I am a nightmare before my birthday. I spent the month of January freaking out that I haven’t achieved enough and am an underachiever and a failure and OLD. I mourn my lost youth and am a general crying mess.

I need to pay tribute to my friend Mackenzie, who helpfully sent me this.

I don’t praise him enough for how much he has done for me, but he’s my hero.

So yeah, what would my past think of me now?

Five years ago, I didn’t believe I’d be alive today. I was sure depression would have finished me off…

To continue the musings in my previous article on revenge, I remembered a story from many years ago.

In 2016, I was walking home on a Friday, having just been returning books to the library. As I walk, I see an elderly woman trying to get downstairs, carrying groceries.

I immediately offer her my arm and to carry the groceries for her.

She thanks me and I tell her she reminds me of my grandmother, who was also fiercely independent. I tell her that I miss my grandmother. She was not a kind lady, but she was very inspiring.

“Well…

To my Krav Maga Girls

In response to this brilliant Ju-Jitsu article, I wrote one for Krav Maga.

Don’t date a female Krav Maga practitioner if you aren’t prepared for a strong woman. She is used to being the underdog, and her practice is about making sure her agility, speed, accuracy, and intelligence make her a force to be reckoned with, under the darkest times.

Don’t date her if you can’t treat her the way she deserves. She has a fierce pack of fellow Kravits who will stand by her side, and won’t let her stand alone in the face of adversity.

Don’t date her…

Seven years ago today, was my most serious suicide attempt. It was the second of four, but it was the one that came the closest. In those moments, deaths felt like the best possible option.

Now, all those years later, as I celebrate a milestone birthday and freak out about being “old,” I also reveal that I got the chance to get older. It almost didn’t happen.

I think back to those dark moments and I wish I could have told myself all I would miss.

I would have never passed the bar.

I would never be a Top Writer…

So yesterday, I was alerted to the fact that some users on Quora had decided to post hate-speech about me personally, calling me a “little Zionist bitch” and wanting me to be scared.

Scared? Gentlemen, (and I use the term loosely) you don’t have me scared at all. Duck walks are scary. Being put in a rear-naked choke is scary. Drinking Diet Snapple is scary. Internet trolls aren’t scary.

What you mistook as fear is called pity and disappointment at the complete stupidity and evil of the ideas of ethnic cleansing. I’m scared that my country’s army will have to…

My instructor Raz Chen educated me on the principle of a strong foundation. He taught me to think of Krav Maga as a pyramid. If you have a good base, you can build a very big pyramid. If you have a very weak base, your entire structure falls apart.

When people think of the foundation of Krav Maga, they think of the P1 and P2 curriculum, focusing on clean footwork, accurate strikes, and good stance. That is very true, but there’s one more level that is just as important. P0.

P0 is the mental training that goes along with the…

So, my wish from yesterday came true. I had hoped for it to be a short period of black depression, and after seven hours, I finally could see blue again.

It is a beautiful duality that what hurts us can also be what heals us. Blot clots kill 100,000 Americans annually. One of the anticoagulants that treat it is called tyrofabin. It made from the venom of the African saw-scaled viper, one of the most deadly snakes in the world. What kills also cures.

I feel that duality in my own life. Being social with others is often what…

Well, I’m back in a Black Depression Period. I think this is the fourth of 202o and hopefully the shortest.

I know I’m in it when I think breathing is too much work and when I can’t see the color blue. I know it exists and I recognize it, but I can’t see it. So the picture below looks gray to me.

I write these periods out for a few reasons:

• Many of my Quora readers write to me on depression and they find it helpful.
• I can come back once I’m mentally healthy and see patterns. The more I…