When I Released Hurt in a Song
Learning and processing empathy and forgiveness through songwriting.
“Hurt people hurt people.” It’s a cliché, but not enough of one for me to always remember it. I struggle with anger, resentment, and a lack of forgiveness for abuse and other things I’ve been through. Some might be at peace with those feelings, but resentment especially can hold me back when I’m stuck in my head.
I’ve also heard people say, “When we get busy, we get better,” and that has definitely proven true in my life. Right now, I am working close to full-time hours across two jobs for most of the semester. Activity necessarily distracts me from the garbage in my head that, subtly or not, tells me that I am a victim without choices.
In thinking about my past, though, bullying and abuse from decades ago still haunt me. It shouldn’t take learning abusers have gone through trauma of their own to convince me to let go, however imperfectly, of my rage.
And yet that is exactly what happened in the mid-2000s as I was finishing high school. I was permanently struck nearly speechless about someone in my life when I found out about his life years after he left our school. This led to a big moment of healing in my life.
Still, I shouldn’t abuse myself either by focusing on pity for me or for that bully. I can use that healing to move forward.
***
I’ll never forget that feeling in my college dorm room in the fall of 2007 when I had a sudden urge, as I have occasionally, to write a song with the basic guitar chords I know. I think I was overcome by guilt thinking of the biggest bully I had in middle school.
He was an athlete who, it seemed, was improving academically and socially when he left our school. A teacher he had had in sixth grade told me towards the end of high school that this now young adult was in prison.
I never found out why he went to jail, but that forever changed how I viewed him. He was probably traumatized and later incarcerated, likely raped and further abused in prison.
I felt sympathy, even empathy, for someone who seemed like he would never stop calling me “faggot” a few years before. Holy crap, that was one powerful realization, that kids I viewed as all-powerful were fucked up people who, like me, were actively in pain and treated like garbage.
That doesn’t change the pain I felt as a kid, but even with that pain, a couple years after I found out that he was in jail, I wondered if I could have done something. Maybe I felt like that could have been me sent to prison at a young age. After all, when I was little, I was violent towards others, and maybe I still would be had I not gotten a lot of help.
Before I came to the school with that bully, there was a brief time in my life when I was a bully, teasing and treating a couple other kids like crap because I wanted to fit in. It can still be hard to forgive myself for that—and, at the same time, to forgive others who treated me like that.
That night in my dorm, I remember these words pouring out of me when I played five basic guitar chords in a couple different patterns. The words and music came easily, and I remember crying into a tape recorder at the end of the song:
“To a Prisoner”
You never beat me up with fists, only with words
And I suppose you had a reason why
I never thought I’d find the day when I’d write something like this song
But for all the times that I wanted to die
At least I had a home to come to
At least I had a family whenever I had tears to cry
And I’m sorry to hear how you ended up, in jail
But if it ever means you think you wanna die
I hope you never give up
And I hope you find some happiness to call your own
And I hope you pick up the pieces of your life
If only it meant you would find a home
Find a home
I remember coming home every day after school, all alone
After soccer, I suppose, you did the same
Far from the cushioned household that I became so proud of
Neither parent could ever accept the blame
I hope you never give up
And I hope you find some happiness to call your own
And I hope you pick up the pieces of your life
If only it meant you would find a home
Find a home
Find a home.
***
The tape has long been lost. But I still try to sing that song when I play original sets of music every once in a while. It matters to me that I got to that place of empathy, love, and, perhaps, humility to write anything like those words, partly because for many years growing up I had trouble expressing empathy towards others. Something must have opened those metaphorical floodgates because writing that song made me feel something I needed to feel.
I think of that song when I hear country artist Brandon Stansell’s song, “Hurt People.” But I also don’t want to use it to wallow in sadness and self-pity. I want to move forward.
And today, I am working on that. I work on being busy, I work on being with other people, and I work on being present. The ways I’m working to stay present have taken some interesting turns.
I’ve cut back or cut out use of headphones, sugar, and caffeine recently. It’s been surprising that I can abstain to a degree from these, especially because for many years I’ve used each of these as a coping mechanism for how uncomfortable I’ve felt with myself and the world around me. I need music to survive, perhaps, but gratefully, I can hear it in my head while being more aware of what’s around me when I’m walking the streets.
And I still struggle with forgiveness. A devoutly religious friend says that if you don’t forgive someone for something, that resentment is blocking you from God. I don’t know if that’s true, but I know that resentments get in my way. I let go of most of my hurt from middle school with that bully a long time ago, but there’s still some residual pain from high school, trauma that doesn’t make sense. The truth is that it doesn’t have to make sense. I can accept that I was treated like garbage and still move forward without focusing my energy so much on past hurt. This is very much a work in progress, but what those lyrics remind me is that hurt people hurt people, that everyone deserves empathy.
And I hope that he—and each of us—never gives up.