Cursing

 I curse a lot. And when I say a lot, I mean a lot. It’s honestly become second nature to me at this point. Anything goes slightly wrong? ****. A little more serious? ****. Genuinely worrying? ******* ****. Exasperated? Jesus ******* Christ. And these are only some of the curse words I use. You can also flip them: ******** **** or add some enriching words: ************* ******* ****. I could go on listing curse phrases for ages, but that’s beside the point. The point is, that I curse a lot.

This habit has actually been detrimental to my well-being several times. Just a few weeks ago, at the dodgeball tournament, I was scolded by a teacher for yelling f*** you at the top of my lungs to someone in the stands. I also get in trouble for cursing around children. I’ll be having a conversation with someone (usually when I am responsible for taking care of small kids), and I’ll just start loudly exclaiming several curse words. It’s the worst feeling when you turn around and see dozens of disturbed little eyes staring at you.

I think I know where the cursing comes from. For one, my family (especially my parents) curse all the time. If you know Argentinian and French culture, you’ll know that they aren’t the tamest, PG people. My parents curse quite differently though. My dad curses all the time, for every small little thing, so it becomes second nature to do so as well. However, my mom really only curses when something goes very wrong (if she breaks a plate, for example), but it’s very loud and very angry. So I guess you could say I grew up on cursing. However, since the cursing I heard as a kid was in French and Spanish, I didn’t curse myself because I didn’t know that you could do it in English. However, when I was 11 or 12, I made some friends. Some friends who were two years older than me. And they cursed a lot. All the time, nonstop. I can see now that they were rebelling against the censored American culture that we live in today, but at the time, I just thought they were cool. And so I combined the two elements: my parents’ frequent cursing, and my friends’ vocabulary. 

I remember the first time I met those friends. I was a very innocent 11-year-old child, barely knowing anything about the world. But then, one day, I met them. At the time when bottle flipping and vines were popular, they would go outside to flip bottles and talk. The first time I heard them talking to each other, I almost broke down crying. I didn’t know that the world was so horrible that people my age used curse words (I had always associated it with adults). It was as if my whole perception of the world was crumbling down. However, as time went by, I got used to it more and more, and eventually I started doing so myself.

As to why I do it, I’m not sure. It might be that I use cursing as a way to cover up my true feelings, to create a brutish exterior to shelter myself from any painful emotions that might come along the way. It also might just be that I like to accentuate my sentences, to make them stick more with the listener. I honestly don’t really know. It just comes naturally at this point, without as much as a second thought (which is why it poses such a problem to me).

And so here I am, today, reflecting on the issues that cursing has brought me. It hasn’t gotten to a point where I am unable to get a job, or unable to have a polite, educated conversation. And honestly, does it really matter? And to all the haters, I have one thing to say: **** you and go to hell, you ************* piece of ******* ****.