A Room of Their Own by Rakefet Yarden (best summer reads of all time .TXT) 📕

“What are you thinking?” I asked.

“That I really don’t know how to do that. To just be. To love myself. I don’t know how I can be any different, or whether I’m even capable of it. That’s enough for today. I’m leaving. I’ll go think about it quietly at home. I can’t do it with you here looking at me. But don’t worry, Rotem, I’ll come back and we’ll talk about it, just the way you like.” She gave a little smile and walked out.

Dani

Enough . . . quiet already! That’s how I used to pray all the time, and still do, actually. The noises I constantly hear. Not voices like some crazy person, but the noises of the world penetrating my skull. I used to lie in my childhood bed with a pillow over my head, praying for silence. Praying that Iddo would lower the volume on the TV or on his computer games. That Tal would lower the volume of the music regularly blasting out of her room. And that’s not all. Downstairs was constantly filled with my parents’ discussions, which always sounded like shouting, and my mom’s phone conversations, which were even louder than when she’d talk to Dad. Outside there were cars and trucks, and sometimes even the birds’ chirping bothered me. Not to mention the sound of a plane that dared fly low right over our house.

Everything, simply everything would penetrate the skin, through my blood, muscle tissue, straight to the neurons in my brain, driving me mad, not leaving me alone. I cursed the world, and then I cursed myself. I didn’t know which I hated more − the noise providers or myself − for being so sensitive that everything bothered me. I hated myself for my suffering, and now I solve it by being reclusive. Ban myself from any action that would place me in a crowd. Even walking through a busy street can sometimes be too big a task. A burdening, troubling task, so much so that I want to skin myself, scratch and peel everything off of me in order to let the penetrating noises back out. But sometimes a walk like that can go by peacefully. That’s part of the difficulty: I haven’t really learned this thing’s regularity yet.

Tal used to get mad at me. She’d scream at me that I’m just an egocentric idiot who constantly asks her to lower the volume. Iddo was patient; he always accepted my requests. And generally speaking, he knows how to handle my singularity. My being different which a lot of siblings tend to think applies to them, too. But not Iddo. He’s self-assured enough, with a kind of real inner peace. He knows that I won’t infect him.

It was Wednesday afternoon. Just another ascetic day for me, but a strange feeling was added to it. A kind of burden. That morning, I’d visited Mrs. Adler, who seemed even more worried than usual. At first I thought that maybe something terrible had happened in the country. It took me a while to realize that her concern was aimed at me.

“Come here, sweetie. Let’s have a cup of coffee. You look so weak.”

“I feel fine,” I replied. “But are you all right?” I asked.

She looked at me in shock, and didn’t know what to say.

“You’re so skinny. You’re always thin, but today you seem . . . well, never mind. I’m sure you’re a responsible person who knows how to take care of herself. You don’t need to hear all this nonsense from me…” She continued mumbling to herself, as though she’d despaired of talking to me, so she moved on to talking to herself. At first I chuckled to myself, but after I’d petted her elderly dog and said goodbye, sadness and helplessness overtook me. I felt sorry for myself, for the state that I had reached, and for a woman like Mrs. Adler feeling sorry for me.

It was afternoon on Sderot Rothschild. I was sitting on a bench with Miko, waiting for Tal. This time, she was the one who was late. She’d insisted on getting together again, and this time I agreed very quickly. Something inside me wanted to continue what had been cut short during our previous session, a few weeks earlier.

“Dani!” A hand waved at me, and light blue eyes smiled. A little calmer, but still tired eyes.

We walked over to the nearest café and sat down on the balcony outside, because of Miko. I ordered black coffee with soy milk on the side, and Tal ordered a cappuccino and an almond croissant.

“I’ve started proper therapy, and I also met with a psychiatrist. Someone private that a friend of mine recommended,” Tal told me after all the usual warm-up chatter, and after she’d made sure to say how skinny I was and that I had to do something about it because it really is awful already and I look sick and I should know by now how unhealthy this is . . . the usual lecture.

Sometimes I’m amazed at how dense she is. She’s studying medicine, and she’s been my sister for 25 years, out of which I’d spent the last 10 years with this crap, with three hospitalizations behind me, and she still thinks that it’s a matter of choice. That if I just realize how ugly and unhealthy this is, then maybe I’ll finally stop it. And the saddest part is that I feel disappointed by it all over again each time it happens.

But here was a new thing: This time she was the one with the problems, and she was the one going to therapy and needing help.

“Great. Do you feel like it’s helping?” I asked. I’d tried to find words that would encourage her to keep talking.

“Yes, I think so. The doctor gave me pills for anxiety, and an emergency pill in case I get another one of those panic attacks. I haven’t needed it yet, thank God. The episodes are