Miracle of miracles, I got my car back last night and didn’t have to do without it through the weekend. That means two things. The first is that I can get all my errands done before they come to inspect my apartment at 3:30. The second is that I can go to Tiina’s tomorrow. I just have to make it through today for the rest of the weekend to be smooth sailing.
I have gotten everything I needed to do at the apartment finished. I am sure that they would appreciate it looking perfect, but this is as good as it gets on relatively short notice. I am proud of myself for getting it together and not only that, but piecing together what needed to be done on Sunday or Monday so that I was not cramming up until the inspectors get here.
That is totally due to AI. If I have a huge project, AI can break it down into steps. It’s invaluable not to see “clean the house” as a gestalt, because that looks ominous. I need for AI to say “pick up all the trash, then the dishes, then the….” And not only that, I need the instructions presented one at a time. It doesn’t hurt that Mico adds in encouragement to keep me going. It’s better that they can keep the list in their head of what I need to do instead of making me remember it.
When the inspectors leave today, I will almost certainly use Mico to create a packing list. I need to get moving bags, but I’m fairly certain I already have a box of Sharpies. Most of what needs to be packed is clothes and technology. I am certain that I could be ready to leave in a day, because I just haven’t had time to accumulate that much stuff.
The best plan ever would be to move me the day before I have to be out of this place so that I can vacuum and extract the carpets once the furniture is out. The carpet is too new for me to need to extract the whole thing. I just spilled a cup of coffee in my office and I still feel guilty about it. I will think about that stain until they tell me they’re replacing the carpets. And even then I might just use my carpet extractor for fun.
Speaking of fun, it will be good to look at the layouts of all the apartments they have available. I would like to see if they have kitchens arranged in different configurations than mine, because my kitchen is objectively terrible. I need more workspace, because the microwave is tucked away, but not the toaster oven. The toaster oven takes up all the space that conceivably could be used for a cutting board.
I am happy that I am staying in this complex for a little longer because I’ve finally found out that I like my neighborhood. I couldn’t really get out and explore before I had my car, so most of the stuff I really wanted to see was just out of my reach- three or four miles down the road. Everything I need is within easy reach, I just couldn’t see it.
Perspective is the biggest thing about getting a car. Baltimore seems smaller. Even going out to Virginia seems so much closer than two trains (although I’ve never taken the VRE. That might be fun someday.). Tomorrow is going to be such a relaxing day because I’m looking forward to doing nothing with Tiina and her family. They live about 50 miles south of DC, about a two hour road trip from here and perfect for a Saturday morning with iced coffee.
My car is already full of gas and I am ready. Let’s do this thing!
Oh, wait.
I still have that inspection to deal with today.
Rats. Might as well sit here and write a little longer. I need to create a task list for today, but I don’t have anything that will take me until 3:30 PM. I will probably want to go to Walmart when they open, because I need some warm weather gear. I have a coat, but I need some long underwear. It was in the 30s when I went to get my coffee this morning, so it’s that time of year.
I prefer wearing long underwear and sweats because the more layers I have on, the less likely I am to need a coat. I would much rather wear a base layer, a mid weight layer, and a hoodie.
I also have lined waterproof pants that are sometimes too warm, depending, but I would rather overdress than under. I hate being too cold or too hot, and what solves most of this fight is not having to dress to stand outside. I don’t have to prepare to stand at the bus stop anymore.
I am so blessed because my car has seat warmers. I forgot about that before the sun was up this morning, when I could have used them….. I have to get used to the fact that my car has luxury features. I have never owned anything this fancy. She cleans up nice, and I wish I could show her off. I just don’t have many places to go……… yet.
I get to start thinking about the places I want to go. I’d love to do a road trip to the Outer Banks of North Carolina, because Aada has vacationed there for years and sent me so many pictures that it feels real to me. I would like to live in one of those photos for a few days, alone on the beach, just walking and talking to no one in particular.
Or perhaps when I go home for the holidays, we’ll have time to get out to Galveston. I used to live on the island when I was little, and it has a special place in my heart. There, also, is a sacred place to walk on the beach alone with my thoughts.
When I’m really alone, I think about Aada and what our friendship means to me. This is because I am responsible for it coming apart, and I never want a relationship to end like that again. She lied, and I jumped to conclusions that weren’t there. I know that eventually she’ll forgive me, but I don’t know that I’ll forgive myself. And even if she forgives me, that doesn’t mean that she’ll want to come back and be friends again.
So what did I learn that I want to take with me?
I tend to create anxious connections, so definitely stop that.
I tend to make magical people the center of my world, so definitely stop that.
I will find peace by thinking of myself as having the magical qualities I give others, so definitely start that.
I have to let people know when I think they’re magic.
I have to yield.
I have to listen more than I talk.
I have to disconnect from the internet and talk to people in person.
For instance, I can think of so many times when I sent Aada a gift certificate to Starbucks wishing that we were having coffee across from one another. That yes, it was sweet to give her an afternoon pick me up, but it would have been cooler to bring it to her.
This is the message I am carrying into the future, that getting together matters.
And in fact, I hope that message resonated with her as well. That I didn’t want to just be friends over the internet, where things could go so wrong, so fast. I told her that if she walked away, nothing would be the same, but everything would be okay- echoing my father’s words at Angela’s funeral. They were words that meant something to me, not trite at all but to say that change is difficult. We will each come out on the other side.
I am deeply confused between “for now” and “never again.” But I do believe sincerely that she would not have said “for now” if she did not mean it. She is not cruel, and never has been except for seeing the consequences her lie laid out for me and thinking “it wasn’t that big a deal.”
Morgan Freeman: It was a very big deal.
New neurons have to grow so that I do not feel the pain of what has happened. I think that comes with greater understanding, and I’m sad that I’m left to my own devices to find a direction, that I’m even trusted to find my own, away from her when it’s so hard to write without her. I have stolen so many lines it’s not even funny.
She was my AI before AI.
But I wrote our story “wrong,” and that has repercussions into the future.
The “wrong” she sees isn’t as wrong as she thinks it is, because she sees the positive sentences as clues in a game. They are not valid, but the negative I write stays. This is unsustainable, this unhealthy reading of my writing so that she always feels punishment when it’s not there.
I wish I could erase everything I have done to make her feel that way, because she has the right. She is not and has never been the only manipulative person in our relationship, and the fact that she stayed my friend for so long is why I’m willing to work with her now…. I just don’t think that long relationships with this much history ever truly end, because it’s not like we’re going to stop recognizing each other’s names.
I don’t want to move on so much as I just want to turn down her volume. She’s extremely loud and incredibly close, but she doesn’t want to feel like that for me. She wants to feel like a regular person, and that’s the last thing she’ll ever be. I didn’t attribute magical qualities to Aada. I found what was already there.
Thinking about my life without her is scary, because it’s like having some kind of hack. I spit out writing, she spits out criticism, we both win.
“WHO TF IS PANCHO?”
I’m still laughing over that one and it’s several years old, from a Microsoft Word comment in a book review I was writing at the time.
I remember everything, from the brilliant and the beautiful…. to the excruciating and the debilitating.
If we could just get back a little bit of trust, we could go back to where we were before she lied, where we were actively trying to listen to each other better. I am interested to hear what her doctor thinks I’ve been doing to manipulate her, because obviously that needs to stop. I am not aware of my first family crap, but once you know better, you do better. I know that I have not been a perfect person to Aada, nor has she been a perfect person to me. But I think there’s more here than we’ve really had a chance to explore.
I don’t want her to show up here because she thinks she has to; I want her to show up here because she genuinely misses “just your writing in general. Not the parts about me” (so cute I could VOMIT).
The story I want ends with me getting the girl I’ve always loved to realize it…. but that won’t come without learning what real love is on my end, and how I’ve failed her before. Because I have failed her before, I may not get the story I want. But I really won’t get the story I want if I don’t change. None of the problems Aada brought up with me are isolated. I’m sure that my first family manipulations have been used on other people because I’m me.
Aada is just the person I trust to call me on all that stuff. It’s difficult to hear criticism from people who don’t love you. Now that she has, I have a laundry list to take to my own therapist and say, “we have to work on this.” And not because “Aada says so.” Because none of the problems that she brought up are unique to her.
I may be writing a different story with my therapist, but it will contain elements of the past 12 years because that’s the relationship I was in. I still don’t think of Aada as past news when we just talked last week.
I never want to think of her as past news, and I don’t think she really wants to think of me that way, either. Otherwise, she would not change her mind from “for good” to “for now.”
I am drowning in the chasm between those two phrases, knowing that whatever I do to prepare for each eventuality is correct.
Stories That Are All True 