When my mind was screaming, I was on a mission to quiet it down. I thought that ocean would be the best way to come back to “life” after all my dental treatments had ended. During my dental treatments, I went through enormous amount of pain to a point where I was unable to exercise without enabling pain somewhere in my mouth or face.
Story about how I ended up in that mess in the first place. I was injured while I was swimming in a pool when I was a teen, and then I couldn’t afford to fix those issues while I was in college. Out of emergency, I began treatment during my senior year in college with a surgeon in Glendale. At that time, the car broke down 20 or so miles from LA leaving my mom, my younger brother and I stranded. While waiting, we read from the prophet Jeremiah. Later, I avoided confronting the rest of the issues when I was in Israel, ended up getting treatment in Moldova by an amazing surgeon and finalized everything in the Bay Area during the process which my wisdom teeth ended up becoming another issue. Due to my wisdom teeth being even a bigger issue, I had to address them first, hence the delay in the rest of my dental treatment. My last appointment was in June of 2018, a month before I had moved to Santa Monica.
In Santa Monica, my heart began to scream, and I wanted to quiet it down. I succeeded after telling it to shut up and let go over and over again. I succeeded.
When my mind was quiet and my heart was silent, my soul began to scream, and I ended up singing Tehilim 1-9 in Hebrew without any complications in reading comprehension, while most of my life in times of heartache I read them in other languages. I couldn’t believe how much yearning my soul has for G-d underneath my mind and my heart. That distinction between where the voices arise all of a sudden became very clear to me. And although I always followed my heart’s lead, I feel that it’s time to direct it instead of being directed by it.
Now it is 2020, and I have to decide if California is at all for me. I want to give myself this year to see if this is where I need to be or perhaps it is time that I move somewhere more permanent and stop this crazy roller coaster that began half of my life ago. The truth is, as much as I love the ocean, I am more of a mountain and hill type of a person. I’m sure I would miss the ocean from time-to-time, but ocean cannot give me what I want and need in life.
All of the above are my thoughts that I wrote back in January 15, 2020. Please tag along on my journey as I share some of my thoughts from time to time.
Lana Curdoglo 