Dating Manifesto

I've had first dates at police stations. Flying over the California coast in a red two-seater plane. In a food court with a guy who claimed to be related to the Vegas mafia. At ice rinks where we tottered around like baby giraffes. That's the fun part. The feelings that come after - insecurity, panic, self-flagellation for perceived infractions, staring at your phone and feeling unloved - are not. Unresolved feelings make dating a minefield of melodrama. I'm done. In my effort to make "I'm done" less histrionic pronouncement and more fact, I've made a list. Because lists succor the soul and if you're in the dating trenches, your soul deserves some succoring.

Establish reasonable goals. For years, my dating goal was "Have boyfriend yesterday." If that's not a foolproof way to fail, I don't know what is. I'm not Calvin and I don't have a time traveling cardboard box and so there's zero chance I'll suddenly be in a relationship that started last November. Achievable goals with simple steps honestly never occurred to me until my dating coach brought it up over burrito carcasses. (I don't know why, I'm fanatic about goals everywhere else. Maybe my brain was incinerated by Ashton Kutcher movies where he's the hot instigator of unlikely romantic scenarios.) So my new goal is "Go on second date with dude I really like." Pretty sure that's an achievement badge I can unlock.

Your life is not a Nora Ephron movie. I mean, it might be. There's probably a lot more Nora Ephron potential to my life than I've allowed myself so far. But that potential can't unfold if I'm constantly jumping ahead in the plot. No planning my City Hall wedding to a guy I met twelve minutes ago. All this does is tangle me up in a pressure cooker of expectations.

Sit on your hands.  The proper ratio of texting when dating is 1:1. Not 1:17. Because 1) You look crazy and needy when you do that. Even if you are crazy and needy, you don't need to look crazy and needy. 2) You feel awful when you have three unanswered texts hanging in the ether. Dating is hard enough without giving yourself more ways to feel bad.

No one else can make you feel secure and loved. I was beating myself up for some (probably imagined) breach of the dating code and staring at my phone, waiting for the text that would prove I didn't have anything to worry about. Then it occurred to me that this guy - amazing though he may be - doesn't have the power to absolve me. Only I have that. So I looked at the sad, broken place that felt like I had irrevocably blown it, realized my "I'VE DESTROYED THINGS FOREVER" story wasn't helping, and forgave myself. He texted five minutes later. Thanks for that speedy confirmation of my theory, world.

Anything substantive should be said in person. I'm terrible at this. I hide behind emails and text messages because that's what emails and text messages are for. But I'm practicing communicating. Talking to someone before sleeping with them to make sure we're on the same page, at least in this moment. Laying out what I want and what I'm looking for and knowing that it's okay if that's not what they want right now.

Once you've broken up, there's nothing more that needs to be said. So stop it with the explanatory/secretly-hoping-for-reconciliation-and-more-attention emails, lady. (I'm not proud of this tendency. I cringe every time I think of the needy post-breakup emails I've sent in my day. Which is reason enough to stop for always.)

He's dessert, not the main course. A guy should be the baklava of my life, not the falafel. Yes, dating is a crucial step toward finding your lobster, but never at the expense of things that make you happy.

Do what makes me feel good. Yes, the other person is important but until you've established some semblance of a healthy relationship, your first priority is always yourself. If the way it's going doesn't feel good, get out. If you like someone, but he doesn't want what you want, set him loose. If you're feeling anxious, do something that nurtures you. Exercise or creativity is best, especially if either include glitter. It's time well spent, whatever happens with Dude Du Jour. Bonus: When you're excited about your life and doing the things that support it, you automatically become 57% more attractive.

Be kind to yourself. This includes knowing what you want and settling for nothing less. Making yourself comfortable and happy. If your perfectionist brain is poking you about something you did and telling you it messed everything up, step the fuck back. Did you do what felt right to you in the moment? Did you do it with love, for him and yourself? Did you communicate and behave in a way that feels healthy to you? If the answers are yes, you get to feel good about it, no matter what the outcome. If the answers are no, you still get to be kind to yourself. By looking for the source of the behavior - maybe it's being clingy or insecure or doing things because you need or want the attention* - you can heal the place that needs healing. When I behave strangely, it's because something is off internally and only I can shift it.

* All will absolutely happen if you try to date the month after your father dies.

Don't try to date the month your father dies. Just don't.

You want someone who values you. Your time and attention are precious and if he doesn't appreciate it or make an effort, send him on his merry way.

Self-worth is the key, always. Do whatever it takes to get and keep that self-worth. Lots of the bullshit that comes with dating disintegrates when you feel good about yourself and what you have to offer.

Too soon to tell. I jump to conclusions when I'm feeling antsy, based on my often wildly inaccurate interpretations. In the very early stages, it's almost always too soon to tell. That said...

Trust your intuition. That's why you have it. Your trust in yourself and your judgment is one of your most valuable resources. Dating is an amazing place to hone your internal guidance.

It doesn't have to be a game. I don't like games. I lose games. In my family, I lose everything from Pounce to Scrabble and usually by a very large margin. I don't particularly care, because winning isn't the point. Spending time with people I love is the point. But with the dating game, if I don't win, I don't get anyone to love. That sucks. So I'm reinventing the premise. It's not a game. If it was, the only competitor would be myself. As long as I handle this situation better than I handled the one last month, I'm winning.

Treat it lightly. You're dating. This is supposed to be fun. Ease up, honey.

Don't waste your time. Especially on the jerks of the world when there are so many men (men not boys, and this has nothing to do with age) who will value you and your attention the way it deserves to be valued.

Trust in the flow of my life. If the timing of my life makes me bonk my head against the steering wheel in frustration, continue on the path that feels best and trust that it will sort itself out. The universe has a wicked sense of humor but it's never wrong. Just because it doesn't look the way you thought it would doesn't mean it isn't exactly what it should be.

Shifting Years

Last year, I traveled thousands of miles to realize that it doesn't really matter where you are - your capacity for happiness doesn't change, whether you're on a beach in Central America or in the house where you grew up. I watched the wind of my first hurricane whip past the second floor of my friend's house on Staten Island, bending towering trees in half, like they were genuflecting to the eye of the storm. I had my first panic attack in the parking lot of a hospital. I handed out thousands of dollars in cash. I went soaring over the jungles of Costa Rica. I got kissed on a bridge in Amsterdam. I watched both my parents become incapacitated and unable to communicate. One recovered, one didn't. I learned that seven almonds buy you a lot of attention from a squirrel. I lay by the side of the highway next to the Intensive Care Unit, tears running from the corners of my eyes and into the grass.

Driving away.

"Driving away."

Driving away from the hospital after saying goodbye.

Last year, I watched New York marathon runners jogging from the Staten Island ferry to Rockaway beach with supplies on their backs. I learned that when the power is out for a week, it's not the electricity you miss, it's the heat. I roamed the streets of Manhattan the way I did in college, music pouring through my headphones to create a soundtrack to a city that seemed to expand and contract around me, as my own feelings ebbed and flowed. It was hard to be so far away from my family during that month as my dad was failing and my mom had a concussion from hitting her head on the kitchen floor, but it patched over the gaping hole I felt had been kicked in my chest. Taking that time allowed me be who I needed to be during the last week we spent with my dad. There's still some guilt there, but I'm learning to trust in my own instincts, to know that I can balance my own needs with those of my loved ones.

At the same moment.

"At the same moment."

On the Staten Island ferry.

Last year, the furrow between my brows - the one that appears when I'm confused or in pain - became permanent. The ridges smooth out when I relax, but they're always visible now, something that would have horrified my younger self and occasionally still does. That furrow is the physical legacy of my 35th year and my father's death.

Other things are less visible.

Last year, I learned to sit on my hands when what I really want to do is yell and scream and react. I learned to be kinder to people who lash out, because it stems from their own pain and they're only really hurting themselves. You're allowed to feel your feelings, but when you use them as a whiplash to sting others in a desperate bid to make yourself feel better 1) it doesn't work and 2) now everyone's mad at you. I learned that being kind to yourself means making healthy choices and other people don't have to like those choices. I learned that the journey toward death - even when it's painful and hard and you begin to think that no hell devised by even the fiercest of religions could be as bad as this - can be full of grace. Even joy. Certainly love.

If I could grow wings, I would.

"If I could grow wings, I would."

The world is a beautiful place, and I saw more of it. Autumn leaves on Staten Island, canals in Holland, fireflies in Central America. I met and reconnected with amazing people. It was a year of adventure and stuck-ness and great change. It was a year where I further cemented my faith in myself and in the world around me. It was a year where the roots in my heart grew and extended down through my legs and my feet and into the center of the world. I feel like you can't face death with a loved one without your roots both growing deeper and also disconnecting you from what you previously knew. But where you feel untethered, there are always people to catch you, to be the rubber bumper as your heavy ball hurtles toward the pins. People - friends, hospital workers, folks on Twitter - helped guide my family and me as we picked and spun our way down the lane from my father's accident to his death.

The second half of 2012 was tough for me. But there was a lot of grace and magic in it too. I'm learning not to be frightened by the tough stuff. Because it opens the door to so many good things. Love. Relief. Growth. Change. Pattern busting. Sinking fully into each good moment - the ones with bikes and color and grace - because they're worth so much more when what surrounds them is hard. Parties glow with brighter light, tea with friends takes on new weight, and the words that flow through your headphones and into your brain assume fresh meaning. But I got what I needed from 2012. I think the best you can hope for from a year is to love yourself and the world better than you did when it started.

Sidewalk in front of my old apartment in San Francisco.

"Sidewalk in front of my old apartment in San Francisco."

I couldn't have possibly imagined what 2012 held for me back in January. So I'm letting go of the need to know what this coming year will hold. I want to find an easier forward motion because I tend to go full-throttle and then slam the brakes on myself, which makes for a rather lurching existence. I want more stability and creation and giving. I want to be a better person, a better friend, a better daughter and sister.

Beyond that, who knows? Some things will be good, some bad, some painful, some joyful. But whatever it holds, there will be love and there will be grace and there will be discovery. Before my father died, my brother grabbed his shoulder and said, “I’m excited for you, dad. You’re about to go on an adventure.”

I think that's what 2013 holds for all of us. So I'm excited. We're about to go on an adventure.

Live-Tweeting My Father's Death

We got a call last Wednesday night. My father was in the ICU and wasn't expected to last much longer. We should get there as soon as possible. So the next morning, my brother, my mom and I drove seven hours south to Bishop, California. Walking into a hospital room where your formerly bright and vibrant father is lying in pain, attached to coldly beeping machines is...hard. Because I feel more grounded when I write down my thoughts, I started putting them on Twitter. Turns out, Twitter is a perfect medium for recording your last five days with your father. 140 characters allows you to record one thought, without being intimidated by acres of blank space waiting to be filled with something that's supposed to be properly dignified and profound, when all you have is the fact that you just spilled coffee all over the brand-new floor of the three-week old hospital.

Turns out, 140 characters also captures a whole lot of love.

Love for and from my father, love from Twitter, love for the rest of our family. I honestly feel that onslaught of love and support from those lovely souls on the internet helped me open up so that I was better able to love my father. It was a circular triptych of emotion that carried me through those five days in Bishop as my father slipped further and further away.

In a strange way, I want to go back to that time in Bishop - as hard as it was. Because I've never felt more loved or more loving in my life. I'm glad I was able to share that with my father, in our last few days together. So here are the tweets. Raw, unedited, and all in one place so I can visit it any time I want to feel that love again.

Live-Tweeting My Father's Death

Today needs a superhero cape. I will make one out of a red blanket - extra powers and extra fleeciness.

So basically everything about tonight is heartbreaking. Except my brother's rat dance. That's still pretty awesome.

Medical directive overturned by unanimous family consent. Morphine at the ready. All right, Great Beyond. Let's get this party started.

Dad calmed down when I sat down and held his hand. He even smiled when Matthew did a little jig. All is peaceful as we wait.

Hour nine of the Death Vigil and we've started making water balloons out of surgical gloves.

My brother took it upon himself to fill out the whiteboard in dad's hospital room. He graciously offered the social worker the role of Dr. Fuzzy.

Walking into the closed hospital through the ER, a male nurse I've never seen before says, "Oh, you must be Mr Adrian's daughter." Infamous?

Now that the drugs have stopped and people aren't prodding him every hour, Dad's sense of humor is coming back. His puns: as bad as ever.

My one rant: Absurd that we have the death penalty but we can't help along someone we love who desperately wants out of a broken body.

Calling the funeral director from my Dad's hospital room while he snores peacefully feels oh-so-wrong. And yet...here we are.

Um, so I guess I'm live tweeting my Dad's death? I just find it strangely comforting. Heart, mysterious ways, etc.

My dad wanted a hug - was super distressed when he couldn't lift his arms to hug me back. Heart, meet new crack.

Hard to see my vibrant, joking, super-smart Dad like this. But it's also okay. He's still that guy and he's still in there. Somewhere.

Learning - slowly, slowly - to open up and love when I feel scared, rather than curl up like a threatened porcupine.

Always figured I'd be spoon-feeding a petulant infant before spoon-feeding my Dad. Life enjoys tossing my plans up in the air like confetti.

Bishop is tiny town with Old West-style store fronts and snow-capped mountain ranges. There are worse places to take your last breath.

Throwing paper airplanes over dad's bed and into the hall. Almost hit a nurse.

Singing Beethoven's Fifth and dancing around the bed Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion-style. I should drink less coffee.

My brother grabbed my mom's romance novel and started giving it a dramatic reenactment. Solid gold.

Dad always made the Thanksgiving turkey. Brined in booze and stuffed with cornbread and fresh herbs. I never got the recipe. Damn it.

Emotionally manipulative country song about fathers playing. The world really wants me to break down in this coffee shop.

Brother: "Hey! Instead of going to the mortuary, let's go to the taxidermist!" Mom: "YOU ARE NOT GOING TO TAXIDERMY YOUR FATHER."

Ten minutes later: "How much does taxidermy cost?" "NO."

Matthew told dad that he saw a cow this morning. Dad mooed.

Dad's singing. So...the morphine works.

Never in my life have I wanted a tattoo. But I woke up at my father's bed side thinking that if I ever got one, it would say "Yes."

"I'm excited for you, Dad. You're about to go on an adventure." Boom. My brother nails it.

The wind is picking up and leaves are scattering. This autumn has been full of storms - and another one is coming.

My brother and I both want to try Dad's sweet morphine drip. Sadly, this is not hospital-approved procedure.

Boat wars and roof-top sleepovers and bacon: Love hearing from middle and high school friends with memories of my dad.

This is a weirdly happy time.

"Isn't it great having a dad like me?" "Yeah, Dad. It is."

Playing dad's favorite songs on my laptop. Like to think the morphine haze makes it sound like John Coltrane playing Carnegie Hall.

When the nurses come in to reposition him, the whole family scuttles down the hall to escape the yells of pain. #cowards

Dad's getting delusional. Thinks he needs to get up and get dressed. Keep telling him it's his day off, he can just relax and hang with us.

"You have such a nice family.""It's our family, Dad." "But you have so many great people w you." I like to think he's talking about Twitter.

"We're lucky." "Yeah, we are." "In so many ways." I've never seen my Dad cry before.

Dad loves Calvin and Hobbes. So I read him this.

Pro tip: When you're on your death bed, you get anything you want.

At the JC Penny on Main St buying clean clothes because I didn't have time to do laundry between New York and Death Watch 2012.

Waiting for your Dad's body to disintegrate around him is harder work than you might think. I'm exhausted.

Dad keeps turning to me and saying, "Let's go." You can go any time you want, Dad. You just have to leave your body behind.

Work to be done. Hard to live in a hotel indefinitely. Dad may need us to leave in order to let himself go. Still, a bitch of a decision.

"A house came out of the sky and surrounded our house. How is that possible? It doesn't make sense." "It doesn't have to make sense, Dad."

Dad read The Hobbit to me when I was 3 years old. Mom thought he was crazy. Years later, though I never read it myself, I knew the story.

Dad always called me super kid. Like I was the superhero of children. That was the last thing he called me.

Hard to walk out the hospital door, knowing he's still alive. And knowing that's probably the last time I'll ever see him.

Everything feels surreal. The colors are too bright, sounds are a roar, and everyone keeps wishing me a good day.

My dad's things are strewn all over the living room, waiting for sorting and Goodwill. Time to hide out in another part of the house.

On the up side, now I have a Kindle and my brother's girlfriend has a car.

I always wondered what to do when someone was having a rough time. Wondered if words and thoughts were enough. Yes. More than enough.

I just opened the microwave and found the popcorn I was making when we got the call from the hospital.

Whenever I feel sad about someone - missing my dad or a friend or an ex - I focus on how much I love them. Works every time.

---

As of tonight, November 21st, the evening of Thanksgiving, my dad was still alive. Part of me is heartbroken not to be there with him when he passes, but the rest of me knows we did the right thing - for us and for him.

And I truly believe that you can express love to someone whether you're standing there holding their hand or halfway across the globe. Or separated by whatever stands between us and those we loved who have gone on. Love knows no boundaries.

---

{Edit} Dad passed away on Friday night. I got the news while drinking pumpkin bourbon milkshakes with Drea and Amy and they graciously led me into another room and let me blubber all over them and it was exactly what I needed. Thanks, guys.

As a longtime family friend later texted me, Dad would've thought the pumpkin bourbon milkshake a perfect accompaniment to his passing. He was fond of going all out, especially where fattening beverages are concerned.

Rest in peace, Dad. We love you.

Sometimes Life Looks Like a Hospital Bed and a Broken Clock

When someone you love is in the hospital, you have to reorganize your entire life. In a very physically defined way, because you cancel plans and uproot yourself to drive six hours south to a live in a different house while you deal with things like paperwork and doctors and emotions. But your life also reorganizes itself in an intangible way. You sit in a room and stare at piles of incomprehensible paper until someone notices that the clock on the wall is broken. That time, for all intents and purposes, has stopped. That the person in the bed staring at the clock, unable to move, unable to leave, must be in some motionless hell. You feel like it's your job to fix it, so you stare at it, wondering what you need to do and postulating theories about what has to happen. Until your brother stands up, gently lifts the clock off the wall, and pokes the battery more firmly into place. And time starts again.

It's intangible because something in your life has shifted. You know things aren't quite right. The person you knew isn't quite that person any more. But also they are. But they aren't. Because they aren't eating and the pain meds are doing strange things to their speech patterns and you don't know when they'll get better or if they even want to. Even as you go about your daily life, what your daily life has become, a small corner of your brain understands that something has changed. So you do serious mental and spiritual acrobatics until the world shifts again. Because this is what's happening now. So this is what's right.

Dear Amsterdam

I'll miss plowing through you on my bike like I'm on a mission to careen past every idly pedaling Dutch person on a cell phone which, let's be real, I totally am. I'll miss your bridges strung with lights and your soft, flaky croissants that make your American counterparts curl up in mortification. I'll miss your medieval castles and taking trains the wrong way through Holland and getting away with having the wrong ticket because everyone in your country, from policemen to train ticket collectors to grocery clerks, is just really really nice. I'll miss riding home late at night, when your streets are dark and empty of people but still full of sedate brick buildings that have been standing watch over nighttime pedestrians for the last three hundred years. I'll miss drinking coffee in the sun by a canal. I'll miss eating lunch on the balcony and wandering through stores marveling at the intersection between foreign and familiar. I'll miss your black licorice and the three story windmill that pointed my way home. I'll miss the friends I made, the people I met, and the cats I yelled at for sticking their fuzzy snouts in the butter.

I'll even miss the Red Light District, which totally skeeved me out until I started wondering about the underwear-clad girls posing in those red lit windows. What are their lives like? Why are they there? I wanted to ask them about their stories, what kind of love they have in their lives, and what they think about all this. But I didn't, because how do you ask something like that?

Living in Costa Rica and Amsterdam for the summer taught me that when I travel, I want to have a specific creative project. Specific to the place and specific to my interests - something to frame my time there and give it more of a purpose. To come home from wherever I was for a month and be able to hold or watch or read this thing I made. A creative souvenir that takes the feelings I had and amazing things I saw and molds them into something I can share.

I wish I figured this out three months ago, but that's why you live, right? To figure out the things you wish you could apply retroactively to the rest of your life. But you can't, so you just keep trekking out into the world and hope to whatever sky-dwelling deity you prefer that you remember what you figured out for next time.