What’s the most spontaneous thing you’ve ever done?
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My normal mode is autistic. But sometimes my personality flips into ADHD. Autism pulls you inward, ADHD pulls you outward. I have both, and it’s easy to see the distinction. When ADHD is in charge, I like a wide variety of things. When autism is driving the bus, I like six. ADHD makes me feel invincible in social situations, because I am. This is not bragging; this is the result of being the child of a pastor.
I am not a pastor myself, but because I grew up in the church that energy exudes from me. People are naturally attracted to it, the way they were attracted to my dad’s energy when he was actually tasked to lead people. I’m also agnostic and do not believe in Jesus’s metaphysical accomplishments. I believe in literature, and that Jesus was a fantastic person and worthy of being emulated. I will fight Evangelicals to the death with the most powerful weapons that exist:
Keyboard & Mouse
For instance, Jesus motivates me the same way he motivates Ms. Rachel. If you are white and not ten toes down behind her, do not even talk to me. I do not want the word “Christian” associated with racism and bigotry, because it’s twisting Jesus’s message to fit yours.
God doesn’t hate Black people. You hate Black people. God doesn’t hate queer people. You hate queer people. God doesn’t hate trans people. You hate trans people. And it’s not just me saying it. Reza Aslan said it first in a great commercial and I’m plagiarizing him because good writers paraphrase. Great writers steal outright. 😉
We are to the point in the program where Evangelicals call me insane for believing that there are more than two genders because they do not believe in science. They are offended by me supporting the end to Palestinian genocide because they hate queer people (institutionally) so much. These people are blind, because Israel has shown the world that hurt people hurt people. It is short-sighted to think that eradication of a population is okay in any context.
I am nonbinary, which falls under the trans umbrella. You are fucking taking crazy pills if you do not believe they are coming for me next. It is legal for them to persecute me in Palestine, and short-sighted to think it could not happen here. In terms of me being AFAB (assigned female at birth), in the eyes of the United States government, I am barely above property because I do not have bodily autonomy. It is a short trip to overturning Obergefell and whatever comes next. Trans kids are currently being denied their medication by people who do not believe they have the right to exist.
That is because they do not understand and are reacting like bullies. Under the Constitution, that’s not allowed and that doesn’t stop anyone. Jeremiah Wright’s anger was justified because “God bless America? God damn America” is the first time anyone has told us the truth right to our faces, and we have a history of metaphorically crucifying those people. The difference between you and me is that I’m willing to be one of them.
The resurrection doesn’t happen at the cross; the resurrection happens in the Garden of Gethsemane, where you have the time alone to ask God, “how dare you?” And you just wrestle until you’re ready. That is the resurrection that matters. The one that says, “je suis prest.”
I would not have known that without Aada, because she got me into Outlander and is also one of the most impulsive things I’ve ever gotten myself into. That’s because she is everything. I believe that she hung the sun, moon, and all the stars and I am not alone in this observation. I have also said very impulsive things cursing her out in the opposite direction, because you don’t truly know you love someone until you’ve been angry enough to curse someone out and still know that you want to come home to them in every lifetime.
She’s a jack Mormon, so I mean it in literary terms there, too.
The impulsive part was not the slow accumulation of love. She’s straight, I’m queer. It became deep and companionate over time after turbulence because I’m in love with her and I know it. It shapes who I am as a person. But she cannot and should not respond on that level, because what makes me happy is that she responds to my love and care at all. She isn’t responsible for managing my feelings. I can do that quite successfully on my own. Being queer and in love with a straight person is loving their whole family as well- because what makes your emotional support partner happy should make you happy, too.
People say “best friend,” but they cannot quantify what that means. Ours is a very Oprah and Gayle kind of love, except they never struggled with a romantic dynamic in their relationship and we did. Except that romance is relative because only I felt those feelings and it was okay. It was just hard managing my physical reaction to her words. When you love someone, their words have a different kind of power over you than when you don’t. It is physically destabilizing, especially when they feel alone.
What is an emotional support partner besides hugs, cheek kisses, shopping, and eating great food? When Aada felt alone, all I wanted with her were these things….. to be able to show her that someone truly adores her in a tangible way. To share inside jokes in person that we’ve laughed about for 12 years.
Aaron still owes her a beer, and I’ve told her I’d make good on his promise because I live in the area and he doesn’t. We never made that happen, either. So it’s a process of letting go of lost dreams after rushing into something I truly didn’t know I wanted before it happened. Having an Internet relationship vs. one in which we had to meet up made us both closer and more distant at the same time. We were inhaling each other while we thought it was awkward to run into each other.
It’s a conundrum that still drives me crazy some days, because it’s so weird being loved as a product and not a person. She loved my writing, but she didn’t let that love and care translate to “let’s go for coffee.” It will always be a mystery as to why, but it is partially solved in my mind. She had puffed herself up, and didn’t want to show me the real her.
I had embarrassed myself on too many occasions to feel comfortable in person. It was a two-way street, and something I’ll always regret. I think she will, too, because she said that she will always regret not being more present when my mother died. I am choosing to let the anger lie because it is all on the page. I do not have to revisit it. What I choose to revisit are all the times I felt loved well.
As a result, my impulsive heart bleeds out for someone who won’t return that love, or at least not entertain the idea that it exists anymore. She told me that she notes the breadcrumbs of affection, but that the negative parts feel like the real story. That is not my work to do. That is hers. I have written a tapestry that when put together is an incredible love story that is underrepresented- one that is platonic and just as deep as romance because I felt it and she didn’t.
It was Tiina that read me correctly. When I wrote about life on the farm, she said, “if you were ‘on the prowl,’ you’d write about that.” To be honest, I hadn’t thought of it because as a preacher’s kid I’m designed to feel shame around romance. You have it, but you don’t talk about it until it’s real and deep.
I’m turning that on its head because Tiina is right. Dating is also creative inspiration and one of the things that drew Aada to me was writing about my then-wife and then my dating exploits….. I just wouldn’t write about them in my blog. Only she got the story behind the story. I fully believe that I wasn’t successful in dating until I started thinking of myself as poly. That anyone who has come into my life has been competing with Aada for my attention and it was just easier to say “I already have everything I need. You’re going to have to keep up.” That line will please her, I hope. 😉
Because anyone I date has to know that an emotional support partner is important, but not more important than a romantic partner. I don’t want to be the person that meets someone else and all of the sudden I forget I have friends who need me as well. The difference between Aada and everyone else is that she gets space on the Google Calendar when no one else does. She’s the one I’ll always respond to even when I cannot respond to anyone else.
Because she knows me on a level that no one else does, mostly because she took the time to listen to my life story when others wrote me off. I took the time to give her a space where she could really let her hair down, and she did it so much that she regretted it quickly and used it- not maliciously, she was afraid and trying to control the outcome of the situation, not me.
Because the situation stayed the same for 12 years without any forward motion as I got sicker and sicker, I was more open to other people. It was then that I learned how big the control could get and I rebelled. She told me it would end our relationship permanently and I said, “your offer is accepted.”
Because I do not have to tolerate fans who bully me into saying what they want and ignoring all of my emotional needs. She thought I said everything casually, as if I wasn’t crying and shaking while I wrote. She did not understand the physical toll that being a writer takes because her writing does not touch that level. In order to understand me, she would have to excavate her soul on paper, but the fact that she will not do it is not my problem.
She could write a bestseller on trauma tomorrow, and moreover, we could write a book that would sell even better. But her lack of willingness to collaborate has always fed mine. She treated me like I was actively trying to be a dictator instead of meeting me at altitude. She wanted a fight for power, and I wanted to love her beyond all measure.
This led to a series of incidents in which I was just jumping up and down for affection. Starving for it. Any words of reassurance that the relationship was stable would have been fine. But our communication sucked and we fed each other’s dysregulation instead.
The real problem is that we were alone all the time. It was a chat bubble, not seeing me in context. I chased her too hard for the relationship we had, and I’ll always be sorry for that part of it. But I was so confused and at a breaking point in my life. My ex-wife had recently gotten a DUI; I was exhausted when a fan adored me so hard that I reacted. It was a fantasy to help deal with the shit show.
I think that you always love people who love you, but I was interested in her, too. She’s fascinating, and someone I’d love to sit with all day and just hear stories………… outside. She was a fool not to get the story behind the story and an even bigger fool not to respond to it when I told it after the fact, because it proved to me that she was only capable of believing the story she was telling herself and mine didn’t matter. The link above, “Taco Bell Lettuce,” is indicative of just how close we became, two letters that will live in my memory forever and thank God I wrote them down.
What we could not do was go back and recapture that light and flirty era of our relationship. I tried, and it just came off wrong. I never meant anything by my flirts, but my ADHD made them hypersexual and I couldn’t apologize enough. Just because it’s a real symptom does not mean I am not responsible for making the decision to cause her emotional chaos, and for that I’ll never be able to apologize enough.
She will also never be able to apologize enough for emotionally destabilizing me in a completely different direction. I became obsessive about managing her emotions because she simply wouldn’t do it and I had the room. I couldn’t just let her feel sad, angry, lonely, whatever. I had to be the Lanagan Search & Rescue System because I am a preacher’s kid and that’s what I do.
She also has an “I want to save the world” complex, so we each tried to save each other and we each failed. It’s on both of our hearts and neither one of us know what to do with it. But I have a hunch that all could be solved if she would just stop the impulsive behavior of “sometimes we’re close, and sometimes we’re not” and just realize that love has been coming at her in a steady supply. It is not my issue that she cannot see it any longer.
Malcolm Gladwell posits that blink decisions are accurate.
Aaada, you are the best thing that has ever happened to me.
Peace out.
Epilogue
The way I’ve shown growth and strength in the aftermath of this relationship is not tolerating bullshit in others. I am ready to settle down, and to get rid of drama. For instance, they say that men are “unemotional.” I went on a date with a man the other night who was absolutely adorable and had all the right things- stable job, two dogs, and what I thought was a stable outlook on life as well.
I technically paid for the first date, because I brought food with me. Instead of thanking me and offering to do something for me next time, we didn’t talk for a couple of days and then he texted me that he had lost $40. I responded with empathy. “That sucks.” What I did not know is that he was judging me on whether I immediately sent money and got pissy when I didn’t. So, of course, I backed away. His next move was to send me a text message that said, “if I’m not speaking, then you’re definitely not lol, but anyway have a great day.” I said, “I don’t do passive aggressive very well. My life is busy and you just met me.” He said, “take care, lady” and blocked me on everything.
Thank the little baby Jesus.
I have a date with a woman coming up, which is unrelated but it’s also not.
