I love to swear.
I love the satisfaction of yelling `GODDAMMITALLTOHELL!” when I hit my thumb with a hammer: it helps it hurt less.
I love the word “SHIT!” spit out forcefully, when something goes unexpectedly wrong. (I will never have a tombstone, but if I did, it would simply read “Oh SHIT!”)
Or “SUNUVABITCH!”, which is almost as good as “SHIT!”
And then there’s “FUCK!”
Wow. Is there another cuss word anywhere that says as much?
“FUCKIT!”
I’d have perished by now without that phrase!
It’s the razor sharp word-lance that frees me up instantaneously, from everything that does NOT MATTER AT ALL!
Just plain…”FUCKIT”!
The really BIG sucky stuff sometimes requires more, however, and then I am forced to use “WELL! FUCK THAT SHIT!” accompanied by a little FUCKIT DANCE , which usually does the trick. Luckily, I have a partner who knows all the steps too.
Of course, these kind of verbalizations, coming out of the mouth of what appears to be a “nice lil ol lady”, is quite shocking to most, and out of respect to the other old folks I live around, who could have a cardiac event at any moment, or at least be at risk of swallowing their dentures in a sharp intake of breath, I confine my cussing to those treasured others who can handle my mouth.
My crazy, out of control, alcoholic grandmother taught me to swear, before I even hit pre-school, and was the reason I got expelled soon thereafter. She also was the only grownup in my world I could really trust back then. I always KNEW where she was coming from: when it was safe, and when it was NOT safe, to be around her. All those others, with their prim and proper silky-sweet language, well, that was like living in a live mine field that looked like a field of flowers.
Then I stopped swearing for many, many years. It got beaten out of me by an overtly sexist society and by the church. I learned how to be a “proper Christian lady, wife, and mother” instead. Then later, I learned how to be a “successful professional woman.”
(Unfortunately, only way to keep the swear words from coming out during all of this was to become a closet alcoholic, but eventually, I got past that too.)
Now, however, I am old, and I am finally FREE! Now I get to go back to being who I was all along, under all of those disguises. And I am an old woman who loves to SWEAR, and who very much loves other people to also “dare to swear!”
Cuss words are short, honest and clear: they are not packed full of hidden meanings or messages. You can trust them.
They are spontaneous, not carefully planned, spun stupid words, calculated to elicit a desired response.
They are brave enough to demand equal time with all the insincere slop that passes for human communication.
They are real words, spoken by real people who care more about honest communication than they care about the “approval” of others.
When I meet someone new, and hear that first “Damn!” or “Shit!” or “Fuck” come out of their mouths, I know I’ve met someone I will probably like: someone who is clear about who they are and are content with themselves enough to risk honest, open communication.
When I meet someone whose communication is always carefully measured, “politically correct” and “socially acceptable”, I have usually met someone living behind one façade or another: in any case, it will take awhile to discover who they really “are” underneath it, if they are even open to even being “discovered” as who they really are at all.
One thing about getting old: you know time is not endless anymore, and I’m damned if I intend to waste anymore of mine. It took me most of this lifetime to excavate my authentic self from the cast iron molds people stuffed me into, and the rest of this gig will be spent around real people, as my real self!
And if that’s a hardship on anyone around me, well, just FUCK EM ALL!
(Your turn now, to take little break from the heavy stuff!! )