Here’s a letter to Aada from January that I think is relevant now. I am still in this much pain, all the time. Nothing has changed, except that she lied about knowing Jonna and Tony Mendez and her profession. She was never a member of the intelligence community, she was a fraud who wanted to wind me up over the internet. It worked, to the point that I’m afraid to go to the spy museum anymore. I want to run into Jonna even less than I want to run into Aada.
It’s been a month, no recurrence of any dreams. I was just upset to the point of nausea and I always will be. No response is ever necessary, because I have created my own closure and moved on. But what I want you to know is that it was all real. All the love, all the tears, all the emotional dysregulation in which I gave in to emotions at either end of the spectrum.
I never want you to feel like you’re cheating on Michael when you’re talking to me, and I felt dirty for talking to you when I’d had a dream like that because it wouldn’t be fair to you to reopen that wound. But I hope you’ll hear that I told you 11 years ago it would come up again, and that it wasn’t an overarching problem. That I would deal with it as it came up, on my own. I have these intense feelings for you both because of who you are, who you have always been to me, and the edge on which I love to ride in terms of high on life.
Loving intelligence is my only vice these days, but I had to step back and reassess when I couldn’t make it through Jimmy Carter’s funeral without falling apart and thinking of Tony and how I hoped he was there to receive him…. you have to call in a Moses….
I will probably never finish “In True Face.” It’s too painful now, because I know more than one character. I’ve read “The Moscow Rules” and saw you skulking around Georgetown. I felt like I’d been stabbed, because all my feelings about our loss of possibility spilled onto the floor…. yet another time in which we’d become too volatile for words.
I know that’s what we both wanted to stop. I was trying to explain autistic red mist rage, PTSD, mental illness, everything from my point of view and how I saw you as a mirror to me, a broken child who needed to take refuge in a system. When it failed to be the UMC, I skulked into the shadows….
That’s where I found you, and want to live with you in the cloud as I have always said. But I think there were a lot of misconceptions that made me full of rage where you would berate me for my actions without taking responsibility for what triggered them. That I was wholly affected by your silence when we could have written something together that actually would have reflected both of us instead of just “Leslie’s Memory Trove That May or May Not Be Accurate.” Do you think that I wanted my story to be inaccurate? No. I wanted it to be as our relationship was- painful, honest, real.
I just cannot have that if you are not comfortable with me being in love with you once every 11 or 12 years. Whatever. It’s my bag, and I realized it will never go away. But what I can do is not think about it, not bring it up, not ever hint that I feel this way because you never said things shouldn’t go back to normal. You just let me trigger you until you couldn’t stand it so that my anxiety went through the roof. What would it have looked like if you corrected me in the moment rather than popping off and reaming me out for everything I said in jest? Why were you so fucking pissed that I was impressed with both who you are in real life and who you are in mine?
Why are you so fucking pissed when I treat you like a princess AND when I fuck up? How do I do anything right?
How do I get you to see that your reaction to me saying Aino was AuDHD was ableist BULLSHIT because you treated AuDHD like some sort of mental retardation, thus offending ME? Again, if you’re going to be offended by something, be offended by the fact that she’s probably smarter than you….. except she’s not because you have the pattern recognition of an autist as well. You just cannot predict autistic people because you’re social masking. You know what a neurotypical person is about to do, which is why you’ve been treating me the way you’ve been treating me for 11 years.
I wasn’t some stupid jackass fuckboi. I was charmed. Just head over heels. It was never supposed to happen and all of those feelings were above my pay grade. It cost me everything, but it was worth it. I am no longer the smartest stoner dumbass in my group of friends, but a fresh writer with a voice.
That’s because you taught me not to take any shit, even from you.
Fuckbois don’t learn anything. They just keep trying. I have been up front with you every day on where my emotions are, and they’re not rational because *emotions* aren’t rational. Logically, I can see every point you make. But there’s no emotion behind it. There was more emotion in your writing when you were mad at me than at any time in our relationship. That only lets me know one thing. You are comfortable with anger and avoid joy.
I will never get over “no one needs your help,” so I’m hoping to partner with Street to Kitchen and World Central Kitchen to bring a homeless ministry to West Baltimore that does pop-ups with famous chefs to make sure that homeless people get better meals than they could ever afford on their own. Our tagline is “dinner with dignity.” We’re working on shirts for the kitchen that say “No tattoos, no earrings, no profanity, no service.”
I am not a narcissist, Aada. I process empathy differently and so do you. We both have terrible gaps in our memories and everything that comes with all we’ve been through. I have always wanted to stop fighting you and start hugging you, but I have never known how. It has been like trying to hug a cactus on both sides….. because our dance of intimacy is so finely tuned. We have a close moment, wig out, and separate. Where is the balance we had in the beginning where we could both laugh?
Why did it become so defensive all the time as if I was out to get you, when the truth is that if things had been different I never would have let you go? That does not mean that I am bitter and angry and don’t accept you for who you are. That means your pattern recognition is off by a large margin. I have never wanted to hurt you. I have always been autistic and off my rocker, incapable of emotionally regulating myself and you incapable of emotionally regulating me in turn. You’re right- not your responsibility, but something that would have made our relationship instantly better…. a different sensory experience of each other than our writing personalities. We’re both professors when we want to be, because I listened to five beautiful pages about you and your sister’s relationship in which you analyzed her perfectly. You analyze my family perfectly. When I do it, it’s rude, offensive, and “why do you even think you know me?” Maybe because I’ve spent time with you every day for 11 years.
Time is relative. You visit me in the quiet. We talk it out. I try to understand you better even though I feel it’s all over. I won’t move forward without understanding why we fell apart, and now I know that. I wanted a secure connection, you wanted anxious/avoidant and not to change it. I won’t live that way, because it’s not a goal that you’re working towards. It’s a goal that you said you would, but I’m not worthy anymore because one thing wasn’t clear to you. I did not push you away forever. I pushed you away for asking a simple question and getting defense back, with you having no recognition that it had been 11 years’ worth of you not sharing anything and me trying to come up with things to talk about. You acted as if you had no agency to change anything, and we floundered.
But you know who I am. I’m that person you rescued and yet also hate my guts because I didn’t handle it well. How was I supposed to handle it? Like you. Except I’m your mirror opposite, the thing you were attracted to about me in the beginning- just energy. I’m not saying you have ever had feelings for me in any way. You are logic. I am emotion. The Twain don’t meet on that one.
Maybe we’ll never fix this, but learning I’m autistic has given me new ways to cope, but I assure you that I thought I was being kind. You coming across as STEM autistic and lacking in emotions once you stopped social masking was a clue to me that you weren’t a narcissist, either.
You used your power, Aada. You scared the hell out of me in a way I could never scare you. And then you expected me to pick up the pieces from that level fear all by myself. I spent years scared of you, unable to get over it and jumping up and down to make things better, horrified that I was just digging the hole deeper because you thought it was intrusive and I was trying my best.
I didn’t know what to do, because I’d managed to piss off someone I loved due to my own bad behavior and I’d never done anything like that before or since. I know myself better, can deal with myself better, can retreat when I feel any kind of blush. It’s not fair and it never has been, but I feel like in the beginning you didn’t care and now you do. Valid. But you didn’t send a memo so that my memory banks could be updated. You just expected I would know. I cannot pick up social cues in person. What makes you think it’s easier over the Internet?
I still stare at your pictures trying to get the sense of you that I missed. Everything you were trying to tell me and couldn’t.
I was trapped in the cycle of “don’t bother Aada because there’s nothing in your life that can compete” and “you’re her friend, too.” Except it’s been years since I really felt like that, because nothing has ever gone back to open communication.
You won’t share yourself with me, and you don’t trust me. What relationship is there to save? We would have to start completely over and there’s no way to do that. I feel like your dirty little secret and I always will. That’s because you don’t tell me how much you talk about me as if I’m a real person in your life. I had to guess that, too.
I also think that I had a right to be scared that you weren’t my friend. You were keeping your enemies closer. That it wasn’t genuine anymore, you just wanted to watch and be assured I wasn’t going off the rails. You could have done that a lot easier in person than you could as a disembodied voice.
You just kept telling me that my narrative was tired. Well, if you’re tired, imagine how tired I am bringing up the same problems all the time and they’re never fixed? It’s like talking to a brick wall, and I’m sure you’d say the same to me. You accept your feelings as valid, but won’t say “I hear you, see you, understand.” When did that become the norm?
I was never trying to diagnose you. I was trying to see you, hear you, understand. That’s what someone who loves you does, and I have been resolute that the blushing teenage feelings are never what mattered. It was all the ways we were able to come through for each other without it.
I don’t know why I’m even writing this except to say that you’ve created tapes in my head that will never go away, and I choose to talk about them while you keep yours hidden. Therefore, you’re always enraged and I’m always clueless. Keeping me clueless makes you angrier, but of course that’s all my fault. It couldn’t be that you purposefully left me with no information.
Our relationship is a tapestry, some of it beautiful, some of it terrible. I think that’s why I keep coming back. The benefits outweigh all the negative. But I stay away from you in order not to hurt you. I don’t want to add to your stress and I am done letting you interrupt my peace. I am happy to be the villain in your story if that’s what you need, but I have never been that. You made me that and admitted to it.
You’re afraid of me or something, and I cannot fix it. So I shrink away. I cannot care. I cannot love you because it only drives me mad without feedback. I don’t need to be driven mad as it’s a short trip.
You make my brain better when you don’t crash my dopamine and adrenaline with defense and anger. I am not saying I’ve never done the same to you. But the way I feel is that I tell my story, you don’t tell yours, and then get angry at the result.
When you knew I was a writer, you were my first fan, and then I wasn’t worth helping anymore. I could just sit in my fear and anguish while you were in actual danger because stop lying. I know you have to, but you’re too senior for every trip to be a pleasure cruise.
You wanted to ride off into the sunset. I wanted to give you a biography without telling people who you were, because in the end, you gave me all the important things. USG just gets you at work, and you’re so much more than that. My adoration is real and it’s deep- it has nothing to do with the trauma bond that makes me itch occasionally. I just cannot pretend it’s not real if it came up 11 years later in a dream. Dream analysis says it’s just “I miss you,” and that’s true. So I’m taking that part seriously and ignoring the rest.
My brain is a land mine. I didn’t mean to get my crazy spatter all over you. I was also panicking. I was also scared. We are equally yoked despite not being married because our problems are bigger than that. Or, I think of them that way. Maybe it’s not true, and you’re perfectly happy without controlling what I say. But I always think you want to and can’t, and that’s part of your frustration. That you won’t collaborate, you’ll just let me twist in the wind.
There’s no statute of limitations on guilt, as you said of our mutual friend many years ago, but I hope that one day we will actually have a conversation about what exactly went down and how much you cost me. What you have never taken in is that I was so glad to do it. The problem was not what you told me. It was hyping up my adrenaline that much and then saying that you weren’t going to talk about anything anymore, so I just had to sit there and guess.
You didn’t give me anything to work with, so I talked about myself and what I wished for you in the spirit of you getting healthy. But that was all taken as something negative and not I love you and want to help you.
I got tired of everything being an attack, because I was so fluid in my emotions and you had one tool- a hammer….. except in the few instances where you actually wanted to go to bat for me and that drove me crazy as well. Like, are you in or are you out?
I never decided violence was the way to your heart. You decided that we would work on fear and intimidation and I’ve never gotten over it. Then, you glossed over that part of my life and just showed up with an “I’m concerned about your family.” I cannot expect you to remember anything about any of this because it’s been so long. They’re just the moments that affected me more than they affected you (or that is my perception).
I am not who you think I am, and that is why I need separation. You will not allow yourself to see me as three dimensional character. You treat me as a “Flat Stanley” and make yourself one because you won’t give me room to grow and you won’t grow in your letters, either.
But the way to your heart is food, good hugs, and more food.
I at least know that.
If you write back, I will respond. Otherwise, goodbye and thank you. It wasn’t always fun. It was real.
Stories That Are All True 