The Aliyah Bubble Burst
It’s been eight months since I made aliyah and it’s been a tale of two halves. Even though I moved during a war, I’d found the transition to be relatively easy. I was living in a sublet that I’d found very quickly, immersing myself in ulpan and despite the fact that life was stressful running to bomb shelters I was still living a fairly ‘Israel Lite’ version of life; making new friends, enjoying the hot weather on the beach and going to parties with other olim.
Things changed around the end of June. The sublet I was living in was coming to an end and I’d been told that it takes around 2-3 weeks to find a flat so I gave myself 5 weeks to be safe. Up until then I’d been used to spending my afternoons doing ulpan homework and going over flash cards or reading children’s books in Hebrew, anything I could do to continue my learning. But as the flat search began, all of my time and energy had to be redirected. I spent every afternoon on Facebook arranging flat viewings and then every evening schlepping around the boiling hot summer city from viewing to viewing.
Some people never answered the door despite confirming the viewing, others had open houses where I’d be competing with 30 others at the same time, most of whom spoke Hebrew. One guy was using his open house to find a girl to sleep with so he ignored any male that came in. As the 5 weeks I’d given myself to “be safe” turned into months I started to become desperate and fell into a mental health situation I’d never experienced before.
At the age of 33 I’m very lucky to say that my mental health has always been fairly strong, never suffering from anything worse than a bit of social anxiety. But the idea that I would have nowhere to live, something that was fast becoming a real possibility, was pulling me down to an unfamiliar place. Things quickly spiralled in my mind as the instability of life made me wonder what the point of anything was. Thoughts took over: have I made any real friends? Will I find the future I’m looking for here? Am I tough enough to deal with this? Have I made a huge mistake by leaving everything and everyone I knew for an unstable life here?
I started to spend days alone in my room, something I never did even as a moody teenager. Some days I’d make it to the living room but couldn’t get off the couch. I’d FaceTime my parents who felt helpless on the other end of the phone as I lay there crying for hours. During the week I managed to drag myself to ulpan (though I was no longer at the top of the class) and out for occasional events with friends but I was mostly spending time either alone or at viewings.
For September, after a month back in England during the August ulpan break, I’d arranged a sublet to stay in for when I landed back in Tel Aviv but it was so awful that I only stayed for one miserable week before moving in with a friend for a few days.
Plans and social events were cancelled each day as I went to more viewings, ulpan lessons wasted as I scrolled frantically on Facebook groups instead of focussing on past and future tense. By the end of September I had suitcases at 4 different friends’ places around the city and I was living out of one main one. I was spending more days alone in my room, staring either at the wall or at my phone.
Friends had told me that it was completely normal to have trouble finding a place to live at first, each of them reassuring me with stories of how they went from sublet to sublet in their first few months or how they spent weeks couch surfing. Aliyah favours a personality type that I don’t have; I can go with the flow to an extent but I draw the line at living out of a suitcase on my friends’ couches for an unknowable amount of time. I physically couldn’t think of anything beyond where I was going to be sleeping and it was all consuming. People would ask what I was doing for the weekend or for Rosh Hashonah and I had no answer. I couldn’t see past the haze of instability. So I decided to make a deal with myself that if I didn’t find somewhere permanent to live by the time ulpan finished at the beginning of November then I’d leave Israel and go back to England.
One morning, after a failed trip to the beach for some fresh air, I came back to my room and started to feel light headed so I held onto the bed, breathing heavily. Slowly at first and then rapidly until I started to panic that no air was getting into my lungs. I sank down onto the floor, trying to breathe normally but it wasn’t working. My eyes were watering. I didn’t know if I was crying or if the tears were a reaction to my throat feeling like it was closing. I reached for my phone but I couldn’t enter my password because my hands were shaking. I stared at the phone in my hand for what seemed like a long time, gasping, wondering who I’d even call if I could get my hands to stop shaking. I tried to open my laptop to book a one way ticket back to Manchester, thinking to myself that I had to get out, but again I couldn’t get past the password. Leaning against the wall I slowly stood up and opened the door so I could shout for help but no sound came out of my mouth, all I could hear was the sound of myself loudly gasping for air. I tried banging on the door but my fist barely made a sound so I lowered my body to the ground again and just sat there until it passed.
I’m not sure if it was a panic attack or some sort of anxiety attack but I do know that I had never experienced something like that before. Not during my solo year in New Zealand 10 years ago, not during the grief of my grandparents, never. Over the next few days I kept asking myself if it was really worth being in Israel. Everything ached. My teeth and gums were bleeding, I was eating and sleeping less. I felt as though Israel was rotting me from the inside. A podcast I’d filmed months prior about making aliyah came out during that week; the irony of hearing myself talk about how easy I was finding aliyah as I was laying on the couch in tears wondering if I should pack it all in was almost funny.
And as is the case with life in Israel, everything changed again in an instant.
A chance meeting followed by a chance viewing of an Instagram story meant that I found a place in a perfect location with a room that would be available in the next few weeks. I signed the contract and couldn’t quite believe it was real. The change didn’t happen overnight, but as my move in date came closer I knew that I could, and had to, get through this tough period and come out of the other side stronger.
The weeks in between signing the contract and moving in gave me the breathing room to see the bigger picture of life a bit more. I’d been so focussed on finding somewhere to live that it had taken over every single thought. Now I had the time to think about, and be grateful for, my friends who let me stay at theirs over the last few months or let me store suitcases in their rooms so I wasn’t having to schlep them around from sublet to sublet.
I rediscovered my desire to be independent. On the day I moved into the flat I gathered all my belongings from my friends’ places around the city completely alone. Carrying my heavy cases up and down the stairs, maneuvering around the city, feeling like I did when I was a self-reliant 23 year old in New Zealand. No ‘woe is me’ attitude, no victimhood. I put on my music and happily unpacked my things; relaxing into the feeling of finally having a secure base to live with all my belongings in one place. I was left without a bed but a friend let me borrow her air mattress so I had something to sleep on before heading to Ikea at the first opportunity to order myself a mattress and bedframe.
Once I’d moved in, friends commented that I seemed like me again. I was slightly embarrassed at how many people knew how tough I’d found the last few months, even my ulpan teacher wished me mazel tov on moving day. A friend told me she could see the happiness in my face and body. I was chatting to people in my class that I hadn’t spoken to in weeks, the stress and anxiety barrier no longer there, no reason to be looking at Facebook groups during the breaks anymore.
Truthfully, even though this feels like an ending to that awful time, there’s no nice little ending to life here. Something else will come up and I’ll wonder once again if I’m strong enough to cope. But as an oleh you have to constantly remind yourself why you’re here, who your good friends are, when to accept their help and when to be self-reliant. Some days are easier than others. It really is the little things, like when we had a mock exam at ulpan about Ofra Haza who I’ve loved since I was younger. To the bigger things like going for drinks with a group of olim and bonding over the reasons you all made the crazy decision to leave your comfortable lives for the balagan of Israel.
They say the first year of aliyah is the hardest, and now I understand why. Olim online make it seem as though everyone is always having an amazing time which makes you feel even worse when you’re not. But speaking to others in person and hearing that so many of us feel the same way is not only incredibly reassuring but vital for our longevity here.
Who knows what will happen in the long term, there might come a day when I decide that this place really is too much for me but for now I think that I’ve got a lot more in me to see what happens next here. I’m about to finish ulpan, start my first job and settle into my first flat. I can’t leave now, real life is only just beginning…
