In my room

Sunday night I shut off the light and unerringly found my way to the bed. Even with the lights off, I knew exactly what my childhood bedroom looked like.

The first bed in that room was one that my dad and grandfather built just for me. Tall and white, with primary colored accents (for my feminist mom), it was mine until I was 8 and it was time to get a new one so my sister could sleep in mine. It was the daybed I chose then, white with bronze trim, that I curled into that night as I thought about my bedroom.

The walls were yellow until 10 years ago. It would probably surprise some people to find out that I painted my room pink at 16, when most people were painting their rooms to get away from pink. I remember picking the wallpaper that covers two of the walls—spending hot summer afternoons in the air-conditioned cool of the paint store, pouring over many books of wallpaper samples, doing my best to picture each sample in my room. I finally settled on a pattern that I continue to think of as casual contemporary—abstract flowers that pick up the pink on the facing walls.

I know I’m spoiled. Most of my friends discovered their rooms had been taken over for sewing or guests when they returned home for their first visit after starting college. My best friend’s room has already been redecorated once in her absence. Four years after I moved into my own place for the first time, somehow I still expected that space would always be mine.

Laying in that bed, I started to cry as I looked ahead to my job on Monday—going through my books, papers and clothes that I’ve left in that room. To also help make room for my sister, my bed was going to be taken apart so that it could start a new life as the guest bed at my house. After I finished mourning the upcoming changes, I rolled over and burrowed my face into the soft dry flannel under my cheek. I reached out and curled one finger around the frame of the bed before I drifted off to sleep, hoping to tether myself in the moment and steel myself against the upcoming changes.

Online dating

PJ and I were having a very enjoyable conversation last week, when he asked me if we could talk about our relationships--or was that too weird? He caught me completely off-guard, so I stalled for a moment, and then said, "Sure, it will be awkward, but if we're going to be friends, it would be easier if there weren't off-limit topics." Turns out he's single now. Kind of a relief actually--I was afraid he was bringing it up because he wanted to talk about his girlfriend.

He told me that one of his friends discovered that she couldn't say she was a rabbinical student in her online dating profile because it attracted men who were looking for therapists, not girlfriends. "You mean on JDate?" I interjected. "Yeah," he said, surprised that I knew about the popular Jewish online dating site. "I say I'm a graduate student on my profile. Then I tell them I'm a rabbinical student in our first contact."

I am amused by the irony that rabbinical students, a group I would imagine to be hyper-moral, are keeping truth about themselves from potential dates. I do appreciate that they are keeping an aspect of their lives private for their own safety. I have at least one other friend who also struggles with what information to share, and when, in the online dating process. And it is much like the process I go through as I prepare my blog entries--what information should I reveal?

I never intended for this to happen.

Just a disclaimer to start this off: I never intended for this to happen.  Sure I've slowly become wrapped up in the blog world--spending way too much time reading random blogs when I should be doing more productive things--but I thought I would just let the idea of my blog remain an idea.  But then I wanted to post a comment to my best friend's blog and *poof* here I am.  Don't expect too much yet, ok?