Big Feelings

​Late at night my chest cracks open and all my unwanted thoughts about death pour in. The panic builds until I leap out of bed and creep silently into my children’s rooms. I stare at their small bodies, curled up and tangled, soft mouths slightly open. Little chests rise and fall, a hand twitches. Velvet cheeks, rosy with proof of life. For now.

How am I supposed to live with what I know? Someday they’ll die. Someday I’ll die. The veil that usually hangs in a thick swath over the terrifying portrait of my own mortality has swung aside, and I can’t seem to tug it back into place. When I believed in heaven, I was able to deny how scared I really was. I choked down the bile every time it rose and pretended the taste didn’t linger, bitter in my mouth. Now nothing stops the guttural fear from retching out of me. I walk down the street and I want to scream at everyone—“Don’t you get it?!” There’s no opt-out form, no box to check that lets me say not just yet, thank you. I can’t hold anybody’s hand when I step through that doorway. I don’t have a mirror to stretch around the corner, shaking, and see what’s barreling towards me. Instead I have to get groceries and make a doctor’s appointment and figure out why the cat is peeing on the rug.

I hold a friend’s newborn baby, long awaited, beloved. I glance at her happy face and wonder if the heavy realization has met her yet in the night. I don’t tell her that the night before I read an article about nuclear fallout and couldn’t breathe, thinking about my children in a world without water. We discuss pelvic floor therapy instead.

The parenting expert I follow on Instagram says that my two-year-old screams when I give her four crackers instead of five because she wants to be able to control something. “Everything in life is decided for them,” they say. “Try giving them some choices so they feel like they have some agency. Acknowledge their big feelings.” 

Before my late night panic attack about death I have my evening snack ritual. I stand in front of the messy counter in a quiet house, eyes glued to the dimly lit phone in my hand. One thumb idly flicks, the other hand brings fist after fist of goldfish or cookies or chocolate to my mouth. This goes against all nutrition advice I’ve ever received. It’s the one time of day that I give myself over completely to the sense of exhaustion, the need to be carried. It’s my tantrum. I don’t know how to keep my children from dying, so just let me eat the fucking goldfish. 

In the light of day, the veil is firmly back in place. The coffee is brewing, I’m scrambling to find socks for the kids, no one knows where the toddler’s favorite stuffed animal is. I feel relief after the daycare drop off and feel guilty for feeling relieved. I answer emails, I deadlift ten more pounds than I did three weeks ago, I make a budget and promptly break it by ordering takeout too many times. I’m back in line, snapping at my kids over nothing when twelve hours earlier I was sobbing into my pillow at the thought of their deaths. 

Another friend becomes pregnant and stays pregnant for the first time after several losses. At game night her partner asks: “How do you handle it? I keep thinking, ‘If we can just get to twenty weeks…to viability…to birth…then they’ll be safe.’ But that’s not really true, is it?” My husband and I look at each other. Bleak silence. For a moment, the chasm yawns, and we all stare into it together. I say something about how the fear never really goes away, and you just learn to live with it. We resume the game, I pour more wine, laughter rings out. We tease each other, get too loud talking about politics, squeeze each other tightly and say “Let’s do this again!” when it’s time to go home. My husband does the dishes and I put away the leftover food. Our children sleep safely upstairs. I fold my big feelings neatly at the corners and tuck them under the bed.