And then there were two

Today I had every girl's dream date. Every girl with fibromyalgia, that is. J winks at me online. I write back. After the second email he asks me out and I say yes. He recommends places in driving distance and I write back and say I don't have a car, so he takes me up on my request to meet him at a place I can walk to.

Half an hour into the date he tells me that he's lost 80 pounds in the past 3 years, and he pulls out his driver's license as evidence of what he used to look like. He says he wants to try ice skating but is afraid he'd fall down. (He's 6'6" so it's not an unreasonable worry.) He is so open, so humble about his own health struggles, that I mention my fibromyalgia over my hot dog and root beer.

After our hour and a half meal he's not ready for the date to end, so he suggests a walk, which is exactly what I had wanted from a potential suitor, as evidenced in an earlier post. On the walk he asks me more information about fibromyalgia, and caringly makes sure we don't walk farther than I am comfortable with. He asks me if I have had trouble relationally because of my illness. I evade the question and don't tell him about K or about the surgery I had last summer. He respects my elusive answer and I respect him for being understanding enough to pose the question.

He walks me to a stream I've never seen and it's beautiful, peaceful. In fact, that would be a way to summarize our entire date. My friend teased me about my assertion that I would know whether I was attracted to J in the first 30 seconds of meeting him. Turns out, I was wrong. After a two-hour date I'm still on the fence. We say goodbye and within an hour he follows up with an email requesting my phone number. Sure, this is the way things started with K, but K followed up right after our date BEFORE he knew about the fibromyalgia. After I spilled the beans about my illness, he split like pea soup.

Now let's rewind a day. I spent last evening with my gay boys and the straight one I asked out by email on Valentine's Day. He's still traveling, but home for the weekend and invited me to a group gathering at a bar in the city. While J is quiet, D is loud. While J's eyes exude contemplation, D's are filled with excitement and fun. J and I took a walk by a stream in a sleepy town, and I met D on the gay hill after I took a picture on a stripper pole (though, according to one of my gay friends, the most innocent "pole picture" he has ever seen).

Now, I'm not the kind of girl who goes for players (though I do lust after them subjectively), and while it may sound like it from the description I've just given, D doesn't fit that category. He's loud, he's exciting, he's fun, but he's also, like J, a really sweet guy. Sure, he's a testosterone-y protector type who cracks jokes and likes to do damage to his liver when the time is right, but he's also a sweetheart whose eyes sparkle with genuine interest when he talks to me--and, most importantly, he's passed muster with my sweet gay boys who know him even better than I do.

J is ready to pursue something with a carless girl with fibromyalgia. But do I have to choose between the potential for passion and someone who wants to be with "fibromyalgic me"? Now I'm not saying I DON'T want to be with J. I like him more than I liked my ex-husband, and that's a step in the right direction. But J is safe, and for better or for worse, I've never gone for safe. Hopefully I'll have it all figured out by the time I need to make a decision. In the meantime, bring on the men!

Sneezing in Baltimore

I spent the week watching chick flicks with my roommate as I got through my period and she wrestled with a bad cold. Day six of the movie marathon included "Sleepless in Seattle." I've seen this movie before (though not countless times like many women -- that is saved for "You've Got Mail), but I saw bits of it with fresh eyes. We all remember the storylines of Annie and Sam... bride-to-be with second thoughts and moping but charming widower. But how many of us remember the man that Annie was supposed to marry? His name was Walter. And what was his flaw? He had allergies.

Now, I don't sleep with a humidifier and I am not allergic to countless amounts of food, but I do have to sleep with a fan, I have to sleep in a warm room with about three blankets and three comforters, and I can't eat much dairy or gluten (wheat, barley, rye, oats, etc). The main fault with Walter, as demonstrated by his allergies, was his sensitivity and need for accommodations. Well, if these are the faults that prevent him from marrying the woman of his dreams, I'm in big trouble.

"But he ends up with someone," my roommate says. "Who?" I ask. "Well," she says, "in my head he ends up with someone." If they did show who he ended up with, it would be an equally awkward side character with her own set of issues. Maybe she's overweight or has really crazy hair. Maybe she's a minority or nerdy, or really quiet. None of these scenarios make me feel better, because I fit them all. I don't want to be the side character in someone else's movie. I want to be the heroine, the one who falls for the charming, stable man with just a little bit of edge. I want to be with the man who's not boring but dashing, not safe but charismatic. My roommate is much more overweight and shy than I am. She can't do sports because of her bad hip, including dancing or snowboarding or ice skating on New Year's Eve. It helps to know that I'm not alone, but as we sit on the couch, nursing our ailments and being completely single, I can't help feeling like we are both doomed to be overlooked by the men we really want, because we're the nice girls who guys WANT to want, but often don't.

Now, I'm not really as cynical as I'm sounding in my post. Despite my ranting, I have absolutely no doubt that I will find the man of my dreams. At thirty-three, this positivity is a bit unwarranted. But I can't help feeling like my match is out there somewhere. In fact, this could be a big reason why I'm single. I don't want to be the side character, and I don't want to date the side character either. He doesn't have to be a Hollywood hottie, but he has to fill the lead role in my story of life. Like Sam did for Annie, he has to take my breath away.

Parting the Red Sea

Every three months I turn into a different person: A giant green monster full of pent up aggression, just like the Incredible Hulk. It used to be every single month, but now I take birth control that gives me my period only four times a year. Let me tell you, I will never go back.

We all get the telltale signs of PMS... tender breasts, bloating, increased appetite for sweets.... But my biggest sign is not what happens to my body but what happens to my mind. All of a sudden I'm convinced that my family members are talking about me behind my back, saying what an immature person I am. I'm convinced that my best friend has found a new best friend and is only talking to me out of pity. I'm convinced that I am completely and utterly alone in the world and that no one can understand me and that no one ever will. The image that comes into my head is that all of my loved ones are on one side of a divide and that I am all alone on the other, and that these people couldn't cross the divide even if they wanted to, and I convince myself that they don't.

Instead of wallowing alone in my self pity I reach out to everyone in an attempt to reconcile what is not broken. I write long emails, then second-guess myself and write even longer ones to make up for what I've said. Then I'm not convinced that those contained what I really meant to say either, so I write and write until I have talked in a circle and then I am REALLY convinced that I've blown any chance at keeping those I love in my life, so I say even more.

My friends and family have become intimately aware of this pattern and know not to take it too seriously. They even actually don't seem to mind it but accept it as part of my lovely personality. However, in the dating world such paranoia does not go over well. No one wants three drunk phone messages in the middle of the night asking you to love me (or to at least just give me sex if not love), or to be chased down the street by a lovesick me with bags full of groceries as you pull away unknowingly in your pickup truck. Ironically, my problem isn't actually paranoia -- the problem is paranoia that I have paranoia. Or it's paranoia that other people will think I have paranoia. It's this feeling that they will see the "real" me, the one lurking under the surface, or that the one lurking is the fake me and that they will mistake it for the real me. It all creates a cycle in my head that I cannot break until the "crimson wave" stops and my serotonin levels rise again.

I write about this on a fibromyalgia blog because FM and PMDD often go together. In fact, many of my issues, however seemingly unrelated, can be traced to the presence of my FM. It's nice to have something to blame it on, or at least attribute it to. Luckily I have a roommate now and a plethora of women's advice books, all of which help me to curb my incessant texting and emailing of potential love interests during that tender time of the month. Luckily I'm on enough medication that only half of my brain is convinced at the moment that my best gay friend is leaving me for another girl while they sit with a bottle of wine and laugh about how boring I am. Only half of my brain writes this best friend letters of concern. The other half keeps this half from writing twice as many, and the friend himself seems as unfazed by it all as he was when he met me seven years ago.

Ever since I started getting fibromyalgia flareups they come during my period like clockwork. I'm sure being stuck at home with a fuzzy head doesn't help the paranoia about paranoia. But at least I get to stay home and watch girlie movies with a box of Kleenex, crying over lost love, found love, and the elusive creature that will hold me in the middle of the night, on my side of the great divide.

Jillian and Me

Last night/this morning I got the urge to expand on my experience with Jillian Michaels. It all came about because I got hooked on a season of Biggest Loser Australia. Australian TV shows are different than their American counterparts... They show new episodes about four nights a week but the seasons last just as long. You do the math. So when I took a medication that made me gain 25 pounds in three months, I went off of it and used Jillian's 30-Day Shred to rid my body of the unwelcome weight.

"I want you to feel. like you're going. to die." Yes, Jillian, Yes! The sweat pours off my medically-induced hyper-hydrous body as I raise the weights to the ceiling in defiance of weakness. I do jumping jacks and more jumping jacks, until my legs burn. Then down on the floor for push ups and crunches, with Jillian making torture devices out of my own body. It hurts but the happy endorphins are running all over the place and I feel like a million bucks. "You want abs like this, ladies? They don't come for free." I remind her that mine did come for free until age and illness caught up with me. Now I push my body like I did in high school cross country, pounding out the repetitions until my body can go longer--go farther. It's mind over matter, and my mind is strong.

But my body is not.

Physically, yes. Healthily, no. I have the strength, but if I exert it too often my body revolts and shuts down, and I'm left with repetitive strain injuries that limit my normal range of motion. It's a contradiction that gets me every time. Six months later and my shoulder is still paying for what Jillian Michaels did to it. I can raise my arm above my head again but I still have to take ibuprofen every night before bed. Sorry Jillian... It was fun while it lasted, eh Mate? Good thing one of the contestants frequently won the weight goal just by walking around the property. Treadmill, here I come.

The look of fibromyalgia

I used to be rail thin, thanks to good genes and a sensitive stomach that didn't digest much. This, in conjunction with my big boobs and perfectly shaped butt, gave me quite the ideal body. Of course I took it for granted and envied the girls with a little bit of meat on their bones. As they say, we always want what we don't have. I wore bulky clothing to hide my breasts because they felt too big in comparison to the rest of my body, and I didn't wear my first bikini until I was about 29.

Now I take five medications and have gone from 97 pounds to 145. As an apple I carry most of my weight in my stomach, and it has been quite the transition to learn how to love, accept, and clothe my new body. I finally understand why women are so obsessed about weight and why they count calories and put themselves down. I now understand dressing to hide your flaws instead of to hide your sexuality. Now I wear low cut shirts in order to accentuate my breasts instead of pretending they aren't there, in order to draw attention up to my face and away from my protruding stomach.

The Catch-22 about fibromyalgia is that your illness makes you take medications which make you gain weight, but it also prevents you from being able to exercise to get the weight off. I did Jillian Michaels' "30-Day Shred" until it gave me a new repetitive strain injury in my shoulders. I did a walking DVD twice until it put me in a flareup that lasted for a couple of days. There is a direct correlation between exercise and flareups which contradicts my inherent drive to be active. Instead I regulate myself to Tai Chi, an exercise bike, and walking (not in place), but only when I feel 100% which in the winter is not often.

I abhor the thought of taking off my clothes and having a love interest see my round belly. I may have learned how to dress my body, but what about when the clothes come off? Every woman's fear is looking like her mother, and when my fibromyalgia hit my body grew to look like my mother's middle aged one, only now she exercises enough to keep the weight off so that even she and my grandmother are thinner than I am.

On Monday my roommate and I start diets to lose weight after one party and before another. Luckily my new abode has an exercise room attached to the complex, complete with an exercise bike and a treadmill, two of the exercise machines I can actually use, and which have helped me lose weight in the past. My ideal goal is 130, my attainable goal is 135, and my realistic goal is 140. I will diet in part because of body image but to a larger degree because I like being aware of what is going into that body. Ironically ever since I have gained weight I am much healthier in my eating choices. Now an entire bag of cookies has consequences where it once did not. On Sunday I will wear a killer (stomach hiding) dress to a hopefully killer event, and in two months I will wear a festive 80s outfit hopefully a few pounds lighter.

I want to end this post with an positive spin but in all honesty, I can't. I'm human, I want the body of Salma Hayak, and I want to look good naked. If I can't look good naked, I want the body health to be able to do something about it without flareups telling me I can't. So, what do I do? I don't have all the answers, or even in this case just one answer. Just that I hope my next boyfriend can rub my Buddha belly and feel like the luckiest man alive.

The great outdoors

I live in the Pacific Northwest, and as such I am surrounded by mountains and mountaineers. Almost every guy who shows up on the dating websites I've joined talks about his love of the outdoors: hiking, biking, skiing, snowboarding, kayaking, etc. It's not that I don't love a man who loves these things -- I do. I love hiking, I used to be a long-distance runner, and I would like to repeat my one snowboarding experience. But while I can hike in moderation, my body says no to most other sports. It's not just that my upper body deals with chronic soreness, but my "fibromyalgia variant," as my neurologist calls it, has unique motor issues that prohibit me from balancing on a bicycle like I used to and from going top speed down a mountain. It's hard to explain my body's reaction to the latter, but imagine you are watching a scary movie where something just jumped out at you and you sucked in your breath, tensed your body, and felt like you were going to explode, and you close your eyes in anticipation of you and the scary thing colliding. This is how I feel going down a mountain. It's not so much about colliding with the snow as colliding with each atom of air that I pass through. I know this makes no sense, and this is part of the problem.

If I'm supposed to find someone who shares my interests, how can I find someone who likes sports but doesn't do them? How can I find someone who, like me, loves to exercise his body but doesn't do it in the ways he would prefer because those ways are off limits for him? Do I fall in love with someone who loves to snowboard and have him take off for the mountain all by himself? Isn't part of a successful relationship not only sharing interests mentally but sharing them in actuality?

If this is the case, where are the men who love to sleep in on a Saturday morning and then go for a quick walk around the block? Who wouldn't mind their significant other riding an adult tricycle down the street, complete with a basket to put things in? Maybe I picked the wrong state to live in. Maybe I should live in the Chicago of "Return to Me" or the Manhattan of "Sex and the City." Places where Minni Driver's character can find love with a hot (and completely sweet) construction worker despite her heart problems and bicycled existence or where Carrie Bradshaw "never works out" but lands a millionaire with her perfect unexercised body. Yes, I realize these are TV shows and not real life, but when you spend a significant amount of time in flareups you come to live vicariously through characters on the screen!

For those of you who know me in real life, which at this point in the blog's history is everyone, you know that me spending all my time in front of the TV screen is not an accurate representation of my day. In fact, it is my industriousness and creativity that I'm hoping will compensate for my significant other having to climb the highest mountain without me. Or maybe he'll just be content to stay home and let me snuggle in the crook of his neck while feeding him gluten free pretzels.

Let's call him K

The question comes with dating: When do you tell a potential suitor that you have fibromyalgia?

About three months ago I met a man. He was perfect. Cute, hard-working, sweet... Even before our first date he knew I didn't have a car. And what did he say? "If you ever need a ride anywhere, even to the grocery store, I will drive you." I wasn't fishing for this offer and I wouldn't have taken him up on it anyway, as he lived across the water in another town. But man, I said to myself, if he is so understanding about me not having a car, he will be super understanding about fibromyalgia.

Jump ahead a couple weeks. We've now had three dates. On date three we check out a neighborhood both of us have heard of but have never been to. As I'm planning to move to his side of the water, he suggests I go into a rental office of an apartment building I like and ask how much the studios are. We get a flier for me, and he takes one for himself as well. "I may move sometime," he says.

We spend our date doing the infamous "While You Were Sleeping" lean. We say, "We should do this. We should do that." We go to a chocolate factory where he invites me to pick out a bar -- any bar I want. We walk through a Sunday market and we get pizza, drizzle hitting the tops of our heads as we listen to live music. We take pictures with a famous statue and search for another famous statue which we don't find. On the way back to the car, I decide to come clean about my fibromyalgia. "I don't let it keep me down," I say. I paint it in a positive light, even showing gratitude for the way it helps me stop and smell the roses. He admires my strength and perseverance. He has the exact response I'd been hoping for.

He drives me home, and then silence. I send him an email: "Thanks for being so understanding about my fibromyalgia," I say. I hone in the fact that I do not have the widespread pain or the depression, thinking that if he googles my illness I may come across in an unfavorable light. He sends me a statement of purpose for graduate school that he wants me to proof. I proof it and send it back. A week goes by and I hear nothing. I send another email, the infamous, "I like you / do you like me" confession. This is not completely out of left field. Before our first date he wouldn't go three days without calling. After date one he set up date three. (Date two was a game party at my house.) "I'm really busy," he writes back. "I want to be friends."

Now, I have no proof that the fibromyalgia doomed this possible relationship, but I have my suspicions. (If he isn't a closet homosexual, as most of my love interests are.) The question I'm left with is: When do you tell someone about your illness? Do you write it on your online dating profile, to weed out the ones who will reject you once they find out? Do you wait until you're in the phone stage, or after the first date, or after the third? Do you trick someone into liking you so much that once they find out about your illness they feel like they can't back down?

Contrary to the way I usually work, I didn't spend a lot of time moping over this potential lost love. Instead I jumped back on the bandwagon and asked someone else out. "Yes," he says, "Once I get back from traveling for work." So now we are "facebook friends" and I don't dare write anything about fibromyalgia. To him I am just some woman he met at a bar through a mutual friend... One of those gay men I love so much. "I teach online," I say across the table. I bat my eyelashes. I take off my coat. I leave him hanging because at this point I am still seeing K. One week later I am not seeing K, and two weeks after that I ask for and have his yes and wait for him to return from his travels. His journey continues, and so does mine.