The Unraveling Is What Heals

The will to live prevails in spring, and in me.

Flowering crabapple tree in our front yard, spring 2021

I lie on my back for the first time in over fifteen hours. Light wanes and gives way to the cloak of darkness.

I close my eyelids, motionless in this moment - as if for the first time, as if my body has forgotten the feeling of inertia. First, my nostrils begin to sting, then burn as the sensation travels to my tear ducts. There, it tarries, and my vision blurs.

Then, the fat, heavy droplets pool in the corner of my eyes, traveling down every curvature of my nose and cheeks. The tears plop onto my pillow. My chest trembles. I shiver without thought. Right now, there is no room for thoughts.

My heart yields to this moment, gives way to the visceral need to release pain. I am not conscious of the origin of my tears: Is it exhaustion? frustration? fear? anger? powerlessness?

Yes, I decide. It is all of these. The emotions conglomerate into an indiscernible swirl that continues to saturate my face and my bed sheets. I make no effort to move, despite the chill that moves down my spine in a matter of seconds.

A sigh escapes my mouth. My lower lip quivers, and despite my body’s reaction to the day, to life, I permit the combination of movement and stillness to wind its way through me. There is no way to determine where it all began or where it will end, though I don’t mind much.

For now, the silence grants me catharsis from whatever just happened - I don’t know what - and I try to piece together fragments of the day, to make sense of something. Still, my body trembles, more violently now, in tremors of greater magnitude and duration.

I do not resist it. Because I am alone in this blessed moment, I can do and be whatever I must. The ambushes have ended, at least for now. I can gather myself, but I choose not to, instead knowing the unraveling is what heals. I can collect the memories and the feelings some other time. Now, I will come undone.

I consider the stillness and silence a space in which I can focus on breathing as the distant din fades in the background. My bedroom has become my only sanctuary. It is a place set apart, where I can crash or crumble - sometimes both. In minutes, I will be beckoned to settle an argument, find a missing toy, put on a stray sock, wipe a nose or bottom, assemble a snack. But for now, I will linger. I will savor the time given to me, where my mind and body are both offered a light reprieve.

Lately, I compare my life to a battlefield, which I am aware is a crude metaphor. Everything I have read about war mirrors what I must confront on a daily basis, both within myself and in my home. Sometimes, I remind myself that I chose this life. I wanted children. I prayed for them. And here they are.

Here I am. I am not the woman I imagined I would become, not when I was young or even ten years ago. People hold their judgments about our family, I know. I have heard variations of “Why did you have five children if you couldn’t handle that many?” from neighbors and family and friends. I don’t have a sufficient answer, but I will say this: I was raised to believe that my fertility was a gift, and that I should not thwart its purpose to procreate.

The controversy surrounding that belief is not one I am debating now. I recognize the many layers of nuance influencing a couple’s choice to have children - when, how many, or even if at all. My choice was made from a simple but stalwart belief that my body was meant to invent and bring forth new life.

Every human longs for fecundity, not barrenness, even if only symbolically. Nature reminds me that all living things fight to survive. The will to live is evident when winter gives way to the season of spring: the crabapple sapling nearly destroyed by a recent windstorm boasts of blossoms on its remaining branches.

All things must cycle through death to life, pruning the old and blooming the new. This is also true for me.

Even I, as a harried and weary mother of five, can attest that the dying in me has brought forth bustling laughter, activity, and flourishing. I see it in my children, too, even as their needs exhaust me. They delight in spotting a rainbow after a popup thunderstorm. The spark of innocence still evident in their eyes reminds me that I may have done something right, despite the fact that I was unprepared to manage five children.

I may be a reluctant mom, one whose apparent magnanimity overrides her sensibility, because she chose to have five children. But at least I have given each of them something good in this world, however small - their own sense of self, I hope. The room to be, to know that their existence is enough for me to love them, and that we will endure the tempests of life together.

And I will cling to my own identity, even in this moment of tears and exhaustion and body aches. I will continue groping for the faint hope that I, like the flowering bushes and deciduous trees, will burst forth with something new, Something Greater than where I find myself today.