Instead, I'm a little drunk off the wine I am drinking and am surrounded by pictures I am choosing to go on the wall in my living room. Next to pictures of my brother and my friends and real life. Real life.
Let me begin by saying that Israel is by far nothing as you imagine. I always thought Israel was like the USA except everything was in another language and you'd think nothing of an explosion going off in the supermarket next to where you're shopping for work clothes. This is not true. There is tons of land and tons of desert. You can drive for miles and see absolutely nothing and then all of a sudden come across a small settlement that is categorized religiously.
Everything has history. Everything has a story. You walk with the Bible and with the political storm that is this country's past and present. There is no living in Israel without an opinion. On everything. Here in the US we can blissfully go throughout our day without caring about the BP oil spill or the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The people in Israel must know where they stand on everything or else they could cease to exist. Literally.
Everywhere I looked there were connections forged. The people on my trip forged connections with one another. Some found connection with their religion. Others found connection with the country. Others still found connections with themselves.
I didn't find any of that. Thinking about it after I got home, I realized what I found. And I found it in the trailer of a movie. In the trailer for Eat, Pray, Love Julia Roberts drabbles on about something and about how boring her life has been and then she says:
"...I want to marvel at something..."
And it clicked. I was able to marvel at something without the complications of anything regarding my real life. In my real life I make incredible connections and am smart and have opinions and love things deeply and passionately and laugh really fucking hard.
On this trip - all I did was take it in and be a listener and a sponge. I got to ride camels! Climb Masada! Raft down the Jordan! Eat hummus every.single.day! Without complication of what reality is or the obligation to even be myself. I just was part of the scenery and let a place bigger than I was lead my life for a week and a half. AND IT WAS GLORIOUS. It was absolutely exactly what I didn't know I needed.
At one point we were in the Judean Desert at the hokiest part of our trip - a fake Bedouin village. It was pitch black and we had some free time to wander around. And we look up and there's shooting stars everywhere. And I just lost it. I literally sobbed for two hours straight because I knew it was *M showing me he was there with me. And it was ok to do it! I had to run halfway across the world to cry like that over my dead brother. And not even at the Wailing Wall but at a fake village with camels snoring everywhere. It felt right. Because *M will never get to go on a trip like that. Because *M would have looked at me to see if he should be afraid of the camels or not. Because every stupid fear I had, he had to have.
To be honest, *M would have NEVER gone on that trip but he never got the option and I did. And I feel guilty every day for having options.
There were siblings on my bus. I wanted to tell them how lucky they were and how I wish we could have been them. But I could barely even squeak out anything about myself until one of the last days when I was wearing an Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation tshirt. Alex's dad wanted a picture of someone at the Dead Sea in one of their crazy bright yellow shirts. I was proud to sport it.
I don't know. I feel like I'd be minimizing this trip if I spouted out names and events. I'm still letting this all sink in. I'm still looking at pictures and smiling and feeling waterfalls on my back. How it felt to not have a hairdryer. I'm remembering how manners don't exist in Israel yet everyone will look at you and say 'welcome home'. Why, thank you...
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