Mis-Match

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE GENTLEMEN ON MATCH.COM

Dear Sirs,

First of all, I must make one request: please read the profile. It took me a long time to write that thing, I would appreciate it if you took a few moments to read it, so that when I say I prefer not to date someone who doesn’t live in Chicago, you lovely and I am sure perfectly fine gentlemen from Indiana and Milwaukee will not apply. Sorry, but in my book, if I had to commute to date you, you would be deemed a GUN (Geographically UN-desirable).

Along these lines, please also take a moment to look at my age range. If you’re old enough to be my father, I find it kind of icky. No offense. If we have wildly different likes and dislikes, don’t bother. I probably won’t be that into you. Move on. Really, it’s in your best interest to read the profile seeing as how I am a writer and want to be read. Along those lines, please use proper spelling and grammar. Don’t dash off a profile or email so quickly you don’t take time with it. It kind of makes you look desperate. Typos are one thing, inability with the English language is another.

Look, I know I am a cute girl. Maybe my pictures distracted you and you got all excited, I am not sure. But do yourself a favor: stop, read, consider, then decide if you want to click on that “wink” button, ok?

Now that the whole pesky profile reading is out of the way, I would also like to recommend that you have an opinion. When it asks you about your date’s characteristics, don’t just say “any.” Come on, that’s not true. If you’re willing to take anything, I think you have one thing on your mind to which I say hit the bar or nearest street corner even. I will especially laugh out loud at you if your preferred date’s height is from three feet to eight feet. Clearly you have quite the discerning pallette. I applaud your open-mindedness.

Anyway try to remember these two pointers: read the profile and have an opinion.

Thanks so much,

Cheryl

AN OPEN LETTER TO MYSELF

Dear Cheryl,

You are fabulous. Don’t get down. Maybe internet dating just isn’t for you. Way to put yourself out there. Hang on.

Love,

Yourself

In Dreams

Today my thoughts turn to love. Love and the one person I thought left my life never knowing that I did, in fact love him. I don’t like to dwell too often on our relationship and how, while most girls put the first man in their life on a pedestal, at least for a while, I don’t remember ever thinking of him that way. I never really was “daddy’s little girl.” Instead our relationship might better be described as one of silence. Not even yelling and arguing, but silence. If you don’t talk to someone, you don’t tell them “I love you.” Even our actions were silent.

I remember crying in the street as I walked a friend to her car one night after he died, before the funeral. “He didn’t know I loved him,” I managed to get out between sobs. Now it was too late.

“He knew,” she told me simply.

A few months later, I was in a store and I heard my father’s voice. I knew instantly, with desperation, that I needed to find him. I didn’t have much time before he’d be gone. I began to run through the store, up and down aisles following the sound of his voice. The only thought running through my head was “I have to find him; I have to tell him.” I frantically followed the sound of his voice. When I rounded a corner, there he was.

I ran up to him and threw my arms around him. “Dad, I love you,” I whispered.

“I know,” he said simply, while he returned my hug. “I love you too.”

I sat up-right in my bed, in my first apartment. It had been a dream. Yet, it was more than that. Because I suddenly felt a sense of calm and closure that I hadn’t felt before. There was more to that “dream” than met the eye. I found facing things easier that day. Just as my friend had said, he knew. Now I knew too. But it wouldn’t be the last time he would visit me in dreams.

Bread and Roses

Memories just kind of rest somewhere in our minds and then somehow, some day they surface. It’s almost like you forgot about it, but really you just haven’t thought about it. Where it has been exactly is a mystery. The human mind fascinates me.

Today I took a day off work for the purpose of devoting some time to my writing. I have an essay due for class. I submitted a query, wrote a piece that now needs editing, worked on another new piece, did some research, and enjoyed the peace and quiet of home. I also went to the gym and when I came back began doing laundry. Suddenly I was reminded of my college years. Coming back from class, throwing laundry into a machine and letting it swish around the machine while I did some work, similar to my day.

Did I miss that life? To some extent. And memories of college (the good one, not the bad one) started to come. Bryn Mawr, as I have said before, is like a giant sorority. The school hymn is in Greek, as is a special cheer we have. The school is steeped in traditions that I can’t explain, partly because it’s hard to explain to people who don’t experience it (sort of like blogging) and partly because I literally can’t.

Our traditions involve singing a lot. It’s something I sure was started in the 1800’s and continued through the years. It’s still done. Among our many songs was “Bread and Roses” written at the turn of the century during textile worker strikes. I never gave the song too much thought until today. So I looked it up, just to remember the words.

“Hearts starve as well as bodies. Give us bread, but give us roses.” A reminder that for all the logical things we need and strive for, we also need beauty. For all the practical things we work towards—shelter, food, clothes—we also need to provide for our souls—beauty, truth, love. Could it be that I was supposed to remember this today, for some reason? Whether it was by chance or something greater, I will take it with me and remember to feed all the aspects of my life to truly make it full.

No Laughing Matter

I’m not exactly sure where the idea came from. Whose idea was it to slap some paint on your face, a curly wig and big red nose to try to get people to laugh. Not having done any research, I would guess it derives from the old court jesters, although where they came from I once again am uncertain. Yet clowns are here and here to stay. But really, is it funny?

Most people I know are scared of clowns. It’s a fear that stems from childhood. So, while one might want to blame Stephen King for the terror-fest that is It, I would say we can’t. Because if a three or four year old is being allowed to watch a movie like that, well they have bigger problems on their hands than clowns. I will however blame him for an intense fear of abandoned ski lodges in the dead (get it?) of winter, and as a writer I shall be wary of anyone who claims to be my “number one fan.”

I myself was never scared of clowns; I was mostly indifferent to them. But now that I stop and think about it, it is kind of creepy. My friend E. (who is having her own baby in July) is scared of clowns. When she was three of four, her father dressed up as a clown for her birthday party. E. took one look at her father and began screaming and crying in terror. Her poor dad had to watch his own daughter fear him. No more clowns for E.

I know lots of people who were just as scared of clowns as E was; and who still are. Which makes me say the jack-in-the-box is the scariest toy ever invented. Let’s take a clown, which many people fear, and put it in a toy where it jumps out at you unexpectedly thereby scaring the bejeezus out of people. Freak-y.

Last weekend, I was a dinner with Best Friend and her parents at a pub across the street from my building. As we were finishing dinner, an entire troop of clowns walked in. Best Friend and I caught eyes, which were widening. We left as the clowns ordered beers. Great, drunken clowns in close proximity to a kitchen full of knives. I was certain one of us would have nightmares that night, but luckily we didn’t.

“I was told there would be no clowns. Nothing’s scarier than a clown.” ~Carrie Bradshaw, Sex and the City

Losing My Religion

Because coming clean last week just felt so damn good, and because I told you it was coming, here it is. But first, a disclaimer: this is completely and totally, 100% about my beliefs. I do not judge others’ beliefs. If you believe something I don’t, more power to you. I am happy you have found faith, because I am lacking some, and that’s difficult. Now, on with the show…

Of late, I’ve had some spiritual confusion; perhaps “crisis” was a bit extreme. Here is the Cliff’s Notes (ironically, since Mr. S. taught me to loathe them) version of me and faith.

I was raised Catholic. While my mother converted to Catholicism at marriage, my father was a lifer. He was what one might call über-Catholic. I went to Catholic school where I had religion crammed down my throat, and I bought into it. Said school apparently did not get the memo on Vatican II. I grew up in constant fear of being a bad person and thus burning in hell. It seemed hell was inevitable, because the message I took from Catholicism was “you’ll never be good enough for God.”

In high school I began to rethink the Catholic Church, initially because I did not like the way they treated women. By college I was extremely distanced from it all. And post-college I stopped calling myself Catholic; I stopped going to Mass. I think I decided that if God was my father’s version, I didn’t want to have anything to do with it. To this day I tend to find myself more disgusted with the Catholic church than anything. I went to Lutheran churches and Methodist ones a few times. I researched different sects of Protestantism. Overall though, I was content to simply call myself a Christian and if I ever needed to get more specific, I would cross that proverbial bridge when I came to it.

Over Christmas, I was having trouble finding my spirit. I realized something …I don’t know if I believe in Jesus as a savior, or how important it is. Christmas, to some extent, lost its meaning, so I lost my spirit. I went to mass with my family it was odd. I felt like a stranger, yet not. I knew what they were doing and saying, and why, but the meaning was gone.

Around that time, I took a test at Beliefnet. Basically it asks what you believe about all sorts of things—God, incarnations of God, moral issues, the after life, political issues—and asks you to rate their importance. So for example you might end up answering that you believe in one, incorporeal God and that is of high importance, etc…I have taken the test multiple times in the last few months. It has told me that the religion with the most in common with my beliefs and feelings is…Reform Judaism.

I have always had some connection to Judaism, even as a Christian. When I was eight or nine, I remember asking my dad, outside the Catholic school no less, what was different about Jewish people. I have always seen Christianity as an extension of Judaism. Jesus was a Jew. The Christian Last Supper was a seder supper. First five books of the Old Testament? The Torah. I have always been curious. I could more than like be happy being Jewish.

So now I find myself at a crossroads. I could seriously consider converting. But can I turn my back on my roots? Can I be a different religion than my family? And that little girl in the plaid uniform being reared on a fear of damnation still worries: what if they were right? Then another part of me wonders: maybe I should just believe what I believe and not worry about a religious label or affiliation. Overall, I don’t want to think about it, cause I feel so confused. I guess in life, and in spirituality, there just aren’t always clear-cut answers.