There's a lot of things I love in life; like reading a great book & sipping wine while taking a long, hot bubble bath. But, if I'm to be honest, and I think this is the place to be, I seriously love a good shit-talking session.
I hate to admit it, but my step-mother and I can shit-talk like it's our job and we're stepping on everyone's backs to be the Top Brass. With our wine in hand, we proceed to not only unleash our feelings about an asshole at work or a lady who cut us off in the grocery store, but to also make up a rash of more shit about them as people and what we wish would happen to them. I can't speak for my step-mother, but I'm pretty sure I enjoy this nonsense mostly because I’m an insecure person and I need to get it out.
Knowing I’m not the only person who talks shit , (I'm fairly confident nearly everyone does it) actually led me to the realization that it's weird how many people I know about simply from these shit talking sessions! I mean, here are tons of people I know simply from these negative interactions, people who my friends hate and I laugh at their interactions with because hey, how am I supposed to know any better? From what I know, they're horrible people! How could I ever like them? They bring them up and I nod and laugh like I know exactly what they’re talking about, as if I was there and know those horrible people personally.
And that lead me to wonder; how many people know me only from their friends' shit talking sessions? It’s kind of egotistical to assume people care enough to talk crap about me, but I have to imagine they do. To other people, I might be the stupid girl who doesn't know what she's doing at work, or the weird girl who can't get her shit together in a relationship, or the girl they went to high school with 30+ years ago who acts like she's still 25. To some people, they have a personal feeling about me even though they've never even met me. To them, I exist in a way completely made up by their perception of me.
And while I can shit-talk for days, for some reason that bothers the fuck out of me.
It blows my mind that an entire person’s life can be boiled down to another person’s words whether true or false, whether born from genuine feelings or their own feelings of jealousy and insecurity. We spend a lot of time trying to reassure ourselves that name calling or feeling inferior doesn't define us as a person, but to their friends who don’t know us, all we are is that definition. There is no way around it.
I'm not going to make this an inspirational story about how we should stop talking shit and instead imagine people more complexly. But I have a rather large group of people that live entirely in my mind, and that in itself is rather mind blowing.
I don’t want to discourage people from talking shit or venting their feelings because let's be honest, I'm not a saint, I will continue to do it and sometimes it’s just necessary. But, I would like to challenge you to think about whether or not what you think about someone is a product of reality or the "reality" that lives in your mind. Our reality is not everyone’s, or even the truth.
So, the next time we roll our eyes at that story or at a person you don’t even know, maybe we can think a little deeper. Maybe.
