Hurt People Hurt People

They say

hurt people hurt people

like it’s a proverb

you’re supposed to swallow whole—

like pain is a permission slip

passed quietly

from one trembling hand to another.

As if wounds

are instructions.

As if bleeding

is a language

that only knows

how to say

come closer

so I can show you

what it did to me.

I have been hurt.

Deeply.

In places that still echo

when someone shuts a door too hard.

But I learned something

in the dark:

Pain explains behavior.

It does not excuse it.

There is a difference

between understanding

and allowing.

Between empathy

and self-abandonment.

Yes—

hurt people hurt people.

But healed people

break the pattern.

Healed people

feel the fire rise

and choose

not to hand it forward.

Healed people

sit with the ache

instead of building

a throne out of it.

I am learning

that my scars

are not weapons.

They are reminders

of what I survived—

not what I’m entitled

to inflict.

If I bruise you

because I was bruised,

then the chain continues.

If I pause—

if I breathe—

if I choose differently—

then something ancient

ends with me.

Maybe that’s the real inheritance:

not pain,

but the moment

someone finally decides

it stops here.