I didn’t always believe that saying,
it felt like something people used
to excuse damage they didn’t want to fix.
But lately,
it sounds a little too much like my own footsteps.
I’ve been paying attention to myself,
the quiet patterns,
the small choices that don’t seem loud
until they cause something meaningful to break. I’ve noticed how I pull away
right when things start to matter,
how I say things I can’t take back
just to feel like I’m in control once again.
It’s strange,
knowing exactly what will hurt you
and still walking straight into it
like it’s familiar ground.
When pain finds me,
I don’t sit with it.
I don’t ask it questions.
I run.
Not always with my feet,
sometimes with silence,
sometimes with distance,
sometimes with words sharp enough
to cut the very people who stayed.
And the worst part?
They didn’t deserve it.
Not the friend who kept checking in,
not the one who loved me gently,
not the family that stood close
even when I made it hard.
Yet somehow,
they end up carrying pieces of a storm
they didn’t create.
We’ve had the same conversations
more times than I can count.
The kind where apologies sound familiar,
where I promise change
but return with the same habits
wearing a different face.
I can see the exhaustion in their eyes now.
The quiet kind.
The one that doesn’t shout
but slowly stops expecting anything new.
And that realization,
that I might become someone
people have to protect themselves from,
that sits heavy.
So this year,
I made a decision.
Not a loud one,
not something I announced to the world,
just a quiet agreement with myself.
To stay.
To stay when it hurts.
To sit in the discomfort
without reaching for destruction as an exit.
To pause before reacting,
to feel without turning it into something
someone else has to heal from.
I’m learning that pain doesn’t have to travel.
It can end with me
if I’m willing to hold it
without passing it along.
I won’t pretend it’s easy.
Some days I still feel the urge
to fall back into what I know,
because chaos can feel safer
than being honest and still.
But I’m trying.
Not perfectly,
not all at once,
just honestly.
And maybe that’s where it begins,
not with getting everything right,
but with choosing,
again and again,
to not let my wounds
become someone else’s story to recover from.
Walking Shadow Poetry – Grow from what’s meant to kill you.
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