Today's sack of self-pity is brought to you by.....

Just a warning that what follows is a sack of self-pity.


Oh man….today was a really rough day. I’m not entirely sure why. The Women of the Wash must think that I either have a bladder problem or a drug problem, because I kept going to the bathroom today to have a cry.

This is so unlike me. I think I’m just terribly homesick, and Friday is always the worst day for me, because it’s when everyone leaves to go to their families and I’m just……here.


Another exciting problem is that I’ve basically been lying non-stop to my parents on the phone, and that’s stressing me out. I hate lying, I absolutely hate lying. I can’t tell them that I’m lonely and homesick, because they’re going to talk me into coming home. And I don’t want to come home because I’m a stubborn, idealistic bitch who wants to make this whole Zionist thing work out even if she knows damn well she’s not cut out for it and would be better off if she just swallowed her pride and went home. I can’t tell them about the whole army thing, because I know they’re gonna try to fly out immediately—which could be a huge threat to their businesses—and try to take me home by force. I mean, I guess I have to tell them eventually, but I’m not sure when “eventually” is. I hinted to my Jewish brother that I had gone through steps to make this more than a just “I’m INTERESTED in joining the army” thing and rather, “It’s a pretty serious thing I’ve done, because the army now knows everything there is to know about me,” and he freaked out a bit. He was also the first member of my family that I told that I had decided to move to Israel. Actually, I told my parents back in 2006, during the war, “I’d like to move to Israel.” And then in 2007 I remember saying, “I really really really want to move to Israel. How would you feel about that?” But the actual first time I said to a family member, “Um, so I AM moving to Israel” was to my brother. The problem is that he gets really stressed out when he has to keep secrets from our parents, so this obligates me to tell my parents very soon.

Part of what is stressing me out is that it’s painful for something that I want so badly to be so difficult. All my life I learn about Israel, and I get excited and I want to come here so badly, and finally I get to come after 19 fucking years (which is nothing, I guess, in comparison to 2000 years)….and it’s like everything I learned about my whole life is shattered. I remember one day at Sunday School we learned a bit about the IDF. I was like 7 or something at the time, and I brought home the handout with a black and white picture of an Israeli soldier, and I told anyone in my family who would listen that I thought it was the prettiest uniform ever and that I wanted one too and that mine would be pink. I remember another time learning about Israeli cities, and I brought home that handout, pointed at a picture of Haifa and announced, “When I grow up, I’m gonna live here!” It was a picture of the port, so my parents said, “You’re gonna live in a port?” And I got so annoyed with them that I hid under my bed for the rest of the day.
I knew all the Zionist songs, I even put up with Israeli dancing in Sunday School just because it was Israeli, and I learned how to play Hatikvah on the flute. I remember that when we learned how to read Hebrew, I worked my butt off because it was what they spoke in Israel.
I mean, shit son, I hated the religious part of Sunday school, but anything having to do with Israel I loved.

But then after 19 years of learning all this stuff and being almost brainwashed in a way, I come…and I fold laundry. If there’s a more meaningless job in Israel, please let me know. The people that I work with congratulate me for coming over here, but at the same time they make my life absolutely miserable and treat me like shit most of the time, and make living here in this country near-unbearable. I’m a total idiot in this country, and even if there were no language barrier I’d still be an idiot in this country. And to top it off, I’m extremely lonely because everyone else has family to go to. Everyone else has a support system in this country, and I just have me. So basically my being in Israel is meaningless and solitary. I know, I know, this is a ridiculous amount of self-pity, and I know that “it could be worse.” Yes, it could always be worse. But first of all, this is my blog and I’ll be as self-pitying as I wanna, and second of all I don’t give a fuck that it could be worse—all I know is that it is unbearably painful that everything I believed growing up, everything that I cared about growing up, everything that was important to me growing up….is fake. It’s not real. I just feel like a total idiot for dropping out of school, saying bye to everybody I know and love, and coming to “An Ideal.”

I’m normally such a hopeful and idealistic person. At least, that’s what I think about myself. Actually, the other day when I was talking to Hadas, it was she who pointed out (not in these words) that I have the hope of a crazy person. I don’t know how true that is anymore though, because I feel like over the past months I have become unusually bitter and pessimistic. I hate that. Usually I have hope to the point where people ask me, “What, are you retarded or something??? How the hell can you hope for things to turn out okay in a situation like this?” And lately I’ve had people here telling ME to be hopeful.


Oh well. I have a feeling that tomorrow I’ll wake up and I’ll be singing some song I learned at Hebrew school, and I’ll totally forget that I felt this way today. But for right now, this is what I’m feeling.




I did feel a little better because the crazy French guy came back from his first day in the army, and as much as the guy drives me crazy, it was nice to know that I won’t be totally alone this weekend. Also, it was nice cos I got to ask questions about was the first day is like, and he got more information on what the first couple months are like, so of course I drilled him for any and all information he had. Because, let’s be honest people: I have no fucking clue what I’m doing. I have a couple friends who are olim who are also going into the army soon, but they have Israeli family members to ask about this shit, so they seem to have a much better idea of what’s going to happen, whereas I feel like some sort of little lost puppy. Actually, I feel like that fucking kitten who got stuck on my roof yesterday. She just kept peering over the edge, deciding whether or not the jump down would kill her….. It broke my heart because she just seemed so alone and scared, so I spent an hour trying to coax her into a basket I was holding. My British friend asked what I was doing, I replied that I was trying to rescue the cat, and he joked, “Ah yes, you call the fire brigade for this sort of thing in America, don’t you? ‘No no, no time to save that family from that burning building, there’s a cat stuck in a tree!’ ” He thought it was ridiculous that I was trying to rescue the cat when it would eventually figure out how to get down, but I couldn’t stand to hear it’s pathetic little frightened meows. I tried to climb a fucking tree to help her down, but that required both hands and so I couldn’t hold her. I tried to build a fucking ladder out of tables and chairs, but it was too shaky to be safe. So basically I felt like that cat, you know, just pacing around on the roof not sure what to do. Or some shit like that.

Another thing that made me happy? The song “Tainted Love” came on the radio today during work, and I started laughing because of a memory. In my senior year of high school I was in an art class, and next to me sat a friend. And we were drawing or something, and there was total silence. We were completely wrapped up in our work. And suddenly my friend quietly starts singing the song…..but I don’t really notice it. She gets to the chorus and is like, “Tainted love….” And then I, completely without thinking, go, “Ohh ohhhh ohhh!!’ And then she, also without thinking, goes: “BOMP BOMP!” And then I go, “Tainted love…” and we continued like this for like the duration of the song, and then when we got to the end, one of the freshman in the class turns to us and goes, “Did you guys like rehearse that or something?” And then my friend and I turn to each other, and until THAT MOMENT, we didn’t realize that we were doing a little duet with “Tainted Love.”

Oh man….remembering that just made me smile. And it also made me feel a little more homesick.