Fading

The Kedushas Levi writes that when a person searches and prays for something for a long time, and then they find it, the initial gratitude and excitement is so intense, it’s like a great light. With time, the intensity of the feeling fades and the person gets used to having the thing they were looking for for so long (like a sealed flask of olive oil). This is why, according to the Kedushas Levi, Bais Shammai holds that the menorah should be lit with all eight lights on the first night and then progressively decrease over time.

 

I think about this sometimes. Will there be a time when I take being married for granted? Will there be a time when the memory of this pain and longing fades? Will this part of my story — my singlehood, my struggle, the reason I’ve tried so many ways for so long to work on myself and to grow — become just a thing that once happened?

 

Much as I pray for the day, the thought is unnerving. What will serve as a memorial to this formative, transformative experience? What will hold the intensity of emotion I experienced, as a witness? What will keep the eight flames burning?

 

I hope that my hundreds of pages of journal writing and hundreds of blog posts and thousands of texts and WhatsApps and emails to and from friends, family and whoever about shidduchim, will serve as a collective memorial to my struggle all these years. I hope I will always be able to touch and understand the pain and the numerous layers of hurt, disappointment, shame, fear, loneliness, sadness and grief that I felt.

 

I am also curious about the person I will be when all this is behind me. This journey that has been my why for so many years. That got me into blogging. That got me into therapy. That got me to become more of who I was meant to be. I am curious to meet the me on the other side of this. Who am I when I’m not in shidduchim?

 

And on that hopeful and curious note, I wish you all a meaningful Zos Chanukah.