I was reading the Road to Domestication blog that a former editor of mine writes and one of her posts struck me in a way that can only be described as completely overwhelming. I became a blubbering mess within seconds of reading something she wrote because it hit home so hard I couldn’t breathe.
The funny thing is, and I told the author this, that I know in the back of my mind her blog exists but I often forget it’s there but somehow seem to stumble upon it when I need it the most and her words are so full of emotion and passion, but they are just words.
Words are amazing things. They can incite laughter, they can cause anger and they can cause a fully functional person to go into a complete fit of emotion.
Words can take a sane person and make them so angry they can become physically ill and have a stroke. This happened to someone very close to me. After a hurricane scare in Tampa her boss said some very mean words to her causing her to physically react and have a stroke on the office floor and end up in the emergency room and have a subsequent hospital stay for a few days.
Words can take a sad person and make them laugh so hard they can’t see through the tears. My husband knows exactly how to do this to me. I can be depressed as hell and he will say something to me that might not even be funny to anyone else and get me laughing to the point of being unable to breathe and have my face turn redder than a tomato.
Words can take a happy person who is having the best day ever and hurt them so badly to the core that they don’t know if they will ever recover.
The words, “She’s dying,” “He doesn’t love you anymore,” “I want a divorce,” “She’s cheating on him,” “I broke the vase your mother bought you,” “Will you marry me?”, “Why did the chicken cross the road?”, “A funny thing happened,” and on and on we go…they are all just words. Jumble them in different ways and the effect they have on people changes drastically. Sometimes two people can hear the exact same words and both react completely opposite from each other.
One of my English teachers in high school always said, “When the heart kicks in, the head shuts down.” Its amazing how often words can make our heads shut down.
Words are amazing things. They should be chosen carefully and used wisely.
