Whine Whine Whine

Mopey Reflections from Last Night


Last night I ended up pacing my room for a solid hour wondering if I’m normal. My conclusion? No.

You know what life feels like? Maybe this will be a weird metaphor, but stay with me.

Life feels like my oldest brother’s Bar Mitzvah party.

I remember being 8 years old, in some uncomfortable party dress, in some uncomfortable fancy hair-do that keeps pulling at my scalp, without my glasses, wearing wearing-inducing tights, surrounded by old and strange-smelling relatives that I’ve never met who keep trying to hug me but can’t remember my name….and then when I feel like I can’t get any more uncomfortable, all the adults start doing The Electric Slide, which I had never even heard of before, and they all try to drag me into it.

Basically what I’m saying is that my life on a regular basis feels like that experience all those years ago, that experience of feeling so uncomfortable and out of place and foreign and frightened of people that you just want to go lock yourself in your room and hide underneath your bed.

You’ll notice that in the last paragraph I used the word “foreign.” I feel like I have to clarify that this foreignness has absolutely nothing to do with being an immigrant. Let me make this absolutely clear: Yes, I feel like a foreigner in Israel, but I also feel like a foreigner in the neighborhood of Los Angeles that I lived in full-time from birth until I was 18. It has nothing to do with nationality or religion or whatever. I’m just a weirdo.

Also, I feel like the Phantom of the Opera. In two senses. In one sense, I feel like some masked loner/weirdo. And in another sense, I feel like the production itself of “The Phantom of the Opera”—overly-dramatic, obnoxious, and embarrassingly bad.

Oh G-d. It just dawned on me that it’s Friday evening and instead hanging around after Shabbos dinner to socialize with people, I actually chose to come upstairs to my room to listen to show tunes by myself. As I write this, I am listening to the score of South Pacific.
Oh G-d, I’m embarrassed by what a dweeb I am.



I’m thinking of just no longer opening my mouth around people because every single time I get a reaction from someone on something I’ve said (except when it’s just a straightforward exchange of information) it just makes me feel more alienated.