Taking a break from a day of SQL queries and deploying cubes and exporting data and all the stuff I need to do before 6:00p. Mondays are my busiest days, like they are for a lot of people. Data comes in at an alarming rate, and I am on the horn to catch it. I also spend a lot of my day working for a famous non-profit. I can’t tell you what it is, but I will leave a bread crumb… it stops stars on your arm.

Listening to a playlist I created on Spotify called “Kiss My Brass,” and includes stuff from John Williams, Wynton Marsalis, etc. It also includes the trumpet solo I played to get into HSPVA, “Petite Piece Concertante” by Guillame Ballay. It feels good to go back to that time in my life musically. I got to do a lot of things that other kids my age didn’t, like play a side-by-side concert with the Houston Symphony, conducted by Stephen Stein. I don’t remember a lot of what we played, but I do remember “Rodeo” by Aaron Copland. It was magnificent. I think I am a better singer than a trumpet player at this point, but I did enjoy it while it lasted.

“Fanfare for the Common Man” is now blasting in my ears, and it’s a mood lifter, for SURE. I remember playing that as well. Trumpet players are always trying to out-do each other, and I was no exception. I’d break out little snippets of “Grand Russian Fantasia” and “Cantaloop” while I was “warming up.” The only thing I didn’t get to do when I was that age was duet with Diane. We would have rocked it with “Summertime” or “Let the Bright Seraphim.” But that time in my life has passed, and I am sort of grateful. If I’d kept up with it, I’d be happy because I get frustrated that I’m not as good as I was when I was a kid. Getting into PVA required hours and hours of practice, and if there is anything I hate, it’s woodshedding… although I wonder if I would have been better at it had I been on ADD medication back in the day. I didn’t have enough focus to be able to play one measure eighty times, and that is the difference between good and great.

I do have that focus with singing, though, because I am sometimes amazed and sometimes disgusted at the sounds that come out of me… although as a trumpet player, I have learned that if you’re going to hit a bad note, at least splat it all over the back wall. If you’re going to make a mistake, at least do it right. 😛

Now Charles Ives’ Variation on America” is playing… a perfect analogy for our political climate. Donald Trump is all the minor seconds. He is just a political facepalm if ever I’ve seen one. He seems to be courting the “stupid fucknut” vote. In short, not a fan. In the words of Jed Bartlett, “these people don’t vote, do they?” Jesus, I hope not. In case you missed it, that was an actual prayer.

If there’s any hope in this, it’s that the other Republicans hate him enough to have a brokered convention.

I’m not satisfied with either Democratic candidate, but I’m satisfied enough not to vote Republican.

There’s this ad on now- T-mobile- that says you’re covered from NoVA to Adams Morgan, and I’m thinking that’s not really a brag because it’s not that far. Richmond to Baltimore would have been more effective…. but no one asked me.

This weekend was pretty incredible. I got to take my friend Scott to my little town, and we had lunch in Takoma Park. Then on Sunday, I went to Takoma Park Presbyterian for worship because that’s where some of my youth group attend. I’m keeping my membership at CCC, because ultimately, that’s where I belong. But if you want to go to Bridgeport UCC on the east coast, go there. The architecture is even so Portland- it’s in the round like Portland MCC.

At youth group, Mark, senior pastor of TPPC, Mark asked me if I’d be interested in pinch hitting for him, and I was grateful. I’ve been looking for a place to preach “in the flesh,” and I didn’t know if I’d get one on the East Coast or not. I did, and don’t think I’m not over the moon about it. I’m just not jumping up and down because I have a really bad cold and the Sudafed is making me a little out of it. I also led the parents through an exercise called the “Examen” Lenten practice, and it gave me some points in the moderation category. I realized that the purpose of this blog is that I can talk about my feelings because I’ve already written about them. I put my darkness out there as much as everyone else, because that’s what Lent represents- making amends for all the ways you’ve messed up.

When one of the parents said, “I’m really sorry about your divorce,” it meant more to me than diamonds. There’s nothing I can do to rectify my past, but there is always room to walk humbly and hope grace prevails.

Generally, it does.

Amen.

Yesterday I said that I was Frank Underwood to a T… and that was after I’d watched him murder someone. I knew what I meant, but I also wanted more clarity on it. So I was just sitting there waiting for Visual Studio to install, staring into space, when I realized that my blog was my own way of breaking the fourth wall, talking to the audience about the play that is my life. I was reminded of it when Aaron told me that watching the Fuller House pilot was worth it just for the fourth wall joke….. and it was.

The problem with opening your own fourth wall is that others can get to the same conclusions you can much faster. They can, in a sense, “outfox” you… said with a smile because years and years and YEARS ago, I was drinking with Dana and Amy at my house. I kept whispering a little too loudly to Dana (about Amy) “don’t let her outfox me.” It’s one of those stories I don’t mind telling on myself, but would get mortified when Dana would tell it about me. Why? Because if there’s anything I hate losing control of, it’s the story. For instance, I will absolutely embarrass the crap out of myself, but I will not watch you do it. Mostly because I can embarrass myself better than you can and emotionally, it’s a lot easier than watching someone else tell one of my stories. They have a particular cadence in my spoken voice. One of these days, I’ll have to post an .MP3 or something of my greatest hits.

But you probably knew I was heading down a road toward disaster long before I did.

It was just sudo rm -rf / all over the place. For the uninitiated, that’s the command that will raise you to administrator privileges on linux box, and delete every file on it. Your OS, your data, everything.

I threw a match on gasoline to my entire life, not for any reason except that’s what I thought was going to happen anyway. It was better to push people away than it was to watch them walk on their own. For instance, if you look through my blog archives, you’ll see several entries about missing DC and wanting to move back, or that I’d asked Dana to put it back on the 3-5 year plan, or whatever. Then, when I wanted to move back without Dana, it was seen as completely bizarre. What was bizarre was moving to Houston in the first place. I should have known it would end badly. I had just thrown up a metric fuck tonne of emotions about abuse that had taken place there, and then thought it was a good idea to be reminded of them every day? At the time, it seemed very reasonable. Then, as Dana got more and more depressed, not reaching out to other teaching programs, living there made even less sense. There’s a certain emotional mood I only have when I’m in Houston that I don’t have anywhere else, and it’s a dark, dark place. I thought that in a sense, having Dana and Chef there would make it seem different.

It didn’t.

If I hadn’t moved back to DC, I would have moved somewhere. I briefly thought about Austin, but realized I didn’t know anyone there except James and I didn’t know the land at all. As a Virgo, an earth sign, I am very attached to setting. Therefore, I didn’t want to take off to a place I didn’t know at all. When Argo asked Dana if she needed a restraining order, I was angry and despondent because I thought that the city was big enough for both of us without crossing paths… mostly because it is.

I didn’t even want to meet her on the ground unless it was mutually agreed upon. It would have been humiliating just to run into each other. A surprise and not a good one for either of us. I am thankful that I have only seen a few pictures, so I doubt I would recognize her unless she specifically walked up to me and said, “hi, I’m Argo.” It’s not going to happen. It’s just not. The only reason that she’d probably recognize me more easily is that I sent her pics all the time. Like when I got a new haircut or something, I’d shoot her an e-mail to see if she thought it was cute. She’s so direct I knew I’d never get a bullshit answer… which in the South would be, “my… that is a haircut.”

Besides, how do you take an online rabbit hole and turn it into ladies who lunch? I couldn’t picture that happening, either. Mostly what I pictured was staring at each other to make sure the other was real.

When my family visits, I stare at them the same way. When I went to lunch with Lindsay, there were moments when I felt like I couldn’t stop staring, because it had been so long since I’d seen her in the flesh… although when I was living in Houston, we rarely got a chance to see each other because her job staffing the Mayor was so consuming that there was little chance we’d run into each other, even on purpose. She’s been to the DC area twice since I’ve been here, though, which is almost as much as I saw her there.

I also had this vision of late in life, that Dana, Lindsay, and Matt would all be here, anyway. That the fight would be over and we could all just be friends again… it’s no secret that part of the reason I moved here is that Dana’s parents live in the same town as the Waffle House… that our paths are perpendicular, but not parallel. That we would have the choice to run into each other again, if we both wanted it.

I’m not sure that I do, but there will never be a time in my life where if presented with the opportunity, I wouldn’t go. That’s just what’s up. If Dana hadn’t wanted to keep the door closed, I would have loved to see her at her birthday and Christmas.

And then I remember how painful it was to go out with Meag when she came back to Houston for visits and all of the sudden, it doesn’t seem like so much fun anymore.

I think it’s best that I’m on my own, and I will think that for a long time to come. I have nothing to offer a potential girlfriend because I need to spend my energy learning to adult. I have been an emotionally arrested teenager long enough. I am running toward my own dreams for myself, therapy and grad school and thinking bigger than I currently am. In the smallness of grieving for the life I lost, I cannot think ahead. But the thinking bigger is taking shape. I can only hope that by breaking the fourth wall, I am helping others to feel not so alone.

And if the responses are any indication, I am.

Amen.

I just introduced our IT guy to the magic of Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie’s Wes Borg doing Welcome to the Internet Helpdesk live. The first time I watched it, I felt like I was dying of asphyxiation, I was laughing so hard. Years later, it’s still funny, but when you’re watching it in a group of IT people for the first time, it’s just the most brilliant video you’ve ever seen in your life. It describes our jobs perfectly, and every reaction is spot on. By the time we got to 12:00 flasher, we were all doubled over together.

I also sent him a link to Bastard Operator from Hell. The first time I read it, I devoured every entry. It took about seven hours, because I was reading it in between calls on the night shift. It was hard not to laugh so loud everyone in the building could hear me. My coworker was reading it with me, and at about the same speed, but not quite… so I’d laugh and second later, when he got to the same part, he’d laugh. It went like that all night. Stifled laughter because it was just guffaw-worthy… the kind of laughter that you cannot help… the kind where tears and snot are running down your face as you try to hold it in…. like the time I discovered that there was a composer in the hymnal named P.P. Bliss in the middle of the sermon. I was maybe 11, so of course I just lost my snot (here are some of my other church stories). His real name is Philip, and I cannot for the life of me figure out why the Methodist hymnal lists him that way. Did they not realize what they were doing to pastors across the country as kids read the hymnal when they got bored? Not that I ever got bored in church, mind you……………

I’m on my lunch break, and it’s already been a day and a half. I stayed up way too late last night, and I am a ball of energy that I am sure will wear off shortly because I am jazzed on a 200mg caffeine tab and a cup of tea. Then, when I get to work, the assignment I have requires Micro$oft Visual Studio and it just won’t run on my computer. I have been fighting with it all morning. I finally gave up and switched to a burner laptop with Windows 7. I’m building and deploying cubes, which will mean nothing to most of you, but for the people who do, please understand that I am at the point where my eyebrows are going over my forehead trying to get this fucking thing to work. I really needed it to be lunchtime so I could decompress and get back to work. I might run to 7-Eleven just to get out of the office, but I doubt it. I’m not sure I have enough energy to get up from my desk. Have I mentioned it seems like it’s been a day and a half already?

I’m listening to my Spotify playlist called “High School,” and Amanda Marshall is singing Birmingham in my ears… turned up very loud to keep me awake. I was chair dancing to keep my energy up, but it’s not working anymore. Maybe the next song will be better. It just turned to an ad. If you were in high school in the ’90s, I’m pretty sure you’ll love this playlist. If you have more suggestions, add them in the comments. OMG. Now it’s Roxette. That ages me. It’s “Must Have Been Love.” Low energy. Skip. OMG. Now it’s The Tony Rich Project… Nobody Knows… Low energy but many, many memories attached to it. I’ve been listening to it since Meag and I broke up almost 20 years ago. I remember walking into a Walgreen’s with this playing overhead and just losing my shit in the middle of the store. It’s also on the Argo playlist, because there were a few times I died inside thinking about what a mess I’d made of our relationship. I will never get over it. Never. It’s just this huge emotional scar that will take years to scab over. The hardest part is absolutely knowing I dug that hole, and it feels like I will never get out… at times. At others, I allow myself to smile and remember that it happened at all. Actually, I take it back. The hardest part is that she’s not my first and last call anymore. Not literally calling. I hate the phone. But a few words over e-mail in the early morning and late at night were absolutely life-sustaining. When I lived in Portland, the three hour time difference worked well, because 4:00 AM in PDX is 7:00 AM in DC. At 4:00, I was in my stillest, smallest space… just writing into the night and receiving intelligent, well-thought out responses that made me laugh and cry (in a good way, sometimes laughing until I cried). She had the capability to remind me who I was, building me up from the scorched earth.

Now it’s “Back for Good” by Take That!

Ironic.

Although that song belongs entirely to Meag…. it was “our song,” because it was on the mix tape she made me for my car. Yes, children. Mix. Tape. Google it.

A lot of the songs she put on that tape are in the high school playlist, because of course they are. I remember the days of buying calling cards so that we could talk a bit cheaper, because my phone bills went into the astronomical when Meag moved to New Brunswick.

She’s ghosted, and it hurts, but I’m good with it most days. Others, I really wish I had that friend that’s known me for 20 years. Knows absolutely everything about my ups and downs, and one day I will take a road trip back to Ottawa, whether we’re in touch or not. It’s one of my places. I still wear my Carleton Ravens sweatshirt often, especially in the office, where in the winter it’s like a meat freezer. We could age steaks in the bathroom.

But more about Meag ghosting. I choose to believe that nothing is wrong, she just wanted to close that chapter of her life. So does Dana. She actually used those words, “closing the chapter,” and it resonated with me. I respect it. I hate it, but I respect it. I am making new friends and hoping Scott moves here soon. He’s thinking about running for Congress later in his life, and God willing, I’ll still be here. If I could, I’d vote for him. Yes. I love him that much. I would sacrifice a straight D. I would vote for him just to get him here. 🙂

We’re going to spend the day together tomorrow, and I’m really looking forward to it. Hopefully I’ll have some pictures to post of us palling around. Did you hear that, Scott? I want *evidence.* When he arrived, we went to Off the Record. We didn’t see anyone we recognized, but it’s a life goal to go there with Kathy, my reporter friend that’s known me since I lived here the last time. Then, she worked for Congressional Quarterly, and Politico offered her an obscene amount of money. She’s my Zoey without the sleeping with people for stories.

Speaking of which, one of the reasons I’m trying to achieve wholeness is that in my nothing space, I am Frank Underwood to a T. I need to cut that shit out. Integration of my personality is key, because my nothing space has no limits. I think i have mentioned that before. I need to make my darkness of service, rather than being a total political monster. I can work people, and I know it now. Knowing is half the battle. Hail Cobra.

And on that note, my lunch break is over.

I thought I’d take a break to eat my honey oat bagel and write to you, because even ten or fifteen minutes is enough to post an update. I got my badly-needed haircut after driving to the salon, and I will never do that again. The route was through Rock Creek Park in the dark, and I don’t think there have been many more moments I’ve been more afraid. Just hairpin turns and no lighting except Eggsy’s.

I have officially named my car Eggsy, and I don’t know why I didn’t think of it days ago. Eggsy is my favorite spy… from Kingsmen: The Secret Service. If you haven’t seen the movie, it’s hilarious and I think you will love it. It’s also infinitely quotable, so there’s that.

Martini. Gin, not vodka, obviously. Stirred for 10 seconds while glancing at an unopened bottle of vermouth. Thank you.

It’s 007 meets farce in the best kind of way.

So is my car.

Wouldn’t it be cool if all the Subways in DC were called “Metro?” I just thought of that, because I am having breakfast at Subway this morning, and I highly recommend it. I got a ham, egg, and cheese flatbread with guac and salsa. It was delicous, and I don’t think I’ll be hungry again until Thursday. I don’t have to leave for work for another hour, so I hooked my iPad to my iPhone for Internet access and I’m nursing a Coke Zero and writing to you. By the time this post is finished, I may or may not have nursed several. Oh, wow. Surprised. I’m using the HTML editor in the WordPress app and they’ve finally started turning tags blue so you can see them pick them out easier. It’s the little things, people.

Yesterday was very frustrating at work. I had a lot of problems with my computer and I spent more time troubleshooting them than I wanted, and I had shit to do. Normally, I’m really good at that stuff, but I know nothing about fixing software when developer tools error out. It was a lesson in how to Google. What I learned is that it was a Windows 10 issue with no fix and by then my eyebrows were about to go over my forehead, anyway, so I just wanted to throw my computer against the wall.

I did not.

When I got home, I crawled into bed and watched House of Cards. I’m late to the party- I’m only on Season 1, episode 8 or something like that. So far, I like it, but I’m not as gaga over it as I was Covert Affairs. Kevin Spacey’s southern accent drives me up the wall. I like his regular voice just fine. I do like Zoey Barnes, though, blogger that she is. #gozoey

I’m also intrigued by the character that is obviously a Katherine Graham ripoff. I don’t know all their names yet- I’ll get it eventually.

I’m trying to get caught up on Scandal, too, because I stopped watching it when Dana and I broke up, because it was kind of our thing, and I didn’t want to watch it without her, even though I knew she wasn’t coming back. The last episode I saw is the one where Jake shot James, I think. I heard a spoiler that Jake died, and I cried like it was a real person, because even if you’re a casual reader of this web site, you know I’ve had my own Jake and Fitz for years now.

I’m divorced because they kept switching roles, and of that, I am sure.

I chose Leslie.

Speaking of choosing Leslie, it’s time to go get cleaned up. My hair is so all over the place that I kind of look like Harry Potter. My eyebrows are bushy and have silver in them, which I don’t hate, but they look better all cleaned up. My eyebrows tend to take over my whole face. It’s special.

I also want to get my nails done, but I regret it every time because it slows down my typing, so I think I’ll skip that in favor of keeping them very, very short. I like it when my nails are smooth and professional, but it means more to me that my fingers can fly over the keys.

And speaking of flying over the keys, I’m going to leave early for work and see if I can get some of the work knocked out that I couldn’t accomplish yesterday because of stupid Windows 10. I am starting to feel like an idiot in the computer support department, because I’ve been using linux so long that I’ve forgotten more Windows/DOS than I really needed to…. It’s fine. It really is. But I feel the same way about Windows that I feel about playing my horn. It bothers me that I’m not as good as I used to be. It made me feel good that the IT guy couldn’t figure it out, either.

Stupid Windows 10. At least I’m fed and somewhat awake. Coke Zero fixes everything.

I think I may have been caught on a red light camera Friday night, because Waze was directing me and I didn’t see where I was going for a half second, and that’s all it takes. The ticket won’t be expensive, at least from what I’ve heard from Uber drivers, but it says a lot about my driving that I’ve had a car less than a week and already I’ve made a stupid mistake. Hopefully my insurance won’t go up by too much, but it’s just all the more reason why I didn’t want a car in the first place. I mean, I do, but I don’t. My driving record has been clean for a long time, and I wanted to keep it that way. Of course, not driving for almost a year really, really helped. At least it wasn’t a speeding ticket. I don’t speed at all, and there are thousands of drivers mad at me, I’m sure, because I am content to toodle along in the right lane. My car has a huge blind spot on the left-hand side, so I try not to move much. I’m going to go to Auto Zone after work and get a secondary mirror. I have to make this car last as long as possible, and wrecking it for damn sure won’t help.

I also need to get a few tools to change my sparkplugs, which I forgot I needed… or rather, on the Saturn it was much easier. However, I’ve watched five YouTube videos on the subject, and it’s not THAT much harder. The plugs are just a little harder to get to… if only Volfe was here. It’d be done already, because he carries the tools in the back of his truck. 🙂

I also got all the stuff I needed to detail her, including tire black and a new stick shift knob that lights up blue neon. The car is silver and the interior is blue and black, so it looks divine… literally. Ethereal in the dark. So at least if I did get caught on a red light camera, the picture will look good. It’s all about presentation.

It’s nice to have a little bit of money to spend on fixing up my car, because she doesn’t need much work, but the health of the engine is paramount. The spark plugs need to be changed every 30,000 miles, so buying the tools to do it is a no-brainer. I also want to get some Rubbermaid tubs to keep the back orderly. I have enough cleaning stuff to necessitate the tub, and my room is small enough that keeping my car gear in the cargo area sounds better than trying to find a place for it upstairs. I also have grape soda back there, because I like having cold soda first thing in the morning. However, if it gets too cold, I’m going to be ecstatic that I put it in a bin. Nothin’ says lovin’ like grape soda sprayed all over your car.

I told Lindsay that she’d given me something to take care of, and it felt good because I don’t have babies or pets. It’s nice to have a hobby. 😛

The only thing is that I don’t know Maryland and DC at all. Everything I needed was in Alexandria, so when I lived here before, I didn’t have to go into the city unless I wanted to, and I know NoVA like the back of my hand. Driving in Maryland/DC is unfamiliar and therefore, scary. I am not to be trusted without some sort of GPS, even if I was paying attention to it too hard. Don’t feel sorry for me- I brought this upon myself. I just feel like a schmuck.

Which is why it made me feel like a rock star that I matched with someone on Tinder (looking for friends) that’s a foreign service officer. I told her that I’m a writer and I would kill to hear some of her stories. She’s fluent in like, five languages, which means there’s no limit to the amount of people she can have a conversation with where I’ll have no idea what she’s saying. However, I want to learn Arabic for my novel, so maybe she can teach me what I need to know, or at the very least, translate what I need the characters to say. Plus, some of her stories might make good novel scenarios if she doesn’t mind me lifting them.

In other news, I need a haircut.

Actually, I own a Toyota, but the title was just too funny to pas up. I’m waiting at Jiffy Lube to buy her a drink… and a good one. High mileage oil and everything. I figure that a Toyota will last until Jesus comes, and the guy working on my car agreed with me. You’d basically have to take a tire iron to a Toyota engine to get it to stop working. My sister is not as much of a gearhead as me, so I’m going to get a list of everything that needs to be done at this mileage so I can mete it out by paycheck. I know I’m going from here to O’Reilly’s to get her a new set of sparkplugs, and I topped her off with premium last night to clean the fuel injectors- as much as I could, anyway.

This morning I woke up at 4:00 and shined my boots, then went out and tried to RainX my car, but I got it all prepped and the RainX instructions said you can’t apply it when it’s under 40 degrees… and it was. It looks like we’re going to get some more precip, but it’s not cold enough anymore for snow. It’s just going to be cold rain, so when Scott flies in this afternoon, he’ll have the same weather he left.

I can’t decide whether to take my car or the Metro, because I don’t know how much luggage he has. We shall see what we shall see.

I met Scott at my friend Christy’s house, because he’s in a band with her fiancee. He’s a Republican, and I love him, anyway. 😛 He’s grateful to have someone to meet him at the airport, because DCA can be a scary place if you don’t know your way around. Plus, the Metro is intimidating if you don’t get a good conductor that will actually call out the stops before you get there. The best part is that his hotel is only .2 miles from the Metro, so even with luggage, it’s not a long haul.

My road trip last night was just what I needed to shake off the grief I felt the day before yesterday. I’m grateful to my sister for my car, because I never would have tried to pay for an Uber out there. They would have been the most expensive waffles on record. The food was good, but the service was *terrible.* I overtipped anyway, because I can’t think of anyone more laden than a waitress in a busy Waffle House.

I was surprised and pleased to learn that my mechanic is a trans man- it was obvious, at least to me. He is so hot. I wish I could take a picture. I would never transition, but at the same time, there are those moments where I wish I could take my boobs off so my clothes hang right. I wonder if there’s a way to make them detachable. Duct tape fixes everything. 😛

At the same time, there are other moments when I am such a girly girl. I love makeup and hair and all that shit. Sometimes I also wish that I had long hair, because with short hair, there is no throwing it back into a ponytail or a bun and going. I have to either shower or rinse my head every day. I try not to shower every single day because it really dries out my skin in this weather. But check this out! I found my favorite gel in the entire world, Gorilla Snot, at Giant. I thought only Mexican grocery stores carried it, because the last time I bought it, it was in one of those stores in Houston where *NO ONE* spoke English. There was a lot of “mi espanol es muy, mal… pero cuanto cuesto?” (My Spanish is very, very bad… but how much is this?). I also got better with my numbers because the cashiers couldn’t count back the change in English. Dana and I kept going there…. a lot, really, because it was on our way to Alert Logic and it was the best panaderia in town. I’m too lazy to look it up, but eventually I’ll give you a link. It’s basically Chimney Rock and Westpark.

The mechanic came in a little while ago while I was writing to Susan and he said, “you’re going to type in all your information. I saw you typing 80 words a minute on that Bluetooth.” I laughed and said, “sure.”

And on that note, I have to go. Love you miss you mean it.

Tonight when I got off work, I realized that I missed “home.” The Waffle House is in Dumfries, VA, so I saw my old haunts the entire way here…. even my old office building when I got lost trying to find my way off the toll road (I don’t have a tag yet). So I filled up with Shell just for spite. Actually, that was a joke. My time at ExxonMobil was pretty awesome, actually. I felt like I’d sold my soul to the devil, but at the same time I’ve never had kinder coworkers, ones that keep in touch with me to this day… though neither one of them live here anymore.

When I passed Little River Turnpike, though, that feeling of home was complete. Kathleen and I took that route every morning to get around the traffic on 95, so familiar to me that I could probably drive it blindfolded… though I won’t. I really love NoVA, but Maryland was the safer choice all around. Even Kathleen and I wanted to move there back in the day, because it seemed like they were much more tolerant of the whole gay thing… and they were.

Richmond controls Virginia’s laws, and in St. Bob’s country, you’re not going to see a lot of progress unless absolutely forced to participate. The DC area is tolerant of all, even Republicans, and when you live there, you kind of like to forget Richmond exists… or at least, I did. ExxonMobil has this funds match thingme where if you give money to a non-profit, they’ll match you dollar for dollar. So one of my coworkers gave that money to the Whitman-Walker clinic…. literally AND tongue in cheek because nothing was funnier to us than ExxonMobil donating money to them.

Then there was the day that a drunk Native American shot through the Alyeska pipeline and I was sitting in a meeting where this slideshow was being played in front of me. All the lights were off, the pictures projected practically lifesize on the wall, and the entire room turned when I said, a little too loudly, “UNCLE MATT!” Luckily, they laughed. My uncle Matt is a safety inspector for the Alyeska, and he travels from Fairbanks to Valdez, thus ending up in our picture show.

All these memories are just flooding out, and I feel *fantastic* (say that like Nine). I am back in my element. When I passed Woodbridge, I remembered my fairy godson, Joey, being born and walking out of the hospital crying because that Sunday was Father’s Day and my friend Rob (Joey’s father) was standing right next to me and Kathleen as we were walking out. I spent so much time with Joey, and he wouldn’t remember it, but I sure do. I remember learning the particular dance that would calm him down, and the sweet smell at the top of his head.

The first night I met Dana, she told me that her parents live in Dumfries, and I told her that the only thing I knew about Dumfries was that it was the closest Waffle House to DC. I am sure that there is a Waffle House in Maryland, but I didn’t look. I wanted a trip down memory lane, or memory freeway, as it were.

I am so happy that I moved back, and at the same time, I don’t regret anything. But I feel that something was waiting for me here, and now I have to find out what it is. For now, though, I’m going to eat cheese n’ eggs, raisin toast with apple butter, grits, and hash browns covered smothered and topped.

Amen.

It’s going to be all over the place, because there’s a lot to tell over lunch. Yesterday, my sister and I went to Popeye’s and I had chicken and Fanta, the official meal of the Cajun south. It was delicious, and we chatted both seriously and not. So much laughter, and long hugs because it had been a while since we’d had some face-to-face conversation.

One of the things that really flipped my shit was that when Counselor wrote to me and told me not to contact Dana under any circumstances, I told her that I wanted Dana to cut all ties with my family. This was over Christmas, and I really, really meant it.

Lindsay told me that on Feb. 7th, Dana contacted her to ask if she knew any tax accountants, and she was asking for a friend who’d been here less than a year. It hurt so bad I almost cried. Why she thinks that she can have a relationship with my sister after all we’ve been through is unimaginable to me… on the serious. I was glad that I was on my anxiety medication, because when the cortisol and sin started racing through my body, I was able to combat it.

I don’t have a relationship with Counselor… not that I want one. But it would be the same. Dana hurt me so bad that my therapist recommended group therapy for battered women. I am not innocent in that fight, but the last punch undid me. I had a bruise under my eye for a week, and phantom pain for long afterwards. My wife and best friend in the world left a bruise that everyone could see. I couldn’t leave the house. I took sleeping pills all the time to get away from the pain. It was the most horrible feeling in the entire world, and I lashed out at everyone. I was in so much pain that I couldn’t function, and at first, literally.

The problem was that she outweighed me by quite a bit, so when her fist hit my face, at first I thought my eye socket was broken. She arranged a penitential rite with our priest, and she opened the Book of Common Prayer to show it to me. I hyperventilated so hard that she called my parents, and when they showed up, they saw the bruise under my eye, and it was humiliating… Devastating, really. I didn’t want to show ANYONE that bruise, much less my stepmom and dad. I was just undone.

The fight started when she pushed me so hard I went off like a rat dog with a Napoleon complex, but I couldn’t compete. At that point, I was dealing with a lot of shit that had nothing to do with her, but it was making me so anxious that I’d dropped to 117 pounds and my muscle mass was disappearing. Dana was the opposite. She gained weight and was over 200. Again, I couldn’t compete. I was feather-weight at best.

And the bitch of it is I still love her, pray for her, wish that we could have done more to save our marriage than completely destroy it one day at a time. But praying for her gives me peace in the matter, and I won’t stop. It feels like I won’t ever. But I know that eventually I will meet someone else, hopefully long into the future so that I have time to grieve. There are moments when I still can’t function, I am so upset at what happened. We were in trouble, and the fight was just the last thing that happened. I will never forget it, and yet, she’s still the one I’d hoped I’d be chasing around our nursing home.

So, to say that I flipped my shit yesterday is just about the most honest thing I can say. As Bryn would say, “it’s just true.” I had a great time driving my car home, because she is so perfect for me, and then I crumpled in grief and sadness. I went to bed at 7:00 and slept until 8:00 just because I could. I wanted to get away, so I took 2 Atarax and slept without dreaming. I knew it would do that, because if I had been dreaming, I would have ripped Dana a new one, and I didn’t want to have that dream in the slightest.

She can’t have it both ways. She can’t ask for silence and expect to have full contact with my family. They are so over her.

And one day, I will be, too.

Just not yet.

It’s a good day here at “Stories.” I forgot to put on my calendar when my sister had a meeting in Annapolis, so it’s a surprise that she’s coming to pick me up for lunch at 1300. Her car has arrived and is parked in the parking lot, so I asked her if she could show me where the fuse box is. 🙂 There is no one in the world that I love more than Lindsay. She is my favorite person on God’s green earth, and a surprise visit is enough to make me tear up.

Her car is a Yaris 2-door hatchback, and it’s “bigger on the inside,” as anyone who has ever owned a Yaris will tell you. It’s so much fun to drive. So. Much. Fun. She’s my little egg car, and Dana and I have had a long tradition of naming our cars, so I waffle between Eggbert and Egglentine. I also call her Egglebert Humperdinck. She needs some love, and I’m going to give it to her- Volfe taught me how to change out the sparkplugs, and we’ll see what she needs at Jiffy Lube, too. I don’t change my own oil. It’s just too messy and I don’t have my own driveway. She also needs to be scrubbed down with vinyl protectant and I need some sort of Bluetooth device for my phone. Apparently taking apart the dash to add a new head unit is difficult. It’s already got AUX, so that’s what I used this morning for directions and streaming Spotify. Since I’m on a business plan, I share bandwidth with other people, so I’m trying to clear my phone out of everything it needs so I can put local podcasts and music on it not to go over, or limit other people from using bandwith- it’s all about sharing. 😛 Besides, Google Play will let me download albums or stream them, so I don’t have to spend money on Spotify.

I may go to Best Buy and see if they can do the head unit thing, because I found that in my Saturn, being able to have the mic pick up my voice and other people’s voices coming through my speakers so I could actually hear them was amazing. Some of the head units even have iPhone apps so that the head unit can control Pandora, Spotify, etc… and they’re not expensive. The last one I bought was only $125 and free installation. I bought a Bluetooth speaker phone before I bought the head unit the last time around, and found that it didn’t work worth a damn. If you’ve found one you like, please leave it in the comments, because it would be cheaper and easier than replacing the stereo.

This morning on the way to work I listened to the episode of “You Made it Weird” with Ben Folds, because I thought it was the best inaugural thing to christen it given our ties with him.

I drove to work today because yesterday I got caught in the doors of the Metro and I hurt from head to toe.

But that’s another story for another day……

And on that note, my break is up.

By the next work week, I’ll be driving either to work or to the Park & Ride. I can’t decide which is better, because I have come to love my time on the train. It’s basically the only social interaction I get that I truly enjoy. These orange-juice-glass deep relationships are fun, because I get to talk to someone for a few minutes and then switch to the Orange Line and start all over. Driving to Silver Spring station will still give me at least 45 minutes off my commute, because then I won’t have to wait for the bus. I’ll also be able to return to Starbucks easier, because the store is actually connected to one of the Metro entrances. Other days, I know I’ll choose to sleep in and take the freeway. I’m counter-flow traffic, so 20 minutes is not that bad. I can leave my house by 8:30 and still be there in plenty of time. I’m also excited about getting Maryland license plates, because honestly, I think they’re cooler than Virginia. I really want DC, but I don’t live there. The license plates in DC (at least some of them) actually No Taxation Without Representation, the rallying cry for DC… plus, I love the flag.

One of the tattoos I really want is the logo for Sticky Fingers bakery, because instead of bars under the stars, it’s a rolling pin and a spoon. As a former line cook, it speaks to me more than just about any DC symbol I’ve ever seen. But there are more important tattoos I want to get, first. I want a small dragon encircling my dragonfly, with fire singing every part of it until it’s as black as my heart where that tattoo is concerned. In fact, I had a designer draw it up, but I’ve changed my mind as to the look. I want it to be circular, kind of like the Firefox/Thunderbird logo.

I doubt I will actually get it, but I also thought about great tattoos for my ankles. Check it out- one for all four sides- an old school Mac computer, the Windows 3.1 logo, Tux, and the BSD devil. Is that not fantastic? I’d probably do it as a charm bracelet on one ankle if that kind of tattoo wasn’t so terribly cliche. It’s the ankle bracelet and the tramp stamp, the white girl dyad… but especially the Mac tattoo, an ancient SE. That was my computer in late high school/college, because I needed a word processor without ANY way to connect to the Internet. I mean, really. What writer can go five minutes now without checking Facebook… especially now that Chrome has introduced those ridiculous desktop notifications. I’ve blocked them, because they’re just too distracting.

But back to the whole tattoo thing. I get them because they are the best conversation starters EVAH. Especially with my $1.83 tattoo, people *love* that story and sometimes people tear up when I get to the part about Bill emptying his pockets. I’ve also decided that after my dragon tattoo, I’m probably not going to add anything to my back, because I enjoy looking at them just as much as everyone else. I need to get my quill cleaned up, and maybe I’ll do that first, because it’s the cheapest. I just want some white added to soften it up, and the blood red has faded over time.

I also have a lot of quotes that would be good, but I don’t trust tattoo artists with fonts. I know you can’t imagine why. I would be paranoid the entire time that the kerning wouldn’t be right, the artist would have no idea how much fonts matter, etc. If I *did* get a quote, it would probably be from Doctor Who- “we’re all stories in the end… make it a good one.” I might be paraphrasing, but you get the general idea.

I am actually writing on the train with my Bluetooth keyboard and it feels so good. It’s the first time I’ve ever done it, and I have no idea why I never thought of it before. Mostly because normally the train is so full that I don’t have room to pull it out. However, if I get to the train a little before 8:00, the train is usually not jam-packed the way it is at 8:30…. another reason to only drive to the Park & Ride. Getting my writing time in before work is still important to me, and if I don’t have time to make it to SBUX, this is a great alternative. Plus, my gas will last so much longer. Just not sure how much it would cost to double up on my transporation budget. I need to run the numbers. However, transportation, soda, and sandwiches are really the only thing I ever spend money on, except for the few gifts I’ve bought for friends lately (BRYN, I STILL NEED YOUR ADDRESS!). Amazon is just too easy. I have my Smile account set to donate to Doctors Without Borders, so not only do my friends get presents, so does my favorite non-profit on earth.

You can set your Smile account to several non-profits if Medicin Sans Frontieres (sp?) isn’t your thing, but it’s mine. If I’d become a doctor or a nurse, there’s a large chance I would have just taken off with them. I want adventure in my life, because I feel like now I’m ready to broaden my horizons.

That will happen in March when my friend Scott comes to visit. I am getting SO excited to pick him up at the airport, because I am sure it will be a mixture of going out for socializing and meeting “famous” people…. even if they are Republicans. 😛 Just because I’m a yellow-dog Democrat doesn’t mean I am immune to wanting to meet people that influence politics, whether they’re right or wrong. Because you know what I’ll do. I’ll smile and be charming in front of them, and then come home and tell you every little bit of dirt I remember.

The only time I’ve ever been “caught” writing about politics was on my old blog, Clever Title Goes Here, when I wrote a scathing review of the Democratic Party, including the words “Harry Reid needs to step the fuck up.” I got a comment from the DNCC saying, “we will take your observations under consideration.” I freaked the fuck out, because it was the best and the worst thing that had ever happened to me. It’s always intimidating to run into people you’ve talked smack about on a national level. Maybe that’s why I shy away from politics now. If I write about my friends, I have the chane to make amends or I don’t… they just walk away because they know that if they are a part of my life, they are a part of my writing. It’s just who I am, and I cannot take anything back. I can only try to present them as the three-dimensional characters that they are… the love and the difficulties, real love, painful and true, honest and real.

If I ever picked a fight with someone in politics, intelligence, etc., I might end up on a radar that never ends. I don’t want to end up on some kind of shitty list I can’t get off of because one offense leads to being watched, and I’m not interested. Getting sued is not my bag, baby. I don’t mean any harm. I’m just telling my story and hoping that it resonates with people. I have friends in the hacker community who have gotten on that radar, and their stories are cautionary tales.

And this tale is now finished, because I’m at my stop. 🙂

I didn’t bite the bullet and get a car on my own. I didn’t even think I wanted one until I got a call from my sister, who said that my dad had gotten a new car, so he was letting her take over the payments on his car, and wanted to know if I wanted hers.

Ummm, yes.

Not only is it a manual transmission, a total theft-deterrent device because I’m old and young people don’t DO stick shifts, it’s a hatchback. Literally the car I would have been looking for had I wanted to buy on my own. And, as a total Dr. Who reference, it’s a 2007 Yaris… bigger on the inside. I will become, as my friend John says, a “Yarisian.”

It was enough to make me tear up, because when it arrives, it will still smell like her. It will still smell like home. My dad was so funny, because he called me and asked me what kind of lunch meat I would like in the trunk. If you are not familiar, there’s a thing in our family that I named “Lanagan Lunchmeat Syndrome,” because when I lived in Alexandria, my dad sent me an old Mercedes. I drove it around for six weeks not knowing what the smell was, and I finally took the liner out of the trunk and found a pound of sliced turkey that had probably fallen out of a grocery bag in 1999.

Lindsay came to visit Kathleen and me when my mother’s choir was singing at Carnegie Hall so that we could have a night in DC and then road trip up to NYC the next morning. She was eating a sandwich, and six weeks later, I found half of it under the driver’s seat.

When I moved to Portland, I had a Saturn that was killing me on payments, so I sent the car to my sister, Caitlin. I went eight months without a car, and then my dad sent me his old car, a Ford Focus, complete with a hot dog in the back seat.

Then, when I upgraded to my Jeep, Dana left a Subway sandwich in my center console…. but thank God it was still wrapped. I wasn’t so lucky with Lindsay. 😛

It hearkens back to my early childhood, when my mom, dad, and toddler Lindsay were taking a road trip to visit my grandparents in NE Texas. Lindsay, from the back seat, was feeding my dad Nacho Cheese Doritos. He ate three or four of them and then remembered we hadn’t stopped for snacks or anything, so he said, “Lindsay, where are you getting these Doritos?” “Off the floor,” she replied. My dad said, “LINDSAY!” She said, “Daaaad. It’s ok. I checked ’em on both sides and they’re not dirty.” That’s my Lindsay. She has been a cutup ever since she learned to talk. Hasn’t changed much in that department, and her Kate McKinnon impression is so good it will leave you in stitches. My favorite is when she does Kate playing the mom playing “Grand Theft Auto.” She is literally my favorite person on earth, and we’re going to have lunch the next time she’s here for a conference in Annapolis. That is something for which I am having trouble waiting.

Lindsay had a thing when the driver was ready to load up my car, so Matt (her husband) took care of it. I called him and thanked him for blessing me over and over, and he said, “that’s what family does.” I teared up a little and knew he was right. I can’t wait until I am in the position to return the favor. I have sent very small gifts to my friends for their patience with me as I’ve begun this journey toward wholeness, but I want to do more than that. If I won the lottery, which is impossible because I don’t play, I would buy houses and cars for everyone that has stuck with me over these past few years, because that is what they deserve. I hope the sentiment counts, because I am so grateful… beyond belief, really. I have not been in a space to give back much, because I had (have) so much work to do on myself before my cup was full enough to give to others.

When I was in the thick of my mental illness, I think people thought I was some kind of borderline personality, incapable of seeing anyone but myself. This is the furthest thing from the truth. I care so much it hurts. But when you get down to a place where you can’t even function, it’s hard to care about anything but sleeping to get away from the madness. My life had become so small, so insular, that I realized I was on a path of total destruction, and in Argo and Dana’s case, mutually assured.

Speaking of Dana, I wrote to her and told her it was time to get a divorce. All we need to do is file the paperwork with Multnomah county. She’s going to take care of it and send me a copy. If I don’t contest it, the marriage is dissolved. I hope the state of Vermont is just as easy, because I want to be truly divorced from Kathleen as well. The legal advice I got back in the day was just to let it go… we didn’t live there, so why bother? Because gay marriage is legal in all 50 states, I don’t want to run the risk of wanting to get married again later in life and being stopped because I’m still married to someone else. Honestly, gay marriage being nationally legal is something that never would have occurred to me in this lifetime… especially since when I came out, there were still so many people that thought of it as a disease, or a sin that could be corrected, ignoring the truth of the matter. The truth is that I couldn’t be heterosexual any more than I could suddenly start writing with my left hand the rest of my life.

Could I marry a man? Maybe. But I wouldn’t be completely happy because I wouldn’t be true to myself. I’m just not wired that way… and thanks to the Supreme Court, I don’t have to be.

That being said, I have no room in my life for romance… not yet. I am not healthy enough for anything but beginning good, solid friendships that will sustain me until I am ready.

Because that’s what family does.

I’m listening to the Argo playlist on Spotify, the songs I listened to the most when I realized that I couldn’t be friends with a woman that excited me and be married to someone else at the same time. The fact that Argo has never and will never reciprocate those feelings was irrelevant to me. I didn’t much care what her reaction was, I cared what it was doing to me… and actually, I did care what it was doing to her to be apart from me, because she invested in a friendship and thought I was needlessly throwing it away, tossing it like it was nothing.

She wasn’t physically there to see my reaction to those words, which was basically days and days of feeling like crap and not knowing what to do about it. I was such a sook, and I look back and feel sorry that Dana and Aaron had to deal with my bullshit. I cried like a baby, truly. I needed her friendship. I honestly did. But not in all ways, because when she made me go starry-eyed, it wasn’t mutual, and it wasn’t safe for me keep diving into her, because her words created different reactions in me than mine created in her. The more she opened up to me, the more I wanted to be her person, the one that fixed everything with emotional band-aids and sent her back into her physical world.

But in my physical world, I already had a person, and she had me. I’d made promises, and I meant them. I couldn’t wander too far from my marriage vows, and yet, I did- not physically, but emotionally, because, well, because I wanted to and I was an impulsive jackass at times… and yet, not, because there are emotional layers I am not willing to unpack here. There were reasons I strayed emotionally that I won’t talk about, because to talk about them is to betray someone I love, and whether we are speaking or not, love will never be past tense. But it’s the right kind of love, now. I just had to find it first.

I originally told her about my attraction to her for two reasons. The first is that I thought we’d meet on the ground someday, and I wanted her to be sensitive to it. I’ve said this before, but I didn’t want a situation where she didn’t know she was capable of turning me on and tripping over a land mine. To me, it was fair warning. Full disclosure, no bullshit.

Secondly, I didn’t need her to be attracted to me. I needed compassion… maybe a story about how someone turned her head when it shouldn’t have, etc. A classic “love’s a bitch sometimes” kind of story…. mostly because I wanted her to know that I thought of my feelings for her as inconvenient and, frankly, stupid. But sometimes your heart makes connections without asking your brain first, and your heart betrays you, because you can fight logic all day long. Fighting emotion is useless.

My heart was hurting, because I had to say no to Argo’s friendship in order to say yes to marriage, because when I was “in the cloud,” I was ignoring everything on the ground.

And then I couldn’t make it stick. I missed Argo’s words and reestablished contact before I was truly ready, so there were several more instances of feeling like I was touching a live wire and living to tell about it.

I couldn’t cry in front of Aaron and Dana, so mostly I cried while I was driving myself to and from work. I wasn’t crying because Argo didn’t return my affections. I was the perfect picture of David, the prime minister  in Love Actually who, when he first sees one of his staff, his head tilts and says, “ohhhhh, that’s inconvenient.” I was punishing myself because I knew it was my shit to own and get rid of, and music is how I did it.

It’s a lot of high energy stuff, because I didn’t want to cry anymore. I wanted to take those high-dopamine feelings and use them as an injection of happiness into my day. My heart beat like an 808 drum, and I tried to use that happiness to keep me floating…. and it worked, for a while.

And then my happiness began to fade, because Dana did not see how driven I was to make our relationship right again.

I remember pulling into the parking lot at Alert Logic, Wilson Phillips blasting, losing my shit. Hold on for one more day? Could you shorten it to an hour? Tears rushing down my face in utter helplessness.

This deserves further investigation, but i don’t have time to unpack it all. I’ve got to get back to work. But I will tell you that the song that is playing right now is “DC Sleeps Tonight” by The Postal Service.

It’s a song that expresses something to both Argo and Dana…. I am finally seeing… I was the one worth leaving….

I needed time to get it together. I need time. I will need time.

And now, I have it.

I’m sure we’ll talk more about this later. My mind is buzzing.

Today, the memory that Facebook presented from last year was the first day of my hospitalization, where so many of you poured out your love and support and told me that you were glad I’d gotten the help I needed. I have so many stories from those days, probably enough to write a book, but I’d rather put everything here. There’s something comforting about having my own space and no editors. I’ve made lots of typos, grammatical errors, and run-ons… and still you show up. To me, it’s kind of like making an MTV Unplugged album every day.

I would be remiss not to remember Argo on this day, because it was her words that finally got me off my ass; why do you expect everyone else to fix you? That’s easy, really. I didn’t know I could. I didn’t know how to take power into my own hands, because I’d never done it before. It was the beginning of learning to adult hardcore, because sometimes part of being an adult is realizing that in order to get your shit together, you have to fall apart.

When I first began to see down into the core of my abuse, I was just vomiting emotions everywhere. The Divine Mrs. B and Argo jumped in with their superpowers, because I wasn’t worried for me. I was worried for Dana… that I was too much for her to handle and I needed other people to look after her because I was too wrapped up in my own healing to give anything to anyone else. I felt like I was constantly pouring from an empty cup and I was in no shape to be a wife.I wanted Dana to feel like she had a safe place to fall to talk about me, because I knew she’d need an outlet and might not necessarily ask for one herself.

Because of the way we were raised, our Classic Response™ was to use the buttons on our clothes to hold in our feelings… and then I came along and was all like, “fuck that shit, I am going down and I cannot hide it anymore.” My parents were out of town and dealing with their own enormous amount of shit, which is why I called on my friends instead of them. I am sure they would have wanted to know what was going on, but the stress of adding things onto their plates was heart-wrenching to me, and when I asked my friends to jump in, they fucking did. In a hot second. During that time, Argo and I barely went an hour without checking in, and Mrs. B had the most sound advice I’d ever heard if I could just put it into practice- “just stop caring.” That I was the kind of person who cared way too much and if I could let go of caring for Diane and try to get angry (as I’d needed to do for years) it would help.

In short, it did.

I tapped into my rage, obviously and somewhat viciously. I will never forget the e-mail that I got from Argo after I posted that link: “I heard the sonic boom after your last post.” There is also another piece to the puzzle, and I will not name her because she is a mutual friend, who said that I should get angry, should name, not because I was angry, but because it was the right thing to do.

I also had another friend that carried me through that time in my life, but we aren’t friends anymore, and don’t think I don’t care about it. She was my “little buddha,” injecting calm into the storm, but I fucked that relationship all to hell and I miss her a little each day, wishing I could reach out and knowing I shouldn’t, because it wouldn’t bring her any peace. She told me she was pulling chalks (or something like that… I have no idea what it meant, but one of my strong points is context clues…. I knew what she meant, anyway.).

It was, as Argo said, “realizing the common denominator was me,” and trying to get all the help I needed to be able to survive this massive amount of trauma I’d been dealt and just kept sweeping under the rug, because I was gaslit so successfully that I thought Diane was right. I was just crazy. Nothing happened that was untoward or inappropriate, I just couldn’t get over her.

Getting over her was relative. I stopped having romantic feelings for her in the late ’90s, but I wanted the family she said we were, while at the same time trying to push me away as quickly as she possibly could. It was a paradox I could not handle. For instance, when I was 18, Diane wanted me to come and live with her so that I could get out of the Bible Belt and go to school at Portland State. When I talked to her partner, Susan, she said that Diane had told her that she thought “when I was 18, I’d just go away.” It was interesting, because Susan has a son, and when I met him, I instantly thought of him as a brother, because I thought I was part of Diane’s package as well.

But I wasn’t. I just thought I was. We took a road trip together, getting to know each other in a family sort of way, and yet, after that, it never gelled in the way I thought it was going to go. Too much sludge in my soul to come clean, too meek not to just go with the flow.

The title comes from a Facebook post, where I told Dana I loved her “100 and crazy percent.” It’s the way I felt one year ago today about myself.

And on that note, it’s time to get to work.

Much love and hopes for a great day for you all.

I bought some Marie Callender frozen meals to take to work. I know it’s processed food, but I figured it was better than going through a drive-thru. Today it was turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, green beans, and carrots. Then, I had two donuts for dessert in addition to the one I ate when I got here. I’m planning on taking a long walk later. I needed food, especially sugar, because I am absolutely dragging ass. This morning I woke up at 0430, raring to go, but then I decided to sleep another hour and a half, and then I couldn’t move. Seriously, getting up was equal to the task of nailing Jell-O to a wall. I don’t know where my 0430 energy went, but it left and was replaced by a hungover malaise from my sleeping pills. I finally got out of bed at 8:15, ordered an Uber, and threw on my clothes. I put all my pills in my backpack and took them in the car. I got here just fine, but I wish I had taken all my 0430 energy and run with it. I could have made it to Starbucks by 0600 and settled into a semblance of routine.

I do not know why when I was unemployed, I was so anal-retentive about my schedule and now I’m not. Perhaps it’s that I spend so much time at the office that I feel I need every ounce of the time I’m not there. However, it would have been nice to have a shower this morning. I got a new Axe fragrance (body wash, not cologne) that smells like rosemary. It’s called Deep Space, and I’m pretty sure they don’t make it anymore, but it’s still in a few stores. I like Axe body wash because it smells so good and the fragrance lasts all day, so there’s no need for cologne/perfume/etc. I am also a huge fan of Dark Temptations, which has notes of chocolate and vanilla and whatever the hell it is they put in Obsession. Yes, I said it. Obsession.

That just took me to a very dark place. Diane wore (and probably still does) Obsession for every moment we were in the same room, and over time, it became the scent of home. When she walked into a room, the scent took me back to the bell tables at St. Mark’s, where we would share secrets and long, comforting hugs.

I choose to remember those moments as “home,” because when I don’t, I want to break stuff (it’s all about the she said she said bullshit).

I like having a note of Obsession in my cologne because it reminds me of that time in my life, and feels like home to me now. It’s like an homage, similar to Basie quoting Ellington or similar.

Recovering from all of this still leaves me in a weird “I’m sort of ok about it but I still want to kick her ass into next week” sort of place. But my goal is to take away rage, not add to it. I’d only be going back on my word that I want peace, and anger would only set me back even further in my recovery.

I really miss Sarah, and I need to find a therapist that can meet after work. I’ve got so much to do in terms of working on myself that I don’t want to abandon it. PTSD is real, and it wires my reactions in ways that I never would have even thought. For a lot of people, it is the key that unlocks their personality, and I am no exception. Until you understand where I’ve walked, you cannot understand me.

And if you cannot understand where I’ve walked, just the want to is enough.

Amen.