The News from Nowhere

There’s not much to report from this weekend, but I feel the need to reach out.  I managed to get to shul (synagogue) without much trouble on Friday night, but I missed Saturday morning, this time explicitly because of social anxiety.  I did at least manage to shake hands with the rabbi and the assistant rabbi after the service on Friday night, something I hadn’t managed for several weeks, maybe even a couple of months, because of social anxiety and fear of being judged.

I did get very depressed again while doing my hitbodedut meditation/spontaneous prayer on Friday night.  Speaking of meditation, I’ve gone back to trying to do some mindfulness meditation before my hitbodedut, just for three minutes, to see if I can manage it without getting agitated.  It’s hard and I’m not sure what benefit I really get from it, but it seems to be one of those things that depressed people are expected to do, even if it hurts and doesn’t help, in order to be taken seriously by non-depressed people (like exercising and “making an effort”).

Today I slept late again.  Even once awake it took me hours to get dressed.  I pottered around the flat, skimming books on Doctor Who, browsing aimlessly online, trying to resist the temptation to eat too much.  although I have almost no actual junk food in the flat, I can easily eat too many nuts or dried apricots.  Dried apricots in particular have a lot of sugar, albeit natural rather than refined sugar.  I was supposed to go to my parents’ house this afternoon to see them, my sister and my brother-in-law, but I wasn’t up to going.  I should be cooking chilli for dinner as I haven’t cooked much lately, but instead I’m writing this and feeling awful.

After two weeks, the shadchan (matchmaker) for people with health issues still hasn’t got back to me, not even to acknowledge receipt of my shidduch (dating) profile.  I would chase it, except that I feel in no fit state to be dating anyway.

I emailed my rabbi mentor last night to see if we could speak about my feeling that God hates me and that I have no share in Olam HaBa (the Next World/Heaven).  I don’t know if he could really change the way I think, though.  It’s becoming very hard to stay frum (religious) as I feel so religiously inadequate compared with the other people at shul and on Hevria, feeling that I am going backwards rather than forwards in my spiritual development, that I am simply not doing enough that God must really hate me.  At the moment I don’t really feel anything except a vague depressive sadness and lethargy, but I think deep down I want to be a good Jew, but  I feel like I’ve been set up to fail almost since I was born, if not earlier.  Only I should not say so.  I should take responsibility for my actions.  I can’t believe that anyone who really knows me could love me or forgive me.  My evidence for this is that only two “people” really know me.  I’m one and I don’t love or forgive myself.  The other is HaShem (God) and it often feels like He doesn’t love or forgive me either.