Raw

 

 

Since the war started, I haven’t known what to say when, in greeting, a person inquires, “How are you?”

For weeks, I’ve been avoiding answering by saying, “Next question.”

It just occurred to me how I’m feeling.

I’m utterly raw.

I cry watching videos of soldiers on 12- or 24-hour leave surprising their children, grandmothers, parents and siblings. I cry watching videos of the endless kindness pouring out of my people. I cry when a non-Jew openly acknowledges that we Israelis are the good guys in this existential war.

These tears are prayer.

I feel sick reading about the moral darkness that exists in our world. I feel sick seeing people tearing down posters of hostages with a sense of righteous indignation. I feel sick witnessing the crude illiteracy of so many who actually believe they are standing up for what's right.

I wake up thinking about whether the women in captivity are sitting in bloody clothes when they get their periods, whether they are still being raped and how any of the hostages will recover any semblance of a normal emotional life if they get out alive, please God.

And I use my words and my imagination to manifest the Final Redemption as the concluding chapter of this nightmare.

How am I? 

 

I’m raw, perpetually alternating among competing emotions that cannot coexist.

My heart is in a ceaseless tug of war. 

Literally.