Sometimes seemingly harmless statements might not be as harmless as that person thinks.
Backhanded compliments, invasive questions- plenty of "innocent" things can absolutely crush someone.
And these Redditors are going to tell you their worst stories.
Redditor sneha_magic asked:
"What innocent question that someone asked you, crushed you a little?"
This is so sad.
"My mom accidentally called me after about 10 years of not talking. I answered all ready for a serious conversation. When I answered, she was like 'wait, who's this?' I say 'hey mom it's me.' Her reply is what hurt."
"Who? Why are you calling me mom?"
"She was so drunk she didn't recognize her own daughter's name. F**k'aye."
fragglerawks
What conversation were they thinking of?
"A friend looked at me and said 'I know we've talked about it before, but how did you break your nose?' I've never broken my nose this is just how it looks."
HumpOnALog
GiphyThat's gotta be tough.
"My son undergoing chemo and radiation treatment for a bone marrow transplant. People, meaning well of course, would always ask 'how's your son doing?' I'd always have to fake a smile and give some shallow hopeful answer 'he's fine. He's a fighter' but deep inside the question crushed me every time. No, he was suffering. Teetered on the brink of Life and death. He was not 'fine' and Everytime I heard that question I was reminded of it and had to swallow the pain. My son has since recovered, but it was a very tough time."
GameQb11
She sounds like a good person.
"I went to get a haircut for my Fiance's funeral. It was Friday. He had died on Tuesday. My stylist, all bubbly, said, 'It's been awhile!! The last time I saw you, you were just about to move in with your boyfriend! How's it going?' The words stuck and I kind of rasped it out."
"Honestly though, her reaction was so wonderful. She was behind me, and just put her hands firmly on my shoulders and looked me in the eyes in the mirror. No shock, no stupid platitudes, just silent, genuine empathy. The rest of the haircut was pretty quiet, but she did everything so... like, lovingly, and didn't make a big deal out of it when I cried a little."
RaptureReject
Oof.
"Nonverbal, but the nurse at the flu shot station seemed unsure whether to give me the under-65 or over-65 consent form. If I'm going to be mistaken for being that much older than my actual age, at least it should be in the context of me getting a senior discount."
Frankie_Bow
GiphyInsensitive of them.
"'Rough night last night?' Usually asked with a big smile."
"I was asked that all the time when I was younger because I had a really obvious tremor. Thing is, I did not drink or do drugs at all and I had no idea what was wrong with me. I was eventually diagnosed with Graves' Disease and treated for it, but I still have a bit of a tremor."
imk
That does hurt.
"I teach 1st grade and was talking about how I've been married for 5 years. One student asked, 'How could you not have a baby by now?' Not wanting to explain multiple miscarriages and IVF to a classroom of 6 year olds I said, 'Being around all of you makes my heart so full that I don't think I have room in my heart for a baby!!' They all smiled. I smiled too. I've learned from my experience to never ask couples when/if they want to have a family."
Asquirrelgirl
How sh*tty.
"I had no friends in summer school and a girl asked me if I had any friends. Like straight up, 'Do you have any friends?' Then became friends with me but still."
boringassy
"Did she have any friends?"
Tohabath
GiphyThis is heartbreaking.
"'When will you get better so you can play with us?' My niece who was to young to understand what disabled meant. She's older now and understands I will never get better. And we have adapted play time to do things i can handle as well. But that broke my heart."
littletrashpanda77
The smallest questions can be the toughest.
"'How are you handling everything?' - my notary public who also happens to be my boss's boss while notarizing my divorce paperwork. Completing a divorce packet with no help from an attorney can be a real pain, but at least it kept me focused on the bureaucratic bullsh*t nonsense part of it rather than the fact that my 9 year marriage was ending. Turned out that as soon as someone asked me sincerely how I was doing, the answer was not at all well. I went back to my desk and had a panic attack."
oyofmidmidworld
The Big Car
"Just happened recently actually. A few years ago I had a pretty awesome life, I was married. My husband and I were trying to have kids and when I needed a car we just got me an SUV in anticipation for needing it for kids (he had two and we planned to have 2-3)"
"Well things didn’t work out and he ended up dying from drinking himself to death in January and between that and 2 miscarriages, an ectopic and an IVF cycle that failed I’m slowly coming to the realization that I’ll never be a mother. It’s painful to say the least."
"The kid I nanny for was sitting in my car and we were discussing his day when he says 'nanny why do you have such a big car when it’s only you?' I wanted to cry right there on the spot, it just really stung. But instead I told him it was because I knew I would be watching him and I needed a car big enough for him which seemed to placate him and he then started discussing Batman with me."
SuperGurlToTheRescue
I Hate School
"I grew up lower middle class and my parents had been severely injured by a drunk driver at the end of my 8th grade year and were disabled and no longer able to work. We basically had no money for school clothes but my mother tried to get me a few cool shirts."
"I wasn’t a popular kid and most people didn’t really know much about me. In my freshman year of high school, one of the popular girls in my class asked, 'don’t you have more than 3 shirts? I only ever see you in the same 3 shirts.' High school in the 80’s in the United States sucked."
liablemtl
She didn't hear...
"A waiter asked me if my wife was pregnant once. She was just bloated from chemo side effects. Crushed me, so glad she didn't hear. She couldn't have had kids and she passed 2 years back."
"Edit: I just wanted to say thanks to those who commented on this, it wasn't expected. We went to the place a lot so as a young couple he had seen over the years it was probably a reasonable thing to assume."
"Also I'm doing ok, we knew she was terminal for most of our relationship, we probably did more in those few short years than we would have normally. It hurts a lot still but I know I have her everything I possibly could in that time. Just remember to live life like each day could be your last people, mend that broken friendship, ask out that girl, follow your dream. XXX."
TheMrJacobi
Photo Issues
"I got asked why I wouldn't stand up straight for a photo. I have kyphosis and am standing up as straight as I can."
foxturtle123
New Girl Facepalm GIF by HULUGiphy“staying strong”
“'I could never imagine getting cancer at such a young age. How are you this strong/brave/do you stay so positive?' - I’ve stopped counting the amount of people (especially working at the hospital, I’d expect a bit more sensitivity from them) that have asked me that. Yes I’m mid 20’s, but it’s not a choice that I’m 'staying strong.' it’s freaking survival. Every time someone asks me that, it feels like getting punched."
alonelymushroom
Contacts
"Specialist appointment and they did the normal thing of checking contact details. They asked if the contact number and details for my wife were still correct. I started crying - my wife passed away this time 12 months ago. Surprising how much one simple question asked in total innocence can bring you to your knees."
M1r9f7i9sh
yadda yadda...
"My recently divorced ex and I worked at the same place. Divorce was not my idea but he'd found someone new and I was heartbroken. He ended up quitting at her insistence. 6 months after the divorce was final, a coworker asked how ex husband was doing, hadn't seen him since he quit yadda yadda."
"Behind my back another coworker was trying to wave 1st coworker off... spent the rest of the shift crying on and off. Apparently coworker #1 was oblivious and didn't know we'd divorced, just thought ex had quit."
xceptn2therule
"Who are you?"
Mom asked me, 'Who are you?' when I visited her recently. She has dementia."
socrates_scrotum
Sad Rabbit GIF by Muffin & NutsGiphyTexas
"Why don't you live with your parents?"
"I live with my grandparents because I didn't want to live with my abusive stepmoms on both sides of the family. They all live down in Texas while I'm in Colorado. Still hurts a little when people ask, though."
lowkey_h8_myself
Too Much
"What do you see when you look in the mirror each morning?"
"My friend was having some body issues and she asked me this question since I was one of the most confident people she knew. She learned maybe a bit too much that day."
Cyanora
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Redditor r3tr0gam3r83 wanted to hear about which realizations in life have left people SHOOK, so they asked:
"What is something that blew your mind once you realized it?"
Avocados are not vegetables.
They're fruits, berries to be exact.
Like what?!?!
Colleagues
GIF by Bud LightGiphy"Sometimes it is more important to like your colleagues than the actual job."
"I had shi**y jobs with the most amazing colleagues and had shi**y colleagues and the most amazing job. I'd pick the first every time."
chr989
Star Trekking
"That you could legitimately travel at warp speed through the center of galaxies and never run any real risk of hitting a star. That’s how spread out space really is."
justanotherguyhere16
"Also, galaxies, stars, and even the Universe is constantly moving. I think time travel has been invented, but they can’t figure out the 'space' part of it.
"Yes, they can travel back in time, but relatively speaking, they can’t figure out how to navigate to the part of the planet they want to reach. So when they travel back in time, it’s relative to where they currently are, and end up not moving through space, thus ending up in the middle of an empty vacuum."
theknights-whosay-Ni
Jaws is Old
"That sharks predated the rings of Saturn."
BeardedDominant
"Sharks also developed the immune system that ended up in both dinosaurs/birds and mammals."
csiz
"We don’t know that. We can’t say for certain that the rings are only 100 million years old. It’s still debated."
The_Kek_5000
"I'm pretty sure that sharks are older than trees."
Cayderent
From the Trees
"One day I sat on a tram, passing a river. There was a duck in a tree. I realized I'd never seen ducks in trees. No one else seemed to notice, but I was puzzled. Now whenever I come across something that seems intuitive but I have never considered I call it a duck in a tree."
Ol_Pasta
"This realization happened to me this past year. We apparently have a family of wood ducks in one of the big trees in our yard. Our neighbor said she has seen a duck walking around on a branch. I made it 37 years without knowing some ducks can roost in trees. My wife caught a video of the mama leading like eight ducks into the field next to our house. We aren't even near water."
jwbourne
Artistic Timeline
Confused Eminem GIFGiphy"Pablo Picasso and Eminem were both alive at the same time."
leebon427
"I’d bet a lot of people think Picasso is a Renaissance artist."
editormatt
I admit it. I'm one of those people. Pablo and Marshall, in one lifetime.
New facts are fun.
The New World
Design Loop GIF by xponentialdesignGiphy"They were colonizing the Wild West at the same time as they were building skyscrapers in Manhattan. I always think of them taking place eighty to a hundred years apart. It's wild."
Emilayday
Oh the Power
"Nuclear power plants are just steam power plants that use nuclear reactions to heat the water. There's no fancy magic extracting energy directly from nuclear material. They just boil water and spin a turbine."
RenaKunisaki
"Most electrical generation is spinning a turbine. Photovoltaic solar power is pretty much the only exception, and it's not the only form of solar power. There's solar thermal power, which uses mirrors or lenses to concentrate the heat of the sun to make steam and turn a turbine."
Brawndo91
The Empire
"The Roman Empire fully fell less than 50 years before the discovery of the new world."
South-by-north
"The Romans also had copper wire, magnets, and battery acid. They could have invented electricity hundreds of years before it was actually discovered. But they didn't. The wire was used for jewelry, the magnets as lodestones, and the battery acid was used to clean the rust off of swords."
Kahzgul
"RIP Byzantine Empire. 1453 never forget."
crossbowman44
The Witness
"Owl‘s silent flight. I mean I always knew that but a while ago was the first time I actually witnessed it. Owl came flying towards me and landed only a few feet away and you couldn‘t hear anything. Crazy."
Zealousideal-You-324
"I saw a barn owl swoop down and catch a mouse while hiking at night, and the whole thing happened in complete silence. It gave me a deep sense of unease because it was literally like someone hit the mute button on life."
VulcanVisions
Bad Kermit
Kermit The Frog Meme GIF by IdentityGiphy"Poison dart frogs aren't poisonous in captivity."
"I own 5 of them and anytime I tell someone I own some I always get 'Do you ever lick them' or 'Can you go kill someone with them.' But yeah they get their poison from what they eat, and all I give them is fruit flies."
JMfury
Poison frogs?
That sounds like something Rose would have a story about on 'The Golden Girls.'
Redditor rentinghappiness wanted to hear about the things everyone really didn't know anything about until it happened to them, so they asked:
"What is something you used to think people were over-exaggerating about until you experienced it yourself?"
We never really know anything about anything until we try it for ourselves.
Mouth Issues
Dentist GIFGiphy"Dentist chiming in… tooth pain. I knew academically how painful they could be until it happened to me."
juneburger
"You know the pain is serious when you start looking forward to the inevitable root canal."
HailMari248
Wonders of Nature
"Giant sequoia trees. When I finally saw them in person, they looked fake. I could not comprehend a tree of that size."
schaefer001
"And we may have lost 15-20% of the remaining trees during some big fires in 2020 and 2021. A 2011 estimate puts it that there were only 80,000 remainings. They truly are wondrous organisms that I feel like everyone should have the chance to experience if they can."
"I'm a big believer in doing everything we can to protect and preserve these silent giants. It's really sad that so many were cut down by loggers when the wood is such poor quality for human purposes, to begin with. Such an utter and sad waste."
this_is_poorly_done
Just Me
"Loneliness."
Fried__SoapI
"I'm with you. Put all my cards into a girl who went suddenly cold and dark on me. Now I'm alone at rock bottom figuring out my next moves. You know, the smartest people in the world and also the happiest people in the world can be the loneliest?"
"I was only recently informed it's okay to talk to myself and hype myself. Enjoy my own company. I'm absolutely going to learn to do that. I'm thinking of painting, walking, and weekend trips out on a bus. Would be nice if you could have joined me even if we sat in silence."
Roofdragon
The Years Gone By...
"The physical pain of getting older. Damn."
marklikeadawg
"The emotional pain too. I get so nostalgic and teary over the past and how much has changed. It's a weird grieving process over losing your youth and the way things were."
heethersmeether
"On my 35th birthday, my wife woke me up with a cupcake and a candle, sang me 'Happy Birthday' and then congratulated me on being '15 from 50'... that really hit me hard. The other day I turned 45 and she said '5 from 50' and that hit me so hard, I just wanted to stay in bed all day. I still feel like an irresponsible teen but I'm pushing 50. Insane."
Opa_Kalaka
It's Hazy
Confused Always Sunny GIF by It's Always Sunny in PhiladelphiaGiphy"Brain fog. I had an alcohol withdrawal seizure in March. My short-term memory and sense of time are absolutely sh*t right now. On the plus side, I haven't had a drink in over 90 days and I don't want one."
Sideshow_Bob_Ross
Oh the wonders of the brain.
What a mess.
Scorched
Menopause Hot Flashes GIF by Kino LorberGiphy"Hot Flashes. I didn’t think they were this bad. I’m a 31-year-old man who took Wellbutrin for the past month and hot flashes are a side effect."
"I thought you just thought you were hot. No motherf**ker you are. You’re super hot legitimately, and you have to do something about it or you’ll go insane. It’s not in your head. It’s your brain raising your temps until you can’t focus on anything else."
_PswayZ_
Everlasting
"Chronic illness, there is absolutely no way you can truly understand the impact unless you experience it."
Disastrous-Phase-979
"Just that idea of always being sick and you will NEVER not be sick again."
"AND you're expected to participate in society just the same as everyone else. It's deeply f**ked up."
Farisr9k
"I like the part where I've been in pain for 25 years so I can kind of still function even when it's really bad."
"And then I try to get an ambulance guy or an admin assistant in a hospital to believe that I'm having an emergency and they're like 'You seem fine, take some Tylenol and go home' until I finally get a blood test, and then the doctor goes 'Holy crap, you're about to die, why didn't you come to the ER sooner.'"
"Like, listen up MF, I had to take a go**amn Uber to get here and then argue with reception for an hour."
BlahBlahILoveToast
Stoned
"How much a kidney stone hurts."
SpiritusSanctu
"Most people expect it to hurt the most when passing a stone through the urethra. Nothing prepared me for the pain as it passed through my kidney/ureter."
"One second I would be fine, carrying on conversations, prancing around nimbly-nimbly. The next second I would be keeled over, crying in agony, losing my lunch due to the sudden onset of crippling pain. 0/10 ... Would not recommend it."
King_of_Lunch223
Close Your Eyes
"Insomnia."
Successful_Fall7801
"Oh, what I would give to not have insomnia! I go through periods of sleeping more or less normal, and then for seemingly no reason, I’ll have weeks on end where a good night of sleep is IMPOSSIBLE. I’ll get 2-4 hours of sleep despite pills, tea, baths, white noise, meditation - everything."
"I’ll spend my days so deeply, utterly exhausted that I can barely think, and my whole body feels heavy, lifeless. It’s hard to feel any kind of emotion, let alone happiness or contentedness. Just existing as a human-shaped puddle until the time when I can go to bed and hope to god that tonight will be different for some unknown reason."
"Insomnia is a real bi*ch. It will tank your mental health and send you spiraling really fast."
thesmallshadows
Beep
Meme Reaction GIF by TravisGiphy"Tinnitus. It’s torture."
DissidentBliss
"I don't mind it much 'cause I've had it since I was born. That means I don't know what proper silence is."
77x5ghost
"Me too, they thought I had hearing issues when I was young because I couldn’t really hear some of the beeps well because they matched the pitch of the ringing."
ehter13
Don't judge another until you lace up their shoes and walk a mile in them!
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