All Vows
I cried at services this evening.
Now, usually this does not happen until tomorrow; the general rule is that I hold it together fairly well until the martyrology, at which point I fall apart in the accustomed manner.
But tonight I wasn't feeling well to begin with. I'd been short of sleep, so I'd taken a nap in the afternoon - which never helps, but keeping awake was becoming too much of a task to be worth it. I do not nap well. I woke up and had to get dressed, brush my hair, help to get dinner ready...and for some reason, my emotional stability (such as it is) simply was not equal to the task. I was feeling inadequate, simultaneously guilty and resentful, unloved and unlovable, desperately wishing that there were some physical cue I could give to distinguish between "I don't want to be touched or talked to right now" and "I crave being touched or talked to but am too convinced I am burdensome to ask".
In this unreligious state of mind I betook myself to the service, and...well. Kol Nidre happened. The Yom Kippur evening service could not be better designed for my emotional state. Not because it denies any of what I was feeling, but because it accepts it, transforms it.
The service, opening the Day of Atonement, is all about guilt, about transgression, about repentance, about forgiveness. Judaism does these things out loud, in a group, expressing guilt for past wrongdoing and asking God's help to do better over the coming year. It was incredibly freeing, when I was feeling all these things - and feeling even more powerfully the urge not to burden others with them - to be encouraged, even demanded, to express myself.
I wasn't alone. I wasn't the only one whose year hadn't been what they'd hoped. I wasn't the only one unsure of how to keep going forward, or whether it was worth it at all. And the whole liturgy, thousands of years of tradition, was there to support me.
It was like talking to someone who knew everything I felt bad about, every way I felt I'd failed, even the ways I've never, ever let outside my head.
"I've fucked up so much!" I cried.
"I know," they said. "It's okay."
And now I'm crying again, but I feel better, truly, deep down where secrets live. It's good to cry sometimes, when you're looking forward rather than back.
One other thing that happened at the service: I forgave someone. I won't name her, but I learned to hate by hating her, and she's dead and I still couldn't stop. But now, I think, I can. We're quits. I don't have to hold on to her anymore.
This entry also posted at http://cygna-hime.dreamwidth.org/383564.html, where
people thought it worth discussing.
Now, usually this does not happen until tomorrow; the general rule is that I hold it together fairly well until the martyrology, at which point I fall apart in the accustomed manner.
But tonight I wasn't feeling well to begin with. I'd been short of sleep, so I'd taken a nap in the afternoon - which never helps, but keeping awake was becoming too much of a task to be worth it. I do not nap well. I woke up and had to get dressed, brush my hair, help to get dinner ready...and for some reason, my emotional stability (such as it is) simply was not equal to the task. I was feeling inadequate, simultaneously guilty and resentful, unloved and unlovable, desperately wishing that there were some physical cue I could give to distinguish between "I don't want to be touched or talked to right now" and "I crave being touched or talked to but am too convinced I am burdensome to ask".
In this unreligious state of mind I betook myself to the service, and...well. Kol Nidre happened. The Yom Kippur evening service could not be better designed for my emotional state. Not because it denies any of what I was feeling, but because it accepts it, transforms it.
The service, opening the Day of Atonement, is all about guilt, about transgression, about repentance, about forgiveness. Judaism does these things out loud, in a group, expressing guilt for past wrongdoing and asking God's help to do better over the coming year. It was incredibly freeing, when I was feeling all these things - and feeling even more powerfully the urge not to burden others with them - to be encouraged, even demanded, to express myself.
I wasn't alone. I wasn't the only one whose year hadn't been what they'd hoped. I wasn't the only one unsure of how to keep going forward, or whether it was worth it at all. And the whole liturgy, thousands of years of tradition, was there to support me.
It was like talking to someone who knew everything I felt bad about, every way I felt I'd failed, even the ways I've never, ever let outside my head.
"I've fucked up so much!" I cried.
"I know," they said. "It's okay."
And now I'm crying again, but I feel better, truly, deep down where secrets live. It's good to cry sometimes, when you're looking forward rather than back.
One other thing that happened at the service: I forgave someone. I won't name her, but I learned to hate by hating her, and she's dead and I still couldn't stop. But now, I think, I can. We're quits. I don't have to hold on to her anymore.
This entry also posted at http://cygna-hime.dreamwidth.org/383564.html, where
people thought it worth discussing.