Deep thought…
If Compassion Hides Abuse, Then What Does Connection Even Mean?
She asked me why.
Why I pull away from kindness.
Why compassion makes me freeze.
And I told her something I didn’t even know I knew until I said it out loud:
“Because compassion hides abuse.”
And now I can’t stop thinking about it.
If compassion was the mask that pain wore…
If I learned to associate softness with danger…
If every gentle tone was followed by control,
then what does that make of connection?
What does that make of love?
I keep coming back to this one terrifying thought:
Maybe I don’t know how to feel safe with safe people.
Maybe the wiring in me has rotted from the inside out —
because I was trained to flinch at warmth and feel calm in chaos.
What if my nervous system mistook control for care?
What if my skin believes comfort is just manipulation in disguise?
What if connection — the real kind — has no home in my body?
It hurts to write this.
Because I want love.
I want presence.
I want to be seen and held without being devoured.
But I don’t know how to feel safe in softness.
I don’t know how to trust peace.
And when someone offers me gentleness,
my first instinct is to look for the blade hiding behind it.
Is that why I pull back from my children?
Not because I don’t love them.
But because connection feels dangerous.
Because when they reach for me with raw, aching need,
I feel the panic rise.
I feel it in my chest — the twitch, the brace, the shutdown.
And then the guilt.
Because I know they deserve tenderness.
And I’m trying to give it.
But sometimes their hunger for closeness
feels like a test I was never taught how to pass.
There are moments when I see their eyes looking for mine —
and my body freezes.
Not because I don’t care.
But because something in me still believes
that too much closeness
leads to pain.
And maybe that’s what trauma does best:
It teaches you to fear the very thing you crave.
But now here’s the part that shatters me:
Without compassion, there is no connection.
And without connection…
love starts to feel artificial.
Like a performance I’m trying to copy without ever having seen it done right.
Like saying “I love you” through glass —
knowing they hear the words
but not the warmth.
And here’s where it hits me hardest:
If these are the things I was wounded by —
if compassion, connection, and care were the very tools used to hurt me —
then how do I use those same tools without fear of hurting them?
What if I’m getting it all wrong?
What if the way I protect my children
is actually keeping them disconnected?
What if my hesitation to offer comfort
feels to them like rejection?
What if I’m trying so hard not to repeat the past
that I’m still passing it down —
in silence instead of violence,
in distance instead of dominance?
What if the absence of abuse
isn’t the same as the presence of love?
I thought I was shielding them.
By keeping things light.
By not pushing closeness.
By backing away when it got too raw, too loud, too much.
Because if compassion was what hurt me,
why would I hand that same weapon to them?
But now I’m wondering —
maybe my silence is just another kind of wound.
Maybe my lack of presence feels like the very betrayal I swore I’d never commit.
Maybe I’ve been so afraid of repeating history
that I’ve already become part of it.
And God, that terrifies me.
Because I love them.
I love them so much.
But love alone isn’t enough — not if I’m still locked in the cage of my own fear.
How do I give what I never received?
How do I teach them trust
when I don’t trust what lives inside me?
What if this isn’t just trauma I’m surviving…
but a curse I’m still carrying?
How do I heal from the past
while also learning to give what was never given —
when it’s needed most —
in a way that doesn’t pass the pain down?
That’s the question I’m holding.
Not to punish myself.
But to learn.
To break the cycle.
To bleed less into the future.
I don’t have answers yet.
But I’m asking. And maybe that’s the beginning
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Letters From the Edge 