Words have incredible power. Sometimes, we don't realize just what effect our words will have. They may change a listener's day for the better or the worse, and often we don't know until we see his or her reactions. Words worm their way into our minds and sit there, burning a hole in what we thought we knew of our world. Sometimes, this hole is a good thing, and that burning is like the warmth felt when you sit beside a roaring fire on a cold winter night, when the air is toasty and smelling richly of burning wood, there's a wonderful dinner waiting for you, and outside the snow is falling gently through the night and the world is an untouched layer of white bliss.
Other times, this burning is the scalding feel of a frying pan accidentally brushed against bare skin, leaving horrible blisters in its wake, and the hole is a traumatizing split in the universe, a crack in the wall into which things fall and never return from. This is the kind of burning that currently sits in my heart, slowly working its way from the top to bottom, like a small, bright ember working it's way through a stack of paper, leaving a ragged hole through the middle. I know that the words which put it here were of harmless intent, and I don't blame the person who said them. I know the person who started this fire was just trying to keep me warm. But that doesn't stop the pain.
Most of the pain comes not from the words themselves, what was said, or who said it (again, I place no blame on the speaker), but from the drawn out agony of not knowing whether or not they are the truth. That is the trouble of gossip. By gossip I don't mean "Oh did you hear so-and-so got drunk at a party last night and ran off with other-so-and-so?" I mean talking about your own friends with their other friend. Not talking behind his or her back, of course. Just talking about them. Saying "S/he told me this, what did s/he tell you?" When one gossiper finds out something about the gossipee (new word) from the other gossiper that she didn't know before, this new information becomes the spark which lights the flame in their mind.
When this flame is the painful kind, gossiping cannot provide any sort of comfort against it. That is primarily because you haven't heard the information first hand, but rather from someone else. There is no way to be sure whether or not the gossiped words are true without talking to the gossipee, and when you can't get hold of that person for quite some time, the fires continue to burn. You NEED to hear something from them, confirming or denying the information you've just uncovered about them.
And after the new information is confirmed or denied, the process begins again. Words are heard, and new information is processed. The fire you were so desperately trying to squash out could just be reignited. Perhaps the newest information tames the fire, and makes it that blissful, warming kind that absolutely makes your day, but it's just as likely that the scalding feeling you have will only intensify and burn straight through you, leaving a gaping hole and searing pain in its wake.
Once that hole is complete, going all the way to the core of your being, nothing can fill it. Over time the edges may stop smoldering, but the emptiness will never heal. That information becomes part of a tragedy in our memories that changes us forever. Only once have I felt that kind of pain, and I am still subject to the smoldering edges. It changed me completely, but never stopped burning.
So now with a new ember sitting in my mind, I must wait, as patiently as possible, for confirmation or denial. In the mean time, every burning second reminds me why I have a policy (frequently ignored) of never gossiping.
