Stephen Porges’ polyvagal theory explains why your body can feel like a crime scene after a breakup. A part of you is still tethered to them. Not the pretty, sentimental part. The raw, ragged part. This is what Dick Schwartz’s Internal Family Systems model calls a ‘part’—a wounded piece of you that’s still stuck in the past. The part that finds your thumb scrolling through their photos at midnight, a ghost in the machine of your own life. The part that feels a phantom limb ache where their body used to be next to yours. You can feel it in your sternum, can’t you? A hollowed-out space, a cold draft where the fire used to be. Your nervous system is a crime scene, replaying the impact, the final words, the silence. You tell yourself you’re over it. You tell your friends you’re fine. But your body keeps the score. It remembers the way your gut clenched, the way your throat closed, the way your bones seemed to dissolve into a puddle of grief on the floor. And in the quiet moments, the lie falls apart. So when I tell you that the path to freedom involves sending this person—the architect