TIFU by calling my girlfriend's highschool self ugly

I M24 and my girlfriend F22 have been dating for 2 years. My girlfriend is a bit self conscious because of the way she got treated in highschool. She jokes about how her awkward phase made her funny and generally makes a lot of self depreciating jokes. Especially between her and her friends, her friends are pretty similar to her so it isn't weird to them.

But it's weird to me, so I never entertain her jokes. Until this morning, because I'm an idiot.

So for context

My girlfriend likes to joke and call me a Disney Channel jock because I was a stereotypical popular football player and I did admit to her that I was kind of a bully. Dating her has kind of made me realized the way I treated others back in the day most likely left lasting scars which is why I've made it a point to not indulge in any of her self depreciating jokes.

This morning she decided to show me her highschool pictures for fun. We start looking through them and she starts joking about how she looked like a stock image of a nerd and that we should have met in highschool and been one of those coming of age nerd girl and jock couples who win prom king and queen. She's snickering and starts saying she's kidding.

Instead of being smart and just agreeing I decided to be an idiot and said that I'd probably push her into a locker. She looks at me and asked if I would have really done that and I laughed and said of course. Then to rub salt on the wound I said I would have never dated your ugly a** you definitely had a glow up.

It gets quiet and the snickering I heard before from her was gone and I look up and she has tears in her eyes. I get up and start apologizing but it was to late. I keep trying to apologize to her but she won't speak to me. She's just been sitting in the corner of the couch and is fidgeting with her hands. She doesn't even seem mad at me, she looks ashamed.

I feel awful, I felt like I did a lot to change after highschool to better myself and change. Yet I just said something so awful because I wasn't actively censoring myself.

Tl:dr I called my self conscious girlfriend's highschool self ugly after she made a teen movie trope joke and now she's sad and I can't fix it.

Edit: I haven't slept, I made breakfast for her this morning when she woke up. She finally spoked to me a few hours ago asking if I slept, I told her no. I asked her if we could talk now and she told me yeah.

She said that she knows I would have bullied her in highschool and even though she knows I was joking she knows it's true. She said that because of that she can't handle me making jokes like that and apologized for trying to force me to make jokes like that with her all the time.

I told her that I went overboard and I shouldn't have called her ugly. I said we wouldn't have dated in highschool because my highschool self would have thought she was "ugly" . It would have been because I was a bad person. That I completely understood that I shouldn't make those jokes with her and I won't do it again.

I want to mention my girlfriend started highschool early kind of, she was 13 when she began I was 15 when I started. So I decided to show her all my awful 13 year old pictures so she can crap on them. She didn't 😅 she said I looked cute. I wish we knew eachother when I was 13 I probably would have been a much less angry person. I got bullied and started hitting the gym so instead of solving my issues I just took it out on everyone else and became a bully myself.

Anyway thank you guys for shitting on me I deserved it, I'm going to go now and take her on a picnic or something that involves going outside.