I was mid-sentence inviting him to look at the part of him that makes him less than me. The part of him that puts me above him. The part of him that thinks there is a hierarchy in any form. The part of him that was taught that he wasn’t enough. The part of him that minimizes him. The part of him that doesn’t love him but the words never came out, I stopped. I stopped, not because I couldn’t say it. I stopped, not because the words were stuck in me but because he couldn’t receive them.

A loud cough with a forceful attempt to dampen the cough made me stop. I knew exactly what was happening. He was trying to stuff down emotions, I had watched him do it too many times to count. His body wasn’t about to allow him to do it this time. I trusted his body more than he did, so I sat in silence listening to the fight between him and his body, between control and surrender. Forceful suppression of cough after cough until the sound of him vomiting floated through the phone and into my heart. He gasped, still trying to control his body, desperately avoiding his emotions. With eyes closed I held his ground while he fought himself, knowing the sensation all too well because I had been through it myself. I trusted his body, it had him, it was holding him in a way that he had never allowed before. I listened silently, cough after cough as his body purged self-doubt, my words were never needed. As his control began to lose the battle and surrender silently won, I heard him let go. I heard him stop fighting and I listened to control begin to die and the deepest form of trust began to come alive inside of him.