Life at the Border
| June 24, 2025I keep returning to this narrow space
I
live on the narrow border between Hope and Despair. Each place has its own struggles, its own risks. I spend my days moving between them.
To my right, there’s Hope. An additional perek of Tehillim. Another round of the Prayer Pact. Hope is the rented storage room filled with 12 years of linens, pots, multiple sets of dishes, and oh so many gorgeous vases — beautiful things waiting for a future home. Hope has me picturing what kind of wife I’d like to be, the kind of mother I dream of becoming.
Hope lifts me up. It gives me a reason to keep choosing life, to continue planning for a different future. A future with a beautiful baby crawling around in a timeless knitted two-piece.
I’d picked it up once while walking through the children’s section at Zara Home. I always do, just perusing, not intending to buy anything. But that perfect two-piece, beige knit caught my eye: soft, timeless, 3–6 months, with tiny wooden buttons and a delicate bow. I picked it up. I smiled. A minute later, I was texting my sister: “I’m crazy if I buy this, right?”
“If it makes you happy, not at all,” she replied.
She gets it. Half the storage room is hers.
I bought it and now it lives in that storage room, folded between the linens and the glassware. One more quiet vote of confidence in a future I haven’t met yet.
On my left, there’s Despair. Despair is quieter and heavier. It doesn’t ask me to push myself, or smile, or believe. Despair lets me be as cynical as I choose to be. It’s the “or not” I mutter when someone gives me a bright, “Im yirtzeh Hashem by you.” It shrugs at yet another segulah. It brushes off the directions of people who “know better.” Despair lets me consider fertility preservation without flinching. It means skipping engagements and weddings, especially those of former students. It lets me feel nothing as yet another Yom Tov passes by.
Despair keeps the door closed — sometimes,
literally.
Most people think I’d want to live in Hope, and often they’re right. But more often than not, Despair is a gentler host. Despair doesn’t ask me to be strong when I can’t be. It meets me where I am.
Still, I can’t live in either place too long. Stay in Hope too long, and the letdown is that much sharper. Hope blinds me to what is. But stay in Despair too long, and the world starts to dim. The present becomes smaller, the future a maybe.
So I keep returning to the border — that narrow, often unsteady space between wanting and waiting, between belief and pain. I don’t know how long I’ll live here, but for now I need both.
Hope reminds me that life is more than just persevering. Despair keeps me grounded. Together, they give me a rhythm I didn’t choose, but have had to learn to live with. One that keeps me buying beautiful additions to a home I haven’t built yet. One that understands why I can’t visit that quiet room of linens and dishes.
It isn’t easy to live at the border, in this space of tension. But for now it’s the home. Sometimes I’m grateful. Sometimes resentful.
One day, I’ll move.
I hope.
(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 949)
Oops! We could not locate your form.