Deep Cuts: Sheryl Crow Gets It

Have you ever been in a Nordstrom Rack, deep in a narrow hallway of shoes, and heard a Sheryl Crow song and suddenly been struck by how absolutely authentic it is? Not the hallway of shoes, but the specific Sheryl Crow lyric that you didn’t even know you already knew, and perhaps have been humming inside your heart since birth? A line you’ve never listened to but somehow always known?

Sheryl Crow has one of those voices I can’t dodge trusting. Something about how it’s smooth and lush like velvet (or Velveta cheese) and simultaneously craggy and jagged at the same time, like she has seen some real shit but doesn’t bat an eyelash about it, just writes songs and smokes cigarettes and takes Pilates. I might not want to hear it, but when I hear what she’s saying, what she’s really saying, I realize the woman is speaking right to me, hiding in the size 5.5 aisle in the shoe corner, trying to pretend I’m fine.

“The first cut is the deepest,” She reminds me, and I have been trying for almost 20 years to carry on as though I have never been cut. The first cut was the deepest, Sheryl, and it almost took off a leg. Everything since then has been papercuts. Papercuts and hangnails and scraped knees, but no more almost-amputations, because I learned from my mistake and I kept moving and didn’t wallow and am a celebration of resilience. She persevered! Me and you both Sheryl. I didn’t cave, or crumble, and I put that pain in my past and faked it til I made it, and here I am, 39 and SO GOOD AT FAKING IT NO WAIT I MEAN MAKING IT.

What if I have conflated resilience with avoidance? What if, after that first deep cut, instead of healing, I just ignored it: compartmentalized the hurt, detached myself, boxed the sadness up and pushed it away from me, and what if…what if I am actually just emotionally unavailable and…damaged? Did I not persist? Did I change myself to fit into reality instead of beating back what was trying to bury me? Was it perseverance of perpetual pain-avoidant behavior? Did the first cut fester? Did the hurt persevere instead?

People always say time heals all wounds. Now we also say things like “Let go of what doesn’t serve you,” which is a bit antithetical to healing and resilience. Guess what? Having my heart broken at 22 did not serve me well. When we talk about letting that go, what does that actually, physically, emotionally mean? Forgetting about it doesn’t work. Talking about it is boring and exhausting. Sitting with it is embarrassing. Even acknowledging it is cringeworthy. I imagine letting something go is like opening your palm and letting whatever you were holding flitter off with a breeze, like dried flower petals or a crumpled old bandaid. Yet, everytime I think I am done with having feelings about the things that won’t fade, the cut that still feels fresh if I let myself remember it, I realize I’ve kept it all with me. The feeling that I lost a version of myself that was good and now I am a wrinkled old crone floods over me, and it’s like I have a box of badness that I keep a lid on and shove under my emotional bed. Everytime I think I am letting that go, I am really just closing the lid and looking away again. Ignoring something that I have convinced myself is fixed, healed, doing just fine actually, forgettable even—but it’s just out of sight and out of mind. How do I actually heal, and let go of that bad box? Can I trust myself to get cut, carved up, sliced into; knowing it won’t be as deep and I can be okay, like Sheryl Crow, taking Pilates classes after a Pabst and Marlboro Red?

No one likes getting hurt, not even Sheryl. When I was 22, everything was dramatic, everything was life and death, everything was “never will I ever be the same again.” I wrote about the breakup that destroyed me, over and over, each time feeling the hurt in an acutely new way, each time changing the truth of it a teeny bit as I tried to wrap my head around it. I hated how it had happened to me and didn’t know how I could continue with the cut, the hurt, being a part of me. I had no patience for being sad, for self-pity, for hoping it might be different. I was angry at myself because I was the only person I could blame, and I needed to close myself to feel safe, to secure my feelings from ever leaving my control again, and that was the only way I knew how to keep on keepin’ on.

I have had plenty of boyfriends since I was 22, but have I ever been truly heartbroken again? No, I haven’t, because there’s a good chance I never really loved them and never let them love me. It just seemed like an unnecessary risk, like cryptocurrency or Burning Man. Other people can do it, and I’m happy for them—you are more than welcome to try those furry chaps and latex halter tops, but it is not for me, no thank you. Other people might bet on something risky and end up winning big, but is it worth the chance of losing big? Having lost once, I am not the type to sign up to do it again. If there are no safe bets, how can you even play the game? And even if you do decide, “Hey, I want to play, I’m ready,” what if you actually aren’t ready and how do you let all that fear go to be ready? Like, for real let go, not just say you’re gonna and hope that means you’re doing it? Sheryl says “Baby I’ll try to love again” but can she really?

Being resilient, being damaged, being afraid, being hopeful, being strong, being safe and being genuine are all parts of my being I am trying to balance. When a Sheryl Crow song can tip the scales, I know I have work to do. Re-examine, reimagine, refresh. Maybe the memory of that first cut isn’t the point. Maybe even the pain isn’t the point. Maybe the point is that however you heal, gnarled up and scar-tissued, you let that wound be whatever the fuck it’s gonna be and let yourself live with it, even if it’s ugly. Whatever! I spent so many years trying to hide that I was ever hurt, as if it never happened, ashamed that it had happened, and now here I am vibing with Sheryl Crow songs that play on the “Retail Soft Rock Hits” playlist at Nordstrom Rack. Everyday is a Winding Road, I guess.