re: Can words hurt you?

I'm about to get roasted for this, but here it goes.

I'm on campus about three years ago leaving a engineering class late one evening, probably around 6pm. I stuck around shuffling some papers or something for about 5 minutes so the building had already emptied out. As I come down the staircase and enter the building lobby a guy appears out of nowhere behind me. It was like he descended from the rafters or poofed out of some ninja smoke.

"Hey man! Question for you, but don't get mad when I ask"

"...Uhh, sure " (I know where it's heading from looking at the dude)

Never seen this guy in my life. Definitely not in my engineering program, and I don't think he is in any of the other engineering disciplines. Keep in my we're in a dedicated Civil engineering building.

"Are you gay by any chance?

"...sorry man, definitely not"

"Okay cool, see ya". He walks away.

This interaction screwed me up mentally for about a month. I didn't question my sexuality of course, I know I'm straight. But I began to wonder how people perceive me. Do I look gay? Am I walking gay? Do I dress gay? (I was wearing jeans and button down). I couldn't walk around in public without these questions lingering in the back of my mind. I had never really dealt with depression or mental illness, but this was the first time in my life I think I really experienced a type of 'mental anguish'. These thoughts consumed my life and took a real, physical toll on me. It cleared up after two-three weeks and I laugh about it now. Whenever the subject of verbal abuse or negative words come up I can't help but think of the interaction. I believe largely words like N***** or other common insults have lost much of it's power. It's the nuanced stuff that stings. This random guy who I had never seen before impacted my thought process for days, just using a couple of sentences and a 30 second interaction. So yeah, words can definitely harm you.

Maybe I just need to learn how to take a compliment.