Day 4

I’m normally not a hugger, as my friends and coworkers can attest to. My mom also wasn’t much of a hugger, so I suppose I got that from her. My mom, as I’ve mentioned before, was also not emotionally open most of the time. There are so many things I don’t know about her (and now never will) because she never wanted to talk about it and I’m almost certain she left many things unsaid, both to me and other people.

December was an exceptionally terrible month for me. It was a combination of the holidays, my mom not being at home, moving, and my own poor mental health at the time that did it. But I came to an important realization that month: I don’t want to be closed off like my mom. I already share a lot on this blog, but the one thing I am not good at is telling the people around me how much they mean to me and I’ve started trying to correct that. Three dear friends helped me out with moving and I honestly couldn’t have done it without their help, so I made sure to tell them how much I love and appreciate them. I told this to two of them in person and the other via text and, unsurprisingly, it was much easier to express myself via text, but I need to get better about getting the words out of my mouth. I don’t know why I have such a block on that. Well, that’s not true, I have an idea of where that came from, I just don’t want to share right now.

I mentioned that I’m normally not a hugger, but, as you can imagine, I’ve gotten a lot of hugs from people in the past two weeks. I’ve noticed that it’s been much easier to hug people, even (most of) the ones that I would rather not have given. I’ve also hugged a bit longer than I normally do. The community has shown me extraordinary kindness and love the past two weeks. I’ve always referred to the Jewish community as my chosen family, but I have been overwhelmed by the amount of people reaching out and asking how they can help. I’ve never been comfortable asking for help (I’m sure you can figure out who I got that from), especially to the degree that I need right now, but I’m trying to be better about accepting help because I know I can’t get through this by myself.