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.

I type so fast that my keyboard is constantly ahead of my tablet’s ability to process it. Interestingly enough, my old Android tablet is probably the best of them at it, but the new versions of WordPress hate it, so I hardly ever keep it with me. The coolest thing about my Bluetooth keyboard is that it has three slots, and a dial to control it. My iPad is one, my phone is two, and my Android is three. I tend to set it in the slot vertically, because it makes the paragraphs look like normal size. 🙂

I’m at Starbucks trying to process everything that happened in therapy, because for the first time, I felt some real emotions bubble up. Most of the time, because of the meds I’m on, I can’t feel the physical reactions to stress, anxiety, and rage (using the Oxford comma because anxiety and rage do not always overlap). Today, for the first time, my chest got tight despite the medication, and I realized that Sarah was hitting me where I needed to be hit. I told her about the night Diane passed me her diary, and she started asking about what my triggers were for that event. I told her that since the relationship lasted almost 25 years, there were any number of things that would set me off, but that in particular, there are pieces of music… and that I can remember so clearly how the air smelled that if the air smells the same, I will go right back to that moment. I wish I could describe that smell in a Nathaniel Hawthorne kind of way, but what I remember most is that it was tinged with the smell of burning leaves, a clear sense of fall crispness (It was Sept 10, 1992). It’s amazing how often the air smells like that year after year. She asked if there were any songs on the radio, and I said “no, it was never that kind of music. There are just things that my conductors have pulled out over the years, even her, that I have to muscle my way through.” There was only once I completely lost it. She did not take it well.

When we were young, one of the pieces I clearly remember singing with her in adult choir is John Rutter’s For the Beauty of the Earth. She chose it for our last anthem as a choir together at Bridgeport UCC, and I didn’t know it at the time, but I was having a panic attack. Diane is one of those people that before she gets ready to do something, she wants a bubble around her of silence so she can prepare. We are not dissimilar that way, so I went to her and said, “I’m sorry to interrupt the bubble but I am so sad that this is the last Sunday I’ll have you as a conductor and this piece reminds me of being a kid in the adult choir, your elbow on my shoulder.” I was crying so hard I could barely breathe, and she gave someone the look of “get her out of here.” The rejection meant a lot to me in retrospect, because it was the moment that whomever it was that I knew wasn’t ever coming back.

Either that, or she didn’t want to become a blubbering mess, either, and I will accept that answer as well. But I did not like how she could look at me in all of my panic and tears without realizing that even a kind look or a quick hug would have gone so far… “a compliment or kindness, just to bring us into view, but you could not interpret me… and I could not interpret you.” The service itself went fine, and I was over the panic attack before it even started. I just wanted a moment of recognition that we were ending where we began, and it was sad. Extraordinarily so. Even though Dana and I were right across the street, once Bridgeport ended, I might as well have been living in Abu Dhabi.

Later on, I asked if I could meet with her, and she said no, but I could meet with her partner, instead. It worked about as well as it sounded it did. It was Susan’s job to protect Diane, and she jumped down my throat any time I had anything negative to say. My relationship with Diane predated hers by seven years- there’s no way I should have allowed that conversation to happen, because there is no way that Susan would have had any frame of reference for it. There were things between Diane and me that I didn’t want to tell Susan for exactly that reason- first of all, she wasn’t there. Second of all, she had no reason to believe me, and she didn’t.

Everything was all in my head, but I do not think that was necessarily Susan’s fault. I have no idea what Diane told Susan about me, and my guess is not enough. Susan’s idea is that my feelings about Diane were a crush that I couldn’t get over and it was just this big bag of shit I’d been carrying around for too many years.

Well, as it turns out, she was right about the second part.

Sarah told me that it wasn’t my fault that as a child, I should have taken on the responsibility of saving a full-grown adult. I agree with her, but how could I not? Her stories were all I could think of when I closed my eyes. How to get her out of her present situation. How to get her to see that I was the safe space. How to get her to see that I would never hurt her, and she was choosing to stay with someone who would. Jeri never had any intention of getting help, and there would have been no judge in the world lenient enough that Jeri wouldn’t have been locked up for keeping a pound of marijuana in the house. A pound.

I am spilling all of these “family” secrets because I don’t believe that Diane deserves to be protected anymore. I’ll never get a day in court, but I can get a day (years) in the press. It will be a Google tattoo of enormous proportion, and even if there are unintended consequences for me, there are zero fucks given. I don’t have any more to give.

It’s time to start shifting the blame where it belongs, rather than having me believe for the rest of my life that it was wholeheartedly appropriate for her to use a child for adult problems. Even when she wasn’t aware of it, I was the parent and she was the child. So many nights I went to bed wondering if she was okay…. that I thought it was only a matter of time before Jeri would leave a mark on her that would show. That it was only a matter of time until she was arrested as an accessory. That was my life, starting at 13 years old. Wondering each and every day, most of the day, with no small amount of worry…. and at the same time, feeling the worthlessness of stupidity. My instincts were off regarding the nature of Diane’s intentions, or at least they were until the adults around me convinced me to consider that perhaps Diane knew exactly what she was doing…. and if I couldn’t believe that, to believe how entirely inappropriate it was for a 25 year old woman to use a 14 year old girl as an emotional garbage can.

Part of me thinks that Diane never vetted the journal before she gave it to me, therefore she had no idea the way it would open my mind. The other part thinks that she wanted to open my mind that way so she could inflict the emotional abuse on me that she had suffered herself. I don’t think she could bring herself to perpetuate the cycle of actually sexually abusing a child, but I do believe that she thought what she was doing wasn’t wrong because she wasn’t touching me. It’s what abusers do. They justify everything, and I cannot believe a thought like that would not cross her mind at one point or another.

Years and years later, she told me that she was sorry for the way that she treated me, because she could see how some of those conversations would have been confusing and upsetting to me. It seemed too dismissively simple, and I couldn’t help it. I snapped back that if writing one e-mail of apology was all she was going to do to say she was sorry, then reading it meant “thanks, I’m all better now.”

After that, she offered to attend one of my therapy sessions with me, and I sent her an e-mail giving her my doctor’s information and told her to schedule it, because I wanted insurance that she was actually serious. She told me that she was not the schedule-maker. I wrote her a couple of days later and said that I’d changed my mind about doing therapy together, because I did not want memories of her with my doctor, or even in the room that I go for safe space… but that she was welcome to attend Al-anon with me so that in the room, we were both on equal footing.

That didn’t go over well. By that time, I was out of ideas and tired of trying to please her, so I just stopped. I started talking to Dana and my friends about what had happened, and their alarm bells went off in a major way. Finally, recognition that there was a problem, even if it didn’t come from her. I just hated that I had to get so far down before I could find the way up.

The universe is calling me to get better. Calling for me to feel rest and relief from what has been done to me. Reaching out as if to say, “I have great things for you if and when you are ready….. just try to keep up.”

This one is going to jump around a bit, but I wanted to start with Twitter, because people are starting to follow me like gangbusters, but I have my doubts as to whether they are real people or not. Does anyone else have this problem? I am getting followed by all sorts of companies and media outlets that seem more interested in commerce than reading my feed. I don’t mind, necessarily, because a follower is a follower. However, I am not in need of search engine optimization, real estate, or clothing. I go to Macy’s. End of story.

I actually don’t Tweet all that often, I just use it for my blog feed most of the time, which is exciting because my work is getting a much broader audience. I’ve also got some exciting new followers, like the rewrite editor at USA Today, and some liberal Christian ones from tagging Nadia Bolz-Weber in a reply to a Tweet from one of her fans and including her. It’s truly humbling that word is getting around, and that people seem to like the way I weave my faith all the way through my web site, because it’s not just something I do. Faith is who I am.

For instance, I constantly believe that most of the words that flow out of me are actually prayers in disguise, because my strength doesn’t come from hiding my emotions, but from releasing them and being vulnerable. Life has imitated art as I become less and less scared of being vulnerable in front of people, and not wearing the mask I was programmed to wear at a very young age.

First, there was the natural mask of preacher’s kid, because you don’t want everyone in your congregation to know the ins and outs of your family. No one ever told me to do this, I just knew to be on my best behavior because if I wasn’t, my parents weren’t going to hear it from two or three people, but two or three hundred. It just wasn’t worth it to be vulnerable and human in front of people because when you are the preacher’s kid, they treat you differently and hold you to a higher standard, as if the black robe my father wore extended to the rest of us. The first thing my sister said when my dad announced he was leaving the ministry was, “does that mean we can cuss now?” My personal mask got thicker when the emotional abuse started, because then I had even more to hide.

It wasn’t just about being a preacher’s kid anymore. It was about protecting my relationship with Diane at all costs, because I knew that if I talked, it would be taken away from me. As it was, we were on thin ice and trying to find time alone rather than people seeing us together. I would say now that it wasn’t romantic, but certainly seductive to slip away under the radar.

It was also weird that being a preacher’s kid comes with a false sense of security on the part of other parents, that letting their kids hang out with me was safe because of course I was a “good kid.” In some ways, I was, but my problems were not things that other kids should have heard at that age, because I’d gone from 14 to 25 almost overnight. I was not young and sheltered, but an abused kid with abused kid emotional reactions. Hanging out with kids my own age seemed juvenile to me and hard on them, because it was. They didn’t need to hear my shit, and I didn’t want to talk about the things I should have been focusing on when I was that age. I wanted to have adult conversations because I’d lost the skills to hear 7th and 8th grade problems because they were just so trivial to me. Did I want to talk about problems in our classes or 7th grade relationships? No. I wanted friends who also talked about adult things, because I couldn’t relate to kid stuff anymore. It wasn’t interesting compared with drug-dealing, alcoholic girlfriends and being a closeted teacher. When I was a junior in high school, I had a panic attack before I left for the homecoming dance, because I was going with a boy and not only did I feel like I was cheating on the one I loved, I felt like I wasn’t being true to myself, either. Gary was an excellent beard, it was just a shame he didn’t know it. Before the prom (Gary was a year ahead of me), I got an allergic reaction brought on by stress and an internal histrionic mess. Angela came over and shot me up with cortisone so I could still go.

Years later, watching Queer as Folk, I cried all the way through the scene where Brian showed up at Justin’s senior prom, because I would have given away a limb for Diane to have done that for me….. the only difference being that I have two left feet.

It was an interesting relationship, because even at that age, I knew she was telling me things I wasn’t mature enough to hear without taking on her problems as my own. I am an empath, and my mirror neurons were on high alert for the entirety of 7th and 8th grade. Even when Diane moved away, they still went off, but it was less so because we were just writing to each other and talking on the phone rather than seeing each other twice a week. Having some space and time to respond was much easier for me than being in the moment with her, because then I had less time to come up with something to say. I am still that way. I told Sarah last week at therapy that I am uncomfortable without a delete key. That I have problems starting up real conversations sometimes because while I am fast on my feet with quips and jokes, I am not necessarily able to come up with anything truly meaningful on the spot, because I am too impulsive and often say things that would have come out better if I’d seen them in black and white first. There are so many times in conversation that awkward becomes ononmatopoetic, either because I’ve reached too deep into my emotions and people don’t know how to respond to it, or I’ve used a sarcastic joke that just doesn’t land.

I joke when I am uncomfortable. A lot. Most of the time, it’s conversations where a simple I hear you or , “uh huh” is all that’s really necessary. I am also fond of using obscure movie or Doctor Who references that people don’t get instead of showing real emotions. I think a lot of people are guilty of this, but in my journey to become the authentic “accidental saint” that I am, it’s something I want to change. The problems of the world are real, and people tend to open themselves up to me. They do not want pablum in return, especially when they’ve just bled out emotionally.

The juxtaposition is kind of weird, because on paper, I have the ability to respond with much more grace and mercy than I ever could in conversation, because unless the person is someone I know really well, I often feel like I have a mental patient magnet on my forehead. For instance, one time I rode the bus in Portland, and it was a not a quick trip. I struck up a conversation with the driver, and made the mistake of telling him that I was a psychology major (which I was, at the time. I’ve switched to political science, but have enough hours that I’ve already completed my minor). Upon hearing this, the bus driver seemed to think that meant I was a licenced therapist, and proceeded to tell me about all of his problems whether I wanted to hear them or not. He went deep, and I honestly felt like a doctor trapped on an airplane. If you tell people you’re a doctor on an airplane, they tend to open up about their maladies. It’s the same with being a pastor or a therapist. Tell people what you really do for a living, and your reading time is effectively lost.

Sometimes I hate it when people……… emote.

You don’t know the person well enough to really assess their situation, so it’s hard to act as if you are. However, I am too polite to actually tell them to stop talking. I hear Rigby from Regular Show in my head a lot, because one of his catchphrases is yelling, “STOP TALKING!” There are rarely times that I wish for a turbulence or the bus to crash, but sometimes it wouldn’t hurt, you know?

For instance, I would never in a million years wear a clerical collar while traveling. There are times when I am just not up to be moved by other people’s words, because I have 1800 books on my Kindle and I’d like to finish them at some point. I say “moved by other people’s words,” because sometimes I am open to the universe and allow grace to happen in situations with strangers. I am also intensely introverted. It just depends on my mood, like it does with everyone else, I suppose. I just have to remember that sometimes, burying myself in a book is cutting off allowing grace to happen.

Hold on. I have to Tweet about this.

I got up this moring around 8:00, which is a drastic change from my usual sleep cycle, and I am so grateful. Tomorrow I have an appointment at 8:30 AM, and now I know that I’ll make it. I have done everything I can to make myself tired enough to go to bed at a reasonable hour, and I think it’s working. I had a dentist appointment today, where the dentist said that I needed to heal a little bit more before she continued working, so the visit was over in approximately 15 minutes. I walked to Starbucks and got myself “the usual” (iced black tea, no extra water, cream and five Splenda), and then proceeded on to Dunkin’ Donuts, because I heard in the news that all the stores were closing, so I’d better eat there one last time. I got a regular donut with an indiscriminate purple icing on top, which they called “marionberry,” but actually just tasted like sugar. Now I know why they’re closing… or perhaps I should have gotten a Boston Cream pie. It doesn’t matter. If they’re still open the next time I pass, maybe I’ll give them another try.

From there, I proceeded to the Silver Spring Metro, where I read Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People, by my spirit animal, Nadia Bolz-Weber. I was headed to Tenleytown, which is not a short ride, but I will go miles for a cute haircut. I’m trying to get it back to the haircut that Auna said looked like “sex,” because it’s the best compliment I’ve ever gotten in my whole life bar none. And if there’s ever a time when I want to look unattainably hot, it’s now. I don’t want a relationship with anyone, or at least, not anytime soon. But nothing would please me more than to get attention like that. It strokes my ego and makes me feel good, something that in this time in my life, I could desperately use. I’m sad most of the time, because I have a lot of stuff to work out with my therapist. People thinking I look good is at least a piece of candy back toward Happiness (I saw Inside Out today).

As I was riding toward my cute haircut, there were quotes that stood out to me and I’m still thinking about them. Three of them, I posted on Facebook.

• Those most qualified to speak the gospel are those who truly know how unqualified they are to speak the gospel.
  • I got teary-eyed, thinking about what the Book of Common Prayer calls the things we have done, and the things we have left undone. If you’ve even read a few of my entries, you are probably familiar with why I was crying on a train… but not hard. Just that slow drip of tears that you’re trying to stop and two get away from you.
• I remembered that, at one point in my life, my own depression had felt so present, so much like a character in my life, that it had actually felt right to go ahead and give her a name. I named my depression “Frances.”
  • When I read that, my whole body responded. Nothing had ever felt more true in my life. I am a different person when my meds aren’t right, when I am truly suffering. I suffered so much that I voluntarily hospitalized myself, and even then couldn’t let go of everything that was bothering me, because I couldn’t reach down into that level of pain. I named my depression “Rebecca Radnowski” between Dupont and Woodley Park because she’s my alter ego in fiction. I call her “R-rad” for short. And that’s pronounced Rad-Nov-ski, just in case you’re wondering. In 2002, my friend Anne told me that when she got really depressed, it was like the pod people were coming to take her away, meaning that she felt like a different person. Same software, different case.
• I can go from zero to batshit crazy in no time at all. It’s like a speed ball of adrenaline, cortisol, and sin- an anger accelerant- racing through my bloodstream, causing my chest and neck to tighten and my brain to shut down into single-thought mode. It makes me understand why exorcisms in the Bible were always so physical in nature.
  • I had the exact same feeling when I would get a shitty e-mail from Argo. My blood would boil, my face would flush, my entire body would just panic and I would not take the time to respond. I would just react. That cortisol and sin made it where I didn’t have the tools to de-escalate the situation, so I would just try to be shittier to her than she’d been to me. Obviously, it worked extraordinarily well. The demon within me would not wait to be cast out, so that I could see her words for what they actually were, instead of what I thought they were in my anxiety-induced state. My mind played tricks on me between what she said and what I thought she said. I understand the Geresene demoniac in a whole new way, because now I know there are my own moments where I know I need Jesus to cast out the demons inside me so that I can move out of the tombs and walk in front of other people, clothed and in my right mind. My house is a far cry from living in the tombs, but it is no less isolation than to which Legion sentenced himself. I believe that he chose to take his demons into the tombs to avoid what my friend Sash calls “crazy spatter.” It is a term for which I’ve been looking since I was a teenager. I must protect you from me.

I often wonder what it was that gave Legion the permission he needed to release his demons, because obviously that is the journey I am on as well. What might Jesus have said that resulted in so much “wasted bacon” (I didn’t write it, but I nearly fell on the floor when I read it.)? I only have one story that’s even close. When Kathleen and I were dating, there was one morning where I decided to try prenatal vitamins. We weren’t trying to get pregnant, I’d just heard they were good for you- strong nails, hair, etc. It’s like, 8:15 AM and we’re trying to leave for work (at the time, she worked for me at University of Houston, but that is another story altogether). I took all my medications without food, and vitamins are notorious for making you nauseous if you don’t eat first. So here I am, not wanting to make either of us late for work, literally trying to hold down what I know is going to be a downpour of epic proportions. Kathleen looked at me and said, “it’s ok, Leslie. Go ahead and throw up.” I opened the door to the car and the driveway was never the same afterward.

What was it about me that would not submit to the nausea? Would not let the demon be cast out when it clearly needed to happen. Why did I need PERMISSION to help myself? Why did Legion?

My best guess is that mental illness pushes you so far down that you don’t know how to give yourself permission anymore. When I was in my 20s, I was in a large age-gap relationship. She was two years younger than my stepmother, and I was an adult, but not an an adultier adult- the one you’d look for in any situation that required direction. We were really, really close friends, and when our brains connected, so did our bodies. The age difference didn’t bother me at all, and it didn’t bother my friends, either. But it really bothered hers. Really.

I remember Diane saying after we’d been together three months that it was long enough to create a pattern, and I really needed to think about my future and what I wanted to do with it. It was incredibly condescending, because her partner is 15 years older than she is. In retrospect, I wonder if she was trying to save me from her own experiences, and I do not say that lightly. In my own opinion, deep down I wonder if Diane missed her 30s, because she met her partner when she was 28 and went right into trying to be the same age as her partner so the age difference didn’t show as much. She achieved so much during that time, but she wouldn’t come to Bitchin’ 80’s Night at the Fez with me, either. Because we had such a platonic relationship by then, I wanted to be the person that brought out the side of her that I knew when she was young and giggly, but by then, that person was gone. And as I said, it’s just my opinion, but it resonated with me after that talk, and I will never forget it.

My reality was that the age difference didn’t bother me, and everyone needed to shut the fuck up and get over it. We were lost in our own little world, and that world was one of the experiences that defined me later on. When we came to the fork in the road, where she agreed with her friends that it should just stay a fling before it got even more serious, I was devastated. She was so brilliant, so funny, so amazing that if she’d chosen me as a partner, I would have spent every moment of it in slow motion, just to make sure I captured it all… took it all in because it was glorious. We were at the same place in our lives- she was getting divorced and I had just gotten divorced, and that point of pain brought us together because we could open up to each other. My friend Donna, a grief expert, calls it coming together over “compatible wounds.” Even though she was older, she didn’t hold it over my head. She would let me comfort her. She would let me, for lack of a better term, minister to her needs without pulling the age card, not ever… and we could enjoy our differences.

The funniest one was when we passed Baskin Robbins and she said that for a long time, she didn’t know there was chocolate ice cream. That she liked vanilla with chocolate on it. I quipped, “had it been invented yet?” I can’t remember whether she said, “watch it, Lanagan” or just flipped me the bird. But our relationship was like that. Able to flip each other shit in just the right way.

Losing that relationship changed me, and I could not give myself permission to take care of myself. I lived in my tomb and even though I didn’t walk around naked, the isolation was so intense that I got desperate. I had to get vulnerable enough to ask Dana for help. It was literally like asking her permission to cast out my demon. I called her and said, “my apartment looks like dumped girl. Please help me.”

And she did.

I let her into my wreck of an apartment and we spent hours culling things, doing laundry, picking up Coke cans (in the South, everything is a Coke), scrubbing every inch of the pain I’d let build until all of these easy tasks had become insurmountable to someone so broken.

It worked.

As a thank you, I became “anal Annie” about my apartment. I kept it so clean you could eat off the floors because I never wanted to have to ask Dana for that kind of help again. Dana’s permission clothed me and put me in my right mind.

Today I had another moment where I needed grace, because I was almost hit by a car.

In Accidental Saints, Nadia tells a story where she pulls a pregnant woman aside between the first service and the second because they’d had a congregational meeting where someone ripped her a new one and she had to just stand there and take it. Had to be the pastor in charge, and not a flawed human being like we all are. She tells the pregnant woman, “can you pray over me? I am too angry to do the liturgy.” As they prayed, the pregnant woman put Nadia’s hands on her belly, and she could feel the new life inside her as the woman asked God to take away her anger.

I was on the way home after reading this and even though I pulled the stop cord at the right time, the bus driver kept right on going. It was at least a half mile back to my house, maybe more, and I had to cross then entrances and the exits to the Beltway. One woman did not understand the concept of a crosswalk and nearly plowed into me as I was carrying my heavy bags- one from CVS filled with beauty products for my so-complicated-it-makes-me-angry skin and a new Bluetooth keyboard with a slot for my phone, my iPad, and my Android tablet that I bought with the last of my birthday money. Both bags were heavy, and I was in a foul mood because of the bus driver because I don’t normally carry bags of stuff on the bus and the ONE day I do, he missed my stop. By the time the driver screeched on her brakes, I’d just had it. I screamed at her, “IT’S A CROSSWALK!” She, of course, blamed me, and my anger and panic went to eleven. So I’m walking back toward my house just cursing a blue streak and then it happens.

The landmark for my street is Christ Congregational Church.

The last church my father pastored in Sugar Land, Texas is called Christ United Methodist Church. I don’t remember when he preached this sermon, and it might have even been his first one in that congregation, but the message was what does it mean to be a member of a church that has Christ right in the title (I’m paraphrasing)? As I saw the sign for my own church, with the big rainbow flag lit up to make sure that we were known as open and affirming, that phrase hit me from my hair to my feet. I stopped and prayed, and because of Nadia’s story, I metaphysically reached out and touched Mary’s belly, just to feel Jesus kicking. I let new life and new hope flood me.

I prayed that God would take away my anger, and evict Rebecca so I could just be me. My heart stopped racing. The panic attack that was building melted and I was enveloped in grace.

I suppose all I needed was a cross walk.

Yesterday I sent Argo a quick note just to say that I was reading over old entries and that my heart was hurting over the friendship we used to have. I didn’t necessarily want a response, but I did want her to hear me, and I hope she did. I can never be sure if she gets my letters or not, but that part doesn’t bother me. It is as if having a line to her is more important than her having a line back. She’ll use it if she wants, or she won’t. It is not my right to have feelings over whether she responds. That part is on her. All I can do is tell her my heart hurts. What she does with that information is completely up to her, because I don’t want her to think that there is anger or impatience on my end for a reply. Because that part of me is gone. Her life is busier than mine, so all I can hope is that being prayed for is comforting even when she doesn’t have the time or the want to reply.

Sometimes I think it’s easier living in DC, because now I know for sure that even when we don’t talk, we are sleeping under the same modicum of sky. I don’t think or hope that we’ll be buds, but I do find comfort that if she wants to reach out to me, that I am here. Reaching out to her is way more about trying to heal me and all of the down and dirty shit I did to her to get her to go away, when in reality, that’s the last thing I wanted and I acted shitty to her, anyway. I thought it would make me feel better that she wasn’t a factor in my life anymore, that I could move on with my life without the constant struggle to try and get Dana to make room. Impulsivity ate my lunch during that time, and had I really pondered what I needed instead of reacting quickly, things might have turned out quite differently. There would be time to Netflix and chill in the literal definition- I hate that it’s become a euphemism, when I would like nothing more than to binge-watch something with popcorn or Coco Puffs or whatever between us. As I have said before, I grieve for all the lost bacon cheeseburgers, all the lost great bottles of wine, all the things you do for your friends when either they’re having a bad day or you are.

I also miss that feeling of having that friend that knows you. Maybe doesn’t know what you look like, but has seen your soul and loves you anyway. It’s amazing how much we have seen of each other in black and white- even Dana has said this more than once, that I have seen her soul and love her anyway, as well. It wasn’t the wrong decision to let Dana into my inner sanctum, to let her read what was happening between Argo and me, because I think she got a better understanding of how I felt than if I’d kept everything a secret. It’s just not how Dana and I rolled. There were times when Dana had so much empathy for both of us, and I wish she could have held onto that feeling a little longer, because we both needed it from her. It was complicated, and it was simple.

Complicated in that because of my past, there’d never been a time where I thought a woman wanted to get close to me without the end goal of sleeping together. I didn’t know what to do with that information, and I handled it fairly poorly like a total dickhead. Simple in that if I’d ever had a real friendship in my life, one that wasn’t tainted with that kind of thought process, I could have been an amazing friend to her that would have lasted as long as we did. It tortures me, mostly in my sleep, because I hear all the laughter behind the things we wrote to each other and I miss it so, so much. Women create these amazing bonds with each other that I’d never had before, so it didn’t occur to me that it was Argo’s angle. To create a close bond with each other where we could be open and caring friends without anything illicit.

I was so lost over everything I didn’t know, had never known, and I blew it.

I bought all these books on female friendship to try and get an idea of how these things were supposed to operate, but none of it was anything I could learn in a book. I only found comfort in the fact that many straight women blow it with their own friends regardless of the sexuality of the other. In fact, no one in the books blew it because they told their friends they were in love with them, but they hurt nonetheless. The repeating line in the book is that “no one is her.”

But the thing was, I couldn’t be in love with all of her. I didn’t know all of her. I just knew her brain, and it was the most fascinating mind I’d ever come across. My sapiosexuality (where thoughts and feelings create attraction) got the better of me the closer we became, to the point where I couldn’t hide it. Not from Dana, not from Aaron, and especially not from her. She freaked the fuck out, and so did I. I hadn’t meant to scare her in the slightest. Just to acknowledge that the rabbit hole we were creating allowed a lot of room for falling in love with absolute honesty and trust. The more she stood up to me, the more I realized I needed someone in my life like her. One of the funniest things that has stuck with me is the day that she called me a “judgemental dickhead.”

Even Dana guffawed at that, because we both knew it was true. I’m laughing even now as I type this, because I think it is one of the few things that Argo could have said that would have gotten Dana completely on board. The conversation went something like this:

Leslie: Argo called me a “judgemental dickhead.”

Dana: Did she really say that?

Leslie: WHY? DO YOU LIKE HER BETTER NOW?

Dana just grinned conspiratorially, and I knew for the moment that the waters were calm. Maybe if Argo had called me a few more choice names, she would have realized that the only threat to her was that Argo was going to make me a better partner if it killed her.

In the end, though, Dana knew that it was an easy shot just to bring up Argo while we were fighting, and it would send me into hysterics, because I didn’t want to lose either one of them. Argo was Dana’s excuse for a long time in not connecting with me, because it was so much easier to fight dirty. To pretend that Argo and I were having some sort of affair when there was absolutely no evidence of it except that my own heart was divided, but not in a way that tilted toward leaving Dana. Not ever. My heart was divided because Argo really did need me, just not in the way that Dana did… and Dana wouldn’t give Argo the access she wanted because she was so threatened. When Argo needed me, it was someone to listen. Someone to respond with love and care and prayers, even though she didn’t believe in God, she did believe in me as her “pinch hitter.” Because I was so far away, I ended nearly every letter with “God of the universe, protect my precious Argo.” But wanting to love Argo up in terms of wrapping her in prayers did not mean that I did not feel a connection to Dana that surpassed all measure, all space and time.

As time went on, I learned that it was imperative to stop thinking of Argo with any intimacy besides friendship, and though the connection didn’t change fast, it DID change. I felt horrible about the way Dana felt isolated, because Argo did not reach out to Dana when she needed something, only me. So even though my connection to Argo changed, Dana’s jealousy didn’t, because she constantly felt left out.

Dana was in the middle of a West Wing marathon, so I tried to explain it this way, that Leo needed the President more than his wife at times. It was a bad analogy, because Jenny left Leo… but funny how I just now put that together. #dumbassattack

The bottom line is that when Argo needed me, I felt special in a way that I’d never felt before, and it was a dopamine rush not part of my relationship with Dana, because we’d been together so long that our relationship had settled into long-term companionship coupled with amazing rushes of romance and even though that was what I wanted and needed, Dana did not understand the dopamine rush of new relationship because to her, it meant that she wasn’t important anymore. That I didn’t need her. That I didn’t want her. That I didn’t pray for her just as much. That I was attracted to her in all the right ways, because she was the right one for me and always would be, or so I thought.

Argo was giving me bigger things to think about than I’d ever thought of before, reaching down into my soul and guts and extracting an enormous ghost out of my closet and monster under my bed. It made me blush like a teenager, and for that, I will always be sorry, because that’s not what women friendship is about. But it had never been modeled for me, so I was trapped between thinking that Dana was ok with it and she was not…. but it was amazing how those two things came out at different times. Most often, she was fine with it until we had to talk about something serious, and her modus operandi was to switch the issue at hand to Argo’s “threat.” It was a bait-and-switch operation that worked masterfully well. For instance, how did talking about money devolve into Argo? How did talking about problems in our own relationship devolve into Argo?

For every moment that Argo felt used, I couldn’t apologize enough, because it’s not that I wouldn’t tell her what happened. Dana was angry that I’d told her, and my only reply to that was “I tell Argo everything. Everything. I can’t help that you’re mad and jealous, but I’m not going to stop because I need a sounding board other than you.” It was a serious mess of a situation, because Dana did not have her own friend that she could confide in about me, except she did…. she just wouldn’t use them. She would occasionally, but it wasn’t like Argo and me, where I could drop her an e-mail and she’d get back to me when she could. We talked all the time, multiple times a day. I don’t think that Dana used her own resources like that, and perhaps I leaned on Argo too much, and she wouldn’t just tell me that outright, because she knew it would hurt.

I felt that I could lean on Argo easier because she was never out to hurt me, and I felt like Dana was. Argo never said anything that would have isolated me from Dana, but there was plenty of that going the other direction. Argo loved that I’d found the love of my life, but Dana did not love that I thought I’d found the friend-love of my life because to her, it didn’t mean that I’d found someone to eat cheeseburgers and drink beer with. It meant that I’d fallen for Dana’s brain in the past, and the threat of me loving someone else’s was unacceptable.

Whenever Dana and I fought, all I wanted was for Argo to be RIGHT THERE. To show Dana that the connection in the cloud was much different than the connection on the ground. For all I know, in real life I might have thought she was persnickety beyond belief and she would have driven me crazy…. or whatever it might have been where reality separated itself from fantasy. The thing with friends is that you can tell them to go home. With Dana, there was never that option, and there never would have been. The only reason I said uncle was that she raised her hand to me, first. She reached out and pushed me with such force that I just reacted by hitting her, and my small fist left nothing but emotional damage, and maybe a few defensive scratch marks, but nothing compared to the bruise under my eye when my glasses smashed into my face. It was then I knew that our ability to abuse each other had gone too far, too fast, and part of the reason was that Dana’s fantasy was that I was leaving her. I never would have thought about it had emotional not become physical, and even in the Facebook post announcing our divorce, I still wrote that I thought there might be redemption down the road.

She only read the title of the Life Event, which said “End of Relationship.” None of the paragraphs afterward even registered.

I don’t know what to say about that, because in the moment, she approved the post and then later railed at me that she didn’t have the chance to tell people quietly. I was stuck in the battle of who to call first. Was it more important to tell her family first, or mine? Facebook was the only way I could think of where everyone was on equal ground, and would all know at the same time… as well as all of our friends who would have a chance to read and respond to what I’d written, and respond they did. They sent us both such love and affection that I will never forget it. Not in my whole life. Because to me, the fight was over. We both needed all the prayers and well-wishes that our community could provide.

My inspiration in doing this was my friend Greg, who when he and his wife lost their infant twins, gathered their community together and were so open in their grief. The community that supported them helped them through a time in their lives that was impossibly sad, and I wanted the same thing for Dana and me- to be supported by our community even though some were in Portland, some were in DC, and some were in Houston.

Maybe it would have been better to let our friends know privately, but I cannot second-guess myself and I won’t. I don’t think that we would have gotten even a third of the love that poured out for us if we’d kept our pain private. It meant something to me that people had our backs. Not mine, not hers, but OURS.

There’s so many things I have done. So many things I have left undone….. so much that I am having trouble because I don’t know what to say. I just have to keep breathing, and hope that the love that poured out for us in the beginning is still there. We both need your prayers and if you’re local, your presence.

Sometimes I just need a bacon cheeseburger and a friend to split it with me.

Nae (Pearson, my conductor) has started me down the path of true soprano rep. In the back of my mind, I am screaming, “I am not ready for this,” while the front seems ok with it. The funniest thing that happened is that he started playing the Mozart Alleluia and he asked me if I’d heard it. I said I’d heard the melody, but I didn’t know the words or anything. He said, “it’s just Alleluia.” I’d only heard the instrumental version in the past, so I didn’t know it had words (had word?). It has melismas in it, which as a recovering trumpet player are the hardest thing for me in terms of progressing musically. You’ve heard them without knowing what they’re called if you’ve ever been to see Handel’s Messiah. With Bach, they go on for PAGES. It’s easier to sing them in a choir, because you can stagger the breathing across the section. In a solo, they have to be spot on with breath control. But that’s not my issue.

With playing brass, you tend to set your throat for every note. Melismas are too fast to be able to do that, and letting go of my old brass-playing ways has been a problem since I starting singing in earnest. Some people never get over it. Cecilia Bartoli certainly hasn’t, and that’s probably why some singers think she has poor vocal technique. I don’t think so. I have pity for the fact that she was a trumpet player long before she became a soprano as well. I don’t think it’s hurt her career any- people seem to love her. But at the same time, I have to lose the brass attitude if I’m going to “convert.” It is as if my entire body has to break open to lose my past, and that goes into every section of my life, not just music. But it is music that will make the other parts flow together. What I have learned is that music is capable of saving my life. It was disconnecting from Diane and Susan and Bridgeport and going to Trinity Cathedral and working on Bach’s Mass in H mol that reminded me there was life and breath and faith outside of what I was going through in church… although it also showed me the depth of my own selfishness when my grandmother died during the dress rehearsal and I wasn’t there for the actual performance. Of course I wanted to be at home, but my selfishness kept me from enjoying the fact that our family would all be gathered together for what seemed like the last time…. right up until I got there. When the plane landed in Texas, all was forgotten. It was just a bummer I had to work out, because I’d attended rehearsals EVERY NIGHT for almost six weeks. The music ran through my head in my grief, and then I realized that the rehearsals had their purpose. The music sustained me at a very low time in my life, and if you do it right, being in an orchestra or choir is an extraordinary high.

For me, being in a choir is the closest I’ll ever get to heaven’s glory. I don’t believe in the traditional versions of ACTUAL heaven and hell, but I do believe in the chord that runs between people, and nowhere in the world is that more evident than a choir or an orchestra. From the first downbeat until the last note ends and the overtones resound in the church, there is a palpable feel of presence in an In This Very Room kind of way.

With my new choir, I am slowly settling in. Ingrid, the woman that sits next to me, is just fabulous AND hilarious in a Diane/Sco/Argo sort of way, which means that if you looked them up in the dictionary, the first word would be irreverent. Nae pulled out the first hymn in choir practice, and I said, “It’s about to get all Episcopal in here!” Ingrid was all like, “let’s get it on, bitches.” I have met my match in terms of making other choir members laugh, but I got her. We’re doing The Lamb, a setting of a William Blake poem by John Tavener. When he said to pull it out, I said, “that one’s baaaaad.” She was all like, really? Is that what we’re doing now?” I said, “I will be doing this every time he pulls it out, every year. If it’s funny once, it’s funny a thousand times.” I’m doing pretty well at this talking to strangers thing, because after a couple of rehearsals, Ingrid doesn’t feel like a stranger anymore. We’re going to do the Lakme Flower Duet in church soon. She says she’s an alto, but she’s lying. She’s totally a mezzo in alto’s clothing.

So, anyway, she was telling me that her daughter told her on the way out the door that her look was “lesbian chic.” She was wearing a t-shirt, a sweater, and those Dr Marten boots that have like, 16 holes or something. I told her it worked on her… because it did. 🙂 She laughed and it was just nice to laugh and joke all the way through rehearsal as if I’d been there for years. She told me that she couldn’t go to our retreat because she was going to Cub Scout camp with her son. She told me to drink a lot of vodka for her when I said jokingly and slyly, “I’ll pray for you…” This kind of camaraderie was what I was looking for at Epiphany, and it just never happened. My experience of Epiphany was completely different than Dana’s, because even though we had GREAT friends there, none of them were in the choir with me. I was on my own, and it was tough shit. I don’t mean to bag on Joseph. He changed my life in terms of the way he took me under his wing and gave me voice lessons that literally raised my self-esteem and gave me a worth I will never forget. I just didn’t find anyone I clicked with and I felt alone because everyone clicked with each other. One of the basses told me that I was so loud he needed to turn down his hearing aid, and the marking was FF. I can flat do FF. But I wasn’t any louder than anyone else, and it just seemed like a mean thing to say, especially since it’s especially hard to stay on pitch with a hearing aid. I had a snappy comeback, and I bit my tongue.

The exception to that rule is I clicked with an alto, but it didn’t help me any because she was as far away from me as she could get in both rehearsal and the service.

Dana joined the handbell choir and had a TON of fun with everyone. It was like coming home for her, a great way to plug in that I just didn’t get. I was a little bit jealous, and because Diane started as my handbell conductor, I just couldn’t bring myself to join. Just. Could. Not. My memories of hiding under the handbell table and all of the emotions that went with it made it where I couldn’t even look at a handbell because it just screams TRIGGER TRIGGER TRIGGER. Coming to CCC Silver Spring was the connection I was missing in my life, because Nae was right. He’s the only mean one, and it’s mean in a very funny way. I really like him, because he really likes me. It’s a mutual admiration society, and because he gives me such complicated rep, to me it’s like he really believes in me. I may not believe I am capable of this, but he does, so I’m going to take him at his word.

And then, at the end of rehearsal, for the first time, someone offered me a ride home. It’s only an 8 minute walk, but it’s still the sign that I’m starting to fit in. If only I could remember the lady’s name…. But we climbed into her little Subaru and talked all the way to my house, as if there’s never been a time when we weren’t friends.

Amen.

Today in therapy I talked to Sarah about the kind of person I am, and how a lot of it is not who I want to be. We’re having to start with the basics.

I told her how hard it was that since I didn’t have a job, getting my sleep cycle straight is next to impossible (although I do have a solid line- more on that later). She asked me what my normal sleep cycle was, and I asked her if she meant my ideal or what it is now. She said, “both.” I told her I was the happiest when I was waking up just as dawn broke, and writing from that place of promise. I told her that now, a lot of my writing happens in the middle of the night, and the difference in tone is palpable, like when I went on overnights at Alert Logic… that I even see myself differently in a new dawn then I do at the end of my day. My sleep cycle now is that I can’t fall asleep, so I take a sleeping pill, and then I sleep too much. I will take a sleeping pill at 7:00 and still not fall asleep until 3:00 AM… and then it feels like I’m walking through Jell-o, but that I’m trying to combat it by taking a caffeine pill 20-30 minutes before I get out of bed. I also told her that I was used to being able to function on four hours’ sleep, but it’s not happening anymore and I am none too happy about it. After years and years and years of being able to pull all-nighters, that part of me is slowly ending. It’s like saying goodbye to an old friend, because I have to admit to myself that I am getting older.

I have really felt my age this year. There’s no such thing as competitive suffering, so I do not want to hear from readers who are older than me that say I don’t have it so bad…. complain all you want about your own ailments, as long as it’s not directed at how much worse I’ll have it when I’m your age. I’m almost 40 (a little less than two years), and my arthritis is starting to show. I need more sleep when I used to pride myself on not. My back is the worst, and now I’m registered with a PCP, so that’s the next order of business. It’s getting to where ibuprofen doesn’t cut it anymore, because I have a corkscrew scoliosis that continues to get worse and when I knock it on things, no amount of pain medication is enough to keep me from crying out.

I don’t think the two things are related, but it seems like the first time I had a spinal tap was the first time I noticed that the lower discs in my back stuck out, especially because they were bruised. That was when I was in fifth grade, and the problem has compounded ever since (it went to eleven). Chairs are my worst enemy.

Emotionally, I wonder how I let it get this bad. Sarah says not to be too hard on myself, because bipolar and trauma are a lot to manage and there are so many facets that go into mental health that it’s not surprising my physical health has suffered. I know part of it early on was that I could not fall asleep without Dana, couldn’t even imagine it, so I would just recreate her in my mind and create this fantasy world that she was just away on business. I knew it wasn’t real, it was just comforting, but it worked until I could stand on my own (or lie down, as it were).

Now, my ruminations center on what I’m going to do for a future- that I wasn’t sure I ever wanted a relationship with a partner again. It didn’t come from a place of denial, but from a place of being overly focused on work and not necessarily wanting to drag a wife and family into it with me. I think it takes having lived that life to know how hard it could be for my wife and kids, anyway. I had a wonderful childhood, but there were things about it that drove me crazy, like people commenting on my parents’ parenting. One little old lady went up to my mother and reamed her out because she thought I was too young to be wearing false eyelashes, and wouldn’t believe my mother when my mother told her, “ummm, those ARE her eyelashes.”

I have empathy for the fact that being a minister’s partner is a tough gig, and do I really want that for them?

I also started to get into the meat and potatoes of what happened with Diane, and how for the longest time the abuse wasn’t really real. In fact, it wasn’t real until I was 35. People were telling me it was an abusive relationship from the time it began, but I loved her. Plain and simple. If you love someone, you are not looking for their flaws, and won’t.

It wasn’t until the emotional swings became so great that my childhood emotions started bubbling up in front of me and I could see them in a way that I couldn’t before, because I wasn’t willing to discuss the fact that there might be a problem. It is amazing how far I went to cover everything up, mostly because those abusive actions felt normal to me. Healthy reactions feel unhealthy now and it is hard to lean into them and know they are right. I am learning so much, so quickly that my body is responding, but not at the rate that I’m taking in information.

Dana was very angry with me that it took Argo to get me to see what she’d been trying to tell me. I don’t think she knew how important it was to me for someone completely outside the situation to look in on it with fresh eyes and say, “ummmm….. yeah. That’s fucked up.” Dana knew both Diane and me. Had partied with us for years. Making excuses for Diane’s behavior was easy for me with Dana because whatever doubts there were in her mind about what happened in my childhood were muted by the fact that Dana loved her, too. It made it hard for me to hear her doubts, and when one of her friends told us that Diane had been attracted to me when I was young, it made Dana’s blood boil and me feel absolute vindication that I wasn’t crazy. I don’t know whether he was telling the truth; I don’t know that any of us would have considered him the most reliable source. But I would have taken anything at that point to feel right.

That I hadn’t been confused. That I’d picked up what she’d put down without missing a beat, because that’s what tortured me the most. That I was wrong. That I was so mentally addled that I’d made this huge mistake. That my intuition, those feelings that went to the center of my heart, mind, and body were off to such a disconcerting degree. It is what created the split in my personality- the part that is bubbly, bright and perky and the part that doesn’t trust anyone or anything if she can help it.

Thinking that I hadn’t made a mistake made me feel that I was as smart as I thought I was. Feeling like Diane had come on to me and then having her swear up and down for years and years that she didn’t allowed me to beat myself up because I thought I was so stupid.

It’s taken disconnecting from everything to be able to wrap my mind around the fact that I am smart, and I always have been… way above average, actually, which is why my diagnosis of depression makes me so sad. I am not in the mood to hear that I am right on track for recovery from this disorder I have to manage, because I don’t want to hear that I have a disorder I have to manage. It’s not that I won’t. It’s just disheartening that it’s a lifetime battle, now, where as before I thought that with the right medication it would go away. Yes, I’d have to take pills, but after that my brain would function as normal.

You don’t get over trauma with medication. You just have to talk, and keep talking.

The sleight of hand reference comes from two things. The first is how easily Diane was able to give me adult reading material and then convince me that it was all on the up and up. The second is how I’ve extrapolated that into the ends justify the means. That it’s how the world works; you can use darkness all you want as long as the end result is a greater good. I’ve said and done things in this vein that frighten me, and therein lies the focus of my therapy. Where do those sorts of actions/reactions stop and healthy ones begin?

Part of getting healthy is getting a job that gets me out of the house every day, so that I do not have a chance to isolate. My homework for this week is to go to a store or something and strike up a conversation with a stranger every single day. To that end, I went to a book group that I swore I wouldn’t go to this morning. Just so happens one of the women in the group is married to the director of the National Autism Foundation, and they need someone to do marketing and social media.

And on that note, all I have to say is….

Amen

I haven’t done one of these in a while, so I thought it was imperative for today. After all the time I spend filling out online applications, I like to rest with books and TV. So here are a few of the things I’ve found that are really outstanding.

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Quantico

When you go into the Metro Center stop, there are posters all over the place with the characters wondering who the mole might be on this show about a brand new class of future FBI agents. I decided to check it out. No self-respecting FBI agent would probably watch it, because it’s ridiculous. And so much fun. Seriously. It starts off with a bang, literally. Two people meet on a plane and lie to each other about where they’re going, have sex in the back of a car, and then find out they’re both in the same class at the academy. So, right away there’s a possible love interest. It’s kind of like Grey’s Anatomy meets DC. It’s action-packed- car chases and the like. I’ve never wanted to work in intelligence more, but I don’t think I have the grades or the smarts to be able to keep track of that many lies at once… but they do. Also, one of the actors from Cougar Town is in it, and that is a plus in my book.

Dr. Ken

Ken Jeong went to medical school before he became a comedian, and as a doctor’s kid, I laughed so hard I fell off the couch at the first scene. He’s with his therapist, whom we later learn is his wife. But the line that got me was that he’s complaining that all his patients are horrible. It is the sitcom you never knew you needed to watch, but if you’re a doctor or in a doctor’s family, you will laugh all the way through it. For instance, he calls one patient a WebMDbag. You might have seen that commercial, but the whole scene is FANTASTIC.

The Soulkeepers Series by G. P. Ching

This is a set of liberal Christian novels that battles good and evil by making Lucifer, Fate, Time, Death, and God into real characters. I got sucked in by my friend Meg, who I don’t think realized that it would absorb me like crack. The first book is free on Amazon. Be prepared. The rest of the books are cheap, and they are quick reads. I devoured them like a six-pack of Diet Coke (a necessity for sopranos everywhere). The Soulkeepers all have different powers that they use to defeat Watchers, their term for Lucifer’s minions, and the series starts in a town about the size of Naples, the small East Texas town where I grew up. The main character is a Watcher who doesn’t really want to be a Watcher anymore, so she lives on earth and becomes a Helper to the Soulkeepers, clearly in violation of her terms, because as a fallen Watcher, she is supposed to be neutral in the fight between good and evil. I am fairly sure that this is a young adult novel, and I would recommend it for Senior High youth groups everywhere. The reason I call it liberal theology is that there are two gay Soulkeepers, and it’s not a thing. In fact, God is supportive. You’ve got to love that. Really. People from a small town dealing with the supernatural grabbed my attention right away, and there are so many twists and turns that I didn’t even try to speculate what would happen. I just let myself be carried by the ride. In particular, I think that Rev. Dan and Rev. Karakay would be as gripped as I was. Read it, y’all. Like, yesterday. Like I said, it’s crack, because the first one’s free. I will also say that I particularly identified with the main character, because I have a friend who is very much a Watcher on earth, trying to figure out what’s right and wrong depending on where she stands. That friend might be me… or it might not. Maybe it’s you. It’s interesting how much the FBI class and the fight between good and evil have in common. If you like Quantico, you’ll probably like this series.

Having a Large Backup Drive

Backup drives are cheap, and mine is 3TB. I got it for my birthday, and I don’t know how I lived without it before. I put EVERYTHING on it, because then I don’t have to worry if my computer crashes. I can just reformat it and go along about my business. Ubuntu is a bit unstable, and sometimes I can’t find the answers on my own, so I just wipe the hard drive to get rid of the errors. I should be trying to troubleshoot all this shit, but girl, I ain’t got time fo’ dat. You can do it one of two ways. The first is that you can set automatic backups of your home directory, or you can set your directories to the drive itself. I have chosen the latter option, so that nothing is stored on my hard drive in the first place. It houses all my music, videos, documents, EVERYTHING. I have hundreds and hundreds of files on it, and I still have 2.6 GB left. It will keep me for a while. I cannot stress it enough. Back up, back up, back up. If your computer does not have a USB 3.0 port, buy a new computer, unless your computer is so expensive that you’d rather just add the card. I choose to buy cheap computers so that if something goes wrong, they’re not impossible to replace. For instance, I have dual core laptop that was less than $300 bucks at Best Buy. It’s not fast enough to run many games, but is fast enough to support VirtualBox. That way, I can install Windows XP, just for nostalgia. I even have the Plus! pack. 🙂

Getting a Therapist

My friends are the greatest thing in the world to me. I couldn’t have made this time of transition without them, particularly Stephanie and Kathy, who get me out of the house and take me to do things so that I am not alone all the time, which I am wont to do. They know my shit, and they want to be around me, anyway. But there are things from my past in which I need an objective ear, someone who doesn’t have a horse in the race. She doesn’t know Dana, she doesn’t know Argo, she doesn’t know anyone in my life. She thinks it’s sweet the way I talk about both of them, and it’s nice knowing from an objective perspective that I am not necessarily the douchebag I play on national television (my nickname for this web site). There are just times when you can’t be sorry enough, and getting on with your life is excruciating…. and necessary. This is the first time I’ve really stuck with therapy since I was in the eighth grade, when the Diane issue surfaced and I needed someone to talk to, but wouldn’t actually say anything. Most of my therapy sessions were like the one in Good Will Hunting, where I watched the clock until the session ended. At that time, protecting Diane was more important than protecting myself. In the immortal words of the great philosopher Cher, if I could turn back time….

Cheerwine

Cheerwine has been around a long time, but now that I live on the East Coast, it is much easier to find (it’s made in N. Carolina, I believe). It’s a cherry cola, but way more emphasis on the cherry than the cola. It is MAGNIFICENT! If you live somewhere they don’t have it, order some off the internet. In Houston, they sell it in bottles and sometimes 12-packs at Spec’s. Go see Dana at West U. She’ll point you in the right direction. If you are into soda as much as I am, this is one you won’t want to miss. In fact, it is so popular that some delta bravo went to 7-Eleven and cleaned them out. Bought every bottle, including all the diet, and that person was not me. They have not replenished their stock, and I am spitting nails. Why didn’t I think of it first?

Caffeine Pills

Tread carefully with these, because I am sure that they are easy to abuse. One of my friends told me that she started using them instead of Ritalin, and she had to stop immediately. However, I take one a day, early in the morning, with a Diet Dr Pepper (not my favorite, but on sale). That makes it about 250 mg altogether, and as I have mentioned before, I take it between the time that my alarm goes off and the first snooze nine minutes later. That way, by the time I am ready to get into the shower, the caffeine has kicked in, and I am not tempted to go back to bed. I also don’t have to go downstairs, steep the tea, make the coffee, etc. before I take a hot, hot shower. I love doing that, too, but not in addition to what I’ve already taken. To me, it is easier to take a pill upstairs (where the shower is located), then to try and force myself to go downstairs and back up. Is it lazy? Not so much. The pill kicks in quicker than the coffee or tea, and I feel like I am ready for the day much faster than I would be otherwise. The only thing is that Larry (remember Larry?) looks at me funny when I make it to Starbucks and only want decaf.

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So that’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it. Feel free to add more recommendations in the comments. You can also ask me to review things if you have suggestions. I am fond of weird food and drinks. Just not too much beer or other alcohols. I’ve had my fill. The only thing that’s really tasted good to me lately is a Manhattan made with rye. Otherwise, I’m good.

I set my alarm for 7:30 so that I could be at the church by 9:00 to attend Sunday School and choir practice. It was really important that I was there for World Communion Sunday, because there was a lot of music- one of the biggest sets of the entire season. I kept hitting the snooze button because I stayed up late reading, not remembering that if you hit the snooze button too many times, it turns off and stops ringing entirely. The next time I woke up, it was 11:15 and church starts at 10:30. I feel like a dickhead of enormous proportions, because if I was going to miss a Sunday, this wasn’t it. I am one of the few sopranos who has the vocal power to act as what I call “lead trumpet player.” We have one other one, Ingrid, but she wasn’t there at choir practice on Thursday and I just have to hope to God she made it to church.

The other breakdown is that Samantha is out of town visiting one of her other close friends, and so there was no one to give me a wake-up call. I should have texted her last night, because my phone ringing is one of the few things that will get me up when my alarm won’t. To combat the problem, I took the Best Buy gift card that my aunt and my mom gave me for my birthday and bought a clock radio of massive proportions. It has a volume setting that goes to “oh my fuck,” and it will connect with bluetooth and act as a speaker phone so that Samantha doesn’t have to come upstairs and jump on me, which she’s threatened to do many times.

Also, my cat, Asher, is dead. She died a long time ago, but it’s another breakdown in the system because rain, shine, sleet, snow, whatever, every morning that little fucker stuck one claw up my nose at 5:30 AM. With that alarm, there is no snooze. My ex-girlfriend, Angela, stuck her finger up my nose to wake me up one morning, and I think Asher extrapolated for the next four years.

Dear Angela,

THANKS FOR THAT.

Love,

Leslie

I cannot get a new cat for a couple of reasons. The first is that I don’t want to pay for food, water, vet checks, etc. The second is that we have dogs, and Nassers aren’t big on cats, so I’d have to hide her in my room at all times. This does not work for me. I’d rather wait until I have an apartment of my own and she can move freely about my sofas and chairs as God intended.

I actually already have a cat, but I left him with Dana, which for the record, was REALLY Dana doing me a solid.

She was so cute. She said, “of course I have to do you a solid or the house will blow up.” The link for “doing me a solid” is to Hulu for the episode. You might need a subscription to watch it. I am pretty sure that I pay for Hulu *just* to watch Regular Show. It is the most brilliant show on television, built for kids and adults, because the adult jokes go right over the kids’ heads. Soda is beer and pizza is weed, so the guys are absolute stoners and get into all kinds of trouble. Seriously, I have watched Just Set Up the Chairs approximately 58 times, and that is underestimating.

When I was working for Alert Logic, I used to go home for lunch. Regular Show episodes are about 12 minutes, so I would grab a sandwich and have just enough time for an episode before I had to drive back. There were WEEKS where I would watch Just Set Up the Chairs every day.

My other favorite was an episode of Adventure Time called Trouble in Lumpy Space, because I will watch ANYTHING with Lumpy Space Princess. I got an LSP throw blanket for when I was working overnight and would sleep on my lunch break. I also used to have a Mordecai and Rigby belt, but Dana stole it from me. Eh. I did her a solid.

The other breakdown in the system is that I usually take a 200mg caffeine tab as soon as my alarm goes off, so that if I hit the snooze button a couple of times, it’s kicked in and I can go right to a shower. I have so many tips, tricks, and failsafes. It’s a shame I didn’t use them.

I did go to church yesterday, though. It’s ok that I preached to myself. I fell asleep in the middle, though.

World Communion Sunday was started in 1933 at Shadyside Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. 1933 was the worst year of The Great Depression, and people all over were worried about the rise of Nazism and Fascism. The prevailing attitude that year was one of fear and anxiety, much like today as we combat hunger, inequality, and terrorism. Shadyside’s response to these attitudes back then was to create a Sunday in which we all celebrate the Eucharist at once, drawing the circle wide in prayer and thanksgiving…. one that continues in our fear and doubt even today. Attitudes of anxiety have risen and fallen over the years since World Communion Sunday was created, but the idea that at least once a year, we all (regardless of denomination) come to the table together has not.

We come to the table regardless of our circumstance in life, and we receive food, anyway.

It is interesting that because we are coming to the communion table in unity, today’s gospel is, in part, about divorce… or, at least it is on the surface. It is hard to tell whether the Pharisees really wanted to know what Jesus thought, or whether it was another legal entrapment they could use to perpetuate his demise. They ask, is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife? Notice that with the Pharisees, we are not talking about love, fidelity, roses, and candles. They want to know one thing. Is it lawful? It is in this moment that Jesus gets an amen from me because he does this political sidestep of massive proportions and turns the question back around on them. He says,what did Moses command you? I know this is venturing into fiction, but I think Jesus gets nauseous every time the Pharisees try to talk to him, and he knows that anything he says can and will be used against him in a court of law, so the mask he presents to the world comes down to hide his fear. He won’t use his own words, but those of someone whom the Pharisees already follow. The Pharisees answer, Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her.

I’m going to have to stop us riiiiiiiiiight there.

There’s some history that needs to be explained, because that time and structure was quite different than the one we have today. First of all, just as children don’t choose their parents, they didn’t choose their partners, either. Boys and girls were paired off according to their parents’ deals with each other, and some women were not even lucky enough to marry someone of their own age. If a family had a chance to move up in stature, but their daughter was 13 and the groom was 35, this was not considered any sort of deal breaker. Money was money and women were property. In fact, in Mosaic law, a woman could not initiate divorce. Only a man could.

Because marriage then had to do with property, stature, and honor of the families involved, divorce was significantly more complicated than it is today… and by property, I also mean the bride herself. Women could not initiate divorce because in the eyes of the law, they weren’t people in any case.

Here is where Jesus crosses the line from the legal to the spiritual with the Pharisees:

Because of your hardness of heart he [Editor’s Note: Moses] wrote this commandment for you. But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.

The Gospel does not record what the Pharisees have to say about this, instead skipping to a private conversation between Jesus and the Disciples. They ask him about divorce again and he says, whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.

Something jumped out at me in this text very quickly, and that is in front of the Pharisees, Jesus only mentions a husband divorcing his wife. In private, he talks about the ability of a woman to divorce her husband. In private, beyond the gaze of the Pharisees, Jesus supported marriage equality between both partners. Both people are allowed to have grounds for divorce.

In this one instance, Jesus changes the definition of marriage. However, he does not change the content. The only grounds for divorce are adultery, and not, as some liberal Jews were beginning to think, for any fault in the wife at all. For instance, Jesus did not think it was lawful to divorce your wife if she ruined your dinner or ruined your favorite shirt, even in front of the Pharisees… departing from Deuteronomy 24:1-4, which notes grounds for divorce as a husband simply finding something displeasing about his wife.

I believe that Jesus’ interpretation of divorce was that it should only happen when something cracks the foundation of marriage, because cracking the foundation is rarely something that can be undone.

Dana and I were sitting in the congregation at Second Baptist Church in Houston, Texas, when Dr. Ed Young was preaching on the topic of divorce. He took out both a blue and a pink piece of paper and glued them together. When it had dried somewhat, he started to try and take the blue and pink pieces of paper back apart. Invariably, and I am sure you’re ahead of me here, there were little pink pieces of paper still on the blue side and little blue pieces of paper still on the pink side. He made the point that once we have been put together, there is no way to separate cleanly. In a Southern Baptist church, of course he wouldn’t have held up two pink or blue pieces of paper, but the message was the same. Even though the pieces of paper are the same color, is it any easier to separate them wholly into what they were before they were joined?

I cannot speak for Dana, but I know that her emotional paper is still inside me, and will be for a lifetime. I will always think about the regrets I had in cracking our foundation, which started slow and ended with a thunderclap. We didn’t just break up with each other, we broke up our families, as well… and this is exactly the image that Jesus is trying to get us to see. What God has put together, let no one put asunder is true even after a divorce has taken place. No one can take away my memories of Dana, and no one can take away her memories of me…. the good, the bad, the terrible, the glorious… they’re all there in movies we revisit, sometimes whether we want to or not.

Jesus is right- those memories do not go away in being with other people, and I believe that is how we should interpret his words about committing adultery with future partners. The people we divorce still sit with us and we with them. Moving on does not mean that our memories are erased, but with the passage of time, perhaps we sit with them easier. We pray through the pain, both for forgiveness from God and from the person we have wronged, because let’s face it. In a divorce, no one wins. We have both wronged each other.

Your invitation today is how you’re going to react in treating those who have been divorced. Are you going to sit in judgment like a Pharisee, or are you going to open the circle wider to be inclusive of those who have been emotionally injured in that way? Are you going to look at the divorced in shame, or are you going to simply say, I’m sorry for your loss? If you aren’t there yet, perhaps this is the Sunday you’ll progress toward equality, because gathering at the table means that no one is left to sit watching from the pews. No one is shamed. No one is turned away empty-handed.

We are one bread, one body…. o’er all the earth.

Amen.

Today I just feel like writing about what’s been happening… nothing big or exciting, just want to invite you into my sun room for a cup of coffee (or tea, if you prefer). We have to sit in the sun room because Hurricane Joaquin is coming and the weather is dreary- too dreary to sit outside, because when the rain starts, it usually blows up onto the porch. I have about two hours before I have to leave for choir, the perfect time for a stitch and bitch club. I usually go to choir 30 minutes early so that I can warm up before I go in. Makes everything so much easier because if I go in cold, I don’t have the control over my voice that I need to be flexible. I need my high As to float off, not sound like a strangled cat, which I have done and it is attractive, let me tell you….. The best part is that I can warm up in the sanctuary, and the acoustics are incredible. There’s a balcony in the back, and I sing to it, replacing the friend on the wall that Joseph used as focus. Singing is the one thing in my life that really makes me feel special, because it strengthened me when I graduated into a real soprano from a trumpet player just faking it.

Yes, I still hear Diane in a lot of my flourishes, but I cannot turn off that part of myself, and at this point, I’ve made my piece with it. Piece instead of peace because I am not sure I will ever have true peace with that issue, but it is a piece of myself. A compartment in which she lives and breathes through me. It is the one part of me that will never let go of her, because she taught me too much to turn back.

I’ve talked a lot about her in therapy, and Sarah is helping me breathe through it… much too close to labor for my taste, but it is working. It is amazing how birthing new emotions is like birthing a baby, because everything hurts. I have to breathe all the way down, and after a session, my abdomen and diaphragm are stretched to capacity. It’s to combat the fight-or-flight impulse, because in writing down all of my emotions, very few people talk back to me. It is a different thing to have someone pulling me through the pain and trying to turn it into action on my part. Trying to help me put my life back together so that I don’t feel like a victim but a survivor. It was amazing how much I thought I knew when I was a teenager, and how I thought all of it was normal. All the sunshine, all the chill, all the opening up to me and then pulling away when she thought she’d said too much and I was responding with love but she wasn’t taking it in… or it seemed like it. It was a dance of intimacy where she would tell me things that were too mature for me to hear, and then not give me a place to go with how I felt about it. She was very open when I was talking about my own life, and very closed off when I wanted to talk about hers. It wasn’t equal in a ton of ways, but abuse is so black and white when you’re that age that it doesn’t occur to you that someone can stunt your emotional growth without ever touching you.

Yesterday, I was railing at Sarah. “Why didn’t I realize this when I was 21? 25? I feel too old for this shit and at the same time, I feel like a 14-year-old girl in a 38-year-old woman’s body!” I have married that pattern my whole life, wanting to save women in trouble from whatever it was that was bothering them without thinking of myself at all. Without thinking of career or interests or anything that might have individuated me from them. I was just the Lanagan Search and Rescue system, without applying any of those lessons learned to myself.

My reflex in breaking up with Dana is that I’ve had enough. Dana and I had an interesting relationship in that we both had wounds left over from childhood and we were both trying to save each other, with very little forward progress. We both latched onto each other in our need, and it was so, so good right up until it wasn’t.

I hoped like hell that it could be good again, and I lost. Straight up. She came in Kings full over Aces and said it just wasn’t going to happen.

I disappeared into my books and my silence. I isolate all the time, because I am not ready for a relationship with anyone. My closest friend right now is my roommate, Samantha, which allows me to isolate and have a friend at the same time. We both like our space, and retreat into it often… but at the same time, we share some of the same emotional wounds and can lean on each other when necessary. In fact, it was me that convinced Samantha she needed Vesta as much as I do, and now we go together on Wednesdays so that she can drive me, which is sweet even though the office is within walking distance.

In the last few months, I have found more solace in books than I have in other people, and it is as if they are returning me to the person I used to be. When I was a kid, I was also a voracious reader, and it feels good to be lost in reading and singing and focusing on the things I love rather than what someone else does. I have treated myself differently during this breakup, because when I broke up with Kathleen, I didn’t do all the work necessary to get past the search and rescue system, and I just ended up in the same relationship over and over.

Katharin isolated me from all my friends and when I told her about protesting the war in Iraq and the safe sanctuary program at Bridgeport, she punched a hole in the wall she was so angry. She didn’t want to be with someone who thought immigrants deserved safe sanctuary and the war in Iraq was wrong… even though I told her that I always support boots on the ground, I just don’t always support the commander in chief. Supporting the soldiers that have to carry out the President’s wishes is a lot different than supporting the higher-ups. The worst part was that we were having company dear to me the next day, and I had to find a way to get the wall fixed before they arrived.

She also held it over my head that I was a little bit woo-woo. That I’d celebrated Solstice and Beltane and had no problem with the idea of Wicca as a practice because most of Christianity was borne of it. I changed too much of myself to try and make that relationship fit, and it wasn’t until Dana started getting angry that I noticed. She was my fierce protector, and told me flat out how abusive Katharin was and to get the fuck away from her. She didn’t say it in those words, but the fire in her eyes told me everything I needed to know. Katharin wasn’t one of us, would never fit in, because Dana and I loved each other for who we were, warts and all… and so did Bryn and Matt and Holly and all of my other friends. I didn’t need to change for anyone else, and I needed to re-join the people that would never try and make me.

Loving Dana was realizing that it was the first time someone had ever tried to save me. She held me while I cried, listened to my frustrations, and gave me emotional band-aids of massive proportions. Losing her is indeed the worst thing that has ever happened to me, and I have so many regrets to work out with Sarah. On some days, I feel incomplete without her. On others, I am happy to have this time to myself. Maybe someday we’ll be friends, but I am too angry about the way she manipulated me to see her as anything but danger. It was ridiculous how she kissed me on the street like she meant it and then handed me my heart in a trash bag because I could hear her talking to her mother about how she was never going back, but I’m guessing that her mother didn’t know she was kissing me and I didn’t know the extent of how much she’d told her mother about what we’d been through.

I miss her hugs the most… the way our bodies just fit together and I could rest my chin on her shoulder in happiness and in pain. But I don’t miss her embarrassing the crap out of me at parties and I don’t miss the fights where she was trying to tell me something and crying so hard I couldn’t understand her so that I got irritated that I couldn’t understand what was happening. I didn’t have enough patience. I didn’t have enough give. By the end, I was in complete survival mode, because neither one of us could handle the other. We’d taken care of each other over the years, and it was heartbreaking when we stopped. It was either Argo or Dana and that’s where the rubber met the road. This after months and months of me begging and pleading with her that I would back off, but please don’t take her away from me. Please don’t isolate me from a relationship that has become a life raft of enormous proportion. Please don’t use her in fights as if she is a threat, because she’s not. I’m working through a hell of a lot of issues right now and I could use more than one supportive ear…. please…. please…..

I felt it was better to come straight out and tell Dana that I was struggling with my feelings for Argo because it was an explosive connection from the beginning and I didn’t know what to do because I knew that my struggle was mine to own. Argo was threatened by it, and there was no reason to assume that she was the problem.

She wasn’t. I was.

The process happened exactly like I thought it would with Argo. My feelings for her went away and I could just see her as a buddy, but it came too late to save my relationship with Dana, because Dana thought that I was on my way out, anyway…. which was the furthest thing from the truth of the matter. The truth was that if Dana had stuck around for the entire process, she would have seen the changes I’ve undergone in person, but maybe she didn’t want to… and that’s on her.

I wish she’d stuck around to see the changes I’ve undergone in person, but I didn’t invite her to move with me and I didn’t want to. By that time in my life, I was tired of fighting and ready for solitude. Now the pendulum has swung too far and I have trouble making myself interact with anyone because I don’t want to hurt them and I don’t want them to hurt me. Sarah says that it’s unhealthy the amount of time I spend alone and I tell her it’s ok, I’m comfortable there and she says, “but that’s the problem.”

Church is helping- these relationships that aren’t deep but enlightening all the same. My mind is piqued with all kinds of information on theology and a progressive one at that. I am trying, but at the same time, I’d hide under the handbell tables if we had them.

That was my safe sanctuary when I was a tween. Diane would come and find me and sit under them with me, and I would give a limb to have any one of those moments back. Yes, it was inappropriate… but the way she held me can’t be duplicated by anyone else, either. I miss her hugs the most… the way I could just cling to her for a moment and the whole world would be blocked out. From the moment I met her, she lit me up from the inside. Those are the moments I feel I’m allowed to miss, because I can put the inappropriateness in a different box and just enjoy the good times in my mind.

All of these women have changed me, in both good and bad ways, but I wouldn’t trade any of the experiences I’ve had for anything in the world. I choose to believe that with Diane, it was a kindred spirit kind of love, which is why she still sits on my shoulder occasionally, my angel when I am making music.

Dana is the angel I reach for in the night, sometimes disappointed that she’s not there and sometimes relieved that it’s just a dream.

Argo is the angel I call on when I need the chord that runs between us, because regardless of the past, it is still strong on my end. Now that we are at peace, the chord is shimmery and silver. Sometimes it feels tangible. She is the Argo, the ship that takes me safely from journey to journey. One of these days, I will have the courage to be Jason, the captain of my own ship. Right now, I’m just simple Argonaut, letting the ship sway me to sleep as I travel.

Because I am working so hard on me, the waters are calm, no matter what Joaquin decides.

My angels carry me even in the midst of the storm… literally and figuratively.

Amen.

I’m writing this after just taking a fresh dose of Tylenol 3, so bear with me. Some of this might sound awesome. Some of this might sound like Drinking Out of Cups.

I finally had enough of Amen: What Prayer Can Mean in a World Beyond Belief and started a novel just for fun (is the subtitle a nod to Pagels?). I’ve never read the alphabet series, so I’m a few pages into A is for Alibi. I think Kinsey and I are at the beginning of a beautiful friendship. It reminds me a little of Mallory’s Oracle, but only because Kinsey Milhone and Kathy Mallory are somewhat similar in their delivery and approach to their work. I love novels with strong women leads, because I want to be a strong woman and it doesn’t hurt to take their strength into myself. It’s like getting a shot in the arm of bravery, because if they can get up every morning and do what they do, so can I.

In terms of giving up on Amen, I can’t put it away entirely. I’m trying to finish it before Sunday, because the class has had this book for a while and I don’t want to show up unprepared. My former minister friends are very interested in my opinion. I don’t know that they’ll like what I have to say, but I’m willing to put myself out there, anyway. My answer to this entire book is that the author seems very full of herself. Absolutely sure that there’s not a deity, because prayer works regardless. The thing that makes me feel that she’s so conceited in her writing is that she may not mean to, but she speaks down to those who do believe there’s a deity, as if those who believe are just not as mature in their faith as she is.

Let me say for the record, “fuck that noise.”

Faith is not a journey toward believing there is no deity and praying, anyway. Faith is a spectrum, just like sexuality. To illustrate, I will go back almost ten years and tell you about the time I was sitting in the back of the church at Bridgeport while the Portland Lesbian Choir was setting up for their dress rehearsal (we rented out our space for concerts). One of the women was wearing a t-shirt that said, “100% Lesbian.” Nancy was in love with a woman, but had never dated any others. Before she met her partner, she considered herself straight. At the time, I was dating a man, for the first and only time as an adult (so far). We sat there for at least 20 minutes trying to decide what percentage of lesbian we were. Some days, I feel gayer than others.

It’s the same with religion. Sometimes I am absolutely sure there’s a God, and sometimes I’m not. But there is never a point at which I will go all the way toward atheism, because the question will never be settled for me. Just as I will never consider myself gay or lesbian, because to me, that is saying that even though I have only been married to women, that means the men I’ve dated don’t count. And of course they do. When Ryan and I were together, we dated for a year and two months, and that was in middle school… highly unusual for kids that young, and yet, we just fit. He was the cream in my coffee and the butter on my bread. It was one of the happiest times of my life. To call myself gay after that is just ridiculous. Bisexuality gets a bad rap because most people think it means that you date both sexes at the same time to be happy. Not so much. Bisexuality is a spectrum that lasts your whole life, and if I look at my whole life, I’ve been attracted to men as well as women, but never once has it occurred to me not to be monogamous.

To extrapolate a little further, my first wife was bisexual as well, and because of this, she really wanted to go to a bisexual conference held in Houston where one of the keynote speakers was the late and great Fritz Klein. Remember that name, because even though he died a relatively long time ago, he will teach you just as much about your sexuality now as he told me in that lecture. He took Alfred Kinsey’s work (the scale from 0 being completely heterosexual and 6 being completely homosexual) and added to it in ways that most people never think about, but should. Getting to meet and spend time with him is one of my fondest memories, but this is his legacy.

If you click on the image, it will show a version large enough to print that you can fill out on your own. Here’s the catch. No matter what you put in any of the boxes, Dr. Klein firmly believes that one box trumps them all, and that is self-identification. Say you fill out everything with numbers that say you are as queer as a three dollar bill. If you self-identify as straight, then you are. Period. You are what you say you are, and no one can tell you any different. Self-identification comes at your own pace, on your own time.

There should be some sort of grid for belief, as well. Perhaps I will be the one to make it. I certainly have enough information over my lifetime to complete something like it in terms of belief, prayer life, commitment to religious services, etc. It is a rolling set of emotions. Sometimes I feel more spiritual than others. Sometimes I feel more willing to commit to going to church than others. Sometimes I feel more altruism than others. However, if I look at my faith over my lifetime, I have consistently believed that I don’t know if there’s a God or not. I have never, not even once, believed that there was no God. I always fall into that category of, “who knows?”

I have told this story on Nadia before, but I will tell it again. Nadia Bolz-Weber is a loudmouthed, often profane, heavily tattooed Lutheran minister whom I seek to emulate, but in the best of ways. One of the stories she tells in her autobiography, Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner & Saint, is that she was called to the bedside of a man who said, “I’m an atheist!” She said that in her head, she was thinking, “good for you. I wish I could pull that off.” I knew intimately what she meant- that for this man, there was no struggle. It was black or white.

Even for “professional Christians,” it’s sometimes a struggle to believe that someone is listening when we pray. However, there are two things that keep me in the game at all times. The first is this scene from Shadowlands:

The second is that regardless of how I’m feeling when I show up for church in the morning, there is that moment where we’re all in deep prayer together, sharing joy and pain… or there’s that moment when we are hearing the words that have been said for hundreds of years that begin, “on the night he was betrayed, Jesus took bread, gave it to his disciples, and said: ‘take, eat; this is my body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.'”

I don’t do all of this because I think God cares one way or the other. God is too big, too mystical, too unknowable to think that God might require worship. I do all of this because I see what it does in my own life, just like Jack Lewis. I do not have the option not to pray. It flows as easily from me as do blood, sweat & tears (as a brass player, you didn’t really think I was going to pass that up, did you?). It strengthens me when I think I do not have anything left. It shows me my flaws in my own reasoning because as I am praying, God whispers back… and of course I think the god-conscience is part of myself. I think that the god-conscience resides in every living being.

Where you fall on the spectrum is whether you decide to use it. If you don’t, it doesn’t mean that you are a bad person. It means that you have something else in your life that fills that spot for you. As a liberal Christian trying to take back the fanatical words of the Evangelical movement, I am sorry if you are an atheist and you have ever been treated badly by a Christian wanting to help you to death.

You are welcome to walk with me. I will even hold your hand. It is not either of our jobs to change each other’s minds, just to be together, because the spectrum is wide, but not so much when our fingers touch.

Amen.

I have a dentist appointment at 3:30 today, so I only have to hang on a little bit longer. By then, my Tylenol and ibuprofen will have worn off enough that if they give me a vicoprofen or a T3 it won’t bother my stomach and I might kiss them. Might. We’ll just see what happens when I get there. 🙂 Even if all they give me is laughing gas and try to make me forget about the pain, that will be enough. I have such problems with my teeth that I’ve just put off and put off due to cost that I’m in trouble. I’ve already had a tooth extracted on that side, and it’s affecting everything, including the way I drool. It’s attractive, let me tell you. And remember ladies, I’m single.

My tooth is the only thing I can really think about, so distraction is key. I’ve been watching the fourth season of Veep, and when I realized I was devouring it too fast, I switched back to reading Amen. Like I said earlier, I am reading it for Contemporary Theology class, but I fucking hate it. The author has an air of righteousness about her that is just so off-putting. It’s full of shit like, “if you believe x or so doctrine, keep doing what works for you, but…” It’s like reading a watered down version of Richard Dawkins, and I so wish I was kidding about that. Other people’s beliefs are their beliefs, and they are so cute. I am taking in her words without believing them. I want to argue her into the ground, and if I ever get the chance, I will. Because there’s a way to talk about belief without sounding like a sanctimonious prick. I will water my comments down in Sunday School, but you know me. I won’t water them down here. Mostly her thought process is that you can be an atheist and be a part of the life of the church and pray and all of these things, with which I totally agree. No one should ever be turned away from a church, because at its heart, church is about altruism just as much as it is about belief in God. If you are an atheist, you are always welcome at St. James and All Sinners, because even if you don’t believe in God, I will still put you to work feeding the homeless and asking you to bring extra socks and food.

And if you show up, there will be no discussion about whether your belief is right or wrong. It just is. There’s no proof either way… just as I expect that there will be no discussion about others’ beliefs without really trying to reach across the pews. I’m not going to talk you out of your atheism, and you’re not going to talk me out of my belief, so intelligent discussion can take place within those parameters. I am also not going to let anyone say that your beliefs are cute, but you’re really not mature enough in your faith to see that there’s not really a supreme being… or that there is. But, to me, it’s not the classic grandfather in the sky, but a place inside all of us that yearns for the divine and the mystical for answers. What scientists do not seem to understand is that faith does not answer the scientific problems of our time, but the human ones.

Faith and science can reside together because they accomplish different things. It will not help you to memorize the periodic table when your child is in surgery. It is then that we reach to the mystical and the divine for the prayers that we all pray in those times, such as Anne Lamott’s Help, Thanks, Wow.

When atheists describe to me the God in which they don’t believe, I often say, “I don’t believe in that God, either.” Frankly, the God of the Old Testament is a divine douchebag at times. But, in taking the Bible seriously and not literally, it is the words of the Jews writing that believed that’s what was happening, not necessarily what was. By the time the New Testament was put together, the understanding of God and the Trinity had progressed quite a bit. Theology had progressed into a world of promise and not vengeance. I often say that every parable of Jesus can be redacted to the one about the rich man and the servants who received talents, and what they did with them. The answer to that parable is directly tied to how much each servant believed in themselves.The rich man returns, rewards the two who made money, but severely punishes the servant who did nothing. To me, every parable of Jesus is directly tied to stopping putting all your talents in a hole, because are we really talking about money anymore? Yes, a talent was a denomination of money, but it extrapolates so well in today’s world. I’ve hid my talents for a long time, and I have a feeling I am not alone. People with much more bravery than me have reaped the reward of putting their talent out into the world and reaping its benefits four, five, even tenfold.

Maybe some of you even go to eleven.

It is here that I owe you an enormous debt of gratitude. By writing out my emotions and examining myself, I have put out a body of work that resonates with others as well, and it provided me the confidence to put my money where my mouth is. I have applied to school again. I have agreed to put on the stole and call myself Christ in the World (as all Christians are, but few go to school for it). I never would have had the confidence to do so if I hadn’t put myself out there on this web site, first. I rescued my talents from their hole in the ground by listening to you when you say that I’m a good writer. I came into myself, realizing that I had more talents than I thought I did. I got away from believing that I wasn’t good enough to fly solo, when in reality, I’ve been ready for a long time, I just didn’t have the chutzpah to GO FOR IT.

It was really the marriage article that did it. In one day, I went from obscurity to Margaret Cho and Martina Navratilova and thousands of others knowing who I am, both as a writer and as a person. It encouraged me to keep going… and going… and going. The next article that I wrote was a piece on sex and marriage, which prompted one of my readers to say that maybe I’d end up as a marriage and family counselor. Actually, you get all of that when you put on the stole…. and I would like to think that all of my mistakes in my relationships give me a better idea of what not to tell people in their struggles than being perfect ever would. I feel that all of the changes I am making in my life are preparing me for that Biblical marriage I struggled to have with Dana, and though we failed, I learned things that couldn’t have been learned any other way. I think about her every day, about what went wrong and what went gloriously right. She is literally the best thing that ever happened to me (#lafawnduh) in terms of what an ideal marriage is and the things I’ve learned since in terms of how to keep something like that going- how to keep it sacred.

My next relationship (even if a miracle occurs and Dana and I get back together) will be a reflection of those things, because a relationship with Dana cannot be weighted down with the mistakes of the past. My next relationship will be new, whether it is someone from my past, or someone that I meet here in DC. We both should have turned to the Bible more, and the Internet less. We both should have had more communication and less checking out. We both should have done so many things, and those things I ponder in my heart.

Jesus sets forth the rules for a great marriage, and as Christians, we both ignored those rules when we should have learned them cold. For fuck’s sake, if I’d just taken my own advice in my marriage article, we might not be where we are right now, which is mostly estranged with the occasional e-mail or text. The last communication I got from her was on my birthday, for which I was so grateful because I moped that I hadn’t heard from her right up until I did, and then it seemed like my day was complete. My love for her is so absolute that if I hadn’t heard from her, I think I would still be crying over it.

My cardinal Biblical mistake was putting someone else above her, and it never should have happened. Not in a million years. But it did, because my friendship with Argo consumed me in a way I’d never experienced. She became my first thought in the morning and my last thought at night, but not in a way that I felt superceded Dana, but in retrospect, it did. It’s shitty how hindsight is 20/20. You would have to know all the ins and outs of my friendship with Argo to understand why I felt that way, but it’s not my story to tell. It’s hers.

The point here being that I understand my mistakes, because I’ve been spending a lot of time going over them. Extracting lessons and pain so that I can move forward, even though some of those ruminations pull me back into a time when we were happy- all three of us. It was so good right up until the train ran off the tracks and now I am alone, sitting in a lot of things I wish I could just put into the ground and hide.

But those mistakes are also the basis of why I want to pull everything out and look at it, so I can recover in my own time, enough to be able to take my talents out of the ground and multiply them. As I told my former minister friends, I can see the vision, but I cannot see the staircase…. not yet. But it helps that there are former ministers in my congregation that are willing to impart advice, HARD gained wisdom. And Matt is not shy about sharing his wisdom as well, which makes me feel that I have joined a special group. I have graduated from someone who wants to be a minister someday to asking those who’ve already done it how to create what I want.

They looked at me funny when I talked about not creating by committee. I think they think I want to be some kind of dictator. No, it’s just that I want people who are going to take the God energy emanating from me and put it into action without telling me what I should do. It seems mean. It really does. But at the same time, I do not want to be called to a church already in progress. I want to start my own, and have a denomination approach me, in the same vein as the Cathedral of Hope in Dallas. I am not talking about telling people what to do once the structure is in place. I am perfectly happy to delegate and create. But the vision is mine, and it cannot live in several people at once. It can only live in me, and having to fight an uphill battle every day does not appeal to me. I would rather start a small plant and watch it grow, like a Russian doll. There is a difference between being a visionary and a dictator. Visionaries put ideas in place and have others carry them out. Dictators are micro-managers who cannot let go of anything. Visionaries are open to ideas, but have the freedom to say whether it fits or not. I want a church that is well-run, self-sustaining, and committed to social justice. I believe the way to do that is by working from the top down, not the bottom up. It creates mixed messages and muddled ideas that may or may not move forward because the message is lost, tied up in committee for ages. As the great philosopher Martin Blank once said, look, I don’t want to get into a semantic argument, I just want the protein. I want people to follow me, knowing that the power does not come from within me, but from the holy authority given to me by the power of the stole.

I want to be able to say that I studied for this for a very long time, that I have been working in the church in various capacities since I was ten years old (mostly helping my mom with the children’s choir). I have been a lay preacher, thanks to Susan Leo at Bridgeport UCC, since 2003. When I graduate from Howard with that MDiv, I will have received even more training in the ways of interpreting the Bible, learning how to preach more effectively, and in going to a black school, having more awareness of race relations and how to bridge that gap in my own church. The first thing I want to do is to reach out to the homeless community, which in Silver Spring is almost exclusively black. I want to get in trouble with Jeffrey. I want the government of Montgomery County to know me as a troublemaker. I want to be worthy of an orange reflective vest that says “Clergy” on the back as I am actually walking the streets bringing the light of Christ to people who sorely need it more than I do. I am white. My family comes from money. I have never gone without a thing I need, and rarely gone without anything I wanted. My job is to learn to help people in concrete ways who have never had these things, possibly in their whole lives. When I see homeless teenagers, my heart melts into a puddle on the floor and I have to go into my nothing box just to be able to cope, to be able to calculate my next move without getting too angry or too incapacitated by my own tears to listen to those that need me.

Here’s the first time I learned that lesson. Years ago, I sang with a group called Bayou City Women’s Chorus, conducted by James Knapp. One of the pieces we were singing was called How Can I Keep from Singing, one of the pieces that I loved when Diane introduced it to our choir at Bridgeport, and she later told me that it was sung at a funeral for the family in our church that lost their infant twins. Between those two things, I could not keep my emotions unchecked. I was crying through the whole thing. James was not speaking directly to me, but it felt like it. He said that when we are singing for an audience, the emotions are for the AUDIENCE to have, not us. I have carried that advice ever since, and that’s mostly how I cope with ministry as well. It is not my job to have emotions in situations like this. It is for me to listen while others have theirs.

I was happy and shaken when several people said they wanted to come to my church, because it sounded like their kind of church (in the bulletin it said that I was starting my own church called St. James and All Sinners). I was only shaken because I realized that I needed to have a church as far away from CCC as I could get, because I didn’t want Matt to think I was trying to poach members from him. It’s my dream to start a church, but not at the expense of taking away from CCC. It’s my home. The home that is going to teach me to fly solo, one step at a time.

And this is everything I am thinking as I wait for 3:30, which cannot come fast enough. I have had enough of my own tears.

Amen

No one in my house has codeine, so I am doing my best with my split tooth until tomorrow with Tylenol and Advil. I also bought some ice cream, which I thought would help soften the blow, but as it turns out, not so much. I am having to drink my calories through Carnation Instant Breakfast because the OTC pain meds are taking the edge off, but I still cry when I eat. It’s just unavoidable, and I am not usually a cryer. I used to be. I really used to be. But at the same time, I developed a layer of clinical separation from my emotions so that I can think about things behind it without necessarily flooding out. Sometimes it’s a gift. Sometimes it’s a disaster. But there you go. This whole tooth thing is my undoing, because I cannot hide that much pain.

It’s probably a good thing I wasn’t on codeine today, because I had to be sharp for church. When we did the reception of new members, he told us to introduce ourselves and tell the congregation a little bit about us. Since I’d written nearly everything I wanted to say in the bulletin, I told the story of reading Matt for ages without knowing what he looked like or where he preached on the ground. He wasn’t at CCC when I started reading him, probably in 2008 or 2009, so it was a surprise and a half to walk into a church where I knew someone in the cloud and THERE HE WAS. In the flesh. I ended up telling that story without (thankfully) saying the words “drooling fangirl,” but I got my point across. As I said in my Facebook post about it, it made Matt blush and the congregation clap. #missionaccomplished

We also did a special anthem for the offertory where there was a soprano solo, and Karen, the one who sang it, is one of those voices that brings tears to your eyes because it is so pure and clean… the kind where when you listen to her, you have to will yourself to come in on time. It was gorgeous. Simply gorgeous. I cannot get that tone because my voice is a lot heavier (and LOUDER) than hers, so if I ever sing a solo in church, I hope she is as proud of me as I am of her. We are so different, and therefore we enjoy sitting next to each other. She brings out the best in me, and I hope she feels the same way in return, that I bring out the best in her as well.

And as an aside, the last hymn was cwm rhondda, and I sang the hell out of it. Just enjoyed myself and mad I wasn’t standing next to a bass. And of course I took the highest note possible at the end because I’m a whore like that. Wendy knows. Wendy was the first person to call me a “descant whore,” and Dana thought it was so funny she called me that pretty much the entire time we were married. 🙂

After church, I went down for coffee hour and several people came up to me wanting to know about St. James, and we ended up having a fascinating conversation on how to build a church and a book called Amen that they’re reading in the Contemporary Theology Sunday School class. I bought it for my Kindle as soon as I got home, because I want to go to the class next week. Apparently, this woman is teaching theology in such a way that her parishioners are having trouble following her. I said, that’s probably because she doesn’t teach in parables. I’m reading a book by William Barclay that talks about how Jesus taught in parables so that regular people could understand what he was saying. Here’s my favorite theological joke in the entire world:

Karl Barth, Paul Tillich, Reinhold Niebuhr, and James Cone find themselves all at the same time at Caesarea Philippi. Who should come along but Jesus, and he asks the four famous theologians the same Christological question, “Who do you say that I am?”

Karl Barth stands up and says: “You are the totaliter aliter, the vestigious trinitatum who speaks to us in the modality of Christomonism.”

Not prepared for Barth’s brevity, Paul Tillich stumbles out: “You are he who heals our ambiguities and overcomes the split of angst and existential estrangement; you are he who speaks of the theonomous viewpoint of the analogia entis, the analogy of our being and the ground of all possibilities.”

Reinhold Niebuhr gives a cough for effect and says, in one breath: “You are the impossible possibility who brings to us, your children of light and children of darkness, the overwhelming oughtness in the midst of our fraught condition of estrangement and brokenness in the contiguity and existential anxieties of our ontological relationships.”

Finally James Cone gets up, and raises his voice: “You are my Oppressed One, my soul’s shalom, the One who was, who is, and who shall be, who has never left us alone in the struggle, the event of liberation in the lives of the oppressed struggling for freedom, and whose blackness is both literal and symbolic.”

And Jesus says, “what?”

Parables are found in the Old Testament as well, but I don’t think many people know them as such. For instance, let’s talk about Nathan:

Then the Lord sent Nathan to David. And he came to him, and said to him: “There were two men in one city, one rich and the other poor. The rich man had exceedingly many flocks and herds. But the poor man had nothing, except one little ewe lamb which he had bought and nourished; and it grew up together with him and with his children. It ate of his own food and drank from his own cup and lay in his bosom; and it was like a daughter to him. And a traveler came to the rich man, who refused to take from his own flock and from his own herd to prepare one for the wayfaring man who had come to him; but he took the poor man’s lamb and prepared it for the man who had come to him.”

So David’s anger was greatly aroused against the man, and he said to Nathan, “As the Lord lives, the man who has done this shall surely die! And he shall restore fourfold for the lamb, because he did this thing and because he had no pity.”

Then Nathan said to David, “You are the man!

David had everything; Uriah had nothing. And yet David sent Uriah to the front lines of war just so he could take his wife. In that parable, David realizes what a delta bravo he was to Uriah… Nathan didn’t say that David was a douchebag to his face. He just pointed him in the right direction.

It’s the same with the parables of Jesus. Metaphors about the ways we act are the foundation of the understanding of theology for the lay person, who isn’t the one that signed up to learn words like “Christomonism” and “Eschatology.” That’s for me. Parables are for you. It’s not my idea. It’s William Barclay’s, but it’s one that I wholeheartedly embrace. I have a whole parable spelled out in my own abuse called “The Wheat and the Weeds.” I realized that no abuser/enabler relationship is without its good moments, and that’s why enablers stay. Especially since Diane was with me in my heart and mind all the time, and I was young enough for her to model speech and enculturation, we have a lot of the same facial expressions, speech patterns, you name it. I realized that trying to get rid of her completely within me was burning down a whole field, because I could not separate the wheat from the weeds without destroying who I am in the process.

When I learned that parable, it beget action. So parables are for everyone, even people who sign up to read Barth, Tillich, Niebuhr, and Cone.

Amen.