I curse. Sometimes more than I should. Sometimes just to loosen the passion phlegm that gets stuck in my throat after reading a sanctimonious tale. That’s what happened yesterday: I choked on an article that someone had written with an egotistical pen. She was angry in her words, with me and most of my friends, for flashing our first amendment rights online and using potty language to “sensationalize” our blogs.
But it didn’t end there.
She went on to compare our writing ability to that of a high school it-girl; stating that we were only popular because we were easy —a passive-aggressive version of a whore. An odd coincidence considering that I’ve been married for ten years and have a daughter who just started the third grade, but whetevvs… I’m sure there are a lot of 48-year-old whores out there with children who disguise themselves as foul-mouthed writers —NOT!
The more I thought about her article, the more troubled I became by her insulting words of wisdom. I mean, who was this woman, and where did she get off judging us for being who we were? Maybe she was hoping that we’d all pull up a chair and lick our lips with the same shade of disdain that she was wearing. Or maybe she thought it would spark a viral campaign that would wipe out our entire existence. Only she knows for sure, but based on her holier-than-thou attitude toward her own impassive technique, I would assume that she is delusional enough to believe that she is somehow better than us.
The thing is, we each have our own unique voice. While some may speak softly with a delicate twist of pleasantries, the rest of us just say it like it is, however that may be, for us. It doesn’t mean that we are “idiotic Neanderthals incapable of expressing ourselves without the use of profanity;” it means we are our own people, articulating our thoughts with an intimate spirit. It means that we write, as an expression of ourselves, in hopes that others just like us will appreciate what we have to say, and that is what makes us each special.
It is true: no one needs to use profanity in the written form, same as we don’t need to put butter on our toast, but sometimes it just tastes better when we’re trying to share a story in our own words. It is our style — the way we speak, and we like that about ourselves. We have cut ties with vulnerability and allowed the inspiration to swallow us whole, which is a benefit of being a writer, and I don’t believe it is anyone’s moral obligation to question our integrity for doing so.
Yes, I curse. Sometimes more than I should, and sometimes not at all. I don’t do it for show or because I can’t think of an intelligent alternative; I do it because that’s who I am in real life, and I’m comfortable in my own skin. I’m also a realist. I get that not everyone will swarm to my side, giggling and crying in harmony simply because I want them to — that’s life. We are each cut from a different loaf of bread and some people just don’t like butter.
The brilliant thing about the Internet is that there are a million plateaus to choose from when searching for interesting content. No one is ever going to hold a gun to your head and force you to read an anecdote that you don’t find enjoyable, so it seems to me that, if you’re going to read something that doesn’t capture the essence of the person you are, it is best to keep internal protests to yourself.
At the end of the day, we are who we are, and that means all of us. We are writers, actors, musicians, doctors, executives, stylists, stay-at-home-moms, chefs, designers and whores; but mostly, we are just people and not one of us is fucking perfect. What on Earth would make someone think otherwise?