Dear Readers,

Nobody is perfect. Everyone single one of us is flawed and we all have things we can improve on. Life is a growing process and each day we should be able to find one thing that we want to work on. It could be anything as small as waking up five minutes earlier or as big as deciding to climb Mt. Everest. And if you feel that you are a flawless human being maybe there is a new skill that you would like to learn like a new language or how to play an instrument.

Of course, many of us do not have the time to sit down and meditate on all of our flaws or the new things we want to learn because we are busy. There is work and school and procrastination and a million other things that keep us from meditation (also meditation is a lil bit boring so if we actually have free time we are probably gonna do something fun).

Today I reached a revelation (ye man I have these I a lot I think I may need to get out of my head more...). A revelation that made me realize that I may be on the road to being a bítch. See, I can be a really judgmental person at times. A gossipy judgmental person. It's something I realized but I never tried to change. Like sometimes when I couldn't fall asleep and I was just laying in bed thinking about random stuff I'd be like, "Daym Epoh, you're a bítch". Then I'd have a little "huh" moment but I wouldn't think about how i could avoid being a bítch. It was just a part of me I acknowledged and accepted.

Now all the girls at my school gossip. They gossip because they are bored. They gossip because sometimes there is nothing else to talk about. We gossip because it's fun. We gossip because why the hell not. We gossip about our friends, our ex-friends, our ex-boyfriends and their friends, teachers, and celebrities. We gossip about everyone and their mother. We gossip in circles. We gossip in corners. We gossip walking down the halls. We gossip right in front of the people we are gossiping about. It's just a thing.

I remember there being a point in time when I hated the girls who gossiped. I thought, "Why can't they just be nice?" Then I started gossiping about the girls who gossiped as a form of lashing out. Kinda like, "Hey, if ur gonna gossip about me them I'm gonna gossip about you." Now I'm at the stage where I gossip like it's my second language. I mean, why the hell not?

But today after swim, I saw the gossiping prima donnas of my school in one corner of the room doing what they do best: gossiping. They were talking about a girl who was sitting right next to them. The girl had just found her crush on Instagram and was gonna follow him and her username was something silly but cute. And the two gossiping proms donnas being the gossiping prima donnas were calling the girl dumb saying stuff like, "If I were him I wouldn't follow someone back if they had such an immature username," and, "I wouldn't even bother talking to someone like her who radiates stupidity" Then one of them said she got a thirty on one of her history tests and the other one said that she would kill herself if she was that stupid. They finished their little rant by saying that she had no chance with the guy and that they felt bad for him because he had to deal with such a dumb person following him around and bothering him.

Obviously this could have been worse, but it hurt the girl's feelings nonetheless. I walked past the girl (the one that has a crush on the guy) and I could see her trying to hide the fact that she was crying by ducking her head and quickly wiping her eyes with her back facing everyone in the room. I guess I could have comforted her but she was mean to me in the past and asking her if she was okay would only draw attention to that fact that she was crying.

Seeing this girl cry (even though i hate her guts) made me want to stop gossiping as much. But gossiping is tricky. Sometimes you are warning someone about someone else or relaying information, but it is hard to tell the difference sometimes.

If I say, "Don't hang out with Marissa so much. She hangs out with the gang leaders and mafia men who have been responsible for the robberies and assassinations that happened this month. And don't go to the park anymore after school. That is their hangout spot," that isn't gossip. It's a warning that someone shouldn't hang out with Marissa because she hangs out with dangerous people who can put them at risk.

But if I say, "Did you know that Marissa hangs out with drug dealers after school? The ones that have been committing all the robberies and assassinations this month. Ah, so scary! I hear they do drugs in the park," that is gossip. It's the same information but the reason why the person is saying them is totally different. One clearly wants attention while the other wants to protect the person they are speaking too.

So now when i gossip or relay any sort of information, i'm going to think about my reason for saying what i say. if it's not for a meaningful purpose i'll stop, but if it is, nothing can stop me. :)

Do you gossip?
All the time:👩‍💻/👨‍💻
Sometimes:🐥
I am the Gossip King/Queen: 🤴/👸
Never:🙊
I wouldn't Dare:🤶/🎅

-Epoh