The black words, once marching in a straight line across the white page, swerve and jump as your eyes fill with tears. Am I davening or am I crying? you ask yourself, then you wonder if there’s a difference — and if it matters.

Because for now, all you know for certain is that the tears are so large and so wet, they’re burning straight through the pages. There’s a soggy, seeping hole where the words of prayer once stood.

It can’t possibly get worse, you tell yourself. But you can’t imagine it getting better either.

You change “when” it happens to “if” it does. Because if you let that belief lift you, even a tiny bit, you will fall so much harder when things explode.

You used to see the light. Once upon a time, there was a calendar filled with potential milestones. This is when… and this is when… and by that date… You had a timeline.

But those milestones got erased so many times, you can’t even write on the paper anymore. It’s long eroded beneath the wipe, wipe, wipe of your eraser. The paper is too fragile to support another dangerous drop of hope.

And if there’s ever a slight chance things may turn around, you ask:

How will this go wrong?

Why will it end this time?

How long will it take to pick myself back up?

So you stopped imagining the future and don’t picture any day other than this one, the day that has you sitting in the dark, crying into the pages of your Tehillim.

And the next day, after you’ve turned through nearly every page, you open your eyes and say Modeh Ani. That voice is there, the one that stubbornly pipes up before you have a moment to shush it — maybe this time, maybe this one.

You hide the dark circles with makeup, and that’s when you get the call.

It’s happening — the thing you always dreamed of. But it’s not actually happening, you remind yourself. Because it always ends, so how will it end this time?

It doesn’t end. And then next time you sit with your Tehillim, you see each word. You are dazzled by the light you never could see before. And you realize that all you needed all along, more than knowing what the end was or when it would come, was to believe that the light was there. Somewhere. Somehow.

Someday.

Soon.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 805)