I downloaded Amazon Prime Music for my phone, and put it on the Top Country station. I can’t say I’m really a country fan, per se, but I enjoy the fact that most songs are slow enough I can actually understand the lyrics. So I’m listening along, and I hear this song, and it just breaks my shit up. I realize that losing Argo is not about “breaking up,” because she’s just my friend, but it still hurts like a bitch. So it was great to laugh in the middle of pain. By the time the song was over, I was all like, “behold the field where I sow my fucks, and see that it is barren.”

I’m going to be ok. Everything is going to be ok.

Today I’m using Microsoft Word to blog, when I normally just use a text editor. I’m trying to cut down on the number of typos I get from rushing to publish, because I think that my courage will run out the longer I look at something… and it’s true. The longer I spend on editing, the more I believe my words don’t matter, so I’ll move on to something else rather than writing anything. Perhaps it’s a little too stupid and careless to publish whatever I want, but for everyone that thinks as such, there are a hundred more who applaud me for my bravery in just telling what’s going on in my life. As for the last couple of days, “shitstorm” just about covers it… and in the end, my life hasn’t changed all that much. I lost a friend who’d no longer become good for me, and I can feel good about that. I miss saying things like “kick ass, take names, be good, all that shit…” but in the end, I realized that I was saying those words every morning just as much for me. Uplifting myself by uplifting others, so perhaps I should just e-mail myself every morning. It would do just as much good, perhaps more, because I know I’m pouring a go-get ‘em attitude into someone that really needs it.

Last night I went to bed at 7:30 and slept hard until my alarm went off. The last two days have been emotionally draining as much as physically. When I’m upset, I don’t eat. This morning looked a lot brighter and I was able to manage cereal with bananas and yogurt and a couple of tangerines. I still feel stupid at all the signs I missed, that this thing could have entirely been avoided if I’d just realized nothing was ever going to go back together and to stop trying. It’s not in my nature to think that way, but perhaps it needs to become so. The well of hope became poisoned water, and I drank enough of it to get sick.

All I wanted was to be heard, understood… and when that didn’t happen, the breakdown was complete. I remember years ago that Argo hurt me HARDCORE. To the point where we didn’t talk for hours in a day when we were used to not going 15 minutes. She said that my silence was voluminous, and when I told her that she’d hurt me, she said that she wouldn’t apologize for what she’d said, but she’d apologize for hurting me.

In this instance, I see no difference. I couldn’t apologize for something I didn’t think was wrong, but I could apologize for her hurt feelings, so I did.

It doesn’t matter what the truth is. She’s going to believe what she wants to believe, thus my need to get as far away from this situation as humanly possible. The bitch of it is that if she’d bothered to get to know me, we could have cleared up a lot.

During my illness, she didn’t talk to me a whole lot, just to Dana… and I can’t imagine what those conversations might have entailed, but my guess is that they were a far cry from reality.

Because reality is that I couldn’t get a new patient appointment for three weeks, and I didn’t have any other choice but to go to the emergency room, because there was no doctor that would prescribe for me without me actually being their patient. My time in the hospital was very successful, by all counts, because I learned that there are coping mechanisms for anxiety and angry that I’d just never learned (and lots of people never do). The other thing I learned is that a lot of my “attention deficit” was actually boxes that could be checked on a trauma diagnosis kit. That when I didn’t know what to do, my attention would shift to something I did know… my own memories. If I couldn’t solve the present, I would continually try to solve the past.

And in retrospect, this is starting to sound very familiar and scary. However, I am so much better at solving the present now, because I have the tools to do it…. But not with people who know the old buttons to push to ensure that they will get an old reaction instead of a new one. No one is immune to being “worked over,” and I am no exception. It was a stunning realization that I had grown past Argo, that I didn’t want to be held to my old self because if we had anything to resolve, she wouldn’t approach me as someone who’d been working on my issues. She’d just push buttons until she got what she wanted.

Pushing those buttons has never and will never make my behavior okay, but it takes a gargantuan amount of strength to walk away when you are feeling threatened. I don’t know too many people who would have walked away from having the same buttons pushed I did, and it doesn’t matter what they are. People who feel provoked are provoked for all sorts of reasons, and we all struggle with those moments of “cortisol and sin” that we know aren’t going to end well, because in the end, we’ve given the provoker exactly what they need to “prove” their rightness.

I keep going over and over in my mind what I should have done instead. The first is that I never should have responded to her e-mail. I said I was done. I should have meant it. That would have cut the fight off at the pass, because it would have been me saying, “fight with God if you have to, but you’re not going to get to me.” But our relationship has been like that for years- Argo coming after me with both guns blazing and when she sends across those escalated words, I jump on them like a dog with a bone. I undo myself, not her.

It reminded me of the fight with Dana, where I couldn’t let her just provoke me and walk away. What I should have done in that situation is gotten in my car and driven away. But I couldn’t let her be “bigger than me.” I couldn’t let her win. Anger bubbles up in me from deep inside, and over time, both Argo and Dana learned to capitalize on it so that I would feel ashamed at my behavior with no recognition on their part that I was capable of a calm conversation, I just wasn’t going to have it if there was already a gun on the table.

Feeling threatened is what has driven most of my emotions since I was a teenager. I have so much work to do on responses to adrenaline, because fight-or-flight overtakes me in a way that I cannot see clearly anymore. I can only see spots in front of my eyes and not a path through to get what I want without trying to threaten the person more than they’ve just threatened me.

I don’t know what to do to de-escalate the conversation myself to get the guns off the table in the first place.

When Argo wrote to me and said that she was getting blowback from her friends and I said I was done, she said, “If you continue to refer to me in your blog, drive by “areas of interest”, and send me fucked up emails, I will be forced to seek legal action. I can promise you that.” My throat closed up because I was like, “what fucked up e-mails? Yes, I realize that there are plenty from over a year ago, but nothing since and in fact, signs of growth in others. If I’d known that driving by places I’d seen in pictures and wanted to see for real was going to lead her to that place, I never would have done it, because it was the last thing on my mind to hurt someone. Facebook is just a medium. Real life is real life. I could understand the stalking aspect if she thought I was trying to get pictures of her house or something fucked up like that. But I was 50 miles outside of the city, most notably to see all the places I wanted to go with Dana and just didn’t get to while we were together. Imagining what those friendships might have been like had we not used C3 to blow them up.

While I was on my sightseeing trip, it was incredibly sad and cathartic, and I cannot help that part of my strength in letting go of Argo now is due to the fact that some of the places I saw said, “let her go” as well. The reason I kept holding on to our strength is that perhaps a month ago, she told me that the best present I could have given her is getting well. Her nastiness now is uncalled for, but not unexpected. Like every fallible human ever, she escalated and I engaged, thus “proving” that I haven’t gotten well at all. I am sure she has all the proof she needs to believe that I am the villain in all of this. I don’t believe that I am a villain. I believe that I am perfectly imperfect, that I have the ability to accept myself in the face of being unacceptable, to quote Paul Tillich.

I am as perfect as humans ever get.

I woke up so depressed that I thought I needed a mental health day, and in the end, just threw on my clothes and ran. My job is muscle memory, for the most part, and I decided that I could either feel like shit at home, or feel like shit at work. I chose…………. wisely. Argo sent me a note that said she was getting some blowback from people who wanted to make sure she was okay, as if I had something to do with blowing her cover. There’s only two people in the world that I’ve ever told who the nickname really is. One is Dana, and one is someone I thought was my friend, but as it turns out, not so much. I was pleading for help, years ago, where we’d gotten into this place where neither one of us were good for each other anymore, and I would have given a limb to make it right. So if anyone knows outside of them, I didn’t tell them, and in my humble experience Dana can’t keep a secret to save her life. This is not a slam; she just gets exuberant and things slip out, one of the many reasons I realized I couldn’t trust her as far as I could throw her and getting the hell out of Dodge allowed me to stop being afraid of what she might say at any given moment. So, the breech didn’t come from me, and of that I am sure.

Argo told me to shut it down and never contact her ever again. The contacting is easy. A snake bit me, and when a snake bites you, you don’t blame the snake. You just move on and try to get the venom out. But it is quite a different thing to tell someone that they cannot have their personal space to say what they think and mean it. I told her I’d lawyer up if I had to, because she didn’t have a case. Sedition and/or libel have no place here, because I have been up front that these are my opinions, not facts, and they never will be. Freedom of speech is freedom of speech, and of course, this was after telling me that she hadn’t and wouldn’t read what I had to say. My only reply to that was that it was like telling me she didn’t like oranges without ever actually having one.

At issue was the trip I took down to Dumfries, Stafford, FXBG, etc. because there was nothing that I could do to overcome the idea that I was somehow stalking her, even though that was the last thing on my mind… I have said this before and I will say this again, that it was important to me to see things in real life that I’d only seen in pictures, without bothering anyone and without even anyone knowing I was there. I wrote about it because that’s my thing. I go and observe and take pictures and spend some time reflecting on the past three years and all the things I’ve done to isolate people I truly love. I thought it was benign, so I sent her a picture of my adventures and the response was swift and immediate. I felt like I was a mere journalist. She thought I was trying to seek out ways to make her feel uncomfortable. I apologized profusely and told her that there was no way I meant to hurt her, but by then, she was already on the fucked-up train of “I wish I’d never met you, that there’s not a day that goes by that I don’t regret letting you into my life.”

And finally, I got angry enough to feel the same way. Apparently, for Argo to feel heard, I have to agree with her assessment, and I didn’t, but I did apologize for engendering her discomfort. That it was important for me to have my own space, and important for her to have her emotional space as well without discounting how she felt and writing it off. I handled it in the best way I knew how, which was to just listen, take in her words, and own that her feelings were important whether I agreed with them or not. I can’t erase her feelings, but I *can* stick to my guns that my intentions were pure and I will not be held hostage by her shitty accusations anymore. It just doesn’t work like that.

I’m angry that prayers, well-wishes, check-ins, and just general friend-love have gone out the window in favor of burning this bridge to the ground over something that I feel she’s been waiting for. If her hatred of me was so deep-seated, it’s something I would have liked to know as I tried to put the work into solving something I thought could go back together with enough work and time. That I owned every bit of what I did to make her uncomfortable and did everything to get out of the situation that caused me to act and react that way, including getting away from Dana and Aaron, with whom I was content to sit in my nothing box and have all these dreams without action. There’s a solid reason I left Houston, and it wasn’t to be with Argo. It was to find myself, and I have.

What I realized is a friend that placates you into thinking that things are getting better while just waiting for you to fuck up isn’t a friend at all. Waiting to push my hot buttons untll I regress into the person she wants me to be is just about the shittiest thing she could have done, because she ratchets up that anger in me that needs to pop off just to treat her as shitty as she’s just treated me, without letting anger roll off because she’s intentionally trying to get me to pop off just so she can “prove” I haven’t changed. It is as if she stores up those hot buttons and uses them to great effect, such as telling me that she would not hesitate to get a restraining order even though I have been nowhere near her ever in the history of this move.

I told her that if anyone needed a restraining order, it wasn’t her. It was me. That I was tired of being placated and lied to while she held on to this undercurrent of hatred and regret without telling me she was doing so. Any friend that would do that to me just isn’t.

I don’t want any contact with her, because I see that she brings out the worst in me because she actively tries to escalate a conversation and I fall for it every time. I just regress because she won’t accept me as I am, just pigeonhole me as the bitch while she walks away clean. It is never *our* fault we’ve fucked things up, just mine. According to Argo, she’s never done anything wrong in the history of our relationship except befriending me. It hurts like a motherfucker to hear, but at least now I know her true colors instead of her hiding behind this facade of “I’m glad things are beter.”

She doesn’t have the right to make me feel small anymore, because I won’t let her get away with it. I never have, and I never will. The fact that she will not look inside herself is not my problem. The fact that I carry all this weight of grief and sadness has nothing to do with her… because like I said, in this relationship, she hasn’t made a mistake yet. It reminds me of Katharin, because when she was a school counselor at JJP (John J. Pershing Middle School), she said that if you believe the parents, no kid in the history of the school has ever done anything wrong.

Her days of treating me like shit are numbered, because one day I will look back at this relationship and decide that I was never worthy of the hell she put me through while denying it ever happened. I wish I could hate her. I wish I could get angry enough not to want her in my life. I wish I could tell her to take a long walk on a short pier. But when I look back at the interactions we’ve had, the good wins out and I cannot focus on the bad. But she can. And therein lies the rub. We’ve both given each other a good amount of road rash, but at least I can admit my part. She sticks hard to her guns that I created this entire thing. I hope that strategy works out well for her. I’ve always thought it was better to keep the peace and take it and just sit in my wrongness, hoping that one day, she would, too. But none of the resurrections I’ve hoped for have taken, even when I thought they did and we were good. Because I cannot get out from under things she won’t talk about…. and there are fucking plenty.

Yesterday, when she contacted me and said that people were checking on her based on what I’d written, I said, “I’m done. Your mess. You clean it up.” It’s not my responsibility to take on the feelings of her friends, especially since they are her place to fall and not mine. I didn’t tell these people she was Argo, but someone did, and instead of asking me what I meant, she just came out guns blazing. I got provoked into white-hot anger, and again said some things that were beyond the pale.

I apologized this morning, saying that even though I felt provoked, that didn’t make my words okay, and that it wasn’t important to me whether she responded, but it was important to me that I returned to an even keel.

But I also expressed my feelings about that matter, that when a snake bites you, do you really blame the snake? No. You just try like hell to get the venom out. Her snake in the grass approach to treating me like a friend and having these deep-seated feelings of hate and regret running underneath were not the way I expected this relationship to end. I thought that my words and actions would count for someting, that she would see that I only wanted the best for her, and I can’t help but think that this latest iteration was planned. It was her chance to get rid of me and she took it, because then she’d never have to face the reality of her own mistakes. She could just hold everything over my head and continue to believe that she is always right, no matter how I feel about the situation, because of course, my feelings don’t matter.

I should have listened to Dana when she said that I was pouring emotions down a hole; that I’d never get anything back… because in the beginning, our relationship was mutual and beautiful and the friend my INFJ personality profile said I’d get… this person that would walk with me my whole life because I only have the ability to create a few friendships at a time and devote myself deeply to them without having a ton of acquaintances just to make small talk. But when that piece of us broke, there was no redemption, as much as I might have wanted it. I feel wrecked at all the times I prayed for her, wished her well, sent peace offerings, and thought we were on our way to being the valued people to each other we once were. But Dana was right. That part of us would never come back, and I couldn’t love enough, forgive enough, apologize enough to make those dreams come true. All the love and care we poured into each other turned nasty on a dime, and if things could change that quickly, where the hell was I that I didn’t see it?

I just feel so stupid that I didn’t recognize what Dana was trying to tell me… that the relationship was broken beyond repair and yet, I still tried in vain. It’s the hardest part of me to realize that relationships are broken, because I don’t think they ever end. If I think of my whole lifetime in DC, what if we end up at the same party? What if I innocently end up in her neighborhood because one of of *my* friends lives there? Is she going to see that I have my own life and my own friends, or is she going to try and take that away from me as well? I don’t think that these things will come to pass anytime soon, but I have a long vision and a long memory.

So, in short, I have to stop caring altogether and just say “que sera, sera.” Her take on it is that I will never hear from her directly ever again. She’s said it before, and within a few days, we’ve been in contact with each other after having the make-up conversations that needed to happen. But I don’t think it’ll happen this time, because I am too strong to let her in. I have real trust issues now. I spend my days regretting I ever met her, when I never had to before. I was doing my dead-level best to be open and transparent, and if I truly was the stalker she’s making me out to be, I never would have told her shit. Stalkers live on being secretive and obtuse about what they’re doing. Stalkers have this dark side to them that says people need to be watched from the bushes. I don’t have that bone in my body. I have a writer and observer’s point of view, curious to a fault, and obviously that curiosity was scary to Argo and I didn’t think it would be because again, I was so transparent. I even said, “I’ll send you a picture of my license plate if that’s what you need to know that you’ll NEVER see me in your neighborhood.” I was willing to work with her fear to resolve it, not add to it. I am not the person she believes that I am, and to live with these false assumptions is hell on earth, because I just start to feel more and more worthless, more and more depressed. I WILL NOT let her put me into that place of fear ever again, and I will not be scared of her. She wants a restraining order, get one. Total waste of money because I wouldn’t choose to be around her for a million dollars. She gutted me like a fish, and I know I hurt her, too… so why add to it? Why cause even more destruction without meaning to? I stepped into it up to my ass without ever meaning any harm. She’s the one that took it and ran with it, and how could I have been so stupid that sending little prayers and checking in when she’s had a bad day and giving her jokes to lift her spirits would count for anything? It must be a good feeling to know that you’ve never done anything wrong. I can’t say the same, but I can say that I own it. She emotionally can’t, and never will, and I should have known it long ago.

But my family will catch me. I know they will, both bio and my host family.

Please hold Sam and Dominic in your prayers as Dom’s mother is about to transition due to a long battle with cancer.

Those are the people I need to focus on, pray for, check in, and love to the best of my ability. But at the same time, I will have a hard time ever letting anyone in, letting anyone see the real me, because I don’t want a relationship in which people use those flaws to beat me with them. So perhaps I will have a lot of acquaintances, because I don’t want relationships that are more than orange-juice glass deep. Maybe someday someone will change my mind, but it won’t happen anytime soon. I’m too busy trying to go back inside myself, trying to get rid of the hot buttons Argo knows to push so that if she ever tries to push them again, they just won’t work.

If there’s any time I wish I was six feet tall and bulletproof, it’s now. I’m going to go home and do all my laundry so that I can suit up. Leslie Lanagan™ is back, because I need a chance to put this away and lock the box so that I’m not undone by Argo’s revelations. Right now, the box is too small and I can’t close the lid. But when I do, I will feel like there’s nothing she can do to scare me, nothing she can do to make me regress in a ball of anxiety, nothing she can do to get to me… and I will protect myself from anyone else ever trying to do the same.

It would be so easy to say, “fuck off.” But it’s more complicated than that. As things always are. I have my good memories, and I will take those with me instead. What she does with our memories is none of my business, but if no contact is what makes this better, I’m all for it. I don’t want strife, I want peace… and trying to prove it failed miserably. I can’t help but think what might have happened if she’d really just taken in that I was curious, being the me I always am, rather than jumping on the “you’re a shitty person” bandwagon. But again, if she can’t love me, I can. There is no one smarter than me ABOUT ME. And What I Know for Sure™ is that I have a well of love within me that’s waiting for the right friend and not the wrong one. I just hope that when he/she shows up, I’m not so jaded that friendship cannot happen… the kind that is real, painful and honest, true to its core.

I miss Aaron desperately because I’ve already let him in. He knows my shit and chooses to love me, anyway. But I made a mistake with him, too, and it caused me to suit up. I was talking to him about Dana, and he lost his shit saying that I was putting him in the middle. It was then that I realized he’d become Dana’s friend and I couldn’t count on him to be my person anymore. A wall went up that will never come back down.

It also saddens me that Dana isn’t my go-to guy anymore, but so many walls have gone up there that I won’t let her in, either.

It’s time to go for lunch with Pri-Diddy if she’s in town, because what I know for sure is that she will come up with several TED Talks and motivational videos that encourage my growth forward and not back. Maybe she is the person that my INFJ profile said I’d get, bcause every time I see her, I am filled with peace…. my enormous guru in a tiny body. But at the same time, I am not ready to give all of myself to her in the way that old friends do. I am too content to suit up.

At this point, I trust no one except myself, and maybe that’s what the snakebite was for. To learn that lesson wholeheartedly. If you want to see the real me, you’re going to have to fight through layers and layers of mistrust because I didn’t know just how much this relationship was going to wreck me and hopefully build me up in ways I didn’t know I needed. Moving on from a fountain of dysfunction is what’s best for me right now, as well as suiting up to prove to myself that I am worthy of love even through the wreckage.

I feel like last night was a car wreck of enormous proportions, skidding on a mountain without a guardrail. I’m supposed to take a Klonopin in the morning and one at night. Instead, I took them both so that I wouldn’t feel the physical effects of being so angry at all the lies. I wanted to be able to write about them clearly, without cortisol and sin racing through my body. After I finish, I’m going to listen to Nadia Bolz-Weber preach, because her words have a way of breaking down my walls. I could let her in, because we both have some of the same wounds. I need someone who will understand them, but I’m not going to seek her out because I know she has a million people who already want a piece of her.

Instead, I think I’m going to start group therapy, because I got more out of Al=Anon than I’ve ever gotten anywhere else. I never forget that my troubles started with the revelation of Diane’s partner being an alcoholic and a weed dealer, that it made me on high alert as a 7th grader, taking on problems that were never meant to be mine but wanted to solve, anyway. You can’t imagine what it was like to see my friend in pain and wanting to be the knight in shining armor that destroyed the situation for her. But I was so little, an ankle-biter at best.

I think it was the start of wanting to join the military, because not only could I be in a jazz band, I would get bigger… more muscular, able to take on the destruction that Diane’s ex was putting into her life.

I couldn’t join because of medical reasons, but I still want to be one of those people that abides by the code. Honor, justice, impeccable honesty, and the ability to see violence for the greater good as our world continues to be attacked both literally and virtually in the cyber world.

I have great role models for this, soldiers that I look up to in times of great need. They don’t need to interact with me, because I’ve learned from them in the past and I carry their lessons in my heart.

But Volfe will always be my person, keeping me on the right track. He was the first person to tell me that I was amazing, Dana was amazing, but we were not amazing together, and that it was better for us to be amazing apart. He saw things in our relationship that bothered him to no end, and as we chatted in a parking lot, he laid out for me what he saw. It was truly the beginning of the end, or two new beginnings, as I prefer to think of it.

It was at that time I leaned on Argo for emotional support, and she was giving it to me in spades. I got so desperate for Dana to calm down that I sent Argo an e-mail that said, “could you send me a 12 page report with graphs and pictures on how much you like dick? It would help. Thanks.” I laughed until I farted when she e-mailed me back and I realized she’d changed the subject line to “bullet points.”

It’s that kind of shit that makes me want her in my life, no matter how much it costs me, because those e-mails were life rafts, and I took them. I grabbed on to Argo’s belief in me that I could accomplish anything I set out to do, and left Dana’s shitty words that I’d never amount to anything. I’ve said this before, but taking that life raft was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do, because of course my worthlessness loop said that Dana was right. She was just throwing emotional grenades designed to hurt, and that one put me on the ground.

But Argo’s belief in me made me realize that if I wanted to start a church and touch many lives, I WOULD. She sent me an e-mail that I stared at for an hour without being able to say anything…. “I don’t believe in God…. but I do believe in you.”

I will sit shivah for this relationship, perhaps for far longer than I need to because it takes me a while to get this shit out of my system. When Meag and I broke up, I didn’t open up to anyone for three years. It was Kathleen that finally got through to me, because I saw clearly that we had what my friend Donna Schuurman would call “compatible wounds.” As it turns out, those compatible wounds were our undoing, but in the beginning, they were comforting and familiar. Why wouldn’t I want to be with someone who’d survived something every bit as traumatic as me? But the relationship turned bipolar, dealing with the same issues over and over as we both rose and dipped into good feelings and awful ones.

I could say the same for Argo. The relationship became bipolar, hot and cold. When the sun shined, it was magnificent, and the chill was frightening. All I wanted was for the sun to shine again, and I thought it would this year. That things were getting better to the point where the bipolar would stop.

It didn’t, and I am left with picking up the pieces, meat tenderizer on my skin as I pull the poison out. It is not lost on me that some of the poison is mine, but it is also not lost on me that some of it is not.

I give thanks for the way that Argo carried me, loved me like a mountain lion biting a cub on the neck to carry it to safety.

I also give thanks that when that part of us ended, I could own my own stuff and walk away, whole and complete within myself.

Amen.

I can’t hide it anymore. I tried. I wanted the relationship to be publicly dead so we could work on our issues in private. We started doing some really good work, listening to each other and trying to hear what the other needed. I sent peace offerings because I truly believed that saying I was sorry wasn’t enough if it didn’t come with changed behavior as well. I wanted to be the friend I couldn’t when I was so ill, stuck in the middle of a morass I thought I’d never be able to release. I put things on her plate that never deserved to be there, because I didn’t have Diane anymore, and that dark place in me that believes others’ stories are more important than mine reared its ugly head. The sunflower within me leaned toward her light, because it was immense and powerful when it shone upon me. I felt special in a way that I’d never felt before, because I was truly sharing my pain, rather than someone just listening. We had our own emotional shorthand, our own fights that ended in “make up text,” kisses on my boo-boos of enormous proportion. Because I was so far away, it made perfect sense at the time that sharing ourselves over text was a way to be close to each other without the impossible task of meshing schedules…. although I was excited by the possibility of having her visit Houston so I could show her my house, take her to my Mexican restaurants, take her to all the places I loved because I thought that just like having Dana and Chef there making Houston feel different, she would be no exception. Back then, it wasn’t a thing for us to visit each other, because the rabbit hole had not become something to isolate us from each other rather than bringing us together. Dana and I had a huge guest bedroom, and nothing would have pleased me more than for it to become “Argo’s Room,” if only for a few days of getting to know each others real personalities instead of the ones we presented to each other in black & white. For instance, we are both fucking hilarious, and the days of flipping each other shit are the ones I remember so very fondly.

But things happened that because of my abused nature, I had a hard time dealing with on my own. I should have gone to therapy immediately, rather than trying to heal myself on my own. For instance, we were intoxicated by our conversations from the first time we had a real conversation. My favorite memory of that day is when she said she ran to Eminem, rapping as she went along. I said, “I’m sorry… you rap to Eminem! Explain to me exactly how I’m not going to fall in love with you….. USE BIG WORDS.” Of course, I was joking at that time, but Argo took it seriously and said, “you won’t fall in love with me, as adorable as I might be. You’ll just fall in love with absolute and complete honesty.” It was just true… and at the same time, she is, for a fact, adorable. 🙂

My abused nature says that I need to know everything about you in the next twenty minutes… you’re my new best friend, call me every day. It was intense and beautiful, this way that we came together in moments of need for both of us. I cannot tell her story, but I can tell mine. When I began throwing up all my emotions about my abuse, for the first time in my life, getting angry and despondent that I hadn’t been smart enough to figure it out long ago, she took those wounds and cleaned them with disinfectant, putting on band-aids and xs and os for support.

Wires were crossed in ways that I never meant for them to happen. Dana was just as completely threatened as I was, because I was not immune to the fact that Argo was getting energy that wasn’t supposed to go to her. Dana and I had a coming to Jesus meeting over it, because I could handle not talking so much with Argo, not sending so much energy her way, but my boundary was “you cannot take her away from me. I need her.” Separating from her completely would have been damaging for both of us, and it has been every time it has happened, because it’s happened now more times than I can count. It is the continual dance of intimacy, having a close moment and realizing that shit got real and pulling away from each other afterward.

I kick myself every time it happens, because I have never had a friend who was willing to be wrapped up in me, that it actually would be damaging to her to pull away. I’ve underestimated friendship my whole life, partly because I believed that if there was no sex involved, there couldn’t possibly be that much emotion attached to a relationship… and partly because I didn’t think I was worthy of such a relationship to begin with.

After I became so mentally ill and needed my psychology and psychiatry adjusted back to normal, Argo’s attitude toward me never changed. She still saw me as someone whose bad side would always be lurking underneath… that nothing I could do would correct the way she felt… although she did say that the peace offerings I sent her were very cool and thoughtful, which made me feel like a million dollars… a win at the end of a long football game where we’re just grinding it out. Thus, my impression that we were doing good work to rebuild from the scorched earth up.

But I made a mistake, and instead of seeing it as a mistake that I dearly wanted to rectify, she used it as justification that I’d always be this dark personality, that I’d never really get away from it, and I just couldn’t live like that anymore. I couldn’t live with someone hanging my past over my head, because any credit I’d earned was destroyed in a hot second, rather than seeing me as the entire narrative I am. I will always be a work in progress, I will never be perfect, and I also will never make her dark opinion of me come true.

It was Lindsay that opened my eyes, that every time Argo says something negative about me, I lose the light in my eyes because her opinion means so much that I can’t take in others’ love of me, the people who really want me around and value my opinion and treat me like the lovable nerd I am. When I get into this dark, dark space, the thing that sustains me is realizing that people really do treat my Facebook and Twitter pages like “the hot list,” and if I look at my stats by country, I have literally been read in EVERY country in the world. Taking that in is just enormous, and something I continue to wrap my brain around because it is too much to take in all at once.

Argo can have all the shitty feelings she wants about me, because it’s not my job to listen to them anymore. It’s my job to find people who want to support me in all that I do, rather than getting under my skin in a way that makes me take those shitty feelings and start the worthlessness loop running hardcore. I don’t hear from her when I am doing great things, but I will always hear from her if she feels the need to read me the riot act. Living like that is so harmful that I can’t take it anymore, because our relationship will never change unless she can give me some credit, and she. Just. Won’t. We both think it’s better not to communicate now, and I am ready for it. I never thought I would be. I never thought I would be strong enough. I never thought I’d be ready to slice out a piece of my own heart and call it good.

But don’t get me wrong. I won’t get over this overnight, or even over months. Slicing out my own heart is so much harder than having someone else do it. I don’t want to be angry, I don’t want to be sad, I don’t want to create problems where they don’t exist. It is just a letting go, and I am accepting of it.

Because I just can’t live this way anymore. I am not the person she thinks I am, and her insistence that she can read me over e-mail is not reality and never will be. I am gestalt in the best sense of the word- more than the sum of my parts. Now it’s my job to decide what I’m going to do with it.

Amen.

I am not feeling well today. I got some blowback from my trip yesterday, and I don’t want to talk about it. I just want to be sad. I was trying to let go of all my feelings of anger at everything that’s gone down over the past few years…. just me and my journal and my camera. I went to all the places I thought would help, and it worked. I came home feeling like a million dollars, until someone told me it seemed stalker-y and truly baffling. I think that’s because I handle problems differently than most people. I want to go back to the scene of the crime and try to put my self-worth back together one picture and one blog entry at a time.

But today my self-worth is in the toilet, and I haven’t taken my lunch break until now. I just wanted to stay busy, muscle-memory floating me until I couldn’t avoid crying anymore. It’s as if perception is more important than reality, and people would rather believe their own realities than trying to understand mine.

The point is that I wanted to be alone.

I wanted to let go of things that truly trouble me, not create problems for anyone else. I am a writer and observer, and that’s what I was doing. Really feeling my feelings, digging deep into them so that they wouldn’t dog me anymore. There are times when I cannot breathe, the past eats me up inside. I needed to relieve the pressure as to keep my even-keel personality. Anxiety medication can only do so much, so I took it and went exploring.

I got to see things I’ve only seen in pictures, and thought they’re worth a thousand words, it was nothing compared to seeing everything for real. Sitting at Dana’s old school was a way to see how she incubated. It was sad and beautiful in one breath, and I chose to take pictures of beautiful things there. But the blowback was not from her, just another friend who deemed it “creepy AF.” Well, I think it’s “creepy AF” to try and dictate to someone how they should grieve, how they should act, how they should process.

I wish I could tell you why it was important, but I don’t exactly know. I didn’t take off with a specific mission in mind, just an idea that it would help me let go…. and as I was driving home, I really felt it.

She is not of me anymore. I do not see her as an extension of me, a missing limb with extraordinarily intense phantom pain.

There’s no need to go back in time anymore. I saw everything I needed to see in order to move forward. A huge wave of peace washed over me as I saw things for what they were.

But I cannot ignore the blowback, and I am blue and just want to crawl under my bed. I am not “creepy AF,” and I know this within myself…. but the person who said it got under my skin and my coping mechanisms in order to see myself for who I am and what I believe have been stepped on to an enormous degree.

I know myself, and what I know is that I need to put on some gangsta rap and get shit handled. But even that will only do so much, because sadness is threatening to undo me. I am caught between a rock and a hard place, and trying not to explode in anger or tears.

Tears would probably be more cathartic, because anger would only lead to those words getting more under my skin than less. I am trying harder these days to let anger roll off my back, because it doesn’t serve me well. When “cortisol and sin” threaten to come out of me, I pray without ceasing. I pray because I can’t help myself. I don’t pray because it changes God, I pray be cause it changes me (paraphrasing C.S. Lewis).

All I want is to walk humbly, and hope grace prevails. But that does not happen can cannot when perception means more than reality. It is a lesson I am learning slowly but surely. There’s nothing I can do to change anyone’s impression of me. I can only reach out to people who want the same things I do. Peace in the world and peace within ourselves, the ability to stumble and be forgiven for it.

I will not let this overtake me, ultimately, but I feel like complete and total shit right now. I can’t wait until it’s time to go home, so Eggsy and I can blast NWA (just saw Straight Outta Compton and so damn impressed) and I can try like hell to forget this day ever happened.

I was up before my alarm this morning, and decided it was time for Waffle House. I was on the road by 7:00, and had a lovely conversation at the breakfast bar with some serious hikers. They told me some places to look, and I asked if there was anything around here (Dumfries) that I shouldn’t miss. They told me that the Marine museum was cool, so I said I would check it out. Before I did that, though, all three wipers on my car (I have one of those cute little rear ones) needed to be replaced, so I set out for Wal-Mart (shut it). I got three Rain-X brand, but the book was wrong and none of them fit. So I took them back off the car, returned them to Wal-Mart, and headed to AutoZone, where I should have gone in the first place. They had the front to, but the rear was out of stock. They told me that they could hold one for me at another store, and they listed several. Apparently, I do not know Virginia as well as I thought I did, because I thought Stafford was on my way back to Maryland. As it turns out, not so much. Stafford is way the hell out into nothing, about 15-ish miles from Fredericksburg, or “FredVegas” to locals. I do not know why they call it FredVegas. It is the AntiVegas…. but I’ve heard it referred to as such since 2001, so I know it’s not a new phenomenon (menomenon). Fredericksburg is about the size of Longview, Texas in 1980. Though I did see a few tattoo shops, I believe that is the limit to their Vegas-ness…. because of course if I was only a few miles from there, I had to see what it looked like.

So I went antiquing in a few stores (didn’t find anything I’d be caught dead with… much less alive), took pictures of the foliage, and stopped for a beer at Capital Ale House. Then, when I looked at the food menu, I decided I needed a pimento grilled cheese sandwich with ham and bread and butter pickles. NEEDED.

The main drag in “FredVegas” looks a lot like The Strand in Galveston…. so familiar and warm. All that was missing was a Yaga Ragz and King’s Candy.

I also got a chance to do some grieving, because I looked up Dana’s old high school on my GPS and walked around. I’d hoped that she’d be along with me for that ride, but no matter. It felt good to be on my own, just taking it in. I didn’t cry, but I almost did when I realized that a spider had gotten under my sleeve when I got back in the car… and in fact, the first time I went there, I didn’t take any pictures… just drove off toward FredVegas and then realized I wanted pictures, so I drove back. It didn’t matter. I didn’t have anywhere to be. It was just me and my little egg car, my Eggsy, and our NPR One (coolest app on earth). I call my car Egsy because he’s my favorite spy in Kingsmen: The Secret Service, and in my head, Mike Meyers as Austin Powers always says, “your spy car’s a YARIS?”

And in conclusion, here’s some of the pictures I took:

First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.

-Epictetus

I generally leave for work really early so that I get there just as the office is opening. Several times, I’ve gotten there before there was even anyone to unlock the door. In light of this, I saw a police car on the side of the road with one policeman trying his best to change a tire. I’m no expert except in holding things, so I pulled up in front of him and asked him if he needed any help. He said no, he was good, but thanked me profusely for stopping. I said, “thank you for your service,” and got back into my car feeling that at least if I couldn’t help, I payed attention to the Good Samaritan law. In this day and age, I wonder if he thought I was stopping to shoot him while he was down, so I approached carefully and yelled before I got to him that if he needed help, I was available.

The Good Samaritan law comes from the Bible, a parable about how two men on opposite sides politically came together when something like that seemed impossible. The injured man’s own people “Kitty-ed” him, a phrase I use for Kitty Genovese, who was murdered because no one wanted to get involved for fear of being thought as suspect. Literally, no one did anything.

It took an outsider, a hated man in that territory, to see need and respond to it. I can’t think of a more apt description than stopping to help a white policeman, someone I am groomed to hate because of all the bullshit I see with inequality with arrests and the sheer number of blacks being incarcerated for the smallest of things. White college kids carrying pot are just “boys being boys,” and black ones stay in the system forever… and let me remind you that this happens in Washington, DC, where laws state that pot is legal to begin with.

So I, this wholly other, stopped to help someone in need even though I was wary to do so. I was the Samaritan, and I felt every bit of it.

My last Good Friday was abominable, and I felt like starting this one out right. As I told Susan, “I want to be right with God and my neighbor.” This helped me to feel like I was putting words into action and not just saying things to make myself feel better. It reminds me of Argo, my little lost lamb (although she is not so little… she’s a badass with muscle to prove it). In that entry, I talked about putting actions behind my words, rather than just saying and not doing. The peace offering was a special order from Share a Coke, a bottle that says “Share a Coke with Argo.” It never arrived, but the sentiment was the same… I have done you wrong and I don’t want to ever do that again. To want a response, again, was not giving just for the spirit of it. It gave me something to give something to her.

I am finding that the Good Fridays of my life are slowing taking on “resurrection in the middle of the mess.” We blessed and released our relationship, so all is well even though we don’t communicate. I didn’t want my past to be my only narrative, that source of anger that bubbled up in me without an appropriate outlet. I wish to God I could have been the friend she needed, instead of regressing into my abused nature.

Susan came into my life at the perfect time, my stranger on a train (literally) that doesn’t mind hearing me out in the same way I want to hear her. I feel that I have more tools in my emotional toolbox, and I want to be able to show them… to be the friend to her that I couldn’t be to Argo because I was so damaged at the time. I still can’t believe some of the things I said to push her away, and the blowback was enormous… just enormous… because for every hot button I used to push on her, she knew all of mine as well. The weak spots that would hurt, and they did…. enormously so.

It is my life’s work to put that in my past, and to become the wounded healer both Jesus and Henri Nouwen want me to be. I pray every day for both my own healing and the healing of others for the destruction I caused. I pray for Dana, that she will one day work past her hurt and anger so that we can at least have a less awkward relationship than we would have if we were constantly running into each other. I pray for Aaron and the way I bitch-slapped him for wanting to move to Austin after his divorce, because moving after mine was so hypocritical, and in effect, abandoning someone I’d really grown to love… showing me was true, deep friendship meant without the undercurrent of sex that led me to believe sex and friendship were the same thing.

That is the mark that Diane left on me, another part of my life’s work to erase that is coming along nicely. The thing that gives me hope is that Dana and Aaron continue to be friends, and so even if I am not there, they at least have each other. I miss the days of hanging out with the two of them, in effect Aaron being our “third mike” like Jimmy Norton on the Opie & Anthony show. However, I could not be in that situation any longer, because that piece of me fell apart, and I knew I could never go back. To say why is to betray someone I love dearly, but sufficed to say I wanted to be a different person and I got it.

My little town (Silver Spring, MD) rescued me. Hayat was the first call I made when looking for a room on Craig’s List, and even though I can afford my own apartment now, I don’t want to move. I like having a family around that checks in when I am sick, depressed, or both. They are Lebanese, wholly other to me, and the wholly, holy other I needed to get my life back on track.

For instance, the checking in came when I texted Hayat and said, “do you have a little bit of whiskey I could have? My cold is so bad that I want to make a hot toddy.” She said she didn’t have any whiskey, but she would leave brandy on the kitchen counter. I added it to some black tea with lemon and sugar in the raw (I didn’t have any honey), and within a few minutes, I felt better.

It has always been like this, from the first day. A family I could count on that would help me when I was down and get excited for me when I was up.

This company is the same way. We all have a good time while we’re working hard, and I can’t imagine life without any one of them…. which is why I’m usually the first one here and the last to leave. I don’t get overtime because I’m salaried, but I have drive to finish projects and not leave them in the middle just because it’s 6:00. Today we’re having burgers delivered for lunch, and I got a “hypocrite,” a veggie burger with crisp bacon. I am salivating just thinking about it.

Good Samaritans abound if you’re looking for them. If you are in the middle of your own Good Friday, they will help you find your Easter.

Amen.

Nothing makes me feel more like a stereotypical woman than driving. I often watch the YouTube video entitled This is Why Women Shouldn’t Drive to make myself feel a little better. Again, this is stereotypical. I can’t think of a better driver than Dana, which is one of the many reasons I miss being married to her. Even if she did turn into the football coach/driver’s ed teacher when I was driving, it was nice to have a second pair of eyes. The last time I drove Lindsay’s Yaris with Dana in the car was during Lindsay’s wedding weekend. Dana would have driven home, but she was incapacitated due to being bit on the foot by a “floating breast implant,” otherwise known as a Portuguese Man O’ War. I peed on it for her since she couldn’t reach it on her own, and when that didn’t work, we went to a convenience store and bought some chewing tobacco to make a paste, which actually did make things a lot better. So here’s a tip. If you’re going to the beach, make sure Red Man is in your first aid kit. Plus, trying to pee on Dana’s foot is when I realized what love should be.

I will say in my defense that I never got a speeding ticket or a red light camera ticket in my other Toyota, a Corolla gifted by Matt when he got his new Jeep. The Yaris comes with its own set of blind spots, and so do I. I have gotten two red light camera tickets since I’ve gotten my car, mostly because the lights are not over the road, but on the sides, sometimes behind trees and bushes so that I cannot readily see them. Plus, I was driving in an unfamiliar area and looking at my GPS a little too hard.

“I was caught” going 51 in a 35 in Takoma Park, but when I looked at my calendar, I realized that it probably wasn’t me. Unfortunately, they only got pictures of the license plate and not who was driving, so I didn’t have any recourse in the matter. I’d left my car in a garage that day and given my spare to the parking attendant. It didn’t matter. I didn’t have time to go after the parking garage, and the ticket was only $40. The red light cameras are $150 a pop, but they don’t accrue points on your insurance, so I just paid those as well. I also sent Lindsay a copy of my insurance and a statement that I was driving so she can prove to her insurance company that she wasn’t driving and therefore, the ticket shouldn’t count against *her* insurance. I hope it’s enough. Making things harder for her in her life is at the bottom of my to-do list, ALWAYS.

Right now, the car is registered in Lindsay’s name because she couldn’t find the title, and the last thing I wanted was for her to have tickets in DC, because eventually she’ll want to drive here. Because I go home and watch Netflix every night and eat peanut butter sandwiches, I had plenty of money to pay all three without breaking a sweat. It’s enough to wish I’d never taken on the responsibility of owning a car, but it for damn sure is nice that I don’t have to wait for the bus when it is butt-cold outside. The fact that it is supposedly spring in MD doesn’t mean a thing. When I arrived last year, in April, there was still snow on the ground. I still need to get secondary mirrors so that I can see beyond the length of the car, and now that I’ve had three tickets, it’s probably time to go to O’Reilly’s or similar. I meant to get them a long time ago, and just forgot.

When I said I was giving up my old stories for Lent in order to make room for new ones, this is not exactly the story I wanted to tell. Plus, I haven’t been able to truly let go of them anyway, so forgive me… I know not what I do.

Melissa has ghosted and the only thing I can think of as to why is that when I asked her for her e-mail addres, she got my real name and Googled me. If that is the case, good riddance. I don’t want to be friends with anyone who cannot accept me for who I am. It is also possible that with being a foreign service officer, she’s just off the grid. Some foreign service officers also work closely with the CIA, so it’s possible that she can’t reach out, not that she doesn’t want to. But we’ve had some good laughs, and it was fun while it lasted nonetheless. “Cojones de carne” will give me enough laughs for a lifetime. The only reason I can think of that she might not be involved with intelligence is that she is based here in DC and not overseas (at least for the moment). I cannot imagine what it would be like to be in Belgium, Syria, etc. Plus, ISIS is no joke.

She is dead now, so I’ll never know, but Dana’s Auntie Bert was a foreign service officer, stuck in Dien Bien Phu when it fell. She was old enough that the CIA had not been formed, and was still the OSS. I pretend that Auntie Bert was friends with Julia & Paul Child. None of this can be confirmed, because even if Bert was intelligence, it’s not like we’d ever find out… especially since she’s not a part of my family anymore…. another completely sad reality in my divorce from Dana.

My dad has always maintained that Station Chief in the Foreign Service is CIA. Dana’s dad says it’s more likely a janitor to go unnoticed. But again, nothing that can be verified because we aren’t supposed to know the names of those people, and I think it’s better that way. Most people would be terrified were Oz to be revealed. I am just sad that Auntie Bert died before I got to meet her. I don’t think she would have told me anything about her intelligence work had she done any, but I do think that her above-board stories would have been fascinating.

I’ve also never met my great uncle, Foster Fort, who supposedly died when his helicopter crashed during a coup in Africa. He is my father’s mother’s brother, another mystery in our family begging to be solved, but no way to find out anything because we’re not supposed to go down that rabbit hole. Because it’s been so long, I can imagine that one of the stars on the CIA wall for fallen officers is his.

Watching Covert Affairs is one of the most enlightening things I’ve ever done, because it gives a real insight into what goes on. Of course there is more in terms of the drama of television, but the offices look right. It kind of feels like you’re there. Valerie Plame is the technical advisor on the show, and it’s worth the Amazon Prime membership to check it out. One of the things I learned from the show is that the CIA does indeed have a Domestic Protection Division, but it’s not connected to the FBI. It’s in charge of watching international incidents that could end up on our soil… the only parallel I can draw is to The Blacklist and how Red Reddington stops international criminals in the US at times.

The FBI trying to hack into the iPhone is at the forefront of the news, and I think it will become the NSA’s next project. I do not know how I feel about this. I am of the mind that no one has private information anymore… it’s just information now. Using a bit of code to get into iPhones that may contain messages that plan terrorist attacks might be a good thing. I’ve always thought that in my own life, the best way to protect myself is just not to be interesting. But we are kidding ourselves if we don’t think that our phones already provide enough information for the police and the FBI to track us. Between GPS, triangulation on cell phone towers and wi-fi signals, we are pretty much on the grid all the time. For instance, the speeding ticket didn’t come from getting pulled over, but by some drone monitoring speed.

The lesson in that is just to let people honk at me and not go with the flow of traffic. Perhaps they have no idea that you can get speeding tickets in the mail… although I am proud of DC that they think your insurance going up is punishment enough. $40 is the cheapest speeding ticket I’ve ever had in my life. It doesn’t matter if the police are visible. You can’t catch the drones.

It’s amazing how much our society has changed even in the last ten years. With a Trump presidency, privacy will go out the window altogether. At this point, I do not see a lot of hope for Bernie except as Hillary’s running mate, which would be awesome because it would give Bernie enough political capital to run on his own. I also think that Bernie and Hillary would work well together, given the fact that they both believe in a lot of the same ideals. Hillary has been fighting for the Health Care Bill of Rights since Bill became president in 1992. I know that the Vice President is usually relegated to attending funerals, but if Frank Underwood is any indication, Vice Presidents can have a lot of power if they know how to use it. I don’t know if Bernie Sanders is politically astute enough to whip votes in the Senate, but let’s hope so.

But let me be clear. If it is not over for Bernie Sanders, I will vote for him, too. I just think that mathematically, the nomination will go to Hillary, and I can’t think of a better role-maker in terms of First Dude than Bill Clinton. That’s the thing about Bill and Hillary. Because Bernie is so absolutely leftist, I don’t think he will appeal to moderate voters. But lots of liberal Republicans (lonely at parties these days) and independent voters were swayed by them. I have always been a (Bill) Clinton Democrat. Someone who leans left and plays to the center, believing in reaching across the aisle to get it handled.

Let me also say that Mitch McConnell is a Delta Bravo, which is “douchebag” in military slang. Hold the fucking phone. You won’t consider a nominee for the Supreme Court unless the NRA approves? Who bought you, sir? We can tell. How many millions of dollars did they give you to make that assinine statement?

The NRA is the bane of this country’s existence, even baiting children into owning guns by making them come in all sorts of colors and “zombie themes.”

Let me also say for the record that I am not necessarily against this, as long as their parents are trained gun owners themselves and want their kids to learn gun safety at a young age so that by the time they are adults, they know the pain they are capable of inflicting on animals and humans alike. Especially with animals, they need to take the animal’s sacrifice into consideration and bless what they’ve shot, giving thanks for the food it provides.

And on that note, it’s time for me to go, but I will leave you with a piece of sage advice. I didn’t write it, but it’s still so true you can take it to the bank:

Never, never kill a mockingbird.

Last night was the lock-in at Takoma Park Presbyterian Church. We started by playing Jenga with soda fridge-pack boxes, something I’d never thought of and am putting here in the pensieve to steal for later…. As the night went on, the tagline became “the power of the Fresca,” because the boys decided that the Fresca boxes had magical powers. Well, children, when you mix Fresca with sangria, it does. You’re welcome.

No, of course I didn’t really say that out loud. But I know you have to check, right? It is still me after all. I don’t know how my dad came up with the idea, but seriously, it is delcious. Fizzy and perfect and not too alcoholic so great for sitting out by the pool. Maybe it was, as my grandmother would say, “an old commando trick I learned in the Army.” My grandmother was never in the Army. It was just funny.

I came home around midnight as my coughing got worse and worse, so I’m writing this to you from my iPad and Bluetooth keyboard while in bed with the electric blanket on. It’s supposed to get cold, perhaps even snow tomorrow. I am sick enough that I think I’m just going to stay here until I have to go to work on Monday. Nothing repairs me more than sleep, and I never miss a valid excuse to binge Netflix. I will probably spend some time with the Scriptures, tomorrow being Palm/Passion Sunday and all. I think that over time, Palm and Passion Sundays got mixed together because people have stopped taking the time to go to church on Good Friday, so combining the Sundays was a way to make Easter make sense. I personally love Good Friday, after a long battle of not. It is a way to take one day to reflect on my own Good Fridays, so that Easter will come again, brighter and more glorious than before.

Last year was the worst Good Friday I’d ever had in my life, because I broke up my family butt-good, and it will never go back together. I saw some good advice, though, that sometimes you burn bridges to keep from crossing them again. I would add an addendum, though, that things look different after space and time. Sometimes burning a bridge is a permanent solution to a temporary problem, and that’s so true you can take it to the bank.

I had to take a long, hard look at how that strategy was working out for me, thus, the Worst. Good Friday. Ever (see Jeff Daniels in the first scene of The Newsroom as to how I want you to read this sentence). I was on my knees in pain and confusion last year, and I think in some respects, I haven’t given myself permission to stand back up. I didn’t give myself permission for redemption, because I didn’t deserve it, at least in my own mind. I’d hurt a friend who’d become dear to me and my wife of seven years. Just blew both relationships out of the water with RPGs designed to hurt. Alas, people who need attantion the most ask for it in the most inappropriate of ways, and I was no exception. In those moments, I needed to be loved more than less, but I could not expect it of them because I was actively pushing them away. I couldn’t expect them to fight against the tide. Cries for help were masked as rage, because I didn’t know how to handle myself. If I was “too much to handle” for Dana, it was nothing compared to how painful it was for me to be with me during that time, and yet, I had no choice. I would say that 90% of recovery from mental issues is learning to love yourself despite them, and the other 10% is learning emotional tools to deal with yourself when these issues pop up. Medication can only do so much. Coping mechanisms are essential.

But I digress.

I had to learn to rely on my own God-piece, the one that tells me I am right and good and yells at me a lot to remember it.

The first time the Rev. Dr. Susan Leo asked me to take over for her at Bridgeport UCC, I walked around with R, M temporarily tattoed on the inside of my palm with a Sharpie Marker for five weeks. That’s because she wrote a beautiful affirmation, and I wanted to make sure that when I got up in front of the congregation to say it, I would get it right:

We are God’s children, wonderfully made…
And as fallible as we are, we are no mistake.

Be Responsible and let go of guilt
Be Mindful, and carry no shame.

Believe the Good News of the Gospel.
You are loved unconditionally by God.

When I hear it in my head, it’s the vooice of a young girl. I took my youth group at Bridgeport on a retreat to the Oregon coast in 2004, and we had worship on that Sunday morning. Hearing those words of affirmation from a teenager is the voice that carries me to this day. Everything looks better through the eyes of a child…. the lens of a faith untampered, unjaded.

Perhapd that is because teenagers turn to the divine to get away from the hell sittin’ on a Ritz that is middle school and high school, no matter how much fun the classes are. For instancce, 7th grade was the best and worst academic year I’d ever had in my life, becuase my classes were amazing and yet, my attention wasn’t on them.

I wrestled with God in an empty austin-stone cathedral, my Good Fridays relentless as I worried about the woman I loved.

I was an atypical tween and teen, so I work with youth to ensure that nothing like that happens to them, or if it does, that they know that they have a safe space to tell. To be received. To get the reassurance that it’s not their fault if they need it. I would never offer these blessings unless asked, but I know what signs to watch for. Not only do I have my own experiences, but I have taken a class on how to keep kids safe, and it resonated with me hardcore.

Last night when I arrived at the lock-in, the kids were talking about the news. They were talking about some court case or another, where when a girl was raped, the lawyer for the defendant said, “did you try closing your legs?” I briefly thought about intervening, telling them that this wasn’t appropriate conversation for a church lock-in, but I realized that I would have been wrong in doing so. The sixth grade class is doing a program right now on sex and sexuality called “Our Whole Lives,” or OWL for short. I am sure that there is a section on abuse, but I am not teaching the class, so I don’t know where they are in it. So I just let them be and listened, watching out for fights and anything major, but otherwise aloof and observant. They were waiting for things to officially start and just sitting on the playground equipment, talking. They were all in agreement that the treatment of the teenage girl was unfair.

Then one of the girls brought up a case by saying that when Hillary Clinton was a lawyer, in one of her cases she said to a 12-year-old girl who’d been raped, “maybe you just like seducing older men.” This is completely unverified, and I don’t know where the girl got the information to be able to talk about it in the first place. I also wondered where I’ve been that this is normal everyday playground talk now.

When I told Susan about this course I’d taken on trying to prevent abuse, she said something like “kids see this shit all over the Internet and think it’s normal behavior.” Well, I suppose it is normal…. to the pedophile. I understand the pathology of pedophiles, that they are children in adult bodies whose minds haven’t aged up so that they think adults are attractive. They still want the girls and/or boys they couldn’t get when they were that age, so they just keep trying. Understanding how it happens does not give me much compassion or forgiveness, but it does put pedophilia in perspective as a valid mental illness that can be managed….. in jail.

My nothing box is pleased that Jared Fogle got the shit beat out of him. My God-self struggles to offer forgiveness to all people, regardless of their fallibilities. Abuse is a dragon to be defeated and I am just one St. George…. but there are plenty of us out here, trying to make a difference.

I’ve wandered down a path into my own mind, so back to the playground. The kids transitioned from talking about rape to playing Jenga seamlessly, as if rape culture was just another thing. Not a gargantuan monster, just a thing that needs to be dealt with. It was astounding, really, just to listen.

My mind was going 3,500 miles a minute but my outward appearance was calm to the point of stoned, thanks to one of the other volunteers who had cough syrup with codeine on her. My cough has progressed to the point where codeine was welcome, as was guafenisen as I polished off a 32-ounce bottle of water. I am grateful that I was sent home at midnight, so I slept comfortably without dreaming. But when I awoke, my mind was on the kids and how to deal with the enormity of their new world.

Maybe a can of Fresca would help?

I am officially a space cadet what with the Sudafed, guaifenesin, and dextromethorphan on board. Luckily, I’m not bad off enough to need codeine or antibiotics. I seem to get this every Easter and have since I was a kid. Most of the time, I spent hours practicing with the choir for an Easter anthem I’d never sing, because when Easter rolled around, I’d have full on laryngitis. Tonight is the youth group lock-in at the church, and it remains to be seen how long I will last. I just don’t want to leave Susannah in the lurch in terms of not having enough leaders to break out into small groups. This bad cold couldn’t have come at a worse time, but at least I have caffeine pills and all the meds I need to treat symptoms.

Tomorrow I am supposed to go and volunteer at A Wider Circle, but I may beg off on that, but not because I don’t want to. I just don’t know if I physically can. Especially after staying up all night, I’m not sure I’ll still have enough adrenaline to keep me going. When I take cold medication, generally my “get up and go” just goes.

Everyone has had to work/volunteer when they’ve been sick. I am not alone in this problem. I will go until I can’t anymore. The lock-in would have been so much easier for me when I was working nights at Alert Logic. Finally, some people to do things with that are actually on my schedule. God, that was one of the most isolating things I have ever done. My depression has never gotten so bad, so quick. I was just running on caffeine and adrenaline all the time, because the sleep I got during the day was not deep enough.

So I can stay up all night once, but completely flipping my schedule is not a feasible option anymore. I’m not 20.

It’s hard to believe I’ll be 39 on my next birthday. I haven’t been on the same track as most people, but I hope that it’s been good for me in terms of creativity. I have to look at it that way, because if I don’t, I feel deep, deep shame. I felt like I had the whole “adulting” thing down at Alert Logic, but the reality is that the enormity of my abuse hit me all at once and I finally broke. I have hope that this break was to make a beautiful omelet out of low-grade eggs. The best chefs are not the ones who cook with the best ingredients. They’re the ones that raise peasant food to perfection…. taking the parts that no one else wants and creating something great with them.

I got a note today that a sermon I wrote when I was in the middle of the mess was fantastic, and it made my day. It was in response to someone calling me crazy, a “killing ’em with kindness” project, not to take “crazy” personally but to put positive energy toward it instead of negative. I had to own “my crazy,” but it was essential to my sanity to say that crazy wasn’t bad. Just different. People with mental health issues see the world differently, and ask for attention in the most inappropriate of ways…. but when we make the effort to get healthy and it works, our visions change.

Or at least, that’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it. Seeing the world differently is a challenge and not a flaw. I thought it was for a long time, because there are plenty of people who say to me, “you just don’t get it.” No, I don’t, because I often don’t see what you do. That’s why I value input. I would rather people discuss their differences with me than ghost, but I can’t stop them, and I won’t try.

Chasing after people makes me feel as if I am hard to love, and in a lot of ways, I am. Most of the time, I need to take a chill pill. My favorite activity in large groups is escaping to the bathroom for a few minutes of quiet.

I also realize how strong I am now, because I can read old entries with the eyes of another person, as if my writing came from someone else’s hand. I’ve read things that I’ve written that have moved me, and I don’t get that feeling on the first pass. It is only with a long passage of time that I can see this person emerging, this person that I am proud to get to know, because she is amazing and I can see it in black and white. Reminiscence comes in waves, like movies that play in my head… words into 3D modeling at its best. Trying to find the smallest part of myself, the thing that directs me, is the whole point of being single. Learning who I am without anyone else is a gargantuan task, but I’m up to it as long as I can reflect on the world, capturing the moment with a butterfly net.

Being able to look at myself, really look at both the good and the bad, is a propeller of enormous proportions. I realize that even when other people can’t love me, I can.

And for now, that is enough.

I would have been fine had this not been my Facebook memory today. However, I just cannot even. It’s one of my favorite pictures in life, and always will be. But I carry so much sadness over it, too, because it’s just a reminder of how bad everything got and how we destroyed our marriage from the inside out. It guts me like a fish to see pictures of us happy, because in a lot of ways, we were. The cutest couple on earth, witty banter included… even after our breakup. I saw an old entry that made me laugh out loud….

Leslie: Because we’re broken up, does that mean I can’t jump on you in the morning to wake you up?

Dana (eyes barely open): Don’t be an asshole.

I miss injecting humor into the “Danabase.”

But that was my schtick… Because we were in separate bedrooms, I used to jump on Dana pretty much every morning. When I sleep well, I am a ball of energy in the mornings. Dana, simply put, is not. She reminds me of my little sister in that way. Lindsay is not a morning person, either, so waking Dana up in the morning reminded me of my childhood, jumping on Lindsay in the same way.

It was such a cool thing having separate bedrooms, because we were allowed to take up our own space in the house and come together when we wanted it. We slept better, I think, which made me excited to see Dana after spending a few hours away from her…. but who am I kidding? I spent most of our marriage excited to see her, because she is a bundle of energy pretty much every other time of the day. People even commented on it, that they’d never seen a couple so excited to see each other, and that part of our marriage is something I will always miss. I hope that whomever we choose will also have those eyes for us. I am always of two minds on getting back together, that it would be the most wonderful and terrible thing ever. Wonderful in that I will always have those eyes for Dana, excited to see her and out of my mind with joy. And at the same time, not wanting to lapse into the people that we were to each other at the end. I don’t want to get back together and then realize that we broke up for a reason, capiche?

We also spent St. Patrick’s Day in the Irish pub where we worked, and the year we gave up alcohol for Lent, gorged ourselves on Kaliber, the NA put out by Guiness. It was actually really, really fun to drink beer all night and still remember everything that happened. 😛

If there’s anything I miss more than life, it was spending time with Dana at the pub, because when we worked together as a team, we were unstoppable. Being married to your kitchen partner has its advantages, because we could relay information quickly with just a look, and in a busy pub, seconds matter. I would definitely rehire.

We had a deal. At work, she was the chef and I was the sous. At home, I was the chef and she was the sous… But that came over time, because in the beginning she didn’t trust me with her All-Clad and I was relegated to grating cheese…. a running joke in our marriage, because if it’s funny once, it’s funny a thousand times. 😛

She gave me the greatest compliment of my life during that time, that my palate was better than hers [Editor’s Note: for those who don’t know her, Dana is Cordon Bleu certified, which is why the comment was so enormous to me]… which inevitably leads me to Chef and my greatest accomplishment in the kitchen. You’re going to think this is a small thing, but it spoke volumes to me. Chef and I were alone in the kitchen at Tapalaya, and he asked me to taste something. I said, “it needs salt.” Without missing a beat, Chef added salt. *I* told the Chef something, and *he* listened to *me.* My Chef was John-Michael Sadler Kinkaid, known to this web site as JMSK. He’s now at Pass & Provisions in Houston if you want to go and check him out.

On this day, memories are flooding out of me and I don’t really have a choice in the matter.

My last name is Lanagan, after all. There will never be a time in my life where St. Patrick’s Day isn’t important to me. Not only am I part Irish by birth, I will always remember Dana and I busting out corned beef, concannon, fish and chips, etc….. The official food of St. Paddy’s Day and loaded with memories for me as I move on with my life.

On some days, I am really good with it. On others, I am really not.

Today, I cannot even.

I found out that Amazon Prime not only includes videos, but music as well with no commercials. I can find pretty much anything I want, and they have good playlists as well. Right now I’m listening to “Celloverse” by 2Cellos. Yesterday I listened to the soundtrack from “Hamilton.” Both are excellent.

I have mixed feelings about Alexander Hamilton. He accomplished so much in the US, but he was also basically a Loyalist, so there’s that. He probably wanted Washington to be King of the United States, and I wish I was joking. I have no idea what would have happened if we’d inherited the monarchy, but I do know that we can consider the Kennedys, the Bushes, and the Clintons royalty. If Hillary Clinton had won in 2008, you could be 25 years old and never had a president other than a Clinton or a Bush. Weird.

I wish that we could go back in time, where reaching across the aisle was a compliment instead of an attack. It would be better all the way around. Lyndon Johnson was famous for it. He didn’t get style points for upping the ante in the Viet Nam war, but he did for being a great legislator. Much better than Kennedy, anyway. I’m not knocking Kennedy’s legacy, just saying that it might have been different had he lived.

If both Garfield and Kennedy had lived, we would be so much further along in this racism bullshit, I assure you. By now, it might have even been a non-issue. Garfield was passionate about the rights of free blacks, and would have legislated to that effect.

The way I’m watching people hate each other scares me, but in DC, it is less of an issue than everywhere else, I think. DC is one of the few cities that truly has a black middle class. You don’t find that elsewhere in the country…. maybe Memphis.

It’s wading through the Amazon in our own country to get this problem solved. I can’t wait until it is. Racism rears its ugly head openly now, and perhaps that is the key to exorcising the demon. Polite racism is hard to detect and destroy.

Experiencing polite homophobia is the same raw deal. There are still judges that won’t accept gay people can raise children, and in some ways, I think they’re better parents because there are so few unwanted children in the gay community. I learned how much hard work it was to get pregnant, and I was not impressed.

The days of wishing Dana was my baby daddy are over, but remember…. BABY DADDY IS NOT A LEGAL RELATIONSHIP.

If it’s funny once, it’s funny a thousand times. That’s just how I roll.

Melissa, the foreign service officer I met on Tinder, is giving me some great lines. She accidentally asked for “balls of meat” instead of “meatballs” at a restaurant in Spanish. My only reply to that was “smooooooth.” I asked her what she said instead of “albondigas,” but she only replied “literally, balls of meat.” I can’t wait to see if she actually said “cojones de carne.” If she did, I will fall off my desk chair laughing.

I also told her my most embarrassing moment. I was preaching and when I finished, I fell off the stairs to the pulpit. It was fucking classic, and hard not to utter profanity as I was goin’ down. Angela the Red was with me, and I don’t think either of us will ever forget it.

It’s the kind of thing that would only happen to me. I was dressed in this ridiculous “Joyce Meyer” type outfit- red suit with a black and white shirt that made me look like a peppermint carnation in heels. Now when I preach, I wear comfortable clothes so I can keep my balance.

I have a palsy in my brain that affects my movement to a large degree, so if people don’t understand why I wear comfortable clothes to church, they’re just ignorant, not judgmental.

Think of me as Flynn White. Smart as a whip, but not so much with the moving around.

Just wading through the Amazon of my own mind, I guess.

Emotionally, I am sort of embarrassed about it, because people know there’s something off about me, but they don’t know what it is. Add the eye drift to it and I just look weird. Cute, but weird.

My tagline my entire life, I suppose. Right now it’s even worse because my hair won’t lay right and my CIA baseball cap is covered in fuzz and I couldn’t find my Rice baseball cap, so here I am at my desk with hair pointing everywhere, even after a hot shower and “Moco de Gorilla.”

I wonder what Melissa would think of that?

I’m gonna go check. Love you miss you mean it.

Taking a break from a day of SQL queries and deploying cubes and exporting data and all the stuff I need to do before 6:00p. Mondays are my busiest days, like they are for a lot of people. Data comes in at an alarming rate, and I am on the horn to catch it. I also spend a lot of my day working for a famous non-profit. I can’t tell you what it is, but I will leave a bread crumb… it stops stars on your arm.

Listening to a playlist I created on Spotify called “Kiss My Brass,” and includes stuff from John Williams, Wynton Marsalis, etc. It also includes the trumpet solo I played to get into HSPVA, “Petite Piece Concertante” by Guillame Ballay. It feels good to go back to that time in my life musically. I got to do a lot of things that other kids my age didn’t, like play a side-by-side concert with the Houston Symphony, conducted by Stephen Stein. I don’t remember a lot of what we played, but I do remember “Rodeo” by Aaron Copland. It was magnificent. I think I am a better singer than a trumpet player at this point, but I did enjoy it while it lasted.

“Fanfare for the Common Man” is now blasting in my ears, and it’s a mood lifter, for SURE. I remember playing that as well. Trumpet players are always trying to out-do each other, and I was no exception. I’d break out little snippets of “Grand Russian Fantasia” and “Cantaloop” while I was “warming up.” The only thing I didn’t get to do when I was that age was duet with Diane. We would have rocked it with “Summertime” or “Let the Bright Seraphim.” But that time in my life has passed, and I am sort of grateful. If I’d kept up with it, I’d be happy because I get frustrated that I’m not as good as I was when I was a kid. Getting into PVA required hours and hours of practice, and if there is anything I hate, it’s woodshedding… although I wonder if I would have been better at it had I been on ADD medication back in the day. I didn’t have enough focus to be able to play one measure eighty times, and that is the difference between good and great.

I do have that focus with singing, though, because I am sometimes amazed and sometimes disgusted at the sounds that come out of me… although as a trumpet player, I have learned that if you’re going to hit a bad note, at least splat it all over the back wall. If you’re going to make a mistake, at least do it right. 😛

Now Charles Ives’ Variation on America” is playing… a perfect analogy for our political climate. Donald Trump is all the minor seconds. He is just a political facepalm if ever I’ve seen one. He seems to be courting the “stupid fucknut” vote. In short, not a fan. In the words of Jed Bartlett, “these people don’t vote, do they?” Jesus, I hope not. In case you missed it, that was an actual prayer.

If there’s any hope in this, it’s that the other Republicans hate him enough to have a brokered convention.

I’m not satisfied with either Democratic candidate, but I’m satisfied enough not to vote Republican.

There’s this ad on now- T-mobile- that says you’re covered from NoVA to Adams Morgan, and I’m thinking that’s not really a brag because it’s not that far. Richmond to Baltimore would have been more effective…. but no one asked me.

This weekend was pretty incredible. I got to take my friend Scott to my little town, and we had lunch in Takoma Park. Then on Sunday, I went to Takoma Park Presbyterian for worship because that’s where some of my youth group attend. I’m keeping my membership at CCC, because ultimately, that’s where I belong. But if you want to go to Bridgeport UCC on the east coast, go there. The architecture is even so Portland- it’s in the round like Portland MCC.

At youth group, Mark, senior pastor of TPPC, Mark asked me if I’d be interested in pinch hitting for him, and I was grateful. I’ve been looking for a place to preach “in the flesh,” and I didn’t know if I’d get one on the East Coast or not. I did, and don’t think I’m not over the moon about it. I’m just not jumping up and down because I have a really bad cold and the Sudafed is making me a little out of it. I also led the parents through an exercise called the “Examen” Lenten practice, and it gave me some points in the moderation category. I realized that the purpose of this blog is that I can talk about my feelings because I’ve already written about them. I put my darkness out there as much as everyone else, because that’s what Lent represents- making amends for all the ways you’ve messed up.

When one of the parents said, “I’m really sorry about your divorce,” it meant more to me than diamonds. There’s nothing I can do to rectify my past, but there is always room to walk humbly and hope grace prevails.

Generally, it does.

Amen.

Yesterday I said that I was Frank Underwood to a T… and that was after I’d watched him murder someone. I knew what I meant, but I also wanted more clarity on it. So I was just sitting there waiting for Visual Studio to install, staring into space, when I realized that my blog was my own way of breaking the fourth wall, talking to the audience about the play that is my life. I was reminded of it when Aaron told me that watching the Fuller House pilot was worth it just for the fourth wall joke….. and it was.

The problem with opening your own fourth wall is that others can get to the same conclusions you can much faster. They can, in a sense, “outfox” you… said with a smile because years and years and YEARS ago, I was drinking with Dana and Amy at my house. I kept whispering a little too loudly to Dana (about Amy) “don’t let her outfox me.” It’s one of those stories I don’t mind telling on myself, but would get mortified when Dana would tell it about me. Why? Because if there’s anything I hate losing control of, it’s the story. For instance, I will absolutely embarrass the crap out of myself, but I will not watch you do it. Mostly because I can embarrass myself better than you can and emotionally, it’s a lot easier than watching someone else tell one of my stories. They have a particular cadence in my spoken voice. One of these days, I’ll have to post an .MP3 or something of my greatest hits.

But you probably knew I was heading down a road toward disaster long before I did.

It was just sudo rm -rf / all over the place. For the uninitiated, that’s the command that will raise you to administrator privileges on linux box, and delete every file on it. Your OS, your data, everything.

I threw a match on gasoline to my entire life, not for any reason except that’s what I thought was going to happen anyway. It was better to push people away than it was to watch them walk on their own. For instance, if you look through my blog archives, you’ll see several entries about missing DC and wanting to move back, or that I’d asked Dana to put it back on the 3-5 year plan, or whatever. Then, when I wanted to move back without Dana, it was seen as completely bizarre. What was bizarre was moving to Houston in the first place. I should have known it would end badly. I had just thrown up a metric fuck tonne of emotions about abuse that had taken place there, and then thought it was a good idea to be reminded of them every day? At the time, it seemed very reasonable. Then, as Dana got more and more depressed, not reaching out to other teaching programs, living there made even less sense. There’s a certain emotional mood I only have when I’m in Houston that I don’t have anywhere else, and it’s a dark, dark place. I thought that in a sense, having Dana and Chef there would make it seem different.

It didn’t.

If I hadn’t moved back to DC, I would have moved somewhere. I briefly thought about Austin, but realized I didn’t know anyone there except James and I didn’t know the land at all. As a Virgo, an earth sign, I am very attached to setting. Therefore, I didn’t want to take off to a place I didn’t know at all. When Argo asked Dana if she needed a restraining order, I was angry and despondent because I thought that the city was big enough for both of us without crossing paths… mostly because it is.

I didn’t even want to meet her on the ground unless it was mutually agreed upon. It would have been humiliating just to run into each other. A surprise and not a good one for either of us. I am thankful that I have only seen a few pictures, so I doubt I would recognize her unless she specifically walked up to me and said, “hi, I’m Argo.” It’s not going to happen. It’s just not. The only reason that she’d probably recognize me more easily is that I sent her pics all the time. Like when I got a new haircut or something, I’d shoot her an e-mail to see if she thought it was cute. She’s so direct I knew I’d never get a bullshit answer… which in the South would be, “my… that is a haircut.”

Besides, how do you take an online rabbit hole and turn it into ladies who lunch? I couldn’t picture that happening, either. Mostly what I pictured was staring at each other to make sure the other was real.

When my family visits, I stare at them the same way. When I went to lunch with Lindsay, there were moments when I felt like I couldn’t stop staring, because it had been so long since I’d seen her in the flesh… although when I was living in Houston, we rarely got a chance to see each other because her job staffing the Mayor was so consuming that there was little chance we’d run into each other, even on purpose. She’s been to the DC area twice since I’ve been here, though, which is almost as much as I saw her there.

I also had this vision of late in life, that Dana, Lindsay, and Matt would all be here, anyway. That the fight would be over and we could all just be friends again… it’s no secret that part of the reason I moved here is that Dana’s parents live in the same town as the Waffle House… that our paths are perpendicular, but not parallel. That we would have the choice to run into each other again, if we both wanted it.

I’m not sure that I do, but there will never be a time in my life where if presented with the opportunity, I wouldn’t go. That’s just what’s up. If Dana hadn’t wanted to keep the door closed, I would have loved to see her at her birthday and Christmas.

And then I remember how painful it was to go out with Meag when she came back to Houston for visits and all of the sudden, it doesn’t seem like so much fun anymore.

I think it’s best that I’m on my own, and I will think that for a long time to come. I have nothing to offer a potential girlfriend because I need to spend my energy learning to adult. I have been an emotionally arrested teenager long enough. I am running toward my own dreams for myself, therapy and grad school and thinking bigger than I currently am. In the smallness of grieving for the life I lost, I cannot think ahead. But the thinking bigger is taking shape. I can only hope that by breaking the fourth wall, I am helping others to feel not so alone.

And if the responses are any indication, I am.

Amen.

I just introduced our IT guy to the magic of Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie’s Wes Borg doing Welcome to the Internet Helpdesk live. The first time I watched it, I felt like I was dying of asphyxiation, I was laughing so hard. Years later, it’s still funny, but when you’re watching it in a group of IT people for the first time, it’s just the most brilliant video you’ve ever seen in your life. It describes our jobs perfectly, and every reaction is spot on. By the time we got to 12:00 flasher, we were all doubled over together.

I also sent him a link to Bastard Operator from Hell. The first time I read it, I devoured every entry. It took about seven hours, because I was reading it in between calls on the night shift. It was hard not to laugh so loud everyone in the building could hear me. My coworker was reading it with me, and at about the same speed, but not quite… so I’d laugh and second later, when he got to the same part, he’d laugh. It went like that all night. Stifled laughter because it was just guffaw-worthy… the kind of laughter that you cannot help… the kind where tears and snot are running down your face as you try to hold it in…. like the time I discovered that there was a composer in the hymnal named P.P. Bliss in the middle of the sermon. I was maybe 11, so of course I just lost my snot (here are some of my other church stories). His real name is Philip, and I cannot for the life of me figure out why the Methodist hymnal lists him that way. Did they not realize what they were doing to pastors across the country as kids read the hymnal when they got bored? Not that I ever got bored in church, mind you……………

I’m on my lunch break, and it’s already been a day and a half. I stayed up way too late last night, and I am a ball of energy that I am sure will wear off shortly because I am jazzed on a 200mg caffeine tab and a cup of tea. Then, when I get to work, the assignment I have requires Micro$oft Visual Studio and it just won’t run on my computer. I have been fighting with it all morning. I finally gave up and switched to a burner laptop with Windows 7. I’m building and deploying cubes, which will mean nothing to most of you, but for the people who do, please understand that I am at the point where my eyebrows are going over my forehead trying to get this fucking thing to work. I really needed it to be lunchtime so I could decompress and get back to work. I might run to 7-Eleven just to get out of the office, but I doubt it. I’m not sure I have enough energy to get up from my desk. Have I mentioned it seems like it’s been a day and a half already?

I’m listening to my Spotify playlist called “High School,” and Amanda Marshall is singing Birmingham in my ears… turned up very loud to keep me awake. I was chair dancing to keep my energy up, but it’s not working anymore. Maybe the next song will be better. It just turned to an ad. If you were in high school in the ’90s, I’m pretty sure you’ll love this playlist. If you have more suggestions, add them in the comments. OMG. Now it’s Roxette. That ages me. It’s “Must Have Been Love.” Low energy. Skip. OMG. Now it’s The Tony Rich Project… Nobody Knows… Low energy but many, many memories attached to it. I’ve been listening to it since Meag and I broke up almost 20 years ago. I remember walking into a Walgreen’s with this playing overhead and just losing my shit in the middle of the store. It’s also on the Argo playlist, because there were a few times I died inside thinking about what a mess I’d made of our relationship. I will never get over it. Never. It’s just this huge emotional scar that will take years to scab over. The hardest part is absolutely knowing I dug that hole, and it feels like I will never get out… at times. At others, I allow myself to smile and remember that it happened at all. Actually, I take it back. The hardest part is that she’s not my first and last call anymore. Not literally calling. I hate the phone. But a few words over e-mail in the early morning and late at night were absolutely life-sustaining. When I lived in Portland, the three hour time difference worked well, because 4:00 AM in PDX is 7:00 AM in DC. At 4:00, I was in my stillest, smallest space… just writing into the night and receiving intelligent, well-thought out responses that made me laugh and cry (in a good way, sometimes laughing until I cried). She had the capability to remind me who I was, building me up from the scorched earth.

Now it’s “Back for Good” by Take That!

Ironic.

Although that song belongs entirely to Meag…. it was “our song,” because it was on the mix tape she made me for my car. Yes, children. Mix. Tape. Google it.

A lot of the songs she put on that tape are in the high school playlist, because of course they are. I remember the days of buying calling cards so that we could talk a bit cheaper, because my phone bills went into the astronomical when Meag moved to New Brunswick.

She’s ghosted, and it hurts, but I’m good with it most days. Others, I really wish I had that friend that’s known me for 20 years. Knows absolutely everything about my ups and downs, and one day I will take a road trip back to Ottawa, whether we’re in touch or not. It’s one of my places. I still wear my Carleton Ravens sweatshirt often, especially in the office, where in the winter it’s like a meat freezer. We could age steaks in the bathroom.

But more about Meag ghosting. I choose to believe that nothing is wrong, she just wanted to close that chapter of her life. So does Dana. She actually used those words, “closing the chapter,” and it resonated with me. I respect it. I hate it, but I respect it. I am making new friends and hoping Scott moves here soon. He’s thinking about running for Congress later in his life, and God willing, I’ll still be here. If I could, I’d vote for him. Yes. I love him that much. I would sacrifice a straight D. I would vote for him just to get him here. 🙂

We’re going to spend the day together tomorrow, and I’m really looking forward to it. Hopefully I’ll have some pictures to post of us palling around. Did you hear that, Scott? I want *evidence.* When he arrived, we went to Off the Record. We didn’t see anyone we recognized, but it’s a life goal to go there with Kathy, my reporter friend that’s known me since I lived here the last time. Then, she worked for Congressional Quarterly, and Politico offered her an obscene amount of money. She’s my Zoey without the sleeping with people for stories.

Speaking of which, one of the reasons I’m trying to achieve wholeness is that in my nothing space, I am Frank Underwood to a T. I need to cut that shit out. Integration of my personality is key, because my nothing space has no limits. I think i have mentioned that before. I need to make my darkness of service, rather than being a total political monster. I can work people, and I know it now. Knowing is half the battle. Hail Cobra.

And on that note, my lunch break is over.