A Letter to the Ones Who Looked Away

There’s a kind of pain that doesn’t leave bruises.
No blood. No breaks.
No bandages to make people ask, “Are you okay?”

Instead, it lingers quietly, shaping who you are in the shadows—until one day, you realize you’re not just hurting from what happened to you…
You’re hurting from who didn’t care enough to ask.

This is for the ones who have been betrayed by their own blood.
The ones who were exiled by their own family—not for doing something wrong, but for surviving something no one took the time to understand.

You want to know what it feels like?
It feels like watching the people who watched you grow up… disappear.
It feels like being judged by people who never even bothered to know the chapter you’re in—because they’re still clinging to the table of contents.
It feels like drowning quietly while your “loved ones” discuss whether your suffering is real enough to matter.

When you leave an abusive partner, it doesn’t feel like freedom right away.
It feels like war.
Like dragging your broken self across a minefield of shame, fear, and grief, just hoping you’ll still have a heartbeat on the other side.
You don’t leave because it’s easy.
You leave because staying is slowly killing you.

But people don’t see that.
They don’t see the manipulation, the gaslighting, the way your sense of reality was dismantled one lie at a time.
They don’t see the panic attacks. The checking over your shoulder. The way you flinch at raised voices.
They don’t see the courage it takes to say, “This isn’t love. This is destruction.”

Instead, they see you anxious. Emotional. Isolated.
And they say, “She’s unstable.”
“She’s dramatic.”
“She’s crazy.”

They talk about you like you’re a case study—not a human being.
And here’s the worst part: They do it without ever picking up the phone.
Without asking, “What happened?”
Without saying, “I don’t understand, but I want to.”

Instead, they whisper.
They assume.
They judge from afar.

And then they wonder why you don’t come around anymore.
Why you’re distant.
Why you’re guarded.

Let me tell you something—
Survivors don’t owe you their vulnerability.
We don’t owe you pretty packaging for the ugly truth we lived through.
We don’t owe you silence just because the truth makes you uncomfortable.

If you have never taken the time to ask what someone went through—
If you have never tried to understand what surviving abuse actually does to a person—
Then you don’t get to roll your eyes when they can’t trust easily.
You don’t get to label them “too sensitive” when they’re triggered by things you’ll never understand.
You don’t get to call them broken when you were never there to hold any of the pieces.

To be betrayed by an abuser is expected.
To be betrayed by your own family is devastating.
Because somewhere, deep down, you always hope that blood means something.
That someone, somewhere in that tangled family tree will reach for your hand and say, “I see you. I believe you. I’ve got you.”

But sometimes, they don’t.
Sometimes, they walk away.
Or worse—they stay silent, and their silence speaks louder than any insult ever could.

So this is a call-out to anyone who has ever sat in the comfort of their own assumptions while someone they “loved” was fighting for their life:
Do better.

Don’t wait until it’s too late to say, “I didn’t know.”
Because you could have.
You could have asked.
You could have shown up.
But you didn’t.

To the survivors reading this:
Your pain is valid.
Your story matters.
And you don’t need anyone else’s permission to heal loudly, unapologetically, and on your own terms.

They don’t get to define your worth because they never bothered to learn your truth.
And if they walk away? Let them.
Because you are not here to make other people comfortable at the expense of your own soul.

You are here to reclaim your voice.
To live your truth.
To become whole—whether they understand you or not.

-AG-