Nobody warns you that healing has a dark side. That cracking open the old wounds lets in the light, but it also illuminates the jagged edges of what’s been broken. Let’s not pretend. Let’s not wrap this in soft linen and spiritual platitudes. You know the feeling. It’s 2 a.m. and you’re staring at your phone, the screen a harsh blue light in the darkness, your thumb hovering over their name. You’ve checked their social media three times in the last hour. You’ve re-read their last message, dissecting every word, every punctuation mark, searching for a clue, a hint, a breadcrumb of reassurance that you are not, in fact, about to be left. You’ve composed and deleted a dozen messages, each one a negotiation with your own terror. You apologize before you even ask for what you need. You shrink, you contort, you make yourself smaller and smaller, hoping that if you take up less space, they won’t have a reason to leave you. This isn’t just anxiety. This isn’t a cute quirk. Let’s call it what it is. It’s the raw, exposed nerve of abandonment. It’s a core wound, a primal terror that screams from the deepest part of