Mouthy

A woman in one of my classes this last school year mentioned that she always seemed to say what was on her mind, before she even thought about it, and that that sometimes offended people or got her in trouble. I remember thinking that I would have killed for that problem.
I remember an acting workshop I attended last semester. The guest teacher had us warm up our voices and bodies by bouncing up and down while carrying a loud, open-mouthed hum, like a child being patted on the back.
"Since there are only women here," she said, "I want you to focus deep in your lungs and find your Strong Voice, which we as women often are forbidden to do by society. For example, if you say 'I just really don't like you,' in a higher-pitched voice, it's fine, but when you say, 'I REALLY DON'T LIKE YOU,' in a deeper voice, they're like, 'Whoa! She's so mean!'" she explained, jerking her head back realistically in "shock."
That got me to wondering if it was really okay to tell someone that you didn't like them, rather than just not saying anything at all. Maybe it wasn't always wrong to be mean to someone, or it was acceptable when stating your own opinion?
It had never actually occurred to me to tell someone that I didn't like them. I had always thought that one should simply not say anything to them, just cut them out of one's life as much as possible, and anything beyond that was "unnecessary" and going too far.
Maybe I was wrong about that, though. Maybe I could be mean and still be a good, mostly-nice person. Maybe trying to be nice (almost) always was not the indicator of whether I was right or wrong.
When I first got my Twitter account as Atheist Journeys, and started talking to theists as an atheist, I thought that being nice was what I should always do, because then I would not be sinking to some of their levels. I would be better than them, and take the high ground.
But I felt extremely limited by "niceness" when I was a Christian, and I don't want to do that to myself anymore. There are times to be nice, and there are times to be mean, and I'm not even sure that I should focus on being "nice" most of the time. I wanted to be a "loving atheist," but I'm not sure now that that is who I am.
I had seen people who were always angry, who were offended at the slightest inconvenience or deviation from their standards, and I thought that not being nice would lead to my becoming like them. I had read plenty of feminist books, but I was still afraid of becoming a perpetually-angry bitch (or seeming like one).
I don't know where exactly I got this notion that I had to always be nice, no matter how others treated me. I think I was always afraid of what would happen if I was not nice. I remember, as a child, feeling that adults could hurt me and that I could not do anything about it, even that my parents couldn't do anything about it.
Once when I was seven, I called the (adult) relative who always picked on my cousins and me the devil. As I later heard the story (I only remember what happened next clearly), he threatened that next time I called him that, he would "beat your ass" in front of my mother.
"Don't talk to my kid that way!" my mom said.
"Stay out of this! This is not your concern," he retorted.
"She's my kid," she answered, and then I remember the shouting match. They got in each other's faces, and I was terrified. I thought that he would hurt my mother, and I wanted to stay and try to prevent it, but my aunt forcefully herded me and my cousins out to the front porch. No blows were exchanged, I guess, but I think they came close.
My father wasn't there at the time. I was told to keep it a secret from him. He found out years later, and as it was fresh in his mind, he said that he could hardly control himself enough to keep himself out of prison. That was probably why my mother advised me not to say anything about it.
I think I blamed myself for that incident. If I had held my tongue, he wouldn't have blown up at my mom. I wouldn't have been terrified, and it wouldn't have disrupted the family "harmony." (Though is it really harmony when he made me scream in terror and cry in frustration?)
I remember saying I was sorry later, because I thought my safety depended on it, and I thought everyone would make me anyway. I wasn't sorry, though, and I felt like I was betraying myself. I still remember the smug, condescending way he said, "Apology accepted."
I hated him for that remark. I didn't want him to accept my apology. I didn't want to feel like I had to offer an apology to save my life. I wanted him to move out of state again. I wanted him out of my life.
It's not safe to be mean to adults when you are a small child, even if they make your life miserable. I am just now learning that I won't get killed for making nasty remarks.
The cousin who tried to intimidate me with implied threats and physical size (whom I was fortunate enough to be able to call out and shut up, though I had no idea my mouth would work that way, in that instant), ironically, had my relative very involved in his upbringing, and I wonder if those were the older man's values rubbing off. I do remember this older relative once making a point of letting me pick out a candy first, because I was the oldest among the children. He explicitly stated that that was his reasoning, and though I benefited from it, I thought it was strange at the time. The arbitrary, unearned privilege of the oldest seems, to me, related to the arbitrary, unearned privilege of the biggest (as well as that of the husband in some Christian teachings, of which our relative was a fan at one time).
To the best of my knowledge, no one ever told me that I was not wrong to call him the devil. He was like the devil, in my mind, as he hurt me emotionally and physically, terrified me, and seemed to enjoy it. No one had ever told me that it was not wrong to tell someone flat-out that I didn't like them, until that workshop. No one had ever told me that it was okay to hurt somebody's feelings, or make them mad. Though my mother praised me for verbally putting my cousin down at Christmas (because I thought that he was dissing his brother), my childhood conditioning had been hard to break.
And most of all, no one ever thought to tell me that it was safe to say those things. That I would be safe, protected, regardless of what I had said. Even if I was wrong.
Maybe being mean (or honest) does not mean that you wish somebody harm, that you are petty, or that you are wrong to do it.
Maybe being mean isn't wrong, and maybe I won't be harmed or punished for it. That is a lesson that I am still learning, and it takes a lot of practice and thinking about what to say in certain situations, but someday I hope to be as mouthy as the woman in my class.
Someday I hope to tell someone, "I REALLY DON'T LIKE YOU!"

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