You Stayed Because the Pain Was Familiar

“The mind replays what the body can’t forget.” — Unknown

I felt it
before I had the language
to name what it was doing to me.

Before I knew gaslighting
wasn’t always someone else’s game.

My stomach clenched
in boardrooms I smiled through.

My breath shortened
during apologies I rehearsed
for things I didn’t do.

I wrote journals
trying to convince myself
that safety was just another word for staying still
and staying still was noble.

I blamed the temperature
for what was clearly fire.

Then wondered why everything smelled
like burnt promises and rubber lies.

I stayed
because it didn’t hit me,
it just ignored me.

And I told myself
that was better.

“You can gaslight yourself into staying in places your nervous system already tried to leave. The body always knows first. Words are what show up later. If they’re allowed.”

The nervous system doesn’t wait for permission. It pulls the alarm before the mind has even finished its sentence. But because we’re fluent in explanation and reward systems, we often override it. We teach ourselves that tension is a personality flaw. That numbness means we’re tough. That staying means we’re strong.

When a space stops feeling safe, you don’t always run. Sometimes you rationalize. Sometimes you label your gut a liar. You decorate the discomfort. You call it discipline. You tell yourself to calm down when your chest is screaming.

That’s how trauma gets domesticated. Not by the event itself, but by the story we tell to make staying inside it seem logical. And by the time your body has flinched a thousand times too quietly, you start believing the silence is proof that everything’s fine.

But no one heals by gaslighting themselves. You don’t recover by arguing with the instincts that tried to save you. You recover by remembering that fear is a form of intelligence. And that distance isn’t always a failure of love, it’s sometimes the beginning of it.

I’ve poured everything into this. Healing Thoughts II: 33 Poems and Meditations for Emotional Renewal is up for preorder now. Release date: October 1. These pages carry the deepest, sharpest work I’ve done, and I can’t wait for them to be in your hands.

Scraps + Bandaids:

🕊 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.