Admittedly, I am about as emotionally available as a grapefruit. I always thought I was a super emotional person, capable of emotionally connecting to people (family, friends, partners, children) without any problem. Remarkably, it's taken me until my mid-thirties (ew, am I really already in my mid-thirties?) to realize that all these years, I haven't been connecting. Instead, I've been approaching my emotions like I do my research. It's all very analytical (and duh? the antithesis of emotional). I have been very astute about knowing why it is that I don't connect. I can say the words matter-of-factly, like I would read off a recipe for chocolate chip cookies. "Here are all the ingredients that added together make my emotional doors hermetically sealed." And I thought that by saying those words, it made me an emotional genius.

Uh...nope. I've been identifying the symptoms (over and over) for years, but I only now am seeing that I need to be taking the medicine (read: actually doing anything about the symptoms).

I haven't been running around giving hugs to the people I should be, or saying -gulp- the L word. I haven't been holding hands. I haven't been crying (when I really wanted to be) during the part of American Idol when they show the big, masculine dad in tears because he is so proud of his child.

Why? Well, yeah, that's the part I could write two thousand blog entries about. But the bottom line is that I've been...dare I say it...scared. Because I so much wanted to emotionally connect, and not be let down, and I was, and I don't want to be vulnerable (and etc etc, blah blah in my childhood, yadda yadda yadda), I shut it off, that ability to let myself feel and appear weak. (Irony is so fantastic, isn't it?)

So, with a not-so-sudden realization that the title to my autobiography should be changed from "I'm so Intuitive" to "Who the Fuck Cares If You're Intuitive If You Just Wind Up Alienating Everyone?", I decided last night to ***attempt*** to move from the theoretical to the actual.

So, what did I do?
I looked at my baby. The 6 month old. The one who was looking back at me. We were having our post-work nursing session, and rather than trying to catch up on my New Yorkers, or talk to S about the schedule for the rest of the week, I just stopped and looked.

And you know what I saw? That Z is absolutely hilarious! I mean, it's not that I haven't looked at him ever in the last 6 months, it's just that I was not really seeing him. I've been busying myself with nap and feeding and playing and everything schedules and that was how I was being MOM. But it occurred to me yesterday that his chubby thighs aren't going to be chubby thighs much longer and he's not going to want to be all snuggled up with me forever, so I better damn well hold him and love him and see him and make squishy faces at him NOW. AND GODDAMNIT, I BETTER STOP BEING ANALYTICAL AND START LETTING THEM SEE ME CRY WHEN I WATCH THE PROUTY RIDERS GO PAST MY HOUSE BECAUSE IT MOVED ME TO SEE 70-YEAR-OLD, OUT OF SHAPE WOMEN CYCLING UP THE HILLS BECAUSE IF THEY COULD BEAT CANCER THEY COULD CERTAINLY BEAT A LITTLE CLIMBING ONCE A YEAR.

This shit ain't easy. And after publishing this post I'm instantly going to regret it. But at least know I'll never regret the time I spent looking at Z.