are you hurt? are you... hurting?

I hate the phrase “Hurt people hurt people.” I understand it. And it ‘makes sense’ but aren’t we all hurt? Don’t we all have 'something' that's torn us apart at some point in our lives? At what point, do you decide that you’re not going to use the master’s tools? At what point do you say, "I’ve been hurt, I refuse to inflict pain. I refuse to send more hurt people out into the universe" At what point do you stop the cycle?

People do it. It can be done.

It’s not a matter of “Your blues ain’t like mine”. We all could point to something big in our lives and say, “This is why I’m mean” or, “this is why I made you cry... because someone made me cry once.” That’s not okay. That's never okay. You can’t excuse that kind of bad behaviour anymore. You can’t be okay with being hurt by someone because someone hurt them once. No. Nobody deserves it. You didn’t deserve to be hurt. But you sure as hell don’t deserve to pay for the people that hurt them once upon a time.