11 Things people who lived in broken homes understand

Growing up in a broken home can be quite the shitty experience. Those who grow up in toxic households understand the difficulty of seeing our own families in many different lights and most of those things that are brought to light we’d rather not see:

1. We know vulnerability. We’ve seen hearts break like glass in those moments of intense fighting, yelling matches, and door slams. Those who come from broken homes know the ugliness that was vulnerability in which we saw a weakness we didn’t want to see in our parents and siblings. We were either the ones who had to lend a shoulder for tears or were on that shoulder ourselves.

2. Which is why we do our best not to show it…because we end up hating vulnerability since we’ve had to constantly see the gory side of it.

3. That familiar dread of going home. People who have lived in broken homes know that feeling of not wanting to come home. We find home in other places as well as the hearts of our closest friends, so we try to stall as much as we can so we don’t have to go “home” so soon.

4. We become compassionate towards others. We recognize pain all too well. Whenever our best friends come to us in drunk tears after bad break ups or major losses, we’re always there for them because we want to be the person we needed when we were in pain at home.

5. We become our own bullies…because it seemed that nothing we did was enough. There was always something wrong with us. It becomes so constant that we end up becoming our own harsh critics. We become very self-aware so no one else can become aware of us.

6. We’re not the best at expressing our emotions. We try to guard our emotions in fear they may be used against us, which can cause us to be bad at expressing them. Our emotions tend to come out at the wrong times.

7. We can read people like a book. We understand the traits of a toxic person or relationship since we’ve experienced them before. It’s why we’re able to differentiate those who are harmful to our lives and those who are not. It’s also why…

8. We’re selectively social…because we’ve already been through exhaustively intense drama and we certainly don’t want to have to go through it again.

9. We become overprotective of the ones we love. Some of us have had to protect our siblings or even our parents from pain and we carry that sense of being a protector with our closest friends and lovers.

10. We hate, hate, hate tension. In our households, we’ve experienced tension so strong, that it was almost bendable. Tension for us is a ticking time bomb and we try to avoid it at all costs. We’d rather confront problems before they could even manifest.

11. We strive to succeed…because it gives us the assurance that we do matter and that life gets better with time.