People and Words.

People hurt sometimes. They don't hurt themselves. They hurt the people around us. Rumors and gossip spread so quickly it's almost like a virus. No, it is a virus. How do I know? Well, it's simple. When rumors and gossip get to us, aren't we intrigued enough to stay and listen very carefully? We want to hear what the gossip is, who it is about, and how bad it is. But think about this. It's not so much fun when the rumor is about you. You go on the defense because the tables have been turned.

When I was in highschool, the biggest thing there was cliques and gossip. It seemed like every day, a new rumor was being spread about someone doing something that he or she wasn't suppose to be doing. Of course, everyone wanted to know what it was about but what I learned throughout my highschool was that 3/4 of the time, the rumors weren't true. How do I know? Usually when it got back to the person it is about, they very quickly explain what really happened and the rumors stop. I've had it happen to me lots of time.

Words can hurt. They really can. One thing like "You're not good enough" or "Don't quit your day job" hurt. Am I right? I think so. I can remember my first day of creative writing this semester. See, I aspire to be a famous writer one day so, in my mind, creative writing was just right up my alley. The professor told us to turn in our first draft stories. The catch was we had to read them out loud to be critiqued. She made it very clear that the comments about the story were to be encouraging and not discouraging. I got brave and decided to be first. I passed out my story and read it to the class. One comment I remember distinctively was from all of the creative writing 2 students. I'm in creative writing 1 but we had to combine the class because it was so small.

Well, the creative writing 2 students flat out told me that my story sucked and that I was in the wrong major. Can you imagine what I felt after that? I felt pretty dang rotten. I wanted to quit on my dream and just go to school to be a medical technician or something. My self esteem was deeply damaged after that. Once class was over, I was walking outside to my car and I was stopped by one of my classmates which I call Simon (his real name is Josh but we have an inside joke of him being Simon Cowell and me being Paula Abdul because that was how our personalities are.). He is a creative writing 2 student. I remember I was just about to my car and he called out to me. I turned to face him and he had this grin on his face. He came up and was like "Look, it doesn't matter what they say in there. I really enjoyed your story. It's one of the best I've ever read. Very exciting and entertaining. They are just jealous because they couldn't write something that good when they were in creative writing. You can do this. I know you can."

After hearing that, my confidence shot up a lot. And as the semester is going on, things have gotten better. But I still have the feeling on failure from the first comments about my story. But every time I think about that, I think about what Simon said to me. That really showed me what God wanted me to do.

Here's the moral to the story. People love to spread rumors and talk down to you when they don't like you. But just get up, dust yourself off, and get right back on that horse. Don't give up on your dreams. I know that sounds so cliche but it's true. Trust me. People can talk all they want. But don't let it get to you. If you give in to what everyone is saying, then all you're doing is quitting. And I am not a quitter. I will not give in just because someone says that I suck at what I do. I just try to make myself stronger and better. And you should too.