Both Feet Or Be Gone

Your body remembers what the mind debates. Those marks don’t ask you to live from injury. They guide you toward cleaner choices about what shapes you now.

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I used to call it love
when my heart raced
like it heard boots in the hallway.

I thought that feeling meant passion.
My nervous system thought it meant impact.

You would lean in.
My chest would tighten
like I smelled liquor on someone’s breath.

You would say, trust me.
My jaw would lock
like a door I once hid behind.

I kept telling myself to relax.
My body kept remembering nights
when softness turned on a dime.

So I stayed.
One foot in the room.
One foot still braced for escape.

You asked why I never fully chose you.
I did not have the language yet.

Now I do.

I was busy trying not to die
while you were busy trying to be loved.

“You can’t meet love halfway if one foot is still in survival. Healing means putting both feet in, even when they shake.”

I used to think love would fix the survival part. I imagined the right person walking in, making everything calm by default. I did not understand how deep my body had rehearsed danger. Years of hyper-vigilance had trained my nervous system to treat closeness as a possible threat. So even when I wanted connection, my muscles sang a different tune. One that prepared for withdrawal, rage, or silence the second someone got too close.

If you grew up managing chaos, you probably know this split. Your mind says you want love. Your body still scans for exits. You tell yourself you should be grateful. You blame yourself for shutting down when someone offers real care. What looks like avoidance from the outside is often a survival response that never got updated. The system learned that attachment meant instability, so it continues to guard you from the very thing you say you want. This is an old contract your body signed when you had fewer options.

Healing in love starts with honesty about that contract. You do not have to shame yourself for it. You do have to recognize when your survival patterns start steering the wheel. Maybe you pick partners who keep you half-anxious so nothing ever feels too safe. Maybe you ghost when things soften. Maybe you stay loyal to someone who cannot meet you, because the nervous system knows how to function in tension and does not yet know how to rest in consistency. Awareness here is the practice of watching your own patterns with sober curiosity.

Putting both feet in does not mean throwing yourself into the arms of anyone who offers attention. It means committing to a different way of relating. One where you notice your survival responses as they fire. One where you slow down instead of abandoning yourself. One where love is not a performance you give to avoid abandonment, but a space where your body learns, over time, that safety can exist without constant self-erasure. Your feet will shake. That is expected. Shaking just means your system is updating an old story.

I’ve poured everything into this. Healing Thoughts II: 33 Poems and Meditations for Emotional Renewal is up for order now. These pages carry the deepest, sharpest work I’ve done, and I can’t wait for them to be in your hands.

If part of you recognized yourself in this, ask:

Where does your survival response still choose for you in love, even when your mind says you are ready?

If you’re peeling back wounds like this one,
the 365-Day Shadow Work Journals were made for moments like these.
They speak the same language you do. Truth before comfort.
Explore the journals →

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🕊 New messages drop most weekdays. Quiet, but not gentle.
🔥 Paid subscribers keep the wounds lit long enough to be named.
📚 When the pain overflows, it becomes a book.
🧢 Healing wears well when stitched into something real.
☕ This newsletter runs on coffee and confession.
🖤 Shadow Thoughts carries the pieces too jagged for here.

If this hit a nerve, you’re not alone. Healing Thoughts is where I say the quiet parts loudly. If you’re not subscribed yet, now’s the time. It’s only getting rawer from here.

“Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real.” — Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses