Blame. It’s thrown around like a hot potato. Like it’s a game. Who will get left with the blame in the end? Nobody likes this game, so why do we still play? We don’t want to lose, but it isn’t so great when we win either. Somebody always gets the blame.

Yelling. It’s like throwing knives. Every word, a new wound. Sentence after sentence. Voices getting louder and louder. The knives getting sharper and sharper. Being thrown deeper and deeper into the skin. Puncturing and forever harming what we hold inside. Our hearts, though stitched, are still torn and bleeding. Our self-confidence and self-respect, those were so fragile to begin with. They shattered into a thousand pieces, only for a small fragment of self-care to be found occasionally. Our trust, it’s now so shattered it’s hardly even recognizable. Our trust just might be forever gone, for this is one of the most irreplaceable things we hold inside.

Lies. They’re like the poisonous gas of conversations. The more lies there are, the thicker the smoke. Everyone chokes. Everyone is smothered by the weight of these lies, whether they are ever found out or if they are forgotten or accepted as truth. They can be spread so thin, they blend with the air around us, or more thick so they are like the mist and fog, eventually blocking all sight of the truth. It can become so thick, that there’s nothing left to see but lies. Nothing left to know. Nothing left to remember. Until eventually, the lies crash upon us. Overtaking us. We smother ourselves in the problems we created.

Trust is like a currency. The more you have, the better off you’ll be. Trust is like interest in the stock markets. If you use your trust for something good that works out how it’s supposed to, you get more of it. If your trust is used for something that isn’t good, or something that doesn’t work out as promised, then trust is lost. And it’s very hard to get back. It’s a two way process, and typically, once trust is lost on one side, it also begins to disappear from the other.

Conversations. They’re a battlefield. Both sides throw words back and forth. Some are harmful. Some are helpful. Some are empty and only used to fill in the quiet moments between the other two. You never know when to duck and cover, when to reach out and grab those words. To save them for another day. To keep them hidden away in your mind until they are once again needed. For if you grab the wrong words, you will be stuck with them. You will be left with the harm they inflict. There is no going back.