A letter to the ones who hurt us

When you said all those things to us to hurt us beyond repair - It didn't work.

Those words set us free.

Of course they hurt at first, when the sting from the wound was fresh.

After a while, though, those words became the truth you don't want to tell anyone else...

What you think of yourself.

That information is highly dangerous, of course, to those who would use it to hurt you. But that's why it was safe to give it to us because you know we never could.

We're not the type of people that would pour salt over your open wounds when you revealed them to us. Somehow, you knew that.

Maybe its the fact that we're so different from you, that reflection is so painful.

You have no choice but to try to hurt us so that we reflect less of the good you can't see in yourself.

It could be that you think we're smaller and weaker than you are. Even though we're actually stronger. You could never live through what you put us through. The humiliation, the daily barrage of hateful remarks, the constant negative regard.

Or maybe you did live through it, and you could never forgive your perpetrator. Yes, I think that's it. You could never forgive the one who did this to you, the one who hurt you and humiliated you and told you that you were worthless every day of your goddamn life... Until you became them. And now you can't forgive yourself because what kind of fucking monster does the things that you have done, the same things that hurt you so badly?

They say hurt people hurt people. I don't think that's true. I think hurt people who run away from healing and forgiveness hurt people. I think when you shove the bad things you've done into the dark recesses of your mind so that you can sleep at night, the bad things you have done to sooth yourself because you had no other way, I think that's the cause of your suffering and ours.

Because when you bring into the light the horrible things that happened. Not only that you've done, but the horrible things that happened to you, and you try to forgive, you find love there. Love that heals. Love that transcends all of the human conditions. Love that is proof of a God somewhere out there.

But when you let it fester in the darkness it becomes a poison that makes you hate. Hate everything and everyone. Of course, the thing you hate most of all is the thing that you've become. A monster made by hurt.

So no, your words intended to take away our dignity and our self respect didn't work. We are finding ways to forgive you. Even if that means you'll never sit in our shadow again, we forgive you. We will never become the monster we could have been.

Thank you for giving us liberty. Thank you for the opportunity to forgive the most unforgivable thing. We deserve freedom.

We deserve freedom.