I want to write out my feelings.
I've been feeling quite discouraged this weekend and then this evening I had a series of breakthroughs.
Let's begin by talking about therapy.
I went back to therapy in October of 2008 because I was being tossed from my shul of the past seven years. I hadn't done anything horrible, the rabbi was simply tired of fielding complaints about me and was looking for an excuse to toss me. Then he seized on one right before Rosh Hashanah and I found I did not have my longtime home for the high holidays.
The rabbi eventually offered me a deal whereby if I changed my ways, shut down Lukeford.net, and did my future blogging under his editorial control, I could return to my shul.
I said no and walked away, but I felt bad. I felt like I had failed him. I had failed that relationship. I had failed in my relationship with my shul. I had failed in my relationships with people at shul because I was not very popular and I guess more people wanted me out than in.
I felt bad. I judge myself by the quality of my relationships and this just seemed like a whole lot of failure on my part.
What made it particularly painful was that I was going through a conversion to Orthodox Judaism at the time and I needed a sponsoring rabbi. All three Modern Orthodox shuls in Pico-Robertson had now tossed me. I felt like a right wally. I feared I would never make it through my Orthodox conversion. That failure would make my adoption of Orthodox Judaism over the past nine years look like a failure.
After my religion (and before any particular shul or rabbi), my highest commitment is to my writing. I wasn't going to let it fall away and fall under the editorial control of somebody else who wasn't paying me.
So I chose my writing freedom. I went on to other shuls and to other rabbis. And I went back to therapy.
I found great support in therapy. I was so scared. I was scared of looking like a fraud as an Orthodox Jew by failing to get through my latest Orthodox conversion attempt (the RCC booted me in 2001, I got admission to an Orthodox conversion program in Sacramento in 1993 but left town before I could get going proper, I was entering one while I was at Aish HaTorah in 1998 but got kicked out of the shul in March and moved instead to the Reform temple Ohr HaTorah). I was scared that I was letting down rabbis and Jews who'd believed in me enough to give me a chance at another Orthodox shul (2001-2008).
I was scared I was a bad person. I was scared that I could not hang on to the important relationships in my life. I was scared I was not worthy of belonging to an Orthodox shul. I was scared I was too dirty for Orthodox friends. I was scared of being isolated, of feeling alone in a big world.
Therapy reassured me. I had my priorities straight. I hadn't backed down when it would've been so easy. I stayed true to the best of my writing.
Then I started dating again in January 2009 and this topic dominated my therapy for the next year.
It waned in significance in October of 2009 as my financial situation worsened. My driving job ended in August (after five months) and my savings plummeted. I failed to think of ways I could pay for my Alexander Technique teacher training. I remember asking advice and guidance from a close friend and though she helped, she also showered me with contempt.
When I told her one day about what I planned to talk about in therapy that week, she said, "Why wouldn't you talk about having to take financial responsibility for the first time in your life?"
I also got contempt for my inability to always rise to the occasion when I was on my back.
I got contempt for my debt load. I got contempt for my back problems. She thought they represented psychological problems. I got contempt for not having better relationships with my family, for not being more independent of them. I got contempt for my ill health.
I felt weak and sick and tired. I felt like I had little to offer a relationship. I was too weak to leave the house most days (after I had fulfilled all my responsibilities).
In the fall of 2009, I started increasingly worrying about my finances. And then a week ago, I solved that problem. I got steady work that I can do from home.
So did my worries go away? Nope. They've just changed. I no longer worry about money. I now worry about my fatigue. For the past two weekends, I haven't left the house. I'm just too tired. I have not been to yoga in two weeks. I wonder when this fog of exhaustion will ever leave.
Friday afternoon, I did a mass upgrade of about 25 plug-ins on my semiologic pro set-up on Lukeford.net. The upgrade got rid of all my text widgets and replaced them with an error message.
I figured I had done something wrong. I felt bad. I looked for computer help from two friends but neither were around. So I tried re-installing semiologic pro and my whole Lukeford.net/blog set-up folded up operation.
I felt helpless at the hands of this unreliable software. I saw myself shelling out $100 again for elementary computer help.
Saturday night, I checked the semiologic pro forum and saw that this problem was not unique to me. It had happened to many other people. It was not my fault.
So my emotion changed from self-loathing and helplessness to anger. And with that emotional change, I got more energy.
