"Let them be unkind. Let them gossip with those dry little mouths and dead little eyes, as if saying your name with enough venom might somehow make their own reflection less unbearable. Let them pick you apart in fragments, your face, your choices, your body, your history, your survival, your joy, because hollow people always become obsessed with anyone who is still whole. That is the first truth, ugly and undressed: cruelty is so often the perfume of self-hatred. People who feel clean inside do not spend their evenings rolling around in somebody else’s dirt.
Genuinely content people do not hover like flies over another woman’s life, waiting for a weak moment to land on and feed from. No, the vicious ones do it because your existence needles them. Your audacity to keep standing while carrying pain they would have drowned in offends them. Your refusal to collapse makes them itch. So they talk. Of course they do. What else can small people do when they are faced with someone they cannot reduce? They gossip because they have no substance. They criticise because they have no courage. They sneer because deep down they know that if life ever stripped them as bare as it stripped you, they would not have survived it half so well.
And let us be painfully honest, because honesty sounds much better without sugar: a great many people do not dislike you because you have done anything monstrous; they dislike you because you remind them of every way they have betrayed themselves. You walk into a room and they feel their own cowardice more sharply. You speak plainly and they hear all the times they swallowed their truth to be chosen. You refuse to shrink and suddenly their years of apologising for existing begin to taste as pathetic as they are. That is why they bristle. That is why they whisper. That is why they do that pathetic little performance where they dress envy in moral language and call it concern.
How convenient. How elegant. How utterly transparent. They will say you are “too much” because they are painfully aware they have spent their entire lives being too little. They will call you arrogant because they cannot tell the difference between confidence and the sort of obedience they were trained to admire. They will call you difficult because manipulation stops working on women who have finally learned the texture of their own worth. And when they cannot humble you, they will try the next cheapest thing: they will try to stain you. Bless their hearts. It is almost adorable, in a grim, sewer-rat sort of way.
But this is where you must become frightening. Not loud. Not chaotic. Frightening in the cold, precise way winter is frightening. Frightening in the way a locked door is frightening to someone who feels entitled to walk straight through. Stop treating every nasty opinion as if it were evidence. Stop giving broken people forensic access to your soul. Stop sitting in the dark with their words, turning them over like sacred objects, asking whether perhaps the people who enjoy wounding you might secretly be right. They are not prophets. They are not judges. They are not even interesting.
They are simply cruel, and cruelty has always mistaken itself for insight because it has so little else to offer. Some mouths are not meant to be listened to; they are meant to be recognised as hazards. Some criticism is not constructive; it is predatory. Some people do not speak because truth matters to them. They speak because impact does. They want to see your face fall. They want to hear that catch in your voice. They want proof that they can still enter a room and leave damage behind. It reassures them, I suppose, to know they can still make somebody bleed when they cannot make themselves feel alive. How tragic. How embarrassing. How very much not your problem.
Your worth was never designed to be held together by public opinion, and thank God for that, because crowds are often stupid, fickle, and drunk on the smell of blood. If your value could be reduced by gossip, every bitter stranger would be a god, and what a revolting little world that would be. No, your worth is not on loan from people who have never done the inner labour required to recognise value unless it comes decorated with compliance. Your worth does not decrease because someone too emotionally stunted to process their own inadequacy needs a villain for the evening.
Your worth does not evaporate because a woman with spite in her lipstick and acid in her throat decided you were easier to dissect than to become. Your worth remains, even while they spit. Even while they laugh. Even while they pass your name around like cheap entertainment for cheaper minds. The only truly dangerous moment is the one in which you begin to collaborate with them, when their contempt moves into your head and starts speaking in your voice, when you begin enforcing their verdict before they have even opened their mouths. That is how people lose themselves, not all at once, but by slowly becoming hospitable to disrespect. Do not be hospitable. Let them find the gate locked and the windows blacked out.
And if that makes you seem cold, difficult, arrogant, icy, bitchy, impossible, unfeminine, intimidating, or “not very nice”, then frankly, what a gorgeous little side effect. Women are so often trained to keep themselves emotionally available to those who do them harm, to remain soft in the face of contempt, to keep explaining, softening, clarifying, proving, appeasing, until there is nothing left of them but a smiling apology with bones. Enough of that. Enough of being digestible. Enough of performing grace for people who would not spit on you if you were on fire, unless of course there was an audience and they could call it kindness afterwards.
Let them say you have changed. You should have. Pain is meant to teach, not merely scar. Let them say you are harder now. Good. Steel is harder than skin, and skin tears too easily in a world full of people who confuse access with entitlement. Let them complain that you are not as open as you once were. Yes, well, congratulations to them for noticing that repeated disrespect has consequences. You are not a public garden for every muddy-footed idiot to tramp through and then critique the flowers.
There is also this delicious truth: most of the people committed to misunderstanding you are not nearly as powerful as they imagine. They need your attention more than you need their approval. They need your reaction, your hurt, your defence, your breakdown, your pleading, your frantic attempts to set the record straight. Without that, what are they really? Just a cluster of unimpressive voices speaking into the stale air, hoping their cruelty will echo loudly enough to feel like significance. Deny them that theatre. Nothing unsettles petty people more than discovering they are not central to your emotional weather.
Nothing irritates a gossip more than realising the woman she tried to bury has better things to do than die. So do not chase every lie with a lantern. Do not answer every accusation as if the court were legitimate. Some people deserve silence so complete it forces them to sit with the cheapness of their own performance. Let them talk to each other. Let them admire their own cruelty. Let them stroke one another’s egos in those sad little circles where nastiness passes for wit. You have a life to build, and unlike them, you are not using somebody else’s destruction as a hobby.
So let them be unkind, vicious, sly, smug, and morally bankrupt in all the boring ways cruel people usually are. Let them gossip until their jaws ache and their mascara cracks and their own emptiness rings in their ears like church bells for the damned. Let them criticise you from the safe little corners where cowardice always lives. Let them laugh too loudly, judge too quickly, and pretend their ugliness is discernment. Let them call you names when your boundaries deny them access. Let them write their cheap versions of you and pass them around to anyone shallow enough to believe them. And then let them watch, helpless and furious, as none of it alters the fact that you are still here. Still standing. Still yours.
Because that is the part they cannot bear. Not that you were wounded, but that you were wounded and did not become theirs. Not that they tried to diminish you, but that they failed. No one can take away your worth unless you assist in the robbery, unless you hold open the door, offer them the knife, and whisper directions to the softest part of you. Do not. Let them keep their filth. Let them drown in the acid of their own malice. Let them rot in the echo of all the ugliness they keep mistaking for power. You owe them nothing, not your softness, not your explanation, not your tears, not your doubt. Let them be unkind. And you? Be untouchable."
-Steve De'lano Garcia
And let us be painfully honest, because honesty sounds much better without sugar: a great many people do not dislike you because you have done anything monstrous; they dislike you because you remind them of every way they have betrayed themselves. You walk into a room and they feel their own cowardice more sharply. You speak plainly and they hear all the times they swallowed their truth to be chosen. You refuse to shrink and suddenly their years of apologising for existing begin to taste as pathetic as they are. That is why they bristle. That is why they whisper. That is why they do that pathetic little performance where they dress envy in moral language and call it concern.
How convenient. How elegant. How utterly transparent. They will say you are “too much” because they are painfully aware they have spent their entire lives being too little. They will call you arrogant because they cannot tell the difference between confidence and the sort of obedience they were trained to admire. They will call you difficult because manipulation stops working on women who have finally learned the texture of their own worth. And when they cannot humble you, they will try the next cheapest thing: they will try to stain you. Bless their hearts. It is almost adorable, in a grim, sewer-rat sort of way.
But this is where you must become frightening. Not loud. Not chaotic. Frightening in the cold, precise way winter is frightening. Frightening in the way a locked door is frightening to someone who feels entitled to walk straight through. Stop treating every nasty opinion as if it were evidence. Stop giving broken people forensic access to your soul. Stop sitting in the dark with their words, turning them over like sacred objects, asking whether perhaps the people who enjoy wounding you might secretly be right. They are not prophets. They are not judges. They are not even interesting.
They are simply cruel, and cruelty has always mistaken itself for insight because it has so little else to offer. Some mouths are not meant to be listened to; they are meant to be recognised as hazards. Some criticism is not constructive; it is predatory. Some people do not speak because truth matters to them. They speak because impact does. They want to see your face fall. They want to hear that catch in your voice. They want proof that they can still enter a room and leave damage behind. It reassures them, I suppose, to know they can still make somebody bleed when they cannot make themselves feel alive. How tragic. How embarrassing. How very much not your problem.
Your worth was never designed to be held together by public opinion, and thank God for that, because crowds are often stupid, fickle, and drunk on the smell of blood. If your value could be reduced by gossip, every bitter stranger would be a god, and what a revolting little world that would be. No, your worth is not on loan from people who have never done the inner labour required to recognise value unless it comes decorated with compliance. Your worth does not decrease because someone too emotionally stunted to process their own inadequacy needs a villain for the evening.
Your worth does not evaporate because a woman with spite in her lipstick and acid in her throat decided you were easier to dissect than to become. Your worth remains, even while they spit. Even while they laugh. Even while they pass your name around like cheap entertainment for cheaper minds. The only truly dangerous moment is the one in which you begin to collaborate with them, when their contempt moves into your head and starts speaking in your voice, when you begin enforcing their verdict before they have even opened their mouths. That is how people lose themselves, not all at once, but by slowly becoming hospitable to disrespect. Do not be hospitable. Let them find the gate locked and the windows blacked out.
And if that makes you seem cold, difficult, arrogant, icy, bitchy, impossible, unfeminine, intimidating, or “not very nice”, then frankly, what a gorgeous little side effect. Women are so often trained to keep themselves emotionally available to those who do them harm, to remain soft in the face of contempt, to keep explaining, softening, clarifying, proving, appeasing, until there is nothing left of them but a smiling apology with bones. Enough of that. Enough of being digestible. Enough of performing grace for people who would not spit on you if you were on fire, unless of course there was an audience and they could call it kindness afterwards.
Let them say you have changed. You should have. Pain is meant to teach, not merely scar. Let them say you are harder now. Good. Steel is harder than skin, and skin tears too easily in a world full of people who confuse access with entitlement. Let them complain that you are not as open as you once were. Yes, well, congratulations to them for noticing that repeated disrespect has consequences. You are not a public garden for every muddy-footed idiot to tramp through and then critique the flowers.
There is also this delicious truth: most of the people committed to misunderstanding you are not nearly as powerful as they imagine. They need your attention more than you need their approval. They need your reaction, your hurt, your defence, your breakdown, your pleading, your frantic attempts to set the record straight. Without that, what are they really? Just a cluster of unimpressive voices speaking into the stale air, hoping their cruelty will echo loudly enough to feel like significance. Deny them that theatre. Nothing unsettles petty people more than discovering they are not central to your emotional weather.
Nothing irritates a gossip more than realising the woman she tried to bury has better things to do than die. So do not chase every lie with a lantern. Do not answer every accusation as if the court were legitimate. Some people deserve silence so complete it forces them to sit with the cheapness of their own performance. Let them talk to each other. Let them admire their own cruelty. Let them stroke one another’s egos in those sad little circles where nastiness passes for wit. You have a life to build, and unlike them, you are not using somebody else’s destruction as a hobby.
So let them be unkind, vicious, sly, smug, and morally bankrupt in all the boring ways cruel people usually are. Let them gossip until their jaws ache and their mascara cracks and their own emptiness rings in their ears like church bells for the damned. Let them criticise you from the safe little corners where cowardice always lives. Let them laugh too loudly, judge too quickly, and pretend their ugliness is discernment. Let them call you names when your boundaries deny them access. Let them write their cheap versions of you and pass them around to anyone shallow enough to believe them. And then let them watch, helpless and furious, as none of it alters the fact that you are still here. Still standing. Still yours.
Because that is the part they cannot bear. Not that you were wounded, but that you were wounded and did not become theirs. Not that they tried to diminish you, but that they failed. No one can take away your worth unless you assist in the robbery, unless you hold open the door, offer them the knife, and whisper directions to the softest part of you. Do not. Let them keep their filth. Let them drown in the acid of their own malice. Let them rot in the echo of all the ugliness they keep mistaking for power. You owe them nothing, not your softness, not your explanation, not your tears, not your doubt. Let them be unkind. And you? Be untouchable."
-Steve De'lano Garcia
