A Deep Well

Last year, I had lunch with my friend, The Comet.

It was a beautiful exchange — the kind that only happens after years of knowing each other, when the conversation no longer needs to prove anything. It was both professional and profoundly personal. A meeting of minds, yes, but also of lives lived.

Somewhere in the middle, he said something that stopped me.

He told me I was like a baby deer who had gone through multiple wars.

Not fragile — alert.

Not broken — seasoned.

Still gentle, but no longer naïve.

And near the end of the lunch or in a text exchange we had later,

he said something else.

He called me a deep well.

Not as an insult.

Not as a burden.

But as recognition.

At the time, I nodded and let it pass. But lately, that phrase has been returning to me — quietly, insistently — asking to be understood.

A deep well isn’t dramatic.

It doesn’t splash or demand attention.

It simply holds.

It holds experience. Memory. Pattern. Meaning.

It holds what others skim past because they don’t have time or depth to stay with it.

Depth doesn’t come from intensity alone.

It comes from staying conscious while moving through things that would flatten or hollow out someone else.

I didn’t become deep because I chased hardship.

I became deep because I didn’t abandon myself while living through it.

I grew up inside legacy and responsibility before I had language for either.

I built something real that held other people.

I lost it catastrophically, and then dismantled it with my own hands.

I rebuilt myself without the original root system.

I learned what exposure costs.

I learned what integration demands.

Each layer added water to the well.

Not bitterness.

Not cynicism.

But understanding.

A deep well doesn’t mean I am heavy.

It means I am anchored.

I don’t rush people.

I don’t need to fill silence.

I don’t mistake surface connection for intimacy.

I know how long things take — healing, trust, truth, becoming.

I’ve lived inside timelines that don’t show up on resumes or social feeds.

And because of that, I can meet others where they are without needing them to be somewhere else.

There’s a quiet responsibility that comes with depth.

Not everyone wants it.

Not everyone can draw from it.

And not everyone should.

A deep well isn’t for extraction.

It’s for sustenance.

I’ve spent years learning when to cover it, when to protect it, and when to let someone approach slowly, with care.

These days, I’m no longer surprised by my depth.

I see it clearly now — not as something to explain away or soften for easier consumption, but as something earned.

Something useful.

Something steady.

That lunch wasn’t a turning point.

It was a mirror.

And what I saw reflected back wasn’t fragility or damage.

It was capacity.

A deep well of lived experience — still clear, still alive, still able to nourish what comes next.