Because woman cannot live on crackers and water alone (it’s a nausea thing), I cuddled under a soft, comforting throw and watched the first episode of the new season of Project Runway. At the end of every season, I tell myself THIS IS IT and yell at myself for getting invested in the fashion creations when I have the style sense of an old boxing manager. I’m schlocky. Not Rocky.

Like turning to crackers and water to keep my stomach from rolling into a tsunami of letting it all flow out, tonight’s television show sustenance was more medical than artisanal.

Or so I thought.

Halfway through the segments, one contestant breaks down into heavy tears, explaining how lost she feels without her mom, dead two years already. Losing her greatest fan, losing the one true voice of unconditional love, losing the embrace of the person who believed in her as an artist took the contestant’s confidence down 5000 notches. And suddenly I was crying with her, feeling an instant kindred pain with this broken spirit. The tears were ugly and impossible to have imagined minutes earlier when I tuned in to a show merely to keep me from throwing up.

You never know when that knife of unavoidable sadness will cut deep into the heart of darkness. I don’t have a mother or a father anymore. Who will tell me I’m the greatest kid in the world ever again? Who will think I can do anything and succeed? Who will laugh at my insane song parodies?

Who will be there when I don’t win Project Runway? Who will tell me “You’ll be all right” and “You are More Better” and do what it takes to make me believe it?

Who will meet me every week for coffee and doughnuts and conversations only a mother and daughter can share?

The nausea is on hold. The bad, boring, physical nausea. I did not see those tears or these words coming out of me like drenching rain because a reality show contestant triggered me when I least expected to feel anything.