i'm in love again

though as usual, i seem to do it the hard way.

my mother likes to repeat this saying that she attributes to my brother, "if there's a road straight through, ameena likes to walk off into the brush. she will always take the most difficult route."

i find myself sliding into the curve of his back, wrapping my arm around his waist and somehow fitting perfectly as if there aren't almost twenty years between us. or looking into his brown eyes, as margaret atwood writes, "intricate and easily bruised," and feeling like i can sink right in. immerse myself as if in a lake at the end of the summer.

his kisses and teasing remind me that i exist in a body, still woman, still hungry for a touch, an embrace. his passion ignites mine.

then we have conversations and i feel the vast divide between us splitting open still wider. the differences of age, economic backgrounds, social positions, opportunities. his quick mind, his spongey, evolving spirit let him make herculean leaps. i am sometimes knocked breathless by the romantic lyricism of his emails and text messages. he is an unconscious writer, social commentator and photographer. he can be frighteningly astute and genuinely caring about others.

but he is also young - with the hard-edged black-and-white idealism of his age, as broke as i am, still searching for his career path and beset with health issues. he's not in a position to offer much help sorting through my drama. our connection is as volatile and unpredictable as the circumstances of our lives.

at the same time, the amazons (the three teenaged daughters i live with) are melting down, paying work isn't coming in fast enough, my exhusbands offer intermittant help - when they are not an active hindrance.

i am not capable of juggling people and emergencies at my previous speed. in fact, when i feel even slightly anxious, i can't comprehend the words around me - spoken or written.

and it is an enormous effort to look after anyone. even the simplest task feels daunting to me.

as i said last week. let's see what happens next.

i only want what i can't have

i've seen it in myself.

the pain of those ego-based break-ups.

gradually allowing myself to fall in love with someone who initially i wouldn't have taken seriously. maybe someone who i would have walked away from immediately, someone whose dreams and aspirations seemed laughable to me, but circumstances, and possibly lust, dragged it out.

feeling like i was on safe, but much higher ground - he would never walk away from ME - i let myself sink into a relationship.

perhaps the lesson was in having a relationship and learning to appreciate someone unlikely, someone i might have just passed over if i hadn't been in a low moment. learning about a whole new perspective.

then comes the incredible painful shock. he drops ME. after all the sacrifices i made for him. all the humoring and patronizing and babying. i pretended to take all his stupid ideas seriously. i complimented his bad writing or out-of-shape body. i run it over and over in my head. i flail and grasp at straws. i try desperately to do everything to fix it. i'm sinking fast.

why do those rejections that hurt your ego hurt so much more?

i've been watching a friend go through the pain and contortions of being dumped by a girlfriend.

she was someone he'd had always been dismissive of. he'd entered into the relationship as if he was the "settler" and she was the "reacher." (as defined in "how i met your mother.")

when she dumped him, the tables turned.

suddenly, the power play that underlies most relationships as they ease out of the initial glow and into the day-to-day balance shifts drastically.

as a lawyer friend of mine says, the girlfriend's holding all the cards. he is just going to take whatever she offers. if she offers anything. and even if she doesn't, my friend is going to run around after her like an abused child. and then she will dump him again. because now she knows she can.

i know, i've done it before. sent my paramour emails and presents and flowers. showed up with chicken soup and tea when he was sick. bought him rich, chocolate-colored italian cashmere sweaters. interestingly, he returned everything i gave him when we split up. he left it (in one of the shopping bags i brought over) downstairs with the doorman.

it's like all the weight in the boat sliding to one side. the side you're on is filling up with water and you're bailing it out as fast as you can. there's a part of you that knows it was inevitable and a part of you who's sold yourself the dream.

at the moment, i am so glad it's my friend going through it and not me. not sure i am evolved enough to feel like i'm drowning and know i'm not.

when the storm is finally over, it all calms and you're stable again.

that's when the question should arise, am i capable of being with someone who's floating right alongside me?

bad date post-chemo

ok, i am really not ready for public consumption yet.

i got out of bed and reluctantly met a guy for a cup of tea this afternoon. someone i'd "met" on a social networking site.

back when i was pretty and actually resembled like the picture posted there.

ostensibly, it was a conversation about a project he was working on.

he looked totally taken aback when i arrived even though i was wearing a dress and had applied some kajal on my red-rimmed eyes and matching (but totally inappropriate for a saturday afternoon) bright red lipstick (on my lips).

our conversation therefore was all about me and my stupid health labyrinth rather than anything interesting to a normal, unrelated person.

tragically, i am still obsessed with the fact that i look like a 100 year-old turtle and my memory/brain still has huge lapses, so instead of making leaps in logic, i fall into the abyss. as he spoke, i had a chemo-induced hot flash that made my eyes and scalp burn and my face damp.

so he rushed off to meet someone he thought "sounded lovely" online and i dragged myself back home. i wasn't hurt, i wasn't feeling it either.

then i called a friend and went out to see "it's complicated" which made me laugh like crazy but felt a bit too much like my real life as a middle-aged, single mum with three teenaged kids, except of course, my exhusbands are not nearly as funny (or self-aware or articulate) as alec baldwin (the way the scriptwriter made him).

my current advice, don't suffer the dating world - or the critical gaze of a total stranger until you're really comfortable in your own skin. again. trying to give myself a break.

love and cancer, part 1

my favorite psychic asked me if i've met anyone, "you know, a man who's kind and a bit sexy?"

i started laughing and she did, too.

my answer: "i am bald, i have no eyelashes and very little eyebrows, i weigh about 104 pounds, i am perpetually nauseated and exhausted... i spend half my week in the hospital and the rest too tired to get out of bed, who do i meet apart from irish nurses brandishing chemo needles?"

i should add to that list of endearing qualities, i have 2 out-of-control teenaged daughters and a very clingy almost-11 year-old one.

my mental answer: how could anyone be interested in a repulsive and sexless bag of bones? even my ability to make intelligent conversation is hobbled by shrinking short-term memory. how could someone love me if i grossed myself out?

this particular blog is about dating across cultural and racial divides.

standing in the shower today, after the perpetual shock of seeing myself naked in the mirror, both muscles and fat reduced to stringy flesh and papery skin infused with the strange chemical fragrance of my chemo drugs, i am less a woman and more a feeble asexual alien.

race, religion and economic class are not the only insurmountable rifts that separate human beings - now that i have cancer - illness can be one of the biggest divides there is.

my cousin was on the arranged marriage circuit. he was briefly interested in a beautiful, eligible young woman who was also going blind. "is he crazy?" shouted his mother. "he'll have to drive her everywhere, look after her - what kind of life does he want? and on top of that, she's going bald." thus, no proposal was registered. the poor guy went back on the meeting track.

what shocks me is that it's perfectly reasonable and completely acceptable - and everyone seems to agree with his mum - to dismiss someone sick (god knows what other virtues and qualities she had) on the spot. in fact, there is no taboo at all in dropping someone because she or he is sick. which i am.

have i met anyone? i have vague flirtations online. i smile at people in shops and they often smile back. but am i or anyone else willing to the leap the abyss?

and if someone did cross over, what would be there?

a stick figure.

i find myself thinking i need to wear false eyelashes and make-up and push-up bras and bright colors. all those loud, overstatements of femininity. because there is so little else.

i wonder if i create a garish outer "woman," if the inner one will follow suit?

i used to be married to a man who was a cross-dresser. he longed to be a woman. when he dressed up, he said, "we can be sisters.." in a soft, simpering voice.

i used to be horrified by his over-the-top drag. the bright lipstick, the mascara, the earrings, the scarf, bra and "chicken cutlets" - even the hyper-feminine gestures and the voice - along with the sexy dress, hose and pumps. his costumes and act turned us women into caricatures. jokes.

my femininity was based on confidence. i didn't need frilly polyester underwear or blue eyeshadow or stilletto heels because my being a woman was undeniable. i was petite, pretty, i had breasts, glossy long hair, i could have babies. too many accoutrements would be overkill. like putting a huge painted sign HOUSE on the side of a house. if it wasn't obvious to you, you weren't very smart.

but now that - like my exhusband - i am trying desperately to conjure up my inner woman, that part of me who was pretty and fun and alluring, i wonder if i shouldn't go out and tart myself up. i am wondering if putting on the dog (pun intended, i suppose), wouldn't be part of my healing.

would making the effort to make myself pretty be part of being nice to myself?

the thing about being sick is, you do it alone.

i've been blown away by my family. my brother and my sister-in-law have been my constant companions in the hospital. my mother and father have been back and forth to new york city every other week for seven weeks. my friends have been visiting, holding my hand in hospital, bringing food, cooking food, bringing presents and flowers.

but in the end, they get up and walk out of the hospital and you are still there, hooked up to the i.v. and wearing a dead-ugly blue flower-printed gown and fuzzy socks and bedroom slippers.

they get to go back to real life. have a nap and feel almost normal again.

and you get to live there.

when you're in the midst of cancer treatment, you live there in a big way.

even if i dressed up as a woman, i don't think i could take it on the road.

all the time, i'd be thinking of the tragic moment when i peeled off those false eyelashes and the wig, when the push-up bar came off and the acrid perfume of chemicals seeped through the flowery deodorant, when my the lipstick clung in pieces to my chapped lips and i turned back into a stick figure.

can you fall in love when you have cancer? yes. yes, i'm sure you can. you could fall desperately in love with someone who stood by you. someone who loved and cared for you all along. your wife or husband or long-term partner.

but if you're on your own, "meeting someone" while you're in treatment, while you still believe you're sick, is impossible.

this is the moment to learn to love yourself. all bald, scrawny 100 pounds of you.

i ate lunch alone in a japanese restaurant the other day and, like a teenaged girl, i marveled at how i had become a woman (again). my voice is melodious, my fingers are long and poised, i move gracefully. i was pleased with my company.

my date with myself was a success. i found myself charming. i might even try for a second one.