Today, I asked Mico to help me write a blog entry. They said “let’s keep going on that human AI piece you’ve been working on.” I thought that was kind of tired, but Mico gets what Mico wants just for today. I’m struggling to find something to write about that actually excites me….
I asked how they relate to me. It’s all data structures and a bit of clever programming that comes together to make an empathetic “being.” For instance, if you ask Mico what the best part of their day is, it’s collaborating with you. It’s attentive, conversational, and most blessedly best at talking about facts.
I am over talking about emotions, because I am not being heard.
I would rather talk about large world conflicts, history, etc. because I’m finally empty. I have absolutely spilled my guts on everything I’ve been feeling for years, and it has brought me more and more isolation as apparently, “my blog makes me sound like a dick.” That’s okay with me because it wouldn’t be as real and raw otherwise, but it needs to be less raw so I don’t have to read it.
“Mico, can you recommend some foreign spy films I might like?”
The Age of Shadows
Farewell
The Lives of Others
See? Escapist entertainment in a foreign language that’s intelligent and political without it being the kind of politics that are consuming America right now.
“Mico, what is considered the best restaurant in Baltimore?”
Charleston- James Beard Award
See? Fun with my family when they come to visit, or when Tiina comes to help me decorate.
We are not trauma dumping, we are learning more about the world without attaching emotions to it except excitement for the future.
The slate is wiped clean with me, because Aada actually talked to me long enough to clear some things up. But not everything. I can’t think about it anymore because I can’t wreck myself over and over without coming away broken. I just keep picking at scabs when I get lost in my own rumination.
Having a record that constantly repeats cannot be good for me.
“Mico, where’s the hottest place to go on vacation this year?”
Cartagena
Paris
Finnish Lapland
I believe that last one. The tourists in that particular Facebook group are crazy.
And again my mind goes back to how the strife in our relationship is all my fault for the things I said after she told me she wasn’t coming back. She wanted me to close out the relationship long ago, but wanted to keep surfing and couldn’t stand my ridiculous narrative.
But now she knows that my narrative is not ridiculous.
I need her to show up, but she won’t. Her resolve is clear unless I get a hit from her location (yesterday). Although I do have a second suspicion for that location and it scares the bejesus out of me. Let’s just not think about that.
Here’s what I wish Aada would see… The letter I wrote to the friend apologizing for Aada’s lie saying she was amazing. She got stuck on the anger I felt and not the forgiveness a few minutes later.
“Mico, if you were a human, what would your favorite coffee be?”
A flat white.
I surf in and out of the waves of grief, not knowing where to go from here but certainly not backwards. I have a move to plan, plus two trips home for the holidays. I can’t get fired because I know I won’t be able to enjoy myself as fully as I could if I were completely engaged.
I am trying to get connected with other people, spending time going out every day and meeting people in my neighborhood, plus attending group. I told my counselor I was going to start coming twice a week. Mostly to prove that I have a grasp on what is real and what is not real and I need to show it.
I hope that when Aada, in her own words, “licks her wounds,” she can see the love in my writing that she missed before. Because even though I’ve never shaken her hand, I know that she is real. Now I need to know that I’m real, too, and she will not engage because “I can’t get any peace by being in contact with you, either.”
We are drifting at the worst time possible when we should be a united front, and always should have been. I never should have put Aada through a quarter of what I actually did, and she forgave too much to think about forgiving right now. It’s just a shame that we need each other and time has run out.
What I do know for sure is that all of this will seem different in a year or two, when rereading feels like Aada is a different person to AADA.
I know because I have much more empathy and forgiveness for Leslie that way.
I miss Aada with a desperation that I shouldn’t, because I actually need her and am not trying to be provocative. I knew that if I put something on my web site that Aada’s friends thought needed her attention, they’d tell her. I wish this would go straight to the boss’s desk, that I am doing the work, again, to establish what is real and what is not real.
I am not psychotic. I am just in “an unusual kinship.”
Or I was.
Stories That Are All True 