I walk into the office of the new therapist, feeling distinctly out of place in my yarmulke, white shirt, and tzitzis, and I inform the receptionist that I have a 2:30 appointment with Dr. Anderssen. “Have a seat,” she chirps. “Scott will be with you shortly.”

I sit down in the waiting room, my stomach feeling vaguely unsettled, and after a few minutes a door opens and a really tall, long-haired guy wearing shorts and flip-flops emerges. I figure this surfer guy must be Dr. Anderssen’s client. But then this guy walks over to me, holds out his hand, and says, “Hi, I’m Scott. Are you Mordecai?”

I nod mutely. This can’t be Dr. Anderssen, the famous trauma therapist that my parents somehow dug up for me.

“Nice to meet you,” he says. “Come with me.”

I can’t believe this, I think to myself as I follow him to his office. This is the last time I’m coming here.

When I walk into his office, I get another shock. The room is painted like a tropical rainforest, with fake palm trees lining one wall. There’s a stream of water flowing through the room, with fountains and waterfalls. The sound of water, the warm lighting, and the fresh, forest-y smell make me relax involuntarily, even though all I want to do is bolt out of the office and get back to civilization.

Scott motions to me to sit down on a leather couch, and again I start to feel acutely self-conscious. What does this guy think of me? I wonder. He probably never saw a yeshiva kid before.

Scott starts talking to me, I don’t even remember about what, and before I know it the conversation is flowing. I tell Scott about my daily schedule, explain to him what it’s like to be a yeshiva bochur, and tell him some basic details about my family. When my watch says 3:30, I stand up to leave.

“Wait,” says Scott. “I want to hear more. It sounds like you had a really interesting life. I like to give lots of time for a first meeting with a client, so I don’t have anyone scheduled for a while. I won’t charge you any extra, don’t worry.”

I’m shocked. I’ve been to quite a few therapists in my life – there’s a reason I got sent to this hippie guy; my parents were desperate – and never was I asked to stay longer than the scheduled time.

Flustered by the feeling that Surfer Scott is actually interested in me, I blurt out, “You barely know me, but from the little I told you about myself, what do you think I have the potential to become?”

Scott eyes me steadily. “I think that once you figure yourself out and work out your issues you will become a real rabbi. An amazing rabbi,” he emphasizes.

I stumble out of his office in a daze. Me, a rabbi? I’m the guy who’s terrified of being called up for an aliyah. I’m the guy who won’t ask a question in shiur. I’m the guy who texts on Shabbos because it’s easier than talking to people.

When I went to other therapists, I was deeply embarrassed, and I couldn’t get past my own shame and open up to them. I couldn’t explain to them that my chillul Shabbos had less to do with religion and more to do with social anxiety. My parents and rebbeim saw me as a kid at risk, when really I was just paralyzed by my own shyness. I knew that, but I couldn’t tell it to anyone.

Now this surfer-hippie-therapist tells me I’m going to be a rabbi. Well, what does he know about being a rabbi? He doesn’t know that you have to keep Shabbos to be a rabbi. But I’m going to see him again, even if it’s a colossal waste of money. I want to hear why he thinks I’m rabbi material.

I schedule another appointment. This time, we start to talk about my childhood, but we keep going in circles. He asks me questions, and I give short, vague answers, until I start to feel like a broken record – the way I often do when I’m with other people. I feel stuck.

“Let’s try to continue a different day,” Scott advises. We schedule another appointment.

The next time, the same thing happens. I’m numb, I can’t talk. Scott comes at me from all different angles, trying various techniques that I recognize from my previous therapy experiences, but we get nowhere. By the end of the session, I’m very frustrated.

“What can I do to get unstuck?”

“Maybe we should do a really long session,” he suggests. “Then maybe we’ll get to the bottom of what’s blocking you.”

When I show up at his office the next time, the first question he asks me is, “What’s your favorite song?”

“My favorite what?” I ask blankly.

“Your favorite song,” he repeats.

There’s only one song that I really like, I think to myself, but I’m not telling this guy about it.

“It’s a Jewish song,” I say evasively.

“Okay,” he says. “What’s it called?”

“Um, Kah Echsof.”

Next thing I know, he hands me a microphone. “Stand up and sing,” he instructs.

I remain frozen in place. I wouldn’t sing a solo in front of anyone – the only time I sing alone is when the door to my room is locked and no one else is in the house. In front of a goy I’m certainly not singing.

“Come on,” he says. “I really want to hear you sing it.”

“I- I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Trust me,” I say. “This song wouldn’t interest you.”

He turns to his laptop, goes to YouTube, and before I know it, the soulful strains of Kah Echsof fill the therapy room. This is batty, I think.

Scott listens intently. “Wow,” he says when the song finishes. “That’s a really powerful song. It’s full of feeling. I can see why you connect to it. Now I want to hear you sing it.”

I sit there like a stone.

“What’s stopping you from singing it?” he asks.

I shift uncomfortably. “It’s a song that some Jewish people sing on Friday night,” I explain. “Mostly hassidic people. It’s not the kind of song I’d sing in front of… ”

“In front of me?” he asks.

I feel my face flush. I nod.

“So when do you sing it?”

“I sing it when I’m a guest at someone’s house Friday night and other people are singing it.”

“If you’d be with hassidic people and they’d ask you to sing it yourself, would you?” he probes.

I shake my head no.

“Why?”

I shrug. “I don’t know, I just can’t.”

“I see,” he says. “So you’re locked in this area. If you’re locked in this area, you’re probably locked in other emotional areas, too. Maybe if we get you to sing the song, we’ll manage to unlock you.”

For the next two hours I stand there trying to sing the song. Just sing, I urge myself. Then this torture will be over. But I can’t.

In between attempts to get me to sing, we talk about lots of things that happened in my life. Why I start to freeze when I’m in public. What was the first time I remember feeling that way. How old was I. Where was I at that time. Who else was with me. What day of the week was it.

That last question touches a raw nerve. “It’s Friday!” I yell.

I don’t know what’s happening to me, but I run to the corner and duck down on the floor with my hands over me head, and I start shrieking, “STOP SCREAMING AT HER! STOP! STOP SCREAMING!”

***

It’s late Friday afternoon in my house. My mother is washing the floor, and my father walks in, making brown tracks all through the hall.

“Yael!” he shouts. “Why is the floor wet?”

My mother rushes over with a mop. “Oh, oh,” she stammers. “Here, I’ll dry the floor. Come sit down, I’ll give you something to eat.”

“Why do you always have to wash the floor just when I come home?” he fumes.

My mother’s face reddens. “I- I’m sorry, Ephraim,” she says. “I didn’t think you were coming home yet. I’ll try to wash it earlier next week.”

I’m standing right there, and all I want to do is speak up and say, “But you did wash it earlier! Last week Abba came home an hour later!”

But I’m mute, dumb. I can’t get a word out of my mouth.

“You just don’t think!” he screams. “All you do is make me trouble.”

“It’s not true!” I want to cry out. “Ima works so hard! Don’t scream at her! STOP SCREAMING!” But my throat is tight, my mouth is parched, and I can’t utter a word.

***

“STOP SCREAMING AT HER!” I holler the words until my throat goes hoarse and my body goes limp. Then I start writhing on the floor, my body engulfed in pain. I feel like I’m eight years old again, utterly helpless and vulnerable.

I must have lost it and gone crazy, I think.

Scott doesn’t say, “I understand,” or “I know what you’re feeling,” the way some of my other therapists used to. He just squats down to the floor beside me and says, “Wow, that must be really painful.”

I sit up and stare at Scott, not quite believing what I’m hearing. You mean – my pain is real? You mean someone actually recognizes that I’m suffering?

For the first time in my life, I feel that it’s okay for me to be in pain. Any other time in my life that I started to feel pain, I told myself that I’m a baby, that I’m ungrateful, that I’m overreacting.

“So you trained myself not to feel pain,” Scott observes, after I compose myself somewhat and sit back down on his couch. “Instead of feeling the pain, you deadened yourself against it.”

He runs his fingers through the waterfall. “What happens when you become dead to pain,” he explains, “is that you become dead to positive emotions, too. You just don’t feel anything. And then all sorts of wellsprings within you run dry, too. Your creative expression is squelched, to the extent that you can’t even sing a song.”

Or get an aliyah, I think. Or speak up in shiur. Or even – talk to a friend on Shabbos instead of text.

“I don’t know what caused this emotional blockage,” Scott continues. “But I’m guessing that your parents’ relationship might have something to do with it.”

We talk. And talk. I explain to Scott what Shabbos is, and what Shabbos – and Erev Shabbos – looked like in my house. I tell him how I always dreaded Shabbos, because Abba was home all day instead of being out at work. I tell him how my mother was always docile and submissive, falling over herself to please my father.

“She’s almost… servile,” I reflect. “She worships the ground my father walks on, and she lets him walk all over her.

“It sounds like your mother has no self,” Scott remarks. “And you suffered for her all the years.”

“Exactly,” I say. “I always wanted to protect her, to stand up for her – but I couldn’t, because I was just a kid, and it was none of my business. And I felt somehow responsible, even when it had nothing to do with me.”

Scott nods, and doesn’t say anything. We sit there for a few minutes, quietly, and then he hands me the mike again. “Sing,” he urges. He turns his back slightly, so I’m not facing him directly.

I pick up the mike. There’s a big lump at the back of my throat, and I have to clear my throat several times before I can even get out a syllable.

“Kah echsof,” I begin, my voice all crackly and off-key. I stop.

“Kah echsof noam Shabbos…” This time my voice is clear, the tune true. Hashem, I long for the sweetness of Shabbos. I see Scott, but he’s not really there.

“Meshoch noam yirasecha le’am mevakshei retzonecha…” My voice gains strength as I sing. There’s no one else in the room, it’s just me and Hashem.

I sing from the depths of my heart, a place I didn’t know existed until now. Before, when I sang Kah Echsof at people’s houses, I just felt stirrings of something, but nothing compared to the powerful yearning I feel now.

“Shabbos Kodesh, nafshos Yisrael betzel kenafecha yechsayun…” I let my voice trail off as the song ends. Let my soul, too, find refuge in the shadow of Your wings.

The session is over. Scott doesn’t say a word, he just escorts me down the corridor to the main door of the office.

I sit down in the bus stop in front of Scott’s office, wondering whether my father would ever understand what his yelling at my mother on Friday afternoon has to do with my chillul Shabbos. It doesn’t really matter, because now I want to keep Shabbos.

Scott thinks I’m going to be a rabbi, I remind myself.

I don’t know if I’m going to be a rabbi. I do know one thing, though: One day I’m going to have a real Shabbos table, a place where everyone will feel safe, and respected, and loved. And I will sing Kah Echsof every single week.

Simetimes in life, someone will do something to us that will mess is up. Now that we got messed up how should we deal with it?

Should we just blame the other person and not take responsibility for our own life, or should we accept the fact of what happened and learn how to deal with it?

I am all about learning how to accept the facts in life and learning how to take responsibility for my own life, because if I don’t take responsibility for my own life who will?

When I was thirteen, my brother got engaged to a girl from France. She was a wonderful girl. But she was from France. Across the Atlantic. Accessible by plane only.

I can’t point to anything in particular that prompted my terror of flying, other than the fact that everyone knows that planes are heavier than air; ergo, sending one into the air defies logic and tempts fate. But whatever the cause, the result was the same: I was deathly afraid.

I couldn’t speak about my fear to anyone. I tried once. Before my father booked our tickets for the wedding, I begged him not to buy one for me.

It was the wrong thing to do.

His face turned red, and he yelled that I should be thankful my parents were spending so much money on me, and did I really think I could miss my own brother’s wedding? What would people think?

So that was that.

I guess I’m lucky that Jewish engagements tend to be short, because I spent the entire period in a state of dread. I couldn’t think, couldn’t sleep, couldn’t sit still. For a school kid, that means trouble. I couldn’t get through class without feeling antsy, and that antsiness came across as disruptive classroom behavior. Let’s just say it didn’t endear me to my teachers. And frustrated phone calls home didn’t endear me to my parents. And irritated teachers and parents didn’t help calm me down.

I remember the night before we left as pure torture. I felt like a prisoner scheduled to be executed in the morning. My thoughts raced, my chest constricted, and my emotions clogged up my throat. I struggled to breathe. I willed the sky to stay dark, but I lost that battle within hours. With morning’s arrival, I had no choice but to get ready. I took a long, careful look around my bedroom before leaving it, convinced I’d never see it again.

We traveled from New York to Paris on a Boeing jet. Massive, modern, and sturdy, its indestructible appearance brought my panic down to manageable levels. But the trip wasn’t over yet. From Paris, we needed to get to Marseilles, and we were going to do that via the least trust-inducing contraption known to man.

The moment I saw the plane – the tiny, rickety old plane – my anxiety shot right back up. I wanted to refuse to get on, but one glance at my father told me he would push me on if he had to. Instead, I insisted on a middle seat in the middle of the plane. I’m not sure how that made me any safer, but it felt more secure.

When I reached my seat, I tried to stop my trembling by pressing my feet against the footrest, my hands on the armrests, and my head against the back of the seat, eyes locked onto the seat in front of me. As the plane gathered speed for liftoff, I squeezed my eyes shut so tightly I thought I might squish them. The plane began to shake. More than anything, I wished my mother would reach over and take hold of my hand. I wished she would say, “I understand, it’s okay, many people are afraid to fly. We’ll get through it together.”

Nothing doing.

Neither of my parents seemed concerned by my alarm. Even when turbulence knocked the plane so sharply that everything not tied down was thrown across the aircraft – nearly including my heart – neither of them turned to check on me. They had brought me along, but I was alone.

By the time we landed, I was a mess of nerves. My legs were numb and could barely hold me up, my body was still vibrating, and my mind wouldn’t hold a single fully-formed thought. I wanted to steady myself on my father’s arm, but I would never dare it. Instead, I grabbed onto the top of the seats I passed as I moved down the aisle.

Even after my feet touched solid French soil, I couldn’t shake my agitation. In fact, it spiked again when we reached the place where we’d be staying: an old, cold, dilapidated house that creeped me out. We kids were supposed to rest up for the big day, but though my body ached for sleep, there was no way I was going to close both eyes at once in that crumbling ruin.

The wedding took place the next day in a small but elegant hall. It was a whole-day affair, and I hated every second of it. I was exhausted, jet-lagged, on edge, and lonely; there were no other kids for me to hang out with. My father, who was already annoyed because his rental car had broken down earlier, told me to shape up. He’s the kind of man who needs to choreograph everything, and my glum face was ruining his show. I didn’t have enough energy or interest to fake a smile, so I spent the rest of the wedding ensuring that I was outside his line of vision.

By evening, I was so drained that I slept for the first time in three days. I slept soundly – so soundly that I missed Shacharit, the morning prayers. I wasn’t happy about that, but I was pretty excited about that night. It was the first night of Sheva Brachot, the minor celebrations held during the week that follows a Jewish wedding. Each of the Sheva Brachot is generally hosted by a different friend or relative, and that night was to be hosted by a family friend with a son my own age. Even more important, my father wasn’t going to be in charge of this party. I was finally in for some fun.

I showered and dressed with time to spare, and was one of the first in the car. Unfortunately, this incensed my father. “You miss all of Shacharit, but you’re early for a party?!” he asked incredulously. “Is that how I raised you?”

In an instant, my excitement snapped to shame. I was afraid to open my mouth. I sat, mute, as the rest of my family piled in and my father started to drive, screaming the entire time. He wouldn’t stop. He went on and on, making me feel like dirt, like the worst kid in the world, until I finally couldn’t take it anymore.

I yelled back.

I yelled at him for never acknowledging when I did go to pray. I yelled at him for making me fly when I had pleaded with him not to. I yelled at him for not caring about me at all, for only caring about the opinions of strangers.

He roared. He swore he would stop the car and leave me outside, that it would be nothing less than I deserved. I scoffed. Parents were always making threats that kids knew they’d never follow through on. I was sure he’d never go so far as that, if only because what would people think of parents who left a thirteen-year-old kid by himself in a new country? Even when he pulled over to the side of the road, I knew it was just to scare me.

Then he told me to get out.

I froze.

“Get. Out.” His eyes were stormy in the rearview mirror. “We’ll be back for you after the Sheva Brachot. You’re not going.”

I turned, wordless, to my mother. She looked out her window. I should have known better. She never stood up to him. I put my hand on the door handle.

“Let’s go, you’re wasting my time. Don’t make me come back there!”

It all seemed so surreal. I opened the door. I stepped out of the car, one foot at a time. I closed the door behind me and stepped back.

My family drove off.

Fighting off a wave of nausea, I watched them go until the darkness swallowed them up. I hated the dark. I was terrified of the dark. I was in a small town with few streetlights, just enough to cast shadows of moving branches…or maybe they were tentacles… or possibly ax murderers… It was hard to tell – I had to keep an eye on all of them, so I couldn’t focus on any one of them long enough to say for sure.

I shivered. It was cold out and zipping my jacket, hunching my shoulders, and rubbing my palms together could only warm me up so much. And I was made colder still by the chill in my heart. I had known I was alone, but now I’d experienced solid evidence of it. Now my abandonment felt complete.

As the shock wore off, I began to get mad. I mean, who does that? Who leaves his child on the side of an unknown road in a foreign country? In the cold? At night? My emotions jumped from fury to humiliation to dejection to fear and back. They finally settled on longing. Longing for love. Longing for acceptance. Longing for a family. Things I’ve yet to receive, to this today.

Hours after kicking me out of his car, my father drove by to get me, acting as though nothing unusual had happened. I got in the car. But in my mind, in my soul, I continued to be stuck on the side of the road, waiting to be picked up. Waiting to be cared for.

I waited ten years. It took me that long to realize it was a lost cause.

I’m not waiting anymore. Difficult as it has been – and it has been very difficult – I’ve come to understand that my family will never be capable of providing me with the affection I crave. I need to stop waiting to be picked up and start picking myself up. I need to fill the void inside me on my own, first by recognizing that I’m not responsible for my parents’ feelings and actions, and next by loving myself and by creating a family of my own.

And by the way, I’m not afraid of flying anymore. In fact, I get on a plane every week, and I do so with confidence and composure. It’s an awesome feeling, and it gives me hope that the same way I learned how to deal with my fear, I’ll learn how to cope with all the other harmful ideas and emotions in my life. I will learn to accept myself. I will learn that I’m worthy of being loved. I will learn that I’m worthy of loving others.

I will get there because I believe in myself.