i am not making aliyah.

when my parents told us they were getting a divorce, i was chewing breaded chicken unapologetically. that is, until they told us they were getting a divorce.
then i was chewing wet cement.

a year later, i’m chewing steak and my dad who hasn’t initiated a word to me about my near-distant future plans picks that moment and makes one of his dumb angry remarks about how he’s going to lose a kid to arafat.
i don’t even remember the chewing.

this is fucked up. i hate how everyone’s all like, ‘wow, you’re making aliyah,’ and i smile and my head is reeling. i don’t want your red carpet, ok? is that egotistical of me? it’s not a dream, it’s not an israel action committee. i don’t want politicians to meet me and greet me off the plane. go sit at your nice oak desks and ponder what you’ll do with my taxes this year. it’s not a dream. it’s very very much a reality. it’s so real it burns. the kind of burning you feel when you know you’re tearing at the seams which were already coming undone… or maybe never undone at all and then you have to live with the guilt of tearing a seam.

it’s so real that it’s wake up work 9-5 eat dinner sleep real. it’s the realness of a future coated in dead flowers and leftovers at the back of the fridge.

that’s because we’re all making it that way though. with your ‘aliyah luncheons’. if they knew i was saying this, would they be so quick to smile and judge? i’m running away from their judgement… making aliyah doesn’t make me religious…

no, it won’t be that real for me and it won’t be a dream. it wont be fears of ‘dying in arafat’s hands’ and it wont be living within an hour of the kotel. it’s not about singing songs about jerusalem and it’s not about forcing yourself to cry off the plane because the lights are on you.

maybe i shouldn’t be doing this.
(placing bets yet?)
maybe i shouldn’t be making aliyah.

maybe I should be settling in Israel because that’s what I want to do right now.


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