The Pain of a Cycle Breaker

I used to think that the most important thing in life was family. There was a time that you wouldn't catch me bad mouthing any of my own blood. But what happens when the lies are stripped away, and you're left with the cold hard truth? Does that change? Does it stay the same? There is a soft hatred where empathy once rested inside my chest.

The parts of me that love the idea of family cling to the forbidden testament that is ignorance. There is something about the fight of family. The drive to keep it together. There's something so special about seeing families come together for soccer practices and Christmas. Then I turn to mine, and I wonder at what point it all went wrong.

When I started this healing journey, I never imagined I would change in the ways that I have. I knew that there would be vast changes, but I always thought that it would just be a bunch of mushy happenings where I'd hug myself and magically become happy. There is so much more to it than that. A sickness lives inside of me. A curse. One that while I've found the cure for, leaves me depleted.

One moment I was this toxic, selfish person, who thought I was always right. The next, I rebuked that portion of me to become something so much more. Yet, I still feel like I'm standing on the outskirts looking in at something I'll never belong to. My whole life I'd looked past all of the hurt and the pain. There was surely a reason for it. Right?

I never imagined I'd look at the dynamic of what I once beamed at, as a bad dream I've yet to wake up from. Generational curses, mysterious history, lies and deceit are all that I've known. As I grew, I didn't understand it but now...well, now it's like trying on my first pair of glasses after struggling to see for so very long.

There is historical pain within my family but to think that it has gone on this long is so shocking. It's maddening. Having my own child opened my eyes to the way life really was growing up. When I think back to the life that I lived comparative to the life that I provide for my daughter it is so different. There is love, understanding, and respect between my sweet girl and I. Taking a gaze into the past not one soul stopped to understand me.

Now that healing has taken form, that misunderstanding has been deeply rooted in the hearts of all of the people I once looked up to out of fear. The clarity that has washed over me has broken my heart at the very same time. There is love left.... but its fading as I beg for the changes that we all know this family has needed for such a long time. Instead, we push past the idea that brighter days can come, staying comfortable within the flames of chaos.

I don't know if it will ever be the way I imagined. I don't know if I will ever see the change, I've been suffocating holding my breath for. But what I do know is that it hurts. It hurts to be the only one to even see that there is a problem. It is a lonely uncomfortable feeling. A feeling that surpasses time and space. My heart has never been so broken. My voice has never felt so small. But there is hope in the unknown. There is comfort in the notion that one day I will discover a village of people just like me. In a way I already have. Only it will never be them and that truly hurts me to the core.

It's hard to understand how this hurt causes so much anger, how my truth causes rage. I want to be understood. I want to be heard. I want them to see me. It just hardly feels worth my suffering. Maybe there is beauty in my mystery. Maybe there is beauty in the fact that I am nothing like them. I've yet to find the beauty of separation, only sadness has overcome me, anger to. There is this guilt so deeply rooted inside my chest. The guilt of change. I wonder often when this cycle will end. When my life will truly begin.