It takes a lot to be a blogger, because essentially what you’re doing is trying to show the world in minute detail, and you have to do it in a hurry because the new prompt comes at midnight. I have one day to complete the assignment. When the prompt only asked for the first line of my autobiography, I thought, “OK. I’ll bite. That way, I’ll get a day off without breaking my streak.” It was more time to devote to the characters I love…. not that I was trying to be mean to you or anything. Sometimes, I just have to live more before I react.
However, criticism very much feels like the criticism of the other arts. Your muses are offended because they don’t see themselves the way you see them. Your family is embarrassed at least some of the time. I have to deal with the fact that my life is on display, and so do my friends. But they can be grateful I will never film them. This is not Instagram, where I surprise people by taking photos of them in unflattering positions. Painting a picture with words is a lot harder than taking a picture, I think, because we don’t start from a picture that is necessarily accurate to us, certainly not objective.
I wish I had pictures of me and SG! when it was good, because it would have been a nice keepsake. I mean, it’s one thing to have pictures of her, it’s another to banter together long enough to want to take it. Getting to take pictures with her would never have been the point. It would have been her wanting a picture of us together and saying “I’ll text it to you.” Even my sister makes me feel important when she does it, because a powerful person trusts me with their intimate images and I get the bonus of looking at their faces when they’re out of pocket.
I look at both of them lovingly. I’m sandwiched between them age-wise and shit rolls downhill. I sound a lot like her in person, and I want her to laugh her ass off about that given our conversation the other day.
I just had a thought that cracked me the fuck up, so I want to make her laugh even harder. If there is one, only one thing that makes her feel like a mother to me it’s that I hear her words and phrases coming out of my mouth. I do not have her accent down, so I cannot do an impression. But what I can do is say it how I think she’d say it, and she takes no prisoners.
So, what I would like to say is that if you know me in real life, I would give you exactly where to go to lodge complaints about “my tone.” But, it would not go well for you. She takes no prisoners, suffers no fools gladly, terms, conditions, provisos, the what-have-yous, etc. As I have said before, I have several friends that if we were mutual, they’d regret it. She knows what you did….. 😉 But don’t worry. She also knows a shit ton more about what I did. I can’t control your behavior, but I can learn to control my reaction.
It made me think of a line she wrote me years ago…. “my mother does not suffer fools gladly…..” That’s what I love about SG!. She can figure out the bullshit games running in any room, which is why I use poker metaphors here all the time. I know she understands the rules and the stakes. It’s a weird feeling, bankrolling me and running the juice.
The juice didn’t stop running until I was ready to make Teddy KGB choke down his Oreos all fuckin’ night.
But it’s not the last hand that matters, is it? It’s being able to read the man and not the hand. I don’t know how professional poker players can read the hand blind based on what’s left in the deck, but I do know the microaggressions of someone who has a good hand vs. a bad one.
Note to self:
At next book talk, ask Jonna if she is good at poker. I think her next title, should she write a sequel to “In True Face,” should be “This Would Be Funny If It Wasn’t So Serious…” which is something she said during the talk. I’m sure someone has thought of that title before. Not sure the subject has ever been more serious as a career at CIA while female. They thought she couldn’t handle a lot of things because apparently being able to support your husband at home and at work (if you were a “contract wife,” you could get a job anywhere in the world your spouse was posted in the typing pool. That doesn’t mean that Jonna married John or Tony for a job. It means that was the CIA term for how most of the people got their jobs in the typing pool. Keep it in the family, always. Easier to manage.
Why the trope about spies marrying each other is true to life. The Agency is a bubble, and allows you to forget your real life quickly, just like the military. I’m not sure that being able to get a job anywhere in the world is true of spouses now in the military/intelligence services, but I do know that if you want to work, there’s lots of opportunity if you’re on a military base or have been to the Chief of Station’s house for dinner once if they’re desperate.
Military spouses know the feeling of their partners coming home and struggling with life not surrounding all the stuff going on “out there.” It’s a helpless feeling, I’m sure, if you’re at all interested in geopolitics.
Jonna got to take a turn from the typing pool into a career because of luck, with both her and Tony being cut off from a fire hose worth of information about the chess board every single day. So, they met with their old friends at art shows just to reminisce- respecting boundaries and just loving the people involved.
As usual, I got lost in my own head and went in a million directions, because my autism can connect intelligence to anything because that’s how I understand the world. My view on systems is bird’s eye because I can handle those patterns easier than I can handle waking up in the morning.
With autism, the little things are the big things. It takes you energy to do your job and come up with great ideas. It takes us energy to make it to said job, but amazing once we get there (a good bit of the time) if we’re low needs and if other people are willing to hear us out.
Most people say “that was out there, even for me.” That’s because most of the people who say it are “great with autistic people working for/with them.” But it’s still the same dichotomy as in high school….. “Jesus Christ, do I have to explain everything to you?” You get it or you don’t in most workplaces, and if you’re neurodivergent, the chances are always 20% that someone will think you get it.
Autistic people get jobs all the time.
It’s really hard to keep them based on social cues you don’t know at times you desperately need them. For instance, it’s really hard for me to be around people who don’t also swear as much as line cooks because it’s really hard for me not to use swear words as filler….. because I’ve been on the line for so many years….. and yet also a grammar Nazi so insults often come as not to end a sentence on a preposition. It’s like trying to control Anthony Bourdain, not because I’m something special but because he’s like all of us.
I become “Little Fires Everywhere,” the Celeste Ng title that describes be because I haven’t found many people who understand me. I leave confusion in my wake, always.
The first time I did meet a someone, I knew it. The second time I sort of did? I struggled with it for 10 years. That’s because we both vastly underrated each other. She thought I was too needy, I thought she was too avoidant. We finally met in the middle and I hope discovered that neither of the stories we’d been telling ourselves are true. I can wait my whole life, because I’m only here to receive her energy, not show up regardless. It’s starting to feel pushy even if it isn’t true, because I don’t know if she’s going to respond to my response or not. She always leaves a door open. Always.
The funniest part is feeling at times like, “you fired me yesterday.” That I was indeed just as dedicated as any fashion assistant anywhere…………….. and so was she. It just became a problem when it felt like she was always the Mary and I was always the Rhoda. It was the push pull of wanting to be my own Mary, but being the president of everything because being the Vice President of Overthinker’s Anonymous is not her vibe. President is a public facing office. 😉
I cast a wider net for friends in college.
Or, I started blogging in 2003 because I could cast a wider net for friends. Our closeness was not based on proximity, but emotional intimacy. That feeling of being able to say anything and it won’t be able to get back to your family and friends, etc. Whether I’ve ever been catfished, I don’t know. Clearly once as a child, but I’m emotionally intelligent enough to close the chat windows that feel weird. The text, even the subtext just feels off and you know it if you’ve been chatting a long time. You learn to weed people out. That’s how I’ve found lasting friendships and not flings. Getting to know people from the inside out is a great answer for millions. It doesn’t make you put energy out there so much as attract energy to you.
It is how I’ve learned to control being “little fires everywhere” and concentrate on being the best person I can be. I cannot control my havoc in a neurotypical world, but I can apologize for my responses to it without taking away from the seriousness of what happened. That I will retreat, but I will return with a clear invitation. I don’t want to be with or be friends with anyone who doesn’t want to be here. It just feels insulting to me, and something that I don’t want in my life. For instance, a little bit of the everyday type of assurance we’re good so that I don’t have to walk around thinking about a problem that does not exist,
Only sometimes do I need more support than that; mostly, I just feel insecure after a fight. Who doesn’t? I just feel it on my skin.
Whether it’s joy or rage, I feel my emotions physically. It’s, I hope, why I can describe them. They aren’t insignificant.
But I only understand others’ reactions when I figure out how I participated in other people’s inner conflicts as well. I do not want to be the cause of them.
There will be a realignment.
My art won’t change, but the reader will.
Stories That Are All True 