Not Fade Away

This blog has always been about the spiritual/religious journey. It has been about discovery. Sometimes it's about Jews, sometimes it's about my life which I deem not my own but belonging to G-d. The latter has never been a choice for me, it just happened.

My best friend, L, the love of my life, yes, the love of my life even though some man in my life should be my bashert, has Multiple Sclerosis. It's been ten years since we met, and 5 years since she was diagnosed. She is the only family I have.

Her symptoms are not so physical, contrary to what most people experience or know. Her fatigue has grown over time but she lost 10 IQ points when she was assessed 5 years ago. yet her brightness remains unabated. She has difficulty with her memory, difficulty with tiredness, difficulty with initiating anything. Lately, in my experience, she has difficulty with empathy and seems indifferent to the latest symptoms. She has changed, not for the better.

Where does this leave me in my journey? I'm losing the one person with whom I was actually happy. It's not like she died. She's just fading away. Which is far worse than death.

Where does this leave me in my journey? I don't ask this because it's just about me, but more so, it leaves me confused. As to what do I do? How do I manage this, in a divine sense, when she shows indifference? And why, G-d, why, did you fashion the person I love into someone who is fading away from me?

I've had ten years of true love. I am so grateful. But I'm mourning.

Meanwhile, life continues. It just does.

And I don't know how to approach G-d on this. Since G-d came through, my life has taken an ostensible turn for the worst- aloneness, poverty, humiliation, betrayal, deprivation. I have imagined my life so differently, if I had only chosen safety and security. Material benefits have sucked, no matter what.

Since that seminal moment, life continues to be a challenge and not of my choosing. I am astounded by how endlessly rotten it can be. And yet blessings of an untagged sort, do pour in. Go figure.

I want G-d to make my best friend okay, or at the very least, come back to me, yet I know it will never happen. But I keep praying for her healing. Because it's what Jews do- live in hope. And because even though my encounters with G-d these days are not a happy happening, even though my spiritual life seems arid and wasted, so dry I want to spit, I tussle with the Big Guy, asking questions, demanding answers. I want to know that in the midst of all of this crap, divine love rains down. That, even in the midst of my anguish, the questions and love never fade away.