The Archaeology of Hurt
Confronting those who wounded us fails not because they refuse accountability, but because time has already claimed them. The person who caused our pain exists only in memory; before us sits a different being wearing their face, equally bewildered by accusations of crimes they can no longer access. We arrive armed for battle with ghosts, demanding answers from strangers who inherited the consequences but not the consciousness of past selves. The cruelest discovery is not that our tormentors were monsters, but that they were merely people—and people, unlike trauma, do not fossilise.