Eternity’s Reminder

Where was I last week? What’s going on with me? What happened to those WOMS I promised? Let’s see…

Last week I was sick. This week, I’m feeling better, but I woke up dizzy today, so I’m not certain my mind is functioning at full capacity.

I’m in the middle of revisions and going cross-eyed from it, but I think it’s one of the best decisions I’ve made (or rather, one of the best responses an agent has ever given me). The vast majority of my energy is being spent on those, which leaves little for this blog and life, especially when I’m undergoing this pre-pre-pre-marital counselling in my spare time.

Still really hating my “hostile” result from that test I mentioned. Of course, it could be more accurately labelled as punitive or passionate, but unfortunately, I’m realising my hostile tendencies, especially at work.

Work influences and enables my hostility so much. Too much. I’m trying to identify it as much as possible so I can change, grow, and relearn how to be the more tolerant person I once was. I don’t want to be this angry, reactive person. I want to be better.

As I sit here bored at work, yet again, after an already eventful morning of procedural updates and complaints from upper management, which make me want to hurl my computer out the window (yeah, I’m not hostile at all) — I look over to the shelf where I keep my personal belongings. Poking out of my bag at me, as if someone shined a spotlight on it, is the book I keep schlepping around only to ignore and rarely read. It’s the book my rabbi lent me on cosmology and Kabbalah; you know, that one I keep mentioning but never write about in more detail?

Having already completed my daily tasks (at 08:30 this morning), I decide I should just read at least a little bit more in this book, even if it’s just a few pages (err, paragraphs). This way my friend at shul won’t nag me about not reading it since he’s way ahead of me and waiting for me to catch up.

The truth is I knew I needed to read it.

Eternity's Reminder | Writing Lynn -- Endless Musings

It’s extremely difficult to be angry at the world when you’re too focused on string theory or particle physics and how they correlate to the 10 Sefirot. Definitely needing something to draw me out of myself and remind me of creation, existence, and the why behind my every breath.

B”H for the Eternity written upon my heart that realigns my soul with Hashem’s design and purposes for my life.

It is because of this Eternity I am able to reconnect with my nefesh, my ruach, even in my cubicle at work.

How then did I know I needed to read this book? I could feel deep in my kishkes something was wrong, something was off, and it was me. My conscious, my focus was devoid of anything G-dly, and I needed to reconnect to the true reality: Hashem is in control, regardless of whatever chaos work or Life try to throw at me.

I needed to be reminded that in the beginning there was Hashem, that He spoke, and BANG! the universe was formed. I needed to be reminded that out of all the billions and trillions of stars and galaxies and energies weaving and winding throughout the universe in their different forms or dimensions, Hashem thought it would be a brilliant plan to create not only this planet called Earth, but these creatures called humans and this person called me.

When you think about that reality instead, everything else is meaningless. Everything except knowing Him who created it.

That’s why no matter what this day throws at me, regardless of how it began, I know it’s going to be okay. No matter what pain or sorrows I may still be carrying from the horrors I’ve faced these past few months, as my rabbi says, “[My] problems are His problems.” He takes them away and reminds me I was created for so much more.

Except there is one pain I’m not sure I want Him to take away.

It hurts that I have to be reminded of this from time to time, that I have to reconnect with this Eternity. Why? I use to live only in this reality, these truths at the forefront of my mind each and every day.

But then I had to enter the “real world”. I had to grow up. I had to (almost) give up my dreams, get a real job, and start “adulting”.

Seven years ago, I experienced the one of the darkest periods of my life, if not the darkest. I questioned everything. Everything. My existence and even the existence of Hashem.

I knew He was there, but it felt like He didn’t care anymore. The G-d I knew wouldn’t allow such horrible things to happen to me. But they did, and it felt like all He was doing, all He wanted to do was watch, if even that.

What terrified me the most was within the choice laying before me — I could either “grow up” or I could avoid life and wallow like a child — I knew, knew if I chose to move forward, to grow up, to start living my life as an adult and stop waiting on fairy tales to come true something would break inside me, shattering the romantic, idealistic girl I once was.

I didn’t want that to happen because I didn’t want to change. I didn’t want to stop dreaming. Ever. I dreaded the person I would become if I entered this “real world” full of darkness and sorrow and pain.

Looking back, it took a few years to be shattered to complete obliteration, and while I survived, I’m scared now that maybe my heart grew back a little too crooked, a little too bitter, a little too scarred. Betrayal, I think, does that to you.

I don’t know if I have changed that much in these seven years, if I really am that enraged and embittered by Life and its challenges, if my heart really is that crooked.

What I do know is I have never stopped fighting and I have never stopped hoping, no matter how dark or bleak Life seems.

Maybe that’s what’s changed me: clinging to the truth that I was made for so much more than sitting in this cubicle twiddling my thumbs only to go home and eat and sleep just to wake up and do it all over again. Maybe my scars, my callouses are from all the battles I’ve fought when I refused to give up, to give in, to accept that “this is as good as it gets”, that Life will never be more than an empty, mechanical, meaningless rote.

Whatever I am, whatever I’ve become, whatever I may be enduring, what I do know is there is an eternity written on my soul by Hashem Himself and it reminds me fairy tales do exist. Though villains and evil do too, as Neil Gaiman once said,