I Hear The Goodbye Before You

Vulnerability feels risky when your past linked openness with harm. Guarding yourself kept you alive and easing that guard will draw on the same courage that carried you this far.

Healing Thoughts now speaks in sound.
Each newsletter comes with a full audio version, scored with an original soundtrack.
Free readers receive the text as always.
Paid subscribers hear the words as they were written.

Your support keeps this work alive. It lets me keep building something honest. A space where the words don’t just exist, they breathe.

---

I remember watching your mouth more than your words.

The sentence would start soft, lazy almost,
and my chest would lock up halfway through.

There was always a point where it could turn.
A blink.
A tiny shift behind your eyes.

Here it comes.

I learned to scan your jaw like weather radar.
The way your hand wrapped around the glass.
The way your shoulders climbed when I asked a small question.

You thought I was hanging on every word.
I was counting exits.

You called me quiet.
Careful.
Hard to read.

The truth is, I heard endings before they arrived.
Every laugh felt like a setup.
Every I love you sounded like a warning label.

These days I still track the room.
I still hear air tighten before a voice changes.

I wish I listened to what people say.
I keep listening for the part where they leave.

“You learned early that love could vanish mid-sentence. That’s why you study tone like scripture and body language like survival.”

I grew up around conversations that could snap without warning. One second it was small talk, next second a chair moved too hard, a bottle hit the table, and the whole room shifted into threat. My nervous system learned to track the shift, not the sentence. It paid attention to the sound of breath at the end of a phrase. The volume hiding inside a pause. The way someone’s eyes went flat before their voice did. That kind of training sinks deep. It feels efficient.

When you live like that long enough, love and danger start to share a nervous system file. Affection never stands on its own. Your body runs background checks on tone, posture, how fast they text back, how they set their phone down when you walk into the room. Hyper-vigilance becomes a survival response. The kid who studied faces to stay safe grows into the adult who studies partners to stay ahead of impact.

Hyper-vigilance works in chaos and sabotages you in safety. When you land in a relationship that actually holds you, the same system that once protected you keeps scanning for proof that the good thing is temporary. Your body rehearses loss before anything has gone wrong. That can make kindness feel suspicious and calm feel like a setup. It is hard to let your guard down when your history trained you to hear every silence as preparation for disappearance.

Regulation is about noticing what your nervous system expects and updating it in small, consistent ways. You track tone because it once saved you. Now you get to add new data. A hard conversation that ends without punishment. An argument that settles without withdrawal. A moment where your voice shakes and the person across from you stays. That is how attachment repair looks in real life. Quiet, repetitive, almost boring. Over time, your body starts to learn that love can finish the sentence and stay in the room.

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.

Notice what that stirs in you. Then ask:

When did you first learn to study someone’s tone more carefully than their promise, and what does your body still expect to happen when a voice begins to change?

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 →

Sprinkles of Healing Confetti:

🕊 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.

“To love at all is to be vulnerable.” — C. S. Lewis, 1940