A Yom Kippur Reflection

I spent Kol Nidrei in my bed, not well enough to attend Yom Kippur prayers.Yet I spent the evening talking to G-d, confessing my sins.
At first I said they were too many to mention and where would I begin?
Then I felt that I had to start somewhere because I had to speak aloud.
This was between me and Him and enumerating them out loud would give them form.

Oh, how I had failed Him by being such a poor representative!
I had failed my deceased mother.

I had failed my husband.

I should have been a better mother.

I should have never gossiped, I should have never been haughty or vain or proud. And worse yet, I knew better - but still sinned.

Now the question was how was I going to go about repenting?
How was I going to stop doing these things when at this very moment of remorse, I was also filled with anger, toward myself and towards others who had harmed me? I knew I would have to muster up the strength, in the year to come, to simply be a good Jew.
It can't be more complicated than that.

If anger had helped me feel more authentic in the past few days, (and I had been feeling like it had been a rough few days), then, I was just going to have to find another way to be real.

I was going to have to bite the bullet and just do it. To embrace truth, study well, and devote myself to additional good deeds and actions. Do as much as possible and cease to do what is negative.

Yeah, like that's so easy.
Who was I fooling?

However, if I wasn't going to make this commitment now, then when?
("If not now, when?" As they say...)

I cannot attend Kol Nidrei tonight.
I cannot light candles because I use oxygen.
I cannot attend Yom Kippur in synagogue tomorrow because of weather and poor health.

However, I can find some space in this frightened, angry, remorseful heart to open my soul and my life to a New Year.

And I know G-d hears me.
I know because my feelings and thoughts are sincere.
They are not perfect.
I am not perfect.

If I am a work in progress in this incarnation, so be it. We can only do our best and know that on Yom Kippur, He is here to hear us.