But Brother to the Silent

I was not born into love, but into the echo of slammed doors, the sting of silence after shouting, and the cold steel of a father's glance that never lingered long enough to soften. My name was never whispered gently. It was barked like a command, as if affection was a weakness we couldn't afford.

At five, I learned pain has many forms—some hands offer help, others only harm. Some hands are open, others closed into fists. I used to watch other children at school, with their clean clothes and shining eyes, and wonder what it must feel like to be safe. Their bruises were just scraped knees. Mine were invisible, but they ached deeper.

A teacher once asked me if someone at home hurt me. I wanted to say yes, but the words wouldn’t come out. I had already learned that truth has a cost, and silence was cheaper.

Our kitchen table was more battlefield than comfort. My bowl was always half-empty, not just of food, but of warmth, of kindness, of hope. I memorized footsteps. Some meant rage, others meant being ignored. Both cut deep. The walls at home echoed louder than the voices inside me.

Now I’m thirty-six. I have my own apartment, my own job, and a son. And still, when someone reaches for me, I tense. Not because I don’t want love, but because I never learned what safe love feels like. I carry my past in my skin. My history is written in reflexes, in sudden silence, in flinches I can’t explain.

Last week, my son looked up at me and asked, “Were you like me, Daddy?” I smiled and said yes, but I didn’t tell him the whole truth. He doesn’t need to carry that weight. He doesn’t need to know how close I came to becoming a man I swore I’d never be.

I have learned to love like someone learning a second language—slow, careful, often with mistakes. I cook for my son. I sing lullabies even though I can't hold a tune. I apologize when I’m wrong. I hold space for his fears, because no one ever held space for mine.

At twenty-one, I sat in a jail cell. My fists were tight. My heart was tighter. Across from me sat another man—angry, hollow-eyed—and I saw myself in him. Not who I was, but who I could become. I almost became my father. Sometimes, still, I feel him in the back of my throat when I yell. But I stop. I breathe. I tell myself: I am not him.

To those who saw me—bruised, withdrawn, angry—and did nothing, your silence lives in me, too. But louder than that silence are the few who stayed. The ones who didn’t look away. They saved me, piece by piece.

Today, I speak because I remember what it’s like to be voiceless. I write because I remember swallowing words like broken glass. I hold gently because I know what it’s like to be dropped.

I am not the pain I was handed. I am the person who decided to do something with it.

So if your hands shake when you try to hold yourself together, I see you. If you look in the mirror and see the face of someone who hurt you, but still show up for others—know this: you are brave.

We are not our fathers. We are not the fists or the silence. We are the breaking of that cycle. The voice in the dark that says, “This ends with me.”

Now, I build a different kind of home. Not with bricks, but with honesty. Not with fear, but with presence. My son laughs with a sound I never had growing up—and that laugh is my redemption.

If you, too, were raised in war but still choose peace—

If you grew up hungry for love but now feed others—

If your childhood was a graveyard, but you plant flowers anyway—

Then you are my brother. You are not alone.

I may be the son of none.

But I am brother to the silent.

And I will never stop listening.