Eddy Laughter

I feel like I'm crushed and everyone just sort of takes it like, yeah, Eddie.

And this is the reaction I get from my non-Jewish classmates and also from my Jewish classmates.

Someone just sort of gives me a yikes face, which doesn't help.

at all and we eventually leave the museum and find our way to a playground because that's kind of like where field trips always lead and people are running around and playing tag and I can't get myself to do that.

I'm sitting on this bench and this feeling that I've found in the museum is kind of like sticky and it feels like I can't leave the museum and I'm sitting there with my friend talking to me about TV shows that I don't want to talk about watching everybody else play tag and I feel so angry that they're able to play tag and I can't.

because that was all I would have wanted to do in a normal school day.

But I'm sitting there, and with this feeling that I've found this whole new piece of who I am in that museum, and I have to hold on to it and somehow fit it into my perception of who I thought I was, which is so hard.

It was like suddenly my whole face meant something different than what I thought it did.

And how do you deal with that when you're 13 and all you do is think about the way your face looks in comparison to other people?

And I've just sat with that piece for a really long time, and I just felt it grow into myself, or maybe I've grown into it.

And I found other people to talk to this about.

With my half Jewish friends, we talk about how we exist in this sort of limbo space of maybe we're not necessarily practicing, but it's still very much in our lives.

And everybody who I talk to has their own sort of definition of what it means to them.

And somewhere along this journey, I realized that I really like going to all the family gatherings, and I get upset when I miss them.

I was sick for Rosh Hashanah one year, and I was just like, how am I going to have a sweet new year?

I was distraught.

There's a lot of comfort and connection in those gatherings.

Sometimes it feels like Judaism is a part of my body in that very physical way that I got in that museum.

And at the same time, I've recently, after taking a very long break from it, I've recently become a member of my Quaker meeting.

And I'm finding that Quakerism is its own piece that's separate from Judaism in my life.