Yesterday, I Cried Over Dust

 

Yesterday, I cried while cleaning the bathroom.

Not because anything terrible had happened. Not because there had been bad news or a family crisis. I cried over dust.

That may sound ridiculous. It certainly did to me. But the dust wasn't really the problem.

There is so much to do, every hour, every day. I have been dancing to this tune for the last eighteen years, after deciding that teaching in Israel is not for me. And that I would like to raise my daughter directly, not by proxy.

When I left the workforce, I did it consciously. I loved teaching, but it consumed more of me that I was willing to give.

It wasn’t easy. I felt as though I’d misplaced myself. Not because I’d made the wrong decision, but because I no longer recognized the person I had become.

And gradually, little by little I became the center of a small newly-born Universe. All of our house gravitated around me, matching its rhythm to mine.

I fought back. I wrote poems, a blog, essays, a book. I read a voraciously. I did whatever I could to keep myself above water, not to drown. Even though sometimes the storms were too powerful and I was weak.

When times were really awful, a sort of desperation followed me everywhere, like a toxic cloud. I asked myself all the what if’s and the why’s, I lay awake at night, listening to my thoughts telling me I am a loser, a good for nothing. As if one’s achievements in life are measured only by the number of zeroes in your income.

It is true, there were times I felt invisible. The mother in the back, the wife in the background. I felt like every chore, every task I ever done was weighing on me, keeping me down, crushing me.

Yesterday, while wiping away another layer of dust, that feeling returned. My daily struggle with the dust that settles everywhere with an incredible speed.

Everything felt so senseless, so useless. Yesterday, it was the dust. Other days, it was the dishes, the washing up, the cooking. You do all of them, and then, almost magically, you are back at square one. More dirty dishes, the fridge is empty, there are no clean clothes. You have the impression that you never finish anything. Most of the jobs have a sense of achievement, of satisfaction. A thing well done. Finished. Building something. Handing in a project. Even the school year. Housekeeping? Never. You wage a continuous battle with dust, dirt, mess, all at once.

After I finished cleaning and I washed the dust, mixed with tears from my face I just took a break. My arms hurt, my back, too. I am not young anymore.

I took a big breath. I made myself a coffee. I even frothed the milk. I took Klara the cat with me and sat on the couch. Watched some old, silent black and white movie with Buster Keaton, and I surprised myself laughing at it.

And I’ve decided, yes, I finally decided I will stop fighting the dust. I will accept its existence in my house. With a busy road underneath our building, and the sea filling the air with salt and humidity, fighting dust is a lost battle even before it starts.

I won’t happen overnight, this “transformation”. I know there will still be days when armed with a rag or a mop I will wage war on the dirt and dust. But I won’t have unreal expectations from myself, I won’t judge myself by the cleanliness of my house or the number of home-made meals I serve in a week.

I will try to be me. The mother, the wife, the caregiver, the cat rescuer, the writer, the blogger, the bookworm, the poet, the housekeeper. And I know the world will still be here tomorrow, with good and bad and messes and judgmental people and trouble and heartbreak. But so will I.

  

  

In The Outpatient Department, Where Time Stands Still

Last Thursday, we had a kind of emergency. A mini-emergency. Health related. My husband’s, unfortunately. At first we panicked, we didn’t know what to do, where to go, who should we call? And then, my experience as a SAHM for many years kicked in and I remembered the Outpatient Department at our health clinic. It was the place I took my daughter many times when she was little and sick.

Because we were sure my husband would need some tests and a doctor, I told him to call his family practitioner for a referral, and off we went.

As we didn’t want to go directly to the hospital, the Outpatient Department was the best option. I think about it like the little sister of an emergency room in a hospital… They are able to do basic tests, they have doctors and nurses and give you any treatment necessary. For us it is good because it is close to our home and my husband was able to walk there. What I like (well, if I can use the word “like” when I speak about a place for medical emergencies) about the place is that mainly in the afternoons it is not crowded.

After some anxiety filled time, they received us and they did tests and a doctor saw my husband and concluded it is not a “go to the hospital” situation, more like a “wait and see one”. After they ruled out the emergency factor, everything just quieted down around us. Everybody talked in low voices and I felt myself relax and be able to look around. Because they weren’t in a hurry anymore, they left us – my husband in a bed and me, standing guard nearby.

There weren’t many patients in the ward. An old man, that came with his wife also, wanted to leave and tried to argue with the doctor. But the physician, calmly and politely, was attempting to talk some sense into him – “you have almost no white blood cells, you cannot go home. Not yet.” Then somehow the conversation became about family names and their origin. This is what I like here: everybody has an origin story.

There was also an older lady who wasn’t feeling well but couldn’t tell exactly why and what bothered her. I left the doctors and nurses to try and unravel the mystery.

There were a couple of empty beds and I was so tired I wanted to just lie down in one and go to sleep. And to wake up only when everything is all right.

In the end, they filled out the papers and let us go.  

We walked home slowly; my husband was exhausted. Outside, the day was exactly as we left it – people hurrying home, cars honking impatiently, a dog barking in the nearby park.

Whatever tomorrow would bring, it wasn’t an emergency anymore and for one afternoon, that was enough for us. 

Until I Get To Be Me

 

I am tired, so tired of all of this. Weary and drained. Fed up. Had enough.

Oh, did I offend you? Did you want something nice and cheery and motivational, to help you deal with the crap in your life? You’re in the wrong place, pal. I don’t do any of that. Not today, anyway.

Today I write of pain and disappointment, disease and anxiety, anger and frustration, fatigue and anguish. And so many more feelings that fight to be acknowledged.

I feel like all I do these days is fight something or someone, real or imagined. And I am just tired. Sometimes I think I fight with myself and it is not a pretty sight. I don’t have a very good opinion of myself, so I hurl obscenities at me and try to make myself small and insignificant. And I keep bringing up the mistakes I’ve made, the stupid things I did, and I try to humiliate myself and make me suffer.

Sometimes I think I am my own worst enemy. Sometimes I wonder if I am my best one.

When I was young, I used to harm myself.

In order to mute what I felt inside I had to make the physical pain louder.

Not that it helped.

Pain is pain is pain.

And now I have the scars to remind me.

I am so tired.

And I would like nothing more than to lie down under a mighty tree in a deep forest somewhere in the Carpathian Mountains in Romania.

To feel the soft wind on my face and to listen to the sounds of nature: leaves rustling, birds twittering, millions of insects, tiny constellations buzzing in the warm air.

To push my cheek to the ground, to smell the rich moist aroma of the earth and the fresh, green scent of the grass.

To soak the soil with my tears and for the moisture to reach the roots of the tree and then to erupt with the sap in the leaves and to be dried by the sun.

I want to lie there and forget about everything, to rest until I don’t remember who I am anymore, to be born again, new and untainted, not as myself, but as something special, remarkable. A flower, maybe. Or a strange bush. A medicinal plant. To ease and to sooth. To nurture.

And then to begin again. And again. Until I get it right. Until I get to be me.

At Sixty, I Am Still Waiting For An Explanation

 

 

 

I am sixty years old and I still have no idea what is this life that I, we, have to live.

Is it a miracle or a curse?

I remember when I was pregnant with my daughter I had an ultrasound, the first one. What I saw then on the machine’s monitor – a cluster of cells, beating to their own rhythm and the technician telling me “Look, it has a heartbeat” – it looked like a miracle to me.

When I look at my husband, at all the other patients sitting quietly in hospital rooms, when I see him, them, suffering, it looks like a curse to me.

Why are we born if from the first second we breathe in air we are headed towards death, towards nothingness?

Why exist at all if the sole purpose of our existence is non-existence?

And don’t tell me all that bullshit about journeys and roads and experience and ascension.

Because it is not real.

Because it is not it.

We live and work, we build and create and heal and, in the end, nothing comes out of it.

Life is struggle and pain and suffering and for what? To what end? Heaven? I don’t think so.

I’ve seen so much during my existence on this Earth that I cannot be fooled anymore.

The religious people say that life is simply a transition to…to where? Why?

If all this would be that simple.

I once asked my uncle, who was a priest, about life, God, Heaven, Hell, Universe, us. He shoved me a walnut and said;” Do you see this walnut? This is your mind. And God is so huge that your mind cannot contain Him, cannot comprehend.”

Yes, he was a clever man, my uncle. But I wasn’t convinced.

I wanted to know why I had to live this daily battle. What is to learn? What is to understand? Do we, as human beings contribute with our so-called lives to something bigger, something important?  I would like to think so, to imagine myself as a part of something significant.

But I am skeptical. I don’t know anymore. I mean, I want to believe because otherwise it is really depressing to think that all this will simply end some day and we still won’t understand why.

The truth is, we don’t know anything. We never did. None of us. We just fool ourselves that we do, that we are on this mission to unfold the meaning of life. Because, otherwise, why live?

We are small and so not important and we try to occupy our existence with petty, despicable actions in the name of…What? The immortality of the soul? Perhaps. But do we really have souls or are we simply blood and flesh machines?

I don’t know. I don’t know anything and it is late and I am tired.

I watch the numbers on the clock and I feel time slipping through my fingers.