The Day of Atonement 2022

It's been a year since "The Day of Atonement" part 1. It's strange to think how much has changed since then. I've been through not one, but two seasons of change. The first season was the Spring semester of my senior year - new roommates, friends, boyfriend. The second season is the one I am in now: adulthood, New York, my job, my life as a single person in recovery from several heartbreaks. 

I think it's perfect timing that last night I finished the book I was reading, The Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferarre. To be hoenst, I didn't know if I was going to be able to finish the book. It was extremely depressing at times and I was almost too scared to continue reading, as to face the pages was to face my own fears and experiences. The book is about an Italian woman, who's husband leaves her one day for a much younger, and beautiful woman. He leaves her with two kids, a dog, and a home to take care of. Her world comes crashing down in an instant; and in the weeks and months that followed, she spirals into a madwoman, neglecting everyone and everything around her until she is unrecognizable. The book climaxes with one disatrous night where she almost kills her children and herself (the dog dies, sadly). When a kind male neighbor offers her kindness, she is unable to let him into her life because she can only think of her husband. She goes through all the stages of grief. She fantasizes about her husband and his new lover, having sex. She is unable to function. And then, slowly, she begins to live her life again. Not necessairly happily, but she starts to move on. Months, maybe a few years later, quietly, she has regained her sense of self. Eventually she realizes that she's not in love with him anymore. He is just a person who was once in her life. She begins to let her nieghbor into her life and lets him love her. It is not a fairytale ending, but it is one of triumph nonetheless; she has survived the worst.

At the depths of Olga's descent, at her worst and vulnerable moments, I wanted to look away. Her suffering was mine; I felt it too real to know the pain of when someone you loved (or thought you loved, for that matter) abandons you and loves someone else. I was sure that no good ending could come of this book. Surely she kills herself, gets arrested, gets shipped off to a sanitarium. But I finished the book only because I wanted to add it to my list--and I am so glad I finished. 

Sometimes when you think it is the end, when you are at your darkest and the loneliness and hearbreak knows no end, you want to look away from your own life. You can't even fathom a world in which you're free from this specific suffering. But, day by day, you go on. Until the memories start to fade a little. Until you realize, with a little bit of triumph, that just surviving is enough. That you've escaped the darkest days and everything else is going to be okay. 

In this new year of 5783, I am celebrating how far I've come. The truth is, I am free. I am letting people in, and taking life step by step.

With this newfound liberation, I am going to try to do better, and not transgress in the ways I did last year. For witholding my affection to manipulate others, I am sorry. For confusing love with lust, I am sorry. G-d, help me be a better and more whole and holy person this year.