7am

Yet another sleepless night.
The lights go off, and my brain starts whirling.
I think of all the things I would dearly like to say to so many people.
I write letters in my head that I will never send.
I invent scenarios that will never play out.
I write letters to papers, write introductions to books, all in my head.

Then come the day, I am paralysed and can get nothing down. I do not understand this at all, and am wondering whether I need to go and talk to a counsellor about this strange phase I am going through.

I am dreading seeing Cris.
I am hoping the visit with Abigail goes well.
I don't know how I will feel when she gets married in April and I am not with her.
I do know how I will feel.

I want to go to a bead show.
I don;t want to go as I have too many beads.
I want to go to the craft show in Birmingham.
I don;t want to go as I have enough stuff and need to use it.
I want to go on a course.
I don;t want to go on a course because I don;t want the hassle of it.

I am in such a muddle at the moment.
J says I am agaraphobic and sociophobic. I probably am. I can;t seem to get anywhere on my own. I hadn;t noticed my world gradually shrinking. I walk Martha locally even if I have the car. In Leeds I can get to Moortown, but haven;t been into Leeds centre on my own yet. I went to Amsterdam and didn;t manage to get anywhere on my own last time.
What has happened to me? And why? And when? I didn't even notice it happening again. It was probably the result of my back injury two years ago and the subsequent debacle at the Pain Management Programme at the Walton Centre which I also want to write about.

I feel ill in myself. For years I have dealt with the neuropathy in my hand as it being just a pain in my hand. But somedays its like a river of fire down my arm with pins and needles in the rest of my body. I can;t just say its my hand anymore.

I feel my age at last.

I don;t think I am nice to live with. I am not loving enough.

I just don;t do enough, achieve enough, Brenda would be horrified at the state of this house.
All the kitchen cupboards need cleaning and washing out and sorting.
All the curtains need to come down this summer to be cleaned.
All the windows and sills need painting and cleaning.
The bathroom needs sorting - there is mould on the grout and I don't know how to get rid of it.
The dressing room is a mess and I need to sort it out.

The downstairs front room is ....well I can;t do anything about that. I peer through other windows of other homes, and long for something similar but it won;t work for J and me.

The scullery needs tidying - I do it so often and it just runs away so quickly, with stuff waiting to go for recycling or to the shed. It has become the dumping ground. And there is damp on the walls, that is surely behind the kitchen cupboards in the kitchen as well that needs attention.

I am overfaced. This house is too big, too far gone, it has escaped and I can't begin to get it back. I spent three hours doing housework yesterday - the porch, the hall, the kitchen, and there was nothing - nothing at all - to show for my having done it.

And I go to bed, and turn the light off and I start writing letters again. To people I know. People I don;t know. Conversations I should have/could have/might have had. I wonder about my sister and her husband. I wonder about my brother Yossi Babad and his wife Sara Babad!!  Funny there should be another Sara Babad. (I now have a new blog BabadHolderblog to order things).

I wonder what my sister Hannah Babad thinks......

or my brother Dovid Babad.


I wonder about whether they think I have abandoned them and then remember I sent a text and got back a message with two words on it - thank you - and that has been that for over a fortnight. And no reply from a message to Yossi.

I am just full of loss and pain and it is my own fault. It is of my own making.

I went looking after I left and I should have left well alone. I left because of family issues and they are still there. I could never ever live as an Orthodox Jew. I could never live as an orthodox Jewish woman with all the prejudice that remains against women. I don;t believe in the bible as sent down by heaven via a man named Moses and I don;t believe in the God that they set before me who needs animal sacrifices as a way of our proving our devotion to him!!
I should not have gone looking.

I must begin to write my memoir or I will go mad.
J says if I write the first three chapters and a synopsis he will help me find someone to publish it. I am going to set myself a deadline as I think it is the only way to do this.
I want the draft finished by the end of the March.
The rewrite done by the end of April.
The synopsis and photo etc by May. So my anniversary present to us will be something ready to go out into the world.

Maybe - just maybe - that will get me moving.

BUT.......

I am going to hurt a lot of people if this gets published. But then again,  why not? Why not show the community/cult for what it is - hypocritical under the warm friendly exterior. Its nice - but you step out of line and you are OUT. Forever it seems.

Nevertheless - there is a period of time between then and now for my family to get in touch, to start a healing process and if they do, then maybe I will leave things.
But if I don;t then there will be a book and it will be unpleasant and I will make more enemies.
Do I need them?
Could I live in Leeds if I wrote what I want to write?

I don;t know if I am brave enough. Maybe that is what is stopping me. In fact - it probably is. I am prevaricating, hoping that something or someone will persuade me that they weren't so bad, that childhood wasn;t so bad, that there is redemption. I am hoping. I am giving them a window of opportunity.