eharmony dot panic attack dot com

A few nights ago, I saw a commercial for perfectmatch.com and I became temporarily insane inspired. You see, while the very thought of dating makes my body go numb with fear, I realize that it may be a necessary evil to finding a partner to share my life with. And lately, I've been feeling as though my life just might be worth sharing with somebody.

This notion of inviting someone else into my life crept up on me, somewhat unexpectedly. Up until a few months ago, I was singing the praises of living alone. After 28 years of roommates and boyfriends and brothers and dorms, I have been relishing the joys of aloneness. Ahhh, the remote to myself. Ahhh, I can listen to Celine Dion and nobody will know. Ahhh, sweatpants all day. I can leave the dishes in the sink for a week if I want to. I can just walk around that pile of laundry on my floor for a few more days. I can just choose not to look at that ring around the inside of my toilet. It's my house!

So, I started taking the free compatability test which reminded me of the quizzes in the back of Glamour Magazine I used to take in Junior High. " Do you tend to be more spontaneous in planning things or do you prefer a schedule." Spontaneous. Check. "Would your friends classify you as the life of the party or more of a wallflower." Life of the party. Check. This is fun!

But then it got very, very un-fun. It got downright mean and nasty. It started asking about the not-so-pretty parts of me, the parts of me that I like to hide even from myself, the parts of me that are labeled with scarlet letters of shame and odium. "Deal-Breakers," the page was titled. But in my mind it should have been, "Reasons Why You Will Reject Me" or "Reasons Why I Will Not Get a Match." I couldn't believe it was asking me to just put it all out there, that I am "Full Figured" and "Financially Unstable." It was as if they has asked me to go stand in front of the classroom and, layer by layer, take off my clothes with each little box I had to check. "Often late." Check. "Smoker" Check. "Suicidal after filling out this questionnaire." Check.

After a few cigarettes and a pep talk from a friend, I talked myself down off of the ledge and completed the questionnaire. Later on, it asked me what I was willing to tolerate in my future partner and things like "Bald or Balding" and "More Messy Than Tidy" were checked, while "Unwilling To Have Children" and "Sports Addict" were kept in the intolerable category. I realized that I just might make the day of some bald, messy guy who thinks he's totally rejectable based on these things. And maybe some guy out there thinks that being a "Spender Rather Than a Saver" is sexy! Who knows.

Happy Father's Day

Quite often I get asked, "How do you manage being both the mommy and the daddy to your son?" This question always catches me off guard because I do not consider myself to be both mother and father. I am not, nor will I ever be, Jack's father. How could I be? I am totally and only his mother, and this is all I will ever be. This idea that I would try to somehow play both roles makes as much sense to me as thinking that I can fill in as the family dog, something we also don't have in our home.

And yet, I believe we are not lacking. Jack and I are blessed to be surrounded by wonderful men who support us, take care of us, and otherwise love us so much that we're convinced that life is just as it should be. And so today I would like to acknowledge the men in our lives who fill in the much needed spaces that only a man can fill. Some things are just better left to the men, like teaching Jack how to pitch a tent and make a periscope (thanks Dad), or modeling how to revere and respect a woman (thanks, Craig), or effortlessly tossing, spinning, and air- plaining my son all through the air (thanks, Corey). I truly cannot do alone, and thanks to you I don't have to.

Thank you, Billy, for giving me the experience of being loved totally and unconditionally. Thank you, Dad, for proving me wrong about you. Thank you, Sean, for showing me how a wife can be treated in marriage. Thank you, Donovan, for your very nurturing presence in the shittiest of times, as well as the joyous ones. Thanks, Corey, for the billions and billions of little things that have made my life so much more livable, from making Jack laugh when he's fussy, to creating the best toy ever! He lights up when he sees you, and so do I. Thank you for your unfailing support. Thanks, Nate, for paving the way to great parenting, showing me what an attentive, fun parent looks like. Thanks, Craig, for delighting in my son- oops, I mean, your son. I love that you love him like you do!

Happy Father's Day to you, my amazing army of men! I love you!

Boys and Their Toys

I don't know how to put this politely, so I'm not even going to try. My son loves his junk. And when I say he loves his junk, I mean he loves his junk.

It is the very first thing he goes for when he gets naked. I'll barely have his diaper off of his body and - BAM - his hands are all over his shit, like moth to a flame. In the bathtub, it's one hand on genitalia, another hand holding rubber ducky.

He can't get enough of it. He just loves his stuff. And quite frankly, I'm beginning to get a little bit worried. I mean, I know that all men seem to have a sort of obsessive love affair with their penises, but I didn't expect it to begin at such a young age.

But maybe it does. Maybe it's like some instinctual, survival of the fittest, Darwinian primal urge to love and caress and revere one's "family jewels" in order to preserve the species. Maybe it's just jock itch. I don't know.

As a woman who is sans penis and raising a son who is in love with his, I need a little help here, guys. Help me understand. I mean, I have no reference for a body part that I love as much as you guys love your penises. And, if my son's fascination is any indication of what's normal, this super-appreciation for your stuff starts out real early.

So guys, do us girls all a favor and fill us in on the joys of manhood.

The Rocking Chair

I am holding your entire body in my arms.

You are wrapped in the blanked grandma knit for you; your fingers poke through the stitches. Our chests, pressed together, expand and fall at different rhythms.

I can feel your heartbeat.

A pink cheek is illuminated by the dim light, inviting me to kiss its smooth surface. I do. Your ear touches a tiny shoulder, a shoulder that suggests that someday it will belong to a man, strong and angular. But not tonight. Tonight it is soft and round, like a caterpillar or half baked bread.

Music from a toy given to you at Christmastime lulls you to sleep, but it is your breathing that soothes me. Shallow, rattled breaths escape from your mouth, passing by rose petal lips that beg me to meet them with my own. Paper eyelids cover dreaming eyes, and I long to kiss these, too.

Every part of you draws me close; I could stay in this embrace forever.

Why I Hate Poland

My best friend, Carrie, moved to Poland just before my son was born one year ago. At that time, my life was radically changing: I was expecting my firstborn child, I was finishing up my Master's Degree, I had started a new job and left an old boyfriend. Her leaving, while sad, was overshadowed by the excitement of becoming a mother and the adjustment to life with a baby, and I didn't really have time to notice how much I missed her.

I have never loved someone like I love Carrie. The day we met felt like a reunion of souls that had been apart for a while. What I remember feeling when I shook her hand was the comfort and relief of familiarity, like the smell of the house you grew up in. We were instantly and fiercely friends. One person we met told us that we were "twin souls..." I don't know what that means, but it sounds right.

I know that the term "best friend" is usually reserved for fourth grade girls and charm bracelets, but Carrie really is my best friend. In fact, my admiration and love for her was problematic with my ex boyfriend. He got mad at how often I compared him to her, with him always on the short end of the comparison. He suggested I just marry her, something she and I had considered before we remembered that we aren't lesbian.

When she left, I didn't realize how hard it would be for us to stay connected. We've been separated before- like when I moved to Orange County to become a foster parent and when she moved to Virginia to mend a broken heart- and we've always been able to maintain an almost surreal closeness. However, over the past year, the time difference and Jack's need for my attention made conversation almost impossible. Not that I had much to say: Jack isn't sleeping, I'm going crazy, he rolled over today, he's got diarrhea, he gained two ounces, I've gained 15 pounds. New mom talk is only interesting to other new moms. Really.

And she's in Poland, for chrissakes, living through culture shock, blizzards, and bad, pickled food. When she would talk about it, I would try to imagine her life but my only reference for cold weather is San Diego at night. And not knowing what the town she lives in looks like, only that it is "a small, country town," I am embarrassed to admit that I imagined her in Main Street, USA at Disneyland.

I'm so used to getting my support from her, but for the first time in our life together as friends we had to go to separate support groups for our individual traumas. I'm so used to calling her when I need to laugh or to bitch about my job or my tummy fat or the price of cigarettes. Our parallel lives made this easy, but our lives look really, really different now. I have a baby that I love so intensely that it hurts while at the same time want to auction off to the highest bidder on Ebay. She is living in a country where people are not friendly and do not smile, and where Taco Bell does not exist.

She sent me an email today, a rare commodity since she does not have a computer. As I wrote my reply, which is posted below, I felt the sting of her absence in my life, a hollow, empty pain that I had not realized was there. I will see her in July, at the wedding of a mutual friend, and I look forward to that sweet reunion, once again.

I miss sharing my life with you. I miss having you to call. I like having you as a witness to my life, someone who shares in the beauty and the mess of it all, someone to rejoice with me and be awed with me and devastated with me. My life is devastatingly beautiful, Carrie, and I want you to see it. I want you to witness it with me. Without you here, events in my life bounce around like an echo, unabsorbed by anyone but me. And they're such great events: Jack's smile in the morning, the way a Cheerio sticks to his cheek when he eats, how his chubby baby legs just seem to get fatter and fatter, the sound of his voice when he sings as he plays with a straw.

Maybe it's just loneliness, period. Maybe it is that I am ready to invite someone into my life to bear witness to what I am creating, what I am, who I am. I'm just used to that person being you, Carrie, and I like it when it's you. I like standing with you in the rooms of my life.

I don't want you to come home for me, and I don't want you to stop creating your own life. I support you, and always will, in your journey and in your life wherever that leads you and I want you to experience the hell out of yourself! I just miss you, am incredibly lonely without you, and I feel like you are missing out on me. And I, you.

I love you.

Amber.

Does God Talk to You?

If so, could you ask him this question?

Why does everything I want have to be bad for me? Like, ice cream. Or really buttery popcorn. Or cigarettes. Or 3 Long Island Iced teas in a row.

I mean, why couldn't ice cream be just as nutritious as broccoli? Didn't he know when he created it that we would like it and not be able to stop ourselves (ice cream, I mean. Not the broccoli. I find it quite easy to stop eating broccoli).