Instar, decay, and the riot of my soul
On Motherhood: The rushing became a survival instinct
You’ve been Earthside for as long as I carried you within my body.
I wonder if you were in a hurry. Was it you or was it me? Did I rush you, my love?
The tendency to hurry is a malady I was born with.
I, too, came early but it was nine weeks instead of three and I had to live in a plastic bubble in order to breathe. I rushed to get here, rushed to get home — wherever home was — to be with my mother. But then she left and then she left again. And again. I told myself she didn’t choose to leave. She was forced. Arrested. Taken against her will. But somehow it never made it hurt any less.
The rushing became a survival instinct — something I needed to exist in the world I grew up in. Even the moments that should’ve been allowed to move at their own pace were hurried. I was forced to fit a whole childhood into twenty-minute visits behind bullet-proof glass or with guards looking over my shoulder.
I’ve spent the last decade trying to get the timing right. Trying to find a pace that allows me to pause and to notice while at the same time allowing me to feel like I’ve made forward motion. Like I’m moving in the right direction.
When I can’t shake the rushing — that weight of someone pressing at my back with both hands — I look at you and there is a softening. Their touch is lighter, and sometimes I can’t feel it at all. You’ve taught me to exist in the eternal present. One of the many gifts you’ve given me these past eight months. And some days, I get the ease of living just right and it is delicious.
I remember how scared I was before you were born. I was afraid of myself, mostly. What if I didn’t like who I became? What if I didn’t like myself as a mother? I was like a caterpillar stuck in instar — stuck in the in-between where I was no longer myself, but not yet a butterfly. Not yet a mother.
Instar implies a change, a transformation. When you hear the word transform, you often think of growth and beauty and the arrival of somewhere better than where you started. And there’s truth in that, for being your mother is the greatest self I’ve been in the thirty-five years of my living.
But my transformation to motherhood was riddled with decay. A slow death to my hurried nature, my all-consuming self-doubt, and the endless emptying of myself to those who only took, but never gave.
A complete metamorphosis. I needed to shed the layers of life, the layers of self, to arrive at motherhood. I needed those eight months to make room for the mother, to make room for you.
When I was still pregnant with you, they said my mood could affect you and that’s why I tried so hard to always reach for joy. But I’ve since learned that the opposite is also true.
You were guiding me from the very beginning.
I remember when my water broke. I was getting into bed and I soaked the sheets. The peace that came over me was penetrative. A relief. A feeling of arrival. In an instant, I was ready.
I like to think you were ready, too. That I’d given so much of myself to you when we were still one that you had enough. You were ready to enter the world, for I prepared you for what was waiting on the outside.
For eight months I’ve watched you grow and become who you are, gaining a sense of self that’s separate from me. And although we no longer share my body, I feel your serene and equable brightness even when we’re apart. When you were born you left pieces of yourself behind, cells that have now settled into my limbs, my heart, my brain.1
You have shaped me, my darling, just as I am shaping you.
Is that why I always know what you need?
Is it instinct or is it you, directing me, pulling at my heart from the inside at your steady, cloudless pace?
A gravitational pull to a purpose that quells the rushing, that quiets the riot of my soul to a comforting thrum.
Some of the baby’s cells (DNA) become embedded in various organs and become part of the mother even after birth. This is called microchimerism, from the word “chimera,” referring to a mythical creature made from parts of different animals.
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