Breaking Cycles

There’s something I’ve realized lately that honestly keeps bothering me more and more the older I get: everyone has been through something.

Seriously. Everyone.

Some people grew up in broken homes. Some people got cheated on, abandoned, lied to, manipulated, bullied, abused, ignored, betrayed by people they trusted most, or forced to grow up way too fast. Some people carry trauma so deep they don’t even know how to explain it out loud. Life is hard. People are cruel. Bad things happen every single day.

I know that because I’ve lived through things too.

And no, I’m not saying that for pity. I’m saying it because I understand what it feels like to be hurt so badly that it changes you for a while. I know what it feels like to sit with anger, sadness, resentment, insecurity, trust issues, all of it. I know what it feels like to wonder why certain things had to happen to you while other people seem to move through life untouched.

But despite all of that, I still made it a point to not become a shitty person.

And I think that matters.

Because somewhere along the way, society started excusing horrible behavior with trauma. We normalize people treating others terribly because “they’ve been through a lot.” We shrug off manipulation, cruelty, selfishness, dishonesty, disrespect, and emotional damage because someone had a rough past.

And look — I get it. Trauma changes people. Hurt changes people. Pain absolutely affects the way we move through life. But at some point, there has to be accountability too.

Your past explains you. It does not excuse you.

There’s a difference.

You can acknowledge what happened to you without using it as a weapon against everyone around you. You can admit you’re hurting without making other people bleed because of it. You can struggle without destroying innocent people in the process. I’m honestly tired of people acting like pain gives them permission to be awful. It doesn’t.

And maybe this hits so hard for me because I know how easy it would’ve been to become bitter. Trust me, I’ve had moments where I wanted to shut down completely. Moments where I wanted to stop caring because caring got me hurt. Moments where I understood why people become cold.

But every single time, I kept coming back to one thought: why would I want to become the exact type of person that hurt me?

That’s what I don’t understand.

If you know what betrayal feels like, why would you betray people? If you know what abandonment feels like, why would you abandon someone? If you know what disrespect feels like, why would you intentionally disrespect others? If you know how deeply words can wound someone, why would you use yours carelessly?

You would think pain would make people softer. More understanding. More compassionate.

But sometimes it does the opposite.

“Hurt people hurt people” is one of the truest things I’ve ever heard, but I think people forget there’s another part to that conversation. Hurt people also have a choice. A choice to heal. A choice to grow. A choice to stop the cycle instead of continuing it.

And healing is hard. Nobody talks enough about how exhausting it is to actively work on yourself. It’s easier to stay angry. Easier to blame the world. Easier to keep acting however you want and saying, “Well this is just how I am because of what happened to me.”

But eventually, that stops being healing and starts becoming identity.

Your trauma is not your personality.

There comes a point where sitting in your pain and refusing to grow from it becomes a decision. And once it becomes a decision, it becomes your responsibility.

I think some people are addicted to being victims because accountability feels heavier than blame. If everything is everyone else’s fault, then you never have to look in the mirror. You never have to admit that maybe you’re hurting people too. Maybe you’re becoming someone you once hated.

And honestly? That scares me.

Because I never want my pain to become an excuse for ruining someone else’s peace. I never want someone to leave a conversation with me feeling smaller, unloved, manipulated, anxious, or emotionally destroyed because I refused to work on myself. I never want to hand my trauma to another person like it’s their burden to carry.

That’s not healing. That’s projection.

I think one of the strongest things a person can do is choose kindness after life gave them every reason not to. Not fake positivity. Not pretending everything is okay. Real kindness. The kind that comes from understanding pain so deeply that you never want to become the source of it for someone else.

And no, that doesn’t mean being perfect. We all mess up. We all have moments where our pain leaks out onto other people. We all react badly sometimes. We’re human.

But there’s a huge difference between making mistakes and making cruelty your lifestyle.

Some people genuinely don’t care who they hurt as long as they feel justified. And that mindset is dangerous. Because when people stop taking responsibility for the damage they cause, they become comfortable in it.

I’ve met people who wear their trauma like armor and use it to defend every toxic thing they do. They ghost people, manipulate people, lie, disrespect boundaries, emotionally drain everyone around them, then act shocked when people walk away. At some point, enough is enough.

You cannot heal by destroying others.

And honestly, to the people who constantly find themselves being hurt by people like this — it is okay to walk away. I think a lot of people need to hear that.

It is okay to love someone and still realize they are not good for you. It is okay to understand someone’s trauma while also acknowledging the damage they continue to cause. Compassion does not mean tolerating disrespect. Understanding someone’s pain does not mean sacrificing your own peace to save them from it.

Some things are more important than maintaining a relationship. Your mental health matters.Your peace matters.Your self-respect matters. And sometimes walking away is not giving up on someone. Sometimes it is finally choosing yourself. Whether it’s family, friends, relationships, or people you thought would be in your life forever, you are not obligated to stay attached to someone who continuously hurts you just because they are hurting too.

That is one of the hardest lessons to learn.

Because people love to guilt others into staying. They’ll tell you “they’ve been through a lot” or “that’s just how they are.” But if someone refuses to heal and continues to make their pain everyone else’s problem, you do not have to drown with them.

You can love people from a distance.

You can wish them healing and still walk away.

And maybe that sounds harsh, but constantly excusing toxic behavior only enables it. Sometimes losing people is the consequence that finally forces someone to look at themselves.

The world would be so much better if people stopped romanticizing brokenness and actually started healing from it.

Go to therapy. Journal. Talk to someone. Sit with your emotions. Learn communication. Apologize when you’re wrong. Break patterns. Take accountability. Do the uncomfortable work.

Because the truth is, everybody is carrying something. Everybody has scars you can’t see. Everybody has reasons they could become angry, bitter, selfish, cold, or cruel.

But not everybody chooses to stay that way.

That’s the difference.

Your past is not what defines you. What defines you is what you choose to do with it.

And maybe that’s what I want people to understand most.

I am not minimizing pain. I’m not saying healing is easy. I’m not saying people should magically move on from trauma overnight. Some wounds take years to process.

But I am saying this:

At some point, your healing becomes your responsibility.

Not because what happened to you was fair. Not because you deserved it. Not because your pain isn’t real.

But because if you don’t deal with it, eventually other people pay the price for wounds they never caused.

And that’s not okay.

We need more people who choose self-awareness over ego. More people who choose growth over excuses. More people who choose softness even after life hardened them. More people willing to say, “Yeah, I’ve been through hell… but I refuse to become hell for someone else.”

That kind of strength is rare now. But it matters. And maybe if more of us stopped using pain as permission to hurt people, this world would feel a little less heavy.

So yes, hurt people hurt people.

But healed people heal people too.

I think I’m feeling this extra recently because, truthfully, I feel like I’ve been on both sides of it.

I am still learning. I am still growing. I still have moments where I let my emotions get the best of me and I take things out on people who didn’t deserve it. And for that, I am sorry. I’m not perfect, and I won’t pretend to be. But I do recognize it. I recognize it after I’ve done it, and I’m trying to be better.

I've been on the other side of hurt too, it has made me realize even more that there really is no place or time for hurting people. Whether it is my doing or someone else’s, it is time to grow the hell up and move forward, truthfully.

Take a moment to reflect. Look at yourself honestly. Own what you’ve done, heal from what was done to you, and stop making pain everyone else’s problem.

Let’s all be better humans.

Love always, M