🥋 Hands Up, Heart Open: What They Didn’t See

I took a hit once in martial arts because I forgot to keep my hands up. It was fast, sharp, and humbling. But the hits that stayed with me weren’t physical—they came from people who never asked what I’d survived, only what I’d done wrong. In betrayal trauma recovery,  judgment often arrives faster than compassion. People want a clean story, not the messy truth. They just critique the ending.

This poem is for every survivor who’s been knocked down by silence, shame, and the need to explain pain to those who never bothered to ask.

                                                   What They Didn’t See

 They asked, “Why did you choose someone like that?” As if trauma hands you a map instead of a mirror. As if survival doesn’t disguise itself as love.

They said, “You’re too smart for this.” As if intelligence is armor for the heart. As if logic unknots the tangle of memory etched into your skin long before you knew what love was supposed to feel like.

No one asked, “Who taught you that love feels like walking on glass?” No one saw the child in the hallway who swallowed the truth whole, while chaos raged behind closed doors.

They didn’t hand out apology flowers— they handed down silence. Denial became the family heirloom. The unspoken sat beside us at dinner, louder than any scream.

And when I left— not just the relationship, but the shame and the need to explain myself— they called it sudden.

They judged the ending without reading the chapters that burned before it.

But I know this: I didn’t choose pain. I chose what felt like home— even when home was a battlefield.

And when I finally remembered I deserved peace, I chose to walk away. To build a new story. To choose me.

I don’t owe explanations to those who watched me hurt but still wanted a happy ending. I’m not here to soothe their discomfort with my survival.

I’m here to speak. To stay free. To end, what my father could not.

I am not ashamed of the girl who stayed— she was learning.

I am proud of the woman who walked— she is healed and whole.

I am not broken. I am not naive. I am not a cautionary tale.

I am the rewrite. I am the return. I am the one who remembered.

I am a Warrior.

Closing Reflection

If you’ve ever been asked to justify your survival to people who never asked the right questions—this is your permission to stop performing. You are not a cautionary tale. You are the rewrite. You are the return. You are the one who remembered.