When I was 13 I believed I would go to Hell for cursing. My first memory of using foul language was about that same time. I was goofing off at a friend’s sleepover with several other girls and one of them body slammed me while I was attempting to hide under some pillows. I remember the breath forced out of my lungs, along with the guttural cry of “SH*T!”
It was my first time saying a “bad word.”
I fled the scene immediately as silence dropped around us. I scurried into a closet in an adjoining room, breaking into sobs as soon as the door was closed. I was scared. Scared that the girls would tell my friend’s mom, who would then have to tell my mom what I had said.
When I was 13 I already believed my mom didn’t like my friends. Most of them by that age were already saying words much worse than the four-letter ‘s’ word that I had just shouted. I can remember several sleepovers of my own where my mom would scold us for being too loud, but mostly for the language. Two of my friends were usually loud and proud about their cursing and it could be heard downstairs, even through closed doors. They were not concerned with who heard them. I didn’t mind it myself, though I certainly didn’t think myself the type to SAY “bad words.”
Hearing it and saying it are two different things.
When I was 13 I believed these words were the worst possible thing you could say. I didn’t realize that only a few years later my friends would beat me down with words that stung a lot worse and that weren’t even “bad words” on their own. The notes in my locker, the whispers in the lunch room, all of it ripped into me and hurt a lot worse than the girl who had tackled me at the sleepover.
By the time I was 14, I had learned that words could be “bad” for me without being “foul.” I learned that words could be misleading, no matter how clear you tried to be in your message. But mostly, I learned that I didn’t have to wait to go to Hell, that the rest of my time in middle school would bring Hell on its own.
Teacher Captain's (B)log 