The feeling of love coats my insides, warms me while simultaneously making me fear the possibility of cold. The Middle East and you are interconnected, the two loves of my life. I can't give up one for another, it just wouldn't be fair to a place and a person that I care about so intimately.

The distance between us is a throbbing injury that never dulls its tud-tud-tud on my heart. You are such an example of the half of the Middle East that is foreign to me with your religion, while my time in Jerusalem made my fondness for Zionism grow.

"I find myself stuck in what has been instead of looking towards what can become.."

I don’t want to choose between the two of you. Can’t I continue to ignore the growing battle of religion/culture/family versus true love? The anxiety is worth one glimpse at your smile, one word of affection. My familial, religious, cultural homeland is directly in odds with all that you believe in. Can it be a subject we don’t discuss? Or must I choose for happiness: with my place or my heart? I am so conflicted. How can I know, sitting here behind a computer in the States while you live in the physical area of our discontent?

I guess I choose…