molested me.
“Theres no treatment you just have to get on with it” me being diagnosed with chronic pain and fatigue, ive lost my job, relationships and a ton of money trying to get better. They diagnosed me with something they dont treat and barely believe in.
From my dad – “It’s cancer, likely pancreatic and spread out pretty far and I’ll be fine just being comfortable.” There lot more to that, but it’s the same my mom died to. And still just numb that I’ll lose both parents before 33 to pancreatic cancer and now have to worry my brother will get it as they both are dying youngish.
This question hits me hard now, but not at the time.
My gf and I were laying in bed. I was exhausted. The night seemed fine. She said “I’m not happy”. I said I was tired, rolled over and tried to fall asleep thinking the next day would just be another day. It wasn’t another day after that. To anyone in a long term relationship, please have better communication than I did.
“I don’t need a condom, I know when I’m getting close”
I still told him to wear one. It was a different time that he tampered with it so it slipped off. There never should have been a next time, but that was the time my life took a rapid spiral. That part of my life has left me with seemingly permanent damage to my stomach (stress, antibiotics, something. I’m not really sure). Asshole ruined my life.
Nine years later and that never happened. I took our four year old daughter and left…unfortunately he decided hitting me in front of her was a good idea? After I warned him that was THE deal breaker to end everything. Sometimes I wonder if he did it on purpose. Idc, best thing to ever happen! We’re better off without him in our lives. Six blissful years of no drunken anything anymore! Good riddance to bad rubbish.
I was in grad school. As we were entering the final leg of the program, we had a class meeting with the program director to go over what the next six months was going to look like. They mentioned many students typically begin looking for work around this time, but encouraged us to focus on completing our coursework. After all, “the job market’s pretty hot right now anyway” and not likely to change in six months’ time they said.
I chose to focus on my course work as recommended. When I graduated, the job market had flipped entirely. Everyone in my industry was laying people off by the thousands. I was now overqualified for my old job and too inexperienced for anything else. I ended up working at a grocery store for almost a year before I landed back in my field making a fraction of what I used to make.
Probably too early to say it ruined my life, but it’s been a major set back.
“We’ve been friends for this many years, and we need to have a serious conversation, and now you’re saying you don’t want me in your hotel room? Is that really what you think of me? Does our friendship really mean this little to you?”
Not ruined, but I carry this with me and it felt horrible. Almost everyday I hear this on the back of my head, especially in stressful times: “If you had as many things to do as I have, you would be dead by now!”.
Felt bad, they didn’t mean anything by it, or maybe they did but I’m trying to give them the benefit of doubt. I was falling into depression and burn out and hearing this, by a meaninful other, when I was overwhelmed by everything just sucked. Now I have this little voice telling me that everytime I try to get something done and it makes me feel so alone and shitty.
‘Let’s keep this between us, okay?’ — bruh, he dropped that line with a cheeky smirk I thought was just some flirty energy, but turns out it was the spark that lit a corporate shitshow, torching my job, my bank account, and my last shred of chill.
“I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.”
It was the summer after 5th grade. My folks had split about 2 years before and I was at my dad’s house. He didn’t like how I was writing my book report so he started whooping on me which was typical. The violence of it this time was not. So after he was done and had his fill, he went outside to chop wood. Being terrified that he would kill me with the axe, I called my mom. Who wouldn’t? Sobbing, I begged her to come get me. She did and tore my dad a new one. We drove back to her house and were sitting around the table eating dinner with my siblings. She leans in towards me and points at me, looks me dead in the eyes, and says, “I’m not going to save you like that ever again.” In the most cold and icy way possible like I’ve done her a disservice. And she wonders why I left home at 18.
“You’re so young, I wouldn’t worry much. Cervical cancer is so very rare in people your age, but we can send out the biopsy if it eases your mind.”
I was 25. It was progressing from stage 2 to stage 3. I lost my fertility, but saved my life.
Get cervical cancer screenings, push for them if you have to. It’s not so rare that you can say it’s never happened to anyone you know because now you know me.
“You’re going out in public, like that?” *disgusted stare & sneer, dismissive sniff*
My mother who was a diagnosed malignant narcissist and wildly jealous of me from infancy (mine, not hers) – I had lost a bunch of weight when I lived apart from her for the first significant time in my life when I was 16. I came back from 6 months away working in a YMCA super fit and toned and tanned and gorgeous for the FIRST time in my life.
I bounced downstairs the 2nd day home dressed in a modest chemise top tucked into my jeans – something I would NEVER have worn before I left. I felt AWESOME, I’d nearly cried looking in the mirror before I came downstairs because for the first time I could look at myself and think “Hey that’s me!” and not have a meltdown over analyzing how “ugly” I looked. I’d had 6 months of people telling me every day I looked great and was cute etc (extremely wholesome bunch of kids, I miss them still 30 years later!).
And that was my mum’s reaction.
It destroyed me, and I went upstairs and put on a mid-thigh length oversized hoodie. I never tried to dress my size again after that.
I had an accident 2 years after that comment and never recovered full mobility, and she continued to make hateful shitty little comments that just made me give up completely.
I didn’t really even start recovering till I was in my early 30s, and by then I had been very fat for years. My medical conditions compounded, and now I can’t lose weight due to the medications I’m on.
I look back at childhood photos and realize now – with years of therapy and self growth and space away from her since her death in 2000 – that she had never once been right about any of the shitty things she said to me… I was never a fat kid. I was always cute at worst, and fucking gorgeous at best… but she never, ever let me shine.
But it was “You’re going out in public, like that?” that was the real death-knell for my self confidence and body image.
Parents, be careful what you say to your kids… you never know which phrase is going to be one of the key ones that shape their future lives. And you don’t need to be a malignant narcissist to fuck them up for life with a throw-away comment.
An ex-“GF” back in the mid 90s told me this after she had faked a miscarriage. Turns out she was a lesbian and just wanted a baby. Her and her partner had initially singled me out just for my looks and it went from there. I’ve had a pretty crazy life.
the pizza cook said after he put a half-burnt pizza on top of the oven, where they became fair game for employees. It was my turn for the next delivery, but I let my coworker take it and stayed for a bite. I left with the next delivery and a few minutes later a 81 year old lady blew a red light on the highway and changed my life forever.
Couldn’t walk for a year. My college diploma that I had just received 2 months prior was now useless as it required some physical work. Sports, gone. Overall attitude and life trajectory completely altered.
“Maybe there is a reason why no one wants to hang out or talk to you. You are always the problem”
My ex said this when I was trying to talk, an get some comfort from him about why our mutual friends at the time seemed to want nothing to do with me. Little did I know, he was talking shit about me to them all while we were still dating. They were all my friends before the relationship too. Left them with him, I figure trash belongs in the dump, I don’t.
It was actually a text from my mom “hi taco belle, are you working from home or the office today?”. That wasn’t all that unusual but what was unusual was the fact that about two minutes later my younger sister called me. It was a Monday at about 10 am, I was at work, she was at work. As soon as I saw the call I knew something happened.
My little sister was calling to tell me that our dad had unexpectedly died that morning. My mom was trying to find out if I was at home or in the office to know how she should proceed with that news. A year later and I still get anxious when someone calls or texts me at a not normal time.
Comments
Wanna do shrooms?
Ugh, okay, brace yourself: “Don’t worry, you can totally trust me with that.” 😬 Yeah… turns out, sometimes you really, really can’t. Lesson learned the hard way.
“I’m sorry but I have to leave early, they scheduled me to work”
My Ex, who left my grandpas funeral early to go cheat on me with her co-worker. My grandpa was the rock of my life, the man I always looked up to, his death devastated me and I really needed her to be there for me and help. Instead she went and got railed by her co-worker and even bragged about it after we broke up when I found out she was cheating with a different dude.
Ruined my perception of dating for a long time until I met my wife who healed me.
“I do.”
“Cum inside me”
“You are special and better than other kids”. Took me years to learn no one is born better than another, some discover their talents early, others do later in life. Please dont plant narcissism in kids.
just do it what’s the worst that could happen?
happend a lot of shit after that
Don’t be a bitch, try this
Led to years of buying friendships with drugs or paying for everything… and only being good enough or contacted when I had something To offer.
Hold my beer and watch this!
Let’s invite the neighbors over for dinner.
(affair)
“Listen to women to learn about women.”
“Let’s just see where this goes.” Should’ve known that meant nowhere real.
“Wanna take a hit?”
Talking about weed, but it opened my mind up to doing other, harder, drugs.
“I need to take a break for a bit”
She did, in fact, take a break. But it was for longer than a bit
I promise I’ll change
“Don’t ask me to choose” 😞
“zero”
When my dad told me that he loved me, but he didn’t like me
You don’t need to wear a condom
“You have the most beautiful nose I have ever seen” to which I replied “Tell me more”.
“We’re going to schedule some additional testing, but we don’t think it’s anything serious.”
Happy wife, happy life.
Spent so much time trying to focus only on my ex wife’s happiness that I neglected my own happiness making myself a pretty unhappy husband.
Do you take this woman to be your wife…
I think we’re soulmates, this feels like destiny.
It was not destiny, we were not soulmates and it ended just as spectacularly as you think it did.
“I do.”
Really, you’ll be saving the family and our house if you go to nursing school and become a nurse.
Don’t worry. If it doesn’t work out we will refinance. I promise.
Please don’t read if the subject of eugenics, grooming, and cyberbullying is something you can’t handle right now. It’s bad.
>!Got groomed (not sexually groomed, but suicide baited) by Neo-Nazis over Roblox as a young teen. I didn’t realize they were eugenicist weirdos at first, and they kept suggesting that I should end my own life to spare the economy and my parents from the burden of my disability. I laughed it off because stupid kid me thought it was just a fucked up joke, but it got more insistent and they kept pulling me in and pushing me away with a mix of compliments (“one of the good ones” type of deal), and telling me I was completely worthless.!<
Then they dropped that they were blatant Neo-Nazis and I noped the fuck out of that friendship, but I spent the rest of my teens thinking I was fundamentally worthless due to being autistic. I don’t think people talk about how damaging this type of thing is, and how much these fringe groups go out of their way to hurt people. I highly suspect some sort of Kiwi Farms involvement due to the language they used but I can’t exactly verify that.
My ex wife told me it was okay for me to go camping one night with my friends. While I was camping she dropped our kids off with my mom and went and fucked a guy in a parking lot.
its silly but: “you wash your face like a caveman”.
for YEARS afterwards I could hear my wifes voice repeating that phrase over and over again in my head while washing my face every morning. I have ADHD, and I need to be left ALONE when I’m getting ready for the day – talking to me in ANY WAY could cause me to forget to brush my teeth or finish fixing my hair. She said this while I was getting ready one morning and it took YEARS for me to get it outta my head. I now LOCK THE DOOR when I’m getting ready.
“I could never date you… you remind me of my rapist.”
that was a hard one to hear… this was years before I met my wife. I had been friends with this amazing woman – had hung out a few times, played pool, had a few drinks with her and friends, etc. We got along great, had a lot in common, great conversation, had a blast together when we hung out. I felt like it was the perfect time to ask her out on a real date, to take her out to a nice dinner, etc. That was her response. It really fucking sucked because… well… I didn’t feel like I could even be friends with her after that. I didn’t want to make her feel uncomfortable.
“Well, you have degenerative disk disease, four herniated disks, and lumbar spinal stenosis, but it shouldn’t be causing you THAT MUCH PAIN.” ???? Boom, life forever altered for the worse.
‘I’m pregnant!’
Ok, ruined is the wrong word, but kids F*** you up!!
“Have you lost weight? You look good!”
I was at the peak of my eating disorder, had lost a third of my body weight, could barely make it up the stairs to the study space me and my friends used, let alone the English classroom 4 flights up. I’d been chubby before the weight loss so it was seen as a positive by people who didn’t know. The woman who said it, however, was a staff member at my 6th form college and worked with me closely to help me cope with my severe anxiety. She hadn’t been told explicitely “this girl has an eating disorder” but I was practically skeletal and many of my teachers had already figured it out. I lost all the weight in less than a year, too.
It was something I thought about a lot during recovery. I didn’t get complimented often, this was the first one I’d heard in a while, and it made me feel like I was only worthy of praise when I was skinny. 6 years on and I’m back to being chubby but my body image is probably at its best. Before the weight loss, I thought I didn’t deserve to wear fun things because it’d look bad on me, but I think dressing cute was a huge part of my recovery. I only wore plain black swimsuits because I expected to “look fat,” but now I feel much less insecure when I wear a cute swim dress with a boob-window lol
I do.
‘I’ll order you a separate uber’.
A friend was ordering ubers at a party and I wanted to go with my best friend. The friend ordering said he was going to do mine separately because I was going a different way. He waited until everyone left then I went through the worst assault of my life.
“He’s gifted, and he should be in art school”
The problem was I was talented – and its “big fish, small pond” type stuff. I was gifted when you compared me to the kids in my class, maybe my school – but not in the wider world. And though she meant it with encouragement, it was a terrible thing to hear from a teacher. Expectation turned into self-loathing.
“You’ve had a really rough life, haven’t you?”
I’d never thought of it like that, but it wriggled beneath the security of my world view and undermined my sense of purpose, so now I fight the siren song of victim mentality.
“You have to be a lover or a fighter, not both”
I’ll call you later.
“I’ll remember to do it later”
I have ADHD. I do not it fact, remember to do it later.
“Your Dad and I are getting a divorce.”
I lost my Dad, my dog, and my childhood, all at the same time.
Dad took my dog with him, so my “mother” didn’t dump him at the pound.
“I will always love Hugh.”
My high school girlfriend, three years after graduating – who I was begging not to marry some other guy.
When i told her how i felt about her, I thought she said “I will always love you,” but it turned out her fiancees name was Hugh.
My grandma telling me that she hopes she’ll die before I’m fully trans. Said after years of her fighting cancer and almost dying.
Never looked at her the same since, which is a shame because she was the person I was closest to.
Let me introduce my parents…
“It wasn’t worth the effort.”
“Well honey, there’s a lot of hate in the world”
My mother when I told her I didn’t think she hated me, but I never felt loved by her either.
Step out of the car, ma’am.
“Balatro, the deck building roguelike, is now on sale!”
I want to get an art degree
“Oh that’s just Darryl.” Or “oh that’s just Darryl and Hailey”
Excuses people would use including my parents to encourage sexual harassment and abuse
“We’ve never seen this before, and neither has any institution we’ve contacted.” Said by nephrology and immunology team. Little did I know I’d hear this phrase well over 200 times in my life from specialists. I was laughing when I came to ER because my urine was black and looked like Coca Cola (was 11 but mysteriously sick since I was a baby.) Now I know it was a diagnosis of new disease not recorded in medicine and I’ve been studied for years. Didn’t know how serious it was as a kid and thought I’d recover lol. Still no treatments available. A couple years later they really sat me down and explained I’d be dying very young and probably soon, told my parents to say goodbye and sent me to hospice care center and then it clicked.
Not mine, but my buddy said on Twitter “by any means necessary…here I come” talking about getting a call of duty achievement that day. Somehow a feminism account with a big following saw it and retweeted it and he had dozens upon dozens of people accusing him of being a predator for a long time.
Hay I need to talk to you in my office. My boss out of nowhere fires me, the government bailed out the airlines because covid and they didn’t care. Even though the tax payers gave them billions they still fired around 5k people. But there is a silver lining the CEO of AA got his 10 million dollar bonus that yea so I guess I should be happy.
I’ll just have one more…
“I do”
A couple of beers
“Let’s just wing it.” — said before a group project, a camping trip, and a haircut. All three ended in tears.
I do….
“Sorry, can’t help you. Family, you know?”
Me when I was battling suicidal ideations leading up to my second suicide attempt and I reached out to friends for support without explicitly saying I needed help. I just said, “Is it okay if I can hangout or talk right now? I kind of need to vent, you know?”
The above statement really told me who in my life actually gave a shit about me. So many “friends” were cut out after my failed suicide attempt.
TBH I’m still a little bitter over it.
Sign here.
“Just stick it in there”
“You’re my lobster.”
Spoiler alert, I wasn’t.
“Girls night out tonight” – my now ex, who I busted later that night.
“I need you to sit down.”
When i told my ex we’d try to find a way to work without her having to distance herself from the guy she cheated on me with. Probably couldve fixed the relationship if she stop talking to that fucker
“I’m not them, I will never leave. I will fight harder for you than anyone has or will.”
He in fact did not and went back to his ex
“Why won’t you just let me do this?”
“She’ll be home soon. You can come inside and wait for her to come home so you can play together.”
Was told this by my friend’s Dad (who also was my brother’s baseball coach, btw, so someone I should have been able to trust) just before he molested me.
“Theres no treatment you just have to get on with it” me being diagnosed with chronic pain and fatigue, ive lost my job, relationships and a ton of money trying to get better. They diagnosed me with something they dont treat and barely believe in.
From my dad – “It’s cancer, likely pancreatic and spread out pretty far and I’ll be fine just being comfortable.” There lot more to that, but it’s the same my mom died to. And still just numb that I’ll lose both parents before 33 to pancreatic cancer and now have to worry my brother will get it as they both are dying youngish.
This question hits me hard now, but not at the time.
My gf and I were laying in bed. I was exhausted. The night seemed fine. She said “I’m not happy”. I said I was tired, rolled over and tried to fall asleep thinking the next day would just be another day. It wasn’t another day after that. To anyone in a long term relationship, please have better communication than I did.
“I don’t need a condom, I know when I’m getting close”
I still told him to wear one. It was a different time that he tampered with it so it slipped off. There never should have been a next time, but that was the time my life took a rapid spiral. That part of my life has left me with seemingly permanent damage to my stomach (stress, antibiotics, something. I’m not really sure). Asshole ruined my life.
I swear I’ll stop drinking….
Nine years later and that never happened. I took our four year old daughter and left…unfortunately he decided hitting me in front of her was a good idea? After I warned him that was THE deal breaker to end everything. Sometimes I wonder if he did it on purpose. Idc, best thing to ever happen! We’re better off without him in our lives. Six blissful years of no drunken anything anymore! Good riddance to bad rubbish.
I do. Started 2 years of hell..
“the job market’s pretty hot right now anyway”
I was in grad school. As we were entering the final leg of the program, we had a class meeting with the program director to go over what the next six months was going to look like. They mentioned many students typically begin looking for work around this time, but encouraged us to focus on completing our coursework. After all, “the job market’s pretty hot right now anyway” and not likely to change in six months’ time they said.
I chose to focus on my course work as recommended. When I graduated, the job market had flipped entirely. Everyone in my industry was laying people off by the thousands. I was now overqualified for my old job and too inexperienced for anything else. I ended up working at a grocery store for almost a year before I landed back in my field making a fraction of what I used to make.
Probably too early to say it ruined my life, but it’s been a major set back.
“Do you like it?”
“We’ve been friends for this many years, and we need to have a serious conversation, and now you’re saying you don’t want me in your hotel room? Is that really what you think of me? Does our friendship really mean this little to you?”
Not ruined, but I carry this with me and it felt horrible. Almost everyday I hear this on the back of my head, especially in stressful times: “If you had as many things to do as I have, you would be dead by now!”.
Felt bad, they didn’t mean anything by it, or maybe they did but I’m trying to give them the benefit of doubt. I was falling into depression and burn out and hearing this, by a meaninful other, when I was overwhelmed by everything just sucked. Now I have this little voice telling me that everytime I try to get something done and it makes me feel so alone and shitty.
‘Let’s keep this between us, okay?’ — bruh, he dropped that line with a cheeky smirk I thought was just some flirty energy, but turns out it was the spark that lit a corporate shitshow, torching my job, my bank account, and my last shred of chill.
“I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.”
This cassowary is actually really good with kids.
It was the summer after 5th grade. My folks had split about 2 years before and I was at my dad’s house. He didn’t like how I was writing my book report so he started whooping on me which was typical. The violence of it this time was not. So after he was done and had his fill, he went outside to chop wood. Being terrified that he would kill me with the axe, I called my mom. Who wouldn’t? Sobbing, I begged her to come get me. She did and tore my dad a new one. We drove back to her house and were sitting around the table eating dinner with my siblings. She leans in towards me and points at me, looks me dead in the eyes, and says, “I’m not going to save you like that ever again.” In the most cold and icy way possible like I’ve done her a disservice. And she wonders why I left home at 18.
Pregnant woman come in here worried all the time, but I’m sure everything’s okay and you’ll feel relieved and be able to go back home really soon
“You’re so young, I wouldn’t worry much. Cervical cancer is so very rare in people your age, but we can send out the biopsy if it eases your mind.”
I was 25. It was progressing from stage 2 to stage 3. I lost my fertility, but saved my life.
Get cervical cancer screenings, push for them if you have to. It’s not so rare that you can say it’s never happened to anyone you know because now you know me.
“You’re going out in public, like that?” *disgusted stare & sneer, dismissive sniff*
My mother who was a diagnosed malignant narcissist and wildly jealous of me from infancy (mine, not hers) – I had lost a bunch of weight when I lived apart from her for the first significant time in my life when I was 16. I came back from 6 months away working in a YMCA super fit and toned and tanned and gorgeous for the FIRST time in my life.
I bounced downstairs the 2nd day home dressed in a modest chemise top tucked into my jeans – something I would NEVER have worn before I left. I felt AWESOME, I’d nearly cried looking in the mirror before I came downstairs because for the first time I could look at myself and think “Hey that’s me!” and not have a meltdown over analyzing how “ugly” I looked. I’d had 6 months of people telling me every day I looked great and was cute etc (extremely wholesome bunch of kids, I miss them still 30 years later!).
And that was my mum’s reaction.
It destroyed me, and I went upstairs and put on a mid-thigh length oversized hoodie. I never tried to dress my size again after that.
I had an accident 2 years after that comment and never recovered full mobility, and she continued to make hateful shitty little comments that just made me give up completely.
I didn’t really even start recovering till I was in my early 30s, and by then I had been very fat for years. My medical conditions compounded, and now I can’t lose weight due to the medications I’m on.
I look back at childhood photos and realize now – with years of therapy and self growth and space away from her since her death in 2000 – that she had never once been right about any of the shitty things she said to me… I was never a fat kid. I was always cute at worst, and fucking gorgeous at best… but she never, ever let me shine.
But it was “You’re going out in public, like that?” that was the real death-knell for my self confidence and body image.
Parents, be careful what you say to your kids… you never know which phrase is going to be one of the key ones that shape their future lives. And you don’t need to be a malignant narcissist to fuck them up for life with a throw-away comment.
“My doctor told me that I can’t get pregnant”
An ex-“GF” back in the mid 90s told me this after she had faked a miscarriage. Turns out she was a lesbian and just wanted a baby. Her and her partner had initially singled me out just for my looks and it went from there. I’ve had a pretty crazy life.
“Got a burnt one up top!”
the pizza cook said after he put a half-burnt pizza on top of the oven, where they became fair game for employees. It was my turn for the next delivery, but I let my coworker take it and stayed for a bite. I left with the next delivery and a few minutes later a 81 year old lady blew a red light on the highway and changed my life forever.
Couldn’t walk for a year. My college diploma that I had just received 2 months prior was now useless as it required some physical work. Sports, gone. Overall attitude and life trajectory completely altered.
All because I wanted a free slice of pizza.
“Maybe there is a reason why no one wants to hang out or talk to you. You are always the problem”
My ex said this when I was trying to talk, an get some comfort from him about why our mutual friends at the time seemed to want nothing to do with me. Little did I know, he was talking shit about me to them all while we were still dating. They were all my friends before the relationship too. Left them with him, I figure trash belongs in the dump, I don’t.
It was actually a text from my mom “hi taco belle, are you working from home or the office today?”. That wasn’t all that unusual but what was unusual was the fact that about two minutes later my younger sister called me. It was a Monday at about 10 am, I was at work, she was at work. As soon as I saw the call I knew something happened.
My little sister was calling to tell me that our dad had unexpectedly died that morning. My mom was trying to find out if I was at home or in the office to know how she should proceed with that news. A year later and I still get anxious when someone calls or texts me at a not normal time.
“Mr. RedLegBebop, we’re taking your wife to the ER. Please hurry.”
Will you marry me?
“You can take half the money, or not. I’m doing it either way.”
“You’re pretty for a dark skin girl”…. why can’t I just be pretty in general?
“I do”