Some people shoot poison darts. Not the kind you read about in tribal warfare or spy thrillers. These are invisible, emotional darts. Launched with a word, a glance, a well-placed silence. These darts lodge quietly in conversations, in the small rewrites of memory, in the manipulations of guilt and truth. Over time, they poison relationships.
It can take a lifetime to see it clearly.
I grew up around one of these people. A person full of contradictions—magnetic, emotionally intense, and insecure at the same time. I loved this person. Still do. But their love came with an edge, one that wasn’t always visible until it pierced you.
Things said that were later denied. Intentions recast. Affection withdrawn or given strategically. I learned early to walk on emotional eggshells. To anticipate moods. To translate tone. To decode subtext.
It’s only now, as this person, my mother, nears the end of their life, that I fully see the shape of the pattern.
I’ve been trying to show up. To be present. Even from far away. Phone calls, gentle conversations, creating space for fear, for regret, for whatever needs to be said before the curtain falls. And during one recent conversation, my mother broke down in tears, lamenting estrangement from my younger sister. She felt abandoned. Alone. Forgotten.
I listened. I made room. And then I offered something small, something simple—just a suggestion: “Maybe you could take the first step, mom, it’s just a phone call.”
That was all. A bridge, not a judgment.
But the next day, I was told by my other sister and self-appointed caregiver to my mother that I’d made my mother cry. That I’d said something harmful. That I was now to avoid certain topics altogether if I wanted to stay in touch. These topics regarded the lies that she herself had poisoned my mother with. Unfounded accusations against our younger sister, her husband, and family.
It wasn’t the first time the truth had been rearranged. But this time, something in me shifted.
This, I realized, was another dart. And I’d been hit. Again.
People who rely on emotional distortion don’t always do so maliciously. Sometimes it’s a defense mechanism. A way to avoid facing the mess they’ve created, or the wounds they’ve never tended. But the damage is real. These darts infect families’ bloodstreams. They weave invisible allegiances, unspoken rules, rewritten narratives.
For years, I tried to stay neutral. To keep the peace in the family. To translate everyone’s pain into something understandable. But peace built on denial isn’t peace, it’s paralysis.
What I’ve come to understand is this: you can love someone deeply and still name the pattern. You can feel compassion for the wounds they carry while refusing to take the consequences.
Because clarity isn’t cruelty. And boundaries aren’t betrayal.
There’s a freedom in seeing clearly, painful, yes, but necessary. A liberty that says:
I will not let love become a weapon.
I will not confuse manipulation for care.
I will not rewrite reality to make someone else comfortable.
We don’t get to choose whether we’re wounded. But we do get to choose what we do with the darts. Whether we sharpen them into tools for hurting others, or remove them, carefully, one by one, and begin to heal.
Words Have Power 
This hit like a whisper I’ve been trying to avoid hearing for years. The way you describe those invisible darts, how they lodge silently and rewrite your memory over time, it’s painfully real. That ache of loving someone who both nurtures and wounds you, often in the same breath, is something few know how to put into words without sounding bitter or cruel. But you’ve done it with grace, and more importantly, with truth.
Your line “clarity isn’t cruelty” stayed with me long after. Because sometimes the hardest thing is admitting that the peace we’ve been preserving is actually just a slow erosion of self. Thank you for naming what so many of us have carried in silence. You didn’t just write a post, you gave language to something sacred and deeply human.
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