How much do you curse and why?

I’ve been surrounded by cursing for as long as I can remember. During elementary school, most of it came from my brother, a little came from my parents, and a tiny amount came from my friends. And yet, I didn’t curse at all during that time. I was an innocent kid and knew that those words were bad and that there were certain things that only adults could do. We were unallowed to say them at school, after all. Plus, my parents told my brother off every time he cursed in front of me so that I wouldn’t pick it up from him. And I guess it worked. Although to be fair, I don’t think many elementary school kids cursed anyways, so it’s not like I was unique in this regard.

However, when I got into middle school, I started seeing a lot more of it. I made new friends that cursed, I saw my brother curse more, I saw my parents curse sometimes, and I saw my favorite YouTubers curse. At that point, I had been surrounded by enough cursing that I just let it out. And plus, I thought I would be cooler if I did something that younger people weren’t allowed to do. I took baby steps, of course. It started out with a small amount. But then, I gradually started using them more and more, to the point where it honestly was stupid.

I used to have this friend that hung out with me often. I don’t know how or why, but we developed our own special goodbye. Can you guess what it was? Yup, we cursed at each other. Every time we parted ways, we would say “f*** you” to each other. I guess we thought it was funny? I don’t think we thought it was cool at that point. Well, maybe still a little bit cool. But by that point, I just thought cursing was normal.

On one particular day, as that particular friend was leaving, my dad happened to be in the same room. You might think that I would use my brain and just leave him with a normal farewell. But because I had developed such a natural tendency to curse, I continued to say it to him, and he said it back to me. My dad, obviously having heard me curse out loud right in front of him, tried to confront me about it. That started some kind of shift. Gradually after that day, I started cursing less and less. I had gotten a shock reminder that yes, in fact, it was a bad thing to do. If I wanted to let out my anger, I could instead say more family-friendly phrases like “dang it”.

   But now, my cursing has slowly come back. I don’t curse quite as much as I used to, but I’d imagine that I do so more than average. I started to realize that it can be kind of fun in certain situations. There’s just something about saying them that feels satisfying. Maybe it’s the fact that we are “rebelling” against something? Or maybe it’s just that curse words actually meant to have a satisfying sound. Perhaps it’s the hard endings like the “ck” and “t” or “tch” that make it really fun to say. And yet, when I try to come up with my own words that follow a similar format, it’s just not the same. It just feels nice to let one out every once in a while, and I don’t know why. But what I do know is that I’ve been scarred by people like my brother, and that there’s no reverting to my innocent self.