Waking up
It didn’t feel like clarity at first.
It felt like I had been pulled out of something.
I was sitting there, but suddenly… I wasn’t in it the same way.
The air felt thicker. Slower.
My body was still—phone in hand—but something had shifted behind my eyes.
And then I felt it.
Not a thought.
A sensation.
A tightening in my chest.
Low. Deep. Familiar.
The kind of feeling that had always been there… but never fully noticed.
Normally, this is where I would move.
Check the phone.
Change position.
Think my way out of it.
Do something.
But this time…
I didn’t.
It was like I was standing just behind myself, watching it unfold.
The feeling grew.
Spread slightly into my stomach.
A subtle ache. A pull.
And with it came the thoughts:
Something’s off
You should check
Fix it before it gets worse
But they didn’t land the same.
They passed through me like echoes instead of commands.
And as I stayed…
Something opened.
Not outward.
Inward.
The sensation in my chest shifted.
What first felt like tension… began to feel like something else.
Something younger.
Images didn’t come clearly.
But the feeling did.
Small.
Alone.
Waiting.
It wasn’t dramatic.
It was quiet.
Almost easy to miss.
But now that I was looking directly at it… it was undeniable.
A little boy.
Not seen with eyes.
Felt.
Sitting in a space where something was missing.
Not abandoned.
Not unsafe in an obvious way.
But… not fully held.
Waiting for something to arrive.
Attention. Comfort. Reassurance.
Something that didn’t always come when I needed it.
I felt my body react.
A tightening in my throat.
A resistance rising:
“Don’t go here.”
That was familiar too.
The part that kept things moving.
The one that built my life.
The Independent Man.
But now…
I could feel both.
The protector…
and the boy it was protecting.
For a moment, everything hung there.
Tension.
Stillness.
Choice.
Every instinct in my body said:
👉 Move away
👉 Distract
👉 Shut it down
But something deeper stayed.
Not forcefully.
Not trying to fix anything.
Just… present.
And in that presence, something subtle happened.
The boy didn’t get louder.
He didn’t break down.
He didn’t overwhelm.
He just… became clearer.
I could feel what he was holding:
the need to be reassured
the fear of being left alone in the feeling
the uncertainty of whether someone would come
And for the first time…
There was no rush to get rid of it.
I felt a shift in my chest.
Not the tightness leaving…
But something soft appearing around it.
A kind of warmth.
Not from outside.
From me.
“I see you.”
The words weren’t spoken out loud.
But they landed.
And the strangest thing happened.
The urgency that had been there moments before…
The need to check, fix, secure something…
It eased.
Not gone.
But quieter.
Less commanding.
Because the boy… wasn’t alone in it anymore.
I was still sitting in the same place.
Same boat. Same phone. Same life.
But everything was different.
I could still feel the pull to reach out.
Still feel the instinct to protect.
Still feel the identity of the man who had always handled it alone.
But now…
There was space around all of it.
I wasn’t inside the wave anymore.
I was with it.
And in that space, I realised something that didn’t come as a thought…
But as a knowing:
This is what I’ve been running from.
Not the world…
Not relationships…
But this feeling.
And as I stayed with it…
Even just for a few moments longer…
The feeling didn’t destroy me.
It didn’t consume me.
It didn’t prove I was unsafe.
It just… moved.
Shifted.
Breathed.
Like it had been waiting my whole life…
Not to be fixed.
Not to be avoided.
But to be felt… with someone there.
And now…
For the first time…
That someone was me.—
