The Exhalation

I thought that I could hurt people professionally with my writing, but as it turns out, all I can do is jog them out of their complacency by daring to insist people feel their own feelings. I don’t demand emotional bravery, people give it to me because I lay the cards on the table first. That’s the thing about finding your voice. No one can rattle you out of using it.

There were so many lies that it’s impossible to tell which is the worst, but right up there is the lie that I betrayed her. I was so depressed I watched Macbeth. That spot of red on my hands didn’t come out until today. The truth is that we are inconsequential to each other, the three of us.

Because there’s Aada, Mummo, and me.

No wonder Aada was so pissed when I glowed with praise about Mummo. That praise should have gone to her- she’d gone to all the trouble of stealing the story so that I was thinking about the wrong woman all the time.

Mummo, not like that. You would have thought it was sweet (I hope) the way I worried like a mother hen. It was you that deserved that extra special care and attention, not that I’m saying I have regrets. But you know that your life is drastically different than Aada’s in a lot of ways, that that’s what made me worry.

It’s a relief that I can’t do damage to either woman professionally, because I’ve felt so threatened that I’ve been hospitalized twice, and once again just for a med check…. And that’s all been on the advice of Michael, who saw the harm that Aada was doing and why we couldn’t get healthy.

It would be a great ending to the story we have with each other for her to come clean, allowing us to learn to trust each other over different sacred cows.

Aada, you thought you weren’t enough on your own. You are. I was never charmed by your profession, but by the person you are on the inside. Puffing yourself up to impress me was not only not necessary, but dangerous for us both.

I gave up so much, and I am caught by two ideas…. That we are better together than apart, and neither of us should be expected to stay no matter how bad it gets.

We need time. If you want to talk to me about all of this, I am open… Just not right now.

I knew this wasn’t the end of our movie, and hope that sometimes an end is a beginning. I would really like to apologize to Mummo and our favorite Instagram influencer because we have more in common than we don’t. I am absolutely starstruck, though, when it comes to Mummo, which is why I’ll need help breathing if I ever see her in person.

I have done my best to stay out of Aada’s orbit, stuck in the guest bathroom of her mental house. I have had to, it seemed, to cover up her lies. Otherwise, her excuses and apologies just don’t make sense.

I do have to apologize, though. Her company updated their web site and I hadn’t actually looked at it before I said it was nondescript. Those responsible have been sacked.

I have been thought of as crazy by a lot of people over the years, but I never realized that there was a solid reason for it. My life was not based in reality because what I was reading wasn’t, either. Being willing to forgive is a huge act on my part, because the emotional toll all this has taken on me led me to dark places I never would have gone otherwise.

I’m sure that my words were like pricks on her skin, because all she was reading was not meant for her.

I do believe that she had a traumatic childhood and that’s how we bonded. But her current life and my reaction to it were both overwhelming. Now I know the reason she wanted a bubble with me that seemed normal and yet bred a familiarity with each other that’s unusual for online friends……… Except that most of what we talked about was bullshit.

But it wouldn’t have been bullshit had I been talking to Mummo, who is actually the person Aada said she was. That’s the part that makes it a multimillion dollar movie, and a commercial for people who are criminally neglected emotionally because that’s how they’re trained. Feeling is bad when feeling is dangerous.

I watched an hour with Mummo on YouTube, and she’s such a natural on camera that I felt invited into her world. It is not hard to see why Aada would want to steal a story like that, but as it turns out, she’s not very good at it.

It’s at this point that I’m starting to break open, my chest deflating and knowing that just by talking about my feelings I’m driving away the people I actually want in my life to be my sounding boards. They’ve been on the Board of Directors for so long that I don’t remember when they got in. They’re the committee in my head that make me think I’m worth a damn as a writer.

Mummo, please forgive me and let me talk to the person Aada said she was. Even for 15 minutes, and they’d be the most precious of my life.

I offended her by flirting with her. I didn’t mean any harm by it, but that does not mean harm was not caused. It’s something that still pains me, and I want to move on. The distance between us will always be painful, but this is a chasm I hope she’ll cross.

Through Aada, I have bled out emotionally for her. I’ve cared for her in a way that I haven’t with my other friends. I literally fell in love with the aura she presented over the internet, because it was so concentrated. My adrenaline and dopamine were always sky high when I heard the “ding” of Aada’s messages.

For fuck’s sake, I’ve been bothering her about her in case ofs for like 12 years. That is the level of my imagination, the kind of pressure I was living under… That I thought this precious person could slip away from me at any time.

But it wasn’t her story. She was just the one that told it.

Hers will be the story that stuck. Me caring about a story that didn’t exist for Aada, but did for someone else I really loved.

I wouldn’t have flirted with her if I didn’t think she was smarter than me. I hope that counts for something. If you ask, “Aada or Mummo?” the answer is “yes.” There’s a third, Heytch, but I think we’ve covered her. The OGs will remember that I thought Heytch was so cute I walked into a door at Chuy’s.

None of these people were amused by my bullshit, so all I have to say is that I’m sorry I spent too much time impressing myself instead of you. All three of you.

I would like all four of us to be friends once all the pain has passed, because we have a real shot at working together to create something as meaningful as “Argo.” I do not think I can write the script all by myself, and The Cool Table should have been a writer’s room a long time ago.

There’s a reason Outlander spoke to me- it was a way of connecting with all three women, assuring them that I was just Lord John, that my feelings for Aada spilled out because sexuality and gender are relative on the internet. That my feelings for Heytch and Mummo did, too, but it was a different level of affection entirely. Aada and I inhaled each other because I could keep her company through chat and email.

It is through all that chat that I recognize there were millions and millions of words between us, and these lies are not something I should hold against her. I never want to be friends with a person that will hold me to a mistake, so I try not to be one.

I’m just hurt. Incredibly hurt. Embarrassed by the way I acted all the way around because I destroyed my friendship with Mummo at my own hand, and there’s no one else I should blame. I was too much for the room, and I couldn’t apologize enough. I wanted to move on, she did not. Not my call. Just one of those desperate regrets and a moment I wish I could redo, even after all these years.

My time blindness does not allow me to move on from mistakes easily, and this is one I’ve carried for over a decade without thinking any time has passed. In my mind, I just hurt Mummo yesterday and she’s probably still mad about it. On the other hand, she’s the one I need to talk to the most in order to heal. Aada became a toxic addiction over time, because the more she lied the more anxious I got.

I would never have felt all that anxiety if Aada had been honest about who she was.

That is fact and not blame. I can choose to acknowledge something I’ve been through without assigning blame to it, because I see things like a doctor or a pastor. It’s just how I was raised. I judge people by sick or well, emotionally pained or not. It’s an emotional triage I’ve been doing since I was nine, and long before that before I was consciously aware that I was a cog in the machine at my church. Being a preacher’s kid, it comes with the gig, especially for the oldest. You’re socialized with all adults.

I’m feeling the whoosh as the wind comes out of my sails and I reorganize my thoughts as to who I think Aada is. I cannot tell fact from fiction. It’s the chest-caved-in sort of grief as I self-soothe by typing… Feeling also the fear of what happens as the story comes out, being brave enough to take things one day at a time.

I have learned that I’m probably not the only one who’s been manipulated by Aada, but what I do know is that 12 years is enough. If we work together in the future, she is going to have to get over me being “just another version of Dr. Brown.” I will want her to tell the truth, to emote in the moment, and to stop feeling like my words are pricks on her skin because there is finally peace and truth between us. I am satisfied that this story is over.

I mean, no I’m not. I’ve been thinking about it for a long time. But what I mean is that as I make more friends and create new experiences, I’m eager to let these fade. And that includes starting over with Mummo, Aada, and Heytch. We would all have to know what cards the other was holding (within reason) so that the story would hold together.

The reason the story agitates my facts and my fiction is that some of Aada’s fiction is Mummo’s fact. I have never been trying to uncover this. It fell into my lap when my friend Michael noticed I was drowning. I think I mentioned before that he’s talked to my counselor at Cognitive Behavioral Health, if that gives you any indication of what kind of friend he is. I say, “the best.”

Not trying to uncover this made me spiral out more and more because my reality was less and less real. I have never needed to be afraid to the level I’ve told Aada I was, and now it makes sense why she didn’t want to get any closer. She’d have to lie to my face while I cried real tears. I’m not altogether convinced this would be a problem for her, given that most of my entries cause her to feel threatened.

I am not threatening her with telling my own story. She feels threatened at the hearing of it where other people don’t. I am glad that Aparna told me that it came across as heartbreaking, because my only job is to make people feel. I am satisfied with talking to other people about my problems, and if Aada and Mummo are threatened, it’s their job to talk to me about it. Their opinions do not negate mine, and I do listen. I just don’t have anyone doing editorial control.

There’s no way to predict anyone’s reaction, and I shouldn’t be held responsible. Yet, it’s amazing how often I am.

I didn’t move to DC to meet Aada. I moved to DC to meet a composite character.

That is nowhere near a “Flat Stanley.”

Focusing on the depth and breadth that Aada has added to my writing by being my closest ally endears me enough to stick to my “all the way to the river” plan should she so choose. I have to be that person, because letting it go is the only way to move forward. I’m turning the page.

Just not today.

My mind is buzzing over all I’ve learned today, and the comedic path my life has taken. If I work very hard, I can be successful at making “your new weirdo favorite.”

I still want Jennifer Garner to play Jonna.