I'm grateful for: peace in my home; ceiling fans; Jewish newspapers

Saturday, early afternoon. I slept in, and woke with a full bladder. Whee! I've been hiding out, avoiding everyone, which means that my head isn't entirely full of other people's gabble. I really NEED this break. Twelve people in this house is too many.

Our house-guests continue to be really great. I mean, you couldn't easily find four people at random and move them in here and have it work as well as it is. Of course there are rumblings and grumblings. It is hard on everyone. I hope they get to go back to their home soon, not for our sake but for theirs.

If this lasts a lot longer, I may want them to go back for our sake. I'm no saint.

Someone said to me, yesterday, that you need to find the thing that comes easily to you that doesn't to most other people. ... I don't know what that is.

Making babies came pretty easily to me, it is true. And I do seem to be good at taking crisis calls. I don't seem to be able to do either here, though. And, I may never make another baby.

So what 'gift' do I have? That I can do because I love it and I want to, not just to get paid for it. How do I find it? If everyone has some kind of a gift (I'm not necessarily saying they do, I'm not necessarily saying they don't), then what do you do if your 'gift' is something that is completely unvalued in society? When you are crippled and can't do the bare minimum to support yourself in the world?

I'm not really feeling that whiny, but these are questions wonder/worry about often, and I have no answers as yet. I would very much like to have *something* that I do that I love and others value. I have things I do that I love, and things I do that others value (a little bit). And they sure aren't the same things. *sigh*

Anyway at some point I want to emerge from my room and be sociable, but at the moment it's not looking too likely. I *need* this time. It has been a long, gruelling week for me, and next week doesn't necessarily look at whole lot better. Although I am unlikely to need to drive so far on any given day. That is something.

Yesterday I did make it to the shuk with John. It ended up being a real circus, with Maxine, Darryl, Simcha and John (Maxine's son) coming along. It was fun. I wasn't doing great, but I managed to walk around, and buy some things, and I picked up some fried chicken for us all to have for a picnic. Simcha and 8yo John and I hung out and had a good time at the entrance to the shuk waiting for the rest of them. Darryl joined us soon afterward - he doesn't do crowds well. John came up and then we waited for Maxine. And waited, and waited, and waited. We went to the van, and waited there some more (with the engine running and the air conditioning on). John (my John) went in to look for her and still no Maxine. He came back to see if she'd come to the car while he was looking. Then he went back into the shuk.

Eventually she appeared. She'd had her phone turned off, so we couldn't just call her. She didn't even buy any clothes, which is what she'd done for all that time - try on clothes. At least she had fun.

Home again, Havva got home from guard duty at 10am, and was still awake when we got home so I got to see her and talk with her a bit. Next week at the base is going to be even crazier. She has two over night shifts (as she did this week) and her boss is going to be in Prague, leaving her in charge. This is especially a problem because two of the other girls who work there outrank her. Her boss said not to worry about that, just to keep them busy. Well. I'm sure she'll manage, but it's not a good position to be in.

She went to bed. I sat up and tried to get some work done, then gave up and came to my room and collapsed. Around 5pm we started our usual Friday night movie and popcorn. It didn't work out great, but it worked. We watched 16 Blocks, a really good 'redemption' movie. Maxine and Darryl and Maxine's kids cleared out early, and my family wandered in and out such that I was never alone, and at least twice we had pretty much the whole family together. Which, after all is the point of these things.

After the movie I crawled back into bed and stayed there for pretty much the rest of the night. Eliyahu was very cute, and fell asleep on my lap.

Nothing to report today. I heard something really neat from Zechy, which he got from the J. Post. The IDF, when they get reports of Hizbullah people hiding out in residential buildings, find a telephone number for people in the building. Then they ring up and tell whoever answers that they think Hizbullah terrorists are hiding out in the building and they are going to blow it up, so please, get out of the building and run away.

Then, if the people run away, they blow up the building.

From the J. Post:

"Part of the reason for [the IDF's] slow movement through the town also had to do with the IDF's moral code. A high-ranking Northern Command officer, asked this week by reporters why the military didn't just level the village, explained simply: "We don't work that way."
Indeed, that is also what Peretz explained to US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during her visit here earlier this week. The defense minister said the IDF works according to a system called the "Post Office Theory," according to which Israel looks for the right address to respond to before opening fire.
Despite the enemy's tactics, he told Rice, the IDF was still operating as a moral and ethical army. Hizbullah, he told her, fired at Israel from within mosques and homes, using civilians as shields. "We called up one home and told the residents that we were going to attack, and that they needed to evacuate," Peretz told Rice. "They fled the home and only then did we level the building. A home whose occupants didn't answer the phone, he added, was not targeted."

Sometimes it's all I can do to stay relatively sane. I want to cry out, to scream and argue, to bring logic and facts into a situation that is not affected by logic and facts. Mostly I am able to do it. When I can no longer keep silent, I have my nice, private diary to cry out in. In the words of Rav Kook, who wrote: I am lifting my voice loudly not because I have the strength to speak, but because I don't have the strength to keep silent.

I've been here before. When I started the journey of recovering from my childhood. I talked about being incested (abused) as a child, and people didn't want to hear it. I talked about being sold for sex, as a slave, and people didn't want to hear about it. I talked about ritual abuse, and my mother who even today still tries to destroy me and people didn't want to hear about it. My family didn't want to hear about it - I was the identified patient, the crazy one, and as long as I remained the only one with a problem, everyone else was just fine thank you.

My friends didn't want to hear it. It was too unbelievable, to intense, much easier to cut me off, and/or pretend I'm a nut than face up to the reality that I put in their faces.

My neighbours, other parents, professionals didn't want to hear about it. After all, as long as what happened to me was an isolated incident, as long as it was about *me* then they were 'safe,' they didn't have to think about it, worry about it, face the fact that we live in an world where things like that don't just happen, they happen frequently enough to be, well, frightening.

Other survivors didn't want to hear about it. After all, their story was just so awful I couldn't possibly understand. NO ONE had suffered as they had, no one was as special as they were. How DARE I try and take away their specialness by claiming that we were alike, that we were all in this together? How DARE I have experiences that were similar to theirs - taking away their unique place in the universe.

Perps, of course, didn't want to hear it. Perps are: family, friends, neighbours, parents, professionals and other survivors. They are everywhere. But don't, don't ever dare say that out loud. DON'T call a perp, a perp. Don't ever.

I learned. I learned that people don't want reality. What they want is not to have their fantasies disrupted. And that they will HURT YOU if you try and replace their fantasies with reality. Actual facts. Logic doesn't help. If they can't argue against you logically they always have the fall-back - that you are crazy, you are the problem, you are the one that is making things bad. If it wasn't for you...

Yeah. I learned. So I kept my mouth shut. I talked only, only, when I no longer had the strength to keep silent. For me it was a triumph when, as I got better, I no longer *needed* to talk about things with all those people who didn't want to hear it. It was good to be ABLE to keep my mouth shut, so that people didn't hurt me any more for speaking the truth. I could not and would not lie. Silence was my only escape.

Now I am in the same situation vis-a-vis Israel. Actually, I have been in the same situation vis-a-vis Israel for years, but living here, and with the war, I am reaching the point, more often, more desperately, that I lack the strength to keep silent. I do *not* want to be out there fighting against all the liars. I am sorry if you don't want to hear it, but that is what they are. Those who speak about 'moral equivalence' and pretend that they are unbiased and not anti-semitic. And, please, don't even go to "Some of my best friends are Jews." Someone actually said that to me, out loud, in the last week. What? How thick/insane/stupid/lost in a complete realm of fantastic unreality do you have to be to use that line in this day and age?

Israel is not the aggressor, as some (many) claim. I can't get over the person (you either know who it is or it's not worth typing the name) who refers to Israel as an 'experiment' that has 'failed.' As if, somehow, in their enlightened wisdom, the countries of the West, the U.S., Canada, Europe, created Israel and can shut it down if they don't like the results? What kind of utter, insane, nonsense is this? The Jews came here - from the holocaust, and from the U.S. and Canada and countries in literally every corner of the world. And they joined the Jews who had BEEN here for the last two milennia, and they fought, with little enough help from ANYONE, combined arab armies of more than 40,000 troops. And we, WE JEWS created the modern State of Israel. With Hashem's help. And if the other countries had offered no help at all (as most did already), the Jews, with Hashem's help, would still have formed the modern state of Israel.

'Experiment' my right ass-cheek!

*sigh*

So, here I am. In my nice, safe locked diary, ranting once again. Because I lack the strength to remain silent. But I can, at least, not subject myself to further sufferings by posting this publickly and being just as publickly attacked. It has happened to me before. Why don't I pray for the strength to remain silent? Because silence = death. However painful it is to speak out, on occasion one must. Or die.

Been there, done that.

I'm going to play some computer games. Escape into a fantasy world for a while. The war is here in the West Bank. No missiles, yet, but people killed, three people in the last roughly twenty-four hours. I am still as safe as I may be. Enjoying my quiet, Saturday afternoon, hiding out in my room. With my ceiling fan. Yeaaaa! for ceiling fans!

I'm listening to the sounds of silence. And Zechy chewing his gum

:: Yesterdays : Tomorrows ::

~~~Last Five Entries~~~
Hi and goodbye - 2010-10-15
I'll be moving on - 2010-10-10
Gold membership and stuff - 2010-10-10
Decisions, decisions - 2010-10-07
Days to go - 2010-10-06