Everything Is a Metaphor Until It Isn't

My therapist says I hide in metaphors. I said, "No, metaphors are a house I built with my own hands and the door is locked and I swallowed the key." She stared at me. I said, "See? That's not hiding. That's architecture." Here is what I know: the heart is not actually a drum, the moon is not actually lonely, a river does not actually run anywhere— it falls, continuously, and we just named the falling something that sounds more intentional. But when I say my grief is an ocean, I don't mean it's large. I mean I cannot see the bottom. I mean it has a tide— some days it pulls back far enough that I can walk the shore and find strange, beautiful things the water left behind. And some days it comes for me without warning. When I say you are my anchor, I don't mean you're heavy. I mean I was drifting, and you gave me a reason to stop. When I say time heals, I don't mean it's a doctor. I mean the wound doesn't close— it just grows new skin around itself, and eventually you stop noticing the scar unless someone asks about it. A metaphor is not a lie. It's the closest an honest person can get to the truth without bleeding. It's the mind saying: I cannot describe this directly, but if I hold it next to something else, maybe you'll feel what I feel. And isn't that all language is? One person holding something invisible up to the light and asking another person: Do you see this? Do you see what I see? My therapist says I hide in metaphors. I say I live in them. There's a difference— but I'd need a metaphor to explain it.