Jewish dePressed

Haven't read the Jewish dePressed for about 5 years.
So I bought a copy this week 3.23.07

So many trees recycled and printed to sell overpriced Pesach food, kitchen items.
Articles written about how to get in the shidduch groove (network alot), how to find a spouse for your daughter (network), a "Bubbe" writing about the misery of her marriage, but she stuck with it and learned with 'humor' how to tolerate an abusive husband, married off her daughters who all but one who also found her husband abusive, did well. The poor girl has Bubbe to give her comfort and counsel as time goes on...and a final finger wagging to parents to look well and closely at matches before your daughters commit fully to marriage.
A complaint about the brazen rudeness now in the frum world during shidduch dating; blunt "you're not attractive enough" rather than "we're not well suited, or think differently on matters of importance..."
Lots of sheitl ads for young girls who want European' style wigs so they dont look like frummies, G-d forbid. Its the shabbos clock mentality-I look frum but I think goy-
A first person article written by a "yeshivah bocher" (read like an editorial assignment) who asked the klal to consider when the call comes maybe the bocher has no where else to eat and that food alone is not a chesed, kindness with the chulent, is.
Dire forecasts for Israel, corupt governments, giving back of jewish lands and cheap flights to take a vacation there.
I bought the dePressed on 'the yellow brick road to tschuvah' hoping to find some comfort, warmth, a sense of coming home...2 inches of chaotic, frenzied writing about Torah and yontif and inbetween little peaks of reality, marital misery, misplaced goishe values about young people looking hot looks and money in a shidduch and their enabling parents.

I married in '77. Not only has nothing changed, its become obscene.
I thought when my chassishe husband brought porn tapes into our home in CH that the heavens and hell would open and burn us alive. Then the Tv came in and my toddlers who once played games with one another, sat like golem on the bed, speechless, except to push one another to say "move, I can't see."
In the 80s, TVs and the rebels who dared own them, hid them in the closet. If women needed to 'relax' they might see an approved (by husband) movie with a couple of girl friends and return home before 12...or attend a shiur. Newspapers, most music, verboten.

When husband brought the TV in, I had not seen these images for almost 10 years. I cannot imagine the shock for my kids; I experienced physical shock at the speed and visual impact flying at me--if you were born after 70, this is hard to understand I think, or maybe for people used to computers at a very early age, this is normal. Even now too many hours in front of a screen is exhausting, I still prefer print for my information and to relax.

There's great sadness for me, to look at this scene from the outside, wanting to be inside again and realizing its all sped up and moved far away, in a world I dont really want to be a part of. A world I cannot be a part of...if I didnt fit before, I surely dont fit now. If beauty and youth is the defining features, I lack both. I remain plain in speech and appearance, prefer my religion and men the same, plain, honest and truthful.

The chassidus I wanted and needed and still need, is a world that either doesnt exist anymore or a world that never had a place for me. The reason yidden dont magire, I was told by lubavitchers I came to know, is because of 2 things; if you're not 'born' a yid, its beshert. And those who do convert, often can't stand the rigor of being truly religious, they either convert to marry, which means nothing, or convert and frey out sooner or later. Baletschuvahs are tolerated, but remain a caste to avoid unless one has a family reason to accept such a marriage.

I came from a father whose family sat shiva when he married my mother. I grew up in violence, without family on either side, both citing religion laws to exclude us. The only thing that mattered after my father died was to become in the fullest sense of living, a jew and live between jews. It was this fantasy thinking that led me to CH and to bear five children to create my own family, children who now are as confused and heartbroken as their mother. Every step I thought I was doing what was best for them, trying to balance my own heartbreak at the callousness of rabbonim and the needs of my family.

No one can know the weight on me to have failed in all this.