“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”
We all learned that rhyme in elementary school and we all wished it was true, but it’s not. It’s a lie.
Broken bones and bruises heal, rarely leaving behind long-term damage except maybe some scar tissue.
Words on the other hand get into our mind and make their way into who we are. They become a part of us. It can take years to get over the damage that words can cause.
When I was a kid, my dad had a stick he used to “discipline” my siblings and I. Anything we did that he or my mom didn’t much approve of could cause him to produce the stick.
The stick was actually a three-foot long piece of two-inch base board. It was about a quarter of an inch thick. It’s home was the top of the refrigerator.
When we had to be “beat with the stick” as he called it, he would stand in front of the refrigerator so we could see the stick peeking over the edge while he yelled at us.
He had a few favorite phrases for us:
Shit-for-brains
Stupid
Good-for-nothing
Idiot
Worthless
Selfish
He also added words that fit whatever the situation was, then the beating began.
I was always relieved when he started hitting us. He’d swing his hand back and bring the stick down hard to our butts or the back of our legs at least five times, sometimes more. You could hear the swoosh of air before the stick made contact with our backside. Then the sting set in.
Sometimes there were bruises, once he hit my brother so hard that the stick broke and he kept hitting my brother, drawing blood, but usually there were just red marks. The red marks faded and bruises and cuts healed, but the words echoed in my mind for years after the beating.
The words he used against me never left my mind. They’d slip into the background for awhile, but then I’d find myself using them to describe me. Then I became those words.
I was good-for-nothing.
I was selfish.
I was an idiot.
I was unlovable.
The words my parents used towards me hurt. They damaged me deeper and longer than any beating.
The words they used towards me began to scream at me from my own mind until they weren’t just my parents words, but mine as well.
The words ruined me. The words caused me to make bad choices. When you are worthless, who cares what you do?
I grew up, became an adult and got married to the wrong guy all because of the words that defined me. I wasn’t good enough to be treated better.
It was a difficult life.
That life eventually came crashing down around me and everything I knew and who I was, shattered into pieces.
God picked up all those pieces and put me back together, whole and healed from my past. He gave me new words to describe myself.
Smart.
Intelligent.
Selfless.
Good.
Worthy.
Priceless.
mishellwolff 