“Just One More Voice”
I miss somebody needing me.
An Original Song for Survivors
“Just One More Voice”
An Original Song by Tim McGuinness, Ph.D.
Music & Lyrics Copyright © 2026 – All Rights Reserved Worldwide
LYRICS
The phone went quiet yesterday,
No morning words, no plans to make,
No little light beside your name,
No one waiting when I wake.
I know the love was built on lies,
I know the hands were never there,
But knowing doesn’t stop the hunger
When the room is just a chair.
I don’t miss the money.
I don’t miss the fear.
I miss somebody needing me,
I miss somebody here.
Just one more voice,
Just one more light,
Just one more message in the middle of the night.
Just one more person saying,
“Baby, you’re the one.”
Anything to keep me
From facing what I’ve become.
I know this road.
I’ve been here before.
One lie ends,
I go looking for one more.
Not because I believe them,
Not because I don’t know.
I just don’t know how to sit with myself
When everybody goes.
The first one left a hole in me,
The second filled it for a while.
The third one knew the words I needed,
The fourth one knew how I would smile.
Different face, a different story,
Different country, different name,
But underneath the changing pictures
I was reaching for the same.
A little hope.
A little rush.
A reason not to feel too much.
Someone asking where I am,
Someone promising a plan.
Just one more voice,
Just one more light,
Just one more message in the middle of the night.
Just one more person saying,
“Baby, you’re the one.”
Anything to keep me
From facing what I’ve become.
I know this road.
I’ve been here before.
One lie ends,
I go looking for one more.
Not because I believe them,
Not because I don’t know.
I just don’t know how to sit with myself
When everybody goes.
It feels like thirst.
It feels like need.
Like something in my body
Begging me to feed.
I tell myself, “This one’s different.”
I tell myself, “Just talk.”
But I’ve said those words before
Every time I took that walk.
Maybe the craving isn’t love.
Maybe love was never there.
Maybe what I’m really chasing
Is escape from empty air.
Because silence makes me hear myself,
And I don’t like what I hear.
So I reach for another stranger
To make the silence disappear.
But every time I take the shortcut,
I come back with less of me.
Another promise, another ending,
Another lock without a key.
So tonight I leave the phone there.
Let the quiet fill the room.
Let the wanting rise inside me
Without giving it somewhere to bloom.
I will hate it.
I will shake.
I will want somebody fake.
But wanting doesn’t mean I have to
Give the hunger what it takes.
No more voices
Just to fill the night.
No more strangers
Just to make me feel all right.
No more promises
To save me from myself.
No more handing someone else
The parts of me I never held.
I know this road.
I’ve been here before.
But this time when the silence comes,
I won’t go looking for one more.
I will learn to be alone
Without believing I’m abandoned.
I will learn the empty room
Is not the end of who I am.
The craving will come.
The wanting will stay.
But I don’t have to answer it
Every time it says my name.
No one more.
Not tonight.
Tonight
I stay with me.
Why?
“Just One More Voice” explores the loneliness and craving for attention that remain after a deceptive relationship ends, even when the person recognizes the deception. Its repeated encounters reveal a painful pattern: each new stranger briefly relieves the emptiness, while another betrayal deepens the loss of trust and sense of self. The turning point comes when the person recognizes that wanting reassurance does not require answering another stranger or accepting another false promise. Leaving the phone untouched becomes an act of self-protection, and learning to experience solitude without interpreting it as abandonment opens a path toward healthier connection and a life no longer organized around escaping the silence.
Why the SCARS Institute Provides Songs for Scam Survivors
Traumatic scam victimization affects far more than a person’s finances. It disrupts attention, memory, emotional regulation, trust, identity, and the ability to absorb new information.
For many scam survivors, especially during periods of intense emotional activation, ordinary educational material can be difficult to process. The mind can remain focused on threat, loss, betrayal, shame, and unanswered questions. When the amygdala and related threat systems are highly activated, concentration and deliberate reasoning can become more difficult. A message that is intellectually understood can still struggle to reach the emotional places where it is most needed.
Music provides another pathway!
Rhythm, melody, repetition, imagery, and emotion can carry meaning differently from ordinary instruction. A survivor who struggles to concentrate on several pages of educational material can sometimes hear a song and retain a phrase, an image, or a central truth. Messages such as “you were deceived,” “you are not alone,” “this was not your fault,” “others have survived this,” and “healing requires continued participation” can be encountered without demanding the same sustained cognitive effort required by formal learning.
There is another important reason.
Scammers frequently weaponize music. Scammers choose a victim’s favorite songs, and then they often become associated with grooming, romantic attachment, imagined futures, declarations of love, anniversaries, private rituals, and emotionally intense conversations. After the crime is revealed, music that once brought comfort can suddenly become painful. A favorite song can become a trauma cue and a trigger because it is connected to the criminal and the false relationship.
New music offers survivors an opportunity to reclaim that territory!
A song created around survival, understanding, grief, learning, courage, or rebuilding can become something new to enjoy without belonging to the scam. Music no longer has to remain the property of the criminal memory. New emotional associations can gradually be created around different experiences and meanings.
Songs also communicate something every survivor needs to hear repeatedly: other people understand.
Hearing fear, confusion, betrayal, shame, grief, and recovery expressed through another human voice can reduce the sense of isolation that frequently follows scam victimization. The survivor hears that these experiences are recognizable, shared, and survivable.
SCARS provides songs because education does not have to exist only in books, articles, lectures, or support discussions. Sometimes knowledge needs melody. Sometimes reassurance needs rhythm. Sometimes an important truth needs to be heard many times before it can finally be felt:
You are not alone. You were deceived. It was not your fault. And there is still life ahead.
Also, you can find more music on our SCARS Institute YouTube Channel: SCARS Institute (Romance Scams Now) – YouTube
SCARS Institute
September 2026
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