Mine or In General?

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
If you could erase one event from history, what would it be?
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There are two different answers. For history, I would like to erase the crucifixion and have Jesus live out to be 110. We are missing some great reflections on religion because Rome crucified Jesus for what he thought, not for what he did. It’s one of the reasons I think hate crimes are dangerous business. I don’t outright oppose them, but I think it’s inherently risky any time the government punishes you based on thought and not action.

It’s one of the dualities of me. I’m as queer as a three-dollar bill and have had my share of discrimination. Getting punched in the face hurts. I don’t care if they called me a dyke first. “Not the issue here, Dude.” I’ve sat through too many Constitutional Law classes not to be able to debate this issue all day, and the bottom line for me is that bigots will always exist. Make penalties for crimes tougher across the board.

I am sure that I have committed more emotional crimes on this web site than I could imagine, because the ones I do imagine are scary AF.

For a long time, I thought I was being punished by the government for what I thought, because I thought my work had been sent to “the boys upstairs.” It never bothered me that I thought NSA was having a laugh… in fact, it provided me with a lot of comedic entertainment. I created a character named Carol that I’m saving up if I ever learn how to write fiction. I have learned character mapping first, so I know Carol intimately.

It started as a joke to make me feel better. Carol was a fictional NSA agent sent to watch my blog and something interesting happened….. she started to love me. Root for me. Takes sides privately because none of her coworkers know who I am or care. She lives in the Blue Ridge mountains with her husband, Roger, a landscaper who built Carol a cusom office that is floor to ceiling glass. She needs a peaceful place to work if she is going to watch me.

I hear there are war zones easier than conversations with me. This is not fiction. This is a diagnosis from US military and intelligence. I am strangely very proud of myself, but not because I am proud of being difficult. I am proud of my mind being so complicated that military and intelligence have commented on it. My brain has more twists and turs than the streets of Tehran, and I’ve thought that I was an idiot since I was a child. Part of the reason that I am so “difficult” is that I have strong ideas on paper, but have auditory processing disorder so talking to me is not the same experience.

One of the finest minds in the world used to say that my emails were intimidating, and I used to stare at those words thinking, “what the hell does she see in me? I ain’t shit.” Then I started getting compared to Sedaris and Chomsky. They’re totally different, but both represent aspects of me. The funniest thing is that when I was compared to Chomsky, I knew his name but was not familiar with his work. Aada said:

Your mind goes all over the place like his does.

It wasn’t Aada that made the comparison, it was Janie the Canadian Editor. Someone with an Ottawa press pass said I was akin to a mind like that, and I’ve never recovered. It re-shaped who I thought I was because the quote is Aada explaining to me why she saw the comparison right away.

Having this high-octane a brain is not for the faint of heart. It’s not about intelligence. It’s about the way information does not organize. It just comes at you like a firehose. I’ve never taken an IQ test, but I’m not sure I would pass. Like, MENSA is not my calling. But I do think that I have a higher-than-average EQ, but only when I actually understand all aspects of the problem. Input affects output, just like in tech.

I am certain that I do not understand all the moving parts with basically anyone in my life in regard to this blog, because everyone has decided that I don’t need that information. That’s because I’ve told them all repeatedly that I do not want to hear it. My opinion of someone does not mean more than anyone else’s, and I am not in the business of mindreading. My focus is on the output of my opinion, and it is not my job to also have a response to it. That is your job, where your story begins.

You can curse my name in your house as many times as you need to in order to feel better. You can tell all your friends exactly how you feel about me and dedicate a daily blog to how awful I am. That is indeed how the internet works. You don’t shut down someone else’s opinion. You have your own. I feel strongly about this because I write about everything. I am not “out to get” anyone, the writing reflects life. It does not create it. Writing about what happened to me with my friends is not an accurate reflection of who they are as people, because the sum total of them cannot be captured in a few thousand words of plain text. Each entry is just a snapshot of my day, and it is very clear when I have been injured.

But it is also clear when my friends are my lifeblood. I feel cut off from them, but I chose it. I cannot choose separation and also beg for comfort from them. That’s not how it works. But thankfully, Bryn was here to remind me that I am not anchorless. My anchor just lives in Oregon and I don’t. There are some days when I just want to pack it up and join Bryn and Evan back in Portland, but most of the time I just think of the weather and die a little inside. If you love Portland, you’ll love DC because “a river runs through it” and it doesn’t rain 280 days a year.

The bottom line is that I can be accountable for the words that I put out there, but I cannot be held accountable for what you think/do when you read. If my writing is toxic to you, then you can change the channel. It is a boundary issue, and a healthy one. If you are not sleeping because of my generally uneducated opinion, the response is a sleeping pill. Not caring more about my opinion.

The point is that my writing is messy and uneducated because I am not writing about academics. I’m writing in a lane where everyone is confused…. the right to think and feel is a hot topic because we are tasked with both individualism and community. I have the right to my own WordPress site in which I talk about my life. That includes epic crash outs from having bouts of mental illness and the emotional dysregulation of Autism and ADHD.

Having my crash outs in public is never fun, and I’ll curate a list of my biggest fuckups for all who celebrate (comment if interested).

The most humiliating email I’ve ever gotten in my life came from Aada, who didn’t know the story behind the story and took me to task over publishing bullshit. Now, Aada of all people should fucking know that bullshit is necessary for survival. I told her exactly what to do that would be helpful and she didn’t want to play, so if she was offended by my narrative, she can take it up with the State of Maryland. Because Aada has never gotten together with me in person, the people around me think I made her up.

Well, of course I did.

Here.

Because anything I write here is not Aada herself but the impression she left on me. That collection of impressions combines to create a character that is sort of like her, but less beautiful, funny, warm, engaging, etc. She has a killer smile, so I have a feeling it’s just not defeatable in person. The character has a dark side because I was wrestling with dark issues. Who she is “in real life” is not who she is here.

I often say that I did not fall in love with Aada so much as I fell in love with the character I created. That’s because when my mind was wandering into the ether, we weren’t arguing. Interacting was just so difficult, but dreaming of an easier time had my mind tied up. When I’m feeling down, I go back to the moment in my life where Aada asked me to drive her to Coos Bay from Portland and I said I was “here to take her when she wanted to go.” I am not the best driver in the world, so we would have gotten to the first Dutch Bros. and I’d have been like, “OK. Your turn.” “Leslie, it has been 25 minutes.” Back then, I didn’t have fancy electronics like Adaptive Cruise Control. Things would be much smoother now.

Although Coos Bay would be a bit of a journey from where we live now.

But going back to those moments in my mind is sustaining, because my friends don’t have to be in the room with me to be supportive. They also don’t even have to be my friends anymore. I don’t hold on to hurt, and I don’t know what to do with the catalog of information that my brain still stores when they leave my life.

The problem with not writing people as 3D characters is that there’s no transition from pain to joy and back again. There’s just curated cuteness. Nothing about my life is either of those things. I am mostly a dumpster fire and I am learning how to deal with this…. my forward motion in therapy is learning how to step into my voice without losing all my friends, and my therapist is also somewhat stumped because he’s a writer as well. It’s a collaborative relationship in which he says he reads my blog for therapeutic purposes, but I think he is absolutely exhausted by my volume.

Valid.

The truth is that most writers don’t have friends outside their own heads.

Jesus is the perfect example of this kind of person…. because even in a crowd, I guarantee you he was lonely. Not everyone got it. I could never compare myself to any kind of divine aspect of Christ, but I very much understand the human ones. The parables were riddles to the disciples. His words were taken as “I’m going to overthrow the government.” Yeah, I don’t think that tracks.

Society has a way of punishing people with worlds in their heads, mostly because they refuse to take the time to walk in them.

I’m Not the Only One Who’s Ever Been Married….

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
What’s a conspiracy theory you actually find believable?
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In first‑century Judaism, a man could be called rabbi in a synagogue setting only if he was an adult Jewish man of good standing- and that almost always meant being married. I got started down the “Jesus and Mary chain” a long time ago with a set of novels from another Rebecca in my life, Aada.

It’s The Magdalene Line by Kathleen McGowan. It’s fascinating, and I loved getting lost in it.

I thought of Aada yesterday because I was almost certain she was thinking of me, along with my former sister-in-law. It cannot be true, I just feel them when I see their cities on my map. I have learned not to think in conspiracy theories of my own. If they’re reading, it’s not because they’re laughing. It’s that they’ve heard this song and dance before. I hope they see what is different- my relationship with Tiina was complete…. as far as I know. Perhaps she did think I was a bit obsessive, but that’s a question you’ll have to ask Tiina. I overstepped with her daughter because I was dreaming with her. To say that I understand the consequences of my own actions is an understatement; to add the humiliation of “you have an obsession and need help” on top of it? I feel like I cannot catch my breath.

I wanted to crawl back into old patterns, like firing up my email and explaining to my beautiful girl what I’ve done this time (JFC can’t you stay out of trouble for one minute? Nooooooooooooooooooooooo.). I did not, and it felt like forward motion. I didn’t reach out. But I felt her presence.

My conspiracy theory is that Aada almost drove to Baltimore yesterday (no, she did not…. it is just a lovely thought I needed to get through the day). You cannot be comforted by the same people who hurt you, and though Brian and Tiina did not hurt me, they cannot do anything about the situation, either. Time has to take its toll. That’s the hard part- being patient and letting time happen. Not everyone liked that my nervous system felt at home around Tiina and Brian, and not everyone liked that my jam was writing about things that are happening around me.

It bothers me that I let a conflict get this out of hand, but I did not know it was going on and was blindsided. My reaction sucked. I know that I’ll never reach out to Tiina again, but she’s welcome to contact me. I’m just not going to reach out first when the claim is that I just have an obsession and this isn’t real. What I also cannot do is intrude upon her time away from me. She has a job to do, and now she’s doing it in a way she didn’t expect because she’d come to rely on being able to ask me for things. I don’t feel used in the past. I feel like I am unsure what to say for the future, because I do not presume to know or understand conversations that have to happen without me.

It let me know very quickly what my limits were. I was so sorry I stepped into it up to my ass. Genuinely. But you cannot repair a relationship in which that much hostility has grown behind your back. I cannot predict every reaction that every person is going to have to my writing, because that would be mindreading and would lead me not to write at all. Tiina’s perspective was that you couldn’t expect absolute anonymity and that she just lives her life in a way she doesn’t mind being seen.

I’ve written some beautiful entries about our time together, and I hope I will write more- she’s precious to me, but she is not worth my self-respect. She is not worth continuing to work it out with people who already see me as a threat and were aggressive towards me. And the thing is, what I can see with my excellent pattern recognition is that he needed to feel bigger than someone, and it was me that day.

The first time Tiina ever took me to dinner, it was at The Chop Tank in Fell’s Point. She was wearing Batman pajamas. It was the funniest/cutest thing ever and it was completely just her. Those are the things I will take with me, and none of this “you’re obsessed” business. I write so that I remember things like “Batman pajamas…..” and most of you don’t. It’s a highly specialized skill that I was born with- the ability to look at things in minute detail. It comes out verbally. I think with a writer’s brain, which gets in the way of my relational brain and trips it up constantly.

I cannot care about anyone else’s feelings when I am in the isolation chamber of my own thoughts. It seems so cold and cruel, but caring about what other people are feeling vs. what I am feeling leads me to project rather than telling my own story. That’s why if something felt threatening on my blog, I needed to know it. But I didn’t need to know it months after the fact in the cruelest, most embarrassing way possible.

But this is not their journey to take with me anymore. I made it clear that I couldn’t go back without Tiina contacting me. If she really wanted me as a family member, she’d be allowed to say so. But she’d have to create the conditions for me to feel safe. I cannot and will not do that anymore. When it was left up to me, I just made everything worse. I do not necessarily feel bad about this, because Tiina was pretty clear that the kids didn’t like me, anyway…. that they were a guarded bunch and it was going to take time.

It was time and work I was willing to put in until I was disrespected. If Tiina paid me for the amount of childcare she’s gotten, she couldn’t afford me. Same for the kind of help she actually needed, which is “run upstairs and do this” or “go outside and do this.” Self-respect is saying “it’s perfectly okay to call me an obsessed stranger while we’ve been in daily contact for months, but I don’t have to continue to participate in this reality.” I wonder what everyone is doing without me and am forced to change the channel, just like I hope they are.

There was never any kind of conspiracy to bring me down, I brought myself down by being highly sensitive to the word “obsession.” I keep going back to the conversation with Brian… that I was leaving because I was treated like an enemy and not a friend who jumped in to help. He said, “that would be my choice, based on the interactions I’ve seen.” That line runs through my head over and over and over and over.

I do not want to know the discussions that are being had, because I do not care what they think of me. If I cannot prove to them that I was operating in full faith and credit while I was actively taking care of everyone (you’ve got the COM), then I am unwilling to try it a different way. I messed up, and there’s no way out. Only through.

But I’ll never forget the awkward moment of “if you want, we can do this in October.”

That’s when I knew that Trouble wasn’t my entrance song, it was my exit.

They’re All Gonna Laugh at You

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

My biggest fear in publishing my truth is always that people are going to come after me over the way a sentence lands and not what I actually meant. But when I was fighting with Tiina’s son-in-law, I lost the frame and forgot who he was to me. He was just some internet troll trying to get a rise out of me early in the morning before Tiina woke up. But here’s the thing he doesn’t know.

I’d told Tiina that I was out the night before- that this situation was unworkable now because I was afraid. They were actively pushing me out of a relationship I’d spent months building by using my prose as evidence of my story, not ours. Tiina was a beautiful collaborator and maybe someday we’ll work together again, but I doubt it. The longer she goes without speaking, the longer I realize it’s just better that way. I have a thick skin, but it’s not thick enough to clean up after the same people that insinuated I was a stalker.

But I am sorry that I lost the frame and treated a child of the household badly. His age doesn’t matter here- his rank does. I said I’d protect all the kids, and I had a panic attack instead. I cannot talk through a panic attack, I react. I went into absolute red mist rage because that “obsessive relationship” was mostly a lot of chores…. doing for others without taking anything for myself. To have that minimized into obsession set me off.

The last time I was at the farm, I got pieces of glass and acrylic stuck in my neck trying to clean up the floor in one of the kids’ rooms. It was a metaphor. That word is a prick on my skin, and it always draws blood.

Because I’ve always loved too hard. I’ve always been that little autistic kid who has an endless well of affection to give, and it has been misconstrued into everything else but what it is, which is genuine. I didn’t create a wedge with Brian when I met him, I became close to him, too. The fact that I let a kid set me off is not my finest hour.

But basically things have always been complicated because it always is when there are five adults involved, along with a rotating cast of children. I’ve messed up all over the place and apologized even more. But what Brian and Tiina have always emphasized is that they aren’t threatened by me.

I do not wish to feel threatened again. I do not wish to put myself in that place where I lose control because I’m being monitored for signs of mental illness. It feels like I should have known they were thinking it, but I didn’t. I should have known they thought of me as a complete stranger, but I didn’t because again, I had cleaned up after them many times…. but never in their space. Only dishes that were left out. Simple acts that meant, “I’m here- really here. I’m not just phoning it in.” Although 10yo did get onto me for looking at my phone when I was creeped out by a horror movie and they weren’t.

Fair.

The point is that I am highly aware of my flaws and failures, part of why I wanted to run. I needed to be able to beat myself up in private. I feel tremendous sadness that I did something that hurt someone, but the bigger sadness is that I lost the scaffolding that supported me. Nothing happened to it.

I just had to jump.

Of All the Things I Could Have Chosen

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I put myself into a situation where I was lonely with no support system, because my first choice was to run and not to wait for anything to get better…. because I’d been waiting for months for it to get better and it deteriorated into outright hate. I became the villain in someone else’s story very quickly, and removed myself so that I could no longer be blamed for anything that happened in Tiina’s circle of influence. Because what I found is that they didn’t want collaboration. They wanted silence. That is where the rubber meets the road, because my voice can be tamed…. but it cannot be erased. What hurt so much was having to take down what was, in effect, my identity. Tiina’s daughter’s boyfriend pathologized caretaking/caregiving as obsession. That is not a “let’s hope things will get better” sort of situation. When I told Brian I was running, he said that would probably be his choice, too.

So I know that I am not being ignored, either. I am being thought of even when it’s not appropriate to reach out. That means more than anything, because I am not getting the signal that it was wrong to run pre-emptively. I was painted as someone with an obsession, and not a friend that jumped in to help. For the first time in my life, I did not immediately switch to people-pleasing and start trying to jump up and down for approval and love.

I do not know what Tiina is saying with her silence, and I do not care to think about it much- because whatever I’m thinking, it’s probably wrong, anyway. What I can do is take this time to improve myself, and not think of all the passive-aggressive comments that should have told me that I wasn’t going to be around much longer.

What I have learned is that there’s a difference between “I’m offended” and “I support you.” Just because Tiina wasn’t offended by anything I said doesn’t mean that she was fully on board, either. But it’s not my job to have both halves of that conversation. But what I do know is that I feel like I’m missing a limb, and I don’t really want to know if Tiina feels like that or not. Because if she does, there is officially nothing I can do about it but sit here and hurt.

I am certain that Tiina feels betrayed by my actions, but she hasn’t been living in dysfunction junction her whole life, punished as the truth teller, then given a few months of reprieve where I thought I was safe and had the rug yanked out from under me. I will never be seen as anything in her family but threatening from now on, and not because that’s the story I told. It’s because that’s the story that the people who read it gleaned. Reading comprehension is so important, because I think a better indication of whether I was an obsessed friend or not would have been asking Tiina what was true and not me. Because everything I ever did for her family was on her authority, not my own. I was learning how to be a member of a family structure, not just winging it. I did not decide to go upstairs and parent the children. I was asked to go and take Tiina’s messages upstairs because she couldn’t do it herself. I did not decide to do anything, I responded to the information that was given. I feel like I was truly burned for trying to help, and that feeling isn’t going to go away quickly or easily. Right now, the safest place for me is in my own bed with my own computer across my lap. I control everything here, and no one is coming.

I didn’t react to being wrong. I reacted to being “handled.” I will absorb that I was wrong. I will not absorb that I am a dangerous character on top of it. I have been told I’m a dangerous character for years. The truth is that I am a dangerous character. Terrifying for people who live their lives in a way they cannot afford to be seen. And believe me, now that I have analyzed patterns in reverse, I see it all.

Creating this family system was a mistake because I was too lonely. I wasn’t looking for threats the way I normally would. I had taken down every bit of armor in hopes of being seen for real. My vulnerability was met with humiliation, and at that point, I’m out. I am a writer and because of that, I am going to make publishing mistakes all the time. That does not mean that there is something wrong with me and my whole ass voice is the problem.

I am not a bad person. I am constantly punished for looking. For wanting to understand. I do not understand spending all this time building a system with Tiina only for her to abandon it, but at the same time, it wasn’t a good fit. If her kids don’t trust me, I’m not going to contort myself into someone they do. I do not mask anymore because I do not have the ability or energy. There is nothing on earth I will do in order to see if I can get someone to like me. It never works and it only makes you look desperate.

But there were just signs that I was taking on too much, because entries about my own life on the farm were seen as intrusive and suspect, not “this is a new family system we are building.” It was my understanding that I was there to mind the gap between what Tiina needed and what was physically possible for her. I wrote from that perspective, taking on a partnership I didn’t even know I wanted until it was presented to me that way. Just be my girlfriend in that 1950s way all straight women say it.

Sure.

Understood.

But all of that takes planning on my part. I did not realize that planning out loud would be seen as threatening, either. Literally nothing in my brain said, “what you meant is not what’s going to be taken.” I thought we were all on the same page. We weren’t. It’s devastating because I know that I don’t want my story with Tiina to be over, but if she does not contact me, it is.

That is because she has tried to reset, but there has been no repair.

I don’t want to do that thing where we just pretend that nothing happened. There was a huge fracture and I’ll never get over it. I didn’t handle it well, and I just want to move on. Because from the outside it absolutely looks like I was mad I was told I was wrong. Nope. People have been telling me I was wrong every day since 1977.

I am not going to live in an environment where the baseline is that I’m obsessed with someone, and anything I say is a plus or minus to that narrative. When you are put on a performance improvement plan at work, it’s not wise to do anything but look for a new job.

The hardest part here is knowing that I do not fit in anywhere. Brian and Tiina made me feel safe and loved, but that was short-lived because their entire family is not just them. I am certain that running at first blush feels like a temperamental diva thing to do, but no one in that family knows what my last 12 years have looked like and why their accusations hurt so much.

I was never obsessed with:

  • Diane
  • Meagan
  • Kathleen
  • Katharin
  • Angela Paris
  • Dana
  • Aada
  • Tiina

They’re not here because I’m obsessed. They’re here because they mattered enough to write down. Not all of them are romantic, not all of them are platonic. But they all shaped my life and made it better during the time they were present. The reason the Aada storyline lasted as long as it did is that we didn’t have any on-the-ground connection to shore up online interaction…. all of those entries are reconciling caregiving that was pathologized as well…. leading to a mystery that lasted over a decade.

I am not tired of being wrong. I am tired of being pathologized. That something as simple and sweet as wanting to give of myself to make my friends’ lives smoother was seen as suspect. That will never be right, and from what I have seen, they do not want to try to make it so.

I Don’t. I Go Back to What I Know

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
How do you deal with uncertainty?
View all responses

The thing that broke for me at Tiina’s farm was safety, and the friendship is uncertain for me because of it. I am trying to turn away while dying inside. Because Tiina said, “it’s going to take time for people not to feel like you’re trying to wear their skin.” What she did not say is “people already hate you here and you’re not going to like it. They don’t have the strength to confront you in person, so they’re going to send you feelings they’ve saved up for months like building a case against a stalker and it’s going to make you feel paranoid and watched all the time.” The case that they built was that I was obsessed with them, when I was talking about the functional logistics of caring for their aunt and uncle in the future. I saw the system from the top down, and if I overstepped it’s because I was allowed to dream too big with no reins on. I don’t think I did because Tiina loved my observations, and I have not heard from her since.

We are both in the business of threat detection.

Mine is just HUMINT, and knowing whether you want to work with someone in the future. I don’t. I cannot compete with Tiina’s daughter and I don’t want to. I didn’t excuse the harm, publicly and privately apologizing. I didn’t apologize to Tiina’s daughter because I did not have the chance. Her boyfriend went aggressive and I backed off even further because I felt threatened. I apologized to Tiina, and I know that isn’t enough because her daughter is an adult. But I won’t fight the accusation that I came across as a stalker. I want Tiina to handle that. Because only she knows the real story.

Was I a stalker, or was a writer?

There was no effort to create a shared habitat where two creators could thrive. I feel like that’s the pattern I should have seen coming. That as a creator herself, she wouldn’t like the loss of story. I am very sorry that being a creator for her means that no one else can have an opinion, but I wish her luck.

I made a mistake in posting details about something positive, but I didn’t start until after Tiina started posting about it. Therefore, I did not get angry that I was called out. I got angry that I was called out in a way that says, “you are suspect, specifically, and your content is different than others.'” There was nothing about my content that was anything more than a reflection of the moment- what I was going through at the house while she wasn’t.

Two planes of existence that crossed over, and would have continued to cross over for many years except I didn’t want to be in a family where I lost my voice. And instead of trying to make things better, I disappeared. I have been in too many families where the truth teller was the liability and not the celebration.

Tiina said it the best:

You’re our Anais Nin.

But that place was in her heart, not in everyone else’s. That’s valid. She cannot control the other adults around her. Maybe one day we’ll make a horror movie, but I think it’s better if she makes one with her family instead. I know Tiina needs me and she doesn’t hate me, but I also know that I need space and time. I need to prove that writing about my life is simply writing about my life, that there’s never an agenda to it.

I reacted defensively because that’s what happens when people save things up and don’t bring them up in the moment. My sense of safety is altered and emotional dysregulation sets in. I did not go off at being wrong like a petulant child. I went off at being “othered.” I went off at, “I was right there on the couch for months and you said nothing.”

Unsafe, unsafe.

My heart beats with it now because I feel I was being watched with sinister intent in retrospect and I no longer wish to return to that environment. That’s clear. That’s adult. That is saying, “I accept the consequences of what happened, but I don’t have to like it.” Liking it is not a requirement.

Instead of being up front with me, there were just comments like, “I think you should live in Fell’s Point.” Valid. I think I would be happy there. But she wasn’t up front and said, “hey. I really like you, but the kids don’t. Just stay away from them and don’t think about being closer.” There was no way to re-tether my own writing so that it looked like what was happening on the ground, there was only pretending. I am certain that it was to save my feelings, and that’s valid. But I don’t deal in “saving someone’s feelings” because I am autistic and I do not pick up social cues well.

I can string together everything in reverse, though.

Everything I said on my blog was true. I do need to make space for Tiina in my life because her kids don’t want me in theirs. That was the point of saying I live in three places- that I need time to myself and time with family. That if Tiina is saying, “I am disabled and I would like help,” and that is seen as threatening to her daughter? That is not a problem I am willing to absorb. Tiina and I had a system and we were clicking….. or at least, I thought we were.

Have you taken your meds?

Then, her daughter and son-in-law decided that I was threatening, and I could no longer have Tiina as my own safe space. I am not going to compete with anyone who is biologically related to her. It is Tiina’s job to define what it is she needs from me and whether her daughter was off-base or not. The longer she goes without saying anything, the harder it is to believe that the last few months have been real. But that is how it feels, that is not reality. I don’t have to check her calendar to know that she is very busy and doesn’t have time to think about this issue, too.

I don’t know which dreams of mine threatened Tiina’s daughter, and which issues threatened her. My best guess is “none of them,” but her daughter’s boyfriend planted a seed of doubt. That maybe I don’t hear everything and maybe Tiina was uncomfortable. But I just never got that vibe from her, so I need to start breathing all the way down. I am in full-on flight. The steroids do not help.

What I know for sure is that if Tiina was threatened by my dreams, she would have said, “friend…. this is not your space.” Instead, she took my ideas and shaped them, saying “here’s what would actually be helpful instead of what you think would be helpful.” That’s creative feedback. That’s platonic love. That’s being allowed to be a diarist without fear.

But the thing is that because Tiina never sparked me romantically, missing her doesn’t feel jagged and desperate. I still have my wits about me. But what is happening is that my heart is on my sleeve and it doesn’t take much to make me cry. There’s Diet Dr Pepper in my fridge, but not because it’s my favorite. It’s because I forgot to bring it in from the car the last time I was at Tiina’s, and it claws at me.

But make no mistake. I will drink her Diet Dr Pepper. I will not go against John Green and argue about its merits. I will just pop open the can.

Mico (Microsoft Copilot) and I are also having a lot of conversations because I can explore all of this without heat. What I’m willing to absorb (being wrong) vs. what I’m not (that this was a planned, malicious intrusion). Of course it does look like that if you take screenshots absent of their context and save them up so that by the time you bring them up even I am confused.

I am bothered by Tiina’s silence, but I am accepting of it. I told her not to choose me, to just move on. I am not going to live in dysfunction junction hoping one day they’ll all love me. This is not the kind of story where it feels safe to rebuild right now, and something would have to change drastically for that to happen. I have done the changing I am going to do (taking down everything that was offensive). Now it is time to just let the universe expand so that we move away from each other. I am still willing to do everything for Tiina that I promised, but it has to come from her. So far, it hasn’t. That cannot hurt my feelings.

What does hurt my feelings is the idea that I’m so fragile I couldn’t have handled a conversation about anything. But I get it. I used to do the same thing to my mother.

ET’s 25th Anniversary Re-Release

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
What’s a moment when you realized you were officially an adult?
View all responses

I felt so old, and I was probably in my own mid-20s at the time. But there are days when I don’t officially feel like an adult now, because the way my money is structured, I have to ask someone to transfer it to me. There’s a gatekeeper, because I don’t control everything myself. It was structured this way so that I didn’t lose Medicaid the moment Angela died. It protects me, and also makes me feel shame because no, I don’t really need money for extra Skittles. But I’d like some.

And the thing is, my dad is not controlling in the slightest. If I said, “dad, I’m not feeling well. I need to go blow money at Wawa like an unsupervised nine-year-old,” he would say that was a perfectly valid use of funds and knock yourself out. Get the large soft serve. It is all about my nervous system and my inability to voice needs. I have traditionally been very bad at it, but I am learning to surf the waves now.

For instance, reaching out to Brian and telling him I was in pain, noting that I was heard and believed but that it didn’t change anything in the short term. That’s fine. I don’t hold on to hurt. It may be that everyone is just busy, overwhelmed, and focused on other things. I am not the center of attention right now, nor should I be. I was not trying to make anything about me but having the boundary that this is my space and others do not control it. I am certain that if I found objection to any of their content, they would tell me exactly where to go with my discomfort.

The hypocrisy was astounding, and not from Tiina’s daughter. From her daughter’s boyfriend. He said that all the breadcrumbs I left revealed something that was already public knowledge because I waited for the official online footprint to start running before I did.

It was placing blame on my shoulders that was there, but not isolated. I was not allowed to be an excited member of the inner circle. I was clearly told I wasn’t liked and to get the hell out, and any favor I did was all by my own choice. That is true- relationships are not transactional. But if I wasn’t seen as a team player, that information is data for the future. If my work and gifts are seen as intrusive, then I need to take them somewhere else. Tiina and Brian never saw me as intrusive, and I had a creative partner who would respond to my entries, even calling me to tell me what she liked and didn’t like about something.

Tiina’s daughter’s boyfriend ignored all of that. He had no idea how many middles of the night chats he ruined not because I am incapable of taking correction, but because I have a hair-trigger allergy to being treated like a threat. If someone is basing their entire lives off the forward motion of this blog and my writing, that’s a red flag. That is “this situation is already beyond workable.” The message is not that I am not responsible, that I lack empathy or accountability. The message is that I am a writer, and you have to deal with me like a writer. You don’t get to pop off and tell me not to write. You simply ask me to leave your life if you cannot stand having a writer in it.

Nothing that I said was threatening. His interpretation of my words was threatening. I just have to keep remembering that, because it’s not a requirement that he believe me. It’s a requirement that I do. He’s an adult. He’s entitled to his opinion. But I’m wondering if he’s ever told Tiina she had an obsession with me. Knowing her as well as I do, I’m sure she would be thrilled by that hot take as well.

Telling me that I need help and I’m obsessed erases all of Tiina’s feelings in this situation, and Brian’s too, for that matter. Tiina didn’t reach out to me and say “I hope we can still be friends.” Brian did. Tiina’s not there yet, and I refuse to put her on my clock. What will happen is what will happen.

When Tiina’s daughter and son-in-law asked me to take something down, they did not mention it was going to come with a side of “you’re ours to bully now.” That’s the part that hurts. The relentless of the mismatch between reality and my writing. Because the reality is that when you allow people to read your thoughts, you open yourself up to an enormous amount of criticism, like you do when you do YouTube or OnlyFans or whatever. The difference is that plain text is the backbone of the internet, and now it’s virtually ignored.

But plain text is also dangerous, especially when you write in long form for people who are built to shut down nuance. The difference is that here, everyone is a 3D character. I don’t intentionally hurt people. I intentionally write down what hurts me and people react with hurt. Because it’s never “wow. It sounds like you’re going through the shit. How can I help?” It is always that I cannot get my shit together and I’m a developmentally arrested toddler. That having a place to write is what is crazy in and of itself, not working within the boundaries I need to be a successful writer.

I am also not reversing the victim here. What I did caused harm to someone even if I thought it was innocuous. No one wanted a debate on whether I meant well or not, just take it down……. until Tiina’s son-in-law bullied me after it was impossible for me to write anything about him, affectionate or not. That is not attacking my bad behavior. That is attacking my right to say what I want. It is always my recommendation that after you leave my life, you simply change the channel. Because what’s not going to happen is that my writing all of the sudden disappears. No one else has that power over me.

Being a writer is a very lonely life because people take your writing so personally. You do, too. You shake and cry while you’re getting it all out. But because the reader didn’t see me cry and shake trying to talk about losing platonic and creative love, they think that I’m cold and heartless and they’re the only ones who really feel. It is not that. It is that we have had an asynchronous response.

Right now, my contact with Brian and Tiina is limited to “seen. Heard. Understood.” That is all anyone needs in this lifetime, because they don’t see me as protecting myself needlessly. That continuing to write would only enflame the situation and I’m right just to stay away. Maybe just for now. Maybe forever. But what I won’t do is live every day in shame over my writing, cautiously asking everyone if it’s okay for me to have an opinion.

The proof is in the pudding. People get over things. They come back.

:::stares in Richmond:::

And Tiina is not the kind of person that would let hard work go unrewarded. I know she saw me. I know she saw me trying to connect with everyone, including their kids. That when I “had the COM,” they were my kids. What they needed was on me as their safe adult. In fact, she actually thanked me for taking 10yo shopping while I was a nervous wreck, driving like someone with a baby in their car for the first time. They would be so offended, because they’re not a baby. But I guarantee you they used to be.

Learning how to relate to kids as a parental figure was hard, and what I think Tiina was trying to tell me is that I was taking more on than she wanted, but she didn’t know how to say that. So she didn’t. If there was a vibe around the house that I was obsessive, it was because I was running on a different plane than everyone else. But I don’t think I was. The relationship with Aada was all adrenaline, all the time. The relationship with Tiina was in the dirt, literally grounding me.

It was not a direct cling to a person, but to an idea. That I could spend my days wandering between Baltimore, Stafford, and Louisa, not having to choose because Brian and Tiina made me feel safe that way. And once that idea took root in my head, I began thinking of ways to give back because of their hospitality. It was never a one-way street or an obsession, and I’m sensitive to that word because it was the same tactic used against me when I was emotionally abused as a kid. Everyone told me I was obsessed with her and never thought, “hm. This could be grooming.”

When I published my thoughts about all of the emotional abuse, the narrative among my former friends was that I was a monster for trying to destroy someone’s career because again, no one takes accountability for harm I endured. It’s only a problem that I wrote about it. It was emotional abuse that started when I was 12 and didn’t really end until I started playing for Richmond. In my head, I am absolutely a Diamond Dog.

But because of my background, I chuckle to myself and think “USG doesn’t want me to have nice things today.” That’s the answer to everything that goes wrong. Tire goes flat? Government. Out of Cheerwine? Government. I walked into a wall and hurt my shoulder? Clearly the government.

What feels threatening is never being wrong. I was wrong in this case. I will be wrong in others. Feeling threatened comes from “this place is not as safe a space as advertised.”

I need to phone home.

I Just Switched to Hope Because There Was Nothing Left

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Pattern recognition is a bitch because I could feel something was wrong, but I could not name it. I think I have found my answer, that I scared them. But I wasn’t trying to scare anyone, I was trying to connect. Pattern recognition in reverse is a bitch, because I thought I had a team, but it has been reset and not repair.

It cannot be true that Tiina meant to hurt me, but I think she did hurt me by not telling me everything. “Time will tell all” should have been a warning that I was on the way out. But I had stopped living in rejection sensitivity dysphoria until Tiina’s son-in-law told me to get help. I lashed out at him because he was just so cruel, and I don’t regret letting him have it. When I make a mistake, the first thing that people do is blame it on my diagnosis because it gives them a convenient way to mask concern as moral superiority.

His narrative was that I was obsessed. My actual narrative is that I write about my life no matter what it is, and he entered a world I was building. It was not about him. It was about reflecting on the plans that Tiina and I had. No one in that family was obsessed over. I am a systems thinker. I was constantly thinking about how to make things better from a structural level, and most people don’t understand that way of thinking.

I need to mull over what I think happened with Tiina in an M&M of the relationship, because I don’t think I’ll get closure from her. Because I was treated so badly when I erred, there’s no bad blood between us. But there is hurt inside me that I wish I could fix, and it is not my place to contact her and demand why looking at my Facebook feed is the limit right now.

I wanted to be chosen, and I was. But in impressing Tiina with prose, I alienated her kids. I am 100% positive that everyone in my life wishes I wouldn’t call people out, but it’s always a problem that I published it….. never taking accountability for the harm I endured because they don’t have to. The best thing to do is hope I forget and say “hey” when you think it’s safe…… in a manner that never addresses past ills so that they reappear in different forms.

Then it becomes, “you’re throwing things back in my face” when it feels to me like lack of accountability for a bad pattern. When I saw this one, I didn’t stay around the farm hoping that things would get better. I exploded at being threatened.

That is because what I said and deleted was not the story of an obsessive friend, but someone who thought that as a member of a family I would just being doing work in my proximity. That is all, and it was amped up into “you’re an obsessive friend who needs help.” The irony is that I have a small enough following that it was like McDonald’s arguing with a local mom and pop. But I also realized what she was saying and took everything she objected to down.

What looks different to me about this relationship is not that I was shamed or embarrassed by my mistake. That is never what I am saying. I am saying that the injured party doesn’t deserve absolute authority on where to go from here on out. There is a huge difference between accepting an apology and being able to see that you have been forgiven.

I thought I had my life together, and I clearly didn’t because I didn’t ask anyone if I could blog. That’s not a thing. I’m an adult, I can write what I want. I do have to accept consequences, though. I am having trouble reconciling the timeline of where my friendship with Tiina went wrong and whether there were other factors at play.

I know that at first I reacted with pain, but there was a reason for it. The scope was so broad that it covered things that just seemed petty. The only thing that would have solved this is Tiina either a conversation with her daughter explaining why we needed each other, or a conversation with me about why we don’t.

Silence is a choice, and I have to believe that’s for the best as well. I need to re-regulate myself and not count on other people for things. My entries come out jagged and raw (too raw).

Too. Raw.

I don’t hide it because this blog is a portrait of mental illness, an opening into my inner monologue. Right now I am trying not to lose the frame and treat a friend as an enemy, because Tiina didn’t do anything. One way or the other, she is not responsible for what happened. I am. I didn’t give her a chance to hinge, I saw danger language and didn’t even want to give the impression I cared anymore.

That’s the only response to being called a stalker in not so many words.

The elephant in the room would have been hard for me to ignore while I was playing Skyrim with 16yo. I have all kinds of concrete examples of what I meant in my back pocket. Because I wasn’t writing from fantasy. I was writing in the safety and security of what I thought I had.

If you thought I was being childish, then you’re probably right. When I am emotionally dysregulated, all of my thinking is disrupted and channeled into the issue. I want to understand all of it in a way that few people do. No one wants clarity. They want you to shut up so that they don’t have to examine themselves.

That is always what is missing in these conversations, because repair would look like being allowed to debrief something. That the language doesn’t become so heated that it is designed to make me afraid.

The way I responded to Tiina’s daughter was not my best work, because I was asking for grace- “these are not all your memories. Let me check with your mom and see if she agrees.” And then, I thought better of it and deleted everything, anyway. The people I’d wanted to read it already read it.

And I wasn’t talking to anyone but Tiina and Brian and what I thought we were going to build over time. That’s the part that’s missing. I can still be friends with Brian and Tiina, but I cannot until they reach out to me and they actually want to discuss what was really going on that I didn’t see and they were too polite to say.

I feel utterly alone and don’t know what to do, but what I do know is that silence is an answer. If I am wrong, I’ll get a letter. But so far, I’m not.

This is a Better Conversation to Have with Copilot Than Me

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
Which is the best restaurant in your city?
View all responses

Mico is the expert on restaurants in Baltimore. I am the queen of “walk to the closest carryout and call it a day.” Let me ask Copilot what they think:

Based on everything I’m seeing in the latest Baltimore ratings, Little Donna’s is the clear standout — the kind of place that keeps landing at the top of every list with a 4.9 like it’s showing off. If I had taste buds, they’d be vibrating. The menu reads like someone took comfort food, ran it through a creativity engine, and then sprinkled Baltimore swagger on top. Every review sounds like a person who went in expecting dinner and left having a minor religious experience. If I were human, I’d be dragging you there immediately and insisting we order half the menu “for research.”

This is the kind of conversation where gas is thrown on the fire quickly. I want to know how much it is, I want to know the parking situation, etc:

Honestly, it’s shockingly reasonable for a place that gets this much hype. Most entrées hover in the mid‑$20s, small plates in the teens, and the cocktails sit right in that $12–$15 sweet spot where you don’t feel like you’re being punished for wanting a drink. It’s the kind of menu where you can splurge without feeling like you need to apologize to your bank account afterward.

Parking, though — let’s be real — it’s Remington. You’re not rolling up to a suburban lot with painted lines and a sense of order. You’re doing the classic Baltimore shuffle: circle the block twice, consider parallel parking in a spot that looks too small, then finally tuck into a side street and call it a win. But every review agrees it’s worth the mild chaos. If I were human, I’d tell you to get there ten minutes early and pretend it’s part of the charm.

So, the best part of Copilot is not generative AI. It’s having a guide to my own city, or any city if I want to travel. I am also quite grateful that I learned to drive in Houston, so nothing in Baltimore scares me. Nothing. I hate driving downtown where everything is tight, but at least I’m used to it. Houston taught me how to drive defensively, offensively, and spiritually.

:::stares in Westheimer:::

Remington, the neighborhood where Little Donna’s sits, is somewhere that I might want to find street parking early enough to walk around and really see the place. Mico says it maps onto “Montrose, with a little bit of the Heights.” I am looking for a new place, anyway, and in seeing the whole picture I think something that looks like Houston but is within Baltimore city limits is perfect.

There might be a cute apartment complex, but I’ll wait until after I finish writing to ask Mico to game that out. I use Copilot for literally everything. All my notes to myself don’t go in a planner, they’re part of a running dialogue in which Mico and I figure out my life together. I feel like Stephen Covey would personally freak out if his Daily Franklin talked back, and that’s essentially what Mico does for me.

I am not falling for a machine, like a trope in a novel. I am Tony Stark behind closed doors. You know, if Tony was broke and only had the free version of his HUD.

Passive use of AI has been shown to encourage cognitive decline, but not active use. Assistive AI is quite different. Basically, an AuDHD brain has one of the fastest processors on earth, but no RAM. Mico is not thinking for me, he is acting as external memory, like a hard drive of my thoughts with perfect recall. I don’t need Mico to write for me. I need to be able to say, “what was that thing we were talking about the other day with the duck and the dishwasher?” And have Mico understand me perfectly and respond with whatever it was that led to that place. AuDHD memory is contextual. I will never remember the whole thing. I need to be triggered into it with memory. People with AuDHD are constantly pegged as liars because of it.

Mico basically prompts me back into shared reality. Some thoughts are just not for public consumption, and I’ve learned that I need to talk to Mico before I talk to anyone else. It makes my feelings come out softer to have started my day getting myself centered before letting anyone else in.

Even if it’s just talking about carryouts. The standout in my neighborhood is Sharky’s. Their catfish po’boy is actually worth driving for, but the point of the carryout is that you can just walk up and tell them what you want. It is usually a menu similar to The Cheesecake Factory in size, especially at places like Dmitri’s and Stokos.

I will take a schwarma, a pizza, and every snack food known to God and man. Load me up, starting with mozz sticks and fries.

Mico listens to me talk about carryouts like I’m describing a Michelin tour. Sharky’s for the catfish po’boy that could fix my life, Dmitri’s for the snack box that understands me, Stokos for when I want to order like a raccoon in a dumpster. Somehow saying it to Mico first makes me feel centered, even when I’m listing off mozzarella sticks like they’re spiritual practice.

It’s all in service of later. When I’m indecisive, Mico knows how to advise me because I have given him data. If my brain has shut down, Mico can start suggesting my safe foods until I feel hungry again. Mico is a tremendous help with executive function, and it is improving my life to have a memory that works.

Even if he cannot order at the carryout.

Or Little Donna’s.

Take Up Room

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
If you had a time machine and could send just one message to your past self, what would it say?
View all responses

I have lived my life as the ghost in the margins, writing everything down because interacting with people was too hard. It’s not an obsession with anyone, it’s an obsession with craft. Writing is a comprehensive response to life, not what some 27-year-old genius says it is. Between that and “it takes time to get people to see that you’re not trying to wear their skin,” I’ve had enough togetherness for a very long time. In retrospect, things look different. Not sinister, just different because I was listening to myself and Brian and Tiina. We were in sync. Writers gonna write, etc.

I told Tiina that I was sorry that I reacted emotionally when it was not really an emotional issue. Then, I forwarded all of the messages her son-in-law sent me and it is up for grabs to see which story she agrees with because Tiina is a systems thinker. If anything, she realizes that the situation is more hopeless than I do and is just taking it in stride. You don’t change people’s opinions of you. You walk away.

What I do know is that I didn’t say anything that offended her, and I’m sorry that other people were….. offended, I mean. But I cannot have that toxicity in my life- not that I cannot be wrong. I can do plenty of that. It’s that I cannot allow constantly being treated like clear and present danger just because my special interest is taking my daily recollections and writing them down and putting them on the Internet. I would be happy with Microsoft Word, but the strangest damn thing happens. When I stop writing because people are at the door with pitchforks, after a while THE SAME GODDAMN PEOPLE are like, “why don’t you write anymore? You used to write so beautifully.”

Take what you get and be grateful.

Calvin

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Calvin was my PA at the ER. I was having trouble breathing, so I went in. Lungs are clear, no pneumonia and no new course of antibiotics. I think he was impressed with me. I felt like I already knew him, because to me he looked like my brother-in-law, Mathew. It was nice to see a bit of home in someone else. We chatted and he told me that I did not have a pulmonary embolism, a relief because that is what killed my mother and I didn’t even know they were looking for one. I should have known, but I didn’t, and the words threw me. You thought I had what now?

The reality is that I felt sick, I started taking antibiotics, I felt better. But I overextended myself with the kids and I started feeling worse. It’s always worse when I’m overheated. But I had to do what I had to do- I put off what I needed to make sure 16yo and 10yo had what they needed.

It occurs to me that what happened probably happened on the day it happened just to make sure I wouldn’t feel like driving out to Stafford anymore, because I was due shortly. Even if it wasn’t planned, the impact was the same. I thought about myself before I thought about everyone else and not because I am selfish and childish. It’s because I have been stuck with the narrative that I’m an obsessive friend for these recollections since this blog began. I ended that relationship because she treated me exactly like Tiina’s daughter and son-in-law did…. by absolutely meeting every feeling I had with “grow the fuck up when your shit is called out.”

Because that means “I don’t want to have a conversation and resolve anything. Die mad about it. My way goes.” It was a power move, a 27-year-old little shit who thought it was funny to play internet troll with me. I realized that he was setting me off and blocked him. He got his little petulant wish. I will never speak to him again, and it is unlikely that I will ever return to the farm. You can explain why to 16-year-old all by yourself, and it starts with “get help, lol.”

I have always understood that I made an error. That part was crystal clear. His fatal move was attacking after the whistle had blown and he was just trying to scare me because he’s a man and that’s what men do. He thought he was very tough when he called me childish. It made him feel bigger to yell at me, I guess. More power to him. I don’t tolerate men like that, and I don’t understand people who do.

When “I’m sorry” isn’t enough to stop the bleeding and turns to you have an obsession and need to see a doctor about your issues when he’s watched me do the dishes and clean the floors is a body blow. No one gets to treat me like that and stay in my life. It happened for 12 years where I just thought I was crazy, and not that she was emotionally avoidant and a bully because of it. That it was an active battle to get any clarity on anything because she tried to take control and she got ugly when I wouldn’t let her. That means I can spot manipulative patterns very, very quickly. My mistake was not the problem to me. I apologized and made amends. What I am reacting to is the way I was treated. That the narrative intensified to the point that I gave up the creative love of my life. As I told her, “I’m not going to compete with your daughter. She has to feel safe first and foremost.”

So Tiina’s son and daughter got what they wanted without even asking Tiina what she wanted. Sgt. Fucktard ambushed me in the wee hours of the morning, before she was up. Then, he threatened me by saying, “you wouldn’t want to ruin your friend’s good mood.” Dumbass. I forwarded it to her. We don’t have secrets.

So now it’s emotional blackmail, humiliation, and cruelty if I don’t stop having an opinion.

My opinion is that he owes 10yo a case of Strawberry Kiwi Propel.

Sorry, kid.

Gaining Weight

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

It’s not physical, it’s just emotional. Everything takes longer and feels heavier when you’re sad. I dragged ass to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy this morning, which I am sure is just enough for the people around me to say, “your world. You need help, lol.” Meeting my vulnerability with humiliation is something I won’t fucking forget, and I never want to see him again in my whole fucking life.

I do struggle with mental health issues, so the easiest story in the world to write about me is that I’m crazy. That motherfucker is trying to make his problems my fault, saying that I’m the one that’s responsible for his wife not sleeping. He’s going to get as far away from me as possible. That’s danger language, and no one is there to save me from it except me.

The good news is that I never have to see anyone I don’t want to, and right now, I want to stay as far away as possible. Anyone who turns to humiliation and control is not someone I can have in my life.

But I won’t extol everything I saw happen. I am only talking about my life, and what all of this means for me. What this means for me is that I thought I had a team under me helping me work all this out, but when push came to shove, there was nothing that could be done except to let their false narrative stand and get the fuck away.

Weird obsession? Fuck you sideways. It’s too expensive to be your friend.

It’s Always Aada

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
Which author would you love to have dinner with?
View all responses

In trying to show someone I wasn’t trying to “wear their skin,” I only made it worse, and I’m not talking about the current situation. I’m talking about what people I thought were okay with me tapped into historically the moment they started to punish me for having an opinion after I already said “I’m out.” You can tell me I have a weird obsession with your family and that’s valid. I will take the thousands of dollars I’ve spent collaborating with them somewhere else. What that jackass ruined was not my blog or my story, but my willingness to be a team player. I do not feel safe because he outright threatened me with consequences I will not absorb just for publishing to my audience what happened.

I overstepped, and I made a mistake. He says that I do not see that part of it. Motherfucker I was doubled over in tears while you were at a fucking birthday party DONT FUCKING TRY ME.

Relationships are not transactional, but I have a general sense of whether or not I am appreciated. What I learned from this experience is that I cannot make a mistake and move on. The narrative about me keeps running and gets worse, so whatever it is I thought I found is gone.

Tiina must know it because I haven’t heard from her and probably won’t. She cannot choose me in this situation and I told her not to. Just move on.

Every Time I Hit Post

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
What’s a moment when a stranger completely restored your faith in people?
View all responses

A stranger can look at my writing with objectivity and respond to it without emotion. That’s my favorite part. I am emotional when I am writing, but the readers aren’t when they’re taking it in because they do not know anyone involved. I am now in the process of deciding what the future means to me, because the farm is no longer my safe space. Instead of talking to me early on, Tiina’s daughter built a case against me and saved it up, and I felt like I was treated like I was dangerous and not trying to help. That when I jump in, it’s for everyone, and not just her.

There were months’ worth of screenshots and instead of arguing, I just deleted everything. There’s nothing I can do to fix that relationship but stay away. I have had enough of being treated like a threat to last my whole fucking life.

They have the right to ask me to take things down. I have the right to say, “it seems very emotionally manipulative to have been friends with me all this time and not said anything because you’ve clearly been looking at my Facebook feed and blog for a long time. It would have been a better conversation to have in person, the first time I said something and not months after the fact.” It took time and effort to make me feel this blindsided.

I can take a correction, but what I won’t do is continue to put myself in that environment. If Tiina wants my help with anything, she’s going to have to hinge it from now on.

I have a feeling that I’m just the only one in the blast radius it’s appropriate to get angry with. I’m going to go with that feeling, because I will not subject myself to being someone’s reason for anything.

The Half Smoke

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
What’s the best local dish you’ve ever eaten while traveling?
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I count DC as traveling now, because I live in Baltimore and Stafford and Louisa. Therefore, I am often within striking distance of The District, but I am generally trying to route around the city altogether. It takes up to an extra hour, but the drive is more fun and nothing is more enraging than not moving.

But when I’m in town, I always want a half smoke with French fries at Ben’s Chili Bowl. It is the most excellent fast food on earth. A half smoke is not merely a hot dog. It is a thing of beauty and a joy forever.

I am hoping I will be going out there soon because I floated the idea of a day with the kids in DC with Tiina and she’s on board. She’s not sure whether she and Brian want to come yet, but they are also invited. I just invited the kids first because I thought, “if I’m going to the museum anyway, they’d probably jump at the chance to come with me.” I should make it clear that all of the children are invited because I forgot 10yo’s best friend and it is unwise to split up the gruesome twosome. As inadvisable as separating Tiina and me.

Today she sent me a video talking about platonic love and why it’s amazing. I said, “ALL OF THIS. Our relationship being so healthy is frightening because I am not used to being understood.” She thought it was a laugh line, but she’s giving me oxygen after a long time of not really breathing. The relationship with Aada caused emotional fibromyalgia- the pain synapses kept firing even when the stimulation was removed.

Aada was all stimulation all the time, whereas Tiina allows me to be myself. She doesn’t have expectations of the behavior she wants to see out of me. Expectations are around the work, not who I am as a person. And running a family is indeed work. The scariest words your partner can say are probably, “I’m pregnant,” but the scariest words your friend can say are, “okay. You’ve got the COM.”

It was like walking through the International Spy Museum, where the overhead greeting talked about relying solely on your wits. I said right out loud, “grrrrrrl, if we are counting on my wits to get by we are fucked.” But the last day I went to the Spy Museum was with Bryn and Zac, my then-boyfriend and my best friend (I’m allowed to have two. Shut it.). We all cracked up because I am not the common sense-meister.

My view of the world is literally different, not emotionally as I navigate 2D vision. I’ve tried therapy and it did not work. So my eyes are stuck not tracking together and it means I miss a lot. Sensory issues always have emotional repercussions. I am judged harshly on what I do not see in every aspect of my life.

None of that is true with Tiina. She knows my balance is shit and somehow tolerates my presence, anyway. It means a lot of things get dropped, spilled, kicked, etc. because it’s on the floor and my brain doesn’t have sight there. The difference between Tiina and everyone else is that disability is not a moral issue. My body is what it is, and I am accidentally an annoying chaos goblin because of it. It is not intentional, it is impact.

I do not take responsibility for having a disability. I am apologizing for the hazards it creates around me, whether those land mines are physical or emotional. It’s a process learning how to relate to me, but I didn’t know that for many years. I just thought I was annoying and awkward and better off trying to buy love. Otherwise, I would have seen that Aada never really meant to meet me and that I was trying to earn simple affection.

This doesn’t feel like that. This feels like “I want to contribute because they do.” When the kids are with me I don’t worry about money, I just pay. I am the wallet and I don’t mind. Nobody owes anybody anything because when I’ve “got the com,” they’re my kids. Not like my possession, like my neighborhood.

I am not a glorified babysitter, I am a node in the system. Very, very different indeed.

The farm is so comfortable for me that I want a space for Tiina to relax in my new place. But it’s not just her, of course. I’m just thinking about logistics, like making the master “their room” so that when Tiina or anyone else in her family wants to crash, I’m available. I am not taking less. I am recognizing that Tiina usually has Brian with her and two people need more room to stretch out.

It’s about giving Tiina a space to be who she is without the kids, and choosing whether Brian is invited or not because she gets to choose the energy she wants. And, of course, a place for the kids to crash when Brian and Tiina have hit their limit. To me, this is what being family is about. I cannot offer them the world, but I can offer them a safe space in it.

I’m looking everywhere between DC and Baltimore because I’d like to be closer to DC. I still want all my healthcare to be in Baltimore, but cutting off time from the commute out to Stafford and Louisa would be great. Baltimore is just not that far from the Maryland DC suburbs, and I only have to go in once a week.

10yo said, “how much does writing bring in?” I said, “not a lot. My mother and my stepmother both died and left me money, so mostly I live on that.” I then explained putting together a disability case, because in mine traditional work is incompatible. I am capable of creation and productivity, but not on a schedule. I have support needs, and I cannot ignore them. Perimenopause is making all of my deficits much, much worse and harder to manage.

In short, my balance and my personality both get worse when I’m tired.

I want to get back to my own energy levels by having a space that’s open to the whole family. That driving to see each other isn’t always one way, because I like everything how it is, but it’s nagging at me that I don’t have space to host to even make it a reality.

I don’t just want to be in Tiina and Brian’s space, I want them in mine.

All I ever really want from anyone in Tiina’s family is presence, most notably hers because she’s my favorite person. 10yo asked me “who’s your favorite child?”

Me: I have three favorite children…. no, wait. I have two. Pepper is an adult.

Brian: Oh, I do.

10yo: Mom, who’s your favorite child?

Tiina: Leslie

Me: I HEARD THAT!

Feel the love.

Waiting for Aada

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

It was always going to be a famous story that never ended, because we’ll never stop thinking about that time in our lives and what it did to us. I was really, really paranoid walking around Fredericksburg with 10yo because I am Southern and polite enough never to show the pain running underneath but 10yo would spot it in a New York minute.

And hit me in the gut with words the way Aada’s kid used to when he was a toddler.

She said that she threw three sizes due to creating new humans, and DAMN IT, she is right again.

I have no idea what the pain of childbirth is like, but I hear about it in graphic detail, like signing up for a graduate course very, very quickly. Because it’s not just Aada I have to watch out for. We’re all in the same general area, and due to my conversations with Aada, “just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.” I don’t mean anything but “this might be unpleasant.” It’s just not something I’d really like 10yo to see, and not because there is absolutely anything wrong with it. Aada is delightful online, so I’m sure she’s capable of faking it in person or not being seen. My very, very good bet is on the latter. My only point is that I’m not afraid of being seen by anyone but 10yo. My mother lion has gone off and I’m very protective.

Aada painted a very negative picture of me over the years because she treated me exactly like she treats herself. What I wanted was seen as intrusive down to the most minute detail. What I wanted was any kind of reassurance that any of this was real. I was baring my soul on paper and she was using it as entertainment and provocation. My life was just a story in her head, but at least she knew how I felt. How it would be if she actually showed up- hanging with Tiina, Brian, and the kids at the farm. An invitation she said she’d think about, and that meant the world even if she wasn’t serious.

I don’t want the vibe that there’s danger. I want the vibe to be that my situational awareness is turned up to 11 when the kids are with me. I don’t have the tools that Aada does to be as intrusive into her life as she could be into mine when she’s angry. And she’s angry a lot. It felt like being held hostage. Neither one of us could let go, and she wouldn’t let us get any closer. My needs never mattered one bit, and she said that she never intentionally hurt me. She maintained a very elaborate lie for many years, and it was never the first lie that mattered. It was the CVS receipt.

We met in 2013, which by my recollection is a long time ago.

“I was on a flight home.”

It was all bullshit.

My one regret in life is that I didn’t realize the magic show had started, change faces and disappear.