"Every time I think I've had enough and start heading for the door" -- the song opens mid-decision, mid-retreat. A man who has rehearsed the speech, packed the bags in his mind, and still cannot make his feet obey. The chorus admits the problem without solving it: "I never can say goodbye." Not "I will not." "I cannot." The difference between a refusal and an inability is the whole song. The lyric catalogs the gap between intention and action -- a man who knows he should leave, wants to leave, has tried to leave, and finds himself turned back around every time by a mechanism he cannot name.