Groundhog Shabbat

Today was difficult.  I woke up and had a weird Groundhog Day moment when I realised it was Shabbat (the Sabbath) again.  Too many days lately have been Shabbat, Yom Tov (festival), Erev Shabbat and Erev Yom Tov (day before Shabbat or Yom Tov).  I just want some normal days, where I can write and Skype E. and go jogging and vegetate in front of the TV.

I was quite drained over Shabbat and didn’t do a lot of the stuff I would normally do.  I went for a walk and I did a bit of Torah study, but not as much as I would usually have done.  I have finished re-reading the first fifty Psalms in Hebrew, which makes me exactly a third of the way through the book, but it’s taken me a very long time to get here (about ten months, I calculate with help from Goodreads).  I did a bit of recreational reading too, but not a huge amount.  I slept a lot again.

I feel even more than before that I need to speak to a therapist.  I have a lot to process about the changes in my life: Mum’s illness, getting back together with E., continuing unemployment and the fact that I’ve dropped a mental health coping strategy without really having considered what the emotional side-effects would be.  I mean, I was right to stop it, as it was very negative, but I’m not sure how well I’m coping.  There’s probably a lot to say in therapy about my relationship with my parents, which I’ve spoken about before, but not regarding confronting their mortality, which has only just become a non-theoretical issue.  Likewise about my sexuality – I’ve spoken a lot about it in therapy in the past, but I probably did not say everything I needed to say or work through everything, and suddenly it’s more relevant than at most times in the past.  I mean about the way being single in a community that only permits sex after marriage forced me to repress my sexuality for so long, with a concomitant build up of guilt, shame and who knows what else, as well as interactions with other emotions and thoughts.  I’m not expressing myself clearly here, and that’s partly deliberate, but partly not – I don’t really know what to say about this other than things feel so difficult so much of the time.

Tonight I’m feeling listless again, and lonely.  It’s frustrating that my girlfriend lives on the other side of the world, although I worry I would mess things up somehow if she was here.  I’m in two minds about watching TV tonight.  It’s after 11pm, so I shouldn’t, but I need to relax and I feel too depressed and lacking in concentration to read.  I’m not likely to sleep soon anyway, given how much I’ve slept today.

I feel the interest of these posts is diminishing, if there ever was an interest to other people (apparently there was, but I find it hard to believe).  I’m just trying to dump my thoughts so I can move on from the evening and towards sleep.  I feel unless lockdown ends soon (which it won’t), even I am going to run out of things to blog, just endless lists of runs and books read and self-criticism about not enough Torah study.

I hope to use some of the energy that would have been spent on writing long blog posts on fiction writing.  I want to finish the short story I’m working on and then move on to the novel, away from the dull, but necessary bit I’m writing and onto the more interesting/disturbing stuff, although as I’ve said before, the novel isn’t exactly the type of thing I read, or want to write, but it makes sense to start with something semi-autobiographical.  I have so many images in my head so much of the time, but forming them into stories is really hard.  I suspect that most of them are pilfered from other books/TV/films/comic strips, but talent borrows while genius steals.