What’s something most people don’t know about you?
I love the idea that the writing prompt is about something people don’t know about us and all we do all day is tell people stuff other people don’t know about us. So, I’ll go through a quick list for new people just in case I publish in a different time zone (I start at 0500, but between writing and doing the things I need to do to get ready to write, I’m ADHD. I write a paragraph and get up and down I just don’t scroll up until I read it back. I will publish anything I think because boundaries have already been established in my mind. Nothing I publish is something I can’t stand by later. Other people can be mad, but I can walk away clean. You make the choice not to be in this blog by whether you interact with me, and it’ll be hard and I’ll miss you, but I won’t tolerate criticism as ad hominem attacks. I will drop you with force and I won’t ghost you. You’ll know exactly why you pissed me off so that I won’t stab you in the back on my web site. I don’t say anything about people I wouldn’t say to them.
It’s not because I love you any less. It’s that my life isn’t easy dealing with blowback when my echo chamber already thinks I’m a bad person. I do a better job of kicking my ass than you do, so leave me be. You can watch how I do it or don’t, because while I’m explaining your behavior, you’ll get closer to me if you let it happen. You’ll understand a pattern and why it went wrong rather than making you read my mind all the time. But my writing won’t do that if you think you’re always right. It doesn’t bother me if my friends don’t read me, in fact I prefer it because it also keeps people from getting impressed with me. The highs and lows are too big a swing. So that means:
Supergrover told me something that’s too hard to forget because of my chosen art form, because it would make waves bigger than either of us want to handle to have her identified. Therefore, I view her as my primary partner because she’s the one in which the breadcrumbs on my web site are worth something, no matter how small. And it isn’t that I’d even be writing about us. Breadcrumbs are unintentional because she’s the river that runs beneath my emotions. She comes through me by now because I’ve adopted the style in which she writes and it affects my speech every day. I am more strident at times than I used to be because I have better boundaries. At others, I’m just as romantic with language as I used to be because that’s how I wrote before I met her. Complete change in tone because I was obsessed with the way she wrote…. and proud that my words have certainly been used in powerful rooms without her even thinking she was doing it, because she doesn’t remember everything I’ve written, but it creeps in. It’s fun thinking about exactly about she could have told “this is a goat roping clusterfuck.” Or, “now that you’re mad you’re just packing up your toys and going home.” That one makes me laugh even harder.
Lindsay is my younger sister who doesn’t live with me anymore, but stays close most of the time. She lives in Houston and works in DC, so she’s far away and part of my life depending on the day of the year. We are close because of proximity. Her career is in government relations, so whether she’s been a private or public lobbyist, I’ll never stop running into her. I am so goddamn blessed because I got to move away from Houston without moving away from her. That’s actually the biggest reason I chose DC again vs. going back to Portland to be with Bryn and her whole family like I had been before. There were other factors at play on my end besides my love for Supergrover. I knew that if Mayor Pete won the election, she would end up working in the White House. And I knew that before you did. Also, there are many other candidates that woud appoint her here, I just don’t think she wants to live here. I think that she would do it if she had to, and at that point would be glad to have a local to keep her grounded and she has a thousand of them by now. She would fit in here like she lived here before she even packed.
Bryn is my partner in the sense that you should go to her if something happens to me and you want to know about me. My last wishes, all that shit. She’s basically a human document repository, not someone I could marry because I think you should live in the same city for that. Doesn’t make us in less of a long distance relationship and her family has plenty of friends in that model, so no one would make it weird. There are female names that are synonymous in our lives that aren’t together, so we’re the ones synonymous in their minds. You have a partner and a housecarl. Don’t make it weird. Play Skyrim instead and my whole life will come together in front of you. I’d like to be a good companion, but most of the time I’m a dumbass. I can’t tell you how many times Lydia has gotten me killed and I hate that I could be someone else’s when it’s their turn to crawl through a Falmer dungeon.
Zac is my romantic partner, and I think we’ve been together a year or so. It’s hard to tell because we’ve just been dating off and on. It’s not like we see each other every day. We’re not building a future together unless it’s good for the order- that I’d like to stay single and not have it bother anyone that I’m already dating someone when we go out on our first date. Doesn’t mean they can’t still be my last. I am free to marry someone else. Not Zac. But Zac plays such a large role in my life that I’m not really all that tempted to date anyone else. It’s not that I wouldn’t, it’s that I’m happy as I am. Content. I’m not so much avoiding dating as I am not threatened by the fact that no one else is asking me out and I’ll end up alone. I won’t. Zac would be my boyfriend until he died if I let him and it was a mutually agreeable situation. We don’t have plans to get closer and we don’t have plans to break up unless it’s necessary. I don’t see that as a bad relationship. I see that as connection and leaving each other better than when we found us. We don’t have to get married for the relationship to matter.
He’s an intelligence officer that doesn’t get bored when I want to talk about it and it’s my autistic obsession in life. It’s Extraordinary Attorney Woo’s partner asking her to make an appointment with him to talk about whales because she was overwhelming him all the time with random facts.
Like, he might read the thing I wrote about Israel, and say “you’re technically right, but here’s where you went wrong.” He could tell me in detail if I had his security clearance, but I don’t and I don’t care for it. I’d just like to be able to talk about intelligence like I was in school for it, not that I’m pumping people who have classified information to spill it. Zac is always in control of the narrative, so he always knows the boundaries on what he can say and is excellent about not revealing anything that isn’t already public because he checks. I’m saying that clearly because if I was on his contact sheet, CIA and FBI might not see my interst as only that. That it’s the equivalent of dating someone retired, and lots of people do that. They’re the ones that have the responsibility of carrying that shit, and they know they’re bound not to make you. So, Zac gives me the kind of information you’d get from a college professor in undergrad and I go look up what’s public. Here’s how that conversation goes:
Leslie: What’s going on in Russia right now?
Zac: Crops, grain, “medical medical medical.”
Except that the “medical, medical, medical” part is a quote from a book. From Zac, it’s slow finger wag, emphatic fist shake, or dumb look. That’s the part I know where he’s hog tied and I need to quit. The earlier he starts hemming and hawing, the more badass I know he is. That his Aaron Sorkin walk and talks are better than everyone else’s…. including Aaron Sorkin’s.
That’s because even Aaron Sorkin will never know what could replace “medical, medical, medical.”
Hayat and Mike are my landlords, Edu and Magda rent with me. We all live in one house including Hayat and Mike’s daughter, Samantha. This is possible because there’s an addition that makes it really one and a half houses. It’s impressively large, and I’m glad I chose a group house over an apartment because my autistic side needs absolute quiet and when I need community I don’t have to leave the house for it.
I have been in the same house since 2015, a blessing and a curse because I didn’t get to spend the last year of my mother’s life with her before a took off running again. But I couldn’t have known it was the last year of her life because I took it for granted that she would live past 65. She didn’t even think I was mature enough to drive from DC to Houston because it’s not something she would be brave enough to do and I drove to Portland by myself no problem. It would have been nothing getting through the mountains because I’d already done Shasta in November. This was the Blue Ridge in August. If I had known how the weather was going to be that day, that it was a miracle I didn’t have to stop and chain up with the chains I’d have to go buy, I would have stayed in a hotel another night- to see if the weather cleared up but also to be able to go buy chains and learn how to chain up if it didn’t.
Turns out, chaining up is not that hard. I’ve done it on a Jeep and a Saturn. It was easier on the Saturn and the little car was a lot more fun in the snow. In the Jeep, there was four wheel drive AND chains. Nothing exciting happened. There was no adrenaline in it. I’m just glad I get on the bus and train now instead.
My dad is still living- retired and a trumpet player and on the board of everything everywhere all at once. He’s been a world-class musician since he was in high school, making All-State Band three years running and his senior year, he got first chair. Which means that by the time he auditioned for chairs in that band, when he got first it meant he was literally the best trumpet player in the nation, I believe, because Texas Music Educator’s Association is tough shit. Even band and choir directors know when they take a job in Texas, all the other teachers and choirs/bands have it out for you and standards are high. In the band I joined, there were maybe two in the state that were better than us, and it wasn’t HSPVA. I actually got into a much better situation when we moved to Clements musically. That’s because Clements had a lot more money and a lot more clout. So, both my dad and I have been through “the system,” but I was never that great a player. I just had fun (most of the time). I feel more at home as a singer, so I focus on that.
I write because I feel more at home as a writer than I do as a conversationalist, and people get the same amount of information without me being uncomfortable. Where this becomes problematic is that other people aren’t writers and won’t reply to me because they’re intimidated. They do not accept that they’re not as good a writer as me without recognizing there’s a reason for that and don’t make it a thing. It will ruin our relationship if you think I’m better than you. It’s not that. It’s that I write these long ass essays that are somehow enjoyed all over the world every single day and you don’t. You don’t have to sit there and think about why you’re not a good writer because I don’t expect you to be me. I expect you to know what communication mode works best for you and I will also accomodate you if you’re willing to speak to me that way because you don’t like writing….. but expect that I will expect you too read those letters, not write back if you like talking better. The way this works for me is Facebook Messenger. Bryn, Beck, and Andy have no problem sending me a voice message while I’m still typing. At that point, I start sending them voice messages as well because I know they’re not in a writing mood. It reminds me to branch out.
Beck is the woman I referred to when I wrote about “my wife.” She’s not, I was kidding, and there’s no chance of that happening, either. She’s the one who sets my brain on fire right now because we’re talking about law and conflict resolution likein my old paralegal days. It brings back a side of me I didn’t know I needed, because I feel at home in the law, just like I feel at home with international affairs. I write about intelligence because CIA doesn’t hire people with neurodivergence that have to take medication for it. It’s just too dangerous. But I would have been great if I’d been medically healthy because I would have been as happy in the JAG as I would have been at State, which is really the only government job I’m interested in and also feel like I should have tried to get into State when I was 23.
And all of that is forgiven and forgotten because I didn’t have the capability to think all that through because State is an adult job and I don’t know how to do that. Neurodivergent people do not have job security, ever, because neurotypical people do not like working with us. They can complain to HR all they want and it does no good, so they have to make you look incompetent when they get tired of explaining things in the way you can hear it. Bosses who say that’s not true are the ones that make life easier. But all people aren’t them, either.
It’s a dirty little open secret. Whether you are physically or mentally disabled, getting an interview is harder. They require you to report your conditions if you have them to get ergonomics and/or special considerations, but it makes employers take one look at your resume and think “retard” in a very nasty way. Doesn’t matter whether they’re put off by bipolar or cerebral palsy, I’m not getting in there if I tell people I’m disabled on a web form because I have to in order to get the interview and the considerations afterward because they have to decide if I’m worth it first. Or, I can not tell them….. and that’s worse. I will launch into the song and dance of masking behavior until I can’t keep it up anymore and need those considerations and get fired for it.
I am fucked in getting disability unless I hire a fuck ton of lawyers, and then I’m not sure I can have any assets and now I do because my mom and stepfather are both dead. I don’t want to touch them because I’d be heavily taxed, but I don’t know whether being on disability would allow me to keep them or not when I turned 65. Then, I would also face the social stigma of being disabled, making it harder to date. No one wants to take on a financial project because they don’t want to be the one that pays for everything when they don’t like my cheaper suggestions because that’s the way I can treat them. Zac doesn’t care because we don’t do anything truly expensive except stop at the liquor store on the way home because Zac likes whiskey and I like N/A spirits and a hotel bottle of whatever it is that someone has created this week that’s new. I think the last time it was rum punched up with sour apple liqeur. It was okay. But again, it was like $4. I wish I could be the girlfriend and the friend and the daughter that paid for everything, and I might be later in life if my ideas or blog take off. Who knows? Dooce got to be Dooce, Wil and Jenny got to be Wil and Jenny. Who knows what will happen to me? At this point, it’s exciting to see what’s to come because I’m getting answers to questions I’ve had my whole life.
Mel is a chef I write to in England that has some of the same issues in the kitchen that I do. We work through the emotional side of it and talk about cooking. It feeds me in a way no one else does. Tyler and J.L. are my newest connections, writers who are on a whole other level than me and have taken control of my education. It’s the right move for me, because being around Supergrover all those years was like training for a writer’s room, and it would blow her hair back to be in this group as well. Writing isn’t what she does for a living, but she’s good at it.
She has a blog that she thinks I haven’t read and when she said it I was hurt because you could wake me up in the middle of the night and I could recite lines form it verbatim. There weren’t that many entries and I can quote all of them. I just won’t.
The community that supports me are the only ones who really deserve to know the things that no one else knows about me. But maybe I should give you one. Something good, yet not so deep I end on a downer.
Something no one knows about me is that I don’t have peers. Not really. I’m too complicated and so are my friends. There is no one on earth that can identify with me in every way possible, why I doubt I’ll be happier than I am right now with Zac and Bryn filling two completly different roles as my inner circle. The jury is still out on whether Supergrover comes back to me, but not on the fact that my mama wolverine goes off like hers does, both trauma bonded and angry with each other and refusing to connect.
But if I have more than three people who know everything, it’s not because I don’t want more friends. It’s that I become saturated and overwhelmed easily. I am not trying to be avoidant, just protective, which is where I see Supergrover headed for me and I’m sorry I didn’t see the signs earlier. But it wouldn’t have saved me any pain at all. I just would have started the process earlier. But it would have made feeling put upon last even longer, because there’s a little bit of me that will always feel that way, and not because she put me out with telling me. She put me out with not communicating afterward. We have a situation that changes day by day because I’m a writer. She hates press. Even worse when I’m not a journalist and I’m not fact checking. It’s just like, my opinion, man.
She wants me to write from her perspective. Consider her feelings. I would if I knew what they are. I do not know any of her feelings to be able to consider them.
But I know this.
I love her, something everyone knows. She loves me, something that everyone knows.
And still the truth runs deeper than just that fact. Everything does. We do as people, we do as situations we deal with. And now we’ve stopped leaning on each other and I’m on my own, trying to figure out how to move on when she’s not listening and it’s a disaster. She thinks I’m a dick for pushing her away. I think she’s a dick because she isn’t bringing me closer and it really fucking hurts in a concrete way, not an objective one. And if she saw what I saw, she would see objective danger and come back and say she’s sorry so we could work together instead of against each other. If she doesn’t, whatever she says is on her, and I don’t care how much she says she can deal with it, no she can’t. If I stop protecting her, other people might, too, and that’s bad. I love her so much and she treats me like a mean girl.
I was mad because she was ignoring me, not because I didn’t understand everything on her plate. I wasn’t saying I wasn’t patient. I was saying I think eight years is enough to get over something and you don’t have to get over it but you have to stop shitting on me. Your issues are your issues now.
It’s time for her to tell me everything I don’t know about her, and she’s hog tied like he is in another galaxy far, far away.
I don’t rebel against her story. I regret that she doesn’t tell me the parts that Zac does… the things he needs from me before he has to start saying “medical, medical, medical” like Lauren Graham.).
Stories That Are All True 