When I hurt Me 💔

 

They say,
hurt people hurt people
and I believe them.
But the question that gnaws me hollow is this:
why do I keep choosing me as the target?

I don’t throw fists,
don’t spit venom,
but I’ve learned to bruise myself in quieter ways.
Like cutting sunlight out of my own sky,
like shoving daggers into my own reflection
with words sharpened by shame.

I tell the mirror stories
that are half lies, half curses,
and I swallow them whole
because the echo in my head still carries
my mother’s silence
her absence,
her stillness that screamed louder than any slap.
And my father’s rage
the kind that made walls tremble
and left me convinced love
was a battlefield I’d never survive.

So I became my own executioner.
I set fires in my chest
just to watch my peace burn.
I build bridges with trembling hands
only to strike the match
before my feet dare step forward.
Every time I try to hold myself,
I let go first.

I hand out love recklessly,
emptying pockets that were never full,
giving away pieces I needed to live
and wonder why my hands
always come back bloody and bare.

Tell me,
how can I forgive the world
when I am still on trial in my own mind?
When every weakness becomes a guilty verdict?
When every crack in me feels like failure,
like betrayal,
like proof I wasn’t strong enough to survive unbroken?

I punish myself for not being invincible.
For breaking.
For bending.
For swallowing screams
that still rot in my throat.
I learned pain like a prayer
every syllable holy,
every ache an amen.
I became fluent in guilt,
native in shame.

Now “I’m okay”
rolls off my tongue
like a crime scene covered in perfume.
My wounds smell like lavender,
but underneath they are still raw,
still festering.
Smiles stitched together with trembling thread
just strong enough to keep the world out
but inside,
I unravel daily.

They say trauma is a thief.
But me?
I was the thief and the accomplice
the one handing over my own joy,
my softness,
my right to rest.
I don’t need enemies.
I learned to play both victim and villain.
And the battlefield is always my own skin.

So again
why do I keep hurting me?

Maybe because I thought pain was the price of breathing.
Maybe because I confused survival with life,
numbness with safety,
emptiness with peace.
Maybe because nobody handed me the alphabet of healing,
so I grew up fluent in suffering
and illiterate in mercy.

But today,
my blood is tired of bleeding history.
My bones are tired of carrying ghosts.
My mouth is tired of spitting silence.
I am ready to learn another language
one where tenderness is not weakness,
where forgiveness does not mean forgetting,
where rest is not betrayal.

So I speak now, trembling but alive,
to the me who hid behind broken glass:
You don’t have to carve yourself open
just to prove you’re human.
You don’t have to mistake aching
for mattering.
You are not what they did to you.
You are not what you did to survive.

Yes—hurt people hurt people.
But healed people?
They split chains.
They rewrite bloodlines.
They build sanctuaries where fire once lived.

And maybe
just maybe
the healing starts here,
with me daring to stop the bleeding,
me carving a lane where pain isn’t the compass,
me choosing
for the first time
to be my own safe place.

Yes—hurt people hurt people.
But healed people?
They split chains.
They rewrite bloodlines.
They build sanctuaries where fire once lived.

And maybe
just maybe
the healing starts here.

With me daring to stop the bleeding.
With me carving a lane where pain is no longer the compass.
With me choosing
for the first time
to be my own safe place.

I am not the wound.
I am the scar that testifies.
I am not the silence.
I am the song that breaks it open.
I am not the ashes.
I am the flame that survived the burning.

Today, I refuse to be my own enemy.
Today, I stand
shaking, yes,
but unbroken.
The chain ends here.
The curse ends here.
The story bends
and this time, it bends toward freedom.

Because I am not what hurt me.
I am what healed in spite of it.

And I will not keep hurting me.
I will keep crowning me.
I will keep choosing me.
I will keep becoming
the healed one,
the free one,
the triumphant one.

 𓆩ᥫ᭡𓆪