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I shakily rolled the window down.  I tried to put on my game face, but I was a puddle, tears falling and my whole being splayed open.

Mom said, “Honey.  I’m so sorry you are hurting this much.  Did anything new happen?”

I looked up at her, this woman who had faithfully loved me and raised me and wanted so much for my life to go back to “normal,” and said, “I saw an attorney.  I can’t do this anymore.”

In the darkest of my numbing, I retreated.  There were only a couple of people who knew how much I was really hurting, and for them, no words will ever be enough thanks.  

But for everyone else, I shared a different side.  I was them, so I could exist.  And if they were hopeful, I would try to be hopeful.  If they were judgmental, I would defend and try to make them see.  Or I would accept defeat, and silence myself completely.

I shut down to the deepest bindings of the pain, so for a moment, I could appear normal.  I could appear as they needed me to.

The shutting down protects our own hearts, in ways and in moments.  I shut down so well that I didn’t cry actual tears in front of most humans for a few years.  I protected myself so well that I became robotic, almost sub-human, moving but never really feeling.

And for the people in my life closest to me, I let most parts out.  But I was still a version of myself back then.  Always a version, but never fully whole.

This meant on that day in a church parking lot, after nearly a year of back and forth between my family and me in the unraveling of my life, was the first day my mom saw me cry.  

After speaking the unimaginable words to her, this woman, full of faith and conviction, I bowed my head in shame and sorrow, and I wept.  For the first time in a very long time, I had no strength left for the pretending.

What was she going to say?  Think?  I was ready.  I was prepping myself for shame.  For guilt.  For the shutting down that would follow.

She reached out, squeezed my arm, tears in her eyes, and said, “Okay.  Okay.  I’m just done trying to figure this out or fix this.  I love you.   I love you.  And I am here.  We are here.”

Shocked to my core, I stopped crying, looked up at her with swollen eyes, and said, “Okay.  Thank you, mama.”

Relief and comfort washed over me like a warm blanket.

That one exchange may have saved my life.

She didn’t know it, but she showed up for me in that moment in a way I’ll never be able to convey.  In that moment, she made a decision to love me more than she wanted to fix it.  To make it “good.”  She decided she was done trying to convince me of all the ways I could save this, or make it work, or hold on.  She decided she was simply going to be my mom, hold me, and love me.  And she not only decided for herself.  She decided our whole family was now in this, together, with me.  All on her own, she shaped the course of our future for healing.

So much lifted in that singular moment in the parking lot.  

Sometimes the people we love don’t need our fixing.  They don’t need our solutions.  Sometimes their pain is so deep and wide they can’t see the sky or the moon or the sun, much less the forest for the trees.  

Sometimes this is the only option:  love.

In the love is the only option moments, the world shifts.  The stars align once more.  Breathing is easier.  Being is easier.  The weight lifts.  You can feel it.

Love brings with it hope.

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Next Chapter: Face Time I Love You’s