She quizzed me about the wine and I answered her questions in Hebrew.
“How do you know Hebrew?”
“I picked up a little bit here and there, can I make a phone call now?”
She laughs as I show her my Asimon that hangs on my keychain. I got it in 1985 during my first trip to Israel and held onto it.
Once upon a time they were used as tokens to make calls at public payphones, but those days are decades in the past.
I take my glass of wine, poured from bottle number 5 and grab some cheese and crackers. In another 15 minutes there will be a parade around the interior of the synagogue and in 25 I’ll be in the car.
The plan had been to participate and celebrate the holiday and of course get a slice of cheesecake, but some plans don’t work out.
The Paths We Take
Responsibilities are what forced me to take off early and why my heart aches.
There are things going on that make me second guess a million things and it doesn’t matter knowing I have done my best and made the best choices I could given the information I had.
Doesn’t matter because circumstance and situation makes it appear that nothing helped.
It is possible this is incorrect and that things are better than they appear. It is possible they are substantially better and it is possible they are as bad as they feel or worse.
You can tell me I lack perspective about this and I’ll say you’re right. You can cite chapter and verse and I probably will agree with that too.
But it doesn’t matter because what I see contradicts it all.
Doesn’t matter that when I say I know things I am absolutely certain I am correct because I look at the present and not the future.
The future might serve as the culmination and fulfillment of my dreams but it doesn’t negate the cold truth of the now.
The now is where I am and where I live.
I might look forward and I might look backward but I always know that I live in the now.
All I have to do is look at my feet and stare at the broken pieces of that tiny black heart.
Might heal one day, might come back, bigger and stronger, but it is too early to know and too soon to say.
Don’t Leave Me Hanging
I am at a loss.
Don’t know how long this time will last or if one day I’ll refer to it as a phase. Don’t know how to classify or make sense of any of it.
Been trying to for more than a year.
Been trying everything I know how to do and been looking for more.
There has been limited progress but nothing close to what I hope or want. I repeat the same line over and over because I want it to be heard and understood.
It probably has been but it doesn’t matter because for now there are no changes and I am left with a feeling of dread.
Uncertainty and fear ride their horses around with reckless abandon and I do my best to stop them from having their moment.
But it is hard…really hard.
And in between it all I get these ridiculous comments from the clueless, useless and uninformed. Sometimes it takes significant effort not to respond with nuclear fire.
All I wanted was a slice of cheesecake, maybe even two and instead it is asking questions like “how did we get here” and “how do we get out?”
Hell if I know, sometimes life is a real peach.
