I was harmed.
Not by roles.
By people.
And when I named that harm — quietly, honestly —
I was harmed again.
That second time cut deeper.
Because she knew.
I heard it in her voice.
She knew I had already been hurt,
and still, she chose the institution over the human in front of her.
All I wanted was to move on.
I endured two months of pressure with a single hope:
to complete my time with dignity,
and step forward into the next place that had already welcomed me.
But when even that was taken —
when I was cut loose days before completion —
I felt a deeper loss than the dismissal itself:
I had been abandoned by something I loved.
So I built an archive —
a place where the truth could breathe outside distortion.
And I shared that truth with the leader.
Not with anger. Not with demands.
Just the quiet hope that someone in power would say:
“Yes. I see what happened to you.”
But even that never came.
And by the time the machine offered words,
I had already metabolized the silence.
I had already seen behind the curtain.
What happened to me was never just personal.
It was patterned. Predictable. Preventable.
I wasn’t just harmed by people in roles.
I was harmed by a system that allows harm to echo unchallenged.
And when given a chance to break that cycle —
even in private —
they declined.
If we cannot repair harm when it’s safe to do so —
if we hide behind legal shields
even when those shields are not needed —
how can we, in good faith, claim to be stewards of public trust?
How can we look at ourselves as a culture?
In February, I arrived at Honeyman open-hearted —
singing to myself in the woods,
full of energy, full of care.
By the time I left,
I could barely sing at all.
That’s what they took from me at that picnic table —
not just the role, not just the placement —
but the very resonance of my spirit.
They told me I wasn’t good enough.
That I made people uncomfortable.
And that harm was not accidental.
It was strategic. Meant to silence.
In the months since, I’ve tracked my healing carefully.
I’ve protected it from their frame,
because I knew — intuitively —
that even my recovery could be twisted into threat.
I never sought vengeance.
Only prevention.
I still don’t understand how people
who see the harm they’ve done —
or have the power to help repair it —
can turn away and still feel whole.