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.
Through the Fog 