I can’t imagine Argo hasn’t gotten all of my requests to unsubscribe to my blog, because she is generally umbilically connected to the Internet. So, if she’s going to keep the connection to me, I’m going to keep the connection to her and try to let it stop bothering me. In the past, my reaction would have been to rant and scream about it. That’s just not me anymore. I am walking in light, and to get mad about this is just antithetical to who I’ve become.
So I’ll just remind myself of all the good things about her that I love and not the fact that it irritates the shit out of me that my simple request has been ignored. I never asked her to stop reading, just to break the connection that says, “I am here. I am listening.” Her past is to take the things I’ve written and and use one sentence as a gutter snipe instead of taking the entire letter as one narrative. They are her best IEDs ever.
Yeah, sometimes I get angry, but in the same letter I will also say good things, because I see her as a whole narrative and not just a one-dimensional character.
But.
There have been times where the IED has gone off and I couldn’t help but react instead of respond. The whole goal now is to stop, in all things, really. I want to stop being a hotheaded jackass when she doesn’t see the point I’m trying to make because it will serve me well in other areas of my life. Because I’ve been that hotheaded jackass in front of her, she may not ever believe I am truly capable of changing that aspect of my personality…. but she doesn’t have to believe it. I do.
That doesn’t erase the angry things I’ve said, and it never will if she doesn’t let me grow and change in her mind. Because she only knows the virtual side of me and not the Leslie that lives on the ground, her version is skewed into a crazy that my friends on the ground would fall on the floor. Anyone who’s ever met me will say that I am an emotional roller coaster AT TIMES, but at heart I am full of hope, faith, and love. I have bad days, but so do everyone else.
I have mentally obsessed over this relationship because that’s what my personality dictates. That I am more interested in emotions, responses, and the way things could be instead of the way that they are. I am an Idealist, and idealists don’t want to live in the bounds of conventional reality. They want to create utopia and will try anything to get it. I don’t obsess over everything that’s gone wrong, but how to make it right.
The thing that’s new in my life is stopping the obsession with how to make things right with Argo and starting to obsess over what my perfect reality looks like. I am heartened by my dad’s “you go, girl.” I am heartened by all of the people that send them, really. That’s the change in focus. Why obsess over everything that’s gone wrong when I am creating new things that go right? Why live in the past when I can put so much energy into the here and now?
I am going to work with homeless people. I am going to be the Writer in Residence at a church I’ve come to love. God willing, I am going to get an MDiv and start the church that has lived in my dreams for many months. If Argo needs to believe that I’m too batshit crazy to accomplish all of this, then let her. She can sit in that reality for as long as she wants, because while she’s doing it, I’ll have changed in a million different ways without her- she just won’t be there to see it and celebrate with me.
It feels good that it’s not my problem. It’s hers.
So, as long as I take what I’ve written to heart, I am going to be just fine. Sometimes, stopping caring what other people think is the best thing I can do for myself. Letting go of the version of myself that says I am incapable of incredible things is the best thing I could have ever done for my sanity. I wouldn’t have met BBQ, Stefon, and Rez. I wouldn’t have met Cookie. I wouldn’t have met Jeffrey virtually and get to meet him on Friday. I wouldn’t have gone to Prianka’s wedding.
And most of all, I would have been stuck with a wife who continually beat it into my head that I would never amount to anything. It’s not a goal to prove her wrong. It’s a goal to prove me right. I am not competing with Dana’s vision of me. I am competing with mine. What can I accomplish in this life that will become legacy? Will there ever be a congregation that names me pastor emeritus as it grows beyond what I’ve created? Will there be congregations all over the world that use the liturgies I’ve written?
I have already been read on this blog by at least a few people in every country in the world.
Sit there. Take that in. EVERY COUNTRY IN THE ENTIRE WORLD.
Here’s what I have to say about that.
What’s next?
Stories That Are All True 