Shaving with Rusty Razors

It is a sad fact in my life that I am terrible with transitions.

"I am so sad that we have so little time left here!" I moaned to a friend while walking back from school. He just looked at me like I was crazy.

Ok, so it's true, I am in Israel for 42 more days. (GAH! When I say it like that, it sounds like nothing!) But I am really horrible with switching from one thing to another and I have already begun to attempt to think a bit more about the lives that I will be heading back to in the States. I try to anticipate what I will feel in the future, which, although great ('cause I am usually right), is terrible because it takes me out of wherever I am in the moment. More than that, I have begun to mourn the loss of all the amazing people that I have met here in Israel. What random events bring people together. In two months, most of the people that I spend my time with will be spread across the planet once more. Some to return back to their home towns, some to remain in Israel for another semester, some to study abroad else where.

Which brings me to why I was shaving with a rusty razor today. Granted, this is not a rare occurrence in my life. Having grown up with only a bath tub, I have never mastered/been taught the art of preserving a razor without it rusting after one use. Hence, I often find myself looking at my razor with worry, then using it anyways. (I can imagine my Mom wincing now as she reads this). It probably doesn't help that I am usually in a hurry to shower, as I pride myself in wicked fast showers, and often emerge with little rivers of blood streaming down my legs...



What was different this time was the thought process. "Man, I really should buy some new razors...But I am only here for a month and a half! That is no time at all! I bet that I can get by on one rusty razor and a new one for the next month and a half..." This decision not to act based on a sense of the temporariness of my position has been characteristic of today. I have felt less motivated to do many things: continue to decorate my room, do my homework, buy food, exercise, get out of bed...so, it's possible I might also have a case of the Winter Blahs...

All this made me think about a recent conversation I had with a friend.
"I think I am going to be sad soon."
"Why?"
"I just feel like I need to be. I am already starting to miss this place."
"That makes sense. Just don't let yourself get into the "fuck it" mode."
"I don't think that will happen to me..."
"I don't know. When I was leaving for Israel, I started doing things because I was like, why not? I won't be here for much longer anyways!"

Although I denied that this could happen to me, the next day found me in an interesting situation. I woke up feeling gross (slightly sick) and really, really full (from Thanksgiving dinner three days ago and the late night meal of amazing butterscotch-covered waffles I had had the night before when I went out with my friends). Altogether, I just felt disgusting and I really didn't want to go to class. So, I didn't. I decided to have a bluesy day and to just be SAD all day long. This is something I do at least once a semester and, even if it doesn't help me to feel better, it allows to experience the unhappy emotions that I want to/need to in peace.

An hour later and I found myself downstairs, helping a friend make his own birthday cake. Three amazing layers of chocolate cake with cream cheese chocolate frosting, candied pecans and chocolate ganache. AMAZING. We watched "When Harry Met Sally" and talked and talked and talked. And I couldn't help but feel how strange it was, how temporary. To spend all day with a person from Monterey, Mexico who just turned 19 and who happens to get along with me so well in Jerusalem, Israel, of all places in the world.

I decided to skip  another class because I haven't missed a day yet and I hadn't gone to any other classes, so why start with that one? So, I hopped onto a bus to Tel Aviv with some friends, planning on reading in a cafe while they attended a performance that they had signed up for months ago. Miraculously, there were extra tickets! The show was entitled "Not By Bread Alone" performed by deaf-blind actors. They told us their stories while preparing delicious bread which we then got to eat after the performance.

We sat and watched the play and I continued to contemplate the randomness of life. The actors were deaf and blind for various reasons and had many different stories to tell about their experiences. As they told us their stories through dance, sign language, speech and acting, the bread that they had made was baking in an oven. A smell as familiar to me as home emanated from the ovens and I realized how strange it is that the friends I have spent 3 months with have never been exposed to that part of me.

"But is it the people you are going to miss or the place?" A friend asked.
"The people," I replied.

"It doesn't have to end here, you know that, right?" 

"Don't lie to me." I replied. 

"It might take work! But it doesn't have to!" 

I have heard this before. Many friends said this sentence to me at the end of last semester, when I spent a month and a half before school was over contemplating the fact that the end of school meant the separation of me from people so crucial to who I am and to my life. In the past three months, I have kept up with many of them. Especially the important ones. One relationship changed drastically and ended. Others have not been actively maintained because of the physical separation, although I anticipate that they will be right as rain when I return to Wes. 

And my friendships with people here? We have already begun to make plans to visit one another. Astonishingly, many of my good friends live/go to school close to me in the States. We have already begun to plan group meet ups and when we will travel to see one another. I can be sure that one will definitely visit. Other friends live further away and it will be more of a trek to see them. The sad beauty of life is that relationships are constantly evolving. They are not something that can be preserved in time and in space. I know this. It is something that has always saddened me, even while it makes me feel like one of the luckiest people in the whole world to have spent so many good times with such amazing people. After all, it is a beautiful thing that I will so deeply miss the people with whom I have spent such a short time in Israel. 

But, I am still here. In Jerusalem. My plane ticket is for January 19th. While I am here, there is still so much to do. I suppose that it is inevitable that I will continue to attempt to anticipate how I will feel in the future - that is, after all, who I am. But I cannot allow that to be all. I cannot, if you will, continue to shave with the same rusty razor. There are still so many adventures to be had. And a new bag of razors to be bought. 

Tally ho.