The Cycle

content warning
this piece contains discussion of emotional pain, abuse, and suicide.
if these topics feel heavy for you today, please come back when you have space and support.
you are not alone.

some truths arrive slowly,
through conversation,
through observation,
through the recognition of watching patterns repeat.

this piece is not only my story,
but the story of the collective,
told through the moments i have witnessed,
the stories i have heard,
and the people i have met along the way.

the older i get,
the more i realise how much of life is a cycle,
a pattern we do not see
until we step far enough back
to notice it spinning.

as kids, we just want more.
more love.
more friends.
more belonging.
we chase connection, because somewhere deep inside
we already sense what is missing,
not realising it was never something
we could find outside ourselves.

from such a young age,
we start building our belief systems
from what we see, feel, and hear.
if we grow up feeling unseen or misunderstood,
those feelings take root,
quietly becoming the truth we live by.

we go to school already carrying that heaviness,
already believing we are not enough.
someone makes a comment about how we look,
how we speak,
who we sit with or do not,
and it lands like salt on a wound.
and we start to believe it,
because deep down, we already feared it was true.

like a little boy waiting out the front of school
for his dad to pick him up.
the sun is sinking,
the asphalt still warm beneath his shoes.
his backpack rests by his feet.
he watches the teacher lock the gate,
the jingle of keys the only sound left in the yard.
his dad is not cruel,
he is just still at work,
trying to prove himself in a world
that told him worth is measured in hours and paychecks.
but that moment,
that one quiet, empty moment,
becomes a lifetime of feeling forgotten.

like a little girl whose mother watches her weight too closely.
not out of hate,
but out of fear,
fear inherited from her own mother,
who once said she would be loved more
if she just lost a few kilos.
so now she counts every bite her daughter takes,
thinking she is protecting her from pain,
not realising she is passing it on.
and years later, that daughter will learn to count calories
instead of memories.

like a little boy who grew up having nothing,
who promised himself that when he became a father,
his son would never go without.
so he worked himself to the bone,
chasing security,
providing the best clothes, the best education, the best food on the table,
a car in the driveway and comfort in every corner of the house.
but his son never wanted any of it.
he only wanted a father who was present,
who stood beside him,
who saw him.
and when the son pulled away,
the father grew bitter,
unable to understand why his efforts were not enough,
not realising that the greatest gift
was never in the giving of things,
but in the giving of time,
of love,
of presence over presents.

like a boy who grew up in a home of bruises.
who watched his father’s hands become weapons
and learned that power meant control.
he told himself he would never be like him,
but the anger lived on,
silent and unspoken,
coiled beneath his ribs.
and when shame mixed with fear,
it found the only language it knew,
the one he was taught.
so he raised his voice,
he slammed the door,
he carried the ghost of his father into every room,
believing that was what love looked like.
and beneath the rage
was a boy who once cried behind his bedroom door,
too small to protect his mother,
too scared to leave.
a boy who only ever wanted to be held,
but never learned how to hold gently.

these are the moments that shape us,
quiet fragments of childhood that settle deep,
shaping who we become
until we look back and see
how they stitched our self worth together.

we do not realise that the people who hurt us
are often the ones hurting most,
passing along their unhealed pain
in the only way they know how.

we want to be seen.
heard.
understood.
we want our parents to understand us,
but they are still learning to understand themselves.
they are just people,
trying to keep a roof over our heads,
working jobs that drain them,
searching for love and friendship that often are not real,
buying things to feel something,
filling emptiness with alcohol, distraction, and noise,
because they never learned how to sit with silence,
or how to truly be with themselves.

and so the pattern continues.
their children grow up watching it all.
we mirror what we see,
not out of choice, but out of conditioning.
we drink too early,
give too much of ourselves away,
chasing the same fleeting highs our parents did,
the feeling of being wanted,
needed,
even if just for a moment.
because maybe that is what love is, right,
being wanted by someone else.

but then the cracks form.
the family home grows tense.
voices rise.
doors slam.
silence thickens like smoke.
no one really knows how to speak their truth.
so we run,
out of fear, out of hurt, out of habit.
we move out too early, take on debt too young,
just to prove we can stand on our own.
but independence does not heal loneliness.
freedom without self-awareness becomes another cage.

and the cycle keeps spinning.
we start numbing too,
with work, money, drugs, validation.
we think we are different from our parents,
but really, we are just wearing newer versions
of the same wounds.

and then came the screens.
the phones, the games, the endless scroll.
parents feared what the internet might do to their children,
but rarely asked what was missing
that made children reach for it in the first place.
it was not the apps that created the void,
it was the void that created the need for the apps.

when connection at home feels thin,
when conversations are short and tempers are long,
a glowing screen becomes the softest place to land.
online, you can choose who you are,
post the moments that look like joy,
and hide the ones that ache.
you can find people who say they see you,
even if no one in your house looks up from their own device.

so we became more connected than ever,
and yet more disconnected than ever.
parents hand over screens for silence.
children learn silence is safer than truth.
both call it peace.
but it is not peace,
it is numbness dressed as connection.
if home was the place where love was felt instead of performed,
maybe no one would need to go searching for it through glass.

and then adolescence arrives,
hormones, curiosity,
the wildness of wanting to be wanted.
we start to feel attraction,
mistaking desire for love,
thinking being touched means being seen.
and for those already carrying emptiness,
any spark of attention feels like oxygen.
we give too much of ourselves away,
to people who are also searching,
who confuse intensity with intimacy,
control with care.

like a young girl who gives her body away,
wanting to feel close, connected, and held,
only to discover those one-night stands
left her feeling more alone and rejected than before.

like a young man who learns that love is possession,
because that is what he saw growing up,
love that clings instead of nurtures,
love that fears instead of frees.

like a teenage girl who finally feels noticed,
but his love comes with rules,
do not wear that, do not go there, do not talk to them.
and she listens,
because she does not want to lose the one person
who made her feel chosen.

many stay through pain,
through words that wound,
through hands that should not.
not because they cannot see the damage,
but because leaving means facing the silence inside.
and for some, that silence feels unbearable.
so they stay,
mistaking survival for strength,
mistaking attachment for love.

and then adulthood arrives.
we step into the world still uncertain of who we are,
so we take whatever comes first,
a job that pays the rent,
a relationship that fills the silence,
a routine that feels safe enough to numb the emptiness.
we show up every day,
unfulfilled but convincing ourselves
that this is what life is supposed to be.
we are told to be grateful,
to stop complaining,
but how can we feel grateful
when our hearts are half asleep.

still, there are moments.
a shared laugh, a sunrise,
a child’s sleepy head resting against your shoulder.
for a second, the noise fades,
and you remember what real connection feels like.
the heart whispers, maybe this is how it begins to heal.

but for some, the heaviness grows louder than the whisper.
the accumulation of years,
of being unseen, unheard, unloved,
becomes unbearable.
and in that dark, quiet space,
some make the heartbreaking choice to leave.
to end the suffering
in the only way they can imagine.

those left behind ache.
they replay every moment,
every word they wish they had said.
and still, the cycle spins.

we blame the government,
the schools,
the systems,
the screens.

but the truth is, the breakdown began long before any of that.
it began when the family unit started to fall apart,
when people became parents before they had learned how to parent themselves.
when generations carried their shame, their wounds, their unspoken trauma
into new homes,
hoping love would fix what awareness never touched.

we were never taught how to heal,
only how to cope.
so we built families on foundations of survival,
not safety.
and as the cracks spread,
children left home too young,
running from chaos instead of being nurtured by it.
parents grew tired,
overworked,
overwhelmed,
trying to hold together lives they never had the tools to build.
the family fractured,
and from those fractures came loneliness,
addiction,
comparison,
and the endless chase for more.

and then the systems stepped in,
promising purpose,
promising safety,
promising that if we just worked harder, earned more, bought more,
we could fill the void left by our disconnection.
but they sold us a dream that was never ours.
they built an economy on our emptiness,
and we kept consuming,
believing that maybe this next thing would finally make us whole.

but if the family had stayed whole,
if parents had learned to heal before raising children,
if children had grown up feeling safe enough to stay,
if homes were built on connection instead of survival,
we would not have needed saving.
families could have grown together,
shared resources,
lifted one another up.
instead, each person carries their own debts,
their own exhaustion,
their own grief.

yes, the systems failed us.
but they only filled the gap we created when we stopped turning inward.
it is easy to point at governments, schools, and systems,
because blame feels lighter than responsibility.
it is easier for parents to blame the world outside
than to look at where they stopped showing up inside their own homes.
easier to say the system broke us
than to admit we let the distance grow,
that we did not bridge the gap,
that we allowed our families to slip through the cracks we refused to face.
parenthood is not ownership,
it is stewardship,
a sacred responsibility to nurture what you create.
but too many entered it unhealed,
still children themselves in grown bodies,
seeking from their own children the love they never learned to give.
and in that seeking,
the cycle quietly continued.

we have forgotten that no one is coming to save us.
because the one who saves you
is you.

it starts with awareness.
with choosing to stop running.
with learning to sit in the quiet
and hear the voice you buried under years of noise.
it starts with honesty.
with the decision to no longer hand your happiness
to systems, substances, or other people.
to parent consciously.
to love intentionally.
to stay when it is uncomfortable
instead of walking away.

that is how the cycle breaks.
not through blame,
but through presence.

imagine if we all did that.
if every parent learned to heal before raising a child.
if every child grew up feeling seen.
if love was no longer something we chased,
but something we remembered we already were.

because we were created whole.
from the very moment of conception,
a single soul, complete, growing, expanding.
we did not need to earn love.
we did not need to prove our worth.
we were born from it.

and if we could all remember that,
that love, connection, and purpose were never meant to be found out there,
but rediscovered in here,
maybe the world would not feel so lost.

maybe we would finally stop searching,
and start being.

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if this piece stirred something in you,
take a breath before you move on.
write. walk. talk to someone you trust.
you are not alone.
lifeline australia 13 11 14

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author’s note
this piece was written from observation as much as from experience.
from the conversations i have had with people,
the stories shared over tears and tea,
from people still learning to come home to themselves.
it is a reflection on generational cycles,
the ways patterns of pain, silence, and longing
pass from one family to the next
until someone chooses to see them,
to soften them,
to stop them.
these words are for the ones learning to do just that.
for those willing to turn inward,
to meet what hurts,
and to remember that healing does not just change a life,
it changes a lineage.
because awareness, real and raw awareness,
is how we break the cycle.

-A