A Violent Yawn

*TW- Death contemplations

I’m about 5 years old laying in my bed, stricken by the fear of death. It threatens to swallow me whole. So many questions. Where do we go? Will I see my parents? I’m sick at the thought that I won’t run barefoot in the grass and sunshine forever. I realize now that possibly none of the answers either of my parents could have given would have sufficed to calm my fears. This was a journey meant to be traveled alone from within.

This memory is core. A central part of each breath I take. A pervasive existential worry that it will be my last looms at present. It’s everywhere that I find myself. I can’t be separated from it.

Shaking myself from reverie, I find myself contemplating this gaping pit of fear in the bath. It’s not lost on me that the “Anxiety Release Subliminal” from The Healing Mind plays in the background of my nighttime wind down.

This hole ain’t going to heal itself.

So, I close my eyes and hold it. Breathing deeply, a hand at my chest. Staring at the Stranger inside. I surrender. Dipping my imaginary toes into the void of inevitable endings. My body recoils, physically. It’s as if a space within that has longed to be touched shivers against my awareness. A violent yawn stirs from below. Flashes of my children, of my life and everything I hold precious spark before my eyes. Tears stain my cheeks.

I’m aware of a numbness that has sunk its roots into my core. It has suffocated a piece of me from feeling. And at the same time, has protected me from the fear that edged to engulf that 5 year old little girl lying awake at bedtime.

THIS IS IT. I’m touching it.

I have spent the better half of the past few years wondering at my lack of emotion. Aware of a numbness that I simply could not touch, at the time. And is ironically the same thing that has helped me begin the unraveling of my tightly woven anxieties.

And if I really look hard at when I started becoming aware of this pattern, it emerged sometime conspicuously close to becoming a mother. To becoming terrified of missing a single breath my children breathed. Or a soccer game. Or even that Cheer camp that I secretly am hoping she doesn't end up liking because “I’m not really cut out to be a cheer mom”. Or that pandemic that hit around the same time I was birthing humans into the world. Or the current genocides on our planet. It’s hard to pin down.

But this was MY fear. Becoming a mom was the catalyst of a greater story unraveling, my greatest love story of mother hood and ultimately of life. But it wasn’t a fear implanted by merely becoming a mom. It was always my path to walk, and my deep well of fear to dive into. My greatest wisdom of life to obtain.

And so I stand at the abyss of fear within. The deep dark well of unknowns. I understand now that coming to this place within is also my well of nourishment. Where my mind sees darkness and scarcity, my body senses the deeper spring of life giving waters. Quenching and refreshing and replenishing. The tears on my face fall away renewing me. Reminding me of this finite human life, so small and so big and so mine.

There is an end to this well, and it is deep and it is full of wisdom. And if I ever dare to reach its bottom, I’ll continue to rejoice in the end. Reminding myself that the end of this deep dark well, brings life and love to its surface every time I dare to dive in.