Always Tired | Coming Home from Reserve Duty with Nothing But Question Marks

 

I’m constantly tired.

I go to sleep tired, and I wake up tired. All I want is to sleep. And no amount of sleep is ever enough. No matter how many hours I’ve slept or how recently I woke up, I’m tired.

My brain works slowly. It’s hard to think, hard to speak. Words smear on my lips and refuse to roll out. Lucky for me, I don’t really have anything to say.

On the train home from my miluim shift, panic hit me. This is it. Everything I’ve been suppressing for the past two months is waiting for me right at the doorstep.

Electricity bills, water bills, municipal taxes. Studies I already forgot I had started. A book I began writing. An exhibition I started building. Everything is standing at the front door with an evil grin.

But all I want is to sleep, to turn into a bear and go into hibernation until spring arrives.

This is already the sixth time I’ve been released. I thought I had learned the process by now, that it would get easier. But it turns out it’s the complete opposite. Each time, the return feels harder.

There’s a huge gap between the story I tell myself and the story the rest of the world tells itself about this event. About the choice, about the decision, about how much freedom I have and how much I don’t. Whether the obligation is real, or imagined.

According to most people around me, I have 100% choice regarding the decision to enlist or not, and if I chose to go, then I chose it.

For some reason, I don’t feel like I have full freedom of choice.

I wish I could break down my decision point by point, with an exclamation mark next to every item.

I envy people who can speak in exclamation marks, who can explain and detail the reasoning behind every opinion and every decision.

I used to be like that too. But since the war broke out, all I have are question marks. I can’t explain to myself or to anyone else what stands behind any of my decisions.

Yet I still do things. I make decisions. Life flows, things happen, and still, not a single exclamation mark.

I chose to go on this round with a whole lot of question marks hanging over it, and zero exclamation marks.

It was cold. There was mud. It rained. The wind blew. Everything was pretty miserable. Trench-warfare atmosphere.

And in the middle of all that, I tried to articulate the shining poverty of the situation, to collect small stones from the ruins of the wall.

To pour meaning into a puddle, if not for the present moment, then for the future. So that in ten years, when I look at the photos and words that came out of that period, they’ll serve as important testimony to what happened here.

And now I’m tired. Constantly tired. Constantly wanting to sleep.

I keep asking myself: How long should I allow myself to rest from all this? Where is the line between self-compassion and self-surrender?

And what do I do with the bills, the studies, the books, the exhibitions? When will I have the strength to come back to them and face them head-on?

I already know what reactions to expect, and which messages I’ll get from which people. That’s why I’m not even sure I want to share this post.

But then I ask myself: Why do I write? Why do I publish? Not for pity, not for compassion, and not for pots of meatballs.

I write because this is how I process things. And I publish and lay everything bare and insist on radical honesty, because I know I’m not speaking only for myself.

Original Hebrew post by Roy Kasher (shared on his facebook). Translated to English with care and respect for the original voice. You are welcome to link back to the original, share this translation, or follow Roy for more of his writing and reflections. Credit is appreciated - thank you for reading and respecting the author's openness.