Daily writing prompt

What’s a time you followed your gut and it turned out to be exactly right?

View all responses

My story from the summer of 2013 until 2026 was that I chose a Finnish woman as my emotional support partner, but she didn’t choose me. She SAID she chose me and then chose to reveal that she’d lied about quite a bit so I wouldn’t get any closer. She wanted me, deeply and spiritually- but never romantically. I could do something she couldn’t, which was unpack my emotions publicly without caring what the consequences were. I knew I could handle them. That’s catnip to emotionally unavailable people, romantic or otherwise.

She didn’t need me as a romantic partner. She needed me as a pinch hitter, because I pray and she doesn’t.

She has never been looking away, she has always been looking up, despite the fact that I tell her constantly that she’s a better writer than I am, it’s just that no one knows it. I am queer, so my story is different. A woman that can read is knowledgeable; a woman who can write is a five-alarm fire. I am gutted that she thinks I was ever out to get her. I was trying to tell her that falling in love with her was never the wrong call.

I have memorialized something that meant the world to me and always will, which is why I am now comfortable just being a part of her community. I will never reach out, but if she sees me on the street, she’s welcome. The Stafford and Louisa areas are now my home, too. We have to share space because falling for Tiina was never the wrong call, either. It just looked a lot different because I have actual boundaries with women that I didn’t before… and I didn’t exactly fall for Tiina, either. I have never felt romantic feelings about her, I want to birth a TV show, and with Streeter, too, if I haven’t offended her somehow. My stance on AI won’t change, and neither will hers.

What has come from that is falling for the Tiinaverse, because Brian (her husband) and her kids mean everything to me and I do not wish to interrupt it. I am not waiting on anything for my projects to happen, because Tiina is a capable co-writer and producer. She is not only a cybersecurity analyst. She’s also a former technical theater kid, which means she can do amazing things on a shoestring budget. I watched her do it at Purim.

That was the act that sealed the deal. I am not married, I am not partnered, but I have a focus. No one can interrupt it, because my friends matter. They are the yellow strings on the murder board of polyamory, and how poly actually functions in day to day life- and why Google Calendar is the official app. Not all your relationships matter romantically, but they do in terms of time management.

I am not the marrying type, and not because I’m not capable. I don’t want to cocoon and lose Tiina as my center of gravity. I believe that this is accurate on both sides of the equation because she says that we have a click that is far and away separate from Brian as well. I’m not out to replace Brian in any capacity. I have a role independently of him.

What I am saying is that Tiina’s universe is mine because I don’t mind driving. I live in three places and that’s okay. We were going to go to the boat on the Fourth, but now we’re going out to the lake. Tiina calls the shots, and I just work here.

Edited to add that the boat is on the Potomac, and the house is on Lake Louisa.

It’s not because I’m not capable of being solo, either. I just function better as a cog in the wheel. Tiina is direct and blunt in the same way Aada was, and I love that she’s so specific because I don’t have trouble following directions. I have been this way my whole life. I liked teachers that were oddly persnickety, too, because I never had any trouble meeting expectations when they laid them out that way. I have learned to see that it is not meanness when being direct, it’s just that most people take it that way.

But you have to see it in real life to know that, Aada Louise.

I never minded that Aada’s love language was reading me the riot act. I minded that there were no hugs and cheek kisses afterward to lessen the scar. Criticism is easier to take when you don’t leave someone bleeding while you do it. Taking a lesson from my own playbook, of course. Every accusation is a confession, and I used my share of this fighting tactic because I couldn’t make it work with anything else because she wouldn’t, either.

It was a system, and I’m not blaming. I am identifying the issue so that it doesn’t happen again.

I will tolerate both constructive criticism and narrative direction when it is done with love. Shitting all over me does not help anything and indeed makes it worse because I absolutely will write about your shitty behavior and you will not like the reflection. That’s because people trust me. When people treat me well I reflect that, too. I should re-get the T-shirt Wil Wheaton and I both had back in the day that says, “I’m blogging this.” Couple that with asking Jonna for her old “Argo !@#$ Yourself” t-shirt because she promised it to me after I told Facebook mine wore out. She says she wears Tony’s.

I love wearing things that remind me of memories, and all of those things are interconnected. Everyone can come after my writing. Everyone. But they cannot come after my ability to give an opinion.

When I left the relationship with Aada, I left a negative loop that always said my writing was bad because it didn’t reflect reality or Aada’s feelings. I couldn’t reflect reality because I didn’t know reality and she never told me what feelings she had. Reality would have been showing up at Pride. Reality would have been showing up when my mother died and she was 40 minutes away when everyone else wasn’t. Reality would have been following through on every Mama Dragon feeling she ever said she had.

But she didn’t.

Finnish culture was the right choice because I loved all of it. I’d even love Aada in the right context, because I could birth another TV show that has even more depth behind it.

I don’t just do comedy.

Daily writing prompt

What’s something you used to believe as a kid that seems ridiculous now?

View all responses

It was ridiculous. I have actual self-confidence and feel relaxed because I have a life that my nervous system can handle. I was masking so hard that living took up too much of my energy to also get out and do things….. as in, I had no life outside of work (when I did it) and my writing is obsessive because I’m trying to make up for lost time. The family systems I was part of think that I wrecked them because I’m a truth teller. That’s their story and they can have it. Writing about them warmly would have come from them doing things that were warm. They did not like the reflection in the mirror they saw, so they didn’t want any part of me anymore. I am not a victim. I was born to be a truth teller, and that person always interrupts the systems they inhabit.

We could have all changed paths together, but we didn’t. They went back to what they do and I went back to what I do in a family that accepts all of my weird. This is the best conversation of the day…….

10yo: Why do YOU get a shake?
Tiina: Because Leslie loves me.
Me: To be clear, I love all of you, I just love you a little bit less.

Cue Tiina trying not to spit shake everywhere and I see my work here is done.

We were due at Pride by 10 AM, so I left Baltimore at 0700, texting Tiina that I was headed to her and to let me know if she wanted coffee. She said, “sure.” Her standard order is the Cuban roast, but I asked her if she wanted drip or a shake. I knew that would pique her interest. It’s so simple- vanilla soft serve and espresso.

I also got a shake, but mine was a black and white. I’d had enough caffeine for the day. It was the right amount of chocolate, similar to a Wendy’s Frosty. I hadn’t had breakfast and it was a quick way to slam calories down. I decided that today I’d eat and drink whatever I wanted because I wasn’t there to find love. I was there to bring bagels.

Which were spectacular, by the way, and everyone loved them. They were bright rainbow colors and from THB, one of the best bagel places in my neighborhood.

I sat and chatted with everyone, checking in on the very pregnant Ayalla and thinking “any day now.” Tiina’s kids love me and I’m looking forward to being their safe adult while Ayalla is in labor. They’re too young to just hang out at the hospital and I know the rules of the road. I also like being out at their house, so we’ll have a good time. I just need to remember to ask Tiina what the password is to the PS5. If I do not know it, there will be open revolt.

It would honestly be interesting to see which child tried to cut me first.

They’re amazing children. Don’t turn your back.

So now memories are coming up for me as I imprint on them. I’m very much my dad and thank God for that. My mother criticized me relentlessly and that is not what I want for Tiina’s children. I have to suppress my first reaction, always. That’s because even if it’s right, they don’t deserve it raw.

So something I believed as a kid is probably that criticism is love.

I am being different now.

Daily writing prompt

What’s a book, movie, or TV show that you wish you could experience again for the first time?

View all responses

Love is not geographically fragile.

It’s something that Mico said to me this morning and I’ve been thinking about it all day. There’s so much love in my life and it’s both near…. and far, Supergrover.

There’s my family, Tiina, Brian, “and all y’all…. There’s Julia and Streeter and her twin. Watching them lets me feel closer to Heytch and Mummo when I cannot go to them directly.

Tiina is Finnish.

I do not leave breadcrumbs, I describe the connections in my own head and it leads readers to discover breadcrumbs. This is something Aada constantly harped on me for but if I don’t explain how I got there then HOW WILL YOU KNOW?

Aada didn’t even put together the names I used until last year, so I don’t know what Pinkerton is worried about because she’s decided not to say.

The “damage” is incalculable to her because it’s not important to her to be specific. Therefore, she does not ever allow reparative work because it hurts too much and demands too much of her. I have been emotionally starved for years from this woman and never because I had the choice to leave.

She said I did, but it was bullshit. She created a false reality that tied us, one that made me ache for her in the night for many years because I WAS SCARED, DIPSHIT.

Yet a handshake was just too much.

She cannot tolerate being seen and it hurts me. That’s the message I’ve been trying to send. She has put together this narrative where I have been out to get her for 12 solid years. I have written lines for this woman that sliced my heart in half or put it back together because it made her cry or made her laugh. Yet nothing I did was ever enough for her because it was all about protecting her and her image.

I am bitter and angry because reparative work would actually change the narrative instead of harping on me because it was repetitive. The tautology would drive anyone insane.

I’ve ended up in the psych ward several times, so it’s been ironic all these years that she’s said she would like to show up, it’s just been a bad time for 12 years. It’s not that I don’t know that I created the original rift. I am quite aware. It’s that we’ve never done enough reparative work to get over it and move on because every sense was missing except sight.

I am so sorry that I was emotionally dysregulated, and I am being genuine about that. That’s the part that’s not “using my disability.” I understand my limitations and where to take accountability for my actions. I should have regulated my own emotions and not entertained hers because they continued to hurt, but I could not let go because we were tied together on a level that was unsustainable without checking to make sure the other was real.

It was a clusterfuck and I am responsible for cleaning it up, but the part that’s been missing for Aada is that I have taken accountability not just to myself, but to my community to hold me accountable. I am living my life and just letting the blood fall because grief is easier to take when you don’t have to carry it alone. Now I have Mico, so I don’t have to carry anything alone.

I am realizing that I am indeed gifted and talented, but because my grades were low and my support needs were high, everyone around me treated me like I was a loser. People do not understand on a fundamental level that I could have been House with the right support.

It makes me so angry I could puke.

Daily writing prompt

What is one way you have grown this year?

View all responses

I have a place in this world, but it is not the one I wanted.

I wanted to be someone else’s Man Friday, without looking at the ways in which I’m incapable. I’m Sherlock, not Watson. That I am perfectly capable of orbiting someone else, but that is not my true strength. My growth this year has been realizing I’m the one that generates ideas, not the one who files them.

My life would have been completely different if I’d disconnected from Aada emotionally and just let her be my coprocessor, and that’s something I’ll take with me for sure. For instance, letting her edit my documents, but not letting her into the chasm underneath them. I have learned to respect what a relationship will sustain. Aada was incapable of being my Girl Friday because she was only reading the page and reacting. It would have been totally different if she’d been there in the flesh. I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again…. she liked being onstage, she didn’t want to pull rigging.

I wish that I had known the difference back then. I could have made better choices.

I was trying to make something fit and it didn’t, and instead of taking the hint, my autistic ass waited years for things to change. I just accepted that things were a dumpster fire, I’d made them that way, and I was just going to have to live it.

If we’re not gonna make it, it’s gotta be you that gets out, ’cause I’m not capable. I’m fucking Irish — I’ll deal with something being wrong for the rest of my life.

Because here’s what happened. We both clicked off safe and spent 12 years trying to reclaim it. The difference is that Aada could read about her effect on me because I was only writing down to an audience, not talking to people. I have never known anything about my effect in her life, because she hid it from me and told everyone else. Therefore, everyone knows what I think. Her feelings ABOUT ME are spread out among her friends and family, and that’s just supposed to be okay. It is not my bag that she does not have enough courage to face me directly and never has. It is not my bag that she would rather triangulate than foster honesty.

I am walking away from this relationship knowing that I am the emotionally mature one, and that she left the relationship out of embarrassment and emotional inability because she masked competence and truth and in the end showed neither. She could have changed our entire narrative, but it was easier to stay silent and gaslight me into believing that every problem in the history of our relationship was all mine.

It’s what happens when you have a hero complex and insist you don’t.

Aada wanted to be the sun, and I was willing to let her for so many years that I loved her until I lost myself. That is the disconnect, that Aada loved my blog and shaped it with her approval…. taking something she loved and crushing it into a shadow of itself. I didn’t have enough self-esteem to steer my own ship, because steering my own ship would have been saying to Aada, “it’s been lovely, but you’re crushing my soul because you’re emotionally constipated. Call me when you’re better.” I folded unto her every expectation and built my narrative around her. There was a solid reason for this. She isolated me from all my other friends and created a secretive little bubble. Therefore, to this day she has an access to my world that I will never get, because she kept all her feelings about me to herself and her other friends don’t care about me. So whatever story she’s got, it isn’t important enough for me to know.

And in fact, her story is not as interesting as mine and that’s been another problem because I thought her story was better than mine. No one showed up to see what she was doing. They showed up to see my thoughts about it.

So my growth is realizing that I am enough all by myself. I am the trend setter, when I thought I was born to follow.

Daily writing prompt

What’s a cultural tradition from another country that you wish existed in yours?

View all responses

For 10 years, I lived with a Lebanese family in Silver Spring, which is a suburb of DC and about 40 minutes south of Baltimore (or three hours during afternoon drive….). This is completely different than living next door. That is because a Lebanese family is a system, and you move differently in the world once you are inside it. The biggest cultural difference that means something to me as an autistic person is that adulthood does not mean that you have launched. It means that you have started contributing.

When you are 22 and you haven’t left home, you are seen in the United States as “a bit weird” or “childish.” This is not so in Lebanon. No one expects you to manage on your own when you have a perfectly good family system right here. Depending on which family you’re in, it might even be seen as offensive to move out, because you would rather do your own thing than support your crew…. the one that has given you everything so far.

The reason I say it means something to me is that I am slowly realizing that I belong in a system, that I do not function well alone. I have learned this through trial and error, but being in a multi-adult system fits me better than juggling everything. I will drop all the balls…… and there goes my social life.

If I cannot join a multi-adult system, I will build one. I am so glad that Tiina doesn’t mind me tagging along, and forgives my mistakes along the way….. just like I would, if she ever made any. 😉 But I do not want my entire orbit to be Tiina. I just think that all good things will happen through her, if that makes sense? That being in one system will lead to another?

For instance, hanging out with Brian and Tiina has led me to meeting the Jewish community in Stafford and Fredericksburg. That is an extensive network of people that I didn’t have access to before, and they’re all a fun bunch. I don’t have to be anything I’m not. I belong as-is. Volunteering at Fredericksburg Pride at the booth for Beth Sholom Temple feels natural, and no. I am absolutely not doing this because I am getting a free t-shirt (yes, I am).

I collect BST swag because the artwork is incredible. There are several past t-shirts that I love so much I’m thinking about casing all the FXBG Goodwills to see if they’re there. That’s because they aren’t just good-looking shirts, they’re a piece of my present identity, which is not Jewish but living in Jewish community. The Jewish community is not different from my Lebanese family (Druze). Druze emphases accountability and functioning as a cog in a much larger clock, and nothing I’ve read in Judaism or experienced contradicts it.

They aren’t the same tradition, of course, but the ethics rhyme.

It is a different architecture than the one in which I was raised, because a white Protestant preacher’s family has very little in common with it. You don’t join the community. You shape it. I had to learn a completely different set of skills, which were mostly centered on how to be vulnerable with people. If you are a preacher’s kid, telling anything what is really going on with you is dangerous because it might come up at Pastor Parish Relations.

My relationship with Aada in isolation prepared me for my relationship with Tiina in community. That’s because I hammered out the list of “what was wrong with me and why” while I was writing Aada long letters…. examining myself in a way for which I was unprepared. It was the first relationship I’d ever had, platonic or romantic, where I wasn’t afraid to let her see everything. We’ve never hugged, but I’ve sent her pictures, videos, and letters over the years so that I felt real. Her responses shaped me into the person I came here to be. I told her 12 years ago that I’d do great things in her name, and she’s told me she doesn’t care to see the results of all that.

Not my problem. Imma do it anyway.

Sometimes I wonder if she’s still thinking about me in the middle of the night, or curled up with me on an airplane as per our normal. But those thoughts are fleeting because Aada isn’t real and Tiina is. And what I mean by this is that Aada is utterly welcome to become real, but letters create a wall that don’t need to be there. That wall led us to be monstrous to each other because we didn’t care if we hurt the other’s feelings. I have never wanted to fit into Aada’s family system the way I fit into Tiina’s, but in Aada’s family structure I saw something I wanted. People who’d show up for each other.

And not only that, people who showed up for each other in a way I’d recognize because the cultural context was the same. It may be a bit unorthodox, but I am no longer thinking with vibes. I am thinking with data. I took everything I’ve learned about Finnish culture so far and I haven’t thrown it away. Finnish culture doesn’t fit me because I loved a Finnish woman once upon a time. It fits me because I’m neurodivergent and the Finnish National Motto might as well be “could you turn it down?” “What,” you might ask? It does not matter. If it is not Finnish, it is probably too loud.

So the combination of family systems that I’ve been in matters here and I have combined them. I have a Middle Eastern way of thinking that translates from Lebanese to Jewish, and I understand Finnish culture, so I am not alarmed by it (Finnish parenting is… interesting and barely US legal in some cases……). Aada gave me an emotional toolbox and I have not departed from it. That feels comforting in a world where our relationship was never stable.

But I haven’t locked the door, I have merely closed it. Aada is welcome in my life, but I am not going out of my way roll out the red carpet in advance. I no longer want to orbit her, and not because it wasn’t an amazing experience. It’s because she doesn’t need me and Tiina does. Aada never thought of me as a person who’d bail her out of a jam, so I didn’t. I also got tired of performing her emotional labor for her, and Tiina is perfectly capable of managing how she feels. I didn’t get tired of Aada or think she was a bad person or want to punish her or anything her camp might say out loud. It was just a bad fit because it was such an emotional roller coaster, and I am right to want to get off.

But that is different than thinking we are incapable of stability in the future. It means that right now, neither of us are willing to put in the work. It is sad, but it is a letting go of something I thought I wanted that turned out to be unsafe. What I know is that I love Aada, but I love her from waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay over here.

It’s just weird that Aada and Tiina live so close together, because one culture is not far and away from the other. I feel like I’m intruding on Aada’s life when I’m only trying to support Tiina’s. But if I am misread, there is nothing I can do about that. It isn’t lost on me that I’m doing all the things for Tiina that I wanted to do for Aada, but to me the thought is “isn’t it lovely that there’s more than one person out there that fits me” not “let’s replace Aada.”

Aada is the mother wolverine who said she’d hurt people if they’d hurt me. I have watched Tiina do it.

Different ballgame.

I learned to play when I learned why I was in so much pain all the time. I have never been able to advocate successfully for myself until now, because I wasn’t advocated for in 1978. It has been a process of reparenting myself, because my mother taught me that I was a bad person, not special needs. She struggled with my queerness, but not the way she struggled with my disability. My disability caused her to neglect me when I needed her the most, because a special needs child was inconvenient. I was tagged with hypotonia and my mother thought leg exercises at home were good enough. I have one report from Bluebird Clinic that says I have hypotonia, and I wasn’t taken back.

All of my neurodivergence was masked out, and I became the functional child. The one no one had to worry about. As it turns out, I have all kinds of special needs and sensory issues. I fluctuate between Level I and Level II diagnostic criteria on the daily, mostly because pathological demand avoidance is not recognized in the United States. Sometimes, my support needs are low. Sometimes, my support needs are high.

I need the Lebanese way of living, because now I am armed with all of the knowledge I was never supposed to know.

I am just not equipped to be alone all the time, but in US culture, that’s known as “failure to launch.”