I have lived most of my life not in reality. I didn’t always know this, but I knew the pain I felt and the lack of sense I experienced.

When I was an infant, my parents believed that it was good for me to cry and did not know the importance of attending to me. My mother preferred older children and my three older siblings demanded her attention. My parents believed their reality was the prevailing one and children don’t have difficulties compared with adults. In my growing up years, I didn’t have even one adult I felt I could go to or who would really listen to me. In fact, I didn’t even understand what use adults served. I thought that they served little purpose. I craved someone who would take an interest in me and was unsuccessful in my attempts to find anyone.

My four sisters created our family life. At different times, pairs rejected me or turned on me. I depended on my sister, two years my senior, for companionship, but she undercut my reality and toyed with my allegiance to her. Sometimes, unexpectedly, my sister, five years my senior, came to my aid. I grew up in a family who practiced Judaism. Judaism gave me strength.

From early in my life, I usually felt I was bad. I could never seem to be good enough. I worried about when I would be punished, but kept myself present so I wouldn’t be left behind. Somewhere I believed there was a spark of good in me.

From my earliest memories, I heard the story of the Holocaust as my parents were looking for what happened to family members who were lost. When I was four, we went to Israel for the first time. When I was seven, during the 1967 Six Day War in Israel, we were seeking information in Germany by retracing the past. As early as kindergarten, I had recurring nightmares of Nazis pursuing me. I tried to put together the information I had acquired about my family and the world without knowing how to ask the questions that I needed to ask. The parts that I pieced together I couldn’t handle.

I lived in a silent, unreal state to cope, only speaking when it was necessary. I grew up learning that my needs were insignificant. To avoid being preyed on, I taught myself not to pay attention to them. I spent my time attending to others and unaware of much that happened beyond me. By the time I was about nine, my ways of coping were so established that the source of the pain was no longer accessible.

At the age of 20, at the end of 1979, I graduated university and got married. My first suicide attempt was while I was still in college. Now, for the first time, I got some help. The compelling force was the unbelievable pain I suffered and the desire to find hope and a purpose.

I have been very fortunate. I have had unusually good therapy on a frequent and consistent basis over the past 20 years. I attended day hospitals, continuing day treatment programs, and Intensive Psychiatric Rehabilitation Treatment. I was never in the hospital for more than three months at a time, but have had more than 50 hospitalizations. I have used medication and have also been medication-free.

Now I am a mother and enjoy home life. My two young children are thriving. I am involved with my peers in Westchester County. I’m also comfortable participating in synagogue life as well as in my children’s school communities.

Finally, I am able to put words to the painful and elusive haze that imprisoned me in non-reality. I don’t really need to retreat into my past mute state anymore. I know how important it is to speak about what seems incomprehensible. I have stopped asking if I exist or if anything matters. I don’t have to because I feel myself full with rings of community and a greater well-being surrounding me.

Something that I lacked for a very long time was perspective. I did not understand the concept or have sufficient knowledge about how to get it. In turn, people thought my behaviors were inappropriate and odd. However, I was creative in my attempt to procure what little information I could get. I was not capable of putting together a larger picture from what seemed to be fragments of information. So, even though I was capable of understanding a question or explanation, I still couldn’t put the pieces together. Also, words seemed too complicated or unexplainable. This created feelings of tension from trying so hard and not getting it, along with confusion. All this was unbearable.

I used what others called destructive behaviors to try calming my anxiety. I was not able to make the connection how the behaviors were in fact destructive or even dangerous. It took years for me to make that connection.

It also took me years to feel people’s interest in me. I was perplexed by their behaviors and their words. I did not understand being motivated by feelings or even knew what feelings really were. People did not make sense to me. I was confused by gestures of caring and was not sure what they really were.

Now, I have found the meaning of caring. It is not about avoiding unpleasantness. Nor is it about romance, dependency or sacrifice. It is about the ability to share by feeling, giving and getting. It is about understanding oneself, others and the world through sharing and empathy.

Finding perspective allows one to know how this moment or experience interacts with another. It lets one tolerate what needs to be tolerated while having hope and the knowledge that answers are pursuable.

Words enable one to better communicate, understand and deal with life. Making connections in words, thoughts and relationships is a key for me. Connections are deep.