Through the Fog

Tag: trauma recovery

  • Get What I Deserve

    I used to think

    getting what I deserve

    meant punishment.

    Like life was keeping score

    in some quiet ledger—

    every mistake inked in permanent,

    every failure waiting

    to be returned to me

    with interest.

    So I braced for it.

    For the fall.

    For the loss.

    For the moment

    everything I touched

    would finally reflect back

    what I believed about myself.

    Not enough.

    Too much.

    Hard to hold.

    Easy to leave.

    I called that honesty.

    I called that accountability.

    But it was just

    familiar cruelty

    wearing my voice.

    Because the truth is—

    I’ve already paid

    for things I didn’t deserve.

    Stayed too long

    where I was shrinking.

    Apologized

    for taking up space.

    Carried weight

    that was never mine.

    And still,

    some part of me

    thought balance meant

    more suffering.

    Like peace

    had to be earned

    through exhaustion.

    But maybe

    getting what I deserve

    isn’t about pain at all.

    Maybe it looks like

    rest without guilt.

    Love without proving.

    Being met

    without begging to be understood.

    Maybe it’s waking up

    and not immediately

    putting myself on trial.

    Maybe it’s this—

    learning that I am not a debt

    waiting to be collected.

    And for the first time,

    when I say

    “I want what I deserve,”

    I don’t mean consequences.

    I mean

    something gentle

    finally staying.

  • 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.