I Missed My Own Life
A scar records. Attention turns that record into instruction. Each time we observe without bracing, something new gets written.
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I used to scroll my own life
like a stranger’s feed.
The sink filled with plates I swore I’d wash.
The text from a friend I never messaged back.
The body that sat through arguments
and called it calm.
One night I caught my breath hiding in my shoulders.
I said my own name out loud.
The room changed shape.
Nothing mystical.
I just noticed.
And the moment noticed me back.
“Every moment recreates the world through attention. The act of noticing is the act of birth.”
I grew up with alarms. Doors that slammed. Voices that trained me to track footsteps and silence. Attention turned into surveillance. Years later, I called that vigilance discipline. I could steady a crisis without blinking. Sitting still for five minutes felt harder. My nervous system stayed faithful to old data. It confused stillness for threat and motion for safety. Many of us learned that translation early. What helped wasn’t grit. It began with noticing where my body disappeared when the room went quiet. Shoulders. Jaw. Tongue pressed to the roof of my mouth. Small tells with long memories. The work started there.
You might be trying to reason your way through a pattern that lives beneath words. That’s like lecturing a smoke alarm while the toaster burns. The body learns through repetition. Each time calm returns, the record changes a little. When someone says, “you can say it all,” and actually stays, the update goes deeper. That’s what I measure now. Does the voice across from me stay level when I disagree. Does my breath loosen after I speak. Those signs speak louder than apologies. They teach safety through consistency. They let attention soften from watching to caring.
I once treated healing like a checklist. Hit goals. Patch flaws. Earn small approval. That structure kept me capable but detached. Attention turned that into another lesson. Noticing became a kind of guardianship. I check on the boy still living inside. I watch for old habits that parade as strength. I meet them without shame and offer new instructions. A hand on the chest. Breath waiting to meet itself. The past doesn’t dissolve. It simply steps out of the driver’s seat.
If this reads like a man learning how to occupy his own body, it’s true. I study what steadies me and what unsettles me. Small moments of attention build toward something durable. Presence. The room no longer asks me to vanish. It asks me to stay and witness. That’s where the day begins again. The world reshaped by what the eyes decide to notice.
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.
When you pause and scan gently, what does your body do first, and what story does that movement tell you about safety right now?
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.
“Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real.” — Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses (1992)