The Victims of Gossip
We've all held the knife, victim and perpetrator
I don’t remember being sat down as a young girl and taught how to be a kind girl among girls, or how to navigate being a kind woman among women. I don’t remember being told that if we stab each other with words, they would come back to find us. Perpetrator or victim, the act of ‘bitching’ slices deep and absolute and often leaves a scar.
Perhaps someone did tell me to be wary of gossiping and I chose not to listen. Told me that if I said something about another woman, and it got back to them, or I shared a secret someone had entrusted me with, it was very likely I’d regret it big time. I’d be interested to know if you remember being told the consequences of often female warfare, but I can’t recall.
You might be thinking how simple it is to be kind and that we are born knowing this on a cellular level. Perhaps there must be something innately wrong with me for needing a heads up to refrain from bitching. I think we are born with an internal compass that tells us to share and support to survive. But what happens when the internal compass looses true north and we end up stood awaiting judgement in front of a large group of girls, not wanting to eat lunch alone. It truly feels like life or death as a teenager and I committed crimes to avoid becoming a lone wanderer, but in the end I became one anyway.
My first taste of bitching was at primary school. I was in year four and a girl called Henrietta (all names have been changed to protect those individuals souls) told my best friend I called her a hefty heffalump. My immediate thought was that it didn’t make sense - there was nothing hefty or heffalump about her. She was tiny. And then I just remember pain. A sense of panic and wave of sickness. A realisation that it really mattered to me if people believed her and I was quite devastated. She wouldn’t talk to me and stood on the edge of the netball court. I then preceded to do laps of the playground and in passing I would say ‘I didn’t call you a hefty heffalump though did I’ and eventually I must have tired because I’m here now, writing this. I can’t remember how it was resolved and in the end I’m not sure which of us was more unkind, but who’s keeping score?
As I grew older knives were sharpened. The friends I moved to secondary school with made more friends and I panicked. I found myself in some different classes and quickly made new connections. I am now friends with some of the people I went to primary school with, we are really close, and when they talk about their school life I can’t help but realise mine was starkly different. I’m pretty sure that’s on me but at the same time, I know no one was left unscathed. There was little about my school life I enjoyed, and I wrote about being fourteen here one evening when I was particularly miffed about something. Eventually I left a group of friends which drew out the worst in us all and ate lunch alone instead. I recall this being the happiest I had felt inside the confines of the school.
After I left I apologised to some for anything I might have done and others I let be lessons I would not forget. Naturally I wasn’t the only teenage girl who felt bad for bitching and have received a few messages over the years saying sorry for the things we all did before we knew better.
Now I’m 29, things look quite different. I can already sense when I start talking if I’m going to feel horrendous about something I exhaled into the ether the next day. I can course correct or I will apologise for saying something in the moment. Now if I find the urge to only speak negatively about someone in my life I have to wonder if they should be there, they deserve better than that. The past year I found myself having to pull away from someone for that reason and it made me a lot happier. And at the same time, chiming in on another’s life is something very human. It can be enjoyable and I don’t pretend that’s not true. I will bitch again, as will you, but I know the truth of it, try my bloody hardest not to and listen closely to my stomach if I find a conversation flowing in that direction. I try to turn the speed of my talking to snails pace and use my language intentionally. Sometimes I word vomit. Nearly always the hangover is barely worth the red wine.
Bitching can feel like connection, a mutual disenchantment of someone else being shared in private but I have learnt solid foundations can’t be built on malnourished soil. This is the one lesson that took me the longest to learn as I grew into womanhood. People will love me. That and if I have nothing tantalisingly interesting to tell someone, that doesn’t include Julie flirting with Dave even though she’s with Paul, then I need to go and get a bloody hobby or read a book.
I’d love to hear your thoughts, thank you for reading as always.