I’ve learned the hard way that assumptions carry weight. They don’t just float in the air — they land on people. And sometimes, they crush them.
When I was younger, I didn’t have the language to call what I went through trauma. I just thought it was life. The teasing, the bullying, the rumors that seemed to spread faster than I could keep up with — all of it felt normal, because I didn’t have any other experience to measure it against.
One memory still sticks with me. My family took a trip down South, and at a little crab shack with the not-so-subtle name Dirty Dicks, I bought a t-shirt. At the time, I thought it was funny — just a silly souvenir. I wore it to school once, not thinking twice.
Within days, rumors spread that I had an STD.
I was just a kid, and suddenly I was branded with something that wasn’t only untrue, it was absurd. Why would anyone broadcast something that personal on a t-shirt?
Logic doesn’t matter when assumptions catch fire.
A shirt became a story, a story became a rumor, and the rumor became my reality — at least in the eyes of other people.
And that wasn’t the only time assumptions and cruelty collided.
On the school bus, I was often the target of a small group of kids who thought it was funny to make me feel like I didn’t belong. Once, they sprayed deodorant in my hair while mocking me for supposedly smelling bad.
It wasn’t just a joke — it was meant to mark me. To put me in my place.
The worst part was how quickly those moments snowballed into whispers and reputations that clung to me.
But here’s the part that mattered just as much: a few adults saw me differently.
My bus driver quietly moved me to the front of the bus, not because I had done anything wrong, but because she wanted to protect me where she could keep an eye on me. At the time, I felt like I was being punished, singled out again.
Looking back, I know she was shielding me from worse.
Teachers, too — the rare ones who noticed me, who made me feel like I mattered in ways my peers didn’t — became lifelines in those years. Those small pockets of kindness left marks just as deep as the cruelty did.
Assumptions can wound you, but kindness can scar you in softer ways too — reminding you that you were worth protecting.
Those early experiences planted something in me, even if I couldn’t articulate it then: the realization that what people assume, what they say, and what they spread about you can feel just as heavy as anything you actually did.
Sometimes heavier.
And when you’re young — when you don’t yet have the experience to say this isn’t normal or this isn’t fair — you take it on as truth.
That’s the danger of assumptions: without experience to measure them against, you start to believe them yourself.
Assumptions Don’t End With Childhood
It would be comforting to think that assumptions fade with age — that once you leave the school bus and the hallways behind, people grow kinder, more rational, more careful with their words.
But adulthood doesn’t erase assumptions. It only raises the stakes.
As kids, assumptions isolate us. They shape how we see ourselves before we’ve had the chance to know who we really are. They cut into our confidence and plant seeds of doubt that can take years to dig out.
When you don’t have a range of experience to measure them against, you accept the labels others hand you. You believe you are the outsider, the one who doesn’t belong.
As adults, assumptions can warp more than our self-image.
They can derail careers, unravel relationships, and convince us to normalize things we should never accept.
The damage isn’t always loud or dramatic — sometimes it’s subtle.
It seeps into how we choose partners, how we let people treat us, and how we talk to ourselves in the quiet moments when no one else is around.
For me, adulthood didn’t suddenly open the door to healthy love or mutual respect.
I got married young, to the first person I ever dated seriously. That relationship was filled with fighting and immaturity, but because it was all I knew, I assumed it was just how marriage worked.
I didn’t have another model to hold it against. I didn’t know that conflict didn’t have to be constant, or that love didn’t have to cut me down.
When the marriage ended, I walked away with more questions than answers about who I was and what I deserved.
That lack of experience — that absence of a healthy baseline — made me vulnerable.
When I entered my next relationship, I carried those assumptions forward without realizing it. I normalized behaviors that were actually destructive because I had no other frame of reference.
If all you’ve ever known is dysfunction, dysfunction feels like the default.
And that’s the danger.
Assumptions in adulthood don’t just bruise your reputation the way they do when you’re a kid — they shape your entire sense of what’s acceptable.
They can convince you to stay silent when you should speak up, to tolerate when you should walk away, to settle when you should demand more.
The truth is, assumptions — whether whispered on a bus or carried into a marriage — are never harmless.
They define the stories we tell ourselves about who we are, and if left unchecked, they can become prisons we don’t even realize we’re locked inside of.
Next in the Series
In Part 2, The Danger of Inexperience: Broken Baselines and False Narratives, I’ll share how young love and early marriage set the stage for mistaking harm as normal — and how inexperience can trap us inside false stories until lived experience forces us to see differently.
© 2025 Kimberly Thomas. All rights reserved.
Thank you for reading The Berbly Project. This blog is where I explore personal growth, resilience, and the lessons hidden in lived experience. If this post resonated with you, I invite you to share it, subscribe for updates, or continue the journey through other essays on the site. Together, we can challenge assumptions — and maybe free ourselves from the stories that never belonged to us in the first place.
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Keep reading the series:
👉🏻 Part 2: The Danger of Inexperience – Broken Baselines and False Narratives
👉🏻 Part 3: The Lies That Teach You Silence
👉🏻 Part 4: The Ruin, The Reckoning – From Ashes to Strength
👉🏻 Part 5: A Love Letter to Endurance: Lessons in Salt, Stingers, and Survival
Hi Kimberly,
This so very true! To assume makes an ASS out of you and me. Never assume or take anything for granted.
In addition, people can be cruel, especially todays younger generation. My granddaughter was being bullied on her school bus ride to and from school. After picking her up a few times, I decided to discuss this matter with my daughter (her Mom) and he had to address this issue. This also escalated within the school as well. To make a long story short, some of the children/kids were members of her softball team; once we addressed the problem we were able to get it straighten out. This was definitely a life lesson that was invaluable. Parents please talk to your children, so they don’t get bullied by there friends. Friends do not bully others.
Protect them from matters like this!!!
Thank you so much for sharing this. You’re absolutely right—assumptions can do real damage, and your story is such a powerful reminder of how quickly things can escalate if they’re not addressed. I’m so glad you and your daughter were able to step in and advocate for your granddaughter. That kind of support makes such a difference for kids who are being bullied—they need to know the adults around them will take their voices seriously.
Your point about friends not being bullies is spot on, too. Children (and even adults) need to understand that real friendship is built on kindness, respect, and accountability. The way you handled this not only protected your granddaughter, but it also modeled courage and compassion for her.
Thank you again for taking the time to write this out—it adds so much depth to the conversation and reminds all of us that we can’t ignore these situations, no matter how “small” they may seem at first.