Yeah, over 50 views and no replies, so I’m calling it done. Folks here aren’t ready, I guess.
EDIT: Removed REDACTED from the title since others are now posting.
Ready for what?
If I had to hazard a guess, to talk about the time their mom caught them masturbating with her vibrator. Or, like, such things. That was just a random example haha.
To be ridiculed? :)
Don’t take the piss, this was a serious topic and what @nogwart wrote took a lot of courage. Though I think it may have taken more time for folk to reflect and decide to post responses before he pulled it.
Thought so too. I read the topic on my phone and thought I might reply from my PC at some point. I think we all have done things we deeply regret and that we all think we suck(ed) at some point. Not an easy thing to write about.
Thank you sharaleo and Wendelius. Yes, it was tough to write, and hearing your comments makes me wish I hadn’t pulled it. But, I can’t bring myself to rewrite it.
Sorry dudes, five minutes to 8am here on west coast USA. What did us late risers miss?
Nothing at all, for example I never tried to do a blue angel (farting into a lighter, for you peasants that have never partaken) in middle school and viciously sharted in my tidy whities in the cafeteria on cheese steak day haha. Did not have to explain to the nurse how I managed to burn my husky jean seat. Did not happen, haha. That’s the kind of story we’re looking for though haha.
One time in the Bronx a kid of about 8 or 9 sidled up to me in a pizza shop and whispered if I’d buy him a slice of pizza. He must have been hungry. I only had a few bucks to my name, but I could have ordered a slice for him. Instead I told him no. It’s not really a big deal and I’ve turned down requests for money or things before, but this time it bothered me of his age and the way he whispered the request, probably to protect him from being thrown out of the pizza joint for begging. But also, I was just a year (or so) out of rehab and trying to embrace the AA thing about One Day at a Time (ODAT). I had already had my dinner (pizza) and I had half a pack of cigarettes (enough for the rest of the day). One way of looking at it was that the few dollars was really just buffer, and the rise to my morale and self-esteem from handing it over would have more than made up for anything it could have purchased for me. I had to be careful because I had big financial needs because I was between jobs and living in an apartment on my own. Another way of looking at was that I was too close to the edge financially to be interpreting ODAT that literally. But then when I got home, there was a check in the mail (for a few hundred) and my financial picture changed pretty radically. In the end, I figured it wouldn’t have hurt to have been super literal with ODAT and while I am sure that experience has helped me make choices in subsequent years, no child has ever whisper asked me for a slice of pizza again. And I’ve always felt a little bit bad.
Not sure if this is what @nogwart was thinking, but I think everyone has stories like these.
Because the actual most regretted one is personally identifiable enough and bad enough that I’m not gonna write it here, let’s go with a comedic one, instead. Well, comedic in retrospect.
The time that I fell madly in love with a girl named Ali who was nice to me in gym class and “counseling” class (some weirdo class taught by the counselors at the school were we would learn about feelings and stuff) when I was a new student in the county in 6th grade, except I’d never liked a girl before and was super awkward and weird and instead of just telling her or anyone who I liked I somehow wound up turning it into a year-long mystery where everyone would bug me constantly to reveal my secret love’s identity, including the girl herself, who wound up becoming a good friend, and I promised her that she’d be one of the first to know when I was finally ready to reveal the dark truth. And then I recruited this whole ensemble cast of friends into my love-enterprise, slowly widening the circle of people who knew I was into her into everyone around her except for her and planned out this beautiful reveal that took the form of a 3 page (typed) love letter describing everything about her that I loved in extreme and absurd detail that I delivered the day before our school’s Beta Club field trip to the statewide conference in the state capital.
Unfathomably, she immediately stopped talking to me after I sent the letter, but everyone around me–probably just trying to be nice and unable to turn me from my idiot course–had been so encouraging and ensured me that she’d be flattered and like me right back–that I was sure things were fine. Sure, I was a fat, weird-looking, pale gamer/anime nerd who wore terrible “joke” t-shirts like “Y2K Nerd” and “I See Dumb People” that were always a size too small, and she was a gorgeous, rich, popular student athlete who liked country music and God, but it would work out!
Except that when I approached her the morning of the trip, she said that she really wasn’t ready to get into a relationship just yet because her grandfather had recently died and I was super sweet but she just couldn’t think about that right now, and then she got on a different bus than me on the way and didn’t speak to me for the next three days straight while she wound up hanging out with and eventually dancing with and starting a relationship with a very attractive guy on the swim team who was my chief academic rival at the school over the course of the weekend.
On that same weekend, my best (female) friend also turned me down for a dance 15 minutes into the end-of-conference dance because “her feet were tired” and then immediately got up to dance with my best (male) friend when he asked her to do so five minutes later, so I spent the rest of the dance walking around with the other unlovable nerds collecting pocket change and room key cards from the dance floor that people had dropped. We bought sodas with our ill-gotten gains and then played Magic in my room until 3AM.
edit: I don’t regret the sodas and Magic; that shit was fun
edit2 - editric boogaloo: An upside to this Whole Goddamn Thing was that I decided I’d never again make a big deal of asking a girl out and just let 'em know how I felt. Which mostly translated into falling for and asking out something like 10 more women over the course of the next 4 years, getting turned down every single time, losing several friendships in the process, and developing an insanely low, self-loathing self-image because I just wouldn’t stop shooting for women massively outside of my league.
In fact, the next woman I really did the whole tortured months-long courtship with instead of just admitting my feelings to would be the girl I’m still with, who no fewer than four other people had to harass/threaten me into finally asking out before everyone who knew us both went insane from the stupid romantic tension.
I am completely unsure of what lesson to draw from that, except that my current partner has really shitty taste in men.
For better or worse the answer to the implied question in the thread title is easy for me. I’ve wanted to get it off my chest for awhile and I guess this group of internet strangers is as good as any other for this purpose. Sorry, that’s being uncharitable. It’s likely much much better than most.
My biggest regret, and one of the few truely painful regrets of my life, is that I never said goodbye to my mother.
She passed when I was 17 years old. Died of liver failure caused by acetaminophen (commonly referred to as Tylenol) overdose. Slow and painful way to go. It was a complicated situation that I won’t get into here.
Young, stubborn, stupid, cowardly me knew deep down that, as she lay unconscious and dieing in a hospital bed, the odds were really against her ever pulling out of it. The only cure available was a liver transplant and the waiting list was considerably longer than the time she had left. After spending several days in and out of the hospital (as much as the nurses would allow, with the rest of my immediate family also visiting), several family members, myself included, decided to go home in order to get some sleep in a real bed and maybe try to eat some real food. The next morning my father came home and told me that I really should go back to the hospital to see mom. In hindsight it is easy to read between the lines and realize my dad was telling me that this was going to be my last chance. If I’m being honest with myself, part of me realized at the time what he was trying to tell me, but neither of us was willing to say it out loud. Even though it remained unsaid, he was right. She died later that afternoon.
For reasons I’m still grappling with to this day decades later, I refused to go back into that hospital even knowing it was the last chance I’d have to see my mom. I’ve tried to nail down the reason over the years. Was it stubbornness? Disbelief? Denial? Cowardice? Fear? Some concoction of all of the above is the best I’ve been able to discern. I’m better now, but it still eats away at me from time to time. All I can do is try to never let that combinations of emotions keep me from doing the right thing in the future. So far I’ve managed that much at least.
You’re not alone here. Lots of nerds have had similar struggles.
Reminds me of that Radiohead song. You know the one.
@Dr_Killinger, your comment hit me pretty hard. I’m an M&M as far as showing sadness goes. I attempt to seem okay and mildly calm during moments like that, and inside I’m just pushing back the mess of how I really feel with this tiny bulldozer inside my brain.
When my father passed unexpectedly, I was devastated. I didn’t cry outright, at least not for a while. When I did, it wasn’t in front of family. When my mother passed, we knew for a while what it was leading to, but I chose not to stay in the hospital with my sisters on one particular night, and of course that’s when she passed.
It hits you very, very hard. It shouldn’t, but it does. You beat yourself up in your mind about the smallest details, over and over. “Did I visit enough?” “Was I a good son?” “Did i show enough love?”
This was exacerbated when about two years after my father passed, I had a friend who’s father also passed away. All of our friend group went to the funeral, except me. In my head I wrestled with the fact that it would remind me too much of my father and I couldn’t bear that, that I might be emotional. It was selfish. And you know who showed up at my mothers funeral, hours away from where I live? That friend who’s father had passed away. And he brought 5 of my other friends with him. I cried, right when I saw him. Not because of my mother just passing, but because that was such a loving thing for him to do as a friend.
I regret that I sometimes don’t state how I feel inside. As I get older, I realize how important that is, and how stupid I am for trying to act like the masculine robot, void of emotion.
Oh man, do I ever! Yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon too.
Lots of stuff I regret.
In relationships, there was pushing someone for a “definition” when I knew damn well she wasn’t in a place to do that. I was just too much of a self-centered asshole to accommodate. I still feel awful about the strain it put on her. I’ve gone through a divorce, but how this relationship ended felt the worst of any I’d had. I was so clearly in the wrong.
But the moment I regret the most? This is what happened between myself and a friend/coworker many years back. Amazing, funny, deeply caring guy. But when it came to the job, he had some weaknesses he kept trying to work on. I did what I could to help him both become and look better, but improvement was slow.
We had something called “performance management” when someone wasn’t up to the job. Their boss would set specific goals to meet, and if they weren’t they’d move to the “next stage.” We referred to it as the “polite boot out the door” management technique. This wound up happening to many coworkers, although some managed to make it back into the organization’s good graces. It was a toxic, drama-driven office and we all fed into it somewhat, so rumors were always floating around.
So one day, he confided in me that his manager put him on this program and he was panicking. He hated the job, but he had a family to take care of and didn’t know how he’d ever find another way to make ends meet. “Yeah, I’ll help any way I can, but I’d start back up plans now. Seems like your boss has had it out for you from the get go.” Nobody liked his boss, but to be fair I didn’t really know the person nor understand their motivations. He was on the verge of tears. “Hey, we’ll figure it out.” I clapped him gently on the shoulder, in that quasi-manly way to not feel uncomfortable. “Thanks, Dan.”
On his way home from work that day, he had a heart attack and died. I kept wondering over and over if I’d handled it better, I could have calmed him down more and maybe—just maybe—I wouldn’t be writing this story today. But I didn’t, and I’ll never see my friend again.
I went to the memorial service a few days later. His widow was there, and she came up to me, thanking me for being such a good friend. She said he always talked about me, and how kind I was. She asked me if he was happy at his job, because it’s the one part of his life she never really got to see. I lied, and said yes. I couldn’t stay any longer, with both the sense of guilt over his death and the lie I’d told his widow. As soon as I could find a way to leave without being overly conspicuous, I got out.
The next day, his former boss came up to me, knowing I was a good friend of his. “This was such a shock. I didn’t know he had a heart condition. Was he under a lot of stress?”
I suspect the look I gave was rather stern, as his former boss took a reflexive step back. “Threatening someone’s job tends to do that, doesn’t it?” I spun on heels and walked away while I heard a sputtering half-reply of “I wasn’t… I didn’t…” fade away. That anger, however, was misplaced. I distinctly felt like I’d failed my friend, and he’d paid the ultimate price.
I miss you, Tom.
My life is a seemingly Neverending Series of Unfortunate Events.
I have very few regrets, it’s just the way I view things I guess. But one I do have is a potential job I turned down. My last year in college (I was in college a long time) I wrote a 1/2 hour show on solar power, complete with a basic story board for a lab class. The script was then used by members of my team to actually produce the show.
Afterwards my teacher mentioned to me that the local PBS station was looking for someone. Now I was newly married, already working a 40 hour a week job (that paid decent and had benefits) and so told the teacher I wasn’t interested. He was surprised but said okay.
After graduating I eventually quit that job and went to work for my fathers company, where I still am 36 years later.
I don’t regret the decision I made at much as I wonder where it might have led.
I read it and felt that yes it took some bravery to do that. I simply am not that brave. My greatest regret is, to be honest, horrific. It happened when I was a child and it haunts and affects my life to this very day. It’s not something I share with many and an open forum is not the place for it.
He pulled it before some of us even saw it.