Emes

Note: This was written three days ago, even now looking at it I'm not sure how much of it I mean. Which is not to say that as I was writing it, it wasn't the truth, it was and to a large extend very much is. But I've also realized how little I actually know about anything. And how much coming home has scared me and in many ways warped my perception of the world. Truth be told I'm not sure of anything at the moment.

August 14^th 2008, eleven days until I return to America, the last week or two has been extremely hard saying goodbye always is. But for whatever reason this goodbye seems particularly painful. I’ve seen and done and experienced so much in the last ten months, I hardly remember the kid who left New York thinking this would be a three month adventure. Now almost ten months since I left the shores of America for this frontier on the edge of the world I’m ready to go home. Maybe that’s what makes this goodbye so hard. I know that I’m ready for something else yet I don’t really want to say goodbye. I know I still have so much more left to learn, so much more to grow and I know this is the best place to do it. And yet I’m ready to leave and I don’t ever want to leave. Israel is home, my heart belongs here and it knows it. My soul has exploded here and I know it just won’t be the same at home. I’m going back to a place where I’ll be an extreme minority, where I’ll be forced once again to reevaluate my life, what I stand for and what I’m willing to endure for those beliefs. No I don’t think I’m being overly dramatic, yes I know I’m speaking emes, truth. I feel like at the present I’ve resolved what I need to resolve, save one precious, tender, mysterious problem. I’ve otherwise closed every door I’ve opened since I got here. Yes I feel like I’ve found closure with my life here. Except of course for one gaping hole in that door, it’s why I’ve had so much difficulty writing lately. Every time I sit down to write it inevitably pops up in my prose. Like with so many things in life it’s a girl thing. George Carlin famously does a sketch about this remarking “why did we bring a car to the moon? There might be women there!” And so it goes. It’s such a simple thing you’d think, but of course we all know its not, emotions can be deceiving and your heart and eyes will mislead you, they’ll turn you astray. And without them life would not be worth living the mind, and the soul would be empty without our emotions to move them. To carry them away, to make us feel invulnerable and yet to leave us so very vulnerable, I have a lot of trouble with that I’ve heard from more then one person that I talk and talk and talk and yet they’re not sure what exactly I believe. I think that’s a little much I’m certainly not a closed book and I’ve often a little to open about what I’m thinking about everything. I do after all have an opinion about everything as I’m often told. And yet I have an issue making myself vulnerable. And that’s where I am right now, I have eleven days until I leave Israel and I have a girl who I haven’t talked to in a week, a girl who I believe I may have something special with. It’s difficult to say, but it’s what I believe. I believe that the connection I feel when I’m with her and even when I’m not is not typical. That is to say it’s unique, special and I’m leaving. I’ve thought about it from every angle, picked it apart, held it up and still I’m not sure what to do. I don’t want to admit that I feel this way. I’m usually so sure of my emotions; I usually trust my instincts, my intuition. And now I’m not so sure what if I’m wrong? What if given my statement above that I feel like I’ve resolved most of what I set out to do here, I just don’t have anything else to occupy my considerable brain power. What if my memory is faulty, what if, what if? That perhaps is the worst part for me, so many what ifs the biggest one being of course what if I put myself out there and there is nothing there what if I’m wrong? I think I’ll just have to deal with those what ifs I don’t know what else there is to do. After all what if I ignore those feelings? What if my what ifs, aren’t what ifs at all. What if my feelings are right? That what if might just be the scariest what if of all.