Stupid

Written by Vanshika Srivastava

Stupid, something I am used to calling myself over and over again. A habit that I have seamlessly picked up from my peers and everyone around me, but what does it mean? What do they mean by it? And how am I supposed to take it? Younger me, with those wide and curious little eyes, thought it to be something cute, like a mouse. It just has this ring to it. 
But soon I was told it was not so. The word that I giggled over was now the apex point of something heaving me down day by day. Something self-derogatory. 
One day, during that single silent moment amongst the many trivial ones, I reeled back to when stupid wasn’t stupid. At least for me. How did stupid turn to stupid? Then I went on experimenting, calling myself stupid in Finnish, German, and Spanish. Tyhmä. Dumm. Estúpida. Nothing. I felt nothing. 
It’s just so curious, I realized, that we, our own mind, keep on adding this value to something that is simply crushing us down. And I laughed and laughed and laughed, realizing the irony, how stupid this actually was, and how stupid we actually are.