Bloodline

They say blood is thicker than water.

But no one tells you how heavy it can feel.

I was born into a family where no one said “I love you” out loud.
Where silence was tradition.
And suffering ran through our veins like some kind of inheritance.

We bled, not from wounds — but from words unspoken, truths buried too deep, and the weight of expectations passed down like sacred curses.


---

My father never hit us.
But he didn’t need to.

His silence could choke a room.
One look could send us to our knees.

He bled from his hands every day — the kind of blood that came from honest work and broken dreams.
But he never showed pain.

> “We don’t cry,” he used to say.
“We hold it in. That’s what men do.”



So we did.


---

My brother, Adeel, was the golden one.
Strong, stoic, brilliant.

He followed in my father’s footsteps like a soldier marching to a war he never asked for.

I followed too — quietly, always two steps behind.


---

One night, Adeel got into a fight outside a gas station.
Someone said something. He said something back.

A broken bottle. A flash of red.
And just like that, real blood was spilled.

We rushed to the hospital.
My mother praying under her breath.
My father… silent.


---

Adeel survived.

Barely.

He was never the same after that.
He stopped eating.
Stopped laughing.
Started drinking.

“Men don’t talk,” Dad said. “They get through it.”

But Adeel didn’t.

He bled differently now — from the inside. Quiet and constant.


---

One day, I found him in the bathroom.
Pale. Barely conscious.
Wrists open.

I screamed. He didn’t.

That was the first time I understood that blood wasn’t just a metaphor in our family.

It was our language.


---

He lived. Again.
But he left a note taped to the mirror:

> “You never asked how I felt. You just assumed I was fine.”



That sentence still slices through me like glass.


---

After that, everything changed.

Dad started going to bed earlier.
Mom began lighting candles and praying harder.
I… started writing.


---

I kept a journal full of the things we never said:

“I’m scared.”

“I don’t know how to be a man.”

“I love you.”

“I wish someone would just hold me.”



---

Then one day, I showed my father the notebook.

He didn’t read it at first. Just stared at it like it was some foreign object.

Then he asked,

> “Why write this? What’s the point of remembering pain?”



I looked him straight in the eyes and said:

> “Because pretending it didn’t happen hasn’t helped us either.”



He didn’t respond.

But the next morning, I saw the notebook on his table — flipped open to the first page.

A mug of tea sat beside it.

That was his version of a conversation.


---

Sometimes, love looks like pain passed down and finally broken.


---

Now, years later, I work with boys like Adeel.

Boys who’ve been told to man up.
To shut up.
To never cry.

I teach them that strength isn’t silence.
That blood doesn't always have to carry history — it can carry healing too.


---

One of them once asked me,

> “Do you think pain can be passed down in blood?”



I said,

> “Yes. But so can courage.”



He smiled.

I knew he understood.


---

Adeel lives far away now.
He paints. Sells art online.
His wrists are scarred but his eyes are soft again.

We call every Friday.
Sometimes we talk about dad.

Sometimes we don’t.


---

The other day, my father — now slower, older — asked me,

> “Do you think I ruined him?”



I said:

> “No. You just didn’t know how to hold him.”




---

There’s something beautiful about broken men learning how to be gentle.

Something tragic about how long it takes.


---

Blood doesn’t have to be destiny.

You can rewrite your story.

You can choose what gets passed on.

You can bleed — and still live.


---

............❤️👇👇👇👇

This story is fiction, but for many, it’s emotionally real. If you grew up in a family that didn’t talk about feelings… if silence was louder than screams… if you’re trying to unlearn the pain your blood gave you — this is for you.