We're all human here, so we all make mistakes. Most mistakes can be resolved with a genuine apology, hot glue to fix a broken vase, and a good cleaning solution for a big spill.
Other mistakes, like bullying someone or breaking someone's heart, are much more guilt-inducing and harder for everyone to get over.
But there are some mistakes that are so bad, it's hard to imagine ever coming back from them.
Already cringing, Redditor No-Consideration7967 asked:
"What's your biggest 'I f**ked up' moment?"
Never The Same
"In my young 20s, I went to pick up a really heavy object with a coworker. Instead of waiting for him to grab it all the way, I just went for it."
"The thing shifted weirdly and I tore the ligaments that connect your lower back to your butt. My back has never been the same."
"You think you’re invincible in your young 20s, but you are not!"
- sneakytokey
"Yeah, lifting large and/or heavy things is always a team effort and relies on communication. I hurt my back once trying to move a sleeper sofa with a guy."
"We said we would lift on the count of three. In my mind that meant lift when we say three. In his, it meant something a second later, like, 'One, two, three, go!'"
"So we both torqued it at different times. I'm fine now but still p**sed about it. Took two months to heal and we still argue about who was right about the count."
- Gotforgot
Ouch. Ouch. Ouch.
"Last night, I blew my nose pretty hard and heard a super loud squeak followed by my hearing being all f**ked up. I hoped to sleep it off, but nope."
"I went to the emergency room this morning and yup, I tore a lil' hole in my eardrum. Gonna take a few weeks to heal. Great."
- FroggiJoy87
"I sneezed soo hard one time that I broke two ribs and bruised three. I feel your pain."
- HARRY_POTTKETTLE
Caught On Camera
"Not me, but my town's mayor told an EMT to unalive herself during the aftermath of a budget meeting (right in front of me)."
"The regret that washed over his face when he realized it was still streaming to YouTube for the town to see was priceless."
- Horny44Sweetheart
"Regret that it was streaming, not regret that he said it. Great guy."
- diligent_sundays
"My response would've been, 'Sir, we're still streaming. I'm now calling for a vote of no confidence and your resignation.'"
- OutrageousMoney4339
"It took a while, but we may have finally found a worse mayor than the one from 'Jaws.'"
- jajais4u
Preparation Gone Wrong
"I once accidentally created an infinite network loop on my college campus' network and crashed the entire school's internet. This was during my certification program as a Cisco Certified Networking Administrator."
- Sexy5Princess
"You were prepping for the CCNA in a live environment? That's kinda wild."
- christ0fer
Yeah, "No Big Deal"
"After a delightful shower one evening, I decided to blow dry my hair using the hair dryer that had some exposed wiring. It had always worked decently so I figured no big deal, it's fine."
"Anyway, I got electrocuted and my hand got burned, but on the plus side, I got to see blue lightning go pinging up my arm."
"I no longer own a hair dryer."
- Stunning-Queen5
"I was traumatized for weeks when I accidentally touched the back of the dryer once and got a quick sting. I can’t imagine what you went through!"
- Outrageous-Rope-8707
Can't Take It Back
"Quitting my amazing dream job during a manic episode back in 2019. I got into a shouting argument with my boss."
"Anyway, I was a couple of months into what would turn out to be nine months of ever more desperate unemployment when it finally hit me, 'What the f**k did I do?'"
"I still haven't recovered from that mistake. Bipolar post-mania clarity can be truly heartbreaking. Wreckage everywhere, and no real sense of how it all happened."
- cartercharles
Struggles In The Call Center
"The top one was probably the time I got fired from my job. I did the one thing you shouldn't do when dealing with the public and called the guy on the other end of the phone (it was a virtual call center) an id**t."
"He pushed all of the right buttons, unfortunately, and looking back, I think he was one of those callers who was deliberately trying to wind me up."
- Dalekbuster523
Technical Difficulties
"I was having a fully blown panic attack about messages my ex (then-girlfriend) had sent me while out partying. I was on the phone with my friend, who was trying to calm me down, and he said, 'Don’t reply right now. Send me a screenshot of the messages, and we can walk through them, and I’ll tell you what I think.'"
"I sent the screenshot right back to my ex…"
- TiktaalikFrolic
"I did this in MSN Messager, and id**t teenager me was gossiping about this girl to another girl, sent a screenshot to the same 'window' instead of sending to the other, and didn't notice!"
"Then she asked, 'What is this?' I proceeded to send many, many screenshots while claiming my computer was going nuts."
"The thing is this girl was having issues with a fake social media (the late orkut) account acting like it was her, harassing other girls. After this, she probably thought the fake account was me (it wasn't!)"
- Wonderful-Morning963
Eye-Opening Moment
"When I woke up in the hospital to my mother, my aunt, and my grandma all standing above me. I knew I f**ked up bad because my grandma and my mom hadn’t spoken in over a decade, let alone willingly be in the same room together."
"I had totaled my truck and gotten life-flighted to the hospital."
- AtmosphereAlarming52
When The Common Denominator Is You
"Not one moment in particular, but when I realized had fully ostracized myself from three separate friend groups. Realizing that I just kept f**king people over and pushing them away hurt badly."
- BitMixKit
Just Heartbreaking
"My grandfather had passed, and I inherited his record collection."
"While attempting to repair a record player, I was testing it and dropped his Johnny Cash Live at San Quentin album on my garage floor."
"I went inside and just laid on the floor and cried."
- Ncheney21
Technological Mishaps
"I looped the network and ended up costing about 100K in downtime."
"I was so tired, was migrating a data center and had several failures during the process."
"I was on about hour 39 of an eight-hour day and plugged a switch into a switch, completely spaced on what I did. IT took a couple of hours to find my f**k-up."
- RubixRube
"Well, now I don't feel so bad about the four for downtime I caused by attempting to deploy a new VLAN on our ancient network. The switches didn't like it and all of them needed to be restarted."
"Okay. Fine. Do all that. But because of the network restart, the HA database pair failed to negotiate for the floating IP for primary, causing the webservers to not be able to find the database."
"I was new to the company and didn't know that the one health check that was still failing was trying to tell me this because I was unfamiliar with the naming of everything. (The previous guy liked to use Transformers and mythology in the making of resources. How the fuck was I supposed to know what "Wheeljack" meant in this instance?)"
"I eventually figured it out after 4 hours of solo panic because I started the work at 1:00 AM."
- cbftw
Gambling Addiction
"Finally coming to the realization of truly how much money I lost gambling, and the more important thing, the girl of my dreams."
"I would give all that money (enough to buy a house) away all over again to get her back."
- rakedully
A Heartbreaking Mistake
"My husband is an extremely patient man. His father was an abusive piece of s**t, his mum was a drug addict, and we talked a lot about that. We were best mates before we were husbands. I buddy-punched his arm a few times before he confided in me, it really scared him when I did that. Obviously, I stopped."
"Unfortunately, I was also an addict. For a long time, and he was there for most of it. He was willing to stick with me while I got clean, through all the ugly s**t, as long as I actually stuck to it."
"Well, I relapsed once. Once. Because when he looked at me, he knew I was coming down, he asked if I had more and came to take it from me. And I f**king punched him. Right in the face."
"His expression f**king killed me. I don't remember a whole lot of that night, but that face haunts me. Of all the s**t I put him through, that's the thing that I'm never going to forgive myself for. Even though he says he has."
- metal_mace
A Doctor's Tale
"Thinking I could be a doctor."
"I’m now in my third year of the program feeling utterly lost and hopeless. I struggled from the start but kept pushing myself to keep going. I have missed out on so many family/friend events due to hours studying, I don’t have many hobbies anymore and feel like a shell of who I used to be."
"I am extremely depressed and feel incompetent. The only reason I have not quit is because school has put me 300k in debt and there’s no other career I can make a salary high enough to pay it off."
- No-Introduction7977
It's hard to imagine mistakes that are so bad that there's really no going back.
But it's understandable why these were the moments that, when asked these questions, these Redditors immediately thought of.
AMC
