Realizing your worst fear?

For the first year of the war I had terrible anxiety. I refused to hear anything about what Yossi was doing in miluim. I didn't want to know what my friends were up to, didn't want to hear about people getting killed or injured unless I knew them personally - every accidental piece of news had my heart jump to 150 and I would shut down until it calmed. Sometimes it would take hours. Once my dad said "did you hear the news?" and that was enough to send me spiraling.

Surprisingly, that's changed. Now my skin is much thicker. I can hear stories, even ask questions, and I think I understand why: I had my greatest fear realized -- Yossi went into Lebanon. (*Ok maybe not my greatest fear, because let's face it, I have lots of fears and they're all great. But,)

Since we started dating I knew that Yossi is positioned in the North. His miluim in the past was usually along the Lebanese border, and his training was all to do with combat in northern terrain. I also knew that since 2006 Israeli leadership has been warning that there will be another war with Hizballah. So I always had this fear in the back of my mind that Yossi will get sent to war in Lebanon.

When October 7th happened my biggest fear was war with Hizballah, and I felt bad because everyone was focusing on Gaza and Hamas and here I was worrying about a possible war that wasn't actually happening, but it was all I could think about. A week into the war I saw a neighbor who said his son was on the Lebanese border talking about combat, two weeks into the war my colleague's son was killed in Gaza and in his letter he mentioned the possibility of "Lebanon III," and a few weeks later Nasrallah made a big deal about giving a speech to the Israeli public. It was horrible.

Then Yossi was called up in September 2024, and Nasrallah was killed, and Yossi went into Lebanon and came home. And that's it - my fear was realized and I can function again like a normal human being.