Sinking
Explaining the unexplainable.
The other morning, I woke up with a sinking feeling in my gut.
It was particularly disconcerting as, unlike most mornings when I’m dragged out of bed by a small child after very little sleep, I had actually slept soundly. I’d woken only once—a rarity—and the sleep had felt restorative. Deep. Precious.
But just before dawn, I felt myself rouse. It was as if the bed depressed next to me. More accurately, it was if someone was sitting next to me. I could almost hear the sheets crumple beneath them. A weight, definitely. But energetically, the room also felt different. I could hear breath and feel warmth pulsing in my direction. But as I tried to roll towards the weight in the bed, I was frozen in place. In a dream-like state still and unsure whether I was, in fact, awake or still asleep.
At some point, I must have properly stirred as I reached for my phone to check the time. It was just after 5am. Early enough to go back to sleep, but also early enough that I could be certain nobody was yet moving around the house.
When my husband walked in half an hour or so later to say good morning, I sat bolt upright and burst into tears. Instinctively, I knew something was wrong and whether real or imagined, I had had a visceral response to this dreamy ‘encounter’.
While I’ve always been somewhat fascinated by the unexplainable, I have also felt wary of following my curiosity in that direction. It’s as if acknowledging it might make it impossible to turn away—even if I wanted to. That tension has often kept me at arm’s length, unsure whether leaning in would open something I couldn’t easily set aside.
But lately, I’ve begun to wonder if that’s precisely the point. Maybe I don’t need to unravel it or make it logical. Perhaps part of being human is not always having to search for explanations or force things into meaning. Some experiences aren’t meant to be solved, only lived through—and I’m starting to see that the challenge isn’t always in solving the mystery, it’s in allowing it to exist without resolution.
Perhaps the real work is not in trying to make sense of them, but in allowing them to remain unanswered and, importantly, in giving ourselves permission to surrender to what it is. To trust that even without clarity, we can find a way to carry it, to keep moving, and to live alongside the unexplainable.
