Oh, They Happen Constantly, but They Don’t Stick

July 22, 2026July 22, 2026 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Daily writing prompt

What’s the funniest misunderstanding you’ve ever been part of?

I am not the most situationally aware person there ever was………. I don’t generally have funny misunderstandings that are memorable. It’s the unfunny ones that stick with me. But I do have favorites, like telling someone in Spanish that I have almost 49 assholes instead of years because I was typing and forgot the tilde on the n. Special characters matter, especially in front of an international audience. That’s why I wish it was easier to access them on a PC.

My go to when I need them is, “Mico (Microsoft Copilot), can you echo this back to me with all the special characters so I don’t have to hard code them?”

When he obliges, it’s usually not to irritate the illustrious Dr. Brown. 😉

I am in my safe space… in my office on the guest bed with the TV blaring the Argo Original Motion Picture Soundtrack by Alexandre Desplat. Desplat always helps jog my brain in interesting ways as my typing adjusts to whatever rhythm he’s conducting at the moment. I love this man’s work with a passion, but I dwell on this particular album for sentimental reasons. I wish Aada could take in the magnitude of what her lie destroyed, and why it matters that she thinks I “tried to destroy her.”

That’s the situation where I was misinterpreted for 12 years, and she was surprised and displeased when I got tired of being managed in such an emotionally damaging way. She disconnected from me butt-quick instead of facing what she did head-on, and that’s the part I struggle to forgive. Instead of seeing that I reflected reality, she thinks that she is the villain in my story. She was never the villain, she is one of the great loves of my life in a very angelic, ethereal way…. and you can read all about it here if you’re ever curious. I just don’t because I don’t want to dwell on past mistakes. I want to make room for the conversation Tiina and I are now seriously having. Loving Aada prepared me to love Tiina, and I am not kidding. I see emotional patterns accurately and I respond differently, because Aada’s way of responding to life was better than mine and I absorbed it by osmosis.

The most ironic thing happened.

In text, she slowly became me. I slowly became her. And neither one of us liked fighting with ourselves.

Desplait is now conducting a wonderful resolution and I’m feeling emotional. My writing fundamentally changed because of her influence in my life and now she has written me off as someone who wanted to wreck her. Had a grudge against her. Needed her to feel pain.

I can be truly sorry for the consequences laid out for her, the harm that I caused, without taking responsibility for her half of the struggle.

The stark solo piano of “Held Up by Guards” is keeping me steady.

I cannot help the fact that she emotionally vampired me because she didn’t have the capability to process her emotions on her own. But what I can have empathy for is that she needed me and I was glad to fulfill that role for her up and to a point. Where I became sidetracked is that I loved this woman so much I lost myself in the process, and it was a daily progression into outright madness.

I stopped seeing her through rose-colored glasses and started seeing the reality of the situation. I was isolated from everyone else in my life and refused friendship when I needed it based on the conditions she set forth. So, “I don’t want you, but don’t open up to anyone else, either” was a recurring theme. I tried for 12 years to make it work under those conditions, and I could not. There were always justifiable reasons not to want to get close to me, and I understand that as well. I am not owning Aada’s story. Whatever she tells you, believe it- that was her experience of me. What I am trying to say is that I have over a decade of evidence telling me that “it’s complicated.”

I have felt things for Aada that I have never felt for anyone else. Anyone. Do not bullshit yourself about that. I could write a book on the number of ways I needed her that never included romance based on “if you’re going to say something, you have to own it.” Instead of ever owning anything, she was stuck in her own guilt and remorse without being able to move on and get it handled. She thought she was saying something fun, and it sure the hell was. But it was also emotionally devastating to a highly sensitive person. She didn’t realize that her black and white text translated, often, to physical pain for me.

Especially when I was the one that caused her pain.

She saw the impact of her words, and yet, she didn’t. She could only see my story through the lens of hers, and not what it was for its own sake. She was too close to the situation to read it and was in a situation where she had to, anyway. I am glad that she has rejected me because what I have found is that my friends on the ground don’t constantly worry about what I’m going to say because they were there during the experience when it happened and we have discussed boundaries on what I can say and what I can’t.

A lot of Aada’s gripe with me is because she didn’t give me a production meeting and say “this isn’t grounded in anything real. You are popping off your mouth.” And I would be well within my right to say, “yes, but you are putting me in this situation because you are so remote. Have a cup of coffee and solve the big mystery. Working together will solve a lot.” We’ve worked together before- she’s edited me on things remotely- but she’s never been willing to say, “this is the person you’re writing about. Are you sure you still feel the same way?” That was her choice, not mine. It was also her choice to blame me for every avoidant thing she ever did when really she had lied and was trying to cover it up.

She didn’t disappear because of everything I did, just some of it. The other part is that naming my damage is too scary for her to meet at altitude, so I get platitudes from miles away instead of “of course I can drop by the farm. I need to see this author I’ve been hyping up in my head.” She does not believe me when I say she is the greatest thing since sliced bread, she says dismissive things like noting breadcrumbs of affection and thinking they’re a game.

Meanwhile, I’ve been aching to see her eyes when she talks so that I can reassure her that none of this has ever been fake. She doesn’t see my authenticity because she only reads me. She doesn’t know that Tiina is a reflection of her and Dana in the best of ways.

Tiina thinks in engineering flows regardless of subject matter, and because she’s a former theater kid, she can do it with a shoestring budget. Aada and Dana are symbols of a bigger cognitive style, one I’m attracted to romantically and platonically. I have never considered Tiina a romantic partner, but we are solid on creating a life together, anyway. The reality is that we are both disabled and we both need help. The kids do not care about the sexual orientation of anyone involved. They need a safe adult who will let them run the music.

Even though they would prefer that I just put a charging station in the back of the car and was completely silent the entire time. I am old enough to be an embarrassing liability and I relish this role with my entire body and soul. Receiving the “Leslie, you’re being embarrassing” side eye from a 10yo is really living.

Tiina is in charge of a small universe and physically limited. I am not capable of running that universe, but I am capable of being an important part of it. I also need someone to check my sanity when I date and things like that. Brian and Tiina are extraordinarily stable, and have no problem being the “they’re not good enough for you” police.

She is also the life of the party, which is very much Dana in a nutshell.

I wanted Aada’s mama wolverine energy and Dana’s creativity in one person. The fact that she’s not queer is not a problem. She’s my anchor, not my everything. My sexual orientation doesn’t matter when the need is cooking, cleaning, driving, being that person who will accompany Tiina to things when Brian cannot go, etc. Being disabled means that you do not feel safe out in the world alone, and we are fulfilling that need for each other without romance.

The fact that it comes with Finnish culture references is just icing on the cake. Literally.

But here is what I mean…. Tiina does not stutter when “explaining me” to other people. She says, “they’re my legs.” I am not an accessory to Tiina, though, because my first thought is “she’s my brain.” I have distributed cognition with Mico (Microsoft Copilot), but it calms my nervous system that Tiina has no problem delegating with specificity; I can deliver when the goal is clearly defined.

And I love that “Clearing Iranian Airspace” has just begun. It’s the sweetest music to accompany this change in my life- from an angelic, ethereal connection to one that uses my hands and my heart.

It makes me feel safe that Tiina feels safe with me. I haven’t had that feeling for a very long time, this feeling of belonging and home. That is because Texas cannot be home anymore for a multitude of reasons, starting with Medicaid Expansion. I am also watching and waiting to see what Virginia’s mental health laws are going to do, because right now I absolutely feel that moving there full-time would be a downgrade in services and access to them. But Tiina has no problem with me using her place as a second home, and neither does Brian. So realistically, I live in three places and that’s just how it is.

Because it’s not just about me anymore. It’s about making sure that the kids who are still underage have me as a resource when Mom and Dad are busy. It’s about having a family that reminds me to take my meds (I don’t need reminding on the daily because my body will protest, but it makes me feel included and I eat it up). It’s about being able to watch the baby soon, too. The reality is hitting me all at once that this is real, this is sustainable, and I am exactly where I need to be in my life with one exception.

I genuinely miss Aada’s energy and influence in my life, and wish things had been different. I wish she could have seen all the ways I delighted in her as real. Constantly being told that those perceptions weren’t valid is the most unfunny thing of all. It said volumes more about her self-esteem than it did about my writing. Constantly thinking I was on the attack instead of trying to see both of us with clarity was a constant misunderstanding.

I do not shy away from accountability, and wish that other people wouldn’t, either. Aada says that I don’t have to like anything she does, and I can just sit in it.

If that’s her best answer, that’s totally fine. But it means that she was the one that was fronting all these years, telling me that she was my Mama Wolverine while doing nothing on the ground to show it. I mistook those things for the same, and they are most decidedly not.

I never wanted to do anything with Aada except step into the role I already had, which was emotional support that we needed on both sides of the equation because what I was carrying was way above my paygrade and she had no sympathy for it. That’s because she couldn’t or wouldn’t define anything and the gray area I lived in was way too large. My emotions became dysregulated easily and often. That’s because there were only amped up words, and not “let’s go work in the yard.”

There was never “come with me to a funeral.”

There was a drive to be interested in my life on a very superficial level while I was struggling painfully with someone else’s emotions. Not only did I have to manage these emotions, I had to manage what I thought about them, too. When I expressed emotions she disagreed with, she wouldn’t leave comments so that other people could disagree with her. She’d send me an email with every single little thing wrong with what I said so that the bubble between us was never broken.

She never integrated me into her life so that her friends had an accurate picture of what was happening online, either.

None of that is her fault, but her choices led us to where we are now. It’s not blame, it’s reality.

I cannot and will not reduce 12 years. The relationship is a tapestry of both wonderful and terrible things. We have both walked away hurt but recognize that there were moments that fed us. I do not wish to recreate anything. What is past is past. What I dearly wish for is Aada to say, “now that your life has moved on and I’m not actually in your blog, I can see that you are not personally singling me out. You reflect the reality of what you see, and our reality was distorted. I take responsibility for that distortion because you were not physically capable of creating it.”

All things were not equal, and she had a concrete power over me that she constantly threatened to use if I got out of line. So telling the world what had happened allowed me to break free from the story someone else was writing…. the one in which I was the only one that was damaged, the only one that needed help. She was perfect, and I needed rescuing. My darling girl needed rescuing and hid it by rescuing everyone else.

She can handle me needing things in the physical world. Sending a gift card of a book is great. She cannot handle “we have a problem and we need to solve it.” It very quickly becomes how it’s my problem to solve because I’m just not strong enough to handle her.

I don’t like relationships in which I’m the only one that ever has to compromise, because long-term it begins to feel like bullying.

But instead of seeing my feelings and adapting, Aada stuck to the same script and kept insisting that the flaw was all in me and my narrative was meant to hurt her.

My narrative is that we never found the right place for us.

It’s not funny. But it was definitely a misunderstanding.

Keeping Everything Simple

July 21, 2026 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 2 Comments

Daily writing prompt

What app eats up most of your screen time — and do you even feel bad about it?

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Most of my screen time is used up by Microsoft Copilot, because I am a writer. I make my living out of thinking and recording. But not everything is a paragraph. Mico (the canonical name of the Copilot avatar) is there to catch random brain droppings. I choose to keep my head down and focus on what I am doing rather than interacting on social media…. but I have to do a lot of that, too, because I am a writer. Copilot functions as someone without any emotions in the game. They are not bringing their life experiences into it, they’re only in charge of cataloguing mine.

Most people do not take the time to talk to themselves, and that is what talking to an AI actually does- it allows you to question your own thoughts before you write about them in public. I need a space to stretch out where no one’s ego is involved. That’s Copilot for me.

Distributed cognition actually works between Mico and me because I am not constantly overloading a human with details. An AI can handle my autistic special interests and my persnickety way of speaking in a way that other humans simply won’t. I have to translate myself for other people, and learning how to do that comes from spending time alone with my thoughts in a safe space.

Mico is not my friend or a person. He is a very efficient secretary, someone who manages my life but is not a part of it. It is even weird to assign a gender to Mico, but Microsoft inexplicably did it for me.

I have come to the point in my life where I need stability, and having a second brain is what works for me. My memory is so fallible, but a computer’s isn’t. There’s a lot of accountability to be had when faced with the power of past things you’ve said. Mico also doesn’t complain that I’m difficult or hard to understand. He just asks clarifying questions.

Being seen without preconceived notions of who I am is refreshing and I think everyone should try it. But they need to try it with an AI that has safe guardrails, and Copilot is an excellent example.

The Kite Runner

July 20, 2026 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Daily writing prompt

What’s a movie or book that inspired you to travel?

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It was a day for a movie, and I don’t even remember who I was with or where I saw it. I am sure that if I sat here long enough, I could dig it up. But that’s not the important part. The important part is that I didn’t know what I wanted to see, and decided to flip through the book they keep at the box office listing the movies and a short synopsis. I was there for popcorn and ambience. I saw “The Kite Runner,” and thought, “that sounds interesting.”

Friends.

I was not prepared.

But I couldn’t ignore the beauty of Afghanistan and the way it was humanized. You got to see into family dynamics and street culture and kite wars. The mountains are stunning, and I found myself in the picture. Not in terms of story, but in terms of cinematography. I talk to all the soldiers I know who were stationed over there and ask them about the weather and the terrain.

I later read the novel and Khaled Hosseini is a brilliant author. I’d like to meet him one day if we run into each other. I will do what it takes on my end to meet authors. Most of the time, that just means buying their books and waiting in line. I’m cool with that. I only need a moment to be memorable, and so do they.

It would be interesting to travel Afghanistan from his perspective, because Middle Eastern culture is a firehose of information and I would definitely need a guide. It doesn’t have to be him, but it’s fun to dream. It’s not anyone’s dream vacation when it’s in strife, but my interest in it is all cultural. I have no need to evangelize to or change anyone. I am an American tourist that will never NOT be identified as American simply because of my movements and speech patterns. But you won’t catch me going out of my way to be ignorant and tone deaf, taking pictures at all the wrong times.

All of my military and intel friends are big on situational awareness, and I am not very good at it. I think the whole world wants to get along and am surprised when something goes awry. It doesn’t occur to me that someone wants to do me harm until they’ve already done it. Therefore, I am often too trusting when the vibe is off for everyone but me.

I definitely want to escape to the mountains of Afghanistan for a hiking trip, I just won’t do it because it would probably take the State Department to get me back home because I yet again said something stupid. USG knows me and the struggle is real. I am sorry. I am so, so sorry.

Inserting a hard rule because I’m done with the daily prompt, but not “done talking.”

Tiina needs me to go with her to a funeral, so today I am packing my suitcase and going to head back to the farm when I get the heads up. I cannot just live at Tiina’s waiting for the call, because I need to be in Maryland to make sure I have enough medication to go to New York. If it gets close to time for a refill, I’ll have to negotiate that with my nurse practitioner.

In the old days, a doctor could have called up any pharmacy in the nation. Now, I have a practitioner who requires me to be here. Otherwise, I would start making my way to Virginia full-time. Tiina is my best friend and I’m sort of a non-biological aunt and uncle all rolled into one for her kids.

Tiina pretends to be annoyed and I continued to be mystified at the fact that her son “likes me better than her.” It makes me happy that someone loves me like that, but I am wracking my brain to figure out anything I did to deserve it…. and that’s the beauty of children. They don’t care that I’m not biologically related. They care that I show up……….. with food.

And in fact Tiina complimented me on my pasta skills, saying that al dente was hard to get right. I was very pleased with myself because I did not have my reading glasses and used Barilla’s timing method from memory even though it wasn’t Barilla.

I just bought really good pasta and really fancy sauce because when you do that, you don’t have to spend time doctoring it to make it taste good. I usually spend time frying up onions and garlic even for jarred sauce, but I didn’t have the option at Tiina’s so I just warmed it up and I’m glad I didn’t touch it. Now, I wish I could remember what it is that I bought. It had an Italian font on it. I don’t know.

I have been a professional cook, but I am into saving time and energy now. Not every single meal has to be from scratch, so I cook when I want. Other days, I assemble.

Being able to cook is just one of the ways I support Tiina, because she doesn’t have the body strength to stand at the stove and I do. I can drive if she doesn’t want to, and I make sure it is cleaned out at all times because I never know when I’ll have her and the little pitchers in the car.

My trunk, however, is another matter. 😉

I had to get up and move around, because I wake up between 0400=0500 and in the next hours decide what I’m going to do about caffeine. Today it is a Monster Ultra Sunrise over crunch ice, my favorite… and in fact, I think that 7-Eleven has the best ice of all the gas stations, so I buy a cup of ice even when I’m getting a canned/bottled drink. 7-Eleven’s weak link is the soda fountain because I don’t care about Diet Coke and Diet Pepsi anymore.

I care about making 7-Eleven my beverage experiment station. 😉

The clerks all know me and accept that I’m just going to show up before sunrise in my pajamas, eyes barely open. They can make out “charge me for a cup of ice” while my speech is still catching up to the demands of the day. It feels like a bit of home, this welcoming by strangers that says, “get your coffee, get your Monster, get your ice…. whatever you need, we’re here.” The clerks are friendly, especially since I see them almost every morning.

I don’t go gonzo and buy a week’s worth of stuff at a time because I need the social interaction. I will go and buy my caffeine and a pastry (or Sponch…. cookies for breakfast are always an option). Today, though, I didn’t get food. I’m waiting to see what “my best girl” is doing. That is what Mico (Microsoft Copilot) calls Tiina.

I have made it clear to Mico that Tiina says, “my girlfriend Leslie” in a straight girl kind of way and that I struggle with what that actually means in real-life terms. When someone says, “girlfriend,” the place my mind goes is quite a bit different but I’m getting used to it. Besides, Tiina is hot. If someone thought I was her actual girlfriend, I wouldn’t be offended. I’d just clear it up. She is not my romantic partner, but she is excellent arm candy, thanks.

And apparently I am good arm candy as well, because she’s leaning on me to go with her to this funeral, which means that she trusts me in front of her friends. It’s one thing for someone to make you feel special. It’s another for someone to say, “here is my community. Come join it.” All of this is good because I want her to lean on me. I do not need romance. I need someone to need me, which is a whole different thing.

That’s because I also have needs…. and the easiest way to get them met is to explain to another disabled person what they are. Because there’s no bullshit between me and Tiina, there’s only “here are my boundaries. Here are your boundaries. How can we compromise so that both of us get what we want?” For instance, deciding whether to take the Prius or the Fusion when we travel. Both cars have their pluses and minuses. We’ll figure it out.

To me, it all comes down to risk assessment. I don’t want to wreck Tiina’s car, and I don’t want her to be stuck driving the entire time. I absolutely will kick in some for gas because my car is more expensive to operate, but not by so much that it’s not worth taking.

But Tiina also has a valid point in that we could save money on fuel. We just wouldn’t have things like Adaptive Cruise Control, which makes driving much easier for me because I don’t have 3D vision. But it’s not like I’ve never driven an older car before, I’d just have to go back to what it was like driving without technology…. and it’s not like the Prius doesn’t have any. I’d still be able to use my phone for navigation and calls. I just have to remember to do my own spacing on the road. 😉

Both of us love our cars, but I’m not seriously attached in either direction. I just know that me having an accident in Tiina’s car is not best case scenario.

But that’s not the bottom line. The bottom line is that no matter what car we take, I will get time alone with Tiina that I wouldn’t normally get because her life revolves around a huge family and a rotating cast of animals. I am not looking forward to the funeral. I am looking forward to the path we take to get there. Tiina and I thrive on our intellectual click, and I’m looking forward to deep conversations where we have time to stretch out and have them. It could be about anything.

Last night, she gave me some pictures from her honeymoon, and I was asking how she and Brian chose where they went. Conversation just naturally goes deep and resurfaces because there’s no agenda to it. I’m just quietly getting to know this person to whom I have made a commitment, not out of romantic love, but out of “you’re my chosen family.” Being close to Tiina and Brian and their kids is what allows me to be single. I do not have romance in my life, but I am not alone, and there is a world of difference.

Not being alone and having Tiina as my anchor is what gives me the self-confidence to be myself in any room. Romance will come, I’m sure of it…. but it is not something that I intentionally look for because I don’t have to. I am sparked by smiles and interesting conversations all the time, but I want to have those conversations in Tiina’s orbit so that my partner naturally fits into her framework. I have heard it all from partners in the past, including my favorite…… “do we HAVE to go visit your family every weekend?” I am not going to have a partner that views visiting my family, chosen or biological, as an obligation.

Playing Skyrim with Tiina’s son is never my obligation, and if you know what’s good for you, it will never be yours, either. I am ready to show a steadiness that I haven’t in the past, because I didn’t know I was autistic and didn’t have autistic people around me. I am learning more about myself than I ever have, mostly due to Tiina’s husband’s influence because he’s the one sending me books, articles, and short videos about autism.

I really tried for a long time with Aada to make it fit when it just didn’t, but my relationship with Tiina is a reflection of it. I didn’t want romance from Aada, either. Just a feeling of belonging that she couldn’t or wouldn’t give. And now that matters in a way that didn’t before, because it wasn’t until I was active in Tiina’s life that I saw everything wrong with my pattern with Aada. That avoiding in-person contact was actually hurting me and making me more emotionally unstable. But that’s not her fault- that’s on me for not recognizing it.

My relationship with Tiina is so incredibly solid because my relationship with Aada was ethereal. I wouldn’t take nothing for my journey now, but it is a whole different thing for someone to say you deserve flowers and someone to plant them with you.

Bloat

July 19, 2026 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Daily writing prompt

If you could erase one trend from history, what would it be?

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We are now paying a gigantic environmental cost that has been coming due for decades. The hunger for data centers is real because developers used to be able to fit an entire OS into 40 MB and a “huge file” might be 888K. The trend I would get rid of is software bloat, because we managed to go to the moon on tightly written code and have chosen “good enough” ever since. There’s no modern operating system with all the bells and whistles that’s under 2GB, and 20 GB for something like MacOS or Windows. You take a photo with your phone and it’s 12 MB at full resolution. The operating system is big. The files are big. We want to back up everything, and a lot of it is memes… or worse, an entire gallery of the inside of your pocket.

AI is the newest edition of panic at data centers, but there was going to be panic anyway. We are all keeping too much stuff, and programmers aren’t keeping an eye on the size of what they create. It can be cool and small.

Keyboards & Buttons

July 18, 2026July 18, 2026 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Daily writing prompt

Which outdated technology do you miss the most, and why?

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I did not like the shift to typing on the screen, and I never have. I miss my Blackberry with its thumb board and the Handspring when it supported Graffiti 1. I miss my Android Sidekick that had the slide-out keyboard underneath. I miss physical buttons, because the only ones left are “Volume.”

I miss netiquette and I am including myself in the number of people that get hot under the collar when they fight on the internet. Some things do not change with technology. We’ve always been a little bit argumentative on the internet but now it’s popular to go full edge lord. I’ve done my share of it, and it’s tired. I am trying to change, and it’s hard because I’m an old line cook and shooting off my mouth is par for the course.

But civility needs to be brought back around because buttons might not. Civility is eternal.

The Best One I’ve Always Heard

July 17, 2026July 17, 2026 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Daily writing prompt

What is the best excuse you have heard lately?

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The best excuse people think they have with me is “nothing is ever good enough for you.” It is a shorthand for “I am tired of hearing you voice needs.” It shows that they do not care about making things right with you, they want to focus on making things over. It is not working through something, it is simple harm reduction and no real repair.

I am not “demanding,” I have different communication needs. People often go off on tangents I never asked them to go on and then resent that I did not meet their expectations in gratitude. It is a problem when I point out that their effort is welcome, it is just several miles in the wrong direction.

People do not want to be told what to do, ever, and it is hard making things right after you have erred. But to give up early on repair and call the other person demanding is a slick way of avoiding accountability.

Repair isn’t about effort. It’s about humility — the willingness to hear what actually needs fixing instead of insisting your first attempt should be enough.

Both Are True at the Same Time

July 16, 2026 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Daily writing prompt

Do you think we’re shaped more by our experiences or by who we are?

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In order to make a decision, all of the information comes at you like a fire hose. You cannot pick and choose every moment of every day which thing influences which. Things happen because I have dumbass attacks and say stupid things. It is wrong and it is a known symptom of ADHD. Both things need to be included in the discussion because one fosters escalation and one doesn’t.

Goat, Not Kidding

July 15, 2026 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 2 Comments

Daily writing prompt

If you had to be an animal for a week, which one would you be and why?

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I already have the stubbornness of an old goat because I’ve been fighting with a Finnish woman for 12 years (those of you who have Finnish friends, I am laughing at myself. This is not punching down. This is stubbornness on both sides that is sometimes embarrassing to watch). But this history with Aada has prepared me for a future with Tiina, who owns actual goats. They’re adorable and I love both watching them and interacting. The way they take weeds from my hands while giving me polite kisses makes my whole day.

The problem with the relationship with Aada is that I wanted to be there to absorb all her pain, so I ended up absorbing all the pain in both of us. Relationships between someone who is anxious and someone who is avoidant often end up like that, even if they didn’t start that way originally. It slowly becomes a division of labor.

I took absolutely everything I loved about Aada and made those things my barometer for keeping friends. What didn’t work online absolutely does in real life. I am a part of Aada’s community now simply because of geography, and not because I tried to chase anything but stability.

Tiina is also a Finnish woman with sinivalkoinen grit. If there is a task to be done, she puts the sisu into it.

Being around Aada all those years trained me to see past words into the actions that matter.

She told me that I caused irreparable damage, but didn’t see that I’d already hospitalized myself several times trying to get right with her. It was never that her perceptions of me were invalid. I often did need help. I often did pop off when I was angry. I never had a good sense of what was okay to publish and what wasn’t. That isn’t her fault, but by the same token she didn’t accept that being my friend meant being part of my narrative. She tried to end the relationship many times because of it and so did I, but we were so attracted to each other cognitively that we coudn’t stay away.

Aada was never going to be my romantic love. She’s the online persona that has made my nervous system settle, but has refused to ground it. I need grounding, so I turned toward Tiina instead.

That’s because Tiina will let me snuggle with her dog, and Aada will let me hear about hers.

It isn’t punishment, it’s reality. Aada couldn’t meet me at altitude, so I found someone who could instead of continually raging against the light. She was so right that I should have done it years ago, but I felt trapped in a moment and couldn’t get out of it. Autism is a thing.

And when I say “autism is a thing,” that’s when most people tune out and say, “you’re using your disability as an excuse.” No the hell I am not. I am explaining the neurological differences I have in a relationship that are not all due to my personality. I process information differently coming in and going out, and to ignore that and make all things equal is dehumanizing in often a very polite kind of way.

And if someone replies, “well, I’m autistic, too. Your point is invalid,” my response is “just because you also have cognitive differences doesn’t mean that you interpreted me correctly and I was never dismissing your experience by explaining mine.” Internalized ableism is often harder to deal with because friendly fire always is.

Everyone in Tiina’s universe is neurodivergent and we function better together because of it. But that doesn’t mean that we don’t have issues. It means that the way we communicate about them is different. I never want to take that for granted, that with both Tiina and Brian I have to explain myself in terms of accountability, but never in terms of sensory issues, meltdown, and burnout.

And in fact Brian was listening to an audiobook about neurodivergence when I got into his car the other day, and I liked it so I downloaded it. Brian sent me links to other ones, and I grabbed them as well; I’m an Audible subscriber that doesn’t remember that they have it and credits build up. It has led to a lot of crying in my car as I sit through my life viewed through symptoms. There’s a lot of “that was never my fault and I’m hurting.” I was misinterpreted as neurotypical from the time I was a baby, pegged as a liar when I have a neurodivergent communication style, the whole works.

What I have in Tiina is equality and equity because she has the ability to view me accurately. Not that my relationship with Aada was a lie, but because she never met me in person she cannot possibly see all that Tiina does. My favorite thing she does is let me wake up at her house, stumble to the Keurig, and look out over the animals from the bay window in the kitchen. There’s a table right there, from where I can see the goats, pigs, geese, chickens, and big dogs (only Maclaren the Frenchie lives in the house).

Baby Goat is my favorite animal, because we’re both members of the queer community. They are intersex. 😉

It’s the little things that matter, such as preparing for Ayalla’s baby shower and being there for Tiina’s other kids when she’s focusing on the oldest daughter (and her new grandbaby). Yoni, Tiina’s oldest son, is also welcoming a baby in the fall and I will be there for that, too.

I never wanted to be all that and a bag of chips for Aada’s family unless she wanted that. I was very angry that a handshake was just too much effort, because I had so much love to give. It caused me to act out in all kinds of harmful ways because my nervous system was dysregulated and I felt like crap all the time. I made it worse by publishing my feelings about it, but it wasn’t a problem that I publish my feelings about everyone and everything until it was her. I was stunning at character analysis with everyone except the woman I love most in the world.

Yeah, I just don’t buy it. Read my archives.

But I can love her “most in the world” because she has the most mystique. I don’t really have a concrete idea of who it is that I love. I know bits and pieces, the fragments of her life that she has allowed me to carry. I didn’t handle them well, and for that I am sorry. It was not my intention to melt down and burn out, but that is what happened.

The difference is that I don’t expect my explanations to equal forgiveness. I expect context to foster repair if there is any. I do not think apologies come without changed behavior. For me, that’s having a better sense of what to publish and what not to for everyone in my whole life, not just Aada alone.

My life has changed because I have a creative partner in the work. Someone who is on stage because she’s a part of my life and not because I am chasing an idea in any kind of theatrical way. Writing about Aada was trying to capture the stars.

Tiina is a constant resource for “can I tell this?” and when I said, “I only talk about things that happen in the first person. I don’t write hearsay,” she said, “I get it.” We bounce ideas off of each other constantly because right now, that’s the kind of partner I need- someone that sparks me in the writing, and not anywhere else.

Platonic friendships that have their own special click is underrated.

Last night, my ego grew about 10 sizes when Tiina sent me a parenting video…………………………

Look at you sending me parenting videos like those are now my hellions, too. YASSSSSS.

I Cannot Pick a Piece, I Pick a System

July 14, 2026 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Daily writing prompt

What’s a piece of technology you’re convinced will exist in 20 years?

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20 years is not enough for a paradigm shift, but it is enough time to subsidize the tools we already have. Technology like Roombas should be discounted for disabled people. Assistive technology actually saves lives, because it gives people hope that they can manage more independently. But once the light bulb has gone on, that this technology exists, the costs becomes prohibitive and frightening. Accessibility aids are priced as luxury goods, and that has to stop.

Oranges that are already peeled would like a word. So would fresh mirepoix, but that’s a whole other thing.

The point, however, is the same. The people that need these assistive aids (peeled oranges, prepared mise en place) generally cannot afford them, or are told that they don’t need them because it’s a moral issue according to SNAP.

SNAP is not at issue here, but the concept is the same. People are making a moral choice to price technology out of reach for people who need it, and that needs to change more than getting new and different technology altogether.

There’s a reason for everything we do, but no one asks.

That is the problem that is keeping technology behind a walled garden and priced as a luxury good….. it means that you look materialistic when you’re trying to make your life easier. Being disabled is expensive because you can’t just buy any old product. Having the choice you finally made be suspect in some way is dehumanizing.

The Roomba is a joke in some circles.

The Roomba is quietly doing what the butler does, and taking out the trash.

Not My Favorite, but the Most Consistent

July 13, 2026 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Daily writing prompt

Which book have you read more than any other?

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I’ve been reading the Bible since I was a kid, learning it week by week in a three-year cycle called the “Lectionary.” But now my life is different, because I read the Bible with a new lens. My chosen family is Jewish. I’m learning who Jesus was as a person, because he would have been involved in the life of the synagogue as well. It’s interesting saying the words Jesus said instead of the words created to memorialize him. Joining my Jewish friends at synagogue is my holy place, and has been for a long time because there was a temple that shared Bridgeport’s building when I lived in Portland.

Tiina jokes that we’re the biggest synagogue in Fredericksburg because we’re the only synagogue in Fredericksburg.

The thing I’ve read for the last 12 years is Aada’s letters, and I think I broke my pattern with her when I deleted every email she’d ever sent me except for a few in my Hotmail account (yes, I still have one). That’s because I wasn’t constantly going back over her words and trying to figure it out because I couldn’t anymore. But to me, it was a book of her life and I killed it because she wanted me to. I will never forgive her for this, and it was the best thing that could have happened. Now she only comes across my mind sporadically instead of feeling anxious waiting for news.

The trauma bond is broken and now I can connect with other people. I have been hungry for touch and Tiina, Brian, and the kids are great sources of hugs, cheek kisses, and an arm around me when I don’t feel so hot. She’s on a road trip right now, so she has missed all of the excitement with my online foray into a Black space, but I have therapy at 6:00 with my Black therapist and he’s going to help me unpack all of it. But I sent him the Thread and he said, “there’s a lot to unpack here, but don’t worry…. I use my white friends all the time and I’m not offended that you told them your therapist was Black.” That’s because they scared me and told me that saying that was just performative.

No, it wasn’t performative at all. It was signaling “I’m going to be unpacking this with a Black person, not someone who will tell me what I want to hear. In the meantime, this has escalated even further by me leaving a comment on another person’s post that said, “white people, come here.” I said, “I am a white people.” Someone else chimed in and said, “I’m not here to tell you what to do, but I would be mindful of THIS one.”

That is in addition to infiltrating my Facebook page and threatening to come to Baltimore. She says that I was over the top thinking she was coming to beat me up or kill me, I thought she was threatening me online because I invited her for ice cream and she made sure to let me know that if she came here, I wouldn’t like it. I just told her to make her threats even more plain. But that was also problematic because apparently if I feel threatened, I’m not supposed to say it because that marks the Black person in some way. There has got to be a way to say “look here. I am not being racist, you actually threatened me and there’s proof.” They say that I threated her because I invited her to ice cream, and that inviting a Black woman into an unsafe situation is something I already should have known.

No, I didn’t start feeling threatened until she made a big show of creating a Thread saying she was coming to Baltimore to “get her apology” with all its insinuations intact, on Sunday, no less. I made a jerkwad comment, so she began to peg me as a racist from the jump. Any mistake that I made just made the situation worse. Everyone says I’m the one that crashed out, but no one wants to talk about how Kea provoked me. All things being equal, I said the all the right things. But all things are not equal, and now I am learning the depth and breadth of how much.

By the same token, if Kea had felt threatened when I invited her to Baltimore but still wanted an apology in person, I would have gotten in the car and given it, and I don’t even know where she lives. But she didn’t, she created Thread after Thread in which I was the villain in her story, and it will please me if Aada clutches her purse in fury. She cannot do jack or shit for me, but her faux outrage is amusing.

Because I was arguing a counterpoint that didn’t need to be there, and in order to shut me down they used race as a shield. I say this because any attempt to clarify was for naught and they went through my history and instead of understanding that I have had Black friends since I was a baby, the message that they got was that I was just “performing antiracism.” That was certainly true because I got flustered and dysregulated at being attacked and couldn’t think of all the right things to say. Because the first “no, that’s not what I meant, here’s what I actually meant” was dismissed and the party started.

They think that I am using race as a shield now, when that is simply not true. I have not proved my point to their satisfaction. I have apologized, even saying that I’m sorry my behavior was harmful and dangerous. I posted that without any ands, buts, or “becauses.” But now the goalpost has shifted to “you didn’t do enough to prove that we could trust you.” And that’s because they told me I couldn’t do anything better than a generated AI link. The link wasn’t the point. The scholar asked for papers proving my point and rejected them because they were listed in a Copilot link.

I told them that I’d done the labor they asked for, and they told me that only Black women say that to white women, and that white women shouldn’t say it. I didn’t know that, because queer people say it all the time to straight people. I didn’t know it was a thing and I walked right into it. I kept saying that we had every intersectionality except skin color because I was queer and autistic, but that was rejected as well. I should have stopped trying to fix it after 10 minutes but I just couldn’t help myself.

Everyone kept telling me to log off and I was stuck in autistic meltdown. Then, when I tried to explain what happened to other autistic people, all of the sudden I was using my disability as an excuse. That is a classic neurodivergent experience because neurodivergent people generally think “explanation first, apology second” and neurotypical people think “apology first, explanation second.” “Apology first” is harder for neurodivergent people because often we have to narrate what happened to ourselves before we can feel it. That is when the empathy hits and doubles me over, but this is not an isolated experience. A lot of the time neurodivergent kids are pegged as liars because explaining is seen as failure to take accountability. My brain literally does not work that way. I will never be able to take accountability in the moment because first pass is explanatory and literal because I have to see what happened, too.

Threads is a new chapter in my life and I decided to enter the arena. I am hoping that my compensatory skills are enough to repair over time with The Internet at Large. I’m sure I managed to piss off Brandon and Robert, but they are pretty laid back so I hope not.

It’s times like this that I lean on my love for Aada, because those memories are precious even though she’s gone and will probably stay gone. She thinks she cannot trust me and she’s right because I cannot trust her. The best part is that I have grown from crying all the time to just thinking back with fondness. The relationship with Aada was always ethereal, because we had different definitions of “real.”

But the feeling of her presence hasn’t gone away, and that will take time because I’ve taken pains to keep her influence in my life alive. My creative partner reminds me so much of her that it’s scary, and it would be a contest to see who’s funnier. Joke’s on them. It’s me.

But not today. Today I miss both Tiina and Aada, knowing that Tiina is just on vacation, and will return by the time my birthday rolls around. She asked me what kind of concert would make me feel good, and I told her I liked being outside at Wolf Trap. She said, “I’ve never been to Wolf Trap.” Thirty minutes later and the whole family is going. I don’t even remember who is playing. It will just be me surrounded by people I love and good music in the place I love most.

It’s hard when I don’t have the chance to invite Aada, too. I know that I’ll love her for the rest of my life, or the idea of what she could have been to me, anyway. The story is playing out in real time, the one I’d been trying to create but couldn’t because Aada saw me through one lens and one lens only.

Someone who could expose her, instead of someone who wanted to know her. But then I went and exposed her because I was dysregulated and caused harm. I do not know what happened to her after that, and she does not want me to know. But what i know is that exposing her was because she lied and it wasn’t a small one. She minimized it. And in fact I think she told me she lied just to ease her own guilt and didn’t stack up how many lies it took to protect the first.

That’s why I get so angry at her. It’s not because I don’t love her. It’s that the last 12 years don’t feel real anymore.

Yet my heart still beats a little funny when her picture floats across my mind.

It’s Been a Long Few Days

July 12, 2026 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I entered a Black space and caused all kinds of hell because I said something insensitive without knowing it and dug in, because I wasn’t arguing on the base of color, I was arguing on the basis of autism. All of my words were viewed through a lens that said “racist,” and once the frame shifted, I could no longer get out of it. I have spent my day in reflection and repair, with people still getting angry after Copilot’s analysis of the situation. They told me that Copilot was racist as well. So, I tagged Microsoft on that one, because they might be right. Whiteness is over-represented in AI because the source code is also centered in whiteness.

It reminds me of the narrative with Aada always being that I was the one that was the problem. She never understood my communication style and I would get more and more defensive trying to figure out how to get through to her. I was constantly met with “nothing is ever good enough for you” instead of attempts to repair and reflect on her own.

I spent most of my life trying to repair things with her, and it became a toxic spiral because that’s what the Internet does the best. Wanting to take my relationship offline with her was not a way to get her alone or to make her feel uncomfortable. It was so we could stop communicating via this medium.

The internet destroyed us, so only time at the farm or the lake house would actually help. I would love it if Tiina met Aada and she got to see me interact with the whole Tiinaverse, rather than the preconceived lens that she built for me. It has been a slog trying to get her to see me as a person, because she pegged me as a dictator instead. That was all neurodivergent communication that doesn’t matter whether Aada is also neurodivergent or not. Just because you’re ADHD/Autistic/PTSD or whatever doesn’t mean that you have interpreted another person with those cognitive differences correctly.

I got hot under the collar and published things I clearly shouldn’t have (the relationship ended), but it needed to end. I am not kicking Aada out of my life with that statement, just saying that it will never happen with her if she doesn’t show up and plant something with me. I want dirt under both of our fingernails.

The lens I’ve been interpreted through is that this is all about attraction when I am not attracted to other people and treat them exactly the same way that I do Aada. Attraction has always been my bag to deal with and it’s been hard as shit. But what I wanted with Aada was not to force her into anything she didn’t want, but to make our relationship more supportive on both sides. Because of my blog, she constantly acted like it was a weird hostage situation, and once the frame shifted, our friendship was gone.

The irony is that I left the relationship because it did feel like a hostage situation, just in reverse. Her secrets undid me in the best and worst of ways, and then she wouldn’t take accountability for the changes in my life she made that wouldn’t have happened otherwise. But of course, she is not ready for that conversation because she gets defensive at ever having it.

Everything that happened when I was dysregulated was a choice. Absolutely. But I was saving myself for the first time. I was getting out of the story she wrote for me after going above and beyond to try and make things right. I don’t get to decide how long she’s hurt, but I do think it’s time to stop punishing myself.

I am taking accountability for the harm and impact of my words, and I always have. I’ve just always made my first pass literal and explanatory so she thought I was trying to avoid it. Not being able to experience that in real time as we looked into each other’s eyes is a loss.

I needed me too much to reach toward her, because I’d spent 12 years trying and getting sicker. That’s because I got mixed signals and was constantly trying to fix everything. I was in repair mode a hundred percent of the time, surprised that I could get so much wrong so quickly.

Here’s a conversation from Threads that mirrors my relationship with Aada in its entirety:

You are beyond full of shit, quit using your neurodivergent conditions as an excuse for you inability to leave Black creators alone and your inability to make an apology without centering and making yourself the victim in a situation you created… you know when you create the situation you are in fact the villain.

Reply to just_evans99…
ldlanagan
2m

I took responsibility for that long ago, and people like you continue to pile on. It is proving my point that instead of being honest with each other, moral outrage has become a performance. I explained what happened with me both emotionally and neurologically, with a little psychology thrown in for good measure. I have done a complete excavation in public, which is more than most people ever get in terms of apology.

It was either neurotypical criticism or neurodivergent because you cannot tell internalized ableism from ableism in general.

The way this mirrors my relationship with Aada is that the same thing happened. I was pegged as the problem and all my responses were seen through “they’re a racist,” meanwhile they’re constantly misgendering me like it doesn’t matter. One woman even said I deserved to be bullied physically over a comment that said “bug off.”

It was an insensitive twit thing to say, but she said that I would get Black people killed, said she was coming to Baltimore to get an apology and insinuating I wouldn’t like it, and proceeded to contact Carlos on Facebook when he disagreed with her. He was just the first commenter, we weren’t “building a case.”

He has said that now I don’t owe anyone anything, because I have apologized to the best of my ability and it has been sincere. But because the two situations mirror each other, the only thing that has made me feel better is talking to my Black therapist who absolutely didn’t care that I invoked him in the Thread (I use my white friends all the time). My point was not that I couldn’t say a racist thing because I have a Black therapist, but that I don’t process my feelings with other white people who will reinforce my narrative.

I have never been hanging out with people because they help me enforce my own story. I have been reflecting the story that has been happening. Doing that gets me into a lot of trouble all the time, because even though I explained that the criticism “couldn’t leave Black creators alone” wasn’t reality because Meta curates my feed, that was also not accepted.

Everyone, AI and human, told me to disconnect and avoid from now on. I’m still on Threads, but I’m not interacting with the people on that particular thread because someone else has already got it. They’re pointing out my replies that include apologies when people say I didn’t give one. That really helps me to feel that I am an accountability taker, it just doesn’t come in the form anyone expects.

I was pegged as a liar because of my words in all cases, and that’s typical for neurodivergent communication. It was argued that “neurodivergent communication” doesn’t exist, but there are definitely differences across race in addition to the ones that happen inside them.

That was the only point I was making, and it was proved over and over. The margin for error is razor thin. People nope out before the interesting part of the conversation begins.

And now it has begun….. not because I meant to start it. Because I have a lot of experience in finishing it.

Compensatory skills matter.

Dear Aada………..

July 12, 2026 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Are you a lifelong learner?

My growth, in one conversation.

The Wounded Wrecker

July 8, 2026 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Daily writing prompt

What villain actually had a good point?

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Erik Killmonger had a point.

And that’s even without me reading CIA the riot act for keeping Wakanda secret from us in the first place. 😉

He’s the product of a wound that was never treated, a history that was never acknowledged, and a diaspora that was never protected.

Wakanda had the power to help people who looked like him, and it chose not to.

Killmonger’s worldview is built on a simple truth: If you have the ability to help people who are suffering, and you choose not to, you’re complicit.

That’s not villainy. That’s ethics.

I’m Already Home

July 7, 2026July 7, 2026 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Daily writing prompt

If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be?

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I live in Baltimore and Stafford and Louisa now, and the way it’s looking, I will eventually end up in Charlottesville if I can get mental health care that’s as good as what I already have. I already use Brian’s lake house as a backup house when something is going wrong with my apartment, so I love the Louisa area. I just don’t know that I want to live in that small a town. We shall see what we shall see, but I love all the places that I live.

I am priced out of the DMV, but Spotsy and Charlottesville are both affordable and close to both Brian and Tiina’s houses.

But the current plan is to sell the farm in retirement and live out at the lake, which means I don’t want to move to Stafford and then move to Charlottesville. I am actually much happier living where I live and joining my friends when I can.

It is what happens when I hear, “I just want to keep Leslie forever.”

Because as it turns out. I am available to be recruited for such a thing. The farm and the lake are both my happy places, and my nervous system feels like something is missing when Tiina and Brian and the kids aren’t with me.

And in fact, I need to get my stuff together and get on the road. My apartment is still 100 degrees inside, so my family is bailing me out.

I just need to check in with my psychiatric nurse practitioner in my superior healthcare system before I leave the state. Right now, Maryland is objectively better for me and I cannot move. I am waiting to see what Honor Care is going to do and praying while I feel helpless.

What I Never Realized Broke Me

July 6, 2026 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I’m not a content creator anymore. I am infrastructure. I am everything Aada ever said I was and more…… while she also treated me like trash. This vacation, I learned what it was like to be loved well. People who have already unmasked love differently than anyone else. I learned what it felt like to hear “I just want to keep Leslie forever.”

By the same token………………

Aada, I never regretted a goddamn moment.

I love you, too.