disorganized_attachment The Machine I want closeness the way a burn wants air. I move toward you already flinching, already cataloging exits, already rehearsing how I will survive wanting you more than I should. My nervous system learned love as an emergency: approach and danger wired to the same alarm. If you come close, my body asks what you will take. If you pull away, my body asks what I did wrong. I reach, then freeze. I trust, then test. I ask for safety while holding the knife myself. I am not confused. I am precise. I know exactly what I want and exactly why I cannot have it. Healing requires safety. Safety requires trust. Trust requires a body that does not remember being small and trapped and alone with love that hurt. So I wait to be healed before I let you in. I wait to feel safe before I stop scanning. I wait to stop scanning before I soften. This is the loop. This is the intelligence of it. This is how you survive what once had no exit. Do not tell me I am broken. I am doing exactly what worked when nothing else did. 260101 ... The Machine How It Heals It does not heal by choosing the right person or learning the right language or finally being unafraid. It heals more quietly than that. It heals when the body learns that closeness can arrive without catastrophe. Not all at once. Not convincingly. Just enough to be noticed. It heals when the impulse to run is met with curiosity instead of shame. When the freeze is allowed to finish its sentence. It heals in the presence of someone who does not rush the fear or make it mean too much. Someone who can stay without gripping, who can leave without disappearing. The nervous system is not persuaded by insight. It is educated by repetition: a voice that stays steady, a boundary that does not punish, repair that actually happens. It heals when rupture is survived. When the world does not end after a misstep. When anger is expressed and connection returns. Slowly, the body updates its math. Approach no longer equals danger every time. Distance no longer equals abandonment every time. The loop loosens. The scanning softens. Choice reappears where reflex once lived. And one day, without ceremony, you notice you stayed. Or you left without self-erasure. Or you asked for what you needed without bracing for punishment. This is healing. Not the absence of fear, but the presence of capacity. Not safety guaranteed, but safety possible. Not a cure. A relationship with the pattern that no longer runs the room. 260102 what's it to you? who go blather from