I saw my Nana say this to my father on her deathbed. She was a wreck. She had opaque cataracts for eyes, that had begun forming years ago. Her once fat body was hanging off her in flabby folds. She gasped this sentence out, as her emphysima (sp?) had left her unable to breathe properly for months. From these I learnt that under certain cirsumstances death can be a mercy. A friend of mine maintains that any quality of life is better than no life at all. I disagree.I don't want to fight anymore
A lesson I took immediately to heart and internalised. The trouble being, once you accept that no-one- in the entire world - likes you, where exactly do you fuck off to? In my confused and miserable youth of the time, I kept going right back to the boy who said this, and the people who agreed with him. They didn't like me, but then no-one did, and at least they kept me around for a whipping boy. It was better than being alone, because I didn't like me either.Why don't you just fuck off? No-one likes you.
The deeper lesson came much later, when I could see this statement as reflecting as much about the speaker as it did about me. He never had the right to speak for everyone, and he certainly never had the right to speak for me. With this in mind, "no-one likes you" is better heard as "I don't like you," in which case fucking off is exactly what I should have done. I eventually did, to groups of people who did like me, and taught me to like myself.
The lesson I received at the time: be silent. Draw no attention to yourself. You have little to offer, and what you do have is valued by no-one. A lie, naturally. We all have worth to offer to others, and rejection by a few should only feed our will to give what we have to someone who appreciates it.Did I ask you? You're a freak.
Speaks for itself, really. The hard lesson here was learned in sticking around in a futile attempt to undo the truth of that sentence.I don't think I love you anymore
Sobbed into my shoulder by a friend suffering from depression, anxiety disorders, and suicidal tendencies. Her mental problems manifest physically as a constant nasty cough in her throat. She spends her days and nights literally choking on her own pain. By the time she said these words to me, I'd already found my answer to my own pain. Sometimes I wear my depression rather comfortably, like and old shoe with a tendency to rub. Where once my feet blistered, I've long since acquired callouses. But sometimes my pain seems bigger than the world. Sometimes it's all I can do to be crushed under it and keep crawling. Those times, I just hold on until I get some breathing space. Once I've got that, I can grow to measure up to my pain.It's like the pain's too big, and I can't swallow it. It's too big, and I can't swallow it!
The heartbreaking lesson with my friend, however, is that those answers cannot be taught. She has to find her own space to grow, and I can't be crushed under there in her place. I would, though, and that's a lesson of an altogether different kind.
Anyway, one day on the bus, some kids I barely knew asked me why I held my thumbs -- which of course embarrassed me to the point that I couldn't reply. Now today, I would probably reply, "It keeps me from slugging people who ask me why I hold my thumbs," but in those days I wasn't so quick with a comeback. 
I think it said more about the way she believes your aunt perceives *her* (i.e., too ugly herself to produce a beautiful child) than it did about the way she herself perceives *you*. But not especially kind, in any case. 
