We’d never know how long our words would stay and affect someone, for example:
“Why it should be her, as if there’s no someone else?”
Which, honestly, makes the girl in that sentence’s object lost her confidence to be liked or loved in every relationship she enters or has; questioning self-worth is her main tendency in every relationship she’s in. The person who said that probably didn’t expect or even know that her best friend would tell his girlfriend at the time it was being said, and this happened more than a decade ago when they were just a bunch of high school kids trying to define ‘love’.
“What an arrogant kid you are!”
Such a simple sentence came out from a parent figure who was overwhelmed by anger just because her daughter demonstrated her thoughts, yet so profound it changed the whole mindset of the kid; at first, she tends to undermine her ability because she doesn’t want to be seen/perceived as arrogant, and then she would always rationalize her feelings; delaying what she feels by trying to be ‘objective’, which most of the times making her feeling guilty of what she feels. ‘What if I am the wrong one?’ she wonders, while unconsciously pressing her feelings aside. At the end of the day, she’d feel numb.
…
There are others, but these two somehow stayed within my mind for far too long, it often mess with my thoughts and self-confidence. I wish I could un-heard those or simply have amnesia, thought it’d be better if I am a forgetful person. But wishing someone with a nearly photographic memory to be forgetful is like wishing a musician to not remember the melody of their favorite song.
How I wish I could be sure enough that I am liked and loved the way I am, not because of my ‘performances’ or what I did well,
or to be an assertive person who can fight for my ideals or standards without feeling guilty of having such,
and to simply accept whatever feelings and thoughts I have, without trying to find any justification of whether it is OK to feel that way.
…
-T
