All Of Your Spit and Spite, All Of Your Venom And Vitriol

Some people are born broken. Or maybe they choose it. Maybe, somewhere along the line, they saw compassion and turned their back on it. Maybe they tasted power through cruelty and decided it was enough to keep them fed for the rest of their life. I don’t know. I’ve stopped trying to understand. I used to try—God, did I try. I bent myself into apology, into empathy, into every shape I thought might make me easier to love, safer to be near. But you didn’t want understanding. You wanted submission.

There are people in this world who do not want peace. They do not want connection. They want control. They want the upper hand. And when they see someone kind, someone warm, someone willing to open their hands and offer love instead of armour, they don’t respond with grace. They respond with harm.

You took and took and took, like my light was something you were entitled to. You mistook softness for weakness. You mistook compassion for stupidity. And you thought that if you shouted loud enough—if you twisted the truth long enough—I’d start to believe it was me. But I know better now. I know who I am. I know what you did.

All of your spit and spite. All of your venom and vitriol. You hurled it like confetti, like something to celebrate. Like hurting me was a parade you threw for yourself. You carved yourself a legacy out of my pain, sculpted your sense of power from every flinch, every tear, every time I bit my tongue instead of screaming that you were tearing me apart.

But I am screaming now.

What you did to me didn’t end when you stopped speaking to me. It didn’t end when you found a new person to torment or when you spun the story so well that people still think you’re charming. What you did is still inside of me. In the way I doubt myself. In the way I second-guess my goodness, my softness, my right to feel safe.

You taught me to mistrust love. To see silence as safety. You taught me how to hide my heart so deep it would take years to find it again. You convinced me that kindness was a liability, that vulnerability was a danger, that boundaries were punishments. You taught me things I never wanted to learn—and I’m unlearning them now, one painful inch at a time.

You were a lesson. One I never asked for. One I learned through bleeding.

And still—still—I rise. Not because of you. Never because of you. But in spite of you. Despite the wreckage, despite the voice you tried to take, I am louder now. Brighter. You do not get to define me. You do not get to shape this story. I do.

You’ll never know the damage you did because people like you don’t look at the aftermath. You just get walked away from and claim that as a victory. Wreckage is something you leave behind, not something you try to make right.

But I’m still here.

And you will never get another piece of me.

This journal entry is for the ones who know what it feels like to be on the receiving end of a person who chooses cruelty over connection, destruction over love. It’s for every survivor of someone who revelled in their own rage and aimed it at the most tender parts of another human soul.

You did not win.
You never will.

I’m still writing. Still living. Still here.

And you?

You are nothing but an echo I no longer answer to.

Peace, Love, and Inspiration,
~Britt Wolfe