Blackmailed everyone in this thread.
(Technically, I guess that’s the worst thing I’m about to do rather than worst thing I’ve done.)
Many years ago, with my first love - we had broken up; her fault, my fault, situations beyond our control and some issues we were both too young to deal with.
When we saw each other in a last-ditch effort to *maybe *get back together, once it was apparent that we would not, I said some things that were meant to be hurtful. They were vicious and unwarranted. They were said out of my pain, but that does not excuse me. I actively tried to hurt her, just because I was hurting.
It was one of the very few things I regret doing in my life. I am mostly a good man, but at that time I was not.
And back then, you got punished for it!
You … BASTARD!
I grew up in a rough neighborhood. About half the people I can think of from that time period are either dead due to drugs or violence or are in jail or on probation. With three older brothers, I didn’t have to worry about much, but if I were alone, I could usually expect a fight by someone on my way around the neighborhood.
I found myself in plenty of situations where you ran or you were in a hit-or-be-hit situation. I was taught not to run as the bully would just play on that and continue intimidation, so it was better to get your licks in even if you got your ass kicked. (This was kid stuff in the early 70s, not in the inner city – no weapons – just kids punching each other.)
So one day this kid, Mike, who lived a block away started yelling at me. I had seen him around, but I didn’t really know him. The line dividing school zones happened to be at my corner, so we went to different schools. He was a little bigger than me, but not by much. I was in fifth grade at the time, the last year I lived in that neighborhood.
I’m thinking, “Here we go; this kid wants to fight.” He came up to me, continuing to yell crap. I told him to get away from me, but he kept coming. He got a bit too close, so I pushed him back and put up my fists. He asked me if I wanted to fight and stepped toward me, so I leveled him with one punch. He got up, crying hysterically, and ran off.
When I went home a couple of hours later, I had some explaining to do. Turns out my parents had a visit from Mike’s mother. My father, who had taught me how to defend myself and that I should never take any crap from anyone, demanded to know why I had punched out a retarded kid. (I didn’t know the kid was retarded.)
My father kicked my ass, but that was nothing compared to what a loser I felt like for having punched the kid. (It occurred to me that had my father seen this conforntation and I not hit him, he probably still would have kicked my ass, but I still felt like a loser.) At least there is a happy ending, because a few years later, I intervened when a couple of punks were giving Mike crap. I guess that made me his friend for life, because years later he got a job as a bagger at a grocery store, and he would come up and shake my hand every time he saw me. I wonder, though, if he realized I was that kid who had popped him way back when.
I think, by definition, the answer would be yes. When you hit someone, (even if you call it ‘hitting at’ or ‘handing’), you’re abusing them. No one has a right to put their hands on you in anger. Period. It’s abusive.
Not that everyone isn’t guilty of doing so, once or twice, in their lives. But it’s still abusive, I’d say.
A lot depends upon how they take it. Do they feel confident that you will never do more than that? Do they respond laughingly, or are they frightened by it?
Are your parents living in a constant state of low-level anxiety, afraid that your behavior will escalate? If so, you may as well have hit them hard, the result is the same.
I think by the fact that you have asked this question, you have acknowledged that you need to apologize and never do it again.
Honestly, son, you cannot abuse your own parents while you are growing up. The bad comes with the good as part of being a parent. They probably know that.
They love you anyway, I hope.
You should use any guilt you feel to modify your future behavior so you, yourself will feel more comfortable with the results of your actions. The elimination of guilt is all about becoming comfortable with your own decisions and actions, apart from the expectations of others.
The person you want to be proud of is yourself. The person who is preventing this is yourself. It is only natural to reflect your disappointment upon others and see them as the source of the problem.
Having asked the question in your OP, you must already know part of the answer.
You change yourself for the future, you cannot change the past.
When I was 17, I had a best friend who stopped talking to me and refused to offer any explanation why. Compounding the issue was the fact that he still hangs out with some of my closest friends. About five years after he ended the friendship, I was at a social function where one of his close friends asked me what happened between us. I was so hurt and angry and confused that I told his close friend something profoundly personal about my former friend - something I had no right to discuss with anyone. And I remember, as I said it, thinking, ‘‘Fuck him, I don’t care. Let him be mad at me. At least now he’ll have a real reason.’’
There aren’t many things I regret, but violating that trust that day is probably one of the few things I’m sorry I did. It didn’t matter to our friendship, because that was long over, but it mattered to my character and I know that it probably rubbed even more salt in the wound for my former friend. I was so obsessed with my own drama that I really wasn’t thinking about how much that could hurt him, and considering that we shared the exact same secret, I really should have known better.
If that was a novel, I would totally read it!
I’ve done some rotten things in my life when they seemed like good things to do at the time, but I’ve certainly paid the price in guilt later.
I made somebody a sandwich once from a loaf of bread that was going moldy. I searched through the slices until I found two in the middle that looked OK. In my defense, it was midnight, it was the only bread in the house, and there was nothing else to eat.
As I said its more akin in force to someone slapping someone’s back-the problem is the disrespect inherent in it, not the physical pain caused by it. And my family gives me a tongue lashing because they are not disposed to corporal punishment and since I’m not allowed to usually hang around outside anyways, grounding is not much of a punishment. Plus, it seems to me due to my Asperger’s my parents don’t wish to really punish me-in school, some kids with more severe Asperger’s didn’t get punished at all.
They respond with verbal chastisement and make me feel sorry for what I’ve done. They certainly aren’t worried that I will assault them or anything.
Thank you for all this encouragement and answers! 
I DON’T think it’s right to use Aspergers as an excuse – you know what you did was wrong. Own up to it.
(OT: is it REALLY possible to start chain-reaction puking? Does that actually happen?)
I know that. What I am saying is that others may not have punished me as much due to that.
For some people, the sight/smell of vomiting will trigger a reaction. I’m not sure if enough people exist to create a huge puke-a-thon, though.
I’ve never done anything wrong. I’ve always obeyed the laws of whatever jurisdiction I’ve inhabited. You can’t prove otherwise.
I’ve killed a lot of people. Some girls in the apartment uptown uh, some homeless people maybe 5 or 10 um an NYU girl I met in Central Park. I left her in a parking lot behind some donut shop. I killed Bethany, my old girlfriend, with a nail gun, and some man uh with a dog last week. I killed another girl with a chainsaw, I had to, she almost got away and uh someone else there I can’t remember maybe a model, but she’s dead too. And Paul Allen. I killed Paul Allen with an axe in the face, his body is dissolving in a bathtub in Hell’s Kitchen. I don’t want to leave anything out here. I guess I’ve killed maybe 20 people, maybe 40. I have tapes of a lot of it, uh some of the girls have seen the tapes. I even, um… I ate some of their brains, and I tried to cook a little. Tonight I, uh, I just had to kill a LOT of people. And I’m not sure I’m gonna get away with it this time.
It seems to me that this isn’t really about what others have done, but more a discussion about what you have done and how you feel about it. I’m going to go ahead and close this thread for now.