Tiring day. I had some bad news this morning (my sister’s future grandmother-in-law died), but it was fairly distant from me (I never met her) and I wasn’t desolated. I also had some good news, being invited out for dinner on second night Sukkot (this Thursday), going to the people I was supposed to go to on Rosh Hashanah, before I got ill.
But the day was just tiring. I struggled at work, cataloguing some difficult books and while I managed to offset the difficult ones with some easy ones to get through a reasonable amount, I gave up some of my lunch break because I thought I had been wasting time. I need to have some familiarity with our stock to help students find books and to know which new ones to buy. I also need to skim over books to catalogue them. However, being an avid reader with a wide range of interests, it’s easy to get caught up in a book (fiction or non-fiction) and I tell myself off if I think I’m reading for too long. As “too long” is entirely subjective, this is another opportunity for self-loathing, blame, shame and guilt, who I suppose are the Four Horsemen of the Self-Destructive Apocalypse (not that that’s a Jewish belief).
On the Tube home I sat opposite a beautiful, heavily pregnant woman (who looked a bit like Freema Agyeman from Doctor Who) and her husband. I sat there, trying not to stare at them, feeling envious. This is what I want: spouse, children, love. Of course, the Four Horsemen ride in immediately. I said this year would be different. This year, I would stop envying others their lives. This year I would accept HaShem’s (God’s) plan for me. If He says jump, I say, “How high?” If He says, “You will be lonely forever,” I say, “You know best.” But I can’t do it. I just can’t do it. I want to be happy too much, I want to be loved too much.
Envy is something I could do without, but it’s difficult not to succumb to it when you’re tormented by “reminders” every day of what you don’t have and the life you’re missing out on.
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Right, exactly.
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❤️
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