“If you instigate the snake, you’re bound to taste its venom.” 

Today was a cooking day in my class and so several procedures had to be done in order for everything to work out. It all went well but I feel like it got ugly towards the end of class.

There’s this one person who naturally instigates everyone and he happens to be in my group. I’ve put up with him and his stupid remarks for about four months now, but today I just snapped. He was acting immature and created a mess after the group and I cleaned our work station. Naturally, I told him to clean it up because it was his mess. When he responded with a prima donna attitude and total disregard for my words, I just brushed it off because that’s just like him. But when he added comments saying that I should clean up the mess, along with irrelevant racist jokes, frustration was building up in me.

I came to my boiling point when he handed me the rag and told me to clean it. I threw it back at him and told him it was his food, so it was his mess. This person then made more remarks about me and prompted me to shut him up with just one word. People will say that my response was crass, crude, uncalled for, whatever. But it shut him up and even made my table quiet. I guess they didn’t expect me to come back at him because I’ve always given him this type of passive aggressiveness. Nonetheless, I said it and I knew it cut him deep.

When the bell rang, I just left the class because I didn’t want to deal with him anymore. I felt like I would have said some more if I did stay behind. After school, my friend from the group told me that he was telling his friends that his feelings were hurt because of me. I just scoffed when I heard the news and just went on with my day. 

People know that I’m not prone to confrontations. They are also aware that it takes a lot for me to retaliate in any way. So when I say that I talked back, they would know that this person had to have irritated me so much to have me spit my venom. I know I have an impeccable choice of words when it comes to insults. And I will use what will hurt the most and I won’t be afraid to use it. 

If you instigate the snake, you’re bound to taste its venom. It’s really immature to build someone to their breaking point. So if you want to dish out insults one after the other, at least be prepared to taste my venom.