No.
Not the creature that hops from branch to leaf, content in its own small orbit.
Not the one torn from the ground by a sudden force, lifted skyward only to be returned violently to earth in the rain. Not that toad.

I’m talking about a different kind altogether.

The kind that believes it has the right to govern other people’s movements. To shrink them. To make them so small they forget how to speak. The ones who wield volume, contempt, and entitlement like blunt instruments. You might assume I mean the obvious figures—the “big” men, the ones whose names echo through history and headlines. But no. I mean the far more common ones. The ones I meet weekly. Daily.

The rude ones.
The ones who don’t say thank you.
The ones who shout over a simple mistake as if cruelty were corrective.
The ones who silence others so completely that speech eventually mutates into a scream.

Those people.

It doesn’t matter where you’re from.
It doesn’t matter your gender, your sex, your race, your ethnicity.
It doesn’t matter if you are neurodivergent, disabled, exhausted, grieving, or bruised by life.

Yes, things may have been hard.
Yes, you may have suffered.
But hardship does not grant you permission to dehumanise others.

We all go through shit.
We all mess up.
The difference—the only difference—is whether you learn from it, challenge it, and grow through it, or whether you calcify into bitterness and call it strength.

For a long time, I let the toads of the world pin me down. I let them drain the colour from my days, the confidence from my voice, the softness from my spirit.

I was made to feel as though perfection were the entry fee for basic respect.

As though one misstep justified humiliation.

I am not perfect.
I never have been.
And yes—I have made mistakes.

But when I do, I bow my head. I learn. I change. I carry accountability instead of cruelty.

What I cannot comprehend—what I refuse to normalise—is intentional meanness. I cannot empathise with people who choose to harden themselves and call it survival.

So I call them toads.

Not as an insult, but as a coping mechanism. A way to laugh at behaviour that once wounded me. A way to strip power from those who deem themselves superior.

Because I am not inferior.
And neither is anyone else.

We are equals—fragile, complicated, unfinished equals. And if we grant each other space—real space, breathing room, grace—this world can be gentler than we pretend it is. It can be a place where people don’t merely endure, but thrive.

So if you are a toad—

Grow the fuck up.
Stop drowning in self-pity.
Look inward, honestly, uncomfortably.
And live your life for yourself—not in spite of others, and certainly not at their expense.

The world has enough smallness already.

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