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jollyroget-blog · 5 years

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Becoming me

Why did I stop being religious? I mean a trillion reasons but most of the fun ones came later. After my dad and my ex step mother had their "incident" and separated I didnt really have anyone to hang out with on shabbos when I was there. When I was with my mother, it wasnt much better as I really didnt get along with my stepfather (which I now realize was just because I was traumatized and didnt want any step parents near me). I did try to have some sort of relationship with my family but they didnt understand me and honestly I didnt really feel like they were family. They were just some strange people who for some reason wanted me to hang out with them for literally no reason as they never really spoke to me or anything. So I was alone during a time where I really shouldnt have been. I didnt have many friends and the couple I had, i didnt feel comfortable telling them what had happened. We were young and bad things hadnt happened to any of us yet so I kind of just cut them all off. I think they were offended but i just couldnt have them know that my life was no longer sweet and innocent like theirs. So then came high school and a few months later...and then came the nervous breakdown. It was on shabbos. If I had just been able to pick up my phone and call someone I would have been okay ( I now recognize that I should have and it would have been forgivable but at the time i couldnt imagine ever breaking shabbos). So i just crumbled. I never attempted suicide, though I wanted to desperately that night, because I figured that whatever consequences there are for that were worse that living and sticking it out, so I just cried and prayed and begged hashem to let me sleep and to please not wake me up in the morning I didnt know much about drugs or alcohol at the time so I just tried to knock myself out my banging my head against things. Eventually I cried myself to sleep telling myself that I had to at least pull myself out of this enough to recognize that there had to be a lesson learnt from this whole thing and I did find it and I know that was what saved me and I will always be proud of that. This was my first experience with sleep paralysis which i was never able to explain but was a terrifying thing. I couldnt move or wake up but I was hearing people screaming at me, shrieking with laughter and it was utterly horrifying. when I woke up I had claw marks all over my arms. I tried to say modeh ani, but said it through tears as if I was accepting a punishment. I still have trouble saying it to this day. I was never the same after that. I still kept shabbos but would break down every friday night. My mother stopped making me come down for meals (but always set my place at the table for me no matter what and for some reason as I am writing this entire thing, this part is what bring me to tears. She is literally the best person in the world.) and i would just go up to my room and cry and pray and beg hashem to please help me keep shabbos in any way because it was getting to be too painful as it was. I started dreading shabbos and getting anxiety even by Wednesday because I knew it meant 24 hours of more pain. I would literally just cry through the whole thing. I wasnt drinking yet but I would resort to hurting myself physically in any way I could think of because for some reason that was what helped me sleep. I have no idea why. I would wake up covered in bruises all over my body and just look in the mirror and cry more until it was over ...then wait till the next week. Eventually I took to drinking, I was still a teenager so I would sneak out my window to the liqueur shop that accepted my fake id and just drink myself into a coma. All this time praying and begging for hashem to take this pain away so that I could keep shabbos because I wasnt sure how much longer I could hold on. Eventually I was healthy enough to make some new friends. They werent jewish and I did stop keeping shabbos slowly. first thing I did was leave the TV on so that I would be able to pull myself out of the sleep paralysis...eventually I would turn it on or off....eventually I would go out with my friends and do whatever they did because I just couldnt anymore. I never stopped praying and I never stopped telling hashem that I would love to keep shabbos again if he would only help me find a community and friends to do it with. After i stopped keeping shabbos, everything else followed. I always kept to a standard of kosher but I no longer had any jewish friends. My parents had pulled me out of my old high school after I had been rushed to the ER when I had slashed my leg with a pencil sharpener blade and Id spent some time in a mental hospital and my new school was much more relaxed, but it was far and I was the only person in the grade. (yes that is the end of that sentence. it was a small school and my grade consisted of only me..). I was terribly lonely and the friends I found were from concerts, art school and various parties. Many of them were good people and really did help me as at that time it was my life that needed saving and not just my faith. i missed shabbos terribly. It was an empty space that I couldnt even acknowledge because it was too painful and too far away, picturing myself at a shabbos table full of friends and family, sitting on the couch reading books together, going for walks, and of course that feeling that only shabbos can give you which I hadnt felt in years. Anyway like i said after shabbos, everything else follows. Shabbos nurtures our emunah and mine was fading and fast. It was a terribly painful experience. I thought about death constantly and it absolutely terrified me. I thought to myself one night, during a particular bad moment (I believe i was anorexic and drinking constantly at the time, having sex with whoever whenever) that I thought to myself...this is hell. This is what our hell is. Being distant and empty and losing touch with any and all purpose. It sounds basic it really does but it was a horrible feeling and I truly understood what kind of punishment kaaret could be. I dont remember exaclty what went on for how long but thats basically how it went. It took me a long time to accept that I was no longer "religious". I told my mother this once and she told me that I am religious and Im just having a hard time but I still keep mitzvot and guide my life by the torah as much as I can and I'm so grateful to her for that. She insisted on keeping the title for me and I am sure it saved me in some way. I never skipped a major fast and yom kippur was coming up. I was nervous as i never broke chag on yom kippur and i knew I had a lot to atone for and to think about. I was in a really terrible place and felt like my soul was actually dying and i cant describe how much it hurt. I sat on the edge of my bed as the chag came in and wept for a good couple of hours. eventually I was in a panick and couldn't catch my breath. I prayed desperately for strength and for comfort and most importantly some sort of direction so that I didnt have to do this anymore. I was done I didnt want to be like this. Suddenly a calm came over me. I literally felt it spread from my head to my fingertips down to my knees and toes and i got my breath back...a voice inside my head then spoke to me (In my own language which I always appreciated about epiphanies) and said...."lets do this. let get the fuck to Israel"....I guess the rest is history. I called my dad after chag and said " i need to go back" and it turned out they had just decided to have my brothers bar mitzvah there so yeah..that happened. It was never said that I was going to be staying in Israel but my mother got me an extra suitcase and made sure I had my papers with me "just in case. The night before I left my mom came in to talk to be sobbing like ive never seen her cry before so I told her "mommy dont. Ill visit."..i think that was the first time we kinda said anything about it out loud. she said (well, hiccuped, as she could barely get the words out) "I want you to be happy. I just wish that it could be here. But im proud of you".When we got to the airport and we were boarding the plane my eyes filled with tears and the same little voice in my head said "its over. You did it you're going. Its gonna happen you're gonna be okay" and I had the same feeling when I got to the kotel ( which i made sure to be alone for). My first night in Israel all i wanted to do was walk. I walked all night. I savored everything, I smelled everything, breathed the air, ran my hands along the stone walls taking it all in because I knew that I was literally living inside my own personal miracle. It took me a while and I did have some major ups and downs here like this was far from a smooth transition. I still had trouble with alcohol and hadnt kept a shabbos in years and it of course still had that stigma but I was here and I was ready and I knew that I was finally on my way and most importantly, I didnt feel my soul dying anymore. My first shabbos alone in israel was just me by myself in my sublet apartment with some cheap groceries, a glass of wine and two pitas which today would have sounded like the worlds most depressing night, but when I lit my candles and heard the shabbos bell go off and I had my little set up in the city I had always dreamed of living in, I felt so at peace and for the first time in a long time, I didnt feel alone in this planet and I knew that everything was going to be okay as long as I did my part. So thats it. Thats me. Theres way more obviously i had a lot of work to do but I never stopped moving forward and I dont plant to settle until Im "as frum as I can get I guess" which is always my answer when people ask me what I want to be. I found a group of friends. They dont know this whole story so theyll never really understand what they are to me which is literally, in every sense of the word, the answer to my prayers. every single one of them. Now when I light for shabbos, I picture my own shabbos table set and waiting, my husband coming home from shul, my kids sitting on the couch together reading books, and the spirit of shabbos shining through my home from the light of my candles and the comfort of knowing that its all real. Finally its no longer a painful wish, but its still a prayer and i feel it closer to reality every day.

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