The truth behind Disney.

I have heard it said that the second year of grieving is harder than the first. I was unsure how I felt about this until the second year has been upon me for eleven months now and I must say that I certainly agree. In year one everything is still foggy. Part of you is still in shock. You just brace yourself for each event, each “first”, and for the most part you are showered with love and encouragement because of how fresh the event is. People remember. Year two is when things get serious. It begins to dawn on you that this is permanent. There is an unsettling reality you discover that leaves you feeling nothing less than empty. You are no longer trying to make it through the next moment, you are suddenly overwhelmed with the fact that this aching will continue, forever. You will go on every single day for the rest of your life, just missing someone. Longing for them to be with you in a way they will never be capable of again. And that is exhausting. It is absolutely draining to miss someone all the time. For a while I believe I just trained myself to be without her. I had certainly been without people before. I was never a homebody so I had spent many weeks away from home, and this never bothered me. I wasn’t one to call and check in, I’d see my parents when I got around to it. So I assumed that missing Bailey would be the same. I would come to terms with the fact that I wouldn’t see her, and that was that. But I never prepared myself for the fact that I was going to have to MISS her. To really want for her to be here, when she can’t be. I have crossed over into this state of not knowing if I am grieving the person she was, and missing the sister I had, or grieving the person she could have been, and the relationship we were going to enjoy. One day I miss her the way she was, and the next day I am imagining what life would have looked like with her in it. There are days when I spend every other hour listening to her recorded voicemail on my phone so I can hear her voice again, and really commit it to memory. And there are other days that I spend my time daydreaming about what she would sound like now, and what color her hair would be. What colleges would she be looking at? Would she come stay in my house with me in Troy? Everything that happens, big or small, I wonder how different it would be if she were around. This past week I visited Disney for a day. I know, a day, but I was in desperate withdrawal and needed a quick fix and that’s all that was possible on my college budget. Now I will in no way tell you I am not obsessed with Disney, because I am. I love the man, I love the company, I love the place, I believe in it all. I adore Disney. But what most people don’t understand about my love for Disney is that is actually a little more deep than meets the eye. I’ll explain.
I hate going home. There, I admit it. I hate visiting Decatur. And that sounds awful, and I feel terrible, but it’s true. I never got to” get over” Bailey not being there. When Bailey passed I literally had three weeks in my hometown before I moved away for college. And three weeks in grief’s time, is no time. In those three weeks I was certainly showered with love and prayers and endless support, but then I left. I left home, I left safe, I left known, and I was on my own. Completely and utterly alone. In a place that Bailey had never been. Nor had I really for that matter. No one knew me and no one knew her, and I had to navigate her death through all of that? With that being said, I had tons of cards and calls and support from home, but physically I was alone. And it was difficult. Now during this time everyone was back in Decatur moving on with their lives. They were discovering how to move about in this “new normal.” But I never had that. I never learned how to live in our home without her. I never learned how to walk into Beltline and not see her casket in my mind. I never learned how to drive by Austin and not picture her friend’s devastations. I never learned how to look at my brother’s and not see them in tiny suits for their first funeral. I never learned how to make pleasant memories in Decatur. The last things I have there hold nothing but pain and sorrow, and death. At home, I share a hall with someone that is no longer alive. I share a bathroom with someone I will never see again. And I don’t understand that. I can’t process the severity of that. At this point in my life, Decatur is a place filled with lovely and wonderful people, and my family that I love, but mostly it’s just the place that my sister and best friend, died. And that’s that.
And Troy is a place that Bailey never was.
But then there is Disney. And as absolutely insane as this thought process might seem, Bailey didn’t die in Disney.
So Decatur is where she is supposed to be, and Troy is where she never was, but Disney is where she never ceased to be.
Stay with me. I cannot recount to you all of the wonderful memories our family has in Disney. I can’t remember a time we weren’t begging our parents to go back. From the time Bay and I were tiny, to the time little Carter came around, we adored the place. We walked into those parks together, happy as we could be, sharing in one another’s delight moment by moment. We rode the rollercoasters for Dad and went to every single show and parade for me. Someone endured the Teacups with Bailey each year and Dumbo was ridden in rounds. We posed for as many pictures as Mother could possibly snap and as the boys came around we readjusted to Jedi training and Star Wars rides. It’s so easy to believe in magic when you are in Disney, to dream of an alternate reality where everything is going your way. So when I am in Disney, mesmerized by pixie dust, I also feel surrounded by Bailey’s spirit. She’s not a vacancy. She is in every store and on every street corner. I can turn down Main Street and watched her skip towards the castle. I can ride the rapids in Animal Kingdom and hear her laughter. I can endure Mission Space in Epcot to remember her scream. And I can drag her with me to Beauty and the Beast in Hollywood Studios and hear her grumble. And most importantly, I can cry to Wishes and feel her beside me, tears sliding down just as shamelessly.
I have always had this really strange fear of someday falling in love with someone that didn’t know her. She is such a large part of me I cannot imagine sharing my life with someone who doesn’t know who she is. How can they fully understand me if they can’t understand that part of my life? But I do know that if that time comes, and I need someone to understand who Bailey is, not who she was, or could have been, but who she still exists to be, I will take them to the Happiest Place on Earth. We will remember her together in the most magical place.
In her Neverland, where she will never ever have to grow up.