I’ve felt the need, or the urge, or the itch to write for a few weeks now, but have pushed it aside. It’s easy to do that during the run-up to the Jewish holidays, or the four week endurance test of the Jewish holidays (maximum observance version). But three weeks in, I’m going to write now. Writing here is associated with so many things: comfort, discomfort, risk, clarity, observation. And I’m in the middle of all of those states.
What first made me feel like writing was the dawning understanding that intentions can take a very long time — years and years — to manifest themselves, but eventually many of them do. How many years did I say I intended to meditate in the coming year? And after not doing it, and not doing it, and not doing it, I started last year, and now I sit and meditate (poorly) for 30 minutes each morning and arrange my schedule around it. Similarly, for months if not years, I’ve intended to get control over my spending, and after a particularly binge-y summer, this month I’ve managed to observe the impulses that drive my spending and think harder about what I’m trying to buy (efficacy, ease, confidence, pleasure, excitement, comfort) rather than actually buying things that are just things rather than achievements or states of being. I find this time lag so comforting. We’ll get where we need to go, where we intend to go, but in a wending, winding, sort of way, when the world inside and the world outside are congenial and supportive. We are not failures, we are just not successes yet. I never before appreciated how things can unfold in time. I thought I had to bring about changes or states of being instantly (which is why shopping was so seductive, especially online; I wasn’t seeking instant gratification, but rather instant efficacy. I wanted to make something happen, and I did — I clicked and a whole machinery came to life just to satisfy me). But many things happen when we aren’t trying, when we aren’t looking. I used to find this invisibility, this occurrence without extraordinary effort discomforting because I believed I could control what happened to me, that I was able to control things through extraordinary effort, and that I could control all the people who were part of the happening. Well, no. I held on to that illusion with all my might (a lot!) for a very, very long time, and this blog is, among other things, a record of why and how I began to let go. I expect there is much more letting go that will happen in the future.
Yes, time. Before Rosh Hashanah this year, I was thinking about self forgiveness. I was thinking that I was probably ready to forgive myself for never having had that second child. It felt like time. Among the other things this blog is, it’s a record of a giant tangle of sadness and blame — and the connection between thinking I could control everything that happened, and should control everything that happened, and the subsequent step into blame, first of Daniel but more fundamentally and durably of myself, for what didn’t happen. So this year, I went back and read what happened on Rosh Hashanah four years ago. I felt drawn to that accounting because, I guess, I needed to measure the distance between now and then. Four years is a long time, but not really so long. It’s how long it’s taken. And I was so grateful to have the record of the starting point, even though it’s very painful to read even now. And so grateful to have people like Nicole, Tracey, Sister, Mali, and everyone else who were there for me in a way that no one who was physically near me was or ever could have been. How ever many words I ever write in my life, here or elsewhere, I’ll never be able to capture what that meant in that time, and how precious and necessary it was.
And, still, time. I’m about to accept a new job. An imperfect job, but the perfect job for me at this time. I think being on the verge of this new job, a job in which I will really create something, called me back to the blog because it, even more than my book, was a powerful, sustained, creative effort. I was creating… words are failing me here… I was creating a self that could withstand being disappointed by God, myself, my husband, medicine, the universe. I was creating a story that enabled me to make sense of the place I was in. I was creating a loving and supportive community. I was creating myself as a particular kind of writer. I did that, with help, word after word, one post at a time. So now I can do this new thing, and then the thing after that, and then the thing after that. It is time, again, to create. This time publicly, with my own livelihood at stake. I think it will work out.
Daniel is a brilliant writer, but he hates to write. He makes himself miserable over most of his speeches and his larger articles. I think it’s because he worries they will never be good enough. They will never accomplish his true aims. This morning I told him, “You don’t have to try to be Daniel D_____. You already are. You woke up that way.” And a few hours later, during a deep twist in a yoga class, I realized, me, too. I don’t have to be anybody more spectacular than I am to do this next thing. I woke up with enough, at least with enough to get started.
At every holiday, we say a prayer called the Shehecheyanu, in which we thank God for having enabled us to reach this occasion, with the sense that we are grateful to be back at this occasion, this place in time, once again. I am feeling that intensely now. I am back at this occasion, the occasion of building a path forward for myself. It has taken a long time and a lot of intending, a lot of trying and lot of wandering and not trying, to get back here, which is also somewhere very far forward from where I started.
Another Door 