“It’s the Unraveling” – Joni Mitchell

I haven’t unraveled in several years. I haven’t gotten all the way down to bare wooden spool in quite some time. Apparently, sometimes you need to go all the way to splinters.

Tuesday and Wednesday were days of this. Not knowing whether I would stop crying. Not knowing if it were okay to just cry – or if I should somehow feel something else – something more like acceptance, or serenity or simply not so unmoored.

I didn’t want to let myself get that far – it’s been so long that it felt dangerous, or juvenile to go all to pieces. If I hold on to something, some semblance of being all right – some appearance of being alright, then I’m alright, right?

So, on Wednesday, I watched The Karate Kid on loan from the library. And as soon as it and the special feature commentaries were over, I started to bawl. Again. Two hours relieved, distracted, and then it all crashes in again.

It was then I called around for help – just to cry, to have someone witness and hold the space as I did, so it didn’t feel so alone to do it by myself in my apartment. If someone else is there, then I’m not unraveling fully, am I? I’m not to total pieces, am I? I’m not a leper. Or a lunatic.

At the end of the night, I spoke with my friend in Chicago. She moved back to Chicago after desperate attempts to make it work in San Francisco, after she had to leave her job, needed to leave her apartment, was trying in every backwards, upsidedown, whatdoyouwantfromme way to make it work and stay in San Francisco.

In the end, she moved back home, to the suburbs of Chicago, where she is living with her parents. Her greatest fear of what would happen if she didn’t “keep it together” came to exact and swift fruition.

Her life unraveled exactly as she thought it would if she let go of the desperate trying. … And yet, she’s okay. She’s in exactly the place she feared she’d be, she didn’t want to be, she thought it was a failure to be – but she’s not a failure. She’s still her. She let it all go to pieces, she allowed herself to unravel, and she’s fine. She’s still amazing, and it’s not as bad as she feared when she was trying so hard to make pieces fit that weren’t fitting.

Her moral to me, was sometimes unraveling is simply what we have to do. To let myself cry for 48 hours is simply what I needed to do. I felt better afterward, yesterday.

I needed to, and I kept trying to keep myself together from falling apart, as if that would eliminate the need for me to do so. And it didn’t. Trying to force my feelings into a box they do not fit doesn’t work, apparently. So, I let it all go, because I simply couldn’t hang on to it anymore.

I used an entire box of tissues, and made the mental note to get the ones with lotion next time. I ached, and dribbled, and sobbed at the ceiling for answers.

I fell apart. I really didn’t want to or intend to. If I don’t fall apart, then it feels like I’ve still got some control in the situation – I can still handle this, I am still the master of my destiny.

However, the truth simply is otherwise in this situation. I am not the master of my destiny here. This is utterly out of my control. I have no say in this whatsoever, and yet I have to continue with it anyway. Who wouldn’t wail against the Universe for such a raw deal?

I didn’t want to see my powerlessness in it, really is the bottom line. If I can maintain, even to myself some semblance of “I got it,” then somehow, I can convince myself I really do. To fall to pieces is to admit that I really don’t “got it,” and I really never had it – as far as this goes… and as far as a lot of other things go to.

To really allow myself to unravel is to really admit that I am not in charge of everything. That I am not G-d, and that I am simply, unalterably human.

Who wants to admit that?

The irony, of course, is that when I finally allowed myself permission to fall apart – or rather, when finally I had no further resources to hold it all together, I did exactly that – I fell apart. I sobbed on the phone to friends, to my mom, simply to the quietude of my own home. I cried. And it felt like it would never stop – the grief for how different and uncontrollable everything is for me right now.

But it did. I cried myself into that state of dehydration and near-cross-eyedness. I poured myself into bed, and I woke up better.

My Chicago friend said something else. She suggested that I ask to speak with G-d’s manager. That this particular representative was not being very helpful, and I simply needed more help. If my Higher Power wants me to get through this, I’m going to need more resources. So, I’d like to speak to your manager, G-d, you’re simply not giving me what I need, and I’m going up the chain of command.

She suggested, even, perhaps I could talk to G-d’s mom. Tell his mom what rotten things G-d had been up to lately, frying ants’ backs with a magnifying glass, and giving a young artist cancer. Grounded.

These lines of thinking give me some power back. I don’t have any external power here. I cannot control the doctors, the needles, the hair loss, the fatigue; but I can control how I deal with it. How I choose to address what’s happening to me.

I needed to fall apart first. I needed to let myself free from my own ideas of what it looks like to go through something like this properly. I’ve never done this before, is what I kept on saying to my mom on the phone. I have never done this before – of course I have no idea how to do it then.

Of course, I have no idea what’s the “right way” or “wrong way,” because, there isn’t one. There’s just what I need to do. I needed to cry. For two days. And I’ll likely need to do that again.

Today, I don’t feel that need. I’ve asked for more help from the Universe, and I believe it comes to me when I’ll need it. The help that I needed the other day was permission to let go, to let go completely. To tell myself, I don’t know how to deal with this, to hold this, and to simply grieve for that.

And, so, now I’ve unraveled. I went all the way to bone and back. And I’m alright. I let myself fall to the depth of my sorrow, and I came back. Therefore, I now have the experience of that being a viable option – it doesn’t mean I’ll drown in it forever. Unraveling is allowed. Unraveling is not the end.