I don’t know what I have to do. What do I have to say or write for someone to notice me? Why do I have to lie during the day and only feel myself at night, caught in the hit, hearing the voices, lying and crying myself to sleep in a world that never seems to understand me? Never seems to get me. Never seems to see me. Never seems to fit me. Never seems to want me.
I went to a Purim party the other day, decked out in my suit and hat, trying to play the part of the good chassid with what I have; and the first question I got asked was if I was in a costume. I should have said that aren’t we all in costumes, or maybe it’s just me. Faking it until I make it. Trying to act normal when I’m not, trying to be the ideal when I have fallen so far from grace, acting like I believe when I am no longer sure of anything in my life. Putting on the face of someone else over my own, someone who has goals, and dreams, and hope. Anything to hide the man underneath, the man who has given up, the man who no longer has the will to fight the demons, the man who’s biggest accomplishment is taking the next step on the long death march towards the inevitable.
I hardly write anymore, because I’m tired of sharing myself with others. No one seems to get it. No one seems to care. I see advertisements for how to write more catchy posts, use buzzwords, hell even write the damn article for you; but what’s the point in creating another lie? I am who I am, this despicable and pathetic shell of a man, clinging to the darkness because hope is untenable, and the light too blinding. I can see the views I get on these articles, and I understand why no one wants to read them. They’re sad, they don’t inspire confidence, they don’t have a positive message; I don’t leave you with the false impression of redemption.
This life I live, whatever it is, is the only one I have. I have seen so much change in the past year, and I thought by now I wouldn’t miss the numbness of the hospital bed and medicine times; but that would be another lie. I have a wife, a job, a place to put my head at night; but I am still so fundamentally unhappy. I look at the mirror and hate the man that I see. I look into his eyes and see everything again. The horrors, the pain, the suffering. I look down and see my scars, and I feel my body over for the ones you cannot see. The years of mental anguish and pain whipping my back, hundreds of nights spent caught in emotional turmoil cutting into my flesh. I feel the scars on my soul from knowing that there is a life I could be living and I am stuck here.
I will never escape this, this madness. I will never be able to tell the truth to anyone again, not because I do not want to lie, but because I don’t understand it anymore. So many things I see, and hear, and feel aren’t real but are so entrenched in my reality that I cannot explain it to someone else. I cannot look at them in the eyes and let them in. I have to hide it away, or write it away, because I can barely stand myself to talk about it. No one wants to see another suffering person, they want to feel good. They want to feel hope. They want to see some glimmer of light in this increasingly dark world.
I am not here for that. I am another part of the darkness. I will lie to you, but only as much as I lie to myself. There is no hope at the end of my road, only the accomplishment of living when you don’t want to anymore. There are dragons at the edges of my map, but they’re something I made up. This will not end happily, it will end with drudgery and best efforts.
I have to keep walking, one step at a time. Not because I believe that salvation is around the corner, but because I just don’t know any other way of living. I will live for now, at least I can hold onto that.
I say that I have a sleeping problem. I tell people that I’ve tried different types of sleeping pills; and I have, they just don’t do anything other than give me dry mouth in the morning or leave my tastes buds bitter for the better part of the day. I say that I just can’t fall asleep, that I have racing thoughts. I tell people that I’m afraid of my nightmares or waking up from them and not realizing that they’re just fiction. I tell people that I have insomnia, that it’s something medical. Something clinical. A side-effect.
That’s not true.
I don’t sleep because I choose not to. I stay awake until five or six in the morning, fighting heavy eyelids and unfocused eyes. I feel the sleep-inducing effects of my psychiatric pills; fuck, that’s what half of them are supposed to do. I can feel the exhaustion in my arms, the tiredness in my legs, and the burning desire to sleep when I turn to my side and curl up. I lie on my back in bed, staring into the darkness, knowing that sleep doesn’t evade me; I try and hide from her.
I don’t sleep at night because I can’t stop hearing them. I can’t stop hearing myself. Yelling. Screaming. Shrieking. I can’t stop hearing my own voice, the one that’s supposed to be telling me what’s right in the world, yell at me about how much I should hate myself and how I should hurt myself and how many reasons that there are that I should jump from the highest building I can find. I hear my voice, filled with rage, and disgust, scream at me about how ashamed I should feel, that I am pathetic, that I don’t deserve to live. The voice I hide from the world behind a veneer of false normalcy comes to me at night, unmasked, and filled with fury and hate.
The other voices are worse. Sometimes they say things, random words and phrases. Sometimes I hear people talk about me, treating me like a child. Sometimes they pretend that I am right here with them; but sometimes they make it well known that they are gossiping about me, criticizing me, disgusted by me. Sometimes they just parrot whatever hateful and self-loathing things I say to myself. Sometimes they just scream; they scream and scream and scream with a voice that needs no air to sustain itself and whose vocal cords will never break from the rawness of unending sonic dissonance and degradation.
There are images too. Random things. Fantastic things. Faces from my past. People who I let down. Those that hurt me. Loved ones I miss. The gallery of every suffering complexion I have ever seen. The people who I wished I had said I loved them, but I never got the chance. They flash. They linger. They are all that I can see. Sometimes I scream for them to go, and sometimes I do everything I can to just try and remember them before I lose them amongst the pain. Faces twisted in agony mixed with glimpses of smiles I wish I remembered more vividly. My mind is a cinema, with every screen playing a different horror, a different memory; and I am bound to the chair with eyes held open forced to absorb it all.
I try to numb myself. I watch hours of YouTube. I binge episode after episode after episode. I take more drugs. I do anything to try and make myself as close to mindless as possible, anything to drown it all out. Replace the voices with a laugh track. Replace the faces with actors from a sitcom. Stop the screaming; just anything to stop the fucking screaming.
I want to sleep, I really do. It’s just that I would rather pass out exhausted and numbed from meaningless content and wake up tired than fall asleep begging for everything to stop, praying that this is my last night, that I die in my sleep so that at least I have a chance of my last moment being in a pleasant dream rather than this reality. The one where I hear mothers crying over their dead children. The one where I see bruised faces, and children whose faces hide their lost innocence. The one where my backing track is just samples of screams at different pitches. The one where I cannot stop telling myself that I hate everything about the man that I see in the mirror. The one where I am my own torturer, tormentor; where I whisper to myself to just die already.
I’m not scared of the nightmares anymore or waking up not knowing what’s real and what is just a horrible dream. Those things are fleeting, the constant repetition of my own hate-filled voice is always there, my own personal white noise machine.
I’m going to try and sleep soon, but I need to watch one more episode. Or two. Or maybe just finish the season. I would rather hear the same lame jokes and follow the obvious plot lines than keep on hearing myself tear myself apart.
I don’t want to sleep yet, they’re still here with me.
I saw my new psychiatrist last night. Well, she’s actually my old psychiatrist, the one who I was seeing before this whole-year-and-then-some started. The one who told me to check myself into the hospital in the first place. She remembered me, not least of which because I have a last name that almost no one in this country has. Under the hat and behind the mask she still remembered the little immigrant who almost ended it all. She knew where I had been, but she was shocked at the amount of time I had spent in the different facilities.
She asked me a few questions, wanted to see my new diagnoses. She asked about my past, and why I hear the voices in my head. She asked all of the standard questions you get asked in a first meeting. She wanted to gauge where I was, and she did it all in less than thirty minutes. She told me someone would call me to make an appointment for six weeks from yesterday; I used to see someone every week or two for a year.
She was the one that first told me when I came to her that I had to change my definition of normal, of what was doing well. Normal was not like everyone else’s normal, it was functional. She told me that this was not going anywhere, and the goal of it all was just to keep me going. Keep me stable. Keep me functioning. Keeping me in that zone between so depressed that you want to kill yourself and so high that you feel like your blood is on fire and you talk too fast for anyone else to understand. That was doing well.
So, after a year of outpatient care, and two months of intense hospitalization, I’m here. I’m normal. I’m stable. I’m functioning.
So why do I feel nothing?
Why do I have no desire to do anything that would bring me joy?
Why does almost nothing make me happy?
Why do I put on the smile to make people feel comfortable?
It’s a marked improvement from wanting to die, from wanting to hurt yourself, from the screams in my head, from seeing other people’s faces on someone, from seeing things that just aren’t there, from feeling alien in your own skin, and from being unable to sit in your own chair without feeling like the very thing itself is rejecting you.
But I don’t know where to go from here.
I’m trying all of the steps I’m supposed to be taking. I (mostly) take my meds on time. I’m working with my support team. I’m looking for work, I even did well in an interview recently. I might even have a job some time soon.
It still feels like it’s all happening to someone else, that the real me just wants to lie down in my bed and sleep all of the time. The only thing that I can feel know with any consistency is talking with my wife and listening to music. Everything else feels like a waste of time. I tried to play a game on my computer yesterday, and I quit as soon as the game started. I felt absolutely nothing from something I used to enjoy.
Maybe I’m still tired from my trip abroad. Maybe I’m still jetlagged. Maybe I’m still getting used to this new schedule, or the lack of one. Maybe I’m having to relearn what life is like outside the confines of the program. Maybe it’s all of those things.
Maybe I’m just going to be like this.
I hope it will get better. I hope I can find new hobbies, something that I enjoy. Maybe work will give me some purpose, and new people to interact with in a place that isn’t devoted to recovery and mental health.
But like I’ve said before, the voices aren’t gone; and one of them keeps on telling me that this is the best I’m going to get. That I will forever be functional, never flourishing. I look at social media, which I know I shouldn’t, and I still can’t help but feel envy at all of the people and their happiness. My law school buddies with great careers. My friends holding their new child, or their newest one. My family smiling for real and not the kind that I put on, one that disappears immediately when everyone stops looking.
I don’t know what to say in the end here. I don’t have a hopeful message for you because I don’t have one for myself. I have hope, but I think that might just be the small light inside of me that keeps everything from just turning to darkness. It’s not a fire that keeps an engine going, accelerating, but just a flame that keeps the lights on, something that just points me in a certain direction. I hope that I can give you something soon to be proud of, because I desperately need something to be proud of myself for. I survived it all, but no one builds a monument to just getting by. Maybe this little flame will grow, maybe I will be happy. I don’t want to stay this way forever, there’s no point in just being another functioning machine in this world.
At least I have this, and at least I have you. There’s nothing else I do that leaves a mark like this, everything else is just writing in the sand. I need to keep writing, even if I’ve been told by some to just stay quiet. Talking to you is the only thing that makes me anything other than normal; and I need to be more than that. I’m already far from normal because of what’s wrong with me, I want to get to the point where my life marks me as more than just getting along. More than just functioning. More than just surviving. More than my kind of normal.
Much love from the Holy Land, hope I can keep the writing up. Thank you again for reading.
Tonight, my teacher from ulpan, my Hebrew school, gave us a little bonus assignment. It was a New Year’s card, and we’re meant to write all of the things that happened to us in the past year that we’re grateful for, and what we look forward to in the next. It’s a little optional task, something to add a little brevity to all of the grammar and vocabulary lessons; but it’s something that strikes to the core of how much I went through this past year, and how my future has never been more unknown to me.
For most of this year, in fact up until the last weeks of December, I was in a mental health outpatient clinic. I’ve written about the sessions, the times of clarity, the times of despair, and the nights I’ve spent losing myself to the madness. I would have thought that people would know what I was going through, that they would at least know what’s happened. Maybe I even let myself dream that someone would understand, but time and time again I was proven wrong by the interactions I had with people I was close with. Maybe it’s because they have no point of reference for what I’m talking about; you can read about the state of insanity until the end of your days, but unless you experience what it is like to have your mind unravel, you will only know the symptoms you can relate to your own personal life. Maybe it’s because it’s still just a taboo subject, and people would rather compartmentalize and ignore that aspect of you. Maybe it’s because no one wants to talk about suffering, because everyone else in the world is programmed to avoid pain when they can. Maybe it’s because they just don’t care, because what is my pain to them, or what is it comparison to whatever everyone else in the world goes through.
Maybe I will always be the black sheep, the friend who you worry about, the relative that you don’t know how to talk to, the person you whisper about, the cautionary tale, the one you would rather forget than remember. I am the target of extra care, of well-intentioned-but-ultimately-hurtful suggestions, and the usual measure of mistrust and self-distancing from someone that they don’t know if they are dangerous, or just maybe won’t always be around. It hurts beyond words to have to describe everything I have been through to make someone understand, but it hurts even worse when that flow of information changes nothing. It is not fun to be told what is best for you by people that don’t understand you, and this year has been filled with that. People are always ready to give advice and say that if I need anything to let them know, they are hardly ever ready to call out of the blue just to see if I am ok. It’s funny when the voices that tell you what you should be doing were never there when the voices in your head were telling you much more loudly what to do.
Every day, I wear a bracelet I made in the hospital over a year ago. It’s simple, I mean it was made in the crafts room in a psych ward. It’s eighteen beads on an elastic band, sixteen black and two white placed between each set of eight black beads. I remember thinking to myself when I made that bracelet that the black was all of the darkness in my soul, everything horrible in my mind, everything that I am damned for. The white was there to remind me that I am still on the edge, that I am not yet beyond saving. It’s become my totem, my constant reminder of who I am.
Blackness dominated this year, with only a few points of white breaking up the monotony of being caught in your own mind. I can’t look back and say this was a good year, even though I am in a better place than when it started. I learned some tricks to keep things in check, and I made some adjustments to make life actually livable; but nothing erases the horrible memories from this year that play in my mind when I close my eyes and try to sleep. It’s not even entirely mental. I hate looking in the mirror we have in our bedroom, to see what all of this has done to me physically. The little scars, the stretch marks, the extra weight, and the look in my eyes like I’ve lived much more than a year in 2021. I’m trying to apply the radical acceptance I learned in therapy, but it’s hard when you can’t separate yourself from how much you hate what you’ve become.
Still, I am trying to cling to hope. The voices are still here with me, but I know now how to lower their volume. The intrusive thoughts still come up, but I can put them in their box, or at least most of the time I can. I’m not ashamed of the scars anymore, and I don’t care anymore about the stares and second-looks they bring with them. Leaving my program didn’t end everything, it just meant I was ready to walk with one less crutch. I will live with this for however long I make it in this life, and that’s ok. I have no other life to live, and I don’t think I could see the world in any other way. I don’t think I even want to have a different kind of vision, if I wasn’t different I don’t think I would even be writing in the first place.
I have a job interview tomorrow, and my first appointment with my new psychiatrist. I am taking the steps to make this new year a better one, but I still can’t see as far ahead as I used to, and that’s ok. If I can make it through the day and accomplish something, if I can take it one step at a time, I’m in a lot better position than I was when 2021 first started. This year wasn’t perfect, it honestly really sucked most of the time, but it was necessary. If I hadn’t made the choices I did a year ago, I know I wouldn’t have made it to 2022 to write this. The past is ultimately just the past, and it’s never going to happen again (well, it will in my mind probably); my present doesn’t have to be dictated by it. I can write whatever I want for this life of mine, I don’t need to stay stuck in that place anymore. I can only hope that this year is better than the last, and take the steps to try and make that happen. I still have hope, and that’s more than I had a year ago. If I just have that, I think I’ll make it out ok.
Happy New Year from Houston to Holy Land, I hope you keep reading, I hope I keep writing, and I hope we can share something together. This whole endeavor is about connection, and I hope I can do just that with what comes next.
So, I’ll be honest, it’s been a long time since I’ve written here. It’s not that I didn’t want to write or share what’s going on; it’s just that so much has happened since I last wrote anything. I wrote another draft of this coming back post, but I don’t want to hide behind flowery imagery or beat you over the head with how I’ve suffered. I don’t want that to be me anymore, I don’t want to just be someone that is writing to write something darkly beautiful, I want to tell you the truth, in all its ugly glory. So let me tell you where I’m at.
I haven’t been doing well this past month. I was enjoying a good few months where things seemed to be just going up. I had things going on in my life, and I was making positive steps toward ending this nearly year-long phase of mental health treatment. This disease, this demon I carry in me, decided otherwise.
I think in all of my writing, I’ve done plenty to describe what it feels like to lose your mind; I’ve written so much about the pain. I’m not going to lie to you and tell you that I’m not in pain right now, I’m suffering some of the worst I have in months. Every night is horrible and I lose control. Like clockwork, every night it feels like a stone is crushing my chest and everything becomes so intense, every emotional dial is at eleven. Sadness feels like I’m drowning in an ocean of my own tears, the loneliness feels like I am in a dark room that I will never escape, and the regret feels like someone is driving a dagger into my heart. I lose my mind.
The voices have come back, and they’re getting louder. I cannot describe to you how intense the desire to hurt myself gets, which is already crazy enough to try to explain to people that normally avoid pain and injury. There are nights that I just want to give up, that I pray to G-d to just let this be the last night I have to endure all of this. All of this pain and misery and madness experienced alone in this tiny room I am typing in, not wanting to bother anyone else as I slowly lose my mind again one night at a time.
The crazy thing is that the days are fine. I can function, hell, I can thrive. I can laugh. I can work out. I can help others. I can have hope. My life is split between these times of progress and madness. It’s getting worse every day, but somehow I still wake up as if I’ve respawned after a night in the madhouse.
I’m afraid that maybe I’m never going to get better, that I will always have this demon on my back, these voices in my head, this darkness within me. I’m afraid that I’ll never have the life I imagined for myself as a younger man. I’m afraid that I will always be a slave to this disease.
I spoke about this with my therapist, and I think that this will always be the reality of my life. I have no guarantee that I will not have weeks where my nights are like this, where I am afraid to go to sleep because of the nightmares. I have no surety that I will never end up again in day treatment after I eventually leave. I will never know for sure if I will ever end up again the hospital.
But it has to be ok, or at least, I just need to accept that.
My life will always be different from the vast majority of people I will ever know. My scars will always give away that something is off about me. I will take pills for the rest of my life. I will always see the world differently than those around me.
That’s not a bad thing.
I was speaking with my mentor today, who’s also been through the same kinds of things as me, and he told me something that I’m going to try and keep close to my heart. He told me that I’ve been through things that the normal people in the world could never even imagine. I’ve seen things and had things happen to me that the vast majority of people will never experience; but the fact is, I’m still here. He said to me it takes immense inner strength to endure what we go through, to suffer invisibly and constantly struggle against diseases that literally change how my mind works. I am stronger than I know, and I get stronger every day that I can take all of the punishment this disease dishes out on me and still get up to try again tomorrow.
I’m not saying that I’m better than anyone else, or that people that don’t suffer from mental health issues don’t have real pain and anguish; I’m just saying that I am finding within myself the strength to keep going when it seems like every bout of sleep brings a nightmare or a night terror. That I am finding that perseverance to continue on even though I have nights filled with emotional turmoil. I am finding within myself that I want to live and be healthy because of how loud I scream back at the voices that tell me to hurt myself or take myself out of the equation.
I am going to keep going, I’ve worked so hard to get through all of this. It’s hard, it’s painful, it can be devastating, and it can be challenging when you can’t trust your own mind; but there is a way through it. I will not be a statistic, I am going to have my own unique life. I may always have this in my life, but it doesn’t have to define me.
This disease may be part of who I am, but I am so much more. One day at a time, I will get where I want to be, even if a small part of me is a bit crazy. I only have my one life to live, and I intend on living it as much as I can.
I’m glad to be back, I’ve missed y’all so much. Much love this night from the Holy Land.
All of these nights just blend together, and they’re killing me slowly,
Each and every night never seems to end, blending together in a maelstrom of insomnia, rumination, and endless loneliness. 1 am, 2 am, 3 am, 4 am, 5 am, meaningless demarcations in an experience that is truly marked by descent into the void, the emptiness, the staring at the ceiling wondering when this will all finally be over with.
I stopped praying to G-d long ago for any kind of solace, now I pray to Him only for an end; or I pray to the pills to take me anywhere but here. When I walk the streets to escape from the sleeplessness, I only encounter the piercing feeling of loneliness. Calling numbers that will never pick up, having conversations to fill the emptiness, desperately clawing at anything that will make a dent in all this pain I feel. How do you tell someone that I am talking because the silence draws me deeper into madness?
Nights turn into weeks, weeks into months, and soon, living becomes a plod to oblivion to the slow cadence of a death march. Days don’t seem like days, they are a blur, all time becomes a binary experience: with people and feeling alive enough to live or being alone enough to feel like you’re not alive. I close my eyes for the few hours rest I can wrestle from the heavens, and when I awaken, I feel alone with nothing but the remnants of nightmares and alarm clocks to wish me good morning.
Even a nap is dangerous. Night terrors rob me of any relief, waking to an altered reality, caught in the dreamscape, panicked, and feeling like I can still hear the screams and violence inches from my face. Uncontrollable sobbing, gasping for air, feeling life strangling me, why would I ever want to wake up? Caught between the horrors of what my sleep brings and the reality that never seems to really exist, why wouldn’t I choose the devil I know over whatever unknown this world brings?
But these nights, these damn nights, they kill me over and over again. Restless, waiting, disappointed, fearful, and all so alone. The loneliness is the true torture, the real demon that haunts these sleepless evenings. In prison, in your cell, at least you have someone to talk to. In this prison of mine, I have to make up all of the voices. I hate what they say to me, and I hate myself for talking back to them.
So I call, and I call, and I call the list. Every name a possibility, someone to give me a break from the yoke of this loneliness. Ten minutes, thirty minutes, anything I can take to make me feel less utterly alone in this pain. I hate myself for needing them so much, almost as much as I hate hearing the silence when no one answers. I have friends around the world, or so I think, but it is hard to reach out, to grab hold of some kind of hope when multiple time zones keep you away from the vast majority of people that ever cared about you.
Maybe tonight will be different, I have been blessed with a new pill to try. Will it give me rest? Will it silence the nightmares? Will it finally make the voices stop? I can only pray to whatever is up there that this night will be different; but I don’t have much hope. Too many nights have been fed to the hell that I am living, the fires that devour me every night, the same fire that fills my veins with flames, my mind with a swirling inferno, and turns my soul to embers.
This has all been one long night without end, days are merely punctuation. Loneliness while awake, horrors in my sleep, over and over and over. The fire feeds itself and propels my body even though I try and will it all to just stop. 1 am, 2 am, 3 am, 4 am, 5 am, meaningless numbers that mark nothing but the time left before I have to suffer vertically. These nights are killing me slowly, lonely, one sleepless hour at a time.
Why do I write? To confess? To unburden myself? To leave a record of my trials, of my tribulations, of my slow and inescapable descent into madness? Do I simply write because I cannot speak all of the words racing in my thoughts? That even my mother tongue cannot capture the words aloud?
Is it because I live in a world where my truth is too much? Too powerful? Too graphic? Too real? Too undesired? Too unwanted?
Am I lying when I speak? Do I bear false witness to the world? Why must I always hide behind this mask? Behind the greatest lie of all, “I am all right.”
I smile in despair. I laugh while choking down tears. I write self-affirming words when I am filled with self-hatred. I am okay, my guiding deception.
I am a liar, a fake, a fraud, an impostor. I am a fox clothed in wool, lying in wait to take advantage of the best intentions of those around me. I am an emotional sponge, a succubus of the heart. I absorb everything around me: emotions, experiences, traumas, and the suffering of everyone around me. I anguish over their pain, I cry over their sorrows.
I am the demon in their nightmares, I pine for death over their lamentations. I cannot escape this misery, this overwhelming and all-encompassing agony. It tempers every happiness, every moment of joy; it never fails to to extinguish the flame within me.
Sometimes that pain is the only fire I have left, the only truth I can cling to. The memories and regrets, forever carved into my flesh, stand as a monument to the only past I can remember. I look at the them, I think of those moments, I think of the look on her face, I think of the hate and anger and utter desire to make myself feel pain. My greatest work, written in blood, forearms as pages, lines fading like an old book.
I do not know why I do this, why I break open my chest to let the world see my aching heart, my bleeding soul. It is a compulsion, an obsession, an unquenchable desire to scream somewhere that everyone can hear me and no one can mute me. I must write this all down, either by ink, in ones and zeroes, or in blood. I cannot keep this in. The truth does not flow out of me, it breaks itself out of my breast, clawing it’s way to the freedom of the ether. Why do I write? Because I cannot stop, no matter how hard I try.
Sometimes even the holiest days of days can become routine, and sometimes you need a way to break out of it to really connect with Hashem. Let me give you an idea, a way, to break out of the mundane and really connect.
Even before candle lighting approaches, there is so much work that goes into getting prepared for Shabbat. The late night Thursday night shopping rush, pushing between people in the aisle to find the chili sauce, trying to find the perfectly ripe fruit to serve for dessert, trying to figure out how much chicken to get. Then theres’a the all-day Friday prep. Making sure all of my meat is properly defrosted. So much cutting and dicing. Counting down the minutes as a I fry another batch of schnitzel. So much effort for the day of rest before you can enjoy that moment of calm that eventually hits you sometime Friday night.
Even then, so much of the Sabbath follows the same routine. Eat a meal. Maybe with some guests. Probably eat too much. Hopefully there’s some Torah for the table, but sometimes it’s just a friendly meal between friends. Then there’s going to the synagogue, seeing the same people, making the same small talk and the same jokes. Prayer is almost always the same. Maybe you try to add some extra kavanah into it, or maybe you just try to get through everything. Saturday, it’s the same thing, but maybe with a nap, or maybe reading a book.
It’s all so routine.
If this year of our global pandemic, so much was interrupted in our lives, and this routine is no different. How many other people counted down the days until they could have guests again? Or waited until the synagogues reopened? Or worried about the dangers involved with going back to almost normal? Even now, I still wear a mask when praying inside, and some places want to see my green pass that shows I’m fully vaccinated.
Covid changed everything, but maybe that’s not the worst thing in the world.
One thing that I started to do after all of this happened, when I was barred from going too far from my home and we were forbidden from having guests, was to go outside and just sit. That’s it, just sit outside on the small bench in my landlord’s yard and really think.
It changed something for me.
I’ve been learning a lot of mindfulness exercises as part of my therapy program, and one of them focuses on just really becoming one with your surroundings. You go somewhere and sit (it doesn’t have to be outside but I prefer it), and get into a comfortable position. You practice controlled breathing, where you breathe in through your diaphragm for six seconds, hold for three, and then exhale for six seconds, ending with another three second hold. You do that a few times, and then you just get into a cycle of focused breathing without counting. Slowly, you feel the sensations around your body: what you’re sitting on, the smell in the air, the wind touching your skin, the warmth of the sun. Slowly, you expand your consciousness outwards, and hear the birds, people around you, and all if the movements in your area. Eventually, you try to phase as much of yourself out and let in as much of the world as possible.
Sometimes thoughts come up, and that’s ok. They can be annoying thoughts, thoughts of fear, or just distractions. Just acknowledge them for what they are and let them be. They have no control of you.
You are only in control of yourself and your mindset, and that you are becoming one with everything around you. You are becoming part of G-d through His creations, and you can feel the web that connects every bit of light in the world.
I challenge you this Shabbat or Sunday after church, or whatever day of rest you choose to have, to take a moment to just go outside and try the exercise I described. For me, it makes my Shabbat so much more enjoyable.
Often times, we can get so lost in the routine that is Shabbat or Chag. The meals, synagogue, napping, reading, or just spending time inside. Shabbat is a day of rest, but it’s also a day to connect to Hashem in a way that isn’t possible the rest of the week. Our soul is more revealed, and we are more receptive conduits for holiness on these days. Why spend all of that time cut off from the real world? You’re already cut off from the electronic, so focus on what’s really true and real in the world. Hashem isn’t found just in the synagogues or in our homes, He’s everywhere. Connecting to His creations through meditation and focusing on making yourself truly one with Him and the universe is so spiritually uplifting.
Thank G-d, I live in a land where the air I breathe and the earth I step on are imbued with holiness, so maybe it’s a little bit easier for me. When I feel the air on my skin, I know that this is the air I’m meant to breathe in and surround myself with. I know that when the sun shines on me here, it shines with all of G-d’s grace and compassion. I can truly empty my mind and make myself a vessel to fill with the sounds and presence of all of His creations around me.
Take some time and try, see if it works for you. If not, that’s ok, it’s not for everyone. I just wanted to share something that helps me break up the mundane, even when the day is holy. Let yourselves live in the world, and remember that G- d is everywhere, and man, are his creations amazing.
Every single moment is a gift, a gift that you can never get back, but only remember. Do you want to spend those moments, those free times, your days and nights, your entire life living without experiencing life?
My father recently connected with a few cousins that he had never met before in his entire life. Now, my father is in his sixties; and to me, it seems almost inconceivable to not know and have memories by that time with people so closely related to you. I grew up living close to most of my cousins, for about a decade we all lived together in Houston and the surrounding area. I have so many memories of visiting them, bonding, and exploring the world and our lives together. I remember the crazy stories, the endless games of Monopoly, and the ski trip where my cousins and I played Animal Crossing for hours on a GameCube that ran through a car adapter and a tiny attachable screen while my dad and uncle drove.
He met up with them recently in Dallas for a family reunion (or would it just be a union?), and you can see the family resemblance immediately in the picture he showed me. They grew up not even fifteen minutes apart from each other in a small town in upstate New York; but because of family squabbles they had no control over, they only knew that one another existed out there, but they remained nameless and faceless to each other. My other uncle joked that he would have to take extra-precautions if he ever dated someone from his old hometown, because you never knew if some kind of past animosity hid very real blood relations.
I say all of this because there was one cousin who really wanted to come but couldn’t. Just before the trip, she had been sick, and was later diagnosed with leukemia. I talked to my dad recently, and while he’s had the chance to facetime her and talk over the phone, the prognosis isn’t looking good.
He doesn’t think he’s ever going to get the chance to meet her.
Imagine that, over sixty years of life, six decades worth of memories, lost to what could have been. You could spend a lifetime wondering what the world would have been like if he had known them sooner. What kind of effect would they have had on my dad? Would they have been there for him when he needed help and support? Would their love have added that much more to his life? Would even just a few more happy memories change the way he lives now?
How can you even being to imagine how one decision, or a series of them, could have affected one’s life so fundamentally? How can I one even grasp what is it to have lost so much time because of hatred, or at least indifference.
I recently had a bit of a rough spot. Honestly, it’s been a rough few weeks. I had one night just crying and crying and crying, asking myself if I was wrong, if I was the bad man, if I really was making the world a worse place.
It took a few days, but I am finally back to normal, or at least whatever normal is to me anymore. I can go without thinking about the people that hurt me; and even when they do pop into my head, I can just use the techniques I’ve learned in my outpatient program and just acknowledge them, but then move on.
Why?
Because time is just too precious to waste on the people, things, and events that try to bring you down.
I’m not saying there isn’t an appropriate time for sadness, but just that there’s also an appropriate time for joy; and it’s whenever you can seize it. Life doesn’t have to be a constant feeling of contentment or normalcy, we should strive to find the things in life, big and small, that bring us to that place where it’s nothing but grins from ear to ear. Or, it could be the things that bring us that small feeling of satisfaction, of feeling accomplished, or feeling connected to someone or something bigger than ourselves.
I don’t want to be one of those people that just preaches on and on about how you just need to seize happiness and then suddenly all of your problems go away, that there’s an easy recipe for banishing away the demons. It’s not. What I did, and maybe this can help you too, was go through a long list of pleasurable activities and just check off each one that appealed to me. It could be sitting outside and hearing nature, going to the beach, drawing something, or just grabbing a drink with a friend. Whenever you have free time, just try to do one of those things.
Your depression or whatever is keeping you down is going to make you want to just stay stationary and ruminate, but you have to fight that urge. You have to do something. Just taking that first step is already a victory. Even one minute outside in the sunlight is better than an hour sitting alone in your room hating yourself.
So, when I was hating myself, when I hadn’t been outside for four days (except to walk my dog, which I tried to pawn off to my wife as much as I could), I decided instead of lying in my bed again to just wait for the tears and the sadness to come, I ran. I got out, I went somewhere to check off something on my list.
I went to the nursery and bought plants.
My haul from our local nursery.
When I was kid, I remember helping my mom water her orchids at our old home, the last place I ever called home that wasn’t a place where I paid the rent. She had me plant beautiful rose bushes on the side of house and a tree in the front. I remember the feeling of my hands in the soil, and just feeling so connected to the earth and something bigger than me. I knew that these plants would grow, bloom, and go through the circle of life long after I was out of the picture.
When I was putting in my new plants, I reached my hand into the big bag of soil that I bought and just ran the dirt through my hands. I could feel it’s freshness, it’s vitality; I could feel life running through my fingers.
It was so refreshing. It made me feel alive and good and that I was adding something to this world. I felt like I was taking part in G-d’s creation, and in His plan for us to cultivate and care for this place. I could feel the love in the soil, the same love my mother gave me when I planted with her. It was all flowing through me. Nothing can banish away self-hatred like the feeling of real love and connection, and all it took was making a simple garden.
The fruits (or veggies) of my endeavors
As I write this now, I know that I may never see tomorrow. Rockets fly towards cities in my country every day. Every single moment is a gift, a gift that you can never get back, but only remember. Do you want to spend those moments, those free times, your days and nights, your entire life living without experiencing life?
There will always be things that bring us down, and that’s ok, that’s life, that’s an essential part of the human struggle. The choice we have is in how we react to them. Do you lose yourself in the abyss, as I’ve done countless times (and probably will again in the future), or do you do one small thing to try and get yourself out. Acknowledge the pain, do what is in your power to stop it or fix the situation, but then move on. Don’t let yourself get bogged down in what-ifs, the painful pasts, or your regrets. I spent so many sleepless nights going over and over and over and over and over and over everything I’ve done wrong in my life, every embarrassing moment, and every regret on an endless film reel with my eyes pried open like in A Clockwork Orange. The night before these pictures had been like that, and the night before that too. I hadn’t slept more than 4 hours in two days.
This one small thing saved me from going even further down the drain. A cilantro plant, some celery, a few succulents saved me from more sleepless nights filled with hating myself and wondering if the world would be better without me.
So much time just goes by, and these are trying times to be in. Still, take a moment for yourself to experience something that will bring you even just a little bit of joy. Time only moves forward, and you can never get any of the nights you spent spiraling back to reuse when you feel like it. This could be it. This could be the last day you ever see.
So make it count. Seize something, anything that brings you happiness, and hold onto it like a rope pulling you out of the quicksand of life’s horrors. Don’t waste your time hating people, or waste your time caring about people that hate you. Don’t let an opportunity to connect pass you by because you were afraid, or you held onto someone else’s hatred and anger.
Today is a guarantee, tomorrow isn’t. Live. Just live with whatever joy you can bring yourself. Your memories don’t have to be a film reel of pain and regret, you can make it a scrapbook of good memories. You just need to take the first step.
It’s hard, G-d it can be so hard, but you can do it.
If someone like me can, you can too.
If you need someone to connect to, I’m here.
If you need something to do, find a friend and ask them what they’d like to do with you.
If you need a friend, take the first step in meeting someone new.
If you need the motivation, just look inside.
Like Chaplain said in The Great Dictator, “you, the people have the power…the power to create happiness! You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure.”
Just live for this moment, even if it’s just buying a plant and running some soil though your hands.
Whatever is that makes you happy, that brings you joy, that brings you ecstasy, that brings you anything than pain, do it.
Tomorrow may never come, but if you do one small thing that brings you happiness, at least today will have been worth it.
Good luck, a strong heart, and much love from the holy land.
I just wanted to update y’all on what I’ve been doing since my big shift in how I want this blog to exist and how I want to reach you. I’m trying to stay away from Facebook, other than my Facebook Page for this blog (which you should give a like and a follow to keep up with all my latest posts). You can even follow along on my Instagram for more photos and stories that don’t necessarily need a full on post.
Also, I’ve created a new page on the website for photos that I’ve found particularly significant for me or relate to posts I write; I hope you enjoy them. A lot of the stories I tell you just don’t have images; it’s kind of hard to take a photo of my mind in the throes of madness; but I do occasionally catch a part of life here that’s worth sharing.
Overall, I want this blog to grow to be more than just a place for me to vent and pour out my soul. In a therapy session, I thought of a great metaphor for what I’ve been doing, and how I need to change my approach. For a long time, I’ve just been emptying the vessel that contains all my sorrows and pain and putting it out on these pages. Sometimes I just shatter the whole damn thing and cut myself with the shards to remember what it was like to feel the pain.
There’s a different way though.
In Japan, there’s an art form called Kintsugi, where you take the broken parts of a piece of pottery and fill the cracks with gold. It’s part of a greater philosophy of embracing the beauty in the imperfect, in accepting the the flaws in an object. By bringing together the pieces, you can create something beautiful and unique that could never have existed if the pot had stayed unbroken. You can see each individual part and the role it plays in the whole; whereas the unbroken vessel is uniform, and you cannot see where each piece matters in its own way.
I’m probably oversimplifying an amazingly deep and culturally significant art form, but it really speaks to me. I broke myself when I was in the hospital, and I’ve spent the past six months trying to put the pieces back together. I’ve been trying so hard to make myself into what I was before; but that can never happen. I need to learn to be okay with my flaws, and even find beauty in being different.
This blog is my way of putting back those pieces, of looking at each one and seeing where it fits best. I want to devote more time to figuring out how my life goes forward from here, and I know that this medium has a role to play. I am not just writing for myself, I am writing for you, and I am hoping that you see in me the beauty in how imperfect I am.
I love to write, and this has been an amazing journey so far. I’ve reached thousands of people with these posts, and it amazes me that people care about what I have to say. I’m making all of these changes, making the site look better, adding features, and writing more because I want these posts to be the gold that binds my parts together.
There’ll be more changes ahead, and I’m looking forward to them for the first time in my life. I am afraid of what might happen to me, but I know that if I speak my truth that’s all that matters in the end. If I was gone tomorrow, I’d be proud to know that I at least left this behind. That I have more than words on some website, but that I’ve actually reached you out there, wherever you are in the world.
Keep posted on what’s coming, because I promise you things will only get better from here. Much love from the Holy Land, and here’s to hoping to see you again soon.
