Notes on Gossip

I was 16 when my ex-boyfriend's gang of friends handed me a helium balloon labeled SLUT on Valentine's Day in the middle of the cafeteria, along with a Hate Note from the “popular” senior girls.  Later that year, an upper-classman in journalism started chanting my new nickname - STEPHANIE ~ THE SLUT ~ STEPHANIE ~ THE SLUT as he passed out newspapers in the common area.  It may or may not have mattered how inexperienced I was with sex at the time, but the topic seemed to preoccupy a number of my peers, and I became trapped in an echo chamber of rumors and depression and self-harm.

Going home, there was no one to cry to, as therapy is a New Age thing lost on Boomer parents who were traumatized in other ways and caught up in their own shit.  I buried myself in academics and counter-culture, never expecting to make it past twelfth grade. 

As God's grace would have it, I'm here thriving into my thirties, and shows like 13 Reasons Why watch like documentaries as much as dramas.  Good art (yes, Hollywood is known for some of that) serves as a lens through which to see ourselves and each other - perhaps in a new light, or some old, but focused, ever focusing.

Now we're adults, and people pass around hateful comments on the internet like Covid - just as much sickness and shame attached.  What's worse, these words contain more violence, attacking our identities and ethnicities, how we raise our children, mental health diagnoses - our bodies and our minds.  Unlike the virus, there's no vaccine to provide immunity.  We haven't quite learned that sticks and stones and words too destroy human vitality. 

What would cause us to run around throwing stones, destroying relationships and ourselves, in direct opposition to our shared survival instinct?

Trauma, I would guess.  Unhealed, ignored, shamed and blamed Trauma.

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