Hello everyone!

Wow it’s been a while since I’ve written on here, which seems to be the starting sentence for the most ‘recent’ blogs. In short, I’ve felt like I haven’t been able to write about anything positive to do with mental health, when there are often times I’m really battling with it. It would feel fraudulent to write tips on how to battle an incoming anxiety attack when I struggle with that aspect so much. It would also feel simply too personal to write about the feelings of anxiety I’ve had. Especially when I’m working through it slowly. So in essence, what can I write about? Well, seeing as I’m late to the Mental Health Awareness Week party – which I was planning on writing for and then of course got stage fright about – I will give you all a brief update as to what I’ve been doing. It’ll be a nice account for me to look back on.

It’s been a weird few months in many ways. On one hand, I’m working hard, I’m saving, I’m cat sitting, and I’m building a routine in my life. And that’s good. After a tricky year of losing friends that meant a lot to me, for no apparent reason – they didn’t even have the humility to explain why they just removed me from their life – I’ve found a new peace with it all. I’ve made new friends and I’ve learnt that the friendships and relationships which aren’t for you, will make that known at some point in your life. Loss is hard. It triggers me a lot and feels unbearable to get past at times, but at the end of the day, life is short and you can’t fight for people to see your value if they just don’t care about you.

On that note, ‘life is short’ is a phrase I’ve mentioned a lot on my blog. It’s usually positive phrase, to encourage and inspire people to live their lives during this incredibly brief period of time we have on earth. We get so preoccupied by things, that we can lose sight over just how precious life is. But I’ve realised, that while I have tried to live my life in this way, especially the last few years, it can have quite a detrimental effect on my wellbeing. I’ve seen with my eyes how short life really is; watching my Dad lose his ability to move with a horrid illness. I’ve experienced so many scary hospital trips with him, and seen the reality close up of not knowing what could happen, that it’s absolutely terrified me. I don’t think I realised to the extent of this fear until therapy, but I’m starting to recognise it in my thought patterns. What happens if you are diagnosed with an incurable illness tomorrow and you haven’t done all the things you’ve wanted to do? What happens if you slowly lose the ability to do everything you took for granted? It’s times like these when I start to inwardly and outwardly panic, convinced I am just days away from being told I have an incurable illness that would stop me from living my life. For those brief moments of sheer panic, I am paralysed with fear, urgently thinking about all the money I don’t have and the time that’s slipping away from me to do all the things I’ve never done. The list is ongoing and never ending. It is and would be an impossible feat, but what does that matter when I am just hours away from experiencing the true reality of life being ‘too short’ for myself. And then the panic subsides, the world stops spinning, I can feel sensation in my arms again and I start to breathe; to try and stay in the present and make a mental note to bring this up in therapy. Life being too short shouldn’t panic me to live, and yet in those moments of traumatic connection, where I cannot take in my air and my heartbeat takes my breath away, I cannot do anything else but do just that. 

Interestingly, it is while being in Israel, that a lot of these painful feelings have been coming up. Israel was a country that my father used to visit many times when he was younger, to visit family, for solo trips and to take my mum away, both before I was born and then with his little family. I didn’t even know my Dad could write, until I came across handwritten notes of hilarious occurrences that happened during these trips and although this trip has in some way ways been more special than others, it’s also come with a lot of pain. I’ve walked along the promenade imagining him walking the same steps, I’ve seen hotels on the map I know he would have stayed at and I’ve visited my cousins and had Shabbat in the same flat he would have done so, decades ago. In my imagination, I picture this all, and then when I come back to reality of knowing he can never do this again, 27 years of pain and anger bursts out of me in heavy sobs. This is really the first time I’ve been able to delve into a grieving process I didn’t know I needed to experience; a slow healing journey from the traumatic visions of him falling, hospital trips or consistent, unbearable pain at the thought of this illness completely paralysing him.

As I sit on this bench in Netanya, tears rolling down my cheeks outside a cute little bakery, I am acutely aware that I have spent the last three weeks in a country that knows grief like the back of their hand, just in a different way. Everyone here, and a lot of those I have formed special connections with, knew people brutally murdered on October 7th. Many know those who have died over the years and grief seeps out of every corner, with missing hostage poster attached to each wall, lampposts covered in photos of smiling young people, lost in wars they didn’t start, but engaged in to survive. The strength of the people living here to continue living, in spite of the constant attacks – rocket attacks to kill as many civilians as possible are accepted as a day of life here, whether there’s a war or not – is unbelievable to see. You hear a siren and you run into a bomb shelter for ten minutes and then carry on meeting your friend for a coffee (or if you’re me, you stay in bed thinking someone is taking an incredibly long time to rob a car outside the window).

I am in awe of people like Eli Sharabi, whose wife and daughters were killed on October 7, who was taken hostage and mocked on stage, Hamas telling him his wife and daughters were alive – when they weren’t. Also, for Yarden Bibas, whose wife and two babies were murdered in Hamas captivity, and who was taken hostage and told of their deaths, live on camera, for some sick entertainment. He was eventually released. Both men choose life in spite of the insane difficulties.

Although no story is the same, I draw parallels these people, and include my Dad and Mum in those I look up to, for their unbelievable strength over so many difficult years. To lose control over your body, and to still maintain a determination to be positive and enjoy what he can, makes my Dad a hero in my eyes. The same goes for my Mum. To see her husband physically change from the man who took her around Israel, and have to see the love of her life in hospital so many times, must be one of the worst things in the world. But she gets through it, and they continue and move forward. Maybe there’s some incredible Jewish gene that lies in our blood, that somehow produces a resilience in situations where most would struggle, but without them, I probably wouldn’t be the person I am today and I’m grateful for their positivity.

As my time in Israel, living and working, comes to an end, I will try and take with me the power of the people in my heart, and combine it with the determination of my parents to help me on this grieving journey. I know that with grief comes acceptance, and I’m not there yet. Perhaps when anger subsides and I can look at photos or videos of a previous life without feeling a burning in my chest, I will have got to the end of a journey that’s taken me the best part of two decades to admit I needed help on; help that doesn’t come in the form of alcohol or prescribed pain medication.

Little by little, grief gets lighter and more bearable. For now, I’ll enjoy my last few days and go with the flow. And hey, looks like I did have something to write in the end.

Love you Dad.