“I Can No Longer Suffocate Behind This ‘Me,’ This Iron.” A Moving and Empowering Letter

A genuine anonymous letter received by Rabbi Erez Moshe Doron and read in one of his lectures, and we simply couldn't ignore it. Here it is before you:

"To write a bit about what's been happening to me lately: The more I'm alone and less involved with people, the better I feel. Meeting people can always be a danger. I might lose myself, lose my precision, get confused.

"Lately, I have been isolating myself a lot and I found a different place within me, a new place. Until I encountered a story and fell. I want to write that I can't stand people, but it's more accurate to say that I am very angry and accusatory – because I didn’t know how to be one among all.

"I gave of myself so that others would love me. And I completely lost touch with myself. Now it’s about closeness to Hashem and seclusion, but I still want to say I can't stand people. And I'm at least angry at the blind and dumb among them.

"And I am there, present. And I need to ask for forgiveness and not be too hard on myself, and this is the state you often talk about: the peak of nothingness. The peak of not knowing who I am, what’s inside me, nothing is clear at all…

"Everything is things thrown into my soul. Different and strange things all mixed together from all times, full of people. And it became as if it were me. Such a strange living, unclear. Walking."

"I can no longer suffocate behind this ‘me,’ this iron."

"I am fed up. I am fed up with it. I want to be transparent. I want to scream, sit on the floor and pound the ground, stomp, make faces, cry and cry and cry...I can no longer suffocate behind this thing. This 'me.' This iron.

"I want to sit and mourn all these years. And cry from then until now all the crying I didn’t cry...from then until now. And that’s it. And besides that – nothing. Besides that, I don't want anything, I want that and nothing more.

"I want to cry out all the fear that blinds me, blocks me, and binds me, cry it all out with the utmost true emotion. I want to go to the desert, where the sand clings to me, not the mundane. Cry over the profession I am in – performances, money, people, honor.

"In short, I am a bit going crazy. For the better. I am still holding onto both ropes, and only with the help of Abba in heaven, because there is nothing else here apart from what is connected to Him. All that happens, all that I see there, with Him, is good. I feel a lot the 'lack of taste' in things. Think of all my life that I thought 'this is life' – it is not. And it's good that it isn't. Because it really isn't good. I want to sit on a mountain, feel my soul. Be silent. Just hug my son and cry, and ask to be healed from head to toe – millimeter by millimeter."

"And they will bandage me, and after a while, they'll remove the bandages, until it heals. A thought comes to me that I need to find the puzzle that is me, and throw out the puzzle pieces of other things and of other people that are stuck within me like in a storage room for items.

"In short, as you can see, I have truly started to scream. Rabbi Erez, hopefully. Hopefully, this thing will happen, this thing you say is not from here. Where are all the moments I was in darkness and solitude, in pain and fear, all the moments my soul was hurt and wounded and frightened, and put on a garment of hiding?!

"I want to beg, to pray that Hashem will shine and polish and cleanse me and spread on me a repellent material for lies and fear, and darkness and doubt. And I want to wear Mordechai the Jew's sack, to leave Egypt and come here. But where to???"