The Pros and Cons of Dwelling on the Past

(June 2024)

How I am coping with daily life and how writing soothes my pain are two very intertwined aspects of life these days. Having no tangible evidence of my previous life has left me naked of identity. Rediscovering who I am is an ongoing process.

I knew who I was in the context of where I lived and where I worked and within the framework of routines that made up my life on a daily basis. What happened on October 7th 2023 cause a catastrophic tear in the fabric of space and time.

The time that has passed since then (eight months to be exact) has been the most difficult times of my life. My heart was longing to return “home” but I couldn’t because “home” didn’t exist anymore. The pull and the yearning to go back in time was so great that I was living in a kind of limbo, stuck between worlds, a past that no longer existed and a very uncertain future.

Writing has helped me to relive the splendor of the past and bring it back into the present. The memories are ones that I will cherish forever regardless of the pain attached to each and every one of them. 

Worlds within Worlds

We, each and every one of us, create our world around us. Your world is different form my world and that is different from someone else’s world. We each live a unique existence that is specific to us.

Throughout our lives we slowly build our world around us. Filling it with new experiences and embellishing it with the ornate fabrics of life. The world we create is not my chance, it is by design.

My world was my creation, deliberate and curated to the highest level according to how I resonated and interacted with it on an energetic level. I know this may sound a bit metaphysical but I believe in the universal energy and trust that it will guide me to a better life.

What happened on October 7th 2023 was, in my eyes, a battle between good and evil. The surprise attack gave evil the upper hand and allowed it to open the gates of hell upon our little community and the surrounding communities.

Darkness fell on Beeri that terrible day. I try and fathom how on earth we survived to tell our story. I willed the universe to spare us. I looked up into the darkness and said out loud, “Our story does not end today”. Call this a prayer, a request to the universe or whatever you like. I believe we were protected by a force that I do not fully understand. We chose life, although we had no idea how hard life would be following this tragic day.

Letting Go

How do you let go of something you never intended to let go of in the first place?

Throughout my life I have had my fair share of saying goodbye to people, pets and places. Eventually our grandparents pass away and then our parents follow. The cycle of life teaches us valuable lessons about letting go and the process of grieving for the loss of loved ones.

Nothing prepared me for what happened on October 7th 2023. The total loss and the extreme trauma of that day will always be there for instant recall. Some things cannot be so easily dealt with in therapy. Writing however does help me frame the world I lost in a way that is meaningful to me. 

Much in the same way as I understand the notion of phantom feeling of one who has lost a limb (like my neighbor did on October 7th 2023) so do I feel that our home somehow still exists. If I were to close my eyes for a moment, I can easily tour our house and recall every detail and tell you where everything is or to be more precise, was. Our home still exists in my memory. I cannot let go of this and I have no desire to. These memories are a comfort to me despite the deep sadness that accompanies them.

The Scars you Cannot See

I was one of the lucky ones along with my family, my wife’s family and my brothers family. How any of us survived will always be a mystery. Our pain runs deep. I can only tell you about my pain as, I am certain, that other are equally scarred, if not more so.

The multi-faceted nature of the trauma I experienced presents itself in different ways and at different times. As I have said before that sometimes the sadness is so great that tears are just a breath away. I let myself cry when tears are so close, I never felt good trying to hold them in anyway.

The things that hurt the most are the things that I lost that were closest to me. My cats cause me the greatest sadness. They were my furry friends who have always been there for me. They were my feline therapists. Not knowing their fate hurts even more along with slimmest glimmer of hope that maybe, just maybe, one of them survived. 

I will survive this trauma, I survived October 7th 2023 and I will survive the suffering it has cause me. The pain and the scars will always be there as a reminder of how much I loved the life we had.

Taking all the Time I Need

Recovery from trauma has no fixed timescale. The effects of trauma will always be there however hard we try to mask them with therapies however tried and tested they may be. Trauma on a scale of what we experienced has had very little research done on it. The closest thing is trauma suffered by soldiers in battle. We were not soldiers, we were unarmed civilians with no training of how to handle this type of situation.

As we have settled into a new kind if life, days drift by and I am constantly thinking how to build a new and safer life. I am in no rush, I am taking all the time I need to recover as best I can. Only when I am ready will I be able to get on with life.