One Minute Writer - Adjusting

Today's topic from One Minute Writer: 

"What's the biggest adjustment you've ever had to make in your life?"

This took me a while to think about.  This past year has been the biggest adjustment I have ever had to make bar none!

Most people will say having a baby is a big adjustment but I can't say that.  Evan slipped into my life so easily it was like he was always there.  The joy he brought me, and continues to bring me, far overshadows any kind of adjustment I ever had to make.  The point is, I can't even remember making any adjustments for him.

Even moving to Israel wasn't as big of an adjustment as this past year.  Yes, it was challenging but within a year I felt like it was my forever home.  I didn't speak Hebrew well but I could ride a bus and take Evan to Masada and the Dead Sea. I could grocery shop and get my hair cut.  I could sit in the park and enjoy where I was.  Despite the challenges of not speaking the language, losing my job and the severe financial challenges we faced, the reason we left wasn't because we couldn't adjust.  Leaving definitely tore a hole in both Evan's and my heart.

No, without a doubt, this past year was the hardest adjustment of my life.  The defeat of coming back from Aliyah, being severely ostracized by family and friends, having my child taken from me, and finally, to my relief, finalizing my divorce.  My drivers license was taken from me and my friends stopped calling and texting.  I grew afraid of people, of groups, of leaving the house.

There were good adjustments too.  A new and wonderful relationship, a beautiful new home, a new life, new friends and family. I got my son back.

I went from a country I love more than anyplace to a cold, unheated home with no toilet or water.  My child was taken from me and I was told no one wanted me and that I was an unfit mother.

I wanted and made plans to die.  I had no reservations.

And from there...I am here.  And I am still adjusting to a normal, loving relationship. I am still working on going out of the house and to synagogue.  I haven't made it yet but every week I try. 

I am accepting that I have epilepsy and can't drive and may never drive again.

At one point I said I was becoming.  Back then I thought I was.  It was all blue skies.

Now I am adjusting and trying to accept where I am.  I am trying to adjust and accept who I am.  I am trying to start over and adjust to the wasteland I feel my life has become.

Fortunately I AM loved and that gives me hope that eventually I can become again.  Maybe not.  I really just don't know.

Depths of Depression

Depression is so insidious.  One minute you feel like maybe it's gone and things seem hopeful, activities you used to love suddenly interest you.  You feel better and you smile easier, you relax better and the things you do are because you want to, not because you force yourself to do them.

When I started to feel better, I wanted to go out more, even to places of which I had been so deathly afraid.  I mean it wasn't like every bad thing was resolved because going into the house I was held prisoner in last year (emotionally anyway) still makes me very, very sad and emotional.  That takes a while to deal with after we go.

But like I said, depression is insidious.  It doesn't take much to throw you back into its clutches.  This whole synagogue thing has done that.  Intellectually I know I should just say screw them all.  When I was a member I was on the board and worked hard.  If they choose to not have me back, they lose don't they?

But emotionally it's exactly most of those words that have triggered my depression as well as a boatload of guilt I can't even process.  And to know that one person on this planet planted all these seeds to destroy me and it worked, well, that makes the veil even darker doesn't it?

So I am back to somewhere I was last summer.  Somewhere deep inside of me that says I am no good and everyone realizes it.  The people who think I AM a good person just don't know me although someday they will and then, they too, will run screaming down the street.  My closest friends aren't even sure of me.  My dad doesn't believe me and says it was all my fault my life went to hell.  How could anyone else believe in me?

And I imagine it's hard for Scott and Evan to have seen such progress, to have to realize such regression.  The exhaustion. The disinterest.  The pain I feel, the guilt and the feelings that I am completely worthless.  The things that don't get done or that I put off.  The fact that this is inside of my head and nothing anyone says can fix it although the support does make it less painful.

Depression is insidious.  That's just what it is.  And coupled with its best friends anxiety and panic attacks, it scares me.  I know I'll reclimb the mountain that I fell down so hard and so fast but it scares me to see how fragile my foothold is and how very quickly things can change.

A barbed tongue

I honestly don't understand people.  Especially people who are supposed to know certain things and then practice something else.  My example is that in Judaism, lashon horah (basically the evil tongue or gossip) is to be avoided at all costs.  The issues with it are immense.  

Do you know if what you are saying is true?  Are you seeing the whole situation?  Do you personally KNOW what you're saying to be true?  Will what you say lead another to have a view of the individual that is hurtful or incorrect? 

Basically, just don't do it and if you hear it....don't spread it and take it with a grain of salt.  Definitely don't judge someone based on gossip.

Our sages say that lashon horah kills.  And I have found that to be very real and very true.  The lashon horah I have experienced hasn't killed my body but it has destroyed my soul, my neshama, my reason to live.

I had an ugly separation from my husband in Israel.  Things were assumed by him that weren't true and that I always denied.  Things were told to me by authorities in charge of our autistic son that threatened my custody of him and I had to take action.  So there was a lot going on and a lot of reasons why we divorced.  I am not saying I made good choices but I AM saying that what he later said about me wasn't true.  What kills me to this day is that everyone he told chose to believe it.  Simply because once I had my get (religious divorce) I put it behind me and didn't discuss it out of propriety, I was viewed as guilty and in this case, I was presumed guilty of having had an affair - which wasn't true.

When he came back to the US he specifically made sure to tell everyone we knew including friends in the two synagogues we had belonged to.

I was placed in house without heat or water (my toilet was a bag and animal bedding litter).  He took my son and then told me because of my actions I couldn't see him or talk to him.  This was March so I lived in a bedroom with a space heater and an electric kettle.  I ate hot dogs and crackers when I could get them.  No one called.  My "best" friend finally allowed me to come to her house for a shower once my dad had given me a junker to run around in.

I planned my suicide, became severely depressed, anxious, started having panic attacks and couldn't leave the house.  I was afraid of seeing someone I knew.  I was also deathly afraid of having a seizure with no one around.  I'd had two grand mal seizures in Israel so it was a real fear.

This is how lashon horah kills and destroys.  

I talked to the rabbi at my former synagogue and was told that because of postings made by me on Facebook and, I assume, the gossip my ex spread, I was not welcome back.  Oh sure I could show up but he thought ugly things might be said to me.  I am still incredibly fragile and I knew this would do me in.  It did me in anyway.  Suddenly I wanted to curl up in my bed and stay there forever.  I didn't want to face the world ever again.  I thought I was better off dead.  I thought I couldn't be Jewish because no community would have me based on this gossip.

And that, in a nutshell, is why gossip or lashon horah is devastating.  You don't know for sure what you're hearing second hand is true.  You don't know what may or may not have happened.  You may even have witnessed something but you don't know the whole story.  I admit I was wrong and made very bad choices.  But does this mean I deserve to be vilified for my entire life?  Denied my heritage and a community of which to be part?

The people at this particular synagogue should be aware of this.  It's a central tenet of Judaism.  Always give the benefit of the doubt.  And no one can be condemned without three eyewitnesses.  There's a lot involved.

And the biggest wrong?  Why wouldn't this rabbi, at the very least, remind his congregation of all of this before He relayed this to me - before I was demeaned, blacklisted and made to feel less than human and better off dead?

Blood sugar problems

My sugar is low again.  This totally ruins my day.  I get tired afterwards and foggy during.  It just puts me in bed or on the couch.  It frustrates me and makes me mad.  I'm terrified it will happen again and it probably will sometime today.  All of this after a hearty bowl of oatmeal at 8am and it's only 10:30 now.

No wonder I have anxiety and depression.