I realized today that I am acting a bit as if my sister is dying, not as if she is getting married. I feel I won’t see her again, at least not alone, because her husband will always be around. I suppose it matters to me because, while we have not been very close, she is the only person I can really banter with. I struggle to talk to most people (and to be fair, I can’t always talk easily to her, particularly about emotional things), but I can banter lightly with her in a way that I can’t do with my parents or my friends. It’s funny that I have to have felt like I’m losing her to realize what she means to me.
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I feel quite a bit better today, depression-wise, at least after a terrible early morning when I considered skipping Shacharit (morning prayers) to watch Doctor Who instead. In the event I was so late that I only managed about ten minutes of davening (prayer): tallit, tefillin, birkhat hashachar, Shema (without the brachas), Amidah, Alenu. I feel a bit guilty about this. Once again work helped a lot in distracting me.
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Not for the first time, I feel as if I am being punished for things. I even know what things. I could say, but no one would talk to me again. The crime is a consequence of the punishment, in a recursive loop i.e. the punishment prompts me to sin again. I feel I deserve to be punished, yet I long to be free, free of punishment and free of the temptation to sin. I feel inadequate as a frum man. I’m a hypocrite and I loathe hypocrisy, especially in myself. I don’t know how to break this cycle and years of therapy have not helped.
