haters

My husband just got a really ugly and transparent email from a student for whom he had refused to write a letter of recommendation. Her virulent and hateful reaction to his declining to write for her hit me so hard it made my head spin. She even used profanity, calling him vulgarities I'm afraid I'm unwilling to reprint here.

I'm spinning, and weeping, too, because it upset me so much to read it. And yet it wasn't even directed at me.

These are the effects of hate and ugliness: they spiral outward in directions we can't possibly anticipate. I don't even know this woman; her venom was not directed at me, and yet it has affected me so profoundly that I can't work anymore and I'm practically in tears.

These people don't know what harm they do.