Words
For my integrated English and History course called “Who Am I”, I was to create a podcast discussing a strong belief that I have. I chose to speak about my belief that words can hurt, because I have personal experience with this issue. Feel free to listen to and download my podcast below. Thanks for listening. Enjoy!
I believe that words can hurt. I am here to tell you why I believe this. This is a subject I have a very strong opinion about and it is very important to me, because I have experienced it first hand. Or first “word”. I believe that the words that are hurtful are the negative ones. They can hurt you physically, or mentally, depending of your state of mind. I think that remembering negative remarks from the past, no matter how long ago they were said, is something that everyone has experienced, and in my truth, I know that this situation doesn’t ever feel good.
This is a personal experience I’d like to share, in order to help me fully explain where I’m coming from. In grade school, I was terrible at reading. The words on pages of books and on the chalk board never seemed to quite make sense to me. I didn’t know I was dyslexic. Dyslexia is a reading disability, where the brain sometimes doesn’t recognize certain symbols, and skips over others. This is mostly seen in mathematics or when reading. When I was young and read out loud in class, I was called slow and stupid because I didn’t stutter over only the difficult words like my peers, I stuttered over the most basic ones. I’d make excuses not to read, but everyone knew the game I was playing; therefore, the teasing continued, and I began to believe the things they told me. It made me feel hurt. Even though their words didn’t hurt me in a physical way, it was painful to know that some people thought of me this way.
I couldn’t keep pretending not to care, so I finally told my mom what was going on. She decided to take me to an eye doctor to see if anything was seriously wrong. When I learned of my reading disability, I felt slightly relieved, knowing that my troubles with reading weren’t really my fault. However I was still scared to read out loud in front of anyone because I would continue to find myself thinking back to their previous taunts and hurtful words, even though I wasn’t being teased anymore.
Everything did eventually change though. I got a pair glasses, which are made to help with my dyslexia, and I feel more confident with reading now because I make fewer mistakes and I know when I do make a mistake, it isn’t because I’m stupid or slow. But even though these hurtful words were said a long time ago, they still come back to me when I stutter over the simplest of words, because those memories are still in my head. As I said, when negative things are spoken to anyone, those words can have a negative effect on one’s self-worth. They are remembered until we choose to let them go. I urge everyone to think twice before speaking, because there is no way to predict the effect of our word choices. I believe that words can hurt.