The Home Team

A couple weeks ago I joined a new dating site. Almost immediately I received about ten or fifteen emails from guys interested in getting to know me. While I later learned that the site has a reputation for being a place for men to find "fast and loose girls," the attention was quite an ego boost, especially because I posted pictures I wasn't quite sure about like one highlighting my curls and one in a fancy dress on a heavy-weight day. Turns out the men love my cuirls and they don't mind the extra weight because of my cup size. (The one who commented on my cup size I soon after ended contact with.)

My roommate and I created nicknames for the potential suitors. There was Wii Guy, Biracial Guy, Indian Guy, Italian Guy, and The Mexican. Biracial Guy turned out to be a creep, Indian Guy disappeared, Italian Guy was too young, and The Mexican is now on my yahoo messenger but we have yet to talk. Wii Guy is still in the runnings, thinking it's hot that I love to play Scrabble and feeling lucky that I give him the time of day.

As you my readers know, sometimes I wonder if I really should be putting myself out there at this stage of my health. I have a more clear diagnosis but at least so far recovery doesn't look too promising, and I continue to get progressively worse. Last night I compared my roommate's MRI scans to my own and discovered my small cerebellum that was mentioned in the report. It relieved me to see what the doctors finally saw, but it also made my condition even more real. Just a few minutes ago I read someone's profile who stated he was looking for a heroine and not a damsel in distress, and I wondered which I am.

My roommate and I went to our first baseball game tonight aside from a Giants game when we were kids, and for the first two innings I felt like a heroine. By the third inning my brain encountered sensory overload and I felt like a damsel in distress as I departed the stadium and walked to the car while my roommate watched more innings. The silence of the car quieted my brain and I reentered the stadium as a heroine, all the way up until the very last play as I cheered and clapped with the rest of the spectators at our city's rare win. Maybe, I thought to myself, if I only need to leave a baseball game for half an hour or so, I'm still datable. This feeling of not being datable is not because I'd have to leave something that a man might enjoy, but because I had to leave something that I enjoyed, and that I hope a man can enjoy with me. I now have visions of frequent summer tickets, team shirts, and bringing my future kid(s) to the game.

My aunt and uncle have a marriage that I've long admired. Their 33 years of commitment isn't based on a philosophy of "Til death do us part," but instead on the reality that either of one them could decide he or she didn't want to be married anymore, and that if that happens, they will divorce. While this might not seem romantic, it provides them a sense of security that every day they spend together is by choice. There is no sense of being forever bound against one's will or caught in something they can't escape. I realized tonight that I want to go into my quest for a relationship with the same mindset. My ex-husband stayed married to me despite my health problems because he felt obliged to do so. He played the "nice guy card" and I was left feeling guilty for any complication I created in his life. Never again do I want to be in a relationship where a guy feels bound to me out of duty or sympathy, or out of a feeling that he made his bed so he must lie in it. And never again do I want to feel that for myself.

My roommate assures me that my medical complications, even while increasing in intensity, are not as bad as I think they are as far as my ability to date. "It's a problem if you can't bathe yourself for weeks on end," she said, "Not that you can't drive a car." As I continue to open myself to possible romantic relationships I'll keep her words of wisdom in mind, and I'll make sure that anyone I date knows they have the ability to leave at any time. Not because I'm not worth committing to, but because I want every day they spend with me to be of their own free will and not out of a sense of obligation. I don't want to feel that I've tricked someone into not leaving me, but instead revel in the knowledge that he can't live without me, or that if he did, he would be losing a wonderful woman that he loved.

The Hidden Self

Knowing the self is important in the dating world, even if that self changes over time. I have many definitions attached to my personhood which will never change, and others that do, but this health definition seems very hard to come by. Doctors have tried out various diagnoses, and with each one I either reject it or accept it and attach it to my identity. For three years that diagnosis was finally fibromyalgia, but in the past few months it's shifted from that to possible seizure disorder to congenital brain abnormality.

I picked up my MRI scan on Monday to take to the movement specialist, and the report stated that I have hypoplasia of the inferior cerebellum vermis: the specifics of the congenital brain abnormality that my neurologist mentioned a couple months ago. "Yes," I thought, "I finally have a name." But when I googled this name, the diagnosis didn't seem to fit my symptoms, and when I saw the specialist today he seemed to feel the same way. Can an MRI lie? Can I have hypoplasia but in a different form? Do I have something that looks like hypoplasia but is really something else? All my new neurologist can tell me, from looking at my scans, is that my cerebellum doesn't have a tail, unlike normal cerebellums, and that this is the root of my brain abnormality. I walked out glad that I had some new information, however vague. When I got home I looked at my roommate's scans with a friend in medical school and I can find no tail on hers either. Now, I am no medical expert and if the specialist says there is a tail there has to be one. And if he says I don't have one I obviously don't. But for once I'd like to be able to say, "Look, this is what I have. See?"

I'm by no means a wallower. I live my life to the fullest even with my brain disorder. I look at the positives in everything and rarely do I feel that my situation is hopeless. While I still don't feel that my life is over, I am caught between relief that something has been found and disorientation that the doctors are still as baffled as I am as to what those findings mean.

Since this is a dating blog I will come back to that, though in no way do I wallow in this either. But my ever present dating thought is: What if I don't get better? Okay, I can deal with that. But what if I get worse? Over the past three years I have gotten worse and while I'll stay hopeful that treatment is out there, there's a fine line between denial, acceptance, and despair. Earlier in my life I was in the denial phase. I tried to live as others lived and hoped that my symptoms would go away as magically as they appeared. I'm nowhere near despair, but I am now pretty fully into acceptance. Reaching the acceptance stage has helped me to do positive things like get government assistance and apply for low-income housing -- things I wouldn't have done if I'd still had the belief that my symptoms would resolve themselves. Maybe acceptance is an important step to moving forward, not an antithesis to it. Maybe it's important to realize things may never change, and then to see how the world can change around you, to love you and accept you just the way you are.

This blog doesn't feel very focused, but I don't feel very focused myself right now. I'm full of answers and just as many questions, if not more. Every day brings knowledge about the self that was always there but hidden away until a particular moment. I've always had a congenital brain abnormality. I've had it since the day I was born. But just five years ago did I start to experience it, and just a few weeks ago did I learn that it was there. It's almost like learning of a secret relative -- this person was always attached to you by blood but you just didn't know it. He or she was defining you even before you knew they existed. So how do I welcome this new/old family member into my home?

I haven't dated in awhile, but I've had some great moments with great friends. Most of my time is spent sitting on the couch watching other people's lives on the TV screen. But every once in awhile I get to store up enough energy to be present in the actual world, dancing and singing to familiar songs at a concert, or sipping tea by the water, or even playing Scrabble in a Scrabble club instead of at the kitchen table with my roommate (while she plays at the club as well). These moments make it okay that I've lost the ability to run, drive, and now even read novels. It makes it okay that over half my life is spent in deep sleep and that my dreams are almost more real to me than my waking hours. Maybe that's why we don't get everything in life. Because when life takes away something, it makes those other things much more precious. Hug your loved ones today. Tune in to what your senses are experiencing. Revel in every touch, sound, and sight. And I'll do the same.

To Grandmother's House We Go

When my grandma sold her California house that she bought around the year I was born, I was for the first time in a place where I could emotionally let the house go. I had spent 12 years living with her on and off, the biggest stretch being between the ages of 3 and 10. I moved back from ages 17 to 21 and again at 23 a year before getting married. Throughout my life, whenever I dreamt of home it was my grandma's home, and my happiest years were spent under its roof. I married that fall ready to create my own home of memories.

Three falls later I signed final divorce papers. Turns out my husband didn't want kids like he said he did, so while we were making a home for ourselves (and our cats), it wasn't the home that I had envisioned for us. I came to realize that I used my husband as a way to create stability for myself, and a nuclear family to replace the one I only sort of had. But I wasn't in love with him -- I only wanted to create children with him. Just the two of us wasn't enough for me.

My grandma moved into a retirement home in Washington once she sold the house. As I moved between Washington, Oregon and Massachusetts, I reveled in any chance I got to visit her. Her voice, the smell of her home, the furnishings,... it all brought me back to my happy childhood and and my sense of security. A few months ago my grandma got sick with pneumonia. While recovering she moved in with my aunt, and she recently made the decision to sell her retirement home and move in with my aunt permanently. As an 81-year-old she lacks the health and mental stamina to keep living on her own, and because I'm ill myself I can't take care of her the way I'd hoped. While I know the move is necessary, to lose one's grandma's house--and to lose her role as the head of that house--is to lose something sacred. But whenever I do lose another piece of her, the universe seems to give me something to help lessen the blow.

When I first came to Washington to live with my aunt and uncle after my divorce, I got a job at the Seattle Space Needle. I fell in love with the area, especially Queen Anne Hill located right to the Northeast of the Needle. Its quiet streets looking down on the heart of the city reminded me of my old California neighborhood, and when I moved back to Washington after graduate school I knew that's where I wanted to live. Disability made me put that dream on hold and live with my best friend rent free while I'm unable to work. But disability, in the end, is going to allow my Queen Anne dream to come true.

There is a subsidized apartment complex on the top of Queen Anne, and as it is for low income residents it will only cost me $100 a month to live there -- 30% of my monthly income from the State. A recent drive to the complex proved it to be everything that I had ever hoped my Queen Anne home to be. It will take over a year for my spot on the wait list to reach the top, but the knowledge that I will have my own little "house on the hill" makes losing my grandma's house a little less hard to bear. And as I'd have to wait another year or two for another subsidized housing spot if I move in with someone else and then break up, my Queen Anne studio will be mine for a long long time.

With my health the way it is I don't long for children the way I used to. My family, my friends, and my animals make up for that loss that I used to feel. The next time I marry it will be for love and not for what I think that love will give me. And until then my slow legs will walk the streets of Queen Anne, and each piece of sidewalk will welcome me.