You Oughta Hear My Side

Have you ever heard a story about yourself that was so wildly inaccurate, you almost wanted to sit down with popcorn and find out what “you” did next?

Seems like there are entire unauthorized biographies of some of us floating around out there. No fact-checker. No interview with the subject. Not even a courtesy call to the person being thrown under the bus before they back it up, drive over them again, and then tell everyone the bus was actually the victim.

Everybody’s the Hero When They Hold the Microphone

People rarely tell a story in a way that makes them look like the problem. They will give you every detail of what was supposedly “done to them,” but somehow forget the part where they lied, broke trust, behaved badly, or set the entire building on fire and then complained that everybody else smelled like smoke.

Repeat a version often enough and it becomes the unofficial history of something that may not have happened that way at all. Somebody adds a little here, exaggerates a little there, and passes it along to someone who wasn’t even in the room. Before long, you’re hearing things about yourself that are so ridiculous, even you’re curious where you found the time…or energy.

Billy and I were talking about this the other day because we have heard some truly crazy stuff about ourselves over the years. Things that weren’t true, weren’t half true, and occasionally weren’t even located in the same zip code as reality. In the past, my first instinct was to defend myself, correct everybody, produce exhibits A through Z, call witnesses, establish a timeline, and perhaps request a small courtroom with excellent lighting, of course.

I don’t feel that way nearly as much anymore. The facts don’t change because somebody tells a louder story, and the people who genuinely know you usually know who you are. Everybody else? Well, not every rumor requires a rebuttal, and not everybody is entitled to your side of the story.

That one took me a while to learn.

Apparently, Misery Has a Neighborhood Watch

Sometimes people need you to be the villain because looking honestly at their own behavior would require more self-awareness than they currently have available. It’s easier to throw their garbage onto your side of the street than deal with what belongs on theirs.

Then there are people who seem almost personally offended when somebody else is happy. Another person’s success, marriage, friendship, opportunity, confidence, peace…hell, even one unusually good Tuesday…has to be criticized, diminished or explained away somehow.

I’ve always found that strange. When somebody seems genuinely happy or has something good going on, I want to know what they’re doing. What changed? What are they practicing? Is there a book? A class? Newsletter? Coupon code?

But some people don’t want to know where you found the light. They’d rather try to unscrew your bulb.

Gossip Loves to Dress Up as Concern

Gossip isn’t always some dramatic accusation whispered in a dark corner. A lot of the time it shows up dressed like concern.

“I shouldn’t even be saying this, but…”

“Don’t tell anyone I told you…”

“I love them, but they can be so…”

Or my personal favorite, “I’m only telling you because I care.”

Nobody is required to like everybody. Personalities clash. People irritate each other. Some people are doing the absolute most before the rest of us have even finished our coffee. You’re allowed to think somebody is annoying, arrogant, fake, overbearing, or completely full of shit. I certainly have.

But there’s a difference between privately admitting somebody gets on your nerves and repeatedly sharing that opinion because you want everybody else to see them the way you do.

That’s the part I think we sometimes pretend not to understand.

If there is a legitimate reason somebody needs to be warned or protected, that’s different. But otherwise, why does everybody need to know that you don’t like someone? At some point, you’re not just venting anymore. You’re trying to influence somebody else’s opinion, and now you’re participating in the very thing you’d probably be furious about if it were happening to you.

Punching Down Is Still Punching, Sweetheart

There’s another kind of gossip and cruelty I have a much harder time making excuses for, and that’s when somebody goes after the things another person may already feel vulnerable about or cannot simply change. Their body. Their skin. A disability. Special needs. Neurodivergence. Sexuality. Race. Culture. Age. Faith. The way they walk, talk, think, learn or move through the world.

People imitate somebody’s voice, mock a lisp, criticize a body, make racist or homophobic comments, dismiss a disability and then hide behind “I was only joking,” as though laughter magically turns humiliation into comedy.

It doesn’t.

When you love people with special needs or spend time around people whose brains, bodies, communication or experiences are different from yours, you start to understand how much courage it can take just to move through a world that isn’t always designed to understand them. Making somebody’s difference the punchline doesn’t make you funny. It makes you a very particular kind of shithead.

You don’t have to understand everything about another human being to treat them like one. Some people need to read that again…and again…and maybe once more until it sinks in.

Resentment Wants Witnesses. Grace Barely Files a Complaint.

Here’s where I’m not going to pretend I’m above any of this. I understand resentment and jealousy because I’ve felt both. I’ve watched somebody receive something I thought I deserved. I’ve focused so heavily on what somebody else did that I conveniently ignored my own part. I’ve told myself versions of things that protected my pride.

Most of us probably have.

Pain can narrow your vision until all you can see is what was taken from you, denied to you or handed to somebody else. The question, at least for me now, is what I do with that feeling. Does it make me curious about what I need to change in my own life…or does it make me cruel toward somebody whose life appears to be going better than mine?

One of the greatest examples I have of choosing grace is my husband. In nearly eleven years of knowing Billy, nine of those as his wife, I genuinely cannot remember hearing him viciously badmouth another person. Even when somebody disappoints him or betrays him in a way that would have me preparing a PowerPoint presentation called Let Me Tell You About This Asshole, Billy will usually say something like, “Wow, I really wasn’t expecting that from them…but you live and learn.”

And that’s basically it.

Which, I’ll be honest, can be mildly irritating when I’ve already mentally prepared slides.

He doesn’t need everybody else to hate the person who disappointed him. He doesn’t recruit an audience or go around trying to ruin somebody’s reputation. Most of the time, he searches for the most generous explanation for bad behavior, even when I’m sitting beside him thinking that person absolutely has not earned this level of customer service.

I admire that about him. I’m also learning from it.

The Truth Doesn’t Need a Press Conference

Patterns still matter. If cruel stories about everybody else are always coming from the same person, eventually you’re probably going to be featured in the series. And if every former friend, coworker, partner, family member and casual acquaintance was supposedly terrible, jealous, crazy or out to get them, eventually you start noticing the one person who appears in every episode.

That doesn’t mean every story about being mistreated is a lie. People really do hurt each other. Sometimes somebody truly is the victim of something awful, and sometimes warning another person is absolutely the right thing to do. I think the difference is learning to listen with compassion while still paying attention to patterns…including our own.

Because the uncomfortable truth is, I’ve been on both sides of gossip.

Grace Starts in Your Own Mouth

I’ve said things I shouldn’t have said. I’ve believed stories too quickly, repeated things that weren’t mine to repeat, and told versions of situations that made my own behavior a little easier to live with. I’m quick to tell on myself about that because pretending I’ve reached some higher level of enlightenment would be ridiculous.

I’m still a work in progress, which means old behavior occasionally escapes this healing head.

The difference now is that I recognize it faster. When I know I’m wrong or I see behavior in myself that doesn’t match the person I’m trying to become, I admit it, apologize and try to make it right. Because an amends doesn’t mean much if it ends with the words “I’m sorry.” The real amends is living differently after you say them.

These days, when I’m irritated, disappointed, hurt or caught off guard, I’m much more likely to step back before the first draft of my feelings crosses my tongue. That’s where prayer and writing come in for me. Writing diffuses things. Sometimes I need to see the words on a screen, and sometimes, because I’m still a traditionalist, I need an actual pen and paper before I decide what deserves to be said out loud.

My first reaction may be real, but that doesn’t mean it’s ready for publication.

Changing what and who I allow into my head has changed the way other people cross my tongue. I find myself looking for more good in people because I’m finally capable of seeing more good in myself. That doesn’t mean ignoring bad behavior, pretending everybody has good intentions or continuing to give access to people who have proven they aren’t safe. It means I don’t need to make somebody else smaller to feel better about myself.

And maybe that’s the real shift in all of this.

You Oughta Hear My Side

So yes, you may have heard a story about me…and you oughta hear my side.

Then again, maybe you don’t need to.

I’m not writing this because I need everybody to understand me or because I’m submitting an application for public approval. I’ve spent enough years explaining myself to people who had already decided what they wanted to believe.

What interests me more now is paying attention to how people speak about other people…and paying attention to how I do it too. Because people reveal a lot about themselves by the way they tell a story. If every story has a villain and the storyteller is somehow always the innocent, injured hero, eventually the pattern introduces itself without anybody needing to point it out.

And when somebody tells a version of my story that I don’t recognize, I’m learning that I don’t have to chase it around trying to correct every sentence. I don’t need a public trial, a correction tour, a campaign manager or, sadly, even a PowerPoint presentation.

Character doesn’t depend on a unanimous vote, and peace doesn’t require everybody hearing my testimony.

Let them tell it.

I’ll keep living it.

The people paying attention will figure it out…and everybody else is free to enjoy the folklore.