This article starts with a sigh. If this was a conversation you'd have heard it. I didn't want to hide it from you, my reader.
For years I've kept a diary. Then I decided to start a blog. I write in my private journal less often these days. I'll blog instead, I think. But blogging is different - especially if you reveal your name. My handwritten diaries never contain my name. Maybe it's time for an anonymous blog?
Take right now; Something's on my mind; a curious flavor of emotion. Loneliness? Sadness? Yes. Yes. Frustration? Yes? This paragraph is ending with a tremendous yawn. Everyone around me saw, and I thought you should know.
Perhaps I've already said too much? Do I want to say more? I try to remain discrete here about the real personal things...
I am single. I want to get married and have children, please G-d. Time is flying by. I think and write a lot about time. Here are two samples:
The Watchtower
I live in the past
and the future
Now is just
a watchtower
As I watch you
living this moment
I wonder
how it feels
---------------------------------------
Time Flies
You move
too quickly
Please stop
let me breathe
You lie
as you cheat me
Take your time
as you please
So I pause and think
But nothing waits
And in time
I grow old
While still planning
my youth
----------------------------------------------
And yet. There are people that are good nice people that I say no to. Just like I'm a good nice person and people say no to me. Sometimes the no comes quickly. Sometimes it's a long time coming. The former is like a band-aide ripped off the latter like the band-aide being pulled off slowly. Esther Kustanowitz has written a series of Al Chaits relating to ways people hurt each other in the context of dating that cut me deep.
Much has been spoken and written in recent years of "the blight of frum singles." People have been encouraged to help. But people often don't know how. So they'll do things like referring to an individual single human being's situation as a part of a blight.
A good general rule is to be as kind and gentle as possible in how you speak to and try to assist people. Sometimes we cause pain through words we use while we're trying to help.
This may make no sense to you, dear reader. Oh well. I can't be clearer, but I couldn't refrain.
I think maybe there should be a support group just for frum singles. We could talk about how we're tired of causing pain and tired of feeling pain and want the fulfillment unique to marriage and children and how it's a long, hard process. And maybe we could talk about it a language that sometimes it feels like only we can understand.
This post ended with me hunched forward, staring at the screen, breathing in and out deeply once and pressing Publish Post.
posted by rabbi neil fleischmann @ 10:39 PM
6 Comments:
Somethings take longer to come to fruition than others. Patience doesn't come easily.
It makes more sense than I would like. It's hard, nothing more to it than that. I kind of like the idea of a support group - except that I find that guy-bashing (or female-bashing for men, I am sure) doesn't help much and that's what these things usually turn into. I don't know. Good luck in finding your way of dealing with it. I don't have any answers. I wish I did.
I ended reading your post with a sigh. You express the struggle eloquently. Sometimes all you can do is breathe in and out...and wait...and hope...and dream...
Yes, I'm married, but I was single for what to me--and my parents!--was a very l..o..n..g time. I was VERY SINGLE. At some point I decided to go a different route and partake in shabbatons. Of course the coordinator of these was a businesswoman too, but she did make a memorable remark to me that I made use of then and in different ways make use of now. She said, "If you sit at home, nobody will know who Pearl ____ is. But if you're out there, there's a greater chance of being discovered."
No, dating and finding a beshert is not an easy task -- and often not such an enjoyable one. But sometimes it's in the least likely places, the least likely connections that are made that lead one to "the right one". I do hope that you find your right one soon, or even better, I hope that she finds you even sooner!
Yes, it's hard to be single, and although I've never categorized myself as "frum," I see other people who do and who are in torment. My torment takes other forms. But you're doing great things: I saw your name on the Soul Searching program, so you're involved in theater and the arts in one of the most artistic cities in the world. You're teaching and it sounds like you're being appreciated, which is more than most teachers get.
Every one is different, so the "problem" can't be treated systemically. Also, a group of married people trying to help poor single people smacks of elitism to me. My divorcing friends constantly remind me, it is better to wait than to marry the wrong person, at the wrong time or for the wrong reasons. Maybe by waiting, you're avoiding making the wrong decisions.
Forget it. I'm gonna say what Mirty said. "Breathing is good...I'm sympathetic but afraid I'll say the wrong thing."
Although my family thinks I share too much here I am proud of what i shared here and even more proud of what my readers commented. Thank you all again.
Post a Comment
<< Home