Some teach you things. Others force you to learn things on your own.
Like a child left out in the rain without a coat, eventually you get sick from being cold for too long.
Abuse disguised as protection. Protection from who? From what?
When outside felt safer than inside, although outside came with its very own abuse and being far away felt more peaceful than being close, even though closeness was all you ever wanted.
Maybe that’s why you did what you did. Why you accepted what you accepted.
Abuse disguised as protection in such devastating ways that the mind fogs it over just to survive. It buries the truth, softens it, hides it from itself. Until one day it begins to untangle. Piece by piece, everything returns.
And it always seems to happen later. Later, when you’ve already lost so much. Later, when there’s no railing left to grab onto, nothing to keep you from falling. The truth finally arrives, and you’re left standing in the wreckage of everything it took to uncover it.
But that’s where the beauty begins. In the truth.