I'm Adeli Mone and this is The Slowdown.

I was thinking the other day about how contagious hurt can be.

I remember feeling very hurt by a breakup in New York City years ago and everything

I did or said was poisoned by that hurt.

I remember being in a cab with a friend going from Manhattan back to Brooklyn and just

nastily picking apart the personalities of everyone we had just been with.

And my friend, my dear friend, she wouldn't agree with me.

She wouldn't back me up.

She wouldn't say what I wanted her to say, which was that everyone was awful and everything

in the world was terrible.

She wouldn't say it and I held it against her.

I still remember the smell of the heat coming on in the cab, the human smell of the seat,

the flashing red lights in the rain on McGinnis Avenue.

The whole world was against me.

Later that night, she sent me an email saying she realized I was hurting and observed that

it made me want to hurt everyone else.

She was so kind about it, but also so honest and I knew it to be true.

I had been heartbroken and stuck and grieving and I wanted everyone to grieve too.

And I also wanted everyone to just be wrong because if they were wrong, maybe I could

just this once be right.

If it hadn't been for that email, I might have gone on spreading my hurt, which was the

opposite of who I was.

...