Holiday Angst

I suppose I should stop being in denial about the arrival of Tishrei?

For those of you interested in keeping track, the month of Tishrei contains the following in the span of three weeks: Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, AND Simchat Torah. That's SEVEN festival days if you live outside Israel--seven days on which no melachot are supposed to be done, seven days of going to shul and eating festive meals. Is it any wonder that I love the following month, Cheshvan? It has no holidays!

Now, you might be thinking, "But holidays are fun! Don't you love celebrating, marking sacred time, connecting with the Divine, and all that?"

To which I would reply, "No! I actually don't! I like regular days. I love my routine. Holidays are disruptive. And I can connect with the Divine JUST FINE on regular days, thank you very much."

Though I will admit, hearing the shofar always gets me. And I do love Kol Nidrei (Yom Kippur gets major points for being only one day). But the main truth is, holidays are hard for me, and I often feel alone in that because while everyone else finds them so meaningful and so beautiful (or, at least, they say that they do), I find them somewhat meaningful and beautiful but also majorly stressful and anxiety-provoking. And it's not just the logistics of all those festival days that is a struggle, it's also the sheer magnitude of what these days represent: Book of Life? Book of Death? Genuine teshuvah? Making lasting positive changes to my life? It actually hurts my brain to think about it for too long, because what if I can't truly do teshuvah in the way it needs to be done...WHAT THEN??

If I'm being reflective, though, I guess these are relatively good hangups to have around the holidays, because I used to not be able to get anywhere past the food. And there is a LOT of food, usually in the form of festive meals with family and/or guests. I used to be so stressed out about those meals that I couldn't think about the rest of the holiday at all, and often passed up invitations to meals because it was just too hard. Today, I am proud to say that while I still have some anticipatory anxiety around these meals (How long will they be? When can I leave?), the food is not really an issue anymore; it's the schmoozing that is the tough part. While I don't LIKE disrupting my usual eating routine, I CAN do it when I want to. I can be a good guest and participate in conversation and eat like everyone else, because I am in recovery and I have earned the distinction of blending into the crowd. Just how I like it.

As for the rest of it, I am trying my best with the positive self-talk, reminding myself that I CAN take a couple of days off work to do things a little differently, and it will be fine. I have a new book that I am saving to start on the first day of Rosh Hashanah, along with my annual holiday reading of This Is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared by Alan Lew, and Return by Erica Brown. I accepted invitations to some meals, but didn't over-commit. And with regards to the pressure to make shul a super-meaningful affair, I think I am just accepting that shul is a challenge for me and isn't where I feel most connected to G-d. I'll go and spend the many hours there because that's what we do, but I am not expecting to feel anything out of the ordinary and I don't think G-d expects that of me, either, since He knows how I roll. I'm a "find G-d in nature" person, so I'll be having my Yamim Noraim chat with G-d while feeding an English muffin to the fish during Tashlich.

And here's a little secret: the holidays stress everyone out, even the people who are all spiritual and who love cooking. So if you're privately (or publicly) freaking out about this interminably long stretch of "islands in time," don't worry--you're not alone. Make it as bearable for yourself as you can, and find ways to see beauty even in small things. Give yourself permission to take breaks and relax. Push yourself a little, but not too much. And know that, like a light at the end of the tunnel, Cheshvan is coming!