Words can hurt.
From a young age, I heard the adage ‘Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words can never hurt you’ and knew it was a lie. The sting of cruel, unkind, insulting, or angry words can last far longer than a slap, can wound for a lifetime, can linger, unforgotten and sometimes unforgiven. And a lie told about you?—don’t get me started how that can fester and harm forever—reputation and soul.
Yesterday, I was in a funk—feeling aggrieved, bitter, and sorry for myself for reasons I won’t go into. They’re not important for what I want to say. I felt closed in, cut off, misunderstood, half crazy, strangling with what I wanted to say: my words would have caused resentment, would undoubtedly been misunderstood, would have wounded and hurt. They needed to be said—to me.
In that miserable funk, I wrote a poem. I titled it “I Knew a Girl.” I pored out my heart in pathetic, whining, “poor me” poetry in (imperfect) iambic pentameter for two pages in Word. Writing it was cathartic. It allowed me to laugh, to reflect, to remember “that girl who used to sing”—"that girl with hope in her heart.”
My words hurt no one—and they won’t. I wrote it for me, no other, and it helped. I knew a girl and she is me—filled with hope for a better, more peaceful world.