Personal Update and Reflection

I spent two days in what felt like a hypomanic state—I was writing a lot, feeling very creative with an accelerated speed of thoughts—ideas flying through my head. I was restless and jittery. Then I collapsed. I was in the north, in the Galilee, and this week, during the holiday, Hezbollah launched a lot of rockets towards the Galilee. It was in retaliation for the IDF killing a high-ranking commander. Nothing actually landed here, but I could hear the muffled explosions and the booms from the distance. Once in a while, it felt as if the earth around me was shaking. Nothing actually landed near this place; there were no sirens, yet I trembled with fear. I felt an impending threat of total annihilation.

Then I discovered that I was almost out of clonazepam, so I sought out a way to renew my stock. I was desperately trying to get my hands on it. I was missing my dose. At first, I thought I would check in at the ER of the nearby hospital. We drove there. The place seemed very grim. A woman with a nose ring and a trolley was breathing loudly, trembling, and grappling with herself. She brought a trolley with her. She seemed to be in very bad condition. The other patients in the waiting room looked in bad shape too. The hospital didn’t seem inviting or pleasant at all, and they refused to give me anything because I wasn’t their patient.

I called the ER of my hospital in Jerusalem, Kfar Shaul, and asked them to send me a copy of my medical record with the medication I’m prescribed. They sent it to my cell phone. My medical record is scary as hell. It says that I have PTSD, schizoaffective disorder, and drug-resistant major depression disorder, and that I meet the criteria for treatment with esketamine. Sobbing with tears, I sent him a copy of it. See what a mess I am. I’m ruined. There’s nothing left of me. I’m gross. If you knew about my diagnosis, would you even mess with me? Don’t make any assumptions, he said. You can’t fix me. I’m not asking you to treat me. Nobody can, that’s why they are giving me esketamine, an experimental drug. The magnitude of the destruction is indeed beyond comprehension, he said, referring to the state in the Galilee. It is. I took off my clothes. I looked at my body. Yes, my country is burning, but I am intact, at least in my body, if not in my soul. Somehow this thought grounded me. You can’t fix me. But you can make me feel beautiful, attractive, desired. I love my body when I see it through your eyes. And that’s a lot for me. It is a lot, indeed, he replied.

I ended up taking zopiclone and falling asleep for eight hours straight, waking up exhausted. We drove to the nearby clinic, and the GP was kind enough to prescribe my clonazepam in an instant. I felt as if what happened yesterday was just me trying to escape, go somewhere safe, be it a mental institution. Just not feel like a duck in the hunt, waiting to be caught. I woke up drowsy. I plan to write a whole lot more today, but reflection and expression come first.

Coming to think about it, there is a reason that I might get triggered by the muffled sounds of explosions. Living in Israel, you should be able to get used to the sounds of explosions given the context of all the wars we’ve been through, especially within the context of the recent Israel-Hamas war. Yet it did trigger me. Probably not very different from the reactions of many Israelis. But I knew what I was experiencing and what memories I was suffering from.

First, it was my youth in Jerusalem during the Second Intifada. I think I was once or twice close enough to the location of a suicide bomber terrorist attack, close enough to hear the booms. Then came all these years of activism in the West Bank: Bil’in, Ni’lin, Sheikh Jarrah, Issawiya, Hebron. The soldiers would shoot stun grenades and tear gas at us, which are considered non-lethal weapons to disperse people. Stun grenades usually don’t inflict any particular damage unless you are somewhere closed or get hit by them directly. Once in Ma’asara village, a stun grenade pierced an activist’s ear. At another time, in Tekoa, the stun grenade actually landed on my foot, and I couldn’t care less. I was always considered brave, perhaps militant. Perhaps reckless. I didn’t fear anything at that time. I thought I was supporting the Palestinian unarmed resistance and promoting social justice.

In the context of the recent Israel-Hamas war, that sounds tragically naive. Eventually, the armed resistance is the road taken. It feels as if we are on the brink of annihilation. I’m an aging hippie, trying to rediscover myself after being disillusioned from being a social justice activist. The distant memories of stun grenades bring tears to my eyes. It’s a joke compared to what’s happening now.