So far, I’ve made all my social engagements without problem, but here I sit with my venti skinny vanilla latte, completely exhausted and remembering what it feels like to adult. Being busy is a constant source of sleep deprivation, because when I lie down at night, I cannot wrap my brain around the concept of sleep and not re-running in my head everything that happened while I was out. And then other things creep in, like whether circumstances or personality dictate your actions, how I’m going to take action on dreams I say I will, how to make friends in this town (doing a good job so far), and anything and everything else my brain can possibly think to throw at me until 2:00 AM. It doesn’t matter whether I take sleeping medication or not, but at the same time, if I get home at 10:00 or 11:00, I don’t want to take it because it won’t have enough time to wear off. It’s now a never-ending cycle of coffee… as is for most adults that don’t come home from work and immediately take sleeping pills so that they’ve kicked in at my actual bedtime, which used to be somewhere around 9:00, and now fluctuates. I know I can handle it, because I’ve done it before, but the insular nature of sleeping A LOT has made a difference in my mood and behavior. It’s a balance between wanting to go home and wanting to make friends, because I can’t get together with people until after 6:00p. Because I don’t have to be at the office until 9:00, staying out late shouldn’t bother me. But it screws up my writing schedule most days because I am usually there by 7:10. This morning I managed to get up at 0600 easily, but God knows why. It hasn’t happened for the past three days.

Scales’ colonel and I made an explosive connection, and I think she could be one of those people I could talk to for hours at a time… a new friend whom I hope will one day become my old friend. One of the things I did not know about her before our outing on Wednesday is that while she was stationed in Colorado Springs, she got a Masters in Theology from Iliff (in Denver). I asked her how she did it, and she said, “I was tired all the time.” Pretty much the best answer I could have heard, given how much it must’ve been true.

Last night I went out with new friends Autumn and Dan. We chose Ted’s Bulletin, and it’s one of the best restaurants I’ve been to in DC so far. It’s relaxed and a bit hipster. They even have PBR on tap. I felt right at home, considering how much time I’d lived in PDX.

I had “The Rachel,” which is basically a Reuben made with turkey, and really good iced tea (it’s how I judge a restaurant on the first pass). When I got there, though, I had an amazing cocktail called “The Big Ugly.” I’m not sure what was in it, but it was basically a sweet and spicy Manhattan. Dan and Autumn said they thought it looked strong, and I told them I’d rather have a little bit of something awesome than a lot of something not.

They agreed wholeheartedly.

They just bought a townhome in Alex, something to which I used to aspire, but Kathleen and I were so piss poor at managing money that even with making over 100k a year, we couldn’t have done it at gunpoint.

I don’t know how much it takes to buy a house in the ‘burbs, but I’m all for it. I don’t think I’d be able to swing it unless I was coupled, but perhaps not if I keep misering it up. My friends Ruth and Brian bought a great house in the ghetto back in the day, and Brian is a carpenter. The frame was strong and true, and he customized the house with all kinds of built-ins… now, 16 years later, gentrification has taken off in their neighborhood and the house is worth eight times what it was.

Ruth and Brian are straight, but it is overwhelmingly true that if gentrification starts happening in small batches, it means the gays and lesbians have found it. #nolie

If I did live in the District, I’d probably choose Anacostia for housing prices, but ultimately I think I’d be happiest in Takoma Park, the Portland of Washington. It’s expensive AF to live in TPark, but there are pockets of Anacostia that are coming along nicely, and perhaps I can find that spot on the Anacostia River for both myself and St. James.

If I did, I’d want to steal Jeffrey Thames part time. We would be so cute as co-pastors. I am 5’4, it feels like he’s 7’5. I’m a computer geek. He’s a former Marine. Every service would be a Mutt and Jeff episode. Plus, he’s black, and I’m white. The visual would be friggin’ adorable. He’s so tall he could set the offering plates on my head. Jeffrey, if you run across this, please for the love of God laugh. 😛

Meeting Dan last night was awesome, because she showed me some pictures of Pride at State, complete with John Kerry at the podium. Meeting Autumn was equally awesome, because we inhabit the same geek world.

Tonight is going out with the Lt. Col, and I’m excited about it because we’ve had some good conversations about military health care and I am sure that we are both more interesting in person. I hope we laugh a lot, and I really have no doubt. My only concern is trying to make it to Alex from Landover in a timely fashion…. leaving now… see you Thursday, etc.

Tomorrow I don’t have anywhere to be until 1400, so if I want I can take a sleeping pill and wake up refreshed before coffee with T-money, the woman I talked to on the phone for two hours about victim advocacy, a Clinton presidency, equal sentencing, etc. She seems cool AF, so no doubt we’ll have a good time.

Still a bit nervous about kayaking, but I am done with thinking I can’t do things because I am too fragile, too weak, etc. I never played sports as a kid because of my eyes, and I am generally afraid of branching out in that direction.

But Dan mentioned a coed soccer team, and I told her that now that I had health insurance, I might try it out. We shall see what we shall see.

I am beginning to really believe I am more than the sum of my parts, and it is bleeding over into self-esteem. I don’t love me, but I like her so much that I am sure we’ll fall in love eventually.

Dating me is working out.

Who is this person?

I don’t recognize her, and yet, I do. It’s a strange feeling watching the past wash away… not as if it’s not there, but as it floats further and further down the z-axis. The woman that I’m kayaking with on Sunday called me a “social butterfly,” and if I hadn’t been sitting down, I might have fainted. Since I’ve been here, my only MO was to write quietly in my room… and then I got tired of only talking to Argo via e-mail (before World War Me), and I was freaked out that I couldn’t seem to stop processing the past instead of making room for the future. Scales called my attention to it, and when she did, it started the mind worm of how to make more friends, and if it worked out, a girlfriend…. but I see that as long into the future, because in my heart of hearts, I am not ready for any sort of committment, no matter how small. I still need to work on me, and getting lost in the dopamine of new relationship would take so much away from it that the best I can do is “new friend rush.”

Last night I talked on the phone to a woman for over two hours, and even that was big for me (I’ve made TWO phone calls now). As I have said before, I am deathly afraid of making calls, and also invested in moving out of my comfort zone to accomodate new life… because it certainly won’t happen if I don’t try.

I hope and pray that Dana is moving on with her own life in the same way, because I care about her feelings and it would be so easy to watch all of this happen. Even though we are now meant to be apart, that doesn’t mean that we don’t both hurt at the idea (I’m guessing… I can’t speak for her). But now that we’ve been separated for over a year, it feels like it’s time to let the grieving aspect fade into the background. Not that it’s not still there, just not so EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE. I have to remember that I moved here because of this very thing. I knew for certain that I could not create an emotional boundary with her, that I was certainly still in love with her (at the time) and it would show every time we got together, because I cannot imagine that our friendship would have ended altogether if we were still in the same city… or maybe it would’ve. Who knows? Judging by the response I got the two times she’s been to DC in the meantime, I cannot say for sure. But in Houston, it would have been very hard to stay apart because we had so many mutual friends and Aaron on “third mike.” I can’t imagine that the silent treatment would have lasted too long.

On the other hand, the way our relationship ended was brutally traumatic, mostly because hurt people hurt people… and I never want to put myself in that situation again… Lapsing back into old patterns would have torn me apart, even more than blowing up my entire life and “starting over” in Silver Spring… in quotation marks because I loved living here years ago, so it is not entirely unfamiliar.

But I write about Dana here so that I can let go of those feelings and not carry them into the new relationships I’m trying to create. I already have a space for this, I don’t need to talk about it… anymore. I am sure that Scales is tired of the Dana/Argo saga, but I hope that I was as good a listener as she was and that we continue to be that for each other. I’m really looking forward to meeting up for dinner tonight, because it’s been so long that we actually have stuff to catch up on.

I am sure I will have much more to tell her on Monday, because until Friday, I’m going out every night, on Saturday hanging out in Columbia Heights for the afternoon, and on Sunday, having what is hopefully a relaxing day on the river. I just hope that I am strong enough to follow through with all of these plans, and I think I am. It’s just a different side of me that I haven’t seen in years.

The woman that I am meeting on Saturday is a serious writer, both creatively and a journalist. Those are two different types of writing altogether, which is probably why we ended up talking for over two hours last night. There were no light and fluffy questions, but real discussions on what’s going on in DC- politics, but also the poorest of the poor neighborhoods and what is to be done about them?

We both go to liberal churches- she’s Episcopalian, so of course I had to sign off one of my messages by saying, “in the mystical body incorporate…” I want to go with her to church at least once so that I can actually use my red leather prayerbook that’s been sitting on my dresser since I joined CCC.

But there’s a solid reason I went back to the UCC. It’s that I wanted to be able to create my own liturgy instead of always using someone else’s… I mean, I’m a writer. It’s a goal to create my own prayerbook, although there are very few paragraphs I could write more moving than “The Prayer of Humble Access.” Additionally, Howard is a UCC school, so I’ll be able to complete my denominational requirements there as well as all my classes.

Many, many people have said to me, “but you might be the only white person in your class!” Bitch, please. If that’s the most difficult thing about going to seminary, then I’m not doing school right. The issue I foresee that transcends race is that there is no polity in the UCC. Every congregation can believe what it wants. So I could have some amazingly conservative students in my classes, but even that doesn’t bother me much because in terms of other types of Christians, I’ve learned not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Just learn all I can, and share all I can. Because it is just as possible that they will learn from me. The theology of promise and inclusion is one that widens the circle, and I am only as holy as the person I like the least (to quote Nadia Bolz-Weber). If conservatives are excluded from my inclusive nature, I have already been defeated.

And perhaps that is the point of trying so hard to get out of my comfort zone. If I want to go forth and be the person that God is asking, I should probably leave the house once in a while.

My dance card cleared out for tonight because the woman I was supposed to go out with is taking a project management course that has several hours of homework at night. So we’re going kayaking on Sunday as long as she doesn’t mind teaching a total n00b (I am amused that LibreOffice recognizes this as a word). I haven’t heard back from her on that one. We shall see what we shall see, but it sounds way more fun than just meeting up for drinks.

If we’re talking whitewater, though, perhaps hiking is more my speed. I’ve been itching to get out and explore because I was such a fan of getting lost in the Gorge, taking pictures… the funniest time was when I laid down on the ground at Angels’ Rest near a cliff and had Dana hold my feet so that I could get the shot. We decided that it would be Dana’s job if I fell to call my dad and say, “Leslie was bein’ a dumbass, and got herself killed.” Said with as much Southern drawl as possible, of course. But what did I care? I GOT THE SHOT.

It amazed me that the picture turned out as beautiful as it did, because this must’ve been taken in, like, 2004, when all I had was a 2 mp camera that came on a phone that would seem ancient by today’s standards. So if the color is a little off, remember that it is not color-corrected. It’s just old. I am sure that I could have found a way to punch up each color, but that was the lighting we were in, so it stays. There were so many funny hikes between Dana and me, especially when we were just starting out. Our first hike was up to Multnomah Falls and back down again, but eventually we got more adventurous, like passing Multnomah and crossing over to Wahkeena and standing in the river, literally gulping water because it was moving fast enough that we didn’t think we’d get giardia… And then there was the day we’d realized we’d hiked, like, six and a half or seven miles and had to hike back. We were dying. It was the Bataan Death March of Troutdale, Oregon. Our legs were shaking and we were wet and cold due to the pouring rain… and that was when we realized we were still a half mile from the parking lot. It was definitely beer-thirty by then, and we went to Edgefield for a pick-me-up before we drove back.

But by far, the funniest picture story I have is that Dana and I were driving around Sacramento to get a break from the whole famn damily (Counselor lives there and the parents were in town), and as we were going down the highway, I spotted an enormous field of sunflowers. I said to Dana, “STOP!” It wasn’t unusual for me to say so, because she knew it had something to do with me wanting a picture…. it always did. In order to get the shot I wanted, I had to climb down into a muddy gulch between the highway and the flowers, and I got stuck up to my shins. The mud was so heavy that I couldn’t get back out. I literally couldn’t lift either foot to get traction, so I reached down and took off my shoes, my beloved pink and silver Nikes, and crawled up the side of the gulch. Dana was mystified as to why I was walking back to the Jeep in my socks, but I opened the passenger door and said, “I GOT THE SHOT!” Never mind that if the farmers were not paying attention, my shoes are probably still there, covered in ten feet of mud by now. Luckily, it wasn’t the only pair of shoes I brought on the trip.

I actually ended up taking a series of pictures that day, but this one is my favorite. Dana’s favorite is one I named “Peek-a-Boo,” where I discarded all of the color except the yellow and brown on the small sunflower sticking out at the bottom. I think I still have a copy of it somewhere, but seeing the mud reminds me of just how much I lost trying to get one damn picture, and even so, it was worth it. The aspect ratio is a little off, because it was originally “wide-screen,” but I must have done something in the meantime that changed it… not sure what. I just know that I had to go REALLY far back into my photo gallery to find it, because again, this was taken a long time ago, but at least I had a decent camera phone on me… possibly the best one I’ve ever had- a Sony Walkman phone that I would buy again in a hot second if I thought it would comply with today’s communication standards. I ended up taking other gorgeous shots with that phone, including a view of Portland from Senator Ron Wyden’s office (again, working as a tech contractor… the only reason I’d be in Republican senator’s office in the first place).

If I’m going to take up kayaking, I need to find some sort of waterproof case for my iPhone, because there is no way I’m going to be out on a river and not want to say, “STOP!” A wrist strap is probably advisable as well… because I’m not known for being a klutz or anything…. 😛

So tonight, while said date is doing her homework, I’m going to make homemade mango salsa for the all-DSI cookout tomorrow. I may even be on grill duty, having had a lot of practice at flipping burgers. I just wish we had a griddle instead of a grill, because while grilled hamburgers are delicious, they are nothing compared to the absolute perfection of letting them confit (cook in their own fat). It’s also a thrill just to be cooking anything. It’s been a long time, and I’m looking forward to it. Again, cooking was such a part of my life that I don’t really have time for anymore, and I miss it. I might even listen to Aqua as I’m cleaning up… because nothing says cleaning up a cooking mess like “Dr. Jones,” which as Whovians, Drue and I changed to “Martha Jones,” also a doctor…. a real one, not a Time Lord.

So I suppose tomorrow is Doctor Who t-shirt and Chucks day… but let’s be honest. When is it not?

When I’m kayaking, I guess.

My dance card is getting full. Tomorrow night I have a date with the woman I was telling you about earlier, Wednesday night is dinner with Scales, Thursday night I’m meeting up with a guy that works at State just to shoot the shit (not a date), and Friday is pizza night in Alex with a Lt. Col in the Air Force who makes sure patients get seen. She just got back from deployment, so to this web site I will be calling her “Hawkeye” (Health care… overseas… Come on.) I told her that and said, “please tell me you are old enough to get that reference.” She said, “I’m not much of a M*A*S*H* fan, but yes, I did get it.” I wasn’t much of a fan while it was on, except that my dad watched it every week, and it was one of the only shows where I could be fast asleep and woken up to him laughing so hard he could barely breathe… one of my earliest memories, actually, because I would have been five.

Medical care in the military is a cause I’ll fight for, having worked in the VA Hospital as a contractor upgrading all their computers in Portland… which brings me to the comic and tragic story of being both mortified/sexually harassed and with the benefit of time, can stop being such a tight-ass about it. So, my crew is working on transferring data from old computers to new ones, so we have to go into every office in the building. Every. Office.

I am the only woman on the crew (as per my usual in those days), and the boys unlock a urologist’s office that just has dildos everywhere. I mean, floor to ceiling. Every girth and length you can possibly imagine. So, every guy on my team takes a dildo out of this poor bastard’s office and starts chasing me down the hallway with them. It was a situation in which I felt accepted and rejected all at the same time, if that makes any sense at all, because I don’t think they would have done it if they didn’t think I’d take a joke. It was a cortisol and sin kind of moment, and then I realized that if the doctor in question walked into his office the next morning and discovered that none of his, ummm, stuff was in the right place, it would be my moment to tell the story of why.

The doctor never came forward (as it were), so alas I just let it slide. If I’d been a girl about it, I would have lost respect and they would have avoided me like the plague. My entire career, I’ve just tried to be “just one of the guys.” And it works right up until I realize that I’m not.

And I’m betting that every female soldier, gay or straight, can relate to that one.

But lesbians particularly walk a fine line, because we are alternately the ones men are willing to get vulnerable with because they don’t have to wear the mask of boyfriend/husband and the gender role that comes with it… and the ones who can hang, but only up and to a point, because men do not come equipped with the radar that says lesbians are still women. However, that does not seem to be the case one-on-one, just when a group of guys are posturing around me… I suppose to impress upon me that they have something I’ll never have. Joke’s on them. Doubt me?

See above.

I’m sitting in a SBX near my work, because I decided to see if there was one with a drive-thru on my way. I found one, but I went in this time because I have half an hour before I need to be at the office. I can’t get much done in terms of writing, but just enough to last me until lunch. 🙂

Scales had to cancel for tonight, which made me a bit sad, but I’ll deal. I’ve just missed her and it’s hard to wait two more days. 🙂

Tomorrow, though, I’m going out with the aforementioned woman who wars with herself. She wants to meet somewhere that has craft alcohols. This is right up my alley (sarcasm). I mean, my palate in terms of alcohol is fairly refined having been a cook, but I don’t drink that much, so to say I know where to find craft beverages in Silver Spring is stretching my imagination. I thought about All Set, because even though they do not make their own craft beer, they do have craft on tap, a good wine list, and out of the way spirits. I also said that if she wasn’t interested, there’s a Dogfish Head in Gaithersburg. An IPA sounds great about now, but I’m not sure if she was talking about beer or not.

I am such a beer snob, especially after living in Portland, and I’ve been wanting to trek out to Dogfish Head since I saw it on the way to my friend Andrea’s… and then I got a car and completely forgot about it in the meantime. So we’ll see where we end up, but the last time I went to All Set, I had an amazing craft beer made with chilis that not only tasted delicious, it cleared my sinus passages and I slept like a baby.

I should have brought some shirts to drop off at the dry cleaner’s… #dumbassattack

I cannot say I am excited about said date. I really can’t. This is way more about getting me out of my comfort zone, but at the same time, I am not sure how much I’m ready to be dragged…. especially in terms of having enough chutzpah to drag myself. I am not counting out the fact that I might have a fabulous time, which is what is keeping me going. But if I talk honestly about my life, it’s fairly boring. I work, I come home and watch TV or read, and then I go to bed. Whoo boy. Party. I have turned into the proverbial cat lady without any cats… which is probably the most appealing thing I’ve done for myself in a long time. I don’t spend money, I don’t talk to my cats as if they are my children (don’t get me started), and I can have a dog whenever I want if I’m willing to steal from Samantha and Dom.

But at the same time, the longer I spend with myself, the longer I want to spend time with myself… however healthy or not that might be. I’m a writer, so there’s no part of me that will always want to spend time with other people, but at the same time, there is such a thing as isolating too much. It’s like when I was thinking about moving to DC and thinking of living in NoVA, I said that my perfect girlfriend would live in MD. Far enough away that it wasn’t easy to get together every single day… I can deal with a few texts or phone calls a day, but I am not ready for that all-consuming cocoon that lesbians seem to want almost immediately.

But then again, I am not most lesbians.

And thank God for that.

At the advice of a friend, I decided to try OKCupid, and so far, it’s been a mixed bag. I talked to a woman on the phone (look at ME!) for about an hour that was in seminary as a UU student, and as we jumped around to different topics, she told me that she saw on my profile the line that said, “you should contact me if you’re a veteran.” Now, I put that line in there because there’s no OKCupid option where you can click if you’ve ever been in the military. I was thinking of Volfe, Notorious, and the L___nator when I wrote it, because they’re the people that have consistently made me laugh over the years. At first, when I picked up the phone, she was worried that I had some sort of fetish. Once I explained myself, especially that I’d done lots of reading at Bridgeport on how to serve veterans in a church once they’re trying to re-enter society, because I was then a member of a group on taking care of all parishioners, and we had some veterans in our congregation- all hilarious, too, I might add. I also told her that I’d heard scary stories, and she asked me how I responded to that. I said, “I generally don’t say anything at all, because they just want to be heard, and there’s nothing in my experience that can say “I sympathize,” but I always say “thank you for your service, and thank you for your sacrifice,” because you never know what the soldier feels about why (s)he was deployed, or about their government, or about anything that’s happened to them during deployment or re-entry…. but EVERYONE has served, and EVERYONE has sacrificed.”

She was satisfied with my answer, more than so, but it opened up a can of worms in my own mind. I mean, what veteran or active-duty soldier would be apt to contact you if they think you want to meet them because they look hot in a uniform? Well, the truth is, they do. But to say that’s the only reason I’d ever want to date anyone who’s active duty/reservist/retired is crazy. I’ve been through too much with my friends to think that the uniform is all there is to their magnificence. For instance, working with cars with Volfe and learning to shoot rifles and shotguns with him were some of the best days of my life. Soldiers are just a different breed of people, because they’ve seen more, done more in their lifetimes than I could ever hope to achieve… the root is not the uniform, because there’s too much more to the story.

So then said woman drops it on me that she wants to be a military chaplain in the Army, because most of the liberal chaplains have dropped off in the wake of being anti-war… which is why most of the chaplains are now very conservative. It wasn’t a bomb of any means, I just realized that she was testing me. My first question was “how?” I thought the age requirements to join were really low. She said that the chaplaincy program will take people up until they’re 42 (which was oddly funny because that’s the meaning of life in the Adams-verse).

She also said that she had two little girls, 10 and seven, and that it made her think dating anyone was impossible. I thought she was being too hard on herself, and perhaps I should have said so. There are plenty of people my age who realize that when you get to our age, there’s lots of women who have children. Dating in your late 30’s, it just comes with the territory. Now, I’m not the sort of person who’d get invested over one phone call, but at the same time, it was still selling herself short.

At our age, we all have baggage. We all have quirks. We all have these life experiences that make us who we are. Who in their right minds thinks otherwise?

Then she blew my hair back with all the feminist theory she’d read and I sort of felt like a moron… but in a good way, like asking her which authors I should be reading.

All in all, it was a good first attempt at getting out of my comfort zone, and I’ll carry that with me whether we meet in person or not. I mean, I calld someone. That has to be something… and in fact, I said in my message, “I’m deathly afraid of phone calls, but I’d do it for you. :)”

And then there was this other woman that made me test everything I’d learned with Argo, and I was so proud of myself I kvelled.

She sent me this message that said, “I was going to ask if you wanted to hang out sometime, but being an omnivore is gross.” I sent a message back that said, “so is being obnoxiously judgmental.” She fired back, “that’s what a slave owner would say to an abolitionist.” So, instead of flipping my shit and tearing her apart, I blocked her and walked away.

Go me.

And then there was this other woman who read my line about veterans, and she sent me the most beautifully crafted message in return. She said, “I see that you are looking for veterans. I am not a veteran in the literal sense, but I’ve fought a lot of wars with myself, and I’ve lost most of them… my opponent was just too fierce.” It touched my heart in a major way, and we are going on a date sometime soon. She said, “I’m sure that you could help me with spliced commas and how to use a semicolon, but I think those conversations are best had over vino.”

I thought about it, and said, “Why not?”

Even if she turns out to be a basket of crazy, it’s better than sitting at home all the time, afraid to branch out in the slightest.

Tomorrow is also going to be promising, because Scales and I are going out to dinner and possibly a movie. God, I’ve missed her. She’s spending a lot of time with the colonel, and I get it… but at the same time, it doesn’t stop me from wishing she was still making me laugh on a regular basis. And if the colonel wants to come along, all the better. I’ve met her online, and she’s just as funny as every soldier I’ve ever met.

I have come to the realization that even though I have trouble envisioning the future, it doesn’t have trouble envisioning me.

Amen.

(The title is an inside joke for Volfe, James, Dana, Kevin, and Chris)

I had an interesting night yesterday. A friend pointed me to OKCupid, a free dating site unless you really, really want to put yourself out there. So far, it’s been pretty enjoyable. I talked to one woman who was, like, 45 and was waffling between working and retiring. I asked her about it, saying, “how does one retire at 45? I’m 38 and only feel like I’m adulting sometimes.” She said, and I’ll remember it forever because it’s the punchline to one of my favorite jokes, “the power of compound interest.” She’d been saving since her very first job ever. I told her it was an amazing story of discipline… and it is. I am only now beginning to think about investing, because I have about a year to go before I have enough liquid assets to think about a stock portfolio, but I am working on it one day at a time. Because I live so simply, I am able to save a large amount every month, but I still have a debt to pay. I am floored that I will be debt-free soon, and unless I meet a woman and move in with her, I’m planning on staying with the Nassers as long as they’ll have me.

I live in an enormous house, and I would miss (as Pri-Diddy calls them) my host family just as much as I miss my bio family right now. I would never be able to afford a house like this on my own, and it’s nice to have people watching out for me as opposed to coming home to an empty apartment every night. I have decided that I am not much of a pet person anymore. I mean, I don’t mind if the people I live with have pets, but I’m not home enough to have a dog and both cat hair and litter drive me up the wall. One of Dana’s chores when we lived together was scooping the litter box, because I couldn’t get near it without dry-heaving and once having to change the litter box completely because I threw up into it.

When Asher and I lived alone, I bought disposable litter pans so I didn’t have to scoop. I just threw them away to avoid the situation altogether. I feel the same way about picking up fresh dog shit. Having a backyard for Charlie (my sister’s dog) was the best thing ever because I could let it dry out and not have to worry about heaving into the grass like a drunk.

But more likely than not, whomever my next girlfriend might be will have a cat… hopefully one that doesn’t get jealous and pee all over my stuff when I move in. I will also be investing in heavy-duty lint rollers. It’s nice to have a cat that treats you like furniture, hell when they get up and you realize you are covered in hair and it’s 20 minutes until you’re supposed to be somewhere.

I also found possibly the hottest “guy” in the universe, in quotations because she works for a non-profit by day, and works as a drag king at night. Playing against type, I invited her for coffee immediately…. probably because she’s just as cute a ginger as my friend Katrina, whom I haven’t seen in years but know that our connection would pick back up right away. I have extremely fond memories of working with her and Dana on her backyard. Dana and I helped her rip out all the laurel bushes in her backyard, and then helped her build a fence and gate to replace them. Manual labor is sometimes my jam because it gets me out of my head, and having a cold beer at the end of the day with the two of them will always be precious to me. I mean, gingers obviously have no souls, but drapes, carpet, etc. (Did I really say that out loud? I am blushing furiously right now.)

I used to dye my hair red, but I’ve gone back to my natural color (at least for now), which reminds me of a hilarious story that goes back to my first wife, Kathleen. The setup is that because I dye my hair, I don’t think of myself as a redhead. So we’re sitting in a group of people (I think it was James & Co., but I could be wrong) drinking and playing “I never…”

So the questions keep coming and someone says, “I never banged a redhead” and I fell on the floor in mortification when Kathleen took a drink. Because Kathleen knew I wasn’t a natural redhead, she was laughing so hard she nearly choked on her beer. OMG I am laughing so hard as I type this, because it brings me to another really funny story between us.

At University of Houston, we belonged to the Gay, Lesbian, or Bisexual Alliance (GLOBAL). One night we all played this game, tongue in cheek, on who was the most co-dependent. Not surprisingly, I “won.” The prizes that night were coffee cups, and I asked Kathleen which one she liked. The runner up, who was a little bitter, said, “ok. You obviously win. Hands down.” I laughed until tears and snot were running down my face.

The other woman I wanted to meet last night was from Ireland, but I couldn’t think of a way to write to her and say, “can we get together just so I can listen to you talk?” without sounding like a total jackass. But it was true. Not only could she speak English, she was also fluent in Irish. As an Outlander fan, I was smitten with the idea, even though the two Gaelic languages are somewhat different. I am also fascinated by Ireland, because that’s where my family originated, immigrating from County Wexford (or at least, I think that’s where we’re from, because my friend Una told me that the Lanagans “were from the Narth [insert dipthong here].”) through Bristol, RI.

If I remember my genealogy correctly, we were originally the O’Lanagans, and the Lanigans are a different clan. My ancestor was out to sea during the cholera epidemic, and largely why my clan survived.

I didn’t want to explain all that without sounding like a drooling fangirl, so I didn’t. But I could picture having strong Irish Breakfast together, at least once. The aforementioned friend Una’s accent was so strong and lovely that I wanted to name my daughter after her. We didn’t know each other well, but it was always a treat to run into her… again, just to hear her speak.

Dana was down with Una, and Seamus for a boy, but cringed every time I called our future little boy “Shea Dog O’Bling Bling.” Over time, it diminished into a pained groan that made me laugh every time. I didn’t actually know Seamus, he was a friend of my friend Karen, who turned out to be my friend Felim’s brother. I should have known that, in retrospect, because I worked in an Irish pub… and there can’t be that many Irish people in Portland, first generation, anyway. Karen and I were still surprised that she knew one brother and I knew the other, though.

Speaking of the Irish pub, I’ll never forget the first time we went in. I ordered a shot of Bushmill’s, my grandfather’s favorite, and the bartender said, “we don’t sell that Protestant crap…” which was only hilarious because he’s an Atheist. He thought it was equally hilarious that we’d stopped in on the way home from church. As it turned out, they needed a cook, and Dana got the job that day. It wasn’t until later that I wormed my way in on her coattails, and my legacy there is Lanagan’s pub chili… it’s delicious, but at the same time, I am positive that they would not have named it after me if my last name had been Smith.

Working in the pub gave me some of the best friends of my life, most notably Drew, Suzie, Knives, John, and the aptly named “Handsome Johnny.” I dearly miss my crew, but I wouldn’t have exchanged moving to DC for anything in the world. Eventually, I’ll get them out here… and Knives is going to graduate school in New York, so I foresee beers in our future, especially since I haven’t met his lovely bride. We were in the kitchen a lot together, so he became the man I called my “work husband,” and even though it’s been years, he still calls me “work wife.” We also have special names for each other. Since I am a Christian and he is an Atheist, I call him “Christopher” and he calls me “Rowan.” For those who are blanking on the reference, I mean Christopher Hitchens and Rowan Williams, who despite their differences, were great friends with mutual respect, and that carried into our relationship as well. When the pub wasn’t busy, we had a lot of time to talk about God and Not God.

I am a huge fan of the ontological argument, which means that God only exists as much as you feel God does. Belief, like sexuality and politics, is a sacred spectrum. However, I also believe in the power of science, because science and religion speak to different parts of the brain.

Science is how we’re here. Religion is an attempt to explain why, and as an INFJ, I am always concerned with soteriology, the study of salvation. Though I am not a big fan of substitutionary atonement (whether talking about Isaac or Jesus), I am interested in the way we save ourselves… the resurrection in the middle of the mess, as Dr. Susan Leo would say.

And in terms of science and technology, God will provide the RAM and Jesus saves.

Bam.

So, I joined Match.com to make myself feel better- you know, just to drag me into the future a little bit. However, when I realized that it was not like Tinder at all and it was mostly just advertisements for giving them A LOT of money, I deactivated/deleted my account.It didn’t do the job I hoped it would, which was hook me up with more people in my area that I could talk to without going down an internet rabbit hole. I mean, I’m sure it would have if I was willing to drop $125.00, but for me, even looking at free pictures is pushing it. Now I’m really angry that I still get multiple e-mails from them every single day saying that people have matched me and I better go ahead and pay up “before she slips away into someone else’s arms.” That is an actual quote.

Please. Slip away. Nothing would make me happier. Match is a trap, and a huge one, because even my spam filters don’t catch everything, and if my account was truly deactivated/deleted, I wouldn’t be getting matches at all. It’s a ruse, and a poorly executed one at that. I am sure that if I was willing to drop money on one of their packages with “a match guaranteed,” I’d get more out of the service than I did just browsing for free, because it would open me up to e-mail, instant messaging, etc. But nothing scares me more at this point. Looking at people’s internet profiles has proven to me that I never want to date anyone that can’t spell or use grammar even in the basic sense.

The last thing I want is to meet someone that abbreviates the word “you.”

I sort of get it on Twitter- you’re limited to a certain number of characters, and the links you post count toward them. On a dating profile, it just looks like you dropped out of middle school.

Plus, there is no shortage of dumb blondes with boyfriends……………….

My name is “no.”

My basic MO is that I don’t have one. I don’t know what I want, except that my next partner, just like Dana, has to be a lot smarter than me. It’s a standard I’ve held for years. It doesn’t matter how you’re smarter than me, just that you are. For instance, you might be a scientist. I’m a writer. Between us, we have a complete education.

The last woman I’d ever want to date is another writer. If there’s anything to be avoided, it’s two baskets of crazy in one house, and we all are. Just trust me on this one.

I also don’t know what I want in terms of being single or dating. It’s just such a mixed bag. There’s so many things that need to change about me before I’m willing to open up to someone else, and at the same time, I feel like I’m driving myself crazy by being lost in my own head. Every day, I am reminded of Dana. If it’s not Facebook memories, it’s the moving pictures in my head of the seven years and change we were together. We’d been through so damn much as friends that kissing (finally) brought me down on one knee, under a tree at 37th & Hawthorne that I’m glad I don’t have to drive by all the time.

She’d helped me right so many wrongs, and I would like to think that I helped her do the same, but I cannot speak for her. Only she can do that.

However, one of the last conversations I overheard as I was on my way out, leaving her apartment because it had gotten weird, was her saying to her friend Erik, “no more projects.” I don’t think she knew I heard it, but I did, and I had so many feelings about it that I couldn’t/wouldn’t share, like, “if we are going to talk about projects, I might have a few words to say on the subject…….” But firstly, she was on the phone. Secondly, she wasn’t worth it. Fuck her. If I’d ceased to be nothing in her eyes but a project, without seeing the log in her own eye, then all I needed to do was get the hell out and not look back. I think it’s the one time in my life where her words just sent me over the edge, and I just put on my shoes and walked out the door. Sticks and stones, etc.

By that time, there was no fight left. Just an emptiness that continues to this day. The emptiness that makes me feel I don’t have much business in a relationship in the first place, because I don’t have anything to offer. I have a hard time seeing myself as I am, rather than how she sees me, and it limits my ability to put myself out there in any situation.

Just another reason my anxiety showed itself as rage to Argo, and why I’m having such problems letting that relationship go, because the person that I was to her is someone I hope to never see again. I feel empty where she is concerned, too, because when the Orlando attack happened, there was nothing I wanted more than the mountain of love she used to shower on me, because it made me walk taller It didn’t matter that I couldn’t see her, her words were enough, and always will be.

The Orlando attack kicked me in the stomach, and just reinforced all of my kid fears. I’m not over it, and I won’t be for a long time. Anywhere I am, hand-holding and kissing are a calculated risk. Dana was never as shy about it as I was, and I am ashamed to say that many times I looked over my shoulder and thought, could you not be quite so gay? I don’t know what the difference was between us that I was always afraid and I never felt she was… or perhaps she was just stronger than I was, willing to say “fuck it.” The worst of it was moving back to Houston, because I was so acutely aware of every neighborhood, every street… although ironically enough, the one place I was bashed and tormented was in Montrose, the one place I should have felt comfortable in my own skin.

Just like Pulse… when gay couples congregate, bashers know where to find you a lot easier.

In another ironic turn, if this attack truly was a “hate crime,” and Mateen was just an asshole with a grudge, give him life in prison, the death penalty, whatever. But don’t call it a hate crime. The government should not be allowed to convict you on what you think, just on how you act. There are homophobic assholes in every state… but few of them are deranged enough to kill 50 people in a night club and injure about 50 more. All crimes are hate crimes… to say that a particular kind of hate is motivation is violently in conflict with The First Amendment. Think whatever you want, act and we’ll find a way to own your ass.

We’ll pinch your match out.

I bought both THe Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up & The Life Changing Magic of Not Giving a Fuck. I am having better success with the latter, because I bought it for my Kindle. I was walking through Kramerbooks and bought the former, therefore it has gotten lost in the shuffle of not tidying up (Did you hear that in John Cleese’s voice?). And for that very reason, I know that Marie Kondo is a genius. A motherfucking certifiable genius. This is because she’s right- outer peace creates inner peace, and with all the bullshit I’ve been dealing with over the past three years, it’s hard to convince myself I deserve either. I don’t deserve nice things, I don’t deserve a house that rises to greet me, I don’t deserve the settling of my soul. God, I’m starting to sound like Maron, because there’s a part of me that doesn’t know where my writing will go without any angst to write about… just like he says about his comedy. I am not going to turn this blog into recipes, or, God forbid, Hints from Heloise.™; What would I do with myself if I could turn away from thinking about all the things I’ve always thought? What would this new me be able to accomplish? I cannot wait, and I am terrified.

Although things are coming together one step at a time. In terms of deserving nice things, I have stopped living paycheck to paycheck, and you cannot imagine how much room it gives me to breathe. In fact, I was able to go to Jiffy Lube a few weeks ago and get all the services I didn’t know if Eggsy’d had in years. Got the fuel lines flushed, the radiator, a drink of super-premium high-mileage oil, the works. Now I need to find a trustworthy mechanic to do her basic maintenance, because I don’t think “trustworthy” and “dealership” go together. I also carry a metric fuck-tonne of cleaning products for her in the cargo area, and on Saturdays after I finish my coffee, I rub down all the vinyl with protectant (important in the summer with old cars because I don’t want the dash to crack), pick up the trash and recycling I’ve let gather over the week, and occasionally Rain-X all the windows… a trick that my grandaddy Alvie taught me when I was a kid and I have never departed from it. In fact, I have been known to Rain-X rent cars. #truestory #gulfcoast #worthit

If I can take such good care of Eggsy, you’d think that would translate to my room, and yet, it doesn’t. I just feel like “dumped girl” all the time, and there is no Dana to pull me out of it. I remember quite fondly breaking down in front of her and finally admitting that my heart was so broken I couldn’t function, and would she please help me? AND SHE DID. As a thank-you, I became so anal Annie about my apartment that you could eat off the floor. I never wanted her to forget how much that broken moment meant to me.

After we were done, we took a six-pack of Smirnoff apple and some Swisher Sweets out to the pool at, probably, 11:00 PM. The security guard came up to us and said we weren’t allowed to be by the pool past 10:00. Being from the South, I knew what to do. This might be a stereotype, but it worked. He was black, and I said, “I’ll trade you a Swisher Sweet if we can stay out here.” He said, “as long as you’re quiet,” and walked on his merry little way, telling the mothership he hadn’t found anything. White people (obviously) like Swisher Sweets just as much as the next person, but at the same time, I went to a majority black university and I’ve never seen any black person EVER turn one down.

Speaking of stereotypes, white Southerners are the only people I know that will rag on black people for eating fried chicken and watermelon while eating the EXACT SAME SHIT. It’s not black, it’s Southern. You know what white Southerners bring to church pot lucks? Fried chicken and watermelon. I should know. I’ve been to a metric fuck tonne of them.

Maryland is an interesting hybrid of Southern and Northern cuisine. I’d love to see John-Michael Kinkaid tear it up here, especially in a restaurant halfway between DC and Baltimore. I doubt it would happen, but at the same time, he’d make a killing with barbecued crab, chicken, steaks, etc. Same with John Fot, although he already has an amazing job, so maybe when he retires…… I’ll let him run the BBQ outside the back of my church as long as the homeless eat free. Think about it, John. 😛

Oh my Good Lord it’s cold in SBUX.

But back to my room. I have no motivation to do anything to help myself, and if I could make myself snap out of it, I would have done it already. I am thinking seriously about hiring a maid, and I don’t care how much it costs. I know I can “tidy up,” but I would love it if the initial deep clean was done by not me.

I have dug myself into too deep a hole, and everything feels overwhelming. I am doing all I can do to get up, dressed, and off to work on time, and at the end of the evening, going to bed on time as well. Everything else is suffering under the weight of “just can’t give a fuck, because I don’t have any fucks to give.” It is not indifference, it’s depression and anxiety. You can’t make motivation out of nothing. You can’t make motivation out of deep-seeded feelings that you don’t deserve nice things.

Argo and Dana are the root cause of all of this, not because of anything they’ve done to me, but what I’ve done to them. I don’t feel good about myself, thus I am comfortable with my room looking like a tornado has ripped through it most of the time. I’m also embarrassed to carry all the trash down, because even though it is bagged and thus, not causing any trouble, there’s just so damn much. I am not a hoarder. I am a hider. I don’t want to go downstairs, because that would require interacting with people. It doesn’t matter that I love them. Anxiety is anxiety.

And as I am sitting here writing, I am realizing how ridiculous I sound, and I will call the maids sometime today. I am sure that it it would be cathartic to do all of this myself, but I’m too far down, paralyzed. Last Saturday was Dana’s birthday, and it weighed me down like an anchor. I didn’t even send her a birthday e-mail, because I couldn’t. She asked for quiet, and I am all about that…. and yet, it doesn’t mean that I don’t take all that hurt inside myself and let it create a thunderstorm. I think I went to bed at 4:00 PM. By that time, body memory was too much, especially after all the memories on Facebook where I sent all my birthday love to her and is now trapped in a way that I’ll remember it every year for the rest of my life.

My Argo memories make me so happy, and my Dana memories rip out my guts and barbecue them.

The secret’s in the sauce.

I’m on autopilot today as I go through the motions of working. Since I work in IT, that is all that is really required of me, because IT does not require soul… which is good, because mine is broken and bleeding. People talk all the time about their hearts being broken; this feels like much more than that. All of my internalized homophobia triggers are being set off at once.. all of the things that tell me it is dangerous to hold hands in public, that a kiss could have me beaten… that hiding in the world is better than not.

I haven’t truly felt this way since 7th grade. It’s too late now, of course. Everybody and their dog knows by now that I love women… all of them. Straight, bi, gay, MTF… it doesn’t matter. If you were picking lesbians out of a lineup, I’m betting I’d be first. But there is nothing more that I want today than to be able to crawl back into the closet and stay there, akin to being afraid of the monsters under my bed.

No, the attack didn’t happen in DC, and I have found that DC is one of The Gayest Places on Earth.™ It doesn’t erase my fear, though. I was born in the late 70’s, came out in the early ’90s, and all of that goes into the perspective I have on how safe it is to be “out…” There were “kids” in that club born after all the hell I went through, never thinking that something like this could happen to them. It was just last year that marriage equality was announced by the Supreme Court, and I cannot help but think that it made everything worse for the moment. Not five to 10 years from now, but in this very moment, when bigots are mad it happened at all and “gay Jim Crow” is dying a slow and painful death. If you’ve been keeping up with Twitter, you’ll know that I feel doubly safe that I got out of the South just in time… because yes, Maryland is under the Mason-Dixon line, but there is a palpable difference when you cross the line from Northern Virginia into DC and up into my small but mighty blue state.

Though originally I wanted to move back to NoVA, just because I was familiar with it, knew how to get around, etc., I cannot believe the opportunity that fell into my lap. Because even though NoVA has extraordinarily blue pockets, laws are controlled by “St. Bob’s country,” a nickname for all the people still bitter that the South lost the “War of Northern Aggression.” People who still believe that the war was all about “states’ rights” as if there was more than one they were fighting for than the ability to own people.

I would like to say that things are different now, but there’s just a new group of people to oppress, especially now that the federal government has become involved and the South has no choice anymore. I can’t help but think that this lack of choice is fueling the fire, one that will eventually turn to ash, but will not show signs of it anytime soon.

If it seems like this post is coming from a hopeless place, you’re right.

There aren’t monsters under my bed, there are monsters in my country. The good news in all of this is that if ISIS really does take responsibility for this bombing, there will be military, DIA, and CIA all over their asses…. as if they aren’t already. As Fred Rogers famously said, “in tragedy, look for the helpers.” As a progressive Christian, two ideas run through my head simultaneously.

The first is “kill them all. That’s just how I roll.” The second is “how can I become more loving, more forgiving, more Christ-like in a mess where he would be outraged as well?” In case you were wondering, prety sure that this is a table-flipping whips and chains situation. I know that my Christ-like side will win, but like everyone else, I am allowed my human moments of disgust and hatred as I work through my timeline of grief, because part of it is “it could have been me.” BUT I CANNOT LET DARKNESS WIN. There is too much of it in the world already.

Moreover, I will forgive the shooter, not because it changes anything but me. Right now, all I can muster is pity. Whether this was homophobia or terrorism or both, it does not matter. Sick minds are sick minds, no matter from whence they come. Mental illness has beget mental illness as the news reports more than one person saying “we brought this on ourselves.” That the problem is not a terrorist but Godless heathens who wallow in sin. Wasn’t it the “Lt. Guv” of Texas who said, “you reap what you sow? That God cannot be mocked?” He has since deleted the Tweet, but the damage has been done. Screenshots were taken. That tattoo will follow him forever, if there is truly justice in the world.

Because what I know for sure is that God is not the Actor in this situation…. and God never has been. Even in the Old Testament, which is full of stories of vengeance, the prophet Jeremiah writes, for I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Even in the Old Testament, there is a promise theology that is meant for gay and straight Christians alike.

If you are wondering where God is in all the tragedy, look no further than “the helpers.”

Amen.

Father, Mother, Creator God…

We are here in an intentional way. Our hearts are heavy and our minds are full of what might have been. Fifty people were killed in an Orlando night club, and the grief is overwhelming. What kind of brilliance was lost in that attack? What kind of creative energy? What kind of art, music, design has been silenced? What kind of scientific discoveries?

What kind of mind justified killing 50 people? And yet, even in our anger, we know you are with him, too.

In the news it is reported that it was a gay night club, but I do not dare think that all 50 people dead are gay. It is Pride Month, the time when all of our allies across the queer spectrum gather in support of our need to celebrate our escape from our past… and as we have learned that the past isn’t over, just like you led your children out of Egypt, please deliver us from this distress.

Remind us, O God, that you were there from the first moment that drag queens started throwing bottles at the police, trying to escape their brutality at Stonewall. Remind us that you were there with every epithet and punch thrown from then until now. Remind us that you are there with the victims’ families in Orlando today.

Remind us, O God, that you are the Responder.

You are where we go to scream and cry out our frustrations, our want to take out vengeance on the shooter, and our feelings that our justice has been denied because the shooter is dead. Our inability to wrap our minds over how this could have happened in the first place.

Take our lips and speak with them, take our minds and think with them, take our hearts and heal them… because it is such a human thing to feel all of these emotions swirling, even the ones that say revenge is right and good. Please wrap your arms around the Muslim community in Orlando, for you are not only our God, but their Allah as well. Help us to know that faithful Muslims and terrorists are not the same thing, and to know that their community is hurting as well, frightened with the possibility of retaliation.

Revenge is human, but not divine, and that is where our days go into nights… Nights that ask us to see more of ourselves than rage, even when we think we cannot get past it. Days that ask us to be Christ in the world, just as you have asked. Ones that ask just how our community is supposed to respond, rather than the knee-jerk reactions that grab our souls and try to hold on.

Please be with Barack Obama today as he speaks to the nation, because he has already said so many times over that he is tired of having to give this speech…. the one talking about national gun violence and how it keeps happening over and over and over and over and over…. this one now being the largest massacre to date.

Watch over the hospital as 50 more people are treated for their physical wounds, and stay with them as their post-traumatic stress gets in the way of living their lives, for this will not pass easily or quickly in the minds of the hurt and the helpless lookers-on.

Watch over our community as we resurrect ourselves.

In Jesus’ name,

Amen.

Write injuries in sand, kindnesses in marble.
-French Proverb

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by carelessness.
Hanlon’s Razor

Dear Argo,

I told you to change the channel long ago, and I doubt you’ll ever get this. But it is a letter that needs to go into the pensieve, not so that you remember it, so that I do. I learned this week that anxiety doesn’t always look like a panic attack, but flashes of rage. I cannot help but think that this is true. When you hit all my buttons, anxiety does not present as anxiety itself, but cortisol and anger racing through my body because I cannot stay calm enough to calculate my next move. I jump immediately into trying to knock over the king, when moving a pawn will do.

I get angry, I regret, I say I’m sorry, and it happens again and again and again. Sisyphus has nothing on me, and that person that pops off and regrets is never the person I want to be. It’s who I am when I feel backed into a corner, wet cat and claws extended. After our fights, I collapse as the cortisol runs out, and crocodile tears run down my face as I realize I have yet again hurt someone I love, deeply, but not in a way that I ever expected or thought I deserved.

I was telling Bryn that before I met you, and I realized that my relationship with Diane was going to fall to pieces whether I wanted it to or not, that I created an e-mail address for her called “fakeaudience@gmail.com.” That way, I could write to her without writing to her, and I think there’s a grand total of three letters in that account, because soon afterward, I met you and you agreed to listen. It was a wonderful thing, having fresh eyes on the situation, because it helped me figure out everything that was wrong with my life. Just everything… that’s because the emotional trauma I experienced as a youth had wired itself into every reaction I had to everything, not knowing just how unhealthy it was. That lies and secrecy were not the way of the world, that I didn’t have to hide, that I could be done protecting her from all that had happened. I think it was under my skin, but I refused to acknowledge it, because there was no way it happened the way my gut feeling said it did. The gaslighting was successful. She never did anything to create emotional scars, I just took everything the wrong way. It was crazymaking at its finest.

To the point that I began to pick up those tendencies as well. There’s a lot that scares me as I continue to explore my darkness in hopes of getting rid of it, because if I really want to stick to this dream of being a pastor, I don’t want to fuck other people up the way I was. I want to be a shepherd filled with the light of Christ, and not filled with the light of me.

In many ways, you directed that change, because when I began to see myself for who I really was, I didn’t like her very much, if at all. Things haven’t changed overnight, but they have changed for the better, especially in terms of getting out of Houston and away from all the memories that haunt me there. I was never a kid in DC. Memories here are sometimes painful, but they are all with people where I was on equal footing, and not the power imbalance of being a child trapped in an enormously damaging situation.

Going to Portland to find the family I thought I had was a disaster from day one, because I thought that as an adult, I could be a part of Diane’s life without it being some sort of undercover operation. I don’t know why I didn’t turn around and go back to DC then, without waiting around to see what happened next. Instead, I sold the rarest book I owned, a poetry book by Anne Lindbergh signed by her and Charles. I bought it for 50 cents at a garage sale, and sold it for $1,500. It allowed me a few more months of just wallowing in pain as I tried to figure out what to do next. Luckily, Matt was there to catch me because he was so different than Kathleen that I could rest and relax in him… but being good friends with Diane made me wary of confiding anything in him until you came along with your sweet words and Xs and Os of support as I waded my way through the worst mess of my life… but that wasn’t until years later, long broken up and married to the woman I thought I’d spend the rest of my life loving…. and in a lot of ways, still do. If you’ve ever been in the same room with Dana, you know what I mean. Curly-haired spitfire that will take a lifetime to get over, not just because of how amazing our relationship was at times, but because of the way I treated her on the way out… a product, I am sure, of my past… to make you a catalyst to let go of her “easier,” because it was clear that she wanted out, too, and wouldn’t say it. The reason it wasn’t really any easier is that I had this dream in my mind, that things would blow over and I’d get both my sweet Dana and my sweet Argo back, after I’d had enough time to work out in my mind which end was up. But the main reason I knew Dana wanted out and couldn’t say it is that she constantly used you as a bait-and-switch operation so that she could ignore the problems we needed to work on and redirect fault onto me. When she wouldn’t make room, or at least, consistently so, I realized that I could have one of you or the other, but not both, because it wasn’t worth trying to talk about money, sex, balance of power, you name it, without it being redirected into why I was such a douchebag for spending time writing to you.

She knew you needed me just as much as I needed you, and alternately understood it and used it as a weapon of mass destruction. My anxiety turned to rage at both of you, and I pushed both of you away, violently with words. It was Dana’s choice to make it a physical fight between us, and I will never forget how bad it got, and how that was the last straw for me, even though my abused nature eventually swept it under the rug and wished I hadn’t told her it was over in the madness of the last punch… because, I reasoned, I’m not sure she was fighting with me at that point. There was so much rage behind her fist that I wasn’t sure it was all meant for me, or if there were years and years of anger that had never been expressed and I just happened to be a convenient target… childhood rage compounded with teenage rage compounded with anger at me all in the same broken blood vessels on my face.

The bitch of it was trying to think we could handle our communication issues on our own. I wonder every day what would have happened if we’d gone to a professional mediator that could have explained both sides to us in ways we had never thought of before. Things like explaining why my rage was so intense, why my communication style was so much different than hers, and why the Argo thing would go away on its own, especially if we’d met in person and not goddamn everything was an operatic swell of emotion on the page… no relaxing with beers in the backyard. I wish every day that we’d come to DC or you’d come to “Youston” early on in our relationship so that everything would have been normalized butt-quick.

I don’t know what it would be like to see you, to touch you, to know that you are real. But what I do know is that it would never be the touch of a lover, just a concerned friend who loves you beyond all measure. Someone who’d take your arm as we were walking down the street, someone who’d give you a hug when you needed it, someone who’d bring you bacon if you were sad.

Because anxiety is everything beyond the rage, beyond the pushing away, beyond the loss of light in my eyes. It will never be the way I truly feel about you, and it should never have been. I feel like these fights have been because we are cut of the same cloth, bulletproof until we both walk away in pain and confusion at what we’ve just said to each other, not knowing what the right thing to do might be, but knowing for damn sure that fighting like that wasn’t it.

Your name is stitched into my heart, sewn so fine it might as well have been done by a cardiologist. That will never go away, whether we speak again or not….

…because your injuries are written in sand, and your kindnesses are written in marble.

I was stupid and careless with your heart when the final blow came down, but I hope that one day you will see that I was not trying to be malicious, just lashing out because I was so anxious I didn’t know what else to do. It was a panic attack of enormous proportion, because I thought I was being treated unfairly and it caused my inner 14-year-old to come out instead of the grown woman I’ve become. Nothing that happened the day our relationship broke came from a malicious place, and the insistence that it did broke me. I was lost and angry that my injuries were not written in sand and my kindnesses written in marble, and I took it out on you, when the proper response would have been just to walk away… not to let words escalate yet again.

I was so invested in those shoots of green that I did not see how angry and hurt you still were, and how I’d never be able to calm it, no matter how hard I tried. That my sweet, small a argo had been replaced by Argo, Trademark. That I’d never be able to see into your heart of hearts again, because I’d done so much to break it over and over… ignoring that in favor of thinking that things were getting better and confiding in you as if nothing had ever happened.

But too much had.

I will always pray that you are blessed over and over in the richness with which you have blessed me, and I will always keep a door open for you whether or not you walk through it… because I can’t not. I am moving on with my life in leaps and bounds, but there will never be a time in which I forget what it was like when we were good for each other and anger never won.

Your kindnesses are written in marble. Sin cera.

Leslie

A memory from today’s date in 2013:

It’s Bridgeport UCC’s birthday today. Crescendos of blessings all around and at the same time, history is what history is. Today I remembered how I have fallen short of the glory of God by not being as Christ-like as anyone would have wanted, really. I rejoiced in everything that has been given to me at my church. Dana Bamberger Lanagan came to me through church. I said I wanted to become a preacher and at Bridgeport, I was getting up in front of people in no time at all. No degrees except a dad that went to SMU Divinity and I don’t think people let you claim other people’s educations. People came to hear me and I grew. People came to hear me and I have fallen on my knees in that church in complete anguish more than once, the bulwark against the storm. When I stand facing the congregation, nearly everyone I love is in one room. When you say, “and also with you,” I know you mean it. When I say, “may the peace of Christ be with you,” what I’m really saying is “I never in a million years thought that I would feel this loved by a congregation and this is the best I can do without absolutely flooding out and boohooing.” You are the dimmer switch to my crazy and I couldn’t be more in love with you if I tried. P.S. Again, thanks for Dana. That was really sweet of you.

It’s such a blessing receiving these memories every morning, even when they hurt. I am all about feeling my emotions as they come up, instead of stuffing them down and pretending that everything is fine, because it’s not. Sometimes I just want to kick Dana’s ass into next week, and sometimes not having her by my side makes me feel as if there is no air in the room. But we both made our beds in that department, and now we have to lie in them.

Speaking of which, I still haven’t gotten the paperwork for the dissolution of our domestic partnership in Oregon, and I’ve reached out to Kathleen on multiple occasions, and nothing. With Dana, I understand. It’s difficult. With Kathleen, holy shit it’s been 16 years. Let. It. Go. I never should have married Dana in the first place, and not because I didn’t want her day-in, day-out love. It’s just that back then, gay marriages/civil unions/domestic partnerships were decided on a state-by-state basis, and I never thought I’d see national marriage equality in my lifetime. It made sense then. It for damn sure doesn’t now. The legal advice I received (from an actual lawyer as opposed to my friends ragging on me at a coffee shop) in terms of the civil union with Kathleen in Vermont was just to let it go. We didn’t live there, so what did it matter? But again, that was 16 years ago… any advice I would have received then would have been in a completely different context than now.

Speaking of which, DC Pride is this weekend, and I can’t decide if I want to go or not. I have two offers to be *in* the parade, one from my church and one from DC public schools, because my friend Elena is a teacher, and last year Elena, Prianka, and I were the Three Musketeers. I just can’t decide if I feel pride comin’ on this year. Even in Houston, I didn’t go every year, and I think in Portland I went twice, maybe three times, and I lived there for ten years. Is it bad that I sort of feel too old? Like, I’ve already had all my coming out parties, and I live in a very post-gay neighborhood already- completely integrated. It has to do with being dragged kicking and screaming out of my comfort zone… loud crowds bother the shit out of me, and while last year was a blast, I don’t feel proud. I just feel empty. And maybe going is the answer to turning my attitude around, but I don’t know yet. If my dad and my sister were there with me, I wouldn’t bat an eye. If Scales and the colonel are coming, perhaps. Speaking of the colonel, the only time I really lost my snot at the parade last year was when I saw the military float. Full class A’s and flags from every branch, and I just stood in front of them, squalling my eyeballs out and saying, “thank you for your service” and “thank you for your sacrifice.” I’d been holding back a lot of grief for a long time, and that was the image that broke the damn dam.

Yesterday on Twitter, I noticed that the DIA changed their icon to rainbow colors and had a link to a conference in Austin called “LGBT Spies.” I sent a Tweet to @CIA saying that @DefenseIntel had already beat them to pride colors- where was their rainbow? The military and intelligence have really gotten on the GLBT bandwagon, and for that, I am truly grateful. It’s fun to see the world change, even if I am having trouble changing with it. There is no limit to the internalized homophobia I feel having grown up in an age that told me I was mentally ill. I mean, I am, but not because of that. 😛

But, I am going to be downtown this weekend attending a fountain pen show. Perhaps I will buy Eleven’s sonic screwdriver. I already got my dad the best present in the world for Father’s Day. So him it hurts, and I want to spill the beans SO BAD, but I won’t. SO. BAD.

And on that note, I should probably get back to work. It’s busy around here. Did I mention that? 😛

Today I am wearing my surfing bear t-shirt, and it makes me so happy. I paired it with my brown Dockers and my brown Chucks, with a grey hoodie just in case it gets arctic in my office (it often does). However, I do have a window, and opening the blinds seems to warm everything up nicely. I also think I have a fever, which helps…. no, seriously. At Alert Logic, I used to pray for the days my period was coming because with all the fans and the need to keep the equipment cool, there was no day that it didn’t feel like 50 degrees in that bitch. A fever was just the ticket to make me happy without complaining, even though I still needed a hoodie and several layers underneath. It’s always weird when you have to carry your winter clothes in your backpack in Houston because you know the air conditioner will freeze you out. DSI is not that different, but like I said, a window helps, even though it does look out over the junk yard next door… but there are also a lot of trees, which makes up for it a bit. As long as I’m warm, it could look over a nuclear waste dump.

I am hoping it will be a while before we hire someone else in ops, because I really like having my own office. It’s huge, enough to put in a conference table if they’ll let me, which would be nice because I could change positions, like taking my laptop over to the table and sitting in a different chair. If I can’t get my own conference table, maybe I’ll try one of the benches outside. We have a picnic table in the “backyard” that might be perfect.

Oh, and check this out. I was here by 8:50 and the door was unlocked. #smallblessings

Tonight is dinner with Pri-Diddy and I cannot wait. Any time we can spend together before she has to leave is golden. I just want to hug her and squeeze her and call her George…. but not too tightly, because she has a stomachache. 🙂

In other news, I feel like I’ve really had a chance to exorcise my demons where Argo is concerned, and I have healed so much just from staying away. I feel happier than I have in a long time, because the fight is o’er, the battle won… even if I lost, because the win was not fighting anymore. God, how I wish I had ended it before it became a thing with Dana, but at the same time, if it hadn’t been Argo, it would have been another individual friend as opposed to a couple friend that would have set her radar off. I have to remind myself that anyone who wouldn’t let me have friends of my own was trying to control too much. I am sure that I gave Dana every reason in the world to be jealous and angry, but I wasn’t trying to… just trying to be as honest as I possibly could, because I thought talking about it would help instead of hurt. Dana does not have the same story that I do, but she went through something similar when she was single, so I thought that she’d be the first person to understand that words carry weight, and feelings happen because of them. She did, up and to a point, but her past did not carry nearly as much weight as my present…. and honestly, that’s ok.

I needed to be single again… not because I was taking off after Argo to see what might happen, but because I was so worried about Dana that I couldn’t worry about myself…. and ditto for Argo. Taking on their “stuff” allowed me to ignore my own problems, to the point that one day I decided that I’d just had it. I cracked. I couldn’t get a new patient appointment for three weeks, and I worried that my situation was so dire that I wouldn’t make it that long… and in the end, it was Argo that gave me the strength to see it. She said “why do you think it’s everyone else’s job to fix you?” So I called the number on the back of my insurance card and it just so happened that I’m originally from Naples, Texas, and the person on the other end of the line was from Mt. Pleasant. She’d had a time in her life when she was just as depressed as me, and me being who I am, spent part of that phone call comforting her even though I was the one in trouble…. just like I did with the billing lady. She’d also been as depressed as me, and *she* asked *me* to pray for her. So, of course, me being me, I feel like this depression is going to kill me and here I am in the hospital taking care of THE BILLING LADY.

It turned out to the be the right thing to do, though, because I haven’t gotten a single bill from Methodist hospital. I know this because it doesn’t matter where you move on earth, the billing people will find you. If Osama bin Laden had taken out a loan from Sallie Mae, we’d have caught him a lot earlier. You think being a high value target is terrifying in the CIA? Wait until you’ve defaulted on a student loan…. which I never have, but I’ve heard so many horror stories that I think most of the people that work there are calling from prison. #nojoke

Speaking of which, I need to fill out a FAFSA for University of Houston, because Howard does not have a political science department, and none of my hours will transfer…. although before I check that out, I need to check out the junior college around here because there’s a couple of classes I haven’t taken that will be much cheaper there, like “Intro to Poetry.” I took “Intro to Poetry” in summer school once, and I had an A+ in the class when my professor dropped me for missing too many classes. At that point in my life, I’d never been so angry, but there it is. In summer school, you couldn’t miss more than three classes, and I was sick. Not that the professor cared. Seriously. An A+. It was a “fuck me running” sort of moment, and I am not prone to violence, but if looks could kill, she’d be dead and buried. It’s also good that Volfe wasn’t standing next to me when I used the k-word. 🙂

At this point, I don’t even remember her name (Melanie Jordan… funny how that just popped up).

I really can’t write poetry to save my life, but I can analyze the hell out of it… and I can write a paper in 20 minutes flat if I really know what I ‘m talking about. My last paper on a poem was about Diving into the Wreck, about which I had *A LOT* to say. It was a 500 word essay, and I ended up writing for 15 pages and having to edit it down.

I wish I still had that paper, because I can’t think of anything I’d rather read right now. Anne Lamott says that you should write the book that you wish was out there…. and while it seems egotistical to be comforted by your own words, she’s really, really fucking right. Perhaps that’s why I read my blog so much. It’s the words I wish were already out there for me to find. if I go back far enough, the things that are happening are happening to someone else.

And I can forgive someone else.

Please pray for me. This is such a hard time. Saturday, Dana will be 41, and I won’t be there to help her celebrate. Dana and my mom have the same birthday, so there will never be a time in my life where I forget. Holidays are the hardest, and my heart is still beating… p,q,r,s,t,u… over and over and over and over and over. But that doesn’t mean it hurts any less.

Amen.