Intense, or, Another Damn Facebook List

There's a LOT of alone time spent when you are injured, a lot of alone time and describing pain to people who asked after your health (most politely, some with genuine concern--I can tell which people feel like which to me).

None of this time is spent feeling beautiful.

I have one 3/4ths coordinated left hand and three good fingers on my right that can do a good majority of my tasks. Application of things requiring a graceful or careful hand isn't possible yet. Shampoo still comes out too fast. Q-tips are clumsy. Brushing my teeth is surely done in a poor process. Inserting a tampon is one of those things I just set my jaw and force in right-handed, pain be damned. Even washing my hands is a joke because the left hand gets clean and the right hand just drags around next to it.

I'm at the awkward stage, you might say.

Also, men shrink from me. They see the brace and run. I am still losing weight (dunno why...I'm not running) and the physical therapy for my back is tightening up the legs even more, but the comments and compliments on my ass are gone--AAAAACK! She's got a brace on her right hand! She's dying! She's diseased! So alone turns into the ugly girl I felt like in the Midwest. Alone is the one who used to hide in clothes two sizes too big so that no one would see her.

Gives me lots of time to think.

Here's the list I get from thinking. In this one my mom is tagged...poor thing, she didn't get to know "in sickness and in health" either.

What I Look For In The Love of My Life

• One who can't take his eyes off my body but stays for my laugh
• One who knows the Oscar Wao reference I've made on my Facebook status every weeknight this week
• One who laughs at Christopher Guest movies
• One who proposes to me at a broadcast of "A Prairie Home Companion," at the middle part where people bring their messages to the stage for Garrison to read
• One who tries to please me in bed. OFTEN.
• One who doesn't care if the world is going to Kindles or staying on paper
• One who doesn't have a food pet peeve
• One who graces me with good and yet simple surprises
• One who's not afraid of me--in any mood
• One who doesn't try to convince me that I'm crazy and therefore that my thoughts are worthless in their craziness
• One who is curious
• One who thinks the whole world is great, not just one place
• One who can show me he loves me and loves looking foolish showing me
• One who can be with me in sickness and in health, for richer and poorer...

Sure, I know. He doesn't exist. He's a figment of my romantic imagination. I'm setting the bar too high.

But reader, you're not here. So my list can be anything I want it to be. And since I'm alone, all of it is possible.