HasidiCult

Shabbos, the weekly Jewish holiday, should be a day of rest. But for survivors, it can be just the opposite. I was going to write this as an inspiration piece, full of encouragement of how you can keep going and keep Shabbos even when the going is really rough. (Haha, as if.) But then, I thought, to hell with that. Let's be real.  Keeping Shabbos as a trauma survivor is hell. Plain and simple. Majority of my coping mechanisms are melacha ( which is the term for forbidden work on Shabbos), so I can't cope with the tremendous amount of anxiety I feel. Listening to music? Nope. Putting on lotion? Nada. Calling a friend? Can't do that either. Cutting myself? Just kidding. Don't do that anymore. Plus, all of my major traumas happened on Shabbos, so that doesn't help things much. Even just thinking of the day gets me jittery. As a child, I was molested by a predator in the neighborhood who attended the same Shul (synagogue) as my family. He also happens to be a huge donor

Recently, I've had to switch medications for my juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. I was on a medication called hydroxychloroquine (yes, the same one that made the news for Covid-19...), which I later found out did nothing to help my disease progression. I then switched to a wonderful new doctor who specializes in pediatric rheumatology who suddenly made everything make sense. I'll spare you the elaborate details, but suffice it to say that my previous rheumatologist had diagnosed me with adult rheumatoid arthritis and was treating me as such, regardless of the fact that juvenile and adult arthritis are diagnosed and treated completely differently.  So I was obviously pretty bummed to hear that I spent nine months on a medication that was useless. My new doctor put me on a med that I got excited about, called meloxicam. It was not a very serious medication, an NSAID, but would hopefully bring down my persistent swelling, pain and inflammation. But of course, there was a catch: I co