I would like to say that everything in my life is perfect and smells like clean laundry and cookies and the sun is shining and the birds are singing and I woke up like this but that would be a LIE because it’s cold and miserable outside and my life is untidy in all those untidy human ways that just happen in the depths of the winter and the birds are like EFFF YOU WE ALL RAN AWAY and the weather is like OH HEY 12 MORE INCHES OF SNOW TOMORROW, MOTHERFUCKERSS and ’tis the season when my depression and anxiety tend to show their lying bastard ugly faces (have I mentioned before that I struggle with this? Good morning! I do!) and I had forgotten, for just one moment, until I woke up and checked my email, that while most people are marvelous, some people are this: 

 

So let me tell you, I checked my email in bed this morning, and I woke up like this and then I woke up like THIS and, listen, I am fine, and I know this is just one very tiny moment in the grand picture of existence, and on the whole my life really is pretty great and some asshole behind a laptop isn’t going to change that, nor are they worth the time I’m spending to write this, but let me just tell you this ONE thing before we can all move on with our day: 

I don’t care for the word “cunt.” 

I have a vagina. And it’s awesome. And it’s mine. 

But that’s not really what we’re talking about here. 

You are telling me that I am worthless because I’m a woman, that I’m stupid because I’m a woman, that I’m dirty because I’m a woman. You are telling me that I am no more than a body part to be fucked and disregarded, because I am a woman. 

And I’m just not in the mood to be called a cunt today. 

And I’m upset with myself because if I’m going to write about how much the word ‘cunt’ sucks, I wanted it to be better than this piece. I wanted it to be a piece of writing that proves how definitively non-cunty I am, how smart and funny and personable I can be, how obviously more worthy of other adjectives I am. And this piece isn’t that, because I’m depressed and anxious and motherfucking COLD and just a human and come to think of it I shouldn’t have to prove to anyone that I’m not a cunt.  

(And for the record, I don’t know the gender of the person who called me a cunt. I don’t know if it was a man or a woman who used that word, and lest we all leap to judgements, I’d like to just come clean and say that I’m guilty of using that word about other women, several times, when I was younger, when I was angry. I feel really guilty about that now. I like to think I know better now.) 

So I’m going to get up and get dressed and go to work, and I’m going to go about my day, and I am going to buy a better set of winter gloves and I am going to do my laundry and I am going to be just fine, I truly am. 

But friends and readers, do me a favor. Maybe just don’t use ugly or wounding words today? Especially not that one. There are so many great words out there. We can do better.