War and the Splintered Mind - How We Cope

Friday Drops - a gratitude journal

Every Friday, I write a gratitude journal entry to share here on Prone to Hyperbole. This is my gratitude journal for November 3, 2023.

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I’ve written and re-written this piece about 5 times so far, the words stopping and starting. A bumpy ride. I have been splitting my brain in an ability to function, going on auto-pilot, making dinner, prepping reports at the office, loading my shopping cart at Costco.

The war overseas continues but is threatening to fade into the background for most people who live around me here in Ottawa. I watched Halloween decorations go up. Now I will watch them come down, and Christmas decorations go up in their place. A few days ago, I got word that one member of our community had lost 56 family members. Two days later I heard that another had lost 22.

This is where my split brain kicks in. Though, split is the wrong word — fragmented, fractured, is more accurate. The different pieces are simultaneously in conflict, but cut-off enough that they can ignore each other. I am all of these things at once: heartbroken, hopeless, hopeful, numb, angry, hurt, apathetic. When I love my children this week I love them so much more intensely.

The little one comes to hug me as he always does after prayer, and I kiss his cheeks and I kiss them again and again and again and again and my eyes are threatening to leak again, but we are late for an errand so I can’t afford this right now. So I stop kissing him, and wash my face and go on with my split brain. My feelings are brittle, breakable. I am not always in tears - I keep laughing suddenly when it’s not that funny, a build up of the nervous energy hissing out like a steam valve.

There is something surreal about going about your life in the shadow of a war. I send letters to my elected representatives. I have conversations. I write. But then I have to work out. Or schedule a tire change to prepare for winter. Or meal plan. Two days ago, I ate poutine at the office after “trying to be good” for a week, because I just wanted the comfort food. And then I felt guilty about indulging when there are aid trucks unable to even enter Gaza right now. And then I felt guilty for making it about me.

I imagining you, my reader, shaking your head. Fatigued, perhaps, that I keep stubbornly returning to this topic. I cannot look away. I listened to a sermon that was given at a demonstration on Capitol Hill a couple of weeks ago, calling for a ceasefire. In it, Dr. Imam Omar Suleiman spoke about bearing witness, about our duty not to look away. I have had my heart in my throat for days. I have cried at the most inopportune times. And then I have wiped my eyes and gone about my day, helping one son practice his social studies presentation and the other look up French verb conjugations. I am dried out and cried out. Until I’m not, and then it starts again.

Still, I look for gratitude, not because I feel it flowing through me, but because I have made a conscious decision to be grateful. How can I not be grateful when I look at all the blessings I have? I am drowning in blessings. It’s embarrassing.

This week, I am grateful for:

• The voices of so many people of conscience, especially those of Jewish Voices for Peace, who have worked tirelessly and continue to raise awareness of the situation and push for a ceasefire.

• The kindness of friends who have held me as I cried and ranted in places I was supposed to hold it together.

• The ability to split my brain and continue to function.

• The hugs of my parents, especially in the quiet moments after prayer when we sit to say our thikr and try to be still.

• The cooler weather, that has allowed me to put on my beloved cardigans again, which I think are the perfect form of apparel.

• The food my mother left in the freezer while we were away. I have been so disinterested in cooking that all her pre-prepped meals have saved me lately.

• My electric heating pad.

• The toddler at the mosque on Wednesday night at my son’s community basketball game. The boys were gathered in a corner of the gym after playing, listening to the Imam talk about how power is not always strength, how the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, was soft. There was this little boy, maybe 2, in a brown fuzzy jacket and sweatpants, running after the smallest little soccer ball you’ve ever seen. Toddlers run in the most precious way, their arms swinging like cooked spaghetti at their sides, feet shuffling as though on the wind. This boy’s singular concentration on THAT BALL, his brow furrowed, was so pure. He may have gone home and behaved like a little terror. He may have refused to sleep and thrown a tantrum and screamed bloody murder. But in that moment, he was a boy with a ball and nothing else in the world to worry about, and it made me happy.

• Bilbo, our rabbit, because holding her and stroking her soft fur is calming and soothing.

How are you doing? How is your mental health? Is the war hitting you hard?