My sister introduced me to a web site called “Thumbtack,” where you can basically hang out your shingle and get into business quickly. Mine is computer instruction, because there are plenty of little old ladies that have no idea how to use an iPhone in my zip code. I also put that I can lock down routers, because in my neighborhood, there are an alarming amount of homes with no security at all. I’ve got a profile up, and paid the money for a background check. However, what I did not know going in is that if you get a text message regarding a job, you have to buy credits in order to be able to answer them. For instance, if someone says, “I need an admin assistant,” to reply is 3 credits. 30 credits is $35.00, but I didn’t pay it (at least not yet), because the admin assistant position has gone off on my phone four different times, all from different people, and talks about package delivery in Vermont that can be done via e-mail. I believe it is spam, because never in my lifetime have I been able to lift a 50-lb box using only the power of my typing skills.

I also never have to worry about a background check. I once worked in an airport as a line cook in a pub. If I can pass that one, I can pass any of them. As you can imagine, airports are quite strict about who can be there every day.

The other thing I’m working on is tremendously difficult, but not because it’s beyond my capabilities. It’s just methodical and time-consuming, a mountain of work for what hopefully is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. I signed up with a web site called Udemy, which is similar to Blackboard or WebCT, and making a basic linux class. The copy for it flows naturally. The hard part is recording my desktop. The David Attenborough part comes later (is there, in fact, any nature video not narrated by David Attenborough?). “So you see the cursor in its natural habitat, about to strike the submit button…”

It’s going to be a series of at least ten videos, because I don’t just want to demo linux. I want to be able to show people that you can get an operating system and a full set of software for free dollars. It’s not just about having a linux desktop and knowing shell commands, although that’s part of it. It’s being able to tell people that you don’t have to pay exorbitant sums of money for Microsoft Office, PhotoShop, Norton AntiVirus, etc… and you especially do not have to go to Best Buy just to get software to backup DVDs and Blu-Rays.

When I walk into a software aisle, it literally makes me sick, because manufacturers are releasing products that have a pretty box and it costs money so it must be better… and in fact, the more money it costs, the better quality it must be.

I will probably create a separate course for LibreOffice all on its own, because the ways to create formulas in Calc and format paragraphs in Writer are just enough different to make an inexperienced user’s eyebrows go over their foreheads. I am surprised at the number of people who cannot wrap their brains around software just because it looks different, but has the same functionality.

But then again, I wouldn’t make any money if people actually read manuals and tried to learn software on their own. It’s just little things that surprise me, like the upgrade from Office 2003 to Office 2007. The ribbon wasn’t introduced until later, so the products looked basically identical and people were still frozen in fear.

In fact, one of the reasons that LibreOffice is so popular is that it looks a lot like Office 2007 and people who still can’t use the ribbon have a word processor again. Because I’m not mean, I’ll also tell people how to install Microsoft Office on their linux machines. This is because sometimes documents do not translate from one suite to another as easily as LibreOffice says they do… but I do not view this as a drawback because Microsoft Office documents won’t stay together formatting-wise in different versions of *itself.*

In terms of my personal preferences, if no one else has to edit the document, I print to PDF. That’s because I’m a font nerd, and I want my resume (or whatever) to look the way it did on my screen. If I don’t, it will end up as Arial and Times New Roman (most likely). I like to branch out a little, and if the font isn’t installed on the receiver’s computer, it will be replaced with something else.

Did you know that? If you didn’t, here’s a free sample of what I can teach you if you hire me.

Have SmartCard, will travel.

My sister was into Girls for a while, and when she’s into something, I generally check it out because she’s cooler than me. I binged a little bit of it when I split my tooth down the middle and had some time on my hands due to the Tylenol 3. I watched a little more last night because I went to get a new temporary crown (the first one broke, so they gave me a stronger one), and the benzocaine topical anesthetic made me a little loopy. I think they may have given me a little too much, because I was, as my family calls it, “duh-headed,” for several hours afterward… but not duh-headed enough not to realize that I’m not afraid  of much of anything except Hannah Horvath.

I am old enough now that I would not make the conversational faux pas of asking her editor’s widow if she knew the name of a new editor because her book had been shelved, but I did see myself in her egocentric world and her complete downward spiral… although, for me, it was a warning and not shared experience. Yes, I thought about killing myself, and got down far enough that I realized something must be done about it or I would succeed.

And to tell the truth, I didn’t notice. Argo did. She just put it succinctly (as she does, and I love her for it) that I needed to help myself, and it was good advice. I don’t think I would have responded as easily to people trying to hospitalize me as I did to someone just saying “figure it out.” No one would have tried to hospitalize me, because I never would have let anyone know how much I was suffering. It was something I had to do on my own, because I had to prove to myself that I was worthy of getting better.

I say that it was not a shared experience because Hannah’s mental illness manifested itself differently than mine, but it was no less traumatic watching it on TV. It was a warning to watch myself as I continue writing, because I believe that there is a correlation between telling your own story and how it affects one’s brain. You, in a sense, spend part of your day living in the memories that cause you pain and trying to turn them into something if not beautiful, at least thought-provoking.

It also hurts that when people I know accuse me of revisionist history, they’re not remembering that I’m going to have different memories than they do. OF COURSE they’re going to have different stories than me, because their stories are their own, as well. Using Diane, Dana, Argo, and Aaron as examples because I talk about them the most, if you read what they thought about me, some things would line up perfectly and some would seem like stories from a different planet. There are so many levels to communication and memory which come into play during stories.

I also think that when they hold the mirror up to my face in the same way I do with them, sometimes I don’t like what I see, either. But it’s not my story to tell. It’s theirs. They have as much emotional room as I do, and I take nothing away from it, although I have not been as gracious about it in the past as I am now. I needed to calm the fuck down, first. Because of my PTSD, I was living my life as this big ball of id, my ego and superego underdeveloped because of the trauma I experienced as a teen.

Sarah (my therapist) and Leighton (my nurse practitioner) are helping me in a way that I’ve never experienced, because I’ve never had enough money to have both kinds of therapy at the same time on a consistent basis. Medicaid is slowly and clearly saving my life, not that it is still in danger, but because I have been failing to thrive. Every day was a battle of will to put on the mask and let go of my emotional background so that I could think logically through practical things.

It has been a job all on its own to adult. My old tapes rendered me into a puddle on the floor, my mind struggling to accept that I didn’t have time to think about them, because it was indeed a skill. In dealing with trauma, it’s a fight to keep moving on.

Watching Hannah deal with her own insecurities in some ways gave me tools. In others, it gave me nightmares. I don’t want to be so insular that I don’t notice the world around me… and yet, it’s my job. If I want to keep writing, I need to notice the world to have something to write about. If I want to keep having friends and loved ones, I cannot be so wrapped up in myself that it seems like I don’t care, when in reality there are times that I take on their problems more than my own. I do care, deeply, but sometimes showing it is hard when I am driven and focused to the point that I can’t see anything around me but what’s on my computer screen, staring back at me.

My biggest fear is a blank page, and I combat it daily. I attack it with gusto, because in healing, there is no way you’re going to come to this web site and get platitudes. You’re never going to hear me say “just snap out of it.” You’re never going to hear me say, “God has a plan for your life if you’ll only tap into it.” God doesn’t have a plan for shit. Divinity is reaching up for the mystical, but I do not believe that it works the other way around. Many people think that doing good works is what gets you into heaven. No, doing good works is what brings heaven to you. I do not believe in fear-based theology, that if you stray one little bit from what the Bible tells you, it means that you are going to burn in hell.

I believe that if you stray from the things that the mystical and divine are trying to tell you, you bring hell to you. God doesn’t happen to you. God just is. What you do with it is up to you.

It works the same way for Atheists. It doesn’t take belief in God to realize that if you are making bad decisions for your life, you are creating your own hell. It doesn’t take belief in a deity to know that when you put good into the world, it comes back to you.

The bottom line is that Christianity needs to stop focusing on the afterlife, because it does not take death to go to heaven or hell. We have heaven and hell right here. Why wait? Why “store up your treasures in heaven” hoping that the next life will be fruitful when you have the ability to make this one powerful?

I hold myself to higher standards than you can possibly imagine, which is why it’s so hard to watch myself fail. For a long time, I didn’t realize why I couldn’t get it right, especially in relationship with myself. Finding out that trauma wires the brain differently helped to an enormous degree, not to have an excuse, but an explanation.

I write so much because I believe in the power of context. Nothing happens in a vacuum. Not only do I have to own my role in relationships, I am a product of my own circumstances as well. I do not see cognitive dissonance in believing both. There are things I can control, and there are things I can’t. The journey of this life, the creation of heaven and hell for myself, is realizing what those things are and how to tell the difference.

I can’t control everything, and I cannot give in to the temptation that comes with not controlling anything. When I try to control everything, life bites me. When I control nothing, life owns me instead of being able to create my own reality. Control of nothing is a central theme of abuse, as is trying to control everything, and each path is its own hell because there is no balance. No give and take.

Watching Hannah try to navigate life by focusing only on herself was watching the consequences of taking without any give, because she wasn’t attuned to it. The best she could do was mutual weirdness.

I tried to control my life in a major way this weekend, and it failed. There was no balance between preaching on this web site and being responsible for showing up at CCC. I worked on my sermon until 6:00 AM, and told myself that I could watch TV until it was time to go to church, because I can ususally do that. Because I didn’t feel good anyway (this cold is hanging on), I fell asleep and didn’t wake up in time for choir or church. I worked on this web site for St. James and let a whole bunch of people down, because we were singing something high and difficult and I could do it in a way that the other sopranos couldn’t, not because they’re not good singers, but because I am more practiced at it than they are. It takes an amazing amount of work to keep a sectional high B flat in tune, and we had it when I was there on Thursday.

I don’t know what happened on Sunday, and it weighs on me because I wasn’t there to know. I was so driven in working on me that I dropped out of being a team player. It was a secondary injury, because the primary injury was thinking I could control not sleeping until I got home from church the next day.

And in terms of my sermon, I Monday-morning quarterbacked and realized that I could have said a million different things that could have had more impact, and then I realized that the scriptures I was working on would come around again in three years, so that sermon is done. 🙂

Small comfort for a big mistake, though. I lost control of myself at a time when I really didn’t want to. Because I was so sleep-deprived, there was no amount of caffeine that helped, because I took a caffeine pill and had a cup of tea while I was watching TV and didn’t go to church, anyway.

I created my own hell when I could have created my own heaven- getting enough sleep to wake up early before church and finish my own sermon before I went to choir. I thought I was being selfless in trying to get out my sermon before Matt’s, which I always try to do so that if anyone from my church reads this web site, they know that my ideas are my own and not something I picked up and decided to use it.

In the end, though, selfless became selfish. Watching “Girls” showed me in HD the ways I was capable of it. I didn’t show up… and showing up is how both heaven and hell happen in an instant…… whether you’re trying to control it or not.

My instinct as an abused person is that the more I let them down, the less they will want or need me and I become more insular. The battle is to keep breathing, and find ways to create the balance that Hannah could not. But at least she scared me into keeping up the trying and not so much with the isolating.

It’s wrong to think of hell as a place to go when you die. Hell is isolation into your own head, because you can drive yourself crazy better than anyone else.

I saw it on TV.

I met Brian O’Leary at GLOBAL (which I think stands for Gay, Lesbian, or Bisexual Alliance; it’s been too many years for me to really retain that kind of information.) He and his partner, George, had moved from Boston after George graduated from Harvard with his MBA. He was traveling the world because at the time, he was a consultant for McKinzie & Co. While he was gone, we partied at their house, thus the picture for George to enjoy while we drank at his house without him. It is one of my fondest memories of college, because not only was I crazy in love with the girl holding the small G, I’d been chatting online with the guy holding the capital G, who’d just moved from Ohio after attending Oberlin conservatory and wanted to know more about GLOBAL before he attended his first meeting. It was love at first e-mail, since my high school girlfriend was Canadian and Giles is from Nova Scotia. He was also a vocal performance major, and that also won him accolades in the new friend department. It is interesting to note that all three of us are now living in the DC area, although Kathleen and I are still estranged.

Whether that’s good or bad, I really don’t know. But what I do know is that when Brian posted this picture on Facebook, I saw it this morning and was filled with gratitude at the reminiscence of it all.

Giles and I are both much smaller than we were in this picture. We’ve both lost a lot of weight, and now Giles looks like a model while I look like a 7th grader (except for the wrinkles around my eyes, which is the BEST part about getting glasses). Case in point: my roommate, Samantha, smokes Marlboro Lights, and I agreed to buy her a pack if she would just drive me around for a day because it was much cheaper than Uber. I got carded and the clerk nearly fell on the floor when he saw my birth date. It’s the little things in life. It really is.

But back to the party at hand. I was in a happy-go-lucky mood, and I really enjoyed hanging out with the GLOBAL crew, as well as getting to meet some of Brian and George’s other friends. Additionally, the house was gorgeous, with sumptuous chairs and what looked like a professional decorator had their way with them. Turns out, it was all Brian all the time. He did a wonderful job of making the house look modern and comfortable all at the same time. It made me jealous that even as a college student, Brian knew how to adult LIKE A BOSS. He also knew (knows) how to be a gracious host and a fine mixologist, meaning that he put everything out on the table and let us experiment.

The thing I remember most about that party is it was the time before social anxiety, one where I could just relax and start up conversations with everyone without feeling all self-conscious and like it was time to go home 15 minutes after I got there. Shortly afterward was when Kathleen and I moved, which was really the start of my downward decline into Friday and Saturday night Netflix and pajamas, or books and cookies with hot tea. Now I throw parties with me as my own guest, the kind where I only have to put on pants if I want to……. the exception being if you’re coming over to have Netflix and kettle corn or read with me in companionable silence. 😛

And, of course, if you come on Friday, it’s pizza night. That is beauty in and of itself, because I know my way around pizza. If you don’t like what I pick, we’ll order two.

Thanks to Humibid, Pseudophed, and ibuprofen, my cold has not gotten any worse… but I’m not better yet, either. To top it all off, today is the first day of my period. I just feel like crap all over. Seriously, body. Thanks for that…. although it does explain why, two days ago, I ate half a pan pizza all by myself. Then, the next day, I ate the rest of it. During PMS, it’s the only time I am truly hungry. My body just says, “EAT ALL THE THINGS.” The rest of the time, I am content with very small meals and a granola bar every now and again.

I need to go to the grocery store (still), because I am running out of things to eat AND I still don’t have any cough medicine. It’s time to up my game. When I truly have a cough, I skip right from Robitussin to Delsym, which I believe is actually the better choice. It also comes in my two favorite flavors, orange and grape. When I’m on Delsym, it really does work as well as codeine, except that sometimes codeine works better at night. We’ll see how it goes. My GP wants to see me back in two weeks, but if my cough gets any worse, I may go back earlier and get a prescription for the codeine version of cough syrup. It makes me sick to my stomach, but it’s worth it when I’m asleep and can’t feel the nausea, anyway.

Speaking of nausea, and I’ve had a lot of it over my lifetime, my favorite remedy in the world is ginger Altoids or Gosling’s ginger beer. Gosling’s is the best ginger beer on the planet, because it gets real. It’s hot and spicy, amazing straight out of the fridge as not to water it down with ice. I’ve been on Lamictal for almost ten years now, and one of the manufacturers of the generic included an ingredient that made me feel pregnant all the time. I called it the “blue diamond of death.” I also carried ginger Altoids in my bag to avoid throwing it back up, thus my nausea recommendation above. Haribo also makes an amazing lemon-ginger gummy that works just as well if you can find them- they’re pretty rare as children don’t like them much (they burn with the hotness).

Now that my pharmacy has a different manufacturer, I don’t get that ever-present nausea anymore, because the “blue diamond of death” has been replaced by a white, round pill with no side effects at all. I am a simple woman. It doesn’t take much to impress me, but this certainly did. It improved my quality of life by quite a bit.

As of right now, I am sitting in bed with my iPad and Bluetooth keyboard, with a roll of toilet paper (I don’t have any Kleenex, either.) and a trash bag next to my bed so I don’t have wads of toilet paper all over my room. Yesterday, I was in full-on nesting mode, what Dana and I used to call “lose the egg” day. My room is spotless except for the full laundry baskets filled with clothes I need to wash and put away. In order to motivate myself, I am listening to a channel I created on Spotify called “The Real Slim Lady.” It’s everything that Eminem has ever put out.

Don’t judge me. The Slim Shady albums (both I and II) are AMAZING. “Headlights” on SSII brings me to tears every time, especially if you’ve seen “8 Mile.” I have therapy at 4:00, plus some worksheets I need to finish before then. There are certain “homework assignments” that my Medicaid requires to make sure I’m progressing in the right direction. It’s the “gangsta rap and handle it” approach this AM… although I don’ think Em is really gangsta because there’s so much pop mixed in. I may need to switch to Mike Jones later in the afternoon to make sure I’ve got it “all sewed up.” Sarah will be so glad to hear about my job interview, even though I didn’t get the job. I can’t wait to tell her all about it. Afterward, I think I will go to the liquor store and treat myself to a six-pack of Gosling’s. It makes me feel wird to go to a liquor store just to buy soda, but I haven’t found a grocery store that carries it.

The last time I went to buy it, one of the other customers asked me what it was good for. I told her there were two excellent cocktails she could make- Kraken and ginger or Old Overholt and ginger. Rye and ginger carries so much weight in my heart, because I’d never heard of it before I went to Ottawa and hung out with Meag. Apparently it is not popular in the U.S., but one of the best cocktails I have ever put in my mouth. It was another Canadian that introduced me to Old Overholt, a friend invited to “orphan Thanksgiving” at Susan & Diane’s. It has a great price point, about $17 a bottle and tastes much better (to me, anyway) than anything much more expensive… the exception that I don’t have any because I don’t drink much anymore. I’m just over it. My taste buds have changed, with the exception that I was so nervous during a date I drank more than I should’ve and suffered the consequences.

Being two years away from 40 makes hangovers not even worth it, especially since I don’t enjoy alcohol much anymore. For instance, Dom gave me a 12-pack of Tecate left over from one of his parties, and that was in June. There are still six left. It doesn’t matter- I am so up for fun and shenanigans that people think I must be drunk, anyway.

There are two things that began changing my taste buds. The first is that I do not enjoy drinking in front of people in recovery, and I have a lot of friends who have suffered with addiction.  The second thing is that I would rather make caffeine my drug of choice, because it makes the evening last longer. I remember going to clubs and karaoke with recovering friends in Portland. The first time I came home wired for sound because the bar gave free refills to designated drivers, and I must have had, like, seven Diet Cokes. The second time, the bar sold Monster.

Mission accomplished.

My favorite energy drink is Rock Star Recovery. I am sure it is supposed to be for the seriously hung over, because it has B vitamins in it. But it is delicious beyond belief. Most convenience stores carry the lemonade, but the orangeade seems to come straight from heaven. The grapeade is good, too, and so is the coconut water.

When I worked at the airport as a line cook, though, I depended on Monster 2x. These are not for the faint of heart, but work beautifully if you are on the brunch shift.

Speaking of the brunch shift, one of the funniest lines that Anthony Bourdain wrote in “Kitchen Confidential” is that he’d gotten fired from some kind of fancy restaurant, and the only job he could get was brunch cook. He wrote that “the smell of failure is Hollandaise.” At the time, I was a brunch cook as well, and I laughed so hard there were tears and snot running down my face, especially since I HATE THE SMELL OF HOLLANDAISE… although one of the best compliments I’ve ever gotten from Dana is that my Hollandaise is better than hers (she’s Cordon Bleu certified), and she was REALLY impressed that I never used a blender. I would just add the eggs and the vinegar or lemon juice and whisk like a motherfucker until I reached sabayon and began to add the butter.

Luckily, at Biddy’s we didn’t use Hollandaise, but Bearnaise. It smells so much better that I actually do like it a lot. Even though the smell of Hollandaise makes me nauseous all on my own, there was another tipping point. The dishwashing liquid we used at Biddy’s smelled strongly of lemon, and washing the egg pans at the end of our shift (Dana and I worked together at brunch) made it a hundred times worse. No, I take that back. It made it a THOUSAND times worse.

Sometimes I wish I could go back to that time in my life, because Dana and I were so good together in the kitchen. We had the dance down perfectly. Not only did we have “the dance” perfected, we also had such a strong connection to each other that we could save tons of time on tickets by being able to have entire conversations with our eyes. There was only one time that I made a true mistake. I had a migraine and thought I could handle cooking on my own, anyway. I cut Dana and she went to the bar for her shift drink. I got so sick I just wanted to curl up on the floor, but according to Oregon law, if you’ve had an alcoholic drink, you CANNOT come back into the kitchen. That was a pump up the gangsta rap and get it HANDLED moment as well.

There’s nothing like cooking in a pub when you’d literally rather be dead than feel the migraine coursing through your capillaries. I can’t remember who walked to the convenience store for me, but one of the cooks did and got me a Monster and I took some ibuprofen. I “Kept Calm and Sold the Rail,” but it was literally the worst day of my life in terms of professional cooking. You cannot imagine my relief when the kitchen closed for the night.

It makes me go to my happy place when I think of working at Biddy’s, especially since I feel so bad right now.

Kleenex me, Jeeves.

As predicted, the recruiter called and said that I was not smart enough for a basic computer support position. She didn’t use those words, of course, but that was the gist of it. I get it. I am not a math person. But never in the history of my career have I had to figure out equations in order to say, “Thank you for calling, my name is Leslie. How can I help you?” Even when the computer support job involved knowing command line linux. As I told her in the interview, those things are different skills altogether. It’s back to the drawing board, but I know something will come up. I saw a Hulu commercial that made me laugh- something about getting a job in McClean and “what can silver do for you?” For those not in the know, the silver line is basically the train to the tech corridor.

Apparently, I interview well. One of the things that the recruiter said was that I was great to work with, and I think that if the decision was up to her, I probably would have gotten the job. This is the second interview in which I have done well, but other people have done more weller than me. It’s ok. I will find the right fit, even if it’s flipping burgers. I’m actually really good at that, by the way.

I think it’s funny that I’ve called Argo a burger-flippin’ ho as a joke many times, and now I might get that chance to be my own. 😛

I can’t remember whether I’ve told you this or not (too lazy to look it up), but despite all of our strife, I got the sweetest letter from Argo that I’ve gotten in months, so I printed it out and I keep it in the pocket of my Kindle case so I can look at it when I feel sad or nervous. She has this way of building me up that no one else ever has, so it is wonderful to be able to read that e-mail when I’m about to go into a stress-filled situation. It’s one of her superpowers as I wander trying to find my own.

One of them, apparently, is interviewing. I’m not taking the rejections with me. I am taking the sweet words that the people rejecting me have said, because I know that they are sincere… especially the ones from Christ Church, because I know for sure that it was a hard decision for them. I look forward to earning my superpower as youth volunteer, because I need it for my resume in case I find another youth director position that doesn’t require being ordained. I can’t wait to meet Rev. Susannah and work with her to accomplish her goals. If she wants me to, I can also help with visioning, but that is her call and not mine. Perhaps she is a visionary as well, and I will help her carry her mission forward whether I agree with her or not. As a volunteer, it is not my job to work against her, but to help her as much as I can.

I read a post on Facebook that resonated with me to the point that it hurt. It said to be careful of destination addiction, that what you’re seeking is somewhere else. I have fallen prey to that many times, and I am committing to settling in DC forever. If something goes terribly wrong, that doesn’t mean I need to run. It means that I need to take my Klonopin and Neurontin, pump up some gangsta rap, and get it HANDLED. DC is my home now, and I am putting down some serious roots. My choir director is overjoyed that I will be here over Christmas, because we are doing some serious work together.

I am starting to believe, really believe, that singing is one of my superpowers. When I warm up, I use different muscles than I do in my daily life, and it makes me walk taller with much more confidence than usual. I am going to commit to asking Nae if he needs a wedding singer, because that would help bring in money, even if it’s a small honorarium. I have thought about looking for a job as a ringer in another church, but I can’t. CCC is my home, and it is helping me mentally as I get my shit together. I also, under no circumstances, want to stop working with Nae.

I will also commit to asking Giles if he will work with me as well, because he was my first voice teacher and carries so much weight in my heart because of it. He’s so busy during the school year that it may not work out, but all he can say is no, and he will definitely say no if I never ask the question. Giles and I met through GLOBAL, the gay/straight alliance at University of Houston. He became my voice teacher when he was taking a pedagogy class and needed a student. He listened to my recording at Epiphany, and he made me feel so good about it. He told me how much stronger my voice has gotten since we last worked together, which of course brought tears to my eyes.

I also wouldn’t mind working with Zach again, because he gave me some pointers that really, really helped, like massaging my trachea before warming up.

Speaking of which, I need to see if deep-tissue massage and chiropractic appointments are covered by my insurance. I think it would really help in terms of the problems with my back. My friends Susie and Cynthia told me that I look like I walk around in constant pain, and they’re not wrong.  When I think about my back, though, it connects to the day I sent Meag a picture of it and she said she couldn’t wait to get her hands on me (no flirt intended).  She is one of the best LMTs in Canada, evidenced by the fact that the Canadian board that certifies LMTs has asked her to be on the panels more than once.

In other news, my dad is coming to visit soon. I can’t wait to have a few days with him all to myself. His superpower is that when he called, he told me he was coming over a weekend so he could go to church with me. If that’s not the sweetest music I’ve heard in a long time, I don’t know what is. Our love is a superpower that runs so deep I’m not sure I even have words for it.

Amen.

Yesterday I interviewed with a company called “Frontpoint Security.” I mention them by name because there are several reviews of the interview on Glassdoor, with replies from the company themselves, so I don’t think it’s unfair to name them here. It started as a wonderful day- cold and full of sunshine. I was excited that the train ride took almost an hour and 20, because I was reading a great novel (The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry). I arrived full of hope and the enjoyment of reading. That lasted right up until the interview began. Without any questions about my customer service experience, they handed me a five or six page logic test with math SAT questions. I had two problems there. The first is that I’ve gotten a D in logic twice, because I could not get the hang of taking verbal questions and turning them into equations. For instance, I am still not sure whether Jill is taller than Kelly, shorter than Kelly, or that Jill and Kelly are the same height just because Anne is taller than Jill. I am also not sure how many days it took for a water lily to become covered with water in the middle of a pond. The second is that I’ve never been through SAT prep, because I never had to take it. I went to a junior college for my first two years, and because they had their own entrance exams, I took them instead. I was placed in remedial math, and the very least I can say about that is I passed. I still have a ways to go in getting my Bachelor’s, mostly because I did not have time for a full-time job and advanced trig.

The reason that I skipped the SAT is that I was in the hospital with a migraine that wouldn’t quit, and I stayed there for longer than I’ve ever stayed in a hospital, except for the time I got meningismus, irritation of the meninges rather than full-on meningitis, and still no less painful. The migraine and the meningismus required the same battery of tests, including repeated spinal taps (I went to eleven). Plus, one of the medications I was given made me go from fine to batshit crazy in less than five minutes. A nurse got the order wrong, and instead of giving me a shot in the arm or hip of Stadol, pushed it into my IV. Meagan and Lindsay were standing there when it happened, and their eyes became larger and larger until my dad walked in and told Meagan to take Lindsay home. They were both in panic mode, because the effect of the drug was that I couldn’t stop talking, and at a pace so rapid that it was downright scary. I just kept saying over and over, “I’llbefineoncemydadgetshere. Iwantmydadbecausehe’llknowwhattodo….” along with a litany of orders to the nurses to get my dad the fuck here. When he arrived, he was in scrubs and I had never been more glad to see anyone in my life. I don’t remember what happened next, but I do remember that it calmed me down the slightest bit. Something was ordered for me- I think it was Haldol- but what the nurse did was inexcusable because she’d seen the order and didn’t read the whole thing. I think I missed three weeks of school, and when I was let go from the hospital, I still had to go for another spinal tap because the migraine hadn’t lifted. He told me to drive myself and lent me his van. I drove there, but they gave me a spinal tap and driving home was one of the scariest things I’d ever been through because I could barely lift my head over the steering wheel.

So, these questions are put in front of me and I realize how unprepared I am for this and begin to freak the fuck out. I asked the recruiter how much these questions counted, and did she want to know anything about my experience and career so far? She said,  “of course. It’s just that the manager came up with these questions to see how you’d get through training.” So, I told her everything I could possibly think of that would tilt my chances, including the Rock Star award I won at Alert Logic where a senior vice president had listened to my call and sent all the senior managers a note that if everyone else was like me, our Net Promoter Score was ensured. He talked about how I was cheerful at 3:00 AM, and thought it was brilliant that I chatted him up about football and Doctor Who since he was calling from the UK. The funniest thing that happened was that after I’d validated him by asking his security question, I said, “this is a question I ask all my British customers. Who is your Doctor?” He answered with the name of his GP. When I explained what I meant, he laughed heartily.

I also told her about the other Rock Star award I’d won because I was on the phone with a customer with another AL employee at the same time, and how he’d nominated me for it because of the great customer service I’d given while we were on the phone together. I was sitting there trying not to shake, but the memories of those two awards were something I focused on because it meant more to me than anything to prove that I was worthy of the job itself….. and worthy as a person. I was trying to self-soothe, because I knew I’d blown that test because I couldn’t even finish it and external validation was worthless.

She said I would hear something by Monday or Tuesday, so I am spending my weekend wound tight as a tick. I want a job where I can read all the way to work, and finish several chapters at once. I want a job that starts with great pay and ticks up with quality assurance. I want a job that has metrics out the ass because I like checking my performance every morning. It’s quite soothing not to go weeks without knowing how you’re doing…. like only getting a report card in school every six weeks.

It sounds like a great challenge, one for which I feel ready.

At Alert Logic, so much was going on with me emotionally that I crumpled with anxiety and threw up before meetings. I am not sure that I was healthy enough to take that job in the first place, having just come from Portland because I was so far down that I needed to come home and lean into my family for support. Now, I am free of all of it, and working with Sarah has gotten me on track for a wonderful life instead of one that’s merely mediocre. I came home because I was so depressed that I thought I might kill myself, but the only thing that stopped me was the dream of becoming a famous writer. In essence, I needed to stay alive for you, and I do not say that lightly.

Those feelings resurfaced when Dana and I had our ugly blowout, and I realized that I needed more help than my family and friends could provide. That was when I decided that being in a psych ward was better than leaning on people so unprepared to handle depression this overwhelming. As my romance with Dana and my friendship with Argo ended, I realized that the support system I had was slipping through my fingers, and I didn’t have anyone else that knew the ins and outs of the situation like they did. The suicidal thoughts and plans didn’t come from wanting to cause anyone pain, but to cause them relief that they didn’t have to worry about me anymore. Those thoughts are never reality, which is why Argo’s words gave me the strength I needed to take my life into my own hands and pull myself up enough not to ask my friends for help, but to submit to the fact that I was ill and needed to take my own steps to get better, rather than expecting everyone else to “fix me.”

My nature made it harder to get better in the hospital than I wanted to, because my empath mirror neurons went off and I began to believe that everyone else had it worse than me and they needed my support more than I needed theirs… another belief that probably cost me because I couldn’t recognize that we were all in the same boat. We were all broken in our own ways, and yes, I was just as sick as they were, but I took their stories on as my own, as I have done my whole life. The Lanagan Search & Rescue system became acute as my roommate told me she was a cutter and could I watch over her to make sure she didn’t cut herself in our room?

Luckily, she was not in my cohort, so I had meetings/classes all day without her. We all spilled our pasts and what brought us to this situation, this last-ditch effort to keep ourselves stable. The story that got me the most verklempt was a guy that wanted to kill himself over his job. God, no job is worth that, but his ego was tied to it and a project failure threw him into a downward spiral. Another reached hers by walking in on her husband committing adultery in their bed. Another arrived with scars on her wrists. It was terrifying and uplifting all at the same time, because sharing brought us close together and gave us hope that despite all our problems, we’d make it if we just stuck to the program not unlike AA, but similar in terms of sharing our stories and keeping it up during outpatient.

There were so many people I just wanted to take into my arms and not let go, because I am not the type person that can see suffering and walk away from it. However, the entire point of the program was learning how to soothe ourselves, and hugging was strictly forbidden. In some ways, I felt alone. I was the only lesbian, so there were few people that could really identify with me. I was also angry, because my social worker was a lesbian and absolutely lost her clinical separation and started to cry. Why would I be angry about that? Because it was my job to cry, and I didn’t want to sense weakness in the people around me that were supposed to help me because I didn’t want to take on their emotions about me. It was pity. Just straight out where I could see it, and the last thing I wanted or needed.

What I did learn in all of this was that I was right. Diane had been a problem, and not a solution. She knew I would need her as I started coming out, but didn’t realize that my young ears weren’t the appropriate place for her to talk about her life. She was right and wrong all at the same time, and would have been a wonderful resource had she kept her clinical separation intact as well. But she didn’t, and I ached for her in more ways than one.

If you click on both links, you will see the change in my tone in talking about her. The first is idealistic and wonderful, painful and real. The second is after all of the talks I’d had with friends who didn’t think my story was what I thought it was, and proved it to me.

Now, I am alone with my books and tea, wanting to reach up for something more than just sitting by myself, fictional characters often replacing real interaction. I’m having dinner with Pri-Diddy next Tuesday, where I know that she will enfold me in one of those hugs designed to heal pain…. because I am exhausted.

Sometimes my medication gives me very intense, lucid dreams. Last night, my high school love visited me for the first time in years. We talked for hours, just catching up on our lives. When I woke up, I realized how much I missed her, and had some interesting insights on my current life (as dreams are wont to do). I remembered the days in which I was tortured that she was married to someone else, not because I was in love with her still, but because being an ex caused certain……… issues.

They aren’t married anymore, haven’t been for a long time. But I drew so many correlations between her ex-wife and mine that it was illuminating to an amazing and frightening degree. Her ex-wife ran hot and cold with me, because in some instances, she handled the closeness between Meag and me, and sometimes she didn’t. Does that sound familiar in any way to some of you long-term readers? The hot was just as intense as the cold. I want to talk about the hot first.

It all started with Tim Horton’s, as many Canadian stories do. Here is an excerpt from an entry I wrote about an anniversary with Kathleen. The setup is that we were staying at an inn in Vermont, and it wasn’t far to Ottawa from there:

I’d forgotten that Quebec is the only province in Canada where they don’t have to put signs in both French and English. The entire menu is in French. Not only do I not know what a TimBit is, I don’t know how to ask for one. I am standing there in a puddle of self pity. ALL I WANT IS A DONUT AND SOME COFFEE AND NOW I’M IN A FUCKING FOREIGN COUNTRY AND I CAN’T READ!

I go up to the counter. I ask for a TimBit and a large coffee in English. The woman points to the menu overhead. You can’t get one TimBit. The quantities and prices are scattered as if put there by someone with a killer hangover. I point to the one I want. I pay. It’s like ten dollars. I don’t care.

My order comes up, and all I see is this HUGE BOX. I have ordered ENOUGH FUCKING TIMBITS TO FEED THE ENTIRE CANADIAN ARMY, AND ALL THEIR SQUIRRELS.

We’re walking out of the restaurant, and I’m going to kill Meagan. All she had to say was, “it’s kind of like a donut hole, eh.” So I call her up. And she’s laughing hysterically. “Oh man,” she says. “I never should have done that to ya in Quebec.”

Years later, Deah hatched a plan.

She wanted me to come to the house without Meag knowing, and knock on the door with a box of TimBits. It was brilliant, especially because their daughter is named Tym, so they’re not TimBits anymore. They’re TymBits. So, Deah shows up at the airport with the box, and we drive straight back to the house. Deah stands back, and there are butterflies in my stomach as I knock on the door.

The look on her face was priceless… so full of love and absolute shock that I’m glad there’s not a picture. That look was just for me. She grabbed me and hugged me for what seemed like an hour. It wasn’t, of course, but in my memory it stays that way. Deah is smiling like the cat that swallowed the canary, because she’s managed to pull this off. It was #winning in massive proportions. We had a great time just BEING. We didn’t do anything, and that’s when Meag introduced me to The Joel Plasket Emergency, because “our song” became Nowhere with You:

Our thing was Starbucks, so we went for a coffee and sat there just as we did when we were 18. It was our “date place” in Sugar Land, there being few places for 18-year-olds to party in our quiet suburb. Her poison was a hazelnut latte, and mine was raspberry because I liked getting a “pink drink.” She told me that she was sorry we missed truly being partners, because she thought it was something we’d probably have done well. It was a compliment I’d been waiting to hear for a very long time, because we were secure in our places in life. It wasn’t a flirt, just a recognition that the way things went down was full of regret for both of us. She thought that she’d treated me so poorly that she didn’t even have a right to ask. My inner rage went to eleven internally, because I didn’t know what I would have said, but she’d taken away my choice. Then, rage melted away as I realized that we were exactly where we needed to be at that time in our lives, and to be angry about it was pointless. We’d made our choices, the right ones… at least then, anyway.

At other times, Deah treated the intimacy between Meag and me as a threat, when I really, really wasn’t. All I wanted was to be a part of Meagan’s life in a real way, and it wasn’t that far to Ottawa from DC, so I could really be present in a way that I couldn’t when we’d only see each other sporadically. At the time, her parents were living in Sugar Land, so visits home were always a path back to me and letting the ghosts of our past rise as we went by our old high school and “our” Starbucks (which, incidentally, isn’t there anymore… and don’t think I’m not sad about that fact). I remember clearly the time when we had to run an errand, and she leaned over and said, “want to be 18 again?” I said, “hell, yeah.” She rolled down all the windows, opened the sun roof, and turned up the stereo as we raced down Palm Royale.

I can understand Deah’s hot and cold in a whole new way, because it was not dissimilar to the way Dana treated Argo. She was never a threat, but Dana treated her that way, anyway. I think that was the point of the dream- to get me to understand in a way that I couldn’t until this morning. I am so thankful to whatever brought on the dream, but I would like to believe it was my God place, the one that whispers to me in pieces of wisdom that I, in the words of Mary, “ponder in my heart.”

It is also comforting that years after the conversation we had in the past, we are still in the places we need to be to grow in the right direction. Maybe one day we’ll have another moment in which we can just be 18 again, the ghosts rising from our past…

With TymBits.

Dear Bryn,

It’s been a trip around the sun of gargantuan proportions. So many ups, so many downs, and through it all we’ve maintained our senses of humor. Well, most of the time, anyway. Some shit has just been sad. We’ve walked this path together, forged when we were infants in emotional growth and are starting to feel ten feet tall and bulletproof because when we talk, we realize that we aren’t alone. Have never been alone. We’ve had each other.

I miss the days of sitting on your back porch, watching the dogs play as we delve deeper and deeper into conversation. I miss hugs that were designed to last one second longer, because we’d just emptied our souls and needed to lean in and hold on. I love that we’ve been able to keep up our long friend-love affair by having text. I thought I was an intense personality that would never find someone with whom to roam the earth, because as I get deeper in conversation, people tend to say, “whoa. I’m out.” It was a relief to meet my match… someone not afraid of introspection and hearing others process theirs.

In my personality type profile (INFJ, sometimes P when I’m not feeling like a “judgmental dickhead“), it mentions that in my life, I will cultivate deep relationships with very few people, and hold on to them… rather than having a bunch of friends I know to varying degrees. Thank you for being one of those people. I look forward to the day when I can walk with you around the streets of DC, pointing out cool stuff and saying, “ok, this is fantastic, but let me show you THIS!” Most notably, I want to take you to the zoo. It’s amazing how much inspiration I get from sitting with my laptop or my tablet and just writing in front of the giraffes. Plus, the zoo is within a park, so make sure to point out beautiful joggers. 😛

It would also be fun to go dancing again. That was one of the best nights I’ve ever had in Portland, even though that’s usually not my scene. Let’s hit up somewhere cool (I’d have to ask around, because again, usually not my scene) and take shots of Red Bull. Wired for sound to make the evening last as long as possible.

I just wanted to tell you how much you mean to me, because I figure it’s the best birthday present I have to offer. I figure that in my writing, what I can offer you is my heart. Thank you for taking such good care of it.

Happy birthday, love. I hope you get lots of presents.

Always (and I mean ALWAYS),

Leslie

I had to walk to the 7-Eleven because I’d run out of necessities like hot dog buns. While I was walking, I was listening to an episode of The Diane Rehm Show that featured Sherry Turkle, an expert on digital education and how technology is changing the population in general. I know for sure it changed my relationship with Dana, Argo, and Aaron… all in different ways.

With Dana, there was the obvious “we both check out on our phones when we’re doing nearly anything.” In fact, I would say that our entire relationship changed when Dana got an iPhone, because then both of us were using our phones as our computers, and therefore, it changed our interactions with each other. There were times when we’d instant message in the same house, and that’s not weird. Studies show that it happens to families all over the world, not just ours. When she had a “dumb phone,” she pulled me away from my electronics. It wasn’t her responsibility to do so, but she did… and I did not know how grateful to be for that until tonight. When we both took time out to look things up, something else would grab our attention, and whatever we’d been talking about would be lost. It also made it much easier for us to be wrong or right in an argument about a fact, because instead of just talking about it, we’d Google the answer. We are both trivia nerds, so it was not unusual for us to get in minor scrapes over when the elevator was invented, or whether Cezanne or Gougin painted a particular painting, or what the fuck ever. Even if I knew the answer cold, even based on past conversations I’d had with her, Dana would still take out her phone and look it up. When I was right, she was never as happy as when I was wrong. I’m not the best loser, but I always tried to pretend it didn’t matter to me as not to up the ante….

But it did. Technology changed our relationship for both better and worse, because there were times when I genuinely wanted to look things up as well… we’d sit next to each other and share the screen, both interested in reading the Wikipedia article. That was when technology was an amazing help. Other times, I wanted to talk to connect with her, and stopping to look something up provided what I now believe was an unnecessary distraction.

I will say for the record that she comes by it honestly. I got in a scrape with her dad over whether you could check in at an airline with an iPhone, and I said you could. When he verbally wrestled me to the ground, I printed out an article showing him you could. He still said I was wrong because you couldn’t check in the entire party on one phone. Bambergers do not like to be wrong, so perhaps that was a piece of wisdom I missed in all of Dana’s fact-checking. It’s in her DNA.

Yet another place where I could have been more giving and just let things slide. The thing is, though, because we could see each other, there was also a lot of hugging, kissing, jokes, and laughter.

With Argo, I learned from this podcast that only 20% of communication is verbal, and some studies push it down to 7%. So to say that we knew each other was relative. I know I made the mistake of thinking I knew her better than I did, and I would say the same of her. Our ideas of each other’s personalities were skewed by quite a bit because we never saw each other in the context of facial expressions, tones in our voices, etc. I realized that in a lot of our e-mails, I was inferring her tone rather than knowing it, and that piece made all the difference. Maybe if I could have heard her tone of voice in her writing, I would have said a lot of things differently, gave a lot more when I saw she was upset, etc. I also know that it’s a lot easier to reveal things about yourself that you wouldn’t say if someone was sitting right in front of you, so there’s that.

Actions and reactions on paper are totally different than in person… and totally different than on the phone. There are so many levels to communication that it was a mistake to limit ourselves to only one. My words hurt her, and I couldn’t see it. Her words hurt me, and she couldn’t see it. There was no way to just chill. There was no way to see tears and respond to them. There was no way to know whether we were joking or serious without a fuckton of emoticons. In a way, it was a great release to be able to send my words out into the ether, but when my words didn’t engender the response I thought they would, there was no way for us to look at each other and come to complete resolution. The part that I *do* know about Argo is that she is the most hilarious person I’ve ever met in my life, but it’s a hard road back to hilarity when talking about something serious in only black and white. She entered my life as a “Fanagan,” so in effect, the thing that drew her to me became something she despised.

But it’s ok. She only knew 20% of me, and I only knew 20% of her. Who knows what would have happened had we known the other 80%? I don’t know whether it would be better or worse, but I do know that it would be different.

With Aaron, it’s an interesting dichotomy. We have known each other in a friend-intimate way. He knows he can have whatever he wants out of my fridge, and I know that both of us feel a real loss in terms of “going nowhere with you.” We called it “running Aarons.” However, now that we’re in different cities, I can count on one hand the number of times we’ve talked on the phone. Now our relationship is much more like the one I had with Argo, checking in with each other online all the time… the difference being that I’ve been around him long enough that most of the time, when I infer his tone, it’s correct, because I’ve been there day in and day out to know how he would say something and sometimes, why he would say it. At the same time, though, I don’t know how he has grown in the time that I’ve left, and I have to make room for it. So maybe I know 40% of him. 60% on a good day. 😛

As for me, I have gotten the strange telephobia that’s sweeping the nation. With me, I want to see you in person, or I want to write to you. That middle ground, for some reason, has become lost to me. When I was younger, I could spend hours on the phone. Now, a phone call makes me sweat. It’s common knowledge that getting over a fear is tackling it head-on, so perhaps being single right now is better for me because I don’t get to bargain with Dana over whether she’ll call for me or not. I don’t have a choice whether to face my fear. I just have to muscle through it, along with a lot of other people.

And in all of this, my only question is whether we are creating new forms of dialogue, or destroying something that can’t be replaced. Sometimes people need to hear my voice. Sometimes people need to be able to hug me. Sometimes, there need to be conversations that cannot be interrupted because someone liked my status.

I’d continue this entry, but my phone just went off. I hope it’s a letter, but it’s probably just spam. It doesn’t matter. You know I’m going to look anyway.

I’ve never lived with a real guy before. With Grant, he was a metrosexual, so his beauty products were equal to mine. He cleaned up after himself, and never let the bathroom get real. You know what I mean. He might have left the kitchen a wreck most days, but the bathroom was his sanctuary just as much as mine.

Duncan is one of those men that has never heard of Comet, leaves his dirty shorts hanging in the bathroom to dry on the back of the door, and tends to make yellow stains on the toilet that I clean up, not because he’s lazy, but because it would never occur to him that was a problem. He just doesn’t notice.

Because a) we’re not married and 2) I believe in equality, I don’t care whether the toilet seat is up or down. I figure that he shouldn’t have to remember to put the toilet seat down for me because I don’t have to remember to leave the seat up for him. Where it is is just where it is, you know? However, it would be nice that whether the seat is up or down, it’s clean.

My room looks somewhat akin to the CIA or the FBI thinking that I have papers hidden somewhere that they have to find by turning everything upside down. It’s not necessarily unclean, just unkempt. If I had a guest coming over, I could get it spotless in less than 15 minutes. I need to put the clothes in the hamper and take down the recycling, but other than that, I’m golden. I’m trying to keep everything in some semblence of order because my therapist says it will help, and I’m willing to try anything. I wish I could get back the “anal Annie” attitude I developed in my Portland apartment, but apparently that OCD was short-lived, probably because it was tied to that time in my life, and that time in my life is never coming back, either.

My point is this. As long as I take my dishes downstairs so that I don’t get bugs or mold, I could give a shit what my room looks like. Sometimes my crazy spatter is heavier than others. But I would never in a million gazillion years let that spill over into a common area of the house. My space is my space. Our space is our space, and never the twain shall meet.

I have always had this attitude in group houses, and it has served me well. Duncan is thisclose to getting a reprimand from Hayat, because I’m not going to confront Duncan. Hayat can be “the heavy” a lot better than I can. She is a ball-breaking tornado in a tiny body, and I just love watching her do it. 

It’s kind of a spectator sport. 

When she’s on the telephone, I pretend not to listen so that I get to hear her order people around at work. She is very, very good at what she does, although privately I call her “Chandler,” because I’ve lived here since April and I still don’t know what that is exactly. It has to do with spreadsheets.

I should have taken a picture of the bathroom before I cleaned it. Hindsight is 20/20. All I’ll really have to say is “yellow stains” and she’ll get the picture. Duncan is an attorney who is trying to get into the CIA (really) and always studying for some kind of exam. I’m not sure what that exam entails, because I thought that if intelligence wanted you, you’d know it.

I have a CIA baseball cap that my dad bought for me at a tourist shop, and it gives me no small amount of pleasure to fuck with people about it. I mean, come on. If you’re actually in the CIA, why in the everliving hell would you advertise that fact? Apparently, some people don’t know that.

This one lady said, “are you really in the CIA?” I said, “yes. In fact, it was really easy. I just took a Blockbuster Video application and crossed out ‘Blockbuster Video’ and wrote in ‘CIA’ at the top in crayon, dropped it in the mail, and ‘voila!’ I can’t take credit for that Blockbuster Video line.  James came up with it in high school when one of our friends wanted to be in the FBI. But it’s a good joke, so I lifted it for my own amusement.

The woman looked at me wide-eyed, like she couldn’t tell whether I was kidding or not and just walked off. I just thought to myself, “…aaaaaaand, my work here is done.”

My next touristy purchase is going to be the t-shirt that says, “NSA: The Only Agency That Cares Enough to Listen.”

In case you’re wondering, the crayon was “Burnt Sienna.” I don’t think they would have taken me if it had been “Cerulean.” Although, you are totally screwed if you want to join the CIA, because Blockbuster Video closed all their stores, and Best Buy just won’t cut it.

Good luck, Duncan.  Maybe I’ll lend you my hat if you’ll clean the fucking bathroom.

The high today is supposed to be 52 degrees. Right now it is 48 and partly cloudy. My body is saying, “I remember this.” Right now I am wearing a long-sleeved t-shirt, an oxford, my hoodie, jeans, and two pairs of socks (one of them being thick and woolly). If need be, I have a down jacket to put on top of all my layers, but I doubt I will, because within five minutes of walking, I’m ready to take it off, anyway. When I’m walking, I rarely need a coat because the movement in itself creates enough body heat to keep my inner layers warm. When my mother gave me a Macy’s gift card, I splurged on a Ralph Lauren double-weight hoodie, and I am not sure I have taken it off since she bought it for me because Samantha likes to keep the air conditioning (as I have said before) somewhere between low-boy and walk-in. If you do not know what those are, you’ve never worked in a restaurant. A low-boy is a refrigerator under the prep area. A walk-in is a freezer as big as a dorm room. Needless to say, wearing layers has come in handy since April, and especially handy since August. I am slowly re-acclimating to the cold, and I cannot say it is not welcome.

One of the reasons I stayed in Portland so long was the cold. I do not like the humid heat of Houston, and I love fall clothes and being bundled up like a walking sheet set with comforter. In Maryland, we get our fair share of hot weather, but it doesn’t last as long… another plus being that when it is cold, the sun still shines, so my Vitamin D level doesn’t plummet into nothing. Once I came home from Portland and Angela (my doctor stepmother) ran a set of bloods on me and a few days later, I got a phone call:

Angela: Congratulations! You have the lowest Vitamin D level in the history of my entire practice!
Leslie: I’d like to thank location, location, location. What do I win? An Amana side by side refrigerator/freezer?

My Vitamin D level was six, and normal is somewhere between 20 and 50. I took the pills religiously, but they didn’t work for me. Apparently, what I needed was natural sunshine. When Dana and I moved to Houston in 2013, I sat outside in the backyard and drank water no matter how hot it was. I would sit there for at least an hour a day, and not only did I get a farmer’s tan, I started to feel better, less depressed even, within a week or so. Since it worked, it only encouraged me to sit out there and sweat some more. I made friends. There was Clarence, the toad that lived under the house, an abundance of squirrels, and a bat I named “Batly” after the clumsy character with huge glasses on Eureeka’s Castle, but Dana preferred “Batholomew.”

In the cold of Maryland, it feels right. Sunshine and warm clothes together, with an equal amount of squirrels, cardinals, blue jays, orioles, and hummingbirds. We also have the occasional rabbit, because we Nassers (me being the adopted one) will feed everyone. We’ve got a “squirrel feeder” because the other Nassers will not take my advice about how to keep them out of the bird feeder (toss the birdseed in chili oil, because mammals can taste heat and birds can’t). We put peanuts all over the yard. We even have the occasional bee, which pleases me to no end. I stay away from them because I am allergic, but nothing makes me happier than the fact that they can feed themselves in our yard.

As a former line cook, the fact that bees are dying in large quantities is enough to get me to break into tears, but that’s an entry unto itself. We’ll talk about that another time.

Just now, as I’ve been writing this, the clouds have drifted away and it is truly sunny. It’s still 48 degrees, but the neighborhood looks so pretty bathed in sunlight.

I wish we’d had that weather yesterday, because I went with a group from church out to our retreat house in West Virginia. People were hiking the hills and taking hay rides, which sounded awesome in theory and terrible in practice. I spent most of my day huddled by the campfire, because even though I was warm enough without my down jacket, I forgot to bring gloves. Gloves would have made all the difference, because even when I put my hands in my pockets, it wasn’t enough to keep me from shivering violently. I sat there most of the day, trying to remember everything Matt, Ned, and Dana had ever shown me about making a fire. I did pretty well, actually, and kept us going with monstrous heat in the middle of a misty Portland-like day. Everything was beautiful, with the leaves turning and the grass so green that I couldn’t believe the picture I’d taken. There was no correction at all, and the grass popped out at me. In the photo, I am standing in front of the retreat house, looking out toward the entrance and exit road. I wish I’d taken more pictures, but I got a great shot, and I figured, “let’s quit while we’re ahead.” The rest of the shots I could have gotten included things like cars, orange cones, etc. I wanted the shots I got to be pure, and completely free of anything modern. I wouldn’t have liked any of the shots I’d gotten if I’d had to spend time editing out pickup trucks, and I don’t think you would’ve, either. I tend to spend too much time on editing photos, and would rather concentrate on my eye for photography so that editing doesn’t really need to happen in the first place.

I think it would be a great place to take the youth group on retreat, but the house needs to be brought up to code in order to let the kids sleep there. It might be a project the youth might think about taking on, especially if we have some Eagle Scouts able to supervise. I sincerely believe that Eagle Scouts can do anything. It might be a good conversation to have with Rev. Susannah, who is the woman that actually got the job as the youth director at CCC. I am looking forward to working with her, because as I have said before, all of this is preparing me to fly solo. Learning how to manage a youth group, I believe, is the best step you can take before becoming a senior pastor, because nine times out of ten, you don’t get people to come to your church by adults randomly showing up. The kids hear about the youth groups their friends attend, and that, in turn, brings their parents into the fold. It works the same with young kids’ Christian Education, although in our church, that’s a completely different department, led by Rev. Audrey. I firmly believe anything we can do to get more kids active in our children and youth programs is a good thing, because our congregation is getting older. New lifeblood is coming in, but it would be great to see the rate progress, and I believe it will. There are so many ways for people to plug in, especially kids. Everything from Sunday School to string orchestra.

This church is so amazing that I can’t help but gush about it…… while I wrap up in my layers and try to recreate the acclimatization I had to Portland cold way back when….. but at least my Vitamin D level is normal. 😉

Compromise is so hard, because it has to mean that the other person is listening… and you can’t make them. You can’t make anybody do anything, but in a relationship, it’s hard to convey needs and have the other person adjust their behavior. I am not speaking to anyone directly, just focusing on the weakness in myself. I have a hard time with not winning, even when it’s not a competition. If I knew the answer as to how to fix it, I would probably still be married. I would have made a great lawyer, because I will argue a point until you agree with me whether you want to or not. I have heard over and over in my life, “I just can’t win with you.” Sometimes, that’s true. I am so verbally flexible that few people have the chutzpah to stay with me all the way to the end of an argument, because even without meaning to, I am exhausting.

I want to examine every detail, every aspect, every feeling, every behavior. Most people don’t want to go that deep, and usually my response to “I can’t win with you” is, “yes. You can. We’re just not done yet.” It’s like there’s two sides to a coin in my brain. I want to “win” the argument, and at the same time, to me, a win doesn’t mean I am victorious. It means that we talked through it all the way to the end. I am so much more willing to give when I understand the problem, and it takes me a Sherlock Holmes amount of information before I can make a decision- the exception being that I can’t deduce as fast as he can, so arguments take me a lot of time to process. I want to get all the way inside your brain, know everything you think about a situation. Most people don’t have that kind of endurance emotionally, and to me, “I can’t win with you” is just throwing up their hands in exhaustion and walking off to end the argument so that I don’t have a complete picture with which to ponder.

One of my favorite lines in an argument is “stay with me, Jimbo.” I ask deep, probing questions that most people don’t answer because they don’t know the answer themselves. They don’t know themselves that well, so how could they possibly tell me? It causes frustration because they’re not going as deep as I am. Very few people can. As an INFJ, I am introspective to a fault. If you ask me something about myself, I’ve probably already thought about it. In fact, I like it when people ask me those questions, because I am bad at small talk because I don’t care.

I don’t want to talk about trivial things. I want to talk about big ideas rather than small ones… even in arguments. I want to break us both open like coconuts so that we can get to that vulnerable place of what’s really wrong, instead of the thing you’re actually telling me. I can see behind the mask. Arguments are never about small things. The small things cover up the big things, and I will probe until I find it.

I am also not very good at having my feelings invalidated, the source of just about every bit of anger I’ve ever had in an argument. If I bring up something that’s bothering me and the response is something akin to “it’s all in your head,” it brings up a lot of childhood stuff that still makes me angry and I get enraged to the point where I’m not even fighting with you anymore. I’m fighting with me and the ghosts in my head. I don’t need people to say that I’m right, only that my reality is my reality. That how I view things is important because logic and emotion are not the same, just like science and religion. Just because you don’t feel the same things I feel doesn’t mean that my feelings are wrong or bad- just different. I would much rather have someone say to me that they disagree with my assessment, but they heard me, and better yet, heard something that resonated with them even if they didn’t agree with everything.

I hear truth even when I’m angry, and hearing truth is the easiest way for me to calm myself. My whole body will relax when we reach a point of connection, an aha! moment where we both feel the same way. Sometimes that takes more than a few minutes to achieve.

I am many things, but able to work in soundbites is not one of them. Sometimes, my questions are repetitive because I want to go back to something we talked about earlier and I don’t remember what you said, but I remember how I felt when you said it and I want to go back there and explore it again because there was something I was going to say and we moved on before I could respond.

It’s tiresome, but worth it to me when I grok a situation rather than just skimming the surface. I’ve gotten to the point in my life where I don’t want to be a Southerner anymore- the type person that covers up the deep and dark with a lot of cake and icing. Secrets kill relationships. Old tapes from childhoods kill relationships when the other partner doesn’t know about them and doesn’t bother to ask.

We all have monsters in the dark rooms of our minds that we’re afraid to take out and examine, because we don’t realize that when the light shines into them, it was a coat the whole time.

As I have begun to explore my dark side, I’ve found coats, toys, Legos, you name it. When I flipped on the switch, everything looked different.

It’s a new thing I’m trying out.