When we look back at this time, this crazy last few years, what do you think we’ll say?

Will we be amazed, at how many of us just carried on living life, despite the challenges that have been multiplying like mushrooms after rain? I’ll say especially here in Eretz Yisrael, where we have had a month of being accompanied by ‘bombs from Iran’ and sirens to the supermarket, while we sleep, while we pray, even, while getting our eyebrows shaped at the nice cosmetician woman.

But I know, it’s not only people in Israel who have been feeling the sharp end of life the last few years. Everyone has had their own particular set of plagues to deal with, and live through, and grow from. It’s not been easy for anyone, honestly.

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Two days ago, I finally realised that I’ve been feeling quite angry again about the whole crappy situation going on again.

Not so much the ‘bombs from Iran’, although let’s be clear, I am still anxious whenever I hear planes whirring above me these days. Even though I don’t go down to my bomb shelter, I am not on the level of being 100% calm when stuff is going off around me.

But, it’s not so much that, as all the lies, the never-ending lies, and the feeling that no matter how big the lies get, how bad the Evils treat us all – nothing ever seems to dislodge them.

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On Shabbat, after I’d got super-angry, inside myself, when someone at the Rav asked me if I could move my chair a bit…

And then, when I came home and got super-angry, inside myself, when I realised my husband had left on the bathroom light by mistake…

That is when I started to really connect to the feelings of ‘anger’ about the current situation that have probably been boiling away inside again for weeks, making me feel so stressed, and antsy, and waking me up in the middle of the night, even when there are no sirens.

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So, I sat down Shabbat and I said the Rav’s prayers to get rid of anger.

And for two days, they worked really nicely.

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Today, I woke up after a really rotten night of non-sleep, where I just couldn’t drop off.

(It could be there were some booms – h0nestly, after weeks of this it all just starts to blur into one long sleep-deprived night.)

I was stressing about a million and one stupid things, and I really thought I’d stopped doing that, stopped reacting like that, a long time ago.

This morning, I had a day full of Pesach cleaning and shopping to do. I really needed my energy and koach. And, I just didn’t really have it.

I felt the ‘angry vibe’ starting to hum away inside again.

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I got up, I had to get up. I washed down the cupboards, cleaned the counters, did two more loads of washing, cleaned the floor, snipped the plastic (very badly…) to size and stuck it down on the counters.

I started to feel a bit better.

We went to Machane Yehuda, to try to track down some horseradish, which each year has got more elusive, and more expensive.

BH, we found it. We got the lettuce, the green stuff.

Life was looking up again. We had a lot of the market to ourselves, as just as we were parking and coming up the stairs from the underground carpark, there was a siren warning, which meant about 50 people were all coming down the stairs to get away from ‘bombs from Iran’.

In that half-empty state, we even got a seat in Aroma, and I ordered a sachlab, to go with the pouring rain and cold that is still with us, two days before Pesach.

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Life is good.

Life is really good.

I started feeling that again, for an hour or two. That’s what a big dose of sugar can do for you.

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Then I came home… And made the big mistake of ‘just checking what’s going on’.

All of the Jordan land crossings closed to Israelis now (why?! I have no idea).

More lies about what’s going on with the war.

More lies about that Orange Guy, and his super-duper-fabulous-world-fixing 8-D chess plan, which apparently some brain-dead morons still 100% believe in.

All of a sudden, I just started to feel all stressed-out, and soul-weary, and kinda angry again.

We are dealing with ‘half-lockdown’ rules here in the Aretz again, and that all by itself is making me kinda claustrophobic.

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But really?

I am doing this to myself.

It’s hard to ‘stay off the news’, especially at times like now, when it appears so much is going on.

But even if I’m not feeling the poison as I’m engaging with it, it’s coming out at night, stressing me out, and leaving me feeling kinda despairing and angry.

I really, really don’t want to be feeling like that any more.

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This is one of those articles that hasn’t got the neat ending.

I am still struggling to figure out how I move forward, from the stress-y, angry place I’m currently finding myself in, and really not enjoying very much.

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One thing that has struck me, is that we are actually so fortunate that all this is going on in the lead up to Pesach.

We are all so busy with ‘Pesach prep’, there isn’t a lot of time to think about anything else.

That’s a good thing.

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Tov.

I wish you all, dear readers, a kosher and happy and peaceful Pesach.

Maybe, this is the year the sea really does split, and every last Evil gets drowned in it.

I really hope so.

And in the meantime, may God keep you, and me, and all the people we care about and love, safe, healthy, happy – and increasingly, seeing through the lies that are keeping us all stuck in Mitzrayim.