It’s Not That Deep, Unless It Is
It’s not that deep anymore…unless it is.
At least, that’s what I tell myself these days. The hours spent scream-crying, shaking to Dayseeker’s heart-wrenching cover of Evanescence’s My Immortal are over…mostly. Years of attachment therapy, years of processing, years of radically accepting a reality that turned me bitter from the inside out.
And yet, on Mother’s Day each year, it still finds a way to sneak up on me.
Since joining the Waldorf family, it’s hurt less. The emptiness hasn’t disappeared completely, but it’s grown fainter as time’s strengthened my bonds with both my boyfriend Ryan and his mother Sarah. I’ve adopted the platitudes, the cognitive reframes meant to make logic outweigh emotion. No matter how much I frantically clean in an attempt to redirect the discomfort, or assign profound meaning to early loss, it inevitably finds its way back.
The scream-crying, the shaking, the nights spent in the fetal position alone in my old studio apartment—those were the things that saved me. Those were the things that allowed my body to finally release. There’s simply no way to deny that.
The anger? The self-deprecation disguised as get-me-before-they-do satire?
The disdain-ridden judgment I wore like a shield, supposedly “protecting” me from any potential abandonment? Those were the bandaids slipping off my ever-present bullet wound.
When I let the sensations catch up to me, infiltrating my body like the disease my mother long-sought to diagnose, I’m the kind of hollow only mother-hungry daughters can understand.
Chest—tight. Achy. Head—pulsing. Hands—buzzing.
The room—spinning.
This last year has been one of the happiest, most stabilizing years I’ve ever known. Learning what it means to be part of a healthy, functional family has taught me more than years of therapy combined.
Somatically, I’m calmer. Cognitively, I’m sharper. Relationally, I’m safer.
I can exhale in the presence of others, trusting them to catch me if/when I fall. Experiencing unconditional love and acceptance, in spite of all the qualities once deemed “red flags”, has restored my nervous system in ways I never could’ve believed possible otherwise.
We’re far from white-picket perfect, but we hold space for each other—embracing our differences rather than leveraging them against one another. I function best in a clean, organized space, while they may prefer a little more chaos after a long day of triage. I lean more shoes-off, while they opt for more farm-friendly operational efficiency.
Despite the game of catch-up I may unexpectedly find myself in year-to-year, by choosing writing over wrath, I create peace. By showing up when I’d rather shut down, I make peace with the path of least resistance.
Having attended both Demi Lovato’s It’s Not That Deep and Dayseeker’s Pale Moonlight tours in the last few weeks, I’m left flipping both sides of the grief coin; but this time, I don’t have to do it alone.
Turns out, it’s not that deep…unless sometimes, it just is.
