Here are the facts:

I've gotten pulled over eight times in 2 years.

Four of which were in my first month of college.

I've gotten two speeding tickets.

I've been in two accidents where I was the driver.

Many people will and have judged me because all they know are those four facts. It's a natural thing to do, judge people based on the knowledge we have of them, however little or great. It's a mechanism your brain uses to protect you from potentially harmful people or situations. If you told me you are a registered sex offender I would immediately make a judgment about you and it would most likely affect how I treat you. However, we never know the whole story. You can be required to register as a sex offender for peeing behind a dumpster. But that label is there for life.

Those eight times I've been pulled over were small pointless things like having a dirty license plate or going out of a parking lot the wrong way. One of the accidents was a fender-bender where I was rear ended. Most these were dumb events that were mostly just unlucky and don't attest to my driving skills but more to my inexperience. The second accident was not as simple or inconsequential. Here's a brief run-down of what happened:

I came to a stop sign at a "T" in the road and stopped, planning on turning left. I looked left. A white car was turning onto the road I was on. I looked right and it was clear. I pulled into the intersection and looked left again. There was a black car coming fast that I hadn't seen before. I immediately stopped, not wanting risk going through the intersection. I hoped the other car would swerve around me, they had room to do so. But, the car hit me on the driver's side wheel, only two feet from my door. They immediately got out and started screaming and cussing at me and at each other. I immediately starting crying uncontrollably. I called 911 and 3 or 4 cops came. Nobody was hurt, not even a little, but the car was undriveable.

What people don't know or don't understand is how traumatic this was for me. The car was lent to me to use for college by my grandparents. I was on my uncle's insurance because I was living with him at the time. I was barely 17, it was my first year of college, and I wanted to prove to my parents I was mature and responsible enough to handle it. But that one moment, that failure to look one more time, made me, in my mind, a complete and utter failure to my uncle, my grandparents, and my parents.

But people don't know all that. What they know, from me or from what they here from others, is that I was in an accident and totaled my grandparents car. The most easy and seemingly logical conclusion is that I am a bad driver. That I was an irresponsible college student who can't drive. So they treat me differently. Through no intentional cruelty of their own, they distrust me, or worse, mock me. Because getting in an accident is hilarious.

Can we stop with the judgment? With the assuming and the gossiping and the teasing? And I'm not just talking about what happened to me. Things are almost never what they appear to be on surface level. Let's be kind. Let's give people the benefit of the doubt. Some people's mistakes may be more public or obvious than yours, but we all have made stupid decisions. Treat people as the human beings that they are not the person they once were. Everyone has dirty laundry. If we accept it and move on then maybe we'd get somewhere.