We are victims of our upbringing, a product of our race.

We say to ourselves:

“I was abused as a child.”

“My folks didn’t love me enough.”

“As a child, I was often criticized.”

We make promises to ourselves, to not relieve the pain, to never inflict upon another, the trauma of what we suffered as children.

But we forget.

We forget that what we fear is precisely who we are.

The abuse, the criticism, the wild talks, and shits, thrown at us by our forebears, has molded our character, our perception, our subconscious.

We berate our spouses. Yell at our children, verbally and emotionally abuse the people we love.

A part of us cringes with reminders of becoming who we thought our parents were.

But, hey…
We shrug it off with the rational thoughts of:

“She made me do it.”

“He made me do it.”

“If only they were smarter.”

We fail to recall who our father was -a spirit breaker.

With his angry tirades, speeches, rational arguments, and justified upbraids, he slowly, but inevitably, broke us.

And made us who we are today… A repeat of who he was.