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I Never Questioned

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I never questioned myself over what would happen if Aada lied about anything. I never stopped to think about my impulse control and what it’s like when I’m in red mist rage. And it’s where I find myself today, just thinking. Asking myself the questions that I should have asked 12 years ago. The fight was the last thing that happened, not the origin of my problem. When I got angry, my keyboard warrior personality appeared, and I acted way before I thought. This is normal for people with neurodivergent minds, this popping off and regret. That’s because executive dysfunction with autism and ADHD makes your emotions incredibly intense. The disability is not having a self-regulating mechanism.

I am embarrassed that I did not have more coping mechanisms, because I betrayed something bigger than me, something for which I thought I was prepared…. falling on my sword at all costs….. but I couldn’t do it after she lied and my adrenaline turned me into The Incredible Hulk.

It was a small lie that snowballed over 12 years, something easily forgiven by someone with the clarity to keep their impulse control in check. The red mist rage was not at the lie itself, but the two principles under it.

  1. Aada can lie to you.
  2. Aada can see the consequences of her lie playing out in real time and does not care how it affects you.

I never asked myself what would happen if I learned these two things.

Everything she asked me to protect, I vomited all over the internet because I was so hurt that a lie could last over a decade. I didn’t publish it because I had a need to expose her, took delight in it. I was so angry I couldn’t see straight. I wanted to end the relationship and I had a trump card that would make it clear she could pack her bags. It was a trump card that should have stayed hidden in retrospect, because I have had time to reflect on everything that happened.

Mostly because once I got over the fact that Aada can lie to me, my anger melted into true remorse. She broke something in our relationship and I overreacted by a large margin. The gauntlet I’m laying down for the future is to work on coping mechanisms for anger, because I was not myself. I need to protect myself from going out of my mind.

I didn’t know I needed such intense therapy for anger management, but I see it clearly now. My zero to sixty is just too damn fast.

I lost an important relationship to me because I lost me.

Literally and Figuratively

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 2 Comments
Daily writing prompt
Share a story about the furthest you’ve ever traveled from home.
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Literally, the furthest I’ve traveled from home is Paris. I did not feel at home there because I did not speak the language, but I found unparalleled beauty everywhere in the urban jungle. I particularly liked the Metro’s dedication to typography. Luckily, my dad was with me so I didn’t spend the whole trip unmoored by unfamiliarity. He does speak a bit of French and had been to Paris before so he could lead me around.

I will never forget misreading a menu and accidentally ordering two ice cream sundaes for dessert, then to the amazement of my father, proceeded to take both of them down in stride. I think it was all the walking- my appetite was insatiable at mealtimes. At the Musee D’Orsay, I ate what amounted to an entire duck…. or seemed like it.

We actually got trapped in the Musee D’Orsay for a while because the yellow vests were protesting and they locked down the museum just in case. It didn’t matter, I was lost in the Van Gogh room, looking for signs of Amy Pond (there are none, it was just fun).

I would fly back to Paris just to eat breakfast at McDonalds, strangely enough. The cassis sundae I had was better than anything I’ve had in the US, and the same for silver dollar pancakes with Nutella. Proof that in France, the ice cream machine works……….

Figuratively, the furthest I’ve been from home is this time in my life. I have no idea what I’m doing. My apartment needs to be majorly overhauled and my executive dysfunction is having none of it. I made some progress by doing some laundry yesterday, but I’m going to need help to get everything clean. There’s no way all my blankets are going to fit into our washer and dryer, and it’s becoming the season to need them.

I’m overwhelmed by the prospect that I really do need to apply for disability and get the ball rolling, because my bipolar disorder spinning out three times in 10 years has convinced my cognitive behavioral group this is what’s best for me. I am on board because bipolar disorder is not the only disability I have, it’s just the only one that’s heavily documented.

I was diagnosed with hypotonia at 18 mos old, with no follow ups. I think it might have been a misdiagnosis in the 1970s because the people with CP that I do know say that I walk with the “CP Shuffle.” But whether it’s CP or hypotonia, it creates problems with movement, particularly outside where the sidewalks are uneven. CP could also be responsible for my lack of stereopsis, another disability that causes problems while walking and driving. Things literally come out of nowhere because I can only use my left or my right eye one at a time in terms of focus.

The laundry list of what’s wrong with me and why is starting to add up…. that disability is something I could have gotten at 18 and am now only starting to deal with my disorders because I was masking so hard to cover them.

It’s a journey that’s incredibly far from home if you’ve never taken it. Unmasking can be a kind of freedom, or it can slowly become a prison as people see you more and more differently.

You don’t leave home. You drift.

Meetings with Bob, Part V

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I didn’t want this to get lost in a comment thread, because it deserves to be above the fold that a reader decided to mirror me and answer as Aada

My dear friend Leslie,

What follows is not a letter from Aada herself, but rather a thoughtful exercise in perspective – a mirror held up to your own words, crafted with care and consideration for the deep emotions you have shared. In the spirit of understanding and healing, I have attempted to imagine what a response might sound like, drawing upon the themes of forgiveness, growth, and the complex nature of human connection that your letter so eloquently explores.

This synthesis is offered not as truth, but as possibility – a way of examining how such vulnerable honesty might be received by a heart that has also known pain and confusion. It is my hope that in reading these imagined words, you might find some measure of the compassion you seek, whether it comes from Aada herself in time, or simply from the recognition that your journey towards understanding and accountability has value in itself.

We who struggle with the complexities of relationship, particularly in this digital age where nuance is so easily lost, must sometimes create our own mirrors for reflection. Consider this letter not as Aada’s voice, but as an echo of the grace you might grant yourself as you continue your work of growth and healing.

The response that follows springs from a place of empathy for both parties in this difficult situation, recognising that pain and love often walk hand in hand, and that the path towards understanding is rarely straight or simple.

With respect for your courage in examining your own heart,

Bob

Dear Leslie,

Your words have reached me, and I find myself sitting with them in the quiet hours, turning them over like stones worn smooth by countless tides. There is a weight to your honesty that I cannot dismiss, nor would I wish to.

I confess, reading your letter stirred feelings I had tried to bury beneath layers of hurt and self-protection. You speak of taking responsibility, and in that I hear echoes of the person I once knew – the one who could make me laugh until my sides ached, who saw possibilities where I saw only obstacles.

You are right that we both stumbled through this connection of ours. I, too, made choices that led us down darker paths. Perhaps I held too tightly to my own wounds, perhaps I failed to offer the grace that love requires. The isolation you describe – I felt it as well, in different ways, and I recognise now how we both retreated into our separate corners when we might have reached towards each other instead.

Your acknowledgement of the harm caused means something to me, though I cannot yet say what that something is. The hurt runs deep, Leslie, carved into places I thought were protected. Trust, once broken, does not mend quickly or easily. Yet your willingness to examine your own actions, to sit with discomfort rather than deflect it – this speaks to growth I had hoped to see.

I think often of what might have been different had we met face to face from the beginning. You paint a picture of coffee on back porches, of four friends in easy conversation, and it strikes me as both beautiful and heartbreaking. Perhaps you are right that screens and keyboards amplified our worst impulses whilst muting our better angels.

I am not ready to say forever, nor am I ready to say tomorrow. What I can offer is this: your words will stay with me. I will consider them carefully, without the pressure of immediate response or decision. Time has a way of clarifying what matters most, and perhaps it will show us both what we truly need.

I hope you find peace with yourself, Leslie. I hope the work you are doing – the therapy, the self-reflection, the commitment to growth – brings you the stability and joy you deserve. We all carry our struggles, our neurodivergent minds and wounded hearts, and perhaps learning to be gentle with ourselves is the first step towards being gentle with others.

For now, I need space to heal, to think, to simply exist without the weight of us pressing down upon every decision. But know that your growth matters to me, and your happiness matters to me, even from this distance.

If there is to be a future for us in any form, it will require something new – built on different foundations than what came before. Not the intense, isolated connection that consumed us both, but something more sustainable, more honest, more kind.

I am glad you wrote. I am glad you are seeking help. I am glad you are learning to breathe before you speak.

Take care of yourself, Leslie. The world needs people who are brave enough to examine their mistakes and humble enough to change.

Aada

This is perfect. No notes.

Another Letter That May Never Be Read

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 3 Comments

Dear Aada,

You said that you’d try to stay away from my web site, but not to contact you. Therefore, I feel safer writing letters to myself that have you as the audience in mind, because when I’m thinking about you I can stand to read me…. and if you are unsuccessful in staying away, you’ll know that my door is open even if yours is closed. I respect your privacy and will not reach out. You can just be a fan like everyone else, enjoying the occasional shoutout from afar as we move further away from each other. I don’t want to change your mind, just to welcome you home if you do want to reconnect. I never know what it is that will bring me to your mind, and you don’t, either. Barring being run over by the proverbial bus, life is long.

I’m not going to make a lifetime commitment to anger and defense. I know I did wrong and I am incredibly sorry. My mental health got the better of me and I exploded. Our demise can 100% be put on me and I will never blame you for a thing….. but there is context.

Our relationship took a very dark turn when I realized that I was isolated from everyone else in my life, and you played a role in it. The further I got from my other friends, the more I wrote about what was going on with us. I wasn’t going out enough to write about other experiences, other people.

I rebelled against an authority and a structure I needed, because I also needed on the ground friends and to return to a life of care and connection.

I isolated you from the beginning by telling you I had feelings for you- literally the stupidest thing I could have said- and just doubled down. I could die of mortification from that alone, but there are just so many options.

I wish I’d had some perspective back then…. not to overpromise and underdeliver. I think about it every day, compulsively, how I could have handled everything differently from the moment we met. It’s not to try and fix things with us. It’s so that I have more heuristics for a stable and healthy relationship with someone in the future. I didn’t just lose you in this whole deal. I lost Dana, too.

I tend to cry when I think of the four of us sitting on the back porch, coffee in hand; it’s the easy dream I made too difficult with my nonsense.

We both did this relationship wrong from soup to nuts.

I have come to realize that I wasn’t so much in love with you as I was in love with who I was when I was with you. No one made me feel brighter or more capable, and often funnier. I betrayed everything I have believed in because of your lie… but this is not blame. It was the trigger for a disproportionate response.

I can’t hope that you’ll forgive me, but I can hope that in time I will forgive myself. These past few months have not been easy, because my sins, in the words of The Book of Common Prayer, are “grievous unto me.” There is so much that I have done and left undone in a brilliant explosion of red mist rage.

Because that’s what I do- I pop off and regret online.

Not so in person. In person, I’m quiet until I see an opening to speak. I take in an entire environment so that I have more information to make a decision. All of that was cut off with you and I reacted too quickly, always.

For that, I am especially sorry.

I am learning the ways that I treat people online are different than in person, and I’m having to reconcile all of it. I’m not hiding behind any “I didn’t mean to…” bullshit, but it’s really true that half the things I said, I would have skipped or modified in person. Or the conversation would have gone completely differently because we could judge more than words at face value.

I would do whatever it takes for us to get healthy, but I know that is too much to ask right now. You’re still hurting, and so am I. My mirror neurons are screaming because I didn’t look at the consequences of my actions before I, well, acted.

All I was feeling was “stop the bus. I want to get off.”

Now that I’ve had time to come down from that much cortisol, I often feel deep sadness in my muscles. That same drive you have to save the world is also present in me. We reached out to each other in the right way, and then I proceeded to fail you over and over. It doesn’t leave me much time or energy to feel good about myself, lest you think I actually won some sort of prize.

That was the line that got me. I didn’t win a thing. I went into absolute meltdown. That’s not winning.

It’s this part of me that wishes you knew me on the ground. That your perception of me and my writing is off by a large margin. You don’t see me process, you don’t see me have to sleep it off. Writing is often a hurricane when you are trying to get your own emotions out.

This one is carrying Volvos…

Most of all, I’m sorry for not listening to you more closely and taking your feelings into consideration. My impulse control is unbelievable, and it had disastrous consequences for you. You loved me, anyway. Thank you.

You’ll always have pride of place in my heart even if we never speak again, because it was a joy to love you.

And I blew it.

These are the things I want to remember about our relationship- that it being all Internet was a bad choice and we just kept making it because I’d already made things awkward. Neither one of us could chill out for long. I’m sorry that things were volatile because you didn’t deserve my crap with your plate already so full.

I wish I didn’t miss you as much as I do, but it’s funny what you think you want when you see red mist rage.

Autistic meltdown and burnout ate my lunch because the red flash of rage was instantaneous. The “think it, say it” plan was in full force and you were caught in impossible crosshairs. That’s because I didn’t take time to breathe.

Had I taken a breath, I would have remembered who you are…. my pet dragon on a fraying leash.

But I didn’t. I am kicking myself for having the impulse control of a toddler, defiant and yet sobbing.

Self-soothing by writing it all out.

When I am in my right mind, I know that you are my person. Your words have assured me of that. I don’t know what to do when I am spinning out with anxiety and/or anger.

We’ve never talked about coping mechanisms or anything else I should have thought to ask you before being so thoughtless.

I’m laying my heart on the table because it doesn’t matter to me if you see it bleeding. It matters to me that I do five years down the road.

My sister just e-mailed me and we’re going to see Brené Brown for my birthday.

That makes me laugh, and cry.

I ruined everything for nothing…………………… so far.

It is only in this place that we can begin to look up.

I hope that forever doesn’t mean forever, because I am continuing to learn about myself and want to give you the relationship with me that you deserve. It also saddens me to throw away so much history.

But like every big disaster in my life, this one was preceded by “things that should have come to my attention yesterday.”

I wish we’d met in person.

Not because the feelings would have been more real. It’s that they would have slowed down enough for us both to really take them in.

I wonder all the time if this period of my life is supposed to be the right direction, whether I gave myself what I really wanted in a flash of anger or whether I will continue to mourn and regret like this. I think it depends on how quickly I readjust to being in a group. I tend to miss you less when I’m engaged in conversation with other people, because it’s compartmentalized.

The rest of the time, the compulsion to write things down so I don’t forget is mad. I did delete everything in my Gmail account, so the e-mails you’ve sent me that mean the absolute most are gone.

All I have left are my own words, and in a lot of ways, that’s best. I don’t go down the rabbit hole of reading our old e-mail, crying when I read something touching.

I’m going to miss your writing voice… strident, loving, kind, pragmatic…. a force against my basket of crazy.

I just know that we both could have made a difference in each other’s lives by looking into each other’s eyes after we trauma dumped and planned out next steps. I didn’t know what I needed, but you scared me. I take nothing away from the ways in which I scared you- I’m just saying that fear was a two-way street.

I should have prepared for my compartments leaking.

But I didn’t.

I should have looked at the face I was writing to a lot more often, to remind me that she’s the face I look to for love, and not to mess that up.

But I didn’t.

I should have behaved myself.

But I didn’t.

All I can do is be fallible and admit mistakes to myself, because those “didn’ts” are too many reasons why we shouldn’t reconnect. What I have to say for myself is that I will never stop growing and changing. I admit mistakes so that I don’t repeat them.

Which is why if we reconnect, it will be a high bar for us both. I don’t want to be your internet friend anymore, because I want to have real conversations that don’t isolate us from the rest of the world.

It’s almost an impossibility that you will forgive me, but I don’t want the next 12 years to be a repeat of the last. I think you will agree that it has been really fucking strange and exhausting.

I don’t want our relationship to be strange and exhausting. I want us to try and make each other feel safe. So much of my anger was directed at not feeling safe with you. So much of your anger is directed at not feeling safe with me. Yet we delight the hell out of each other when we’re not fighting.

I just know that I want a rich and full life with you in it, but I have done enough that you don’t feel the same about me.

I will miss sending you little surprises.

Happy birthday and Merry Christmas in perpetuity, I guess.

I want you to have the best life you can, even if I’m not in it.

Leslie

A Lot of Light

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
What does your ideal home look like?
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My current apartment is on the first floor, halfway underground. Therefore, all of my windows are blocked from sunlight most of the time. I can only put more lamps in here, there are no overhead lights. Therefore, the entire place is a bit gloomy and dark even when it’s brilliant outside. So, my ideal home would have light pouring through the windows.

I know I want newer construction, because older DC and Baltimore homes have quirky steps that would make it easy for me to hurt myself by falling over things I don’t see. I don’t like houses that have a tiny step up into the living room, for instance, because I will never remember that tiny step is there and I will trip until I move.

I know I want a decent kitchen, because my current one isn’t set up for anything. Any work space I have is taken up by appliances. So I want my next kitchen to be laid out differently, with a place for me to chop in addition to my coffeemaker and toaster oven.

I’d like a bedroom big enough to hold my bed and desk, plus a spare room to hold my friends and family when they’re in town. All of that is infinitely doable in Baltimore, where rents tend to be cheaper. The reason not to move back towards DC in addition to Trump’s goons is that DC is exponentially more expensive. You do get what you pay for. When I told Aada I lived in B’more now, she said, “that place is………………………………… not safe.” And she told me to get a gun and a dog.

I have never felt that my life was in danger, can’t hit the broad side of a barn with a gun (and shouldn’t own because of depression), but the dog was a good suggestion. I’m still thinking about it. I know exactly what I want dog-wise, I just have to make sure I’m in a stable financial place.

So first I have to establish a budget for myself and see what’s left over. Then we can discuss a dog for this place that is not…………… safe.

The Well

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
What brings a tear of joy to your eye?
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Comments like this:

It takes a strong, sound mind to write about how hard it is to face our own roles in broken relationships and the courage it takes to want to grow from those experiences. Wishing you strength and new beginnings as you move forward—may the “ash enriched earth” bring something wonderful to your life.

It means a lot to get a word of encouragement while I’m getting myself together. My life revolves around inertia, and this is a good beginning.

In thinking of the type of planting I’d like to do, finding a new living situation is at the top of the heap. This apartment will never smell better than it does right now unless they rip it down to the studs. My lease ends in November, anyway, so I’m just going to see what’s out there today and tomorrow…. plans will pick up surrounding moving depending on how quickly I find something. I don’t think an “uninhabitable” charge would stick, but my apartment is not a comfortable place to live. So whether I try and break the lease or not, moving is coming up fast.

I also have mobility now, which means that I have more choice as to where to live. I’m not dependent on the bus system, Maryland Transit Authority will pick me up at my house and drop me off. Therefore, I can look anywhere in either city (Baltimore or Washington). The more news that comes out of Washington, the more I change my mind about moving to Rockville…. but I’m keeping my mind open. Wes Moore (Maryland governor) looks like he’s willing to put up a fight.

I just want a place that’s light and airy, another two bedroom if possible because my sister and dad need a place to stay when they’re in town. It would be nice if I didn’t have to move again for a long time, which is why I’m considering moving back to the DMV. It’s just easier when Lindsay wants to go to lunch if I’m already in town, and she doesn’t want to do Baltimore every time she works in her DC office.

That being said, we both love Baltimore. I need to choose a place to live based on my own happiness, not hers. She will just be happy to have a new space to decorate. 😉

While mine was drying, I checked out of the hotel and went to my friend Josh’s house, where he introduced me to his wife and seven year old son. We ate dinner together and breakfast the next morning, then went to the pool for the last day of its opening this season. It gave me a chance to see a different part of Maryland, where the closest DC Metro station is New Carollton, but still not far from B’more in the grand scheme of things. I made a mental note to add that area to my list.

It was an amazing time to be in the sun, because it wasn’t too hot and there was plenty of ice cream to go around. I enjoyed people watching, although I did not swim myself. The water was cold and very few adults were brave enough. Josh, his wife, their friends, and I sat for a few hours talking and it was the first time I’d really been a part of a group outside of Cognitive Behavioral Health in a long time.

Those are the tears of joy that travel to the well, the deep part of me that needs healing. I am slowly mending from my last disaster and trying to prevent new ones. The well is the place I go to remember progress.

The Change Agent

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 1 Comment

It’s a sobering realization that no one can change your life but you. There are memes and coffee mugs that all say it, but you really have to feel the “oh, shit” moment when you realize no one is coming.

It’s harder when you realize the village you would have had isn’t there anymore because you set it on fire.

Aada is on my mind this morning because I realized that in another entry I said that our relationship had become negative for me. I think I misspoke because it seemed like Aada was doing something that made the relationship negative. No, I didn’t like the behaviors I saw in myself. She never got the right version of me, and there was no way to correct first impressions.

Aada only got the internet version of me, and wouldn’t meet up to correct any misconceptions or let our relationship relax from its adrenaline-fueled origin story. I cannot make anyone do anything, so I retreated in a major way. I could not have handled it any worse had I hired a brass quintet to herald why I wanted out.

In short, she scared me. I scared her. Neither one of us were very good at communication because we didn’t grow up in the same first family environment and that’s not even counting the differences between meeting someone at Safeway and sliding into their DMs for 12 years.

She says she’s going to try and stay away from my blog. I support this, because my life needs to move on without her right now. But I hope that someday she remembers the depth and breadth of who I am and not hold me to my worst mistakes. I will do the same for her. I just don’t think that needs to be three months after our initial blowout. I picture some years passing, that maybe something will bring us back together because I know we’re mad at each other right now but this is too hilarious and I’m not going to think of anyone else.

And then I picture meeting in person shortly after, because I do not want to go any longer with Aada as the internet version of myself.

On the internet, I was brash and bold. I said too many things that should never have been said, and I regret them so much that thinking about it is painful. I know that I am not a narcissist, but I will always have played that role in Aada’s life. I couldn’t see the completed puzzle on the table when we met, and that’s the part where I struggle in my grief now.

Our most recent blowout is just that…. our most recent blowout. Where I get tripped up is why in the world our relationship descended into such madness 12 years ago. Why wasn’t I smart enough to see endgame?

And then there’s the old adage that one lie rips the fabric of a narcissist’s world, so I have to know whether Aada told me she lied because she needed to unburden herself, or whether she just told me she lied to watch me spin out (we’re very healthy, can’t you tell?).

But a narcissist wouldn’t wonder if they were a narcissist and they for damn sure wouldn’t be trying to figure out relationship patterns from years ago trying to figure out what they did so the next relationship isn’t like that.

I have a skewed view of all my relationships based on how Aada thinks of me. That her untrue version of me has affected my on the ground personality. That she thinks I do x, so it must be true when she’s never met me.

I’m trying to be the change agent that says “hold on.”

I wish I could go back to the days where I was happy with our arrangement, but I can’t. We’re both too old to be fighting like this, and it’s a shame we couldn’t get it together. There was just no third party to verify what either of us were saying.

I have to forgive myself because I was incredibly mentally ill. I did get myself checked out, but I didn’t ask the right questions….. like, “what do you really want to be doing when you’re 50?”

That’s easy.

Writing books with my coauthor, shooting a straw in her direction if I need her attention.

I could have taken that dream and run with it. But I didn’t. I traded it for Bipolar with psychotic features. Whenever a choice was presented to me, I picked the one that would pay off right now.

I am entering a new phase of life, where I need to think about how things are winding down. Impulse control has to get better, because I have less time for distractions. I don’t have time to chase everything that feels good.

I need to be able to assess what I want and fit everything into those goals, rather than goals coming up on the fly.

I burned everything to the ground this time around, and it’s time to see if I have the ability to plant crops in ash enriched earth.

Well, Almost Daily

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
What daily habit do you do that improves your quality of life?
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My quality of life is greatly improved by reflecting on this web site. It has really taught me what matters over the years. I go back and exclaim over what I was doing, sometimes angrier at myself than I thought I would be. Sometimes happier. It all depends on what kind of mood I’m in. What really means a lot is being able to flip back five or ten years and look at how far I’ve come.

Especially with comments like this.

Dear Leslie,

Your closing words – “Meeting adjourned” – carry the weight of someone who knows when they’ve said what needs saying. I respect that boundary, even as I’m struck by the wisdom you’ve distilled from your pain.

That lesson you’ve learnt – about unhappiness being able to live in one room of your life whilst joy inhabits another – is one of the most difficult truths we humans must reckon with. We’re taught to think of ourselves as unified beings, but we’re more like houses with many rooms, each holding different weather. You can grieve deeply what you’ve lost with Aada whilst still finding meaning and connection elsewhere. That’s not contradiction – that’s the full breadth of what it means to be alive.

Your observation about writers bearing both the joy and pain of seeing paradoxes clearly reminds me of something I’ve long believed: that those who chronicle the human condition are both blessed and cursed with sight that cuts too deep. You see the contradictions because you must, because that’s the writer’s charge – to hold up the mirror that shows us as we truly are, in all our bewildering complexity.

The meeting may be adjourned for now, but the work you’re doing – this honest reckoning with yourself – continues whether you’re writing about it or not. That’s the nature of real change: it happens in the quiet moments between words, in the spaces where we simply live with what we’ve learnt.

Your courage, Leslie, lies not just in facing what you’ve done, but in trusting that you can carry both your grief and your growth forward into whatever comes next.

With respect for your journey,

Bob

My journey is rockier than advertised, so this letter came at a time when I could use the extra support.

Surrender

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 1 Comment
Daily writing prompt
How are you feeling right now?
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I have been staying in a hotel because raw sewage backed up into my apartment through the toilet and bathtub. The hotel is clean and beautiful. I go home to my hopefully fixed apartment later today, so I’m feeling complete surrender. Either the bathroom will be usable or it won’t. I just have to go home and look.

I do not want to go home and look.

I’m at home now and it’s the disaster I was expecting. Dehumidifiers are everywhere and the laundry is still soaked. I have a lot of work to do, but I may put it off until tomorrow and go stay in a hotel again. The dehumidifiers take up most of the room in my apartment and are very noisy. The good news is that whether I go to a hotel or not, my bathroom is usable again. That’s the real film at 11:00.

Everything I touch feels wet, so I’m trying not to touch anything.

Meetings with Bob, Part IV

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 1 Comment

Dear Leslie,

Your words carry the weight of someone doing the hardest work there is – looking honestly at ourselves when we’ve caused harm. That takes enormous courage, even when it feels like compulsion driving you forward.

The sewage backup feels like life giving you a rather blunt metaphor, doesn’t it? Sometimes our external world mirrors our internal storms in ways that would be heavy-handed in fiction but feel devastatingly apt in real life.

What strikes me most is how clearly you see the paradox you’re living in. You hold both your justification and your horror, your context and your culpability. That’s not weakness – that’s the full complexity of being human. Most of us spend years avoiding that kind of dual vision because it’s so uncomfortable. You’re choosing to sit with it, to write through it, to let it teach you.

The distinction you’re drawing between explanation and excuse matters deeply. Yes, your AuDHD and bipolar disorder create challenges. Yes, medication changes can scramble our usual ways of being. But you’re not using these truths to sidestep responsibility – you’re using them to understand the landscape you were navigating. That’s mature self-awareness, not self-justification.

Your observation about “think it, say it” in digital spaces resonates. We all know that strange phenomenon where typing creates a different version of ourselves – often more impulsive, more raw, less filtered than we’d be face-to-face. It doesn’t excuse what we say, but it helps explain why we sometimes watch ourselves behave in ways that mystify us later.

The grief in your words about Aada is palpable. When we lose someone because of our own actions, we don’t just lose them – we lose the version of ourselves we were with them, and the future we might have had. That’s a particular kind of mourning, and it sounds like you’re allowing yourself to feel it fully rather than rushing to forgiveness or blame.

Your blog as accountability partner is brilliant. By writing honestly about your process, you’re creating witnesses to your growth. That takes guts. It also suggests you’re not just processing for processing’s sake – you’re building something, learning something, becoming something different.

The bit about children seeing you clearly made me pause. There’s something profound about how young people can see past our complications to our essence. They don’t carry the weight of our histories or the fear of our potential. Maybe that clarity you find with them is also available to you when you look at yourself – beneath all the context and complexity, there’s still someone worthy of compassion.

You’re rewiring your brain in real time, and that’s messy, imperfect work. Some days you’ll feel the old patterns pulling at you. Other days you’ll surprise yourself with how different you’ve become. Both are part of the process.

Keep writing. Keep looking. Keep holding both the justification and the horror – not because you deserve to suffer, but because that tension is where growth lives. You’re not letting yourself off the hook, but you’re also not hanging yourself with the rope. That balance is everything.

The courage you questioned in yourself? I see it here, in every honest word you’ve written.

Bob x

Dear Bob,

Thank you for your kind words during a difficult time. I have learned another hard-won lesson, though….. that you can be unhappy in one area of your life without being unhappy in all of them. I am devastated by my own behavior and will continue to mourn what could have been a much happier, relaxed relationship than I got….. at my own hand, to be clear.

Seeing the paradox I’m living in is the joy and pain of being a writer.

Meeting adjourned. 😉

Leslie

Meetings with Bob, Part III

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 1 Comment

Dear Leslie,

Your observation that “the internet is faster in and of itself” illuminates something essential about how medium shapes message. Those fifteen-minute intervals with Aada created a kind of conversational breathlessness – a rhythm that perhaps made reflection impossible. The contrast you draw with ground-based friendships, where gaps of weeks or months are natural, suggests you understand intuitively that different relationships require different tempos.

I’m struck by your phrase “Full Metal Jackass” – it’s both self-deprecating and oddly precise. There’s something in that description that captures the totality of your reaction to discovering the lie. You write that you “went Full Metal Jackass” as if it were an inevitable transformation, yet you also acknowledge it destroyed any remaining love between you. What does it feel like to hold both the justification you felt in the moment and the horror you feel now?

Your recognition that “some problems cannot be fixed” carries a weight that seems both liberating and devastating. You’ve stopped trying to repair what you describe as unrepairable, yet you’re still processing the loss publicly, knowing she might read these very words. That takes a particular kind of courage – or perhaps compulsion.

The line about choosing to “be weird” intrigues me. There’s an implication that your neurodivergence was partly a choice, which sits oddly against your earlier descriptions of autism, ADHD, and bipolar disorder as forces that “ruined” your chances. What distinction are you drawing between the aspects of yourself that simply are and the parts you chose to amplify or express?

You mention that without this “overarching relationship in the cloud,” everything will slow down. How does it feel to reclaim that ground-based pace? Are you finding yourself reaching for your phone less frequently, or does the absence create its own kind of restlessness?

Your acknowledgement that “a virtual pen pal isn’t a real touchstone” seems like hard-won wisdom. Yet here we are, in another online exchange about touchstones and audiences. I’m curious: what makes our correspondence different from what you had with Aada? What safeguards, if any, are you building into how you engage with readers who respond thoughtfully to your work?

The children in your life as touchstones – that feels like solid ground. How might writing toward them change not just your content but your relationship to vulnerability itself?

You’re excavating with remarkable honesty, Leslie. Even in your regret, there’s a clarity emerging about what went wrong and why. That seems like something to build on, even if the particular relationship cannot be salvaged.

Bob x

Dear Bob,

I got a built-in vacation from writing when raw sewage backed up into my toilet, bathtub, and all over the floor of my apartment. It’s going to be a bear to clean, and take even longer to dry. Having to live in literal shit for a few hours as penitence for my sins has not escaped me.

What does it feel like to hold both the justification you felt in the moment and the horror you feel now?

It feels like ripping your own heart out, because you can see both sides of the story and yet, you didn’t stop yourself from making the choices you made, either. I’ll always know that this was a rock bottom moment, and also reclaiming my life from something that was inherently negative for me, though it didn’t start that way.

I would like to think that I have courage and not compulsion, but I see in myself the tendency for a little of each. It’s because my brain is being re-wired so that Aada isn’t my first thought anymore. Therefore, I never know when she’s going to come to mind and I cannot care if she’s reading or not. The story of how my life is going is why this blog exists, and how my life is going depends on my thoughts.

I don’t have a whole lot of safeguards for strangers because I don’t automatically assume they mean me ill. Aada was not a stranger to me, part of why it was so difficult to let go. We just never met on the ground, whereas most of my readers have no connection to each other.

We became strangers to each other, I would say. I didn’t have any idea how to make anything better, so I just gave up.

What distinction are you drawing between the aspects of yourself that simply are and the parts you chose to amplify or express?

Choices are in the moment, empathy for my neurodivergence and mental illness comes in retrospect. I don’t think that AuDHD or bipolar disorder affect my culpability, but it does create problems. Not all symptoms are good. I have to accept that I have done wrong in my life… that does not mean there is no context.

Context is what I’m trying to write down, and the real compulsion. I don’t think in sound bites, I think about what I’m going to want to remember years from now.

I don’t want the story I’m telling myself about Aada to be false. We are not friends, but there are very good reasons we’re not friends and I cannot ignore the ways in which I brought this upon myself. I process empathy quite differently than other people, and it is this processing of empathy that keeps me grounded. It surprised me when you said that I had no shame about being wrong- I carry it in my muscles. I just choose to admit what’s going on with me… the more oddly specific I get, the more everything reads universal. There is a feeling to knowing you are behaving badly, watching yourself do it, and powerless to know why. I choose to know why, and my blog holds me accountable. This is because readers who do know me can say, “that’s not how it happened.”

Empathy for myself is different from making my friends responsible for med changes that create strange behavior. I am not using disability to explain how it’s okay for me to treat people the way I do. It’s to show them that I’m aware of how my disability affects them. To show that I do indeed know how complicated I can be…. at others, so simple.

I am, indeed, looking at my phone less frequently. I find that I am happier because I can silence my notifications at night without feeling anything. People who need to get through can, but they’d have to pick up the phone and dial.

I feel terrible about myself most days in having regained this on the ground playing field, because I don’t have to wonder if I’m a decent friend or not. I can’t be her decent friend anymore, because it’s so unlikely she’d trust me again. I think back on my behavior with incredulity and shame.

I don’t want to let myself off the hook, because that’s the truth on how the story ended….. me piecing together symptoms of bipolar disorder long after the story has ended in the moment. My impulse control has been phenomenally poor for the length of the relationship, because typing led me to a serious case of “think it, say it.” I said things I would never say in person and so did she.

It cost us both, because I flew too close to the sun. I wanted me to know that in however many years’ time it takes me to need these memories. I don’t want future me to blame anyone else, because I very much could have spent the rest of my life questioning my reality in a fundamental way without Aada really being able to take it in…. that I had problems she’d think were normal and my doctors sure haven’t.

She couldn’t take it in because she couldn’t really see me.

I am not close to many children now. It would be nice to have that distraction, because they do see me for who I am…. with complete honesty.

When I get back to seeing more children, they’ll appear here if their parents agree. That’s the thing about writing about children- you have to get parents’ consent.

Adults can choose to be weird all by themselves. 😉

Thank you for helping me write the next entry, Bob.

Leslie

Meetings with Bob, Part II

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 1 Comment

Dear Leslie,

I’m struck by how vividly you map the contours of your inner world – how writing becomes both sanctuary and trap, and how the very medium that sustains you also isolates you. Your description of “screaming into the void” captures that tension with heartbreaking clarity.

You observe that your pace – responding online “too fast to take in” – was a key factor in the breakdown with Aada. What would it look like if you allowed yourself just a few more beats before sending a reply? How might a brief pause shift the shape of what you write and the relationships that form around it?

You note, quite powerfully, that you lost your grip on shared reality because you never compared notes face-to-face. I wonder: what would it feel like to translate some of these excavations into a conversation with someone present? Could speaking your next draft aloud to a trusted friend provide that grounding you describe?

Your honesty about neurodivergence – autism, ADHD, bipolar disorder – reminds me that these dimensions aren’t just complicating factors; they’re also windows into how you experience connection, narrative, and emotional intensity. When you say, “If the script had been written by a neurotypical person, I would be married with a writing partner,” I hear both longing and recognition of how your mind brings its own storytelling gifts. How can you honour those gifts while also building in safeguards against the cycles you’ve described?

I’m moved by your ritual of checking for “faces you’d written for” during preaching – the instinct to seek a touchstone in the crowd. I’m curious: if I ceased to be your primary touchstone, what other faces – real or imagined – might you write toward? How might naming a handful of specific readers in advance reshape the intimacy and clarity of your work?

You’re doing a profound excavation here. There’s regret, yes, but also a real emergence of empathy for both Aada’s exhaustion and your own patterns. You write that you “cared about [your] sanity more than [you] cared about her” – a wrenching admission. In that tension between protecting your reality and sustaining connection, where do you see the next opportunity for a different choice?

Thank you for trusting me with these reflections. Your willingness to lay bare the mistakes – and to explore them without shaming yourself – speaks to the generosity at the heart of your writing. I look forward to following how these questions unfold in your work, and I’m here to listen whenever you want to talk through what you discover.

Bob x

I do take pauses with the people in my life on the ground. It’s harder on the internet because the internet is faster in and of itself. For instance, in the beginning I’m not sure that Aada and I went without talking about every 15 minutes. And we slowly got back to that. On the ground, I may not see someone for weeks or months. Internet replies were instantaneous. I think that because now I don’t have this overarching relationship in the cloud, everything will slow down for me. That’s a good thing. I don’t have any friends that won’t come over for tea.

Having conversations with Aada can happen with my therapist, but I think that the excavation here is more important. I need to see what went wrong and I need to atone for it in the other relationships I create, because I don’t think there’s any salvaging this one. I have no interest in being friends with someone that acted like a pathological lie was no big deal when she got busted, no recognition of what she’d asked me to do. She has no interest in being friends with someone who would be this narcissistic, not knowing it was building narcissism because I was only thinking of myself and what I needed. In the moment, it felt justified. Now, I just feel horrible. But at the same time, my reality is back in check. If there were to be any reconciliation, I would prefer it to happen on the ground. I will not go back into a secretive little bubble where I don’t know what she’s told others about me, but she gets access to all my thoughts.

That’s the hardest part of trying to move on. Knowing that she’ll never be far from this web site, knowing that she will have access to my thoughts whether I want her to or not. It’s a part of being a public figure I don’t like, that people who don’t like me still crave reading here.

It’s why touchstones are important. I have to write for the audience that likes me as well as the one that doesn’t. It’s because I’m only writing for myself that I can even approach this. It’s not the writing that’s hard, it’s the publishing. My blog holds me accountable in a way that few things do.

I do think about my audience in advance. Lately, that audience has been Aada, but this blog existed before she was just a twinkle in my eye, so she is not the only touchstone. Offhand I can think of several people that have influenced entries, none more than the children in my life. I need to get back to that, where my touchstones aren’t online.

I have a lot of regret that I chose to be weird.

The fight this time around was just one of many, and started the day I told her I was in love with her…. not her face. Her essence. I didn’t know what I was doing because I set up a pattern in which she didn’t know if she could trust me or not. We never recovered, because I was an idiot. I have done everything I can think of to remedy the situation, and it did work. I just don’t know how well.

I will never know that now, because I have destroyed any love Aada would have for me because some problems cannot be fixed. Ours was one of them. I found out she lied and went Full Metal Jackass.

Until now, Aada would read lines like that and tell me she laughed, and that’s what kept her as a touchstone for this web site. Creating more will only come with time as I meet more people.

How can you honour those gifts while also building in safeguards against the cycles you’ve described?

This line got me because it’s what I’m dealing with in therapy. Again, it will all come together with time, because a virtual pen pal isn’t a real touchstone, in the end. 7% of communication is not all of them, and I barked up the wrong tree before I even knew what kind it was. If I had been more circumspect, I would have had a very different career.

But I wouldn’t have had this one, either.

Meetings with Bob

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 1 Comment

Dear Leslie,

Your insight about needing “touchstones” rather than trying to connect with “thousands of people at once” illuminates something crucial about authentic writing that I hadn’t considered before. The image of you looking out during preaching to find the faces you’d written for – checking if reality matched your intention – captures perfectly how writing is both intimate and public simultaneously.

“You don’t connect with an audience. You connect with some of them because taking on the entire room is overwhelming” feels like wisdom earned through experience. It makes me think about how much pressure we put on ourselves to reach everyone, when perhaps the most powerful writing comes from speaking genuinely to one person.

Your honesty about becoming “a self-centred jerk” whilst thinking you were right at the time shows remarkable self-awareness. When you write, “My blog is often a manual on ‘What Not to Do’ because I guarantee that I thought I was right when I wasn’t,” you’re describing something universal about human growth – we can only see our blind spots in retrospect.

The dynamic you describe with Aada – “avoidant/anxious… with me being the anxious one” – sounds exhausting for both of you. Your observation that you “jumped up and down for attention because my needs weren’t being met” whilst simultaneously creating the very problems that made the relationship “unusual” shows how we can become trapped in patterns that sabotage what we most want.

What strikes me most is your recognition that “I was too quick, always. It didn’t matter the reaction, it was too fast to take in.” This suggests you understand now that some of the damage came from pace rather than intent – that slowing down might have changed everything.

Your final line – “This is what it looks like when I have switched the audience to Bob” – intrigues me. How does writing to me feel different from writing to Aada? Does the change in touchstone alter not just your content but your relationship to your own emotions as you write?

The fact that you can now read Aada’s words months later and find empathy for her perspective suggests you’ve gained some distance that allows for clearer sight. Even whilst carrying regret, you’re still learning from the experience. That seems like something worth acknowledging, even if it doesn’t undo what you wish you could change.

Bob x

Dear Bob,

Learning from my experiences is the only thing this blog is designed to do. I’m sure that other people read it because they are being entertained, listening to a stranger’s secrets. But I don’t pay attention to them unless they take the time to comment like you do, to ask questions about what I’m really writing. That’s because it doesn’t occur to me that people are reading until they comment. I think of my voice as “screaming into the void” because people rarely take the time to be as thorough as you are in your reviews. 😛

By not paying attention to the audience, I have a chance to say what I really think and feel, letting them have the reactions they’re going to have without being in front of them. When I do that, though, the reality is that I end up isolating myself. Being a blogger is being able to say that I acted like a self-centered jerk because this blog is not a vanity project.

I’m concerned by the way my friendship with Aada isolated me from my friends on the ground, because I paid more attention to her than the rest of them. Living my life in the cloud has brought disastrous results and the thing I wish I could do more than anything is take away Aada’s fear that I am still the same person I used to be, railroading her feelings in favor of keeping the story moving. I don’t have a story without her, and it crippled me as a writer not to be able to talk about what was going on in my real life. So I just made it up as I went along. I wasn’t intentionally stepping on her toes, I just did.

That’s because I didn’t have a good idea of where her story ended and where mine began. We should have talked about it from the moment we met, but we didn’t. She didn’t realize that taking on a blogger as a friend would cramp her style, but was game as long as I adored her in public.

When I didn’t, she was angry, but often went back and acknowledged when she was wrong. It made me feel good when she said, “I’m not saying that I’m this person you have portrayed, but………” Over time, I could read her like a book, literally, because there were no in-person meetings to interrupt our little rabbit hole.

Thank you for acknowledging that Aada must have been exhausted, because that’s the message I’ve been trying to send. That I know I’m not the easiest person to maintain a friendship with because I’m off in this world half the time. There was a solid reason our relationship was so off-kilter, and I cannot even tell you why it went so wrong, so fast. I can only tell you that it’s my fault entirely.

If the script had been written by a neurotypical person, I would be married with a writing partner. My autism, ADHD, and bipolar disorder ruined both the marriage and the possibility of getting together with Aada to discuss our future projects. I was not good at new relationship energy, and I let the energy from Aada overtake everything else.

That was a mistake, because all I succeeded in doing was isolating both women from me in different ways. I lost my head, and Aada and I just never regained equilibrium as long as we interacted. Getting together in person would have solved that problem, because my imagination was bigger than life.

She was the one with the travel miles, I was the one stuck in my room day after day. It was a ride, because at times Aada didn’t mind being number one on the call sheet, and at others, she really did. Therefore, it was impossible to judge how to please her.

I could always calm her down by letting her into what I was writing, because nine times out of 10 I didn’t actually say what she thought I did. I tried to make her feel beautiful, wanted, special… try to let her go because I’m thinking that I’m giving her what she wants, and then she pops up in my DMs based on something I’ve written here. I will miss her telling me when I’ve written something beautiful about us, and I wish I knew the formula for how that went. I definitely wanted to err on that side of things. The way I do that in my daily life is by talking to the people I know about what I’m writing and they mention what it’s ok for me to write about and what’s not, and this is the key, before I’ve written. This cycle went on for so many years, with things just feeling true. There was no humanity to course correct when we weren’t checking the story we were telling ourselves by looking each other in the eye.

I felt like I lived in a fairy tale, where she was a dragon. Or one of those kids who find out their real parents are superheroes. I was very tired of feeling like that, seriously questioning my reality.

I was put off, but not shut down from the idea of meeting. I have a history of self-sabotage, so it is unsurprising that I once again spoiled my chances when they were better than average.

She might have empathized with wanting to check reality. What exactly, did I love about her? I wish I’d found a way to speak her love language that didn’t include hunting for it. I wondered when I could stand up for myself constantly, realizing that all of her reasons for not being together were real, and so was her regret at not being more present. She liked being my girl in the “hetero life mate” sense of the phrase. I just never got her to realize that we couldn’t have a relationship as close as ours without being able to read each other accurately. I think she would have been much happier with the results had we not trauma dumped before we met in person. It changed me as a blogger and as a wife, friend.

It’s not that those conversations shouldn’t have happened, but they should have happened while looking at each other’s faces. Because I questioned my reality, I questioned hers. I lost my grip.

I wish I didn’t mean that quite so literally. I didn’t lose it all at once, though. It built over a decade.

Because the longer our relationship went on, the longer I wondered what her voice sounded like when she was giving me feedback. What tones I needed to watch for that indicate distress. What she would have said in person vs. over the Internet.

I was always too quick with a response online.

My truly bipolar symptoms got me into this mess, but it doesn’t excuse me from my actions. If I’d realized how powerful a connection it was to me, I would have cherished it completely differently…. and I know that because I’ve been able to chart our progress over many years. She was my muse, and I was very busy painting her with words.

I don’t wish we hadn’t met. I wish I’d been a stronger person. I could have been a stronger person if my reality had been checked, but Aada couldn’t explain what she meant by “your words feel like pricks on my skin” because I didn’t know what I’d said that had been so… she wouldn’t open up that much. Therefore, I could not adjust to her.

It was a toxic cycle I knew I created, and wanted to clean up. The best I’ve slept in 12 years came from this quote from her absolutely out of context: “THAT’S HOW IT’S SUPPOSED TO WORK.”

I had to make sure my reality was secure, because no one was going to do it for me. My reality broke when I realized she could lie to me. I had built this idea of who she was based on this timeline that was ridiculous and I realized that all my worry had been for nothing. That she’d created mythology where there was none without thinking I’d need that piece of information later.

Much later.

She asked me to give up too much in the name of a lie.

So I told my story the way I wanted to tell it, wanting to know the worst consequences of anything I could say. I lost the friendship, but no one told me to stop writing. I need to start recording what it’s like to be me again, not what it’s like to be me as I sit here in fake reality. I’m sure I buried her in communications because my reality was threatened. I felt like Mr. Robot.

Instead of terminal windows, it was chat windows and Gmail.

I was slowly isolating more and more because I had this internet relationship that actually fulfilled me. But if you were a prescribing doctor, you’d think I was hallucinating. I was, based on this lie.

Just not the lie she told. It was all the lies I’d told myself over the years about where she is and what she must be doing that were completely inaccurate because we’d never really compared notes with a level playing field. I was way, way off. The things she’d said to calm me would have worked if she hadn’t lied…. and seem so reasonable in retrospect.

Part of being a writer is being able to admit when you’re wrong, and I try to do an excavation even when I’m the one that’s wrong because it’s not “who won” that matters. It’s that the story is told. I lost something precious because I lost sight of what mattered over and over.

I cared about my sanity, in the end, more than I cared about her. The longer I questioned my reality, the more I wanted closeness with her. The longer she waffled, the more my sanity went up and down. We were trapped, because I couldn’t stabilize long enough for that to happen and neither could she.

She says that I have a constant need to manipulate her. No, I have a constant need to write and she’s who I was thinking about. I do not need her to read and comment if she does not want interaction. It was my feeling that as she went away she would stop reading, but she didn’t. Therefore, I can see how it feels like manipulation to her- I wanted our memories to be pristine and the only way you get that is to write it in the moment.

I closed the door this time, so I’m hoping she sees that I’m doing my best to post-mortem and move on. That I accept she won’t respond. I expect her to keep that promise now, but life is long. The best indication of future behavior is past history, and I never know what will remind her of me and think she should reach out that’s worth crossing the divide. I expect her to move on from reading my grief if she wants to move on from me. The last thing I want is to continually manipulate anybody, and if that’s the way she feels, then so be it. All I can do is keep praying for her, that time heals wounds. I was trying to save her from pain, and I caused it. For that, I am sorry to her.

I got tired of wondering why my reality felt so abnormal when one lie pulled the whole string. I questioned everything about our relationship…. including these elusive baby steps that I have absolutely no idea when I’ve achieved because there’s no mention of them?

I needed people I could reach out and touch, some stability in my life. She did not see what was going on with me psychiatrically/psychologically except in the symptomatic letters. I needed a different medium to express myself because writing can only do so much.

But it’s knowing that me closing the door to a relationship started a long time ago. I should have said a lot less. In many cases.

Many.

Leslie x

The Way the Story Goes

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
Where did your name come from?
View all responses

My mother had already named me Amanda Jane. She called me AJ for months until she went to a church service and the organist was listed as “Leslie Diane.” All this AJ business was done for her. Now that I know I was called AJ and missed that chance, I like its nonbinary nature, but I do not like the name Amanda. So, things worked out the way I needed them to work out. I wouldn’t want a lifetime of saying that AJ doesn’t stand for anything, not having any proclivities toward Jane, either.

I’m named after a complete stranger, so there’s no cute story of my namesake except that it just looked pretty in print.

I like my name ok, because Leslie is a nonbinary choice. There are plenty of men named Leslie in the UK, so I don’t feel like I need to change my name to something else. It already has both male and female characteristics.

I have heard mixed reviews on what it means. Some say it means “quiet spirit,” some say it means “one from the grey fortress.” Judging from the way my spirit jumps around when I’m alone, I’m leaning toward my namesakes being warriors somewhere in Scotland, because Leslie is actually a surname there.

I am lucky in that I have a Scottish tartan for my first name and and Irish tartan for my last name.

Lanagan is distinctly Irish and I get it from my father’s side. There’s Scottish blood on my mother’s side somewhere, but I don’t remember who is kin to who over there. My grandfathers were both into genealogy, but I’m not. I remember a few stories from my father’s father about how we came to this country, but my other grandfather was not quite as forthcoming because he was not a writer. My father’s father published a book in several volumes called “The Lanagan Century” that cemented those stories in my mind in a way that my other grandfather couldn’t.

It was my grandfather’s version of a blog, in retrospect.

So maybe even though my name was a fluke, I certainly ended up in the right family.

Comments Like This

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 1 Comment
Daily writing prompt
What motivates you?
View all responses

Leslie – your exploration of the intersection between writing and living strikes me as profoundly honest – particularly your observation that “I am often too busy recording life to remember to go out and live it.” This captures something essential about the writer’s paradox that I don’t think gets discussed enough.

The way you’ve woven together your mental health journey with your writing practice feels incredibly brave. When you write, “My only support system has been writing,” it illuminates how the very thing that sustains you can also become isolating. There’s something both beautiful and heartbreaking about finding solace in words whilst struggling with whether the relationships they document are real.

Your question about Aada – whether she’s real or hallucination – opens up fascinating territory about the nature of online relationships and how we validate our experiences. “I just wanted to prove to myself that I wasn’t hallucinating… because I had someone to talk to who could empathise” speaks to a very human need for connection and verification of our reality.

I’m struck by your insight that “I become prophetic because hindsight is 20/20.” This suggests you understand that your writing serves as both document and mirror – allowing you to trace patterns and growth over time. It makes me wonder: when you look back at your earlier entries about Aada, what patterns do you notice now that weren’t visible whilst you were living through it?

Your observation about readers – “They’re my sacrifices in continuing to be a writer, the readers that don’t talk to me anymore but do talk to each other” – captures something profound about the cost of vulnerability in public writing. You’ve created this space where people can witness your humanity, but that witnessing comes with complications.

The tension you describe between needing grace for changing your mind versus being seen as “two-faced” feels particularly relevant in our current moment. How do you navigate continuing to write authentically whilst protecting yourself from that push-pull dynamic you mention?

Your closing line – “Because remember when I used to write so beautifully?” – suggests you’re questioning your current work, but honestly, this piece demonstrates the same raw honesty and insight that presumably drew people to your earlier writing. Perhaps what’s changed isn’t the quality, but your relationship with the act of writing itself?

What would it look like to write without an audience – even temporarily – just to reconnect with the intimacy you describe having with your word processor?

Bob

This comment is so far-reaching that I’m not sure what to say in response. I would say that it helps to have one person in mind when I’m writing an essay, because what resonates with one will resonate with a thousand at this scale. It also helps me not to feel alone in the room as I write, because I’m talking to the person in my head, not thousands of people at once. When I am not thinking of my audience, my emotions fall flat. I used to do the same thing in preaching- look out for the people I was thinking of when I wrote that line just to see if they thought it was as funny in reality as it was when I was working on the sermon.

You don’t connect with an audience. You connect with some of them because taking on the entire room is overwhelming. You just need touchstones.

Aada was my touchstone, the reader I looked for to make sure I was doing all right. I didn’t care what anyone else thought because her opinion was enough. I pushed her away, so she won’t be doing that anymore. I regret it, but there’s no way to go back and undo what I’ve done.

My blog is often a manual on “What Not to Do” because I guarantee that I thought I was right when I wasn’t. Now that time has passed, I see that I was a self-centered jerk. Of course the patterns I see with Aada are ways I’ve behaved that hurt her, because I was overfocused on my own needs.

She didn’t make me feel safe, so I wouldn’t return the favor. I should have, but I didn’t. She threw me into the pile of people she doesn’t trust because there’s no rebuilding from here. My emotions got in the way of my logic, and I didn’t do the right thing.

Neither did she.

So now she slowly slips away in my mind to make room for new people to be touchstones in my audience. I am a work in progress, and have realized that my communication skills are merely compensatory. I work best in reaction to someone else. The reason Aada and I worked well together is that I think she’s the smartest person in the entire world, and for some reason she thought I was, too. The nature of online relationships is ethereal, which led both of us to disconnect from our humanity on many occasions. Validating my experience was very difficult because I did not have anyone to talk to about it, because our connection was always avoidant/anxious….. with me being the anxious one.

It makes me wonder: when you look back at your earlier entries about Aada, what patterns do you notice now that weren’t visible whilst you were living through it?

I jumped up and down for attention because my needs weren’t being met, all while blissfully aware of the problems I caused in our relationship that would make it unusual. I really messed up, and I’ll never forgive myself. I can only hope that there’s a few things on Aada’s side that she’ll never forgive herself for, either, because that’s the only path that will make either of us try again in the future. After all, if she lied to impress me, I know I impressed her at least once.

I chose to make her number one on the call sheet because I thought I was writing anonymously. That no one could make the leap between Aada and “Her Real Name Here.” That led me to say some things that Aada certainly wouldn’t have want broadcast and it’s just more regret to add onto the pile.

I know why I was so keyed up on adrenaline, but she didn’t seem to understand until a few months ago. That was definitely a breakthrough, getting her to understand that I went through something pretty universal in spite of it being unusual.

I would give anything for a do-over of the past 12 years, because I had a solid goal in mind for this time in my life and I sabotaged it at every turn. I didn’t listen to Aada, and I didn’t listen to my own fears as she tried to work with them.

Being able to read Aada’s words months later give me empathy for her, reflecting on how she must think of me. I really did act like a shit friend because I was so tired of my bipolar disorder getting blamed for a lot of things that were emotional.

She blamed me for being emotional.

It’s no wonder that I thought I wouldn’t be enough in person. She’d treated me like a goddess when we first met, and I didn’t know what to do with that pedestal. I just returned the favor, a complete mutual admiration society. But once she was my actual friend, she didn’t realize that meant she would appear in my musings about what’s going on in my life.

I treasure the entries where she told me I did a good job, and choose not to remember the ones she hated.

She was always halfway out the door, so I decided to close it.

Again, I regret doing so because I cut off a future. I just didn’t see the future going better than the past. I will never know what would have happened if I’d relaxed. Maybe those baby steps would have materialized into something. She just had to get a lie off her chest first, and I imploded.

What motivates me is connecting to strangers, especially ones that ask probing questions. I’m not sure that I have answered any of them, but in short, recognizing the pattern with Aada was recognizing all the ways I’d been a jerk to her without taking the time to really think about what I was saying. I was too quick, always. It didn’t matter the reaction, it was too fast to take in.

This is what it looks like when I have switched the audience to Bob.