The Wound That Followed Me

Suffering doesn’t dissolve when we run from it. It thins, waits, and reappears disguised as resistance. Healing begins when recognition outlasts avoidance.

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.

I packed light that year.
Left the house, the city,
the smell of whiskey and drywall.

Told myself I was starting fresh.
New job, new sheets, new version of me.

But the body has a brutal memory.
It kept the map
and followed.

Every quiet room became a copy
of the old one.
Every kind face reminded me
to brace for impact.

No one tells you,
when you move on,
the wound updates its address.

“They told me to move on. I did. But the wound came with me.”

I used to believe that starting over meant leaving the past behind. I changed cities and convinced myself that new surroundings would rewrite old stories. They didn’t. The body carried its own version of events. It remembered tone, pace, silence, and posture. It compared every new room to the last one that hurt. That comparison happened before I could think. You probably know that feeling. The one where safety feels unfamiliar, where calm feels suspicious. It’s the nervous system trying to protect you in real time with outdated data.

When I was younger, I mistook that protection for weakness. I thought my reactions were proof that I hadn’t healed. It took years to see that they were just proof I had learned caution too well. The body isn’t dramatic; it’s loyal. It doesn’t rush to trust again simply because the mind decided to move on. You can talk about healing all day, but your system only believes what it experiences. Every consistent moment of calm updates that record a little more than words ever will.

These days, I pay attention to how safety behaves. Not how it’s promised. I notice whether someone’s voice stays steady when I speak up. I notice how my breath changes after an argument that ends with understanding instead of distance. Those are the quiet lessons that teach both of us, me and the body, that we’re no longer in danger. You’ll feel that shift too. Once repetition replaces reassurance. It’s slow, but it works.

I used to think healing meant strength. Now I think it means accuracy. Knowing when you’re safe. Knowing when you’re not. Letting the body have a say before the story forms around it. The wound doesn’t disappear; it just stops running the schedule. When that happens, you don’t forget where you came from. You simply stop mistaking vigilance for truth.

When you stopped running, what part of you kept walking ahead anyway?

If you’re peeling back wounds like this one,
my 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.

“We are healed of a suffering only by experiencing it to the full.” —Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time (1913)