People hurt you. People you love. Your parents, an old boyfriend or girlfriend, a relative or even a friend. They hurt you and then they die. They leave before you have the opportunity to “show them”. They exit this world before they can apologise to you or see you succeed and move on without them. And so you carry that anger, unexpressed.

Because you can no longer punish the ones who hurt you, you turn to the ones who love you. You lash out when people are nice to you or when they do good to you. Sometimes, you wonder at your level of distrust and suspicion but you can’t seem to help it.

The thing is, the one you love has become a proxy for the one you hate. They are paying for the sins of the one who left. Someone MUST pay and so you punish the one who is available.

You need to forgive. You need to let go of the one who damaged and hurt you. Until you do, you can’t fully love the one you’re with.