Through the Fog

Tag: accountability

  • Fucked Up

    I know I’m fucked up.

    You don’t have to tell me.

    I’ve spent enough nights

    inside my own head

    collecting evidence.

    Every bad decision.

    Every person I hurt.

    Every bridge I burned

    then stood beside

    wondering why

    I had nowhere left to cross.

    I know.

    I know I’ve mistaken chaos

    for something familiar enough

    to call home.

    I’ve pushed away

    what felt too good

    and chased things

    that made me miserable.

    I’ve begged people to stay

    then made myself impossible

    to stand beside.

    I’ve wanted peace

    and somehow

    kept choosing war.

    That’s fucked up.

    But what nobody asks

    is how you get that way.

    How many times

    something has to hurt

    before pain becomes

    your first language.

    How long you have to survive

    before survival habits

    start looking like

    personality flaws.

    None of that excuses me.

    There are apologies

    I still owe.

    Things I’d undo

    if regret had hands.

    Versions of myself

    I wish I could sit down with

    and ask,

    What the fuck were you thinking?

    But I already know.

    I was hurting.

    And hurt

    doesn’t always make you gentle.

    Sometimes it makes you angry.

    Reckless.

    Distant.

    Sometimes it makes you destroy

    the very things

    you were terrified

    of losing.

    So yeah—

    I’m fucked up.

    But I’m also aware of it now.

    And maybe that matters.

    Because I don’t want

    to spend the rest of my life

    using my wounds

    as permission

    to keep creating new ones.

    I can’t rewrite

    who I’ve been.

    But I can decide

    who gets my name

    from here.

    And maybe someday

    I’ll look back

    at this version of me—

    messy,

    ashamed,

    trying like hell—

    and realize

    I wasn’t fucked up.

    I was unfinished.

  • I Dug My Own Grave

    I dug my own grave

    one bad decision at a time—

    not all at once,

    not dramatically,

    just slowly enough

    to call it living.

    A drink here.

    A lie there.

    Another thing

    I told myself

    I’d fix tomorrow.

    I kept throwing dirt

    over warning signs,

    burying the parts of me

    that knew better,

    that tried to speak up

    before everything got this deep.

    But I didn’t listen.

    I called it coping.

    Called it survival.

    Called it anything

    except what it was—

    self-destruction

    with softer language.

    And now I stand here

    looking down

    at the hole I made,

    realizing

    no one pushed me into it.

    That’s the hardest part.

    Not the damage.

    Not the regret.

    The knowing.

    Knowing my own hands

    built this.

    Knowing I became

    the thing

    I kept trying to outrun.

    But maybe

    that’s where change starts—

    not in pretending

    I’m innocent,

    not in blaming the world

    for every scar I carry—

    but in finally

    putting the shovel down.

    Because if I dug this grave,

    maybe I can still

    climb out of it too.

  • Powerful Words

    Powerful words

    aren’t always loud.

    They don’t always arrive

    with thunder

    or fists on tables.

    Sometimes

    they slip out softly—

    barely above a whisper—

    and still manage

    to split a life in two.

    “I’m done.”

    “I forgive you.”

    “It wasn’t your fault.”

    “I need help.”

    “I choose myself.”

    Five syllables

    can reroute a future.

    Three words

    can untangle years

    of silence.

    There are sentences

    that bruise.

    Sentences

    that resurrect.

    Sentences

    that sit in your chest

    for decades

    like a nail you never removed.

    I have said words

    I wish I could swallow.

    I have swallowed words

    that should have been set free.

    That’s the danger of language—

    it carries weight

    whether we mean it to or not.

    But there is power, too,

    in choosing carefully.

    In speaking truth

    without cruelty.

    In drawing boundaries

    without apology.

    In naming pain

    without weaponizing it.

    Words built the cages

    I once lived in.

    Words also

    handed me the key.

    Sometimes power

    isn’t in shouting.

    It’s in saying the right thing

    at the right moment—

    and meaning it.

    It’s in knowing

    that what leaves your mouth

    doesn’t disappear.

    It lands.

    And once it lands,

    it grows.

  • 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.

  • When Reality Sets In

    In sober living,

    the air was softer.

    Time moved slower,

    like the world agreed

    to lower its voice.

    Everyone spoke the same language—

    triggers, steps, boundaries, hope.

    Pain was expected there.

    Relapses whispered about,

    not shouted.

    No one asked why are you still struggling

    because the answer was obvious:

    you’re human.

    Out here,

    the volume is different.

    Bills don’t care how long it took

    to relearn how to breathe.

    People don’t pause

    because your nervous system is still

    learning how to stand upright.

    The world wants productivity,

    not progress.

    In the bubble,

    healing was the job.

    Out here,

    healing is something you’re supposed to do

    quietly,

    after work,

    without letting it show.

    Out here,

    bars glow like invitations.

    Old streets remember your name.

    Old versions of you

    wait patiently

    in familiar places.

    No one claps when you don’t drink.

    No one sees the war

    that didn’t happen today.

    Sobriety stops being a celebration

    and starts being maintenance.

    And some days,

    that’s the hardest part—

    realizing the safety net is gone,

    but the fear came back.

    Still,

    you wake up.

    You choose it again.

    Not because it’s easy.

    Not because it feels good.

    But because you remember

    what it cost

    to survive long enough

    to get here.

    The bubble taught you how to live.

    The real world teaches you

    how to keep choosing it

    without applause.

    And maybe that’s what recovery really is—

    staying sober

    when no one is watching,

    when the world is loud,

    and the comfort is gone,

    and you’re still standing.

  • After the Fact

    Nothing teaches you faster

    than the sentence

    I wouldn’t do that again.

    It doesn’t mean you’re wiser now—

    just more aware

    of the cost.

    Awareness isn’t loud.

    It doesn’t brag.

    It just changes how you choose

    when no one is watching.