That's hard. We aren't bad people, we only hurt people because we've been hurt. We can know we don't have to continue the cycle, but more importantly, we have to put the past to rest by figuring out what it all means. It means we did things because we didn't love ourselves, and because we didn't love ourselves, we weren't able to love others. But we don't just start out that way, something had to be done to us to place us on that emotional path. We didn't continue it because we're bad people, we're human, that's what humans do. When we don't know how to process pain, we want to get it off our selves, and try to do that by putting it on another person. That's something human beings do, too.
Now that I have escaped the endless loop of recreating my past pain, I want to do that with love. I believe I can tap in to a better kind of energy and live only in that. And needless to say - the fact is, this is a forum for alcoholics - I spent a very large part of my life, almost all of it thus far, not able to see anything but pain.