Not everything is sexual.
Not everything
is someone
trying to hurt you.
Not everything
is someone
trying to use you,
abuse you,
harm you.
Sometimes,
the people around you
want to love you.
Care for you.
Listen to you.
Know you.
Be there for you.
But when you have lived
through so much pain,
every shadow
starts to look like someone
waiting behind a tree.
Every hand
reaching toward you
looks like another hand
coming to take.
And maybe
it becomes easier
to pass the pain
to someone else,
not realizing
that it was not
their pain to bear,
just as it was
never yours.
So it travels.
From body
to body.
House
to house.
Generation
to generation.
Until suffering becomes
something inherited.
Something so familiar
you mistake it
for love.
And all it does
is make everyone sick.
You give them
the disease
someone gave you.
You lead them deeper
into the forest
and call it protection.
You make them afraid
and call it care.
When all they ever wanted
was for you
to be safe.
When all they ever wanted
was to feel safe.
To know you.
To love you.
The rest
I never asked for.
But I came back for it.
Again.
Because you all ached,
and all I ever wanted
was to understand.
So I followed
every sound.
Every shadow.
Every disappearing figure
between the trees,
believing that
if I went far enough,
I would finally find
the thing
that made all of this
make sense.
But there is no end
to a forest
you keep choosing
to enter.
There is no understanding
that can make cruelty
become love.
There are wounds
I cannot heal
by climbing inside them.
There are histories
I cannot rewrite.
There are a hundred years
of hurt
that do not belong
inside my body.
That was never
what any of us
were meant to be.
Not you.
Not them.
Not even me.
So I will stop
following.
I will stop carrying
what was passed
from hand to hand
before it reached mine.
I will leave the forest
without needing to know
who—or what—
was waiting
at its center.
That is yours alone.
May you find
your peace with it.