I needed to pay my respects

It’s been a long time my friends.

A long time since I’ve last posted anything here. A long time since I’ve sat down and looked at myself in the mirror. A long time since I wrote the first words in this blog. It’s been a long time on my journey to this moment.

I don’t have a good excuse for my absence, besides the ever-growing normalcy of my life. I’ve traded therapy days for work shifts, occupational therapy and making mandalas for lesson plans and dry-erase markers. I’ve worked longer than I have in a very long time, and I am enjoying what I am doing. I’m a teacher now, or, at the very least I’m teaching. My days are no longer filled with group meetings, psychiatrist check-ups, and sessions; they are filled with mundane realities of life. I am becoming a normal person, or at least I’m trying to play the role of one.

I still hear them, the voices in my head. I still wake up from nightmares not knowing what is real and what are the demons of my mind. I still have a threshold for how much I can mentally take, although I think it’s getting a little bigger every day. I can smile and joke again. I can make my students laugh. I can make my wife smile. I can hope and dream again; but that doesn’t mean any of the darkness has gone away.

I think about why I still have this desire, this compulsion, to write. I’ve been writing in analog, keeping things for myself; secrets I cannot share and things I do not want you to see. Still, I must reach out, I must bare my soul, I must have this place to let some of the weight off that drags around my neck.

I don’t want this to be a place where all I write about is my mental health, I don’t want to be that person anymore. I think people are tired of hearing about it, and I’m tired of living with it. I want to refocus, remember why I started this whole endeavor. This was supposed to be about my journey here in this holy land; but it just got a lot more complicated along the way.

I wanted to come up out of hiding today because it’s Memorial Day back in the states. A lot of things have happened that I should have written about before this, and maybe I still will; but I wanted to make sure that I took the time to say something today.

I come from a military family. My father was in, my grandfather, uncles, and even more as time goes back. I never took the oath, my dad wanted something different for me; but there are many times that I wish I had served and given something to my country, especially before I left her. There is something different about military service in America that I have come to appreciate living in a country with mandatory conscription. Here, you feel sorry for the men and women who would rather be doing something else with their lives, and are instead stuck in some job given to them just because they needed something to do. The number of actual combat soldiers is small, and the number of people who may have given more to the country with their youth doing something else is large.

That is what makes the idea of service in America so different. You’re not guaranteed honor or prestige, glory or combat; only a uniform and a job to do. You volunteer solely to serve, not knowing where you may end up. You could be a truck driver, a tank driver, a pilot, a grunt on the ground, a marine riding shotgun in a Humvee, or the next general-in-the-making. That choice is what binds the members of our armed services, the idea that as masters of our own fate, they decide to give part of their lives to their country.

Which brings us to today. Sometimes it’s not just a tour that you sacrifice, sometimes it’s your last breath, that last thing you will ever see; sometimes it’s everything. Sometimes its’s not just your sacrifice, but your parents’, your spouse’s, your family’s, your children’s. Today is not just about the people we lost, but the people they left behind. It’s about the people who get that knock on the door. It’s about the buddies who leave a poured beer untouched for a comrade. It’s about children who live in the shadow of sacrifice.

I don’t believe in the glories of war and conquest, but I believe in the beauty in heroism, in dedication, in gallantry, and in sacrifice. I’ve lived most of my life during various wars, and I live in a country now where war seems to always be on the horizon. I do not glorify death, but I find meaning in loss. War is hell, battles are horrible, but giving your life to protect your fellow soldiers and your country is tragically beautiful. So much of war is beyond any one person’s control, but the decision to serve with the dangers it comes with is entirely within our power. That choice, and the sometimes tragic consequences that come with it, is powerful and must be respected.

I do not want to glorify anything that has to with war. I wish we could live in peace with one another; but I am not a fool (just a madman). Every great nation is built on sacrifice, and it’s continued existence requires that more people die so that other’s may live freely. I pray that one day, this day will only be for remembrance, that no more stones will be carved with names of those lost, and that we will be able to look back and only thank those who gave everything so that people like me could write today.

May their memory be for a blessing, and may G-d watch over those that continue to serve in our armed forces.

On Living With the Fear of Dying

So much is going on in the world that forces us to confront the darkness within men’s souls and the uncertainty of life. The war in Ukraine, the continued fight against the Covid-19 pandemic, countless regional conflicts, and the everyday murders and crimes in cities around the world. Here in Israel, we are experiencing the worst wave of terror attacks since the Second Intifida. In a week’s span, eleven people have been killed in separate attacks, with one of them being the worst single attack since the 2014 Har Nof attack in Jerusalem. We are living in a state of national anxiety, national uncertainty, national fear, and national grief. This is a small country, and every attack so far has occurred within a half hour drive from my home. One happened in Hadera while I was working just a short drive away.

This is real, it is in my face, it is on my mind, and the deaths weigh collectively on our souls. My boss told me today to expect less students for the next few weeks as people avoid public places. He took me aside to try and assuage my fear as a new immigrant faced with the reality of terror. I had to reassure and comfort several students who came in today who persevered through their sadness and grief to try and maintain some semblance of a normal life.

What do I say to them? How do I comfort someone was born here when I have only three years of life in this land? What do I tell my family? How do I look at myself and wonder if I made the right choice coming here? I love this place, I love these people; but the fear of dying because I went to a bus stop, or a mall, or took an evening stroll tends to override the power of patriotism and the conviction of my beliefs.

I don’t want to talk about the politics of what’s going on, because I don’t believe that it’s material at this point. We know why people commit these acts of terror. We know the realities on the ground. We know that something must be done; but yours truly and most of the Israeli and Palestinian world cannot come to an agreement on what that solution must be. We are the perennial Gordian Knot, and the object of increased scrutiny. There are many reasons why, but I don’t want to talk about them; not because I do not have a political opinion, but because I care more about what this means for my daily life and not for some grand scheme to solve a problem that seems to never end.

I was talking with a friend of mine last night, an American that I’ve known since high school; and it was difficult to tell him what was going on in my life. My job is going well, my wife and I are healthy, I am mentally stable, I have dreams and ideas on how to make my life better; but this situation looms over everything. It is hard to think about finding ways to enrich your life when you know that people are dying around you. It is difficult to plan and see yourself somewhere in a year when you don’t know if the next time you go into work or go shopping could be a tragedy waiting to happen. The fear is pervasive, and maybe the terrorists are winning if I can’t help but be afraid when I go outside.

So what can we do? As a nation? As a people? What can I do?

I don’t have an idea of some kind of grand scheme to solve the problems, I am just a simple oleh trying to make ends meet while finding my place here in my new home. I cannot preach about Zionism, about patriotism, or about national strength; not because I don’t believe in those things, but because I don’t believe that my voice is the right one to speak.

The one thing I can say is something that the Lubavitcher Rebbe always talked about. He always talked about bringing light into the world, and that small acts of compassion and devotion can bring a little illumination into this world and hopefully pierce the overwhelming darkness. The people killing innocents in the street want to achieve their goals with acts of murder, acts of terror, and with acts of hate. I believe that the only answer to this it counter them with the small acts of light we can do in this world. We must meet death with a commitment to life. We must meet terror with steadfast belief in the goodness of the world. We must meet hate with love and compassion.

These may just sound like platitudes, and they are; but they can change things. One reassuring word to a scared young woman counts in this world. One act of kindness make the burden of living with the weight of this situation a little easier to bear. One recommitment to believing why we are here and what we are meant to do can help us stand straighter when the weight of grief on our shoulders makes it hard to do anything but stay home and be afraid.

I will continue living here, despite what is happening here. You may worry for my safety, and my family’s safety; and for that I thank you. Some people reading this may completely disagree with me, and that’s also okay. I don’t want to fight with anyone, I don’t want to debate about my right to be here; I just want to believe that everyone deserves to live without fear of dying randomly on the street. I believe that there is still hope, that we can find a solution to all of this. I don’t know how we will get there, but I persist in that belief because I truly believe that all people in this world just want to live in peace.

All we can do know is try and stick together, to comfort one another, and to find ways to share this burden together. Whether it’s giving money to the man on the street, helping people on the street, comforting those who are afraid, or doing mitzvot to try and bring some bit of holiness to this place. If we can talk about something it is manageable; and as Herzl said, if you will it, it is no dream. If we commit ourselves to making this a more beautiful world, that dream is still possible. Maybe I’m naïve, but I must have some bit of hope to cling to.

How do we live with the fear of dying? We must continue to hope and believe in the importance of life and the happiness that it can bring. I may be a dreamer, but I would rather live with this hope than succumb to a life of fear and anxiety. I came to this country to build a new life, and that’s what I’m going to do.

This post is in memory of those killed this past week and in hope that we see no more tragedies unfold in this beautiful and holy land.

Much love from the holy land; sadness, grief, and fear be damned.

What do I have to do?

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 don’t want to sleep

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.

We can not stay silent

Long time since I posted anything to this blog. I took a break from everything: Facebook, Instagram, social media, and this project. I needed time to clear my head, time to figure out what all of this meant, what I mean, what my life means, whether or not any of it at all was worth continuing. I continue to write in my journals and for a select critic, but I have purposefully remained silent and cut off from as much of the world as I can.

However, the events of today demand that I say something.

I am not an expert in politics, and I could never claim to really know that much about the world other than what I touch with my own two hands and tread with my own feet. My life and worldview are limited by my experiences, or perhaps I limit how much of the world I see in light of how my skewed eyes see it. I am a student of history, but again I cannot say that I know more than anyone else who enjoys reading and listening about the subject. Despite my radio silence, I still check the news occasionally, if only out of routine and fear of what might happen to me.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine does not allow me to stay silent anymore. I believe that all free citizens of the world, and those who still yearn to see freedom in their own countries, must feel outraged and appalled by what is happening in Ukraine. An independent country that has already lost parts of itself to Russian predation is now on the precipice of complete conquest. Cities are falling. Civilians are dying. Soldiers are meeting their deaths defending their homeland. These are images that any sensible person must look at, must react to, and must take pause and reflect on what the world must do to prevent the further domination of a sovereign country by a hostile superpower. We must take stock of what we can do to make a dent, even as individuals.

European history has seen this happen before. A recurring pattern comes to mind. The invasion of Serbia by the Austro-Hungarians prior to the first World War, and the invasion of Poland by Hitler and Stalin prior to the second. Again, a great European power seeks to further it’s agenda by stomping on the freedoms and independence of it’s smaller neighbors. I am not saying that the world will again be dragged into a global conflict; but I am saying that the foundation is there for the conflict to expand, bring in more combatants, and necessarily lead to the death of countless more civilians, and the destruction of cultures, liberty, and the modern way of life for numerous countries. Ukraine is enough for us to all be enraged, but it alone may not be enough to quench the thirst for autocrats that seek to rebuild empires long gone.

I do not know what any of this will do, writing to you today. I d0 not if I ever reached anyone with anything I have ever done; I do not know if my typing now will ever reach past the walls of the room I sit in. If it does, if you take notice, if you read this, if you take anything from this, let it be one thing: that this blog stands with Ukraine, that I stand with Ukraine, and that you must as well if you have any respect for the ideas of freedom, liberty, self-determination, and the right for nations to forge their own path without intimidation from larger powers. May you take note that the only thing that any of us can do, or the least we can do, is make our collective voices heard. Post about it, write about it, attend a rally, write your representative, educate yourself if you do not know, and educate others if you do. The world today demands that we do everything can to fight for what is right in the face of misinformation, fake news, paid pundits, and the ever present fear of having to face that would disagree/argue with/hate us. There are people dying in this war as I type these letters, and I cannot help but feel ashamed that this is all I have done to try and change the world. I may not have faith in myself or what I write, but I have faith in the power of the human voice, in the strength of the human soul, in the enduring bravery and heroism in the hearts of those people fighting right now.

We may not be able to fight there, but that doesn’t mean we cannot do our part wherever we are. Ginetta Sagan once said, “silence in the face of injustice is complicity with the oppressor.” We cannot stay silent today, and we cannot stay silent tomorrow; we must speak/post/yell/scream until peace is achieved. I may want to say silent and in my own little world, writing about my life and my soul for no one to see; but I cannot do that today. I know what is happening in Ukraine is wrong, and you should too; G-d will judge us on what we do with that knowledge. We can remain silent and neutral, or we can speak and do what we can to change things. You would be amazed what one voice can do, let alone a chorus that sings of peace and righteousness.

We must stand in solidarity. We must stand for strength in the face of adversity. This Friday night in Ukraine, Shabbat will be brought in with candles and shell explosions, songs of prayer and the chorus of boots marching. Like so many leaders around the world say, we should pray for those lost, pray for the safety of those in danger, and pray that peace will come. After you are finished praying, say something. Do something. Anything. Do not let this world slip further into darkness when you have a chance to enlighten it with your voice. I want nothing more than to slip away, but I don’t believe I could face G-d at the end of my days if I did not say something now. You all have unbelievable power, use it however you can.

Long live Peace! Long Live Freedom! Long Live Ukraine! Слава Україні!!

Making my own normal

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.

Reflecting on the Past Year

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.

Much love.

They buried my friend on a Wednesday

There is no good way to start this.

This is something that isn’t supposed to happen.

In our minds we imagine a sort of order to life. You are born, you grow into adulthood, you get married, you have children, maybe even grandchildren. Then, at some unknown older age, you leave this world. Death is a subject that no one likes to talk about, but we all have it in the back of our minds as we see the people around us. We all know without saying it that we will one day bury the ones we love, like I buried my mother. We believe that there is a certain order to how lives are lived and eventually end.

This wasn’t supposed to happen.

I lost a friend recently. I learned about her passing while sitting in the computer lounge of my mental health clinic trying to pass the time on Facebook. That was when I saw that she was gone, and it hit me like a brick smashing into my heart. Her smiling face was the first thing I thought of, and then I realized that the world would never see that smile again.

There’s so many things I could say about her. I could tell you about the memories I have of her, and all the joy she brought into my life in the time that our lives crossed paths. I could tell you about how amazingly kind she was, and how she one of the few people that reached out to me when I first went through the symptoms of my then undiagnosed bipolar disorder. I could tell you about how proud of her I was, even in law school. I could tell you that she was one of those successful people you never envied because her love was so infectious. I could tell you that she had so much potential, and that I was proud that she made it so far.

I could tell you that even though we became separated by circumstance, distance, and time, I never failed to smile when I saw her smile pop up on my feed.

And now she’s gone, and I miss her, and I miss the time we could have had together. I wish that I had done more, said more, connected more, done anything; because I never would have thought that our time together in this world would have been so short.

I’ll grieve, I’ll probably cry again as I reread this, but I’ll remember her. Maybe the power and the impact she had on me is so great because, even after all this time without talking, it hurts so much to know that she’s gone. Maybe the fact that I can still remember her laugh and her smile means that I’ll be able to keep a part of her with me. Maybe the fact that she brought so much light into this world makes up for the fact that she left so soon.

Maybe.

In the end, she’s gone, and I never got the chance to say goodbye. I would have told her all of this, and how much love I had for her for being there when I needed a friend and for how much richer she made my life. I’m not going to lie and pretend that we were the closest of friends, or that we talked all the time. She was someone from my past that I only thought fondly of, and someone who’s continued presence I took for granted. Now that she’s no longer with us, I have to figure out what it means to lose a friend like this. I have to figure out how to make sure I don’t let myself lose time with others. I have to figure out how to keep her memory alive within me.

I don’t have any answers because all of this is just so much to handle, so hard to understand, so difficult to make sense of. I will never know the why, why G-d would take someone so young, in their prime, so deserving of a long and prosperous life. All I can do is cry, and hope that tomorrow I cry a little less. That, and remember her. Remember her joy. Remember her kindness. Remember her strength.

And always remember her smile, the one that I still can’t help smiling back at with tears.

Missing you, hoping to see you again one day. I’ll never forget you, our queen of the rose garden.

Progressing through the pain

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.

Reflecting on My Mother’s Yartzeit/מהרהר על יארצייט של אמא שלי

Today is my mother’s Yartzeit, the anniversary of her death according to the Hebrew calendar. It’s been nine years since she passed away, but it’s always a hard day. I still have memories refreshed and renewed every year of that day and the days preceding it. I remember the events leading up to her hospitalization, the time agonizing over whether or not she would ever get any better, and eventually tearing my shirt on learning that she had left this world. It’s a hard time, my mind is only partially occupied with anything I’m doing, the other part of me is nine years in the past and thousands of miles away.

May my mother’s soul ascend today and be bound with it’s Creator

I decided to leave my mental health program early for the day, I couldn’t focus on anything; I just wanted to go home and be alone and watch the few home movies DVDs my dad sent me a while ago. I haven’t had a DVD drive for my computer since I made aliyah, so I bought one so I could finally watch them. I learned so much just from watching them and seeing what my, or our, past was like.

Remembering Her

I asked for the videos to remember everything that time has taken from me when it comes to memories of my mom. It was a few years after she passed away that I forgot what her voice sounded like, and a few more years after that when I lost the ability to recall exactly what she looked like without having to look at photos; and for a long time even looking at the photos just brought too much pain to be worth the remembrance.

My dad’s camera wasn’t that old, but you get the idea

When I lived in Houston, I hardly had any photos of my mom in my apartment, it was too much to bear. Even though years had passed, the trauma of those final days were burned into my memory. For a long time, I could only associate my mother with feelings of loss and regret, the tragedy of her passing consumed all of the pleasant memories I had. Even when I would think about happier times, it would eventually make me realize she wasn’t there anymore. There was nothing more painful than picking up my phone to instinctively make my nighttime call to her only to realize their was no one on the other side.

Watching her through these videos I see so much of my mother, and my father and the rest of my family, that I had forgotten; as well as parts of her I would have never remembered her if not for these videos. Besides finally being able to hear her voice again, I got to see her living life in a way that was long gone by the time my furthest memories go back. I don’t remember much before my parents got divorced; and I think that my parents’ divorce colored a lot of what I remembered, as if the negative aspects pulled themselves together in my mind to dominate whatever hard drive space I have.

Divorce is not fun, and my parents look nothing like these people. Stock photos don’t capture real life sometimes.

I got to see them happy, and happy together, something I can’t remember on my own. I saw my mother’s amazing smile and heard her laugh that laugh that was so infectious. She truly lived life in the moment and to the fullest, and I can see it in how she is constantly smiling.

The other thing that I got to see from the videos was just how much my parents loved me. It’s easy for me to remember the fights and arguments I had with my parents and the ones they had between each other, but it’s difficult to remember those times when they showed unbridled love for their only son. Whether it was my doting on me at my birthday, picking up the mounds of wrapping paper from Christmas gifts, or even just bragging about the interests I had as a child. There was one video of me getting ready to take a bath (glad that wasn’t shown at my wedding), and the sheer joy my mom showed doing something as trivial as bathing me impressed on me just the sheer amount of love she felt towards me. You can see it in her eyes, how I was the most precious thing in her life.

Changing my perspective of today

Over the years, my thoughts on this day and Mother’s Day have changed and grown, reflecting both my growing maturity as well as the distance of time. In the immediate years surrounding her death, I was inconsolable on this day. I had to take the day off, because I couldn’t stop crying no matter what I was doing. The pain was just too real and recent, I dealt with the aftershocks of her passing for a long time. My therapists think that one of my memories of her in the hospital contributed to my post-traumatic stress disorder, and I remember it being the one memory that triggered complete disassociation when I was in a recall session in the hospital. Those were rough years when I couldn’t look at a picture of my mother without bursting into tears.

It took me a long time before I could look at this picture and just feel love instead of sadness.

Slowly, slowly, things have changed. It is still a hard day, but I can cry tears of joy alongside the ones of sorrow. I used to spend all of my time just missing her, wishing she was there by my side when I needed her. I passed by so many life milestones, like getting married and graduating law school, without her in the audience. In grief counseling, they told me that a person imagines their future with certain people in it, and when they pass away, the shock of that altered future shakes us to our very core. Watching those home movies, I imagined a world where instead of playing with me, my mother was playing with a future grandchild (G-d willing). I imagined her being at my thirtieth birthday party, coming to visit me in Israel. I imagined what it would be like to see what her children’s lives had become.

I don’t have to imagine though how she would feel. I know that she would be proud of me, even now in my mental treatment program, and that she would love me all the same. I know that I would stay up until midnight or later just to talk with her, but that I can really do that anytime I want. I can access her love without having to feel the pain and the despair, because her love was stronger than any of that.

My favorite photo of my mom and my family

I’m lucky that my mom got to know my future wife while we’re dating in the last few years of her life. She passed away before the wedding, but she knew that she was the one for me. When my mother was on her deathbed, my future wife (then girlfriend) was studying abroad in China. My wife ended her study abroad early and took the next possible flight to Houston once she found out what had happened. The day my mother died was when my wife saw her in that state for the first time. I was in the hospital room by her side, alone in the room, when my wife came into the room. Suddenly, a doctor called my name and I left my future wife alone with my mother in the hospital room. My wife said to my mother that she was there for me and that she was going to take care of me. My mother was completely not functioning at the time, she was barely clinging to life. Her brain had serious and irreparable brain damage. She was in hospice care, and we were all just waiting. When my wife said those words, my mother took her last few breaths, and my wife came out into the hallway to tell me that she was gone. My mother waited until she knew that someone was there for me when she was gone; that’s how strong her love was.

What lies beyond

I can’t promise myself that one day I won’t feel any pain on this day, and I think that’s all right. My psychiatrist said to me today, it’s ok to be sad, and it’s ok to be in pain; it’s just what we do on these days that matters. My mother wouldn’t have wanted me to just sit and be a wreck over missing her, she would have wanted me to smile and laugh like I did today, albeit with a tear, watching old movies. She would have wanted me to do something to honor her. So, today I donated to the Houston Zoo, a place she and I used to go to a lot and some of my better memories with her were as a kid going to the zoo with my mom, and later with my sister too. If you’d like to support the Houston Zoo, there are several ways (I adopted my favorite animal, the red panda), and you can check out the different ways to donate here. No pressure, just thought I would share.

If I could take anything from today and tell it to you, it’s first off to appreciate the time you have with people; because you never know when it’s going to be gone. However, I always say that, and I think I found something more profound today. Days like these where we remember our lost loved ones don’t have to be dominated by sadness and mourning lives lost and unlived, they can be points of light where we find new meaning in the lives of people we loved. People cannot be boiled down to their ends, it doesn’t do them justice to only remember the sad parts of their lives. Each person has so much beauty in them, and my mother was no different. She lived a life that I try and emulate, to live with the kindness and willingness to help others that she embodied. Our love doesn’t have to end in tragedy, it can go on in our memories. They are always with us, and their support is everlasting. I remember my mother’s life today, not just her death. To do anything else is unthinkable, because she wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. Always loving you mom, and thank you for the gifts you gave me.