There is only one thing in my opinion that hurts above all else. I can’t speak for men being kicked in the balls. Due to my lack of male anatomy. I can’t speak for those who have given birth, due to my lack of experience. But I do know what hurts more than that combined are words.

Recently a dear friend of mine has been in on the receiving end of such hurt, it’s nothing new really, she has had to deal with it from said person her entire life. But it doesn’t get any easier. If the antagonist knows the right combo of words and the exact place to direct those words then the scars never have a chance to heal and fade.

Hit me, I will bruise, yea it may hurt for a few days maybe a few weeks depending on the severity but my body will heal. Stab me I shall bleed, and again patch me up and I should be fine after a while or so. But words as innocent as they seem, have this ability to be almost like a diseased thing. let them linger long enough and they will eat away at you like a flesh eating disorder.

As people that have mental health issues and have a hard time just battling against ourselves, having to put on battle armour from medieval days just to protect us from the influences of the outside world. After a time that armour becomes beaten down and carries the wounds of wars of the past. And it takes a good run of days, positivity, creativity and productivity to mend the dents and the penetration attempts.

When you have someone that constantly picks at you and pulls you down… Criticising, or comparing you to someone else that is not even on the same page as you or… Rather is on the same page as you, or in actuality a few chapters behind then it becomes so hard to pick yourself up and dust yourself off. Especially when you don’t have enough time to get over the last time.

I want to share with you that yes, we are all going to be criticised, and we may even do it ourselves without thinking about it. For some reason it is now human nature. I don’t know where it started.

Probably classes. I have more money than you so I must be a better person… Not likely. No offence to anyone in particular but people down on their luck tend to be just as generous. Just cause they can’t afford to donate as much as you. It’s the thought that counts. They at least think of others when they have all the reason in the world not to. And then society comes along and berates us even more. I can kind of understand society doing this. I have seen the world. In my own family no less, thinking they were better because they had this mentality, when in reality they were in fact worse off. Snooty attitudes to class brings about this idea that someone is better than you.

“Oh your child doesn’t have many clothes”

“Well I only buy in the best fabric for against my precious child’s skin you see, and they are very expensive”

“Aren’t they going to grow out of them within a few months?”

“…”

Nothing, no answer for stupidity. That scenario relates to someone I know.

I am not naive, I know that the critics of the world are not going to stop anytime soon. Some people earn a living from it. Food critics, literary critics, media, newsrooms. But if criticism has taught us recently that words can do irreparable damage. Take if you will for example, and the best I have the tragic case of Caroline Flack, how she was hounded into an early grave by the media. Was she an angel? Who knows, I don’t know the ins and outs of the case that she was facing. Point is she should have felt that there were many ways to turn and one of those ways was not to stare down the barrel of a noose.

Social media is a thing now. And in my opinion should be branded as a form of bullying. Nothing is sacred anymore. Your most embarrassing moments are a screenshot away from being made public YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Face Book. They are no longer your own moments. They belong to the world around you. best advice I can give you is only be embarrassing in the privacy of your own home. Because the minute something is posted, it’s out there and by the time you come to take it down it’s been viewed and shared and liked with the majority of the western world.

You are turned into a meme which years later aren’t always something people are proud of, and just what gives me the right to take something posted on a strangers Face Book account and turn it into a meme that isn’t even all that funny or inspiring? But is degrading and offensive.

I don’t have children, but I am an Aunt, and my niece is getting to the age where she is becoming more and more aware. She is already banned from watching YouTube because of the content she was finding. And now that she can only access YouTube Kids she isn’t interested.

Having been born a millennial is probably the hardest time to grow up, during the War kids had nothing, a hard time also but it was a safer world. My mum was born post world war II and she recounts not always having the things her friends had, and vice versa.

As a child of the 80s / 90s again we went without things due to expense or the time.  But now, kids have everything at the tip or flick of a finger. I have two nephews, one just turned seven, the other is six. And my niece is coming up to eight. All three of them have an Alexa in their rooms.. Why?

The twins are just about to turn one so no Alexa there yet, but when will it be?

And here I am criticising the parental decisions of my sisters and I am not here to do that. Like I said, I don’t have children so maybe it’s just something that is done these days. Who knows?

My point is… I digress, is that the entire world is going to criticise you. It’s something that you can’t ever get away from.

Unfortunately.

But what counts is what the people around you that matter say. So one person says one thing, you probably have an army of people that say different. Or a community. Don’t let the twisted thoughts of one person bring you down because they are probably jealous, or just so simple minded to understand empathy or anything that goes on outside of their tiny little world. Because now the internet as dangerous as it can be, is also a refuge for those that seek interaction in ways that seemed unimaginable as little as twenty years ago. The world is getting smaller in technological standards. The fact I can fit a computer that is more powerful than the apple mac II’s of history in my back pocket proves that.

P.S… Other than that one poem they read all those years ago? What else have they read to be able to even gain an opinion that matters?

 

imprinted.