People always say the same thing when you ask them to not use a certain word or expression:

I don’t actually mean anything by it.

It’s a free country.

I was just kidding.

I am intimately familiar with these rationalizations as I have used them all myself.

Alana stop being so retarded.

That word was the nuclear option in my arsenal of insults to hurl at my twin sister whenever we were arguing.

She would scream back at me,“I am not retarded!”

Still, it’s not like we were beating one another senseless. So what was the harm?

The harm was that Alana had been called retarded nearly everyday of her life.

School was a relentless hell for her. Home was supposed to be her safe space, the one place where she could just be Alana. Where she wouldn’t have to worry about people asking what was wrong with her or what she had, but it wasn’t—because of me.

So many of us do not have to live with the aftermath of the words we say. We spit them out and go on with our lives none-the-wiser. But I had to live with the pain I caused and this is what it looked like.

I call Alana retarded.

She screams. She sobs. She throws everything she can get her hands on. She simply breaks.

This was more than just an insult, more than just a heat-of-the-moment mistake. It was an accusation. It was an acknowledgement that no matter how hard she tried, no matter how many strides she made to better herself, to improve herself, she would still be seen as less than.

What horror it must have been to have your entire value as a human summed up in one hateful word.

The words we say do not exist in a vacuum. You take on the words of others, you envelop them, they become the foundation for your identity. You hear the echoes of others in your head but soon their voices fade away and they are replaced with your own.

Now, you are the one calling yourself retarded, stupid, different. You are the one telling yourself you don’t fit in, you’ll never fit in, so why try? And at some point you do stop trying. You simply just stop. Because every safe place you have known, your home, your school—even your own mind—has become tainted with these words that destroy you. These words dismantle you piece-by-piece until you are robbed of your pride, your dignity, the very essence of who you are. Until all you are left with is the pain and you are utterly consumed by it.

That pain doesn’t go away. That hurt cannot be erased by an apology.

Alana has lived with this pain all of her life and she always will. All because I thought I deserved to say whatever I wanted, because I thought it was my right.

So, I don’t say the word ‘retard’ anymore. Doing so costs me nothing. I suffer no hardship. It is not an inconvenience. It is simply preventing someone else from experiencing the agony I know I put my sister through. That’s the least I can do. It’s the least any of us can do.