“What did you just say?” I asked her shakily as I turned to face her.
“You know, you’re a whore,” she responded.
“What?” My clarification came out automatically.
“Nah, I mean, you’re just a chaser.”
The words rang in my ears for hours, days, and weeks afterward. A fellow student had said them about me as I was leaving a conversation with her. I happened to hear her as I was walking away, when I asked her to repeat herself, she couldn’t meet my eyes. “You’re a whore.”
I remember hearing those words and feeling my vision spiral as adrenaline coursed through my body like I had been physically wounded. The words knocked the breath out of me and stung to my core. I knew they weren’t true. I knew they were said out of spite. Logically, I knew all of these things. When I went to her weeks later, telling her how much her words had hurt me, she responded that everyone who had been present in the conversation agreed that she had been making a joke and that I was the one who needed a reality check. This was someone who had said mean things to me in the past, but who I had made the mistake of trusting enough to remain close to.
So why did something said by someone who will have no greater impact on my life mean anything to me? After I left that conversation, I called my parents sobbing. I sat with my friends crying because the same girl had also told me that I should just shut up in class. Eventually, I came to the realization that about a million good things had happened to me in the days leading up to and the days after the offending comment was said. Since when did bad events become more potent than the good ones? It was at this point that a familiar tune reached my consciousness, “Haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate.” #TSwiftForTheWin
We’ve all been hurt by words before. Truly, it is the greatest ignorance to assume that discourse lacks power. I can remember vividly every time I’ve been called fat, a bitch, a whore, and know-it-all. What I can’t vividly remember is every time someone has complimented me, every time I’ve succeeded at something, every time I’ve accomplished a goal or every time I did what was right. I don’t often re-live those good moments over and over. I don’t call my parents in glee. My friends and I don’t usually sit together and discuss what we’re proud of. And yet one bad thing was said, and suddenly I found myself crying alone in a bathroom. And here I am now spending time to write about it.
The most frustrating part of the whole situation was that someone who had brought this cloud over my life wouldn’t accept that she had done anything wrong because the sun was still shining where she was standing. Now here’s a cheesy metaphor for you: when the darkness comes rolling in, pick up your own pieces of light. Over time I realized I had allowed her to take away all those small shining pieces of happiness I had earned. So I reclaimed them. I reevaluated her words and fought to open my mind to truth again.
I wish I could say that two years after this happened it doesn’t bother me anymore. I wish I could say that I wasn’t still angry. To this day, it is not her words that haunt me, it is her deflection of responsibility. This person brought a storm to my life, but she made me rethink my life and my direction. For that I thank her, and wish her well.
