I lit Shabbat candles tonight with Sweetie.
I’m always glad to do this with her. We exhale the week just behind us, we light the candles, draw in the light, say the blessing and then we embrace and kiss, and that’s how we begin Shabbat. And I love it every time.
But the calendar is also heading into the big Spring festivals of Purim and Pesach (Passover), and I dont know how I feel about those right now.
I don’t know how I feel about doing much that’s Jewish at all, to be honest.
I have known that there were things about my life that were off since before I was diagnosed with ADHD. Getting the diagnosis only confirmed a lot of what I had been experiencing — a sense of disjointedness in the world, of being out of sync with things, while I struggled to know where I belonged and what I was meant to do and be in the world, especially after my career began winding down.
What surprised me, after the initial sadness at having to put my music career to bed, was how relieved I felt at not having to hustle for gigs that were getting harder and harder to find. I thought at the time that I could content myself with a once-monthly thing at the synagogue here in town. How difficult would it be to focus my energy and passion on that schedule?
But as my hands became less able to play guitar, I found that my enthusiasm for playing Jewish music at all was flagging as well. I needed the money, but I felt like a fraud trying to lead kids in prayer and music earlier this month, when I struggled with my own sense of identity and belief.
Over then winter, so exhausted of carrying the weight of my sadness related to my membership at Havurah Shalom, and with Sweetie’s blessing, I resigned my membership and decided that I needed to be unaffiliated for awhile while I sorted things out. I felt better almost immediately after I did that. I’m still friends with people at Havurah and believe I will be no matter what as long as we stay in touch.
Purim is a holiday that, to be honest, has never held a ton of excitement for me. I’m terrible at getting properly drunk — I get sick before I’ve had enough alcohol to feel joyously wild — and I don’t enjoy dressing up in costume, mostly because I spent the first 25 years of my life with a core piece of myself in hiding and don’t want to hide any part of myself now. So scratch Purim. I honestly won’t miss it.
Pesach is another question. I used to greatly enjoy preparing the house and setting the table, welcoming guests and leading the Seder. Then Covid came, followed by Long Covid, and even though we were able to reunite with close relatives as early as 2022, I lost my enthusiasm and energy for cleaning and preparing the house. I lost my enthusiasm for leading a full Seder. So for the last two years we’ve mostly just made our favorite Pesach dishes and shared a meal with family, but nothing past that. And to be brutally honest, I haven’t yet found my former enthusiasm for doing a full-on Seder, so we’ll once again have Just A Nice Dinner with family and a few friends. We’ll recount the story in highly truncated form, or we may not.
I’ve been going through an incredible time of pervasive grief, punctuated by shorter periods of apathy as regards the larger world. I just don’t have the energy to care about much beyond myself and my closest beloveds right now, and I don’t know when my field of concern will expand again.
I informed my Bremerton Rabbi that she probably needs to start looking for another cantorial soloist for High Holy Days next fall, because I couldn’t promise to be able to play guitar again by then, if at all. (As it happens, that synagogue community doesn’t yet know if they could pay me as much as last year, which I honestly am not so worried about.) I have to admit that I was relieved to be able to back away from the commitment.
I’ll meet with the local Rabbi on Monday to discuss my future at his synagogue. If there’s a way I can continue to help him out once a month through May or June, that’s fine (and like I said, I can use the money because it’s the only work I’m still doing at this point). But I cannot guarantee anything beyond that. Sweetie assures me that I cannot work at all we can still pay our bills (just), and that if I have to stop working it will only bolster my disability claim.
The awful truth is that my sense of identity is all jumbled right now. Who am I now that I’m no longer trying to mask the more annoying parts of myself? Who am I if I feel SO disconnected from my Jewish identity, if my sense of Jewishness feels slightly suspect to me? Who am I if I don’t know who I am?
At the doctors office yesterday, they did a depression assessment. Am I depressed? Well, yeah, probably at least a little. Since 2020, my life has fallen down farther and farther and right now it feels like it has gone almost completely to hell, with NO a sense of when or if any recovery is in store.
I feel quite alone these days. Forcing myself to go to bicycle events when I can is good, but I don't always have the energy to do so. (I’m still debating whether I’ll go to Coffee Outside tomorrow morning or not, and may not decide until just before I go to bed.) Jewish communal events don’t seem to grab my interest these days. And of course, I find myself hiding in a corner while my Zionist and anti-Zionist friends continue to fight over whether Israel should exist as a Jewish state. I feel like it doesn’t matter if I have skin in that fight, since someone will find a reason to hate me for being Jewish No Matter What, honestly. What’s a little strip of desert the size of Delaware in the big picture when people will hate or love me anyway?
I start the Wellbutrin tomorrow.
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