It is not me....

Image by h.koppdelaney via Flickr

Before coming to live in Israel, I was pretty content with my life in Romania. I had the chance to do what I always wanted to - I was a journalist, I had friends. I know, sometimes it was difficult too, and the only reason I left my homeland was LOVE. I fell in love with the guy that I call now my husband, so I left everything, I packed my bags and my son and ...Israel, here I come...
I don't regret the fact that I married him. He is a good husband (well, most of the time), he is an excellent father for our daughter.
I tried hard to fit in. I went to a teacher's college and studied to become a teacher. I went to the ulpan (Hebrew-learning school for the new-comers). I tried to make frieds, I smiled a lot, I started working as an English teacher, I suffered like crazy, I did yoga, meditation, aerobics, anything to help me cope. It didn't work. I got pregnant and had Maya (actually, the only good thing that came out of this) , left teaching and finally got to antidepressants. That is what this whole process got me.
Well, I managed to kick the habit and I'm now clean of Cipralex, and I know I am supposed to learn my lesson, but I just haven't gotten it by now.
This woman that is now walking on the face of the Earth is not me, Ramona Lazar, she's a fraud. I write in English, but it is not my native language, I speak in Hebrew but it is not my mother tongue, I read in English...but my dreams are still in Romanian. The lullabies that I sing to my daughter are in Romanian and I say to her "Te iubesc, comoara mea" - "I love you, my precious" , because only this way the words have the right meaning for me.
In Romanian I am funny, and witty with a bubbling personality and it is easy to me to connect. In Hebrew...well, somethimes I now that people think I am stupid because it takes me longer to answer a question. People ussualy usually think I am Russian, but after they realize I don't understand the language...well, they assume I am slightly retarded.
I know that if you'd asked Romanians, they would happily swap places and lives with me ( the moaning bitch), but this is just me. I long for my Romanian-ness in a way I didn't think possible. It is difficult for me to explain exactly how it feels, living in two languages and having inside me, inside myself another one, that eats me from inside. Sometimes, I feel I have to write in Romanian, or read some books, just to feel the words coming out or getting in, healing me.
In a sense, it fells like Eva Hoffman's "Lost in Translation: A Life in a New Language" , but at a different age, when the process of losing one's linguistic identity is even painful. She says in her book: "Linguistic dispossession is close to the dispossession of one's self". And she is damn right!

I have to finish now. It is late in this part of the world and tomorrow we're going to Tel Aviv and I am going to buy me some good books to read...

Night night whoever you are...