I’m noticing that I have less of a need to write now that there’s not a constant problem turning itself over in my head. Relationship issues are hard work, and to come out on the other side healthy & happy feels like a win. I’ll take it. The flip side of the coin is that my inner monologue has settled back into boring. Boring is fantastic. I like it a lot. Emotional ups and downs take it out of me because I have such a fear of abandonment that standing my ground feels like torture on my nerves. I just have to feel that fire, knowing it’s turned up to hell by autism and a regular person wouldn’t feel like that. We don’t learn to fit into society by actually making our brains process differently. Neurotypicals, particularly parents, think that eventually the battles over homework will get easier. They’re just like other kids. Other kids don’t like homework, right? Meanwhile, it has nothing to do with us. We don’t need to change. People need to change around us. If you don’t notice that your kid is doing poorly in school because they memorized the dictionary and the encyclopedia (so he can’t be dumb), you are likely missing neurodivergence for what you *want* to see.
I know this is true of the conflict with Supergrover, because it was so easy to miscommunicate over e-mail. However, it is a constant and vigilant battle because no matter how much I say I’m autistic, it is not what people are thinking when they’re talking to me. Neurotypical superiority is relentless….. unless you’re high needs. Then, everyone who interacts with you views themselves as a fuckin’ hero because other people *tell them they are.* Basically, if you are high IQ, people don’t think “autism” because they have it confused with mental retardation. Yes, some autistic people are that affected by it, but being on the spectrum means you have a processing disorder. Information goes through your brain differently than it does for your neurotypical peers, often changing the meaning of sentences, questions, and demands.
Nor do we understand social cues. The only reason I do is that I was coached into it. I couldn’t have had more people to mask than a PK. That’s seeing hundreds and hundreds of reactions a week instead of just my immediate family. I have learned how emotions work in neurotypical people because they have explained it…. I do not do it. I do have emotions, but I process them as differently as I process logic from someone neurotypical.
In popular culture, there are two versions of autistic.
There’s the kind people win Oscars for, and the real autistic people- the actors that have taken on many roles without even knowing they’re autistic.
There are a few celebrities I recognize with my neuroscopte (as opposed to “gaydar”). I don’t even want to tell you who they are, because it would stigmatize them in your minds. Suuuuure, you’re open-minded. It’s a pattern I see all the time. People are okay with neurodivergence as long as it’s ADHD. When you tell someone you’re autistic, they either don’t believe you or treat you like you have cancer. That’s because their whole lives, they’ve been taught that autistic people are to be pitied.
I am so driven to write that I don’t need much stimulation from other people. I get it, and then remember why I don’t like it. There are positives, though. With autism, there’s a specific way you walk that plays heavily into the “neuroscope” aspect. It’s so prevalent there’s a diagnosis for it- the autistic gait. I was not convinced I was autistic until another autistic person pointed it out to me.
I am not officially diagnosed, I am in the process. However, I have been peer reviewed by people who are both autistic and work in a day center for autistic adults. One of them even has the same combo I do, autism and cerebral palsy. Because autistic people can identify other autistic people a majority of the time (some studies say up to 80%), I do not feel worried about my official diagnosis. I know I’m on the spectrum, and that I fluctuate between low and high needs all the time. People just don’t recognize when I’m high needs because I’m smart and I hide it. This past year has been about uncovering who I really am, as opposed to what everyone told me I am and should be.
High needs is needing help around the house, like a carer in a nursing home. You want your individuality, but you also don’t want the details of your life to fall through the cracks. Neurodivergence is very good at letting you ruin your life if you let it. You do things like forget when it’s time to pay bills. I am not saying that’s what a neurodivergent person is like all the time. There are resources, like Google Calender, Tasks, etc. What I am saying is that nothing is too important to slip the mind of a neurodivergent person. I forget to eat, sleep, bathe, you name it. I live and die by my adaptations, not who I am as a person. Who I am as a person is to hyperfocus on one thing for years and years, boring people to sleep.
(My dad’s favorite joke is that one time he woke up and he was preaching.)
I am lucky that my interest is writing, because even though I tend to talk about very few topics, I manage to weave a lot of media, current events, etc. into the narrative. However, because those topics are emotional relationships and how I handle them, it’s an area few people are willing to explore……. But they love reading about others. Lots of people enter my world that aren’t even convinced they have one. You’d be surprised at how much you think about everything if you get still enough to hear it.
In short, I’ve come to think of myself as your pinch hitter. That maybe my emotional work will help you along. I’ve had successes and failures, so it’s not like I’m writing the manual on how to feel and be felt. It’s that some people read my writing looking for how I do what I do. Others read my writing to find out what they *wouldn’t* do.
Either way, I hope I’m worth the price of admission.
I realized that I know a lot about information technology, and I have a lot of my own preferences when it comes to using computers. So, I asked Carol to give me some writing prompts that had to do with the way I view technology. There are a lot of them, but not all of them are good. So, in this entry, I’ll just be answering the questions I thought were worth answering.
What role does technology play in your daily life, and do you find it distracting or helpful?
I haven’t had the choice over whether or not to use technology since I was a kid. My dad got me a beeper, then a cell phone so that we could keep up with each other. The cell phone was nice. The beeper was not. Before I had a cell phone, it was like the Mission: Impossible theme would play in my head, getting louder and more ominous the longer it took me to find a land line. I lived that way for a couple of years, until cell phones became affordable. There was no argument over whether I was old enough for one- I must have been 17 or 18. Lindsay got it much easier because she’s not old enough to have worn a beeper. She could always text back. It is so damn interesting to me how much technology changed in the six years between when I got a beeper and Lindsay got a cell phone. Not only is her reference for technology newer than mine, she did not have any early adoption issues with things like typing on the screen. For instance, my favorite phone before they stopped selling them was the Blackberry Pearl. I was much more competent on the thumb board than I am on anything else. I try to text using voice dictation, but it doesn’t work that well. So, I carry a Bluetooth full-sized keyboard wherever I go. It has three Bluetooth slots that you access through keystrokes. Therefore, I can text on my phone, Android, or iPad and it’s the same feel as a desktop. I wouldn’t say that I was bad at texting on my phone after all these years of doing it. It’s more that I type 90 wpm and I get frustrated that I can’t move that fast on a screen…….. like my sister can. Overall, I would say that technology is a help unless you are overextending yourself trying to keep up on top of every message and notification. “Do Not Disturb” is a great feature, and in iMessage, it will actually tell someone that your phone is on DND so they won’t expect a response right away. Life only moves as fast as you let it, and social media notifications are ruining us all….. like, to the point that there are hundreds of Gen Z kids explaining to other Gen Z kids how to get a Kindle, an MP3 player, and a dumb phone. They’re tired, and they’re funding the backlash.
How do you balance personal interactions with technology? Do you think it affects the quality of relationships?
I am really, really careful about that. If I’m out with someone and it’s not my dad, sister, Zac, Supergrover, or Bryn, you have my undivided attention. I will not interrupt you for anything unless those five people call. This is not because you are less important than they are. It’s that they are my commitments, the ones I’ve made the executive decision to always answer. On the flip side, they would not call unless shit had seriously hit the fan. Not one of them would want to interrupt me when I’m with someone else, so I know that if they call, it’s a 911 at worst and a 411 at best. In short, I don’t pick up my phone to call or text over stupid shit. I am all about being present.
For all my overseas fans, 911 is who you call for an ambulance/policeman/etc. 411 is who you call for information, like a telephone operator (yes, they still have those- VoIP is just as terrible as land lines in terms of maintaining absolutely stable connections. I think we all learned this with Zoom when everyone had different network speeds at their houses.
Has technology made you more productive in your personal life? If so, how?
Technology has made me productive since high school, and I wish I still had my computer from back then. My stepmom is a doctor, so she paid for the very best computer available in 1990. It was a Macintosh SE, and it was more fun than the law allowed. Imagine it, people…. a computer where there’s no chance in hell you could connect it to the Internet (I’m sure you could now with mods, but why? It’s not like the operating system needs updating… There aren’t any servers to connect for those updates.
But even before that, my grandfather got a Texas Instruments computer (a 99/4A or something like it) that plugged into your TV. I wish I had learned BASIC then, because I’d have a much easier time learning new syntax (all computer logic is the same. It’s just that sometimes it looks like French, sometimes it looks Italian, etc. It’s coders finding new languages in which to be fluent, because trends pass. For instance, Adobe Flash is no longer a thing. The joke at Apple was that the tablets for the Ten Commandments would run Flash before the iPad. However, I had plenty of fun with the games that were included, and you could buy more with cartridges that looked kind of like Nintendo games. The cartridge wasn’t the same shape, but it was the same idea. I think I even blew on one once. 😉
The problem is that I do not understand logic or object-oriented programming. It could be java or javascript or Python or Ruby on Rails. Doesn’t matter. I know HTML/CSS (Hyper Text Markup Language and Cascading Style Sheets). It doesn’t have anything to do with logic except figuring how to layer text and images I know a lot about using the x, y, and zed dimensions to make everything float correctly no matter what size window your browser is in, or what you use as a resolution on your computer. It’s a shame that WordPress has gotten away from all of these things when layout and design was so much more complicated- not in terms of coding it, in terms of having the web site look just the way you want it.
Now, I have moved on to AI for all the practical stuff, because it really is good at being a secretary. It does all my research and writing prompts for me right in my browser. I disabled Copilot in Windows 11, but that’s because I don’t use it in the operating system. I only use it when I am using Microsoft Edge to write blog entries. It has a very specific use case that does not involve AI doing my writing for me.
Although I might ask it for a satirical blog entry written in my style, just to publish it as fiction if it’s as funny as I want it to be. The best part of Copilot is that it will scan my web site in seconds and give me something personalized…. that really is in my tone and style.
What excites you about using the latest technology?
I like creating media boxes that constantly have updated software to create things for my blog. I used Audacity when I was recording my entries. The linux distribution “Ubuntu Studio” has every creative piece of software you can possibly use. Blender is great at making 3D models, as well as Google Sketchup. I am all about using technology for me, like a CNC machine. I do not want to be an early adopter of everything. I need to wait and see what the privacy issues are, and make sure there have been enough security patches released that I can count on the operating system to get out of my way. Windows makes it impossible, because most of your notifications come from them.
How likely are you to recommend Windows to a friend?
There are news articles full of crap if you leave widgets enabled on the left side of the toolbar. It wouldn’t be so bad if it was the weather that just sat in my taskbar, but it’s not. That little icon opens everything you need to get lost in a news hole….. and it’s not even good news. It’s random crap you’d get on a Google or Microsoft home page.
Don’t you want to upgrade to the full version of Microsoft Office?
As it turns out, I did. A subscription gives you a TB of space. That’s twice as big as I can use because my hard drive is only 512 MB. I could get NVME drives that would up my space considerably, but I can upload it to the cloud and not keep it on my computer all the time. I should upload all my Skyrim mods, because I don’t think I could upload the game itself- mods are open source. However, they increase my game folder by at least 60 GB. It took me years to collect them all because unless you have a premium account at Nexus Mods, they throttle your bandwith at 3GB/s. I do not want to redownload all of them, because mods like “Legacy of the Dragonborn” and Beyond Skyrim: Bruma are each several gigs apiece, especially if you’re like me and want to download the larger textures. I run them through a program to make them smaller, but I won’t if I get a better computer. My computer right now is just not fast enough to support an external GPU, and anything I’d really want would be $500-$1,000. That’s because my current computer can play Triple A titles, even turning up the settings to ultra. But that’s in the base game. Once I start overhauling everything, the textures are much larger. My current video card only has 512 MB of dedicated memory and shares 8GB with my DDR5 that controls the system. What I would want is 8GB of dedicated graphics memory, because it works so much better than sharing RAM with the operating system, and most new cards have enough speed to not only play games, but to rip moves at the highest quality very, very fast. Editing pictures and video is the same way. You do not want a cheap media box to render video, and I have to have a desktop and not an iPad/Android because the web site opens up much more features. For instance, my iPad won’t let me upload audio files to my space on WordPress, which is why I used SoundCloud. If I really liked recording my entries, I would have bought a premium membership by now. I just looked at my web stats on it and it freaked me out to no end, because not only did it show which countries were listening, it was so granular that I could pick out individual neighborhoods. I don’t need to know who is listening to that degree, because it only makes me anxious.
You have security issues like not using our browser.
Tell us what you think…. about everything. Microsoft Office, Edge, Visual Studio Code, you name it.
I also now have the solution. Windows 11 Debloat. It’s a script you run in power shell that gets rid of all the crap. Enjoy it to the best of your ability, because I sure have. It gets the operating system out of the way.
Lastly, my favorite app of all time is Mozilla Thunderbird. Microsoft Outlook only thinks it’s an e-mail client. There are too many open source plugins that make Thunderbird 10 times more useful. Web mail is fine, but I have like four e-mail addresses I have to keep track of at once. But because my Google account is something like 20 years old, it’s not the files I’ve stored that make my Google Drive fill up. It’s mail. It’s enough to drive you from online shopping ever again.
Because they’ll send you e-mail surveys all the time, just like Micro$oft.
I’ve already answered today’s writing prompt, so again, I had to turn to Carol (shorthand for ChatGPT). Here is the string I asked it, important so that if you’re a blogger, you can see how I did what I did:
Certainly! I’ve explored your blog “theantileslie.com” and here are 20 personal questions based on what I found:
In your post titled “Untitled Entry,” you mentioned being a blogger. What draws you to blogging, and why do you prefer this medium?
What draws me to blogging and why I prefer the medium are two different things, but they both feed into the same goal. I am attracted to blogging because my personality is built to lead by laying out my own vulnerabilities first, never having top-down kinds of power. I do it through writing because I am good at letting ideas flow through me, then picking the wheat from the chaff. Being a blogger is very much like being a verbal digital photographer. You take a thousand shots, you keep five. Out of all my entries, I can honestly say I like a handful. Praise that I’ve gotten comes from other people, but not in terms of valuing my worth. In terms of seeing which of my personal ideas read universal and which don’t. I prefer the medium because I take in information through sight, which means that anything I read is going to stick with me longer than if I heard it. I feel that I regurgitate information best in the same way I took it in, ergo the manic rambling spiral you see here.
When you decided that DC was your home and left Texas behind, what emotions did you experience during that transition?
The thing about getting a writing prompt from Copilot is that it’s objective. It doesn’t care whether it hurts your feelings with a question or not. Even reading the question, I curled up into a ball. That was not a good time in my life at all. I was going through a divorce with my wife in addition to a friend divorcing me and getting back together weekly…….. the friend didn’t understand me that well, either. Leaving Dana was cathartic in that I was finally able to see our pattern for what it was- a great one that had become toxic over time because we stopped paying attention to it. It got too hard, and certainly problems go away if you ignore them, right? I also realized in retrospect that though the relationship with the friend was rockier, it was the one that was worth my energy. If Supergrover had not lived in DC, we would not live in the same city. Period. I came back here because I fell in love with it when I was eight, lived here in my 20s, and think of it as Portland, Oregon without the shitty weather. There was a period of time when Supergrover made my move all about her, and it put me on the ground. We are still recovering, but remember that scar tissue is stronger.
Describe your ideal week. How do you balance time between close friends, family, and your writing?
I already have my ideal way of writing, and it wouldn’t change no matter what I did for money. That’s because I write before everyone wakes up so I can see the sunrise in my office (when Supergrover e-mails me between 0300-0600, sometimes I’m already up. I have never needed much sleep, even as a child. So, I knock myself out with sleeping pills between 8-9 PM, because it takes about an hour to kick in. That way, even if I only sleep five hours, I’ve gone as deep as I can possibly go in that amount of time. I use melatonin to fall asleep and Benedryl to stay asleep. People don’t think of them as two separate problems, but they are. Oh, and the reason I try to be in my office by dawn is that there is a distinct separation between my work and home life now. I used to write in bed, without really waking up. I am still not really awake, but I’m at least sitting up. 😛 The last truly important thing to know is that I view WordPress’s web site as easier to use than the JetPack app. I love working in Microsoft Edge because I can edit an entry and access Copilot with one button….. but again, I am not using ChatGPT to create art. I am using ChatGPT to help me create art.
In your writing, you often explore emotions and relationships. What inspires you to delve into these topics?
In writing, the axiom is “write what you know.” I know myself and the way I interact with others. I am also not telling you a story with a beginning, middle, and end because people weave in and out of my life for all different reasons. I also don’t feel like I have to live in fear of expressing my opinion, because no one’s is more important than mine as long as I remember that no one else’s is less important than mine, either. If I expect to be able to show up as my full self, you should expect to get that from me as well. It’s not about trying to make each other fit in another’s mold, but trying to be giants together with room for all our fallibility.
Can you share a memorable moment from your journey as a blogger?
Several, some of them long ago, some of them relatively recent:
When I was first getting started, a blogger no one has ever heard of named Wil Wheaton read a piece I wrote about singing- that hitting high notes felt like flying over the mountains. He responded that it was how he felt after he nailed an acting audition. Later, when I went to Powell’s to get my copy of “Just a Geek” signed, I told him who I was. At the time, my blog was called “Clever Title Goes Here.” So, I say I’m “Leslie from Clever Title” and he hands my book back with “Dear Leslie, Clever Inscription Goes Here. Love, Wil.” I don’t remember what happened to that book, but if there is any justice in the universe, Dana has it because she’s a bigger Star Trek fan than me. I don’t know Wil through anything but his writing. She’s watched his every episode of TNG. In my head, Wil is my fan and she is his.
I had been following Tony and Jonna Mendez since 2008, when “Argo” came out. I love action movies, but there was more to it for me. Tony was a real person? I should totally read about this real person. I fell in love with his books and later learned that Jonna was an author as well (they’ve collaborated on several, and Jonna’s first solo work, “In True Face,” just dropped). So, I didn’t get to meet Tony because he’d stopped doing public appearances, then died in 2019, which would have cut off meeting Tony even if I was a mutual friend and not just a drooling fangirl. So, with all of this in mind, I poured my heart and soul into “The Spy in the Room,” which was a recording of my experience watching Jonna promote a book all by herself that was never meant to be a solo work. I watched as she turned into me, essentially. The same way that Supergrover lives in me, Tony lives in her. She doesn’t have to have new memories with him. His uploaded consciousness is with her every day of her life. How this affects my blog is that this wonderful writer thought I was perceptive and did a great job on the piece. You don’t forget praise like that.
How do you handle the ups and downs of life, especially when it comes to maintaining your writing routine?
I am able to handle the ups and downs of life because of my writing routine. I start with my writing, which is basically a personal meditation, before I do anything else. I am grounded before I leave my house. The TL;DR version of staying grounded is this phrase….. “God to head, head to feet, feet to floor.” I am not waiting on energy. “I’m conducting it all while I sleep, to light this whole town.” -Barenaked Ladies
What role does vulnerability play in your writing process?
It is often just a byproduct, because I’m writing my internal monologue. I do not see what others are going to find shocking about that, and I am able to go deeper and cover more ground because of it. If I stopped to think about just how much I’ve told people about me, I would never publish anything again. You already know too much. 😉 However, by disconnecting from what other people think and just laying it out there, you learn two things. The first is that people are never going to react to what you thought would irritate them, there’s going to be a whole new set of irritations you didn’t see coming. The second is that no matter what they think, I am not responsible for representing my own thoughts and also their misinterpretation of them.
Have you ever written about Supergrover? If so, what aspects of this character resonate with you?
The joke answer is that I’d have to comb through my entries, because that name doesn’t seem familiar……………….. #eyeroll In terms of how she resonates with me, that is a good word to describe us. We’ve never met in person, but we’ve been friends a month shy of 11 years. Everything about our relationship is energy and its resonance. The only thing more interesting to me than my stories about her are her stories about me, no matter how good or how bad. It’s not that her emotions are right or wrong, it’s that I only get wigged about our relationship when she shuts down so that I have no real feel for how we’re doing- the other impossible thing to do by e-mail only. Perhaps when this is all over, she’ll let me take her out for ice cream, but I’m not holding my breath. I am taking each day as it comes.
How do you cope with emotional challenges, and how does writing help you process them?
I do not cope well with emotional challenges in person, because my sensory issues are naturally turned up more due to my environment than when I am writing, because my office is a sensory deprivation chamber. The only thing I listen to when I’m in here is the ceiling fan. If it’s too cold, I wrap up, because I like the white noise. To me, it is better than listening to a fan through my headphones….. which I do when I’m out in the world, like writing on the train. I cope extremely well with introspection and conflict when I have the time and the space to stretch out. Having a blog feels like a virtual reality headset in which I am speaking to millions and millions of people. When that is my 10,.000 foot view, trying to craft a narrative that will speak to that many different people at once, it forces me to look at every aspect of why something is happening, including the fact that the problem is often me. If you like Taylor Swift and you are a reader, you’ll identify with this blog a lot. Even our tones are similar- one of her most popular songs is “Antihero.” I swear to Christ your life will not make sense until you can sum up every problem as quickly and neatly as Taylor did by saying, “I’m the problem. It’s me.” The reason you are emotionally failing at life most of the time is that you aren’t empathetic or compassionate enough to see your own role in a problem. I do that every single morning, so I can watch the sun come up in my office. As a result, people are often unprepared for conversations with me, because my blogging rarely allows me to show up with my feelings about things undecided. The art of creative writing has made me invincible, because it is not my job to handle your emotional challenges….. unless I’m halfway responsible for them. Realizing that I am halfway responsible is what makes me invincible. I don’t have to stand firm for a hundred percent. I have to stand firm for a hundred percent of my half. I cannot successfully have relationships unless I allow the other person to own a hundred percent of their own story as well.
What impact has your mother’s death had on your perspective and your writing?
“Childhood is the credit balance of a writer.” -David Cornwell If I take my relationship with my mother as her daughter out of it, and am only thinking of her as a person in my writing life who died, I am so relieved. It allows me to say so much more and understand so much more without the thought of hurting her. The most clarity comes from being able to say the quiet parts out loud. Being able to get this angry at the way she was a terrible parent allows me to grieve and move on, making more ways for the room in which she was a perfect one. My challenge when my mother was still alive is not dissimilar from my problems with Supergrover. Because of her low self-esteem, she would have taken everything away that was bad and thrown away everything that was good. Not having to wrestle with myself over how my mother would feel if I published something has taken a weight off me that I didn’t know was there until it happened. It has changed my relationship with my blog to an enormous degree, particularly because Supergrover is the human I love most in the world, and she was a real asshole about it….. not in the moment. In the moment, she was wonderful. Over time, it was not great. I think she’d cop to that. I never told my mother the details of my relationship with Supergrover. She only knew what she read here and my body language. Therefore, she thought Supergrover was bad for me because my personality flipped when we were mad at each other. When things were dark between Supergrover and me, I’m sure I was a delish and a delight to be around………………………. my eyes are now rolling out of my head. My mother’s reactions mean something to me, even more in retrospect because she noticed something that Dana did as well. The only person who didn’t was Supergrover, because she wouldn’t meet me in person. It’s not that we couldn’t have made it happen. We just didn’t, and it cost us dearly. What makes our relationship irresistible is that I do communicate so well in writing that sharing physical space doesn’t matter. She has a job where physical space can’t matter, because it’s too much of a commitment. In effect, less is more. I get to be with her wherever she is in the world because my love doesn’t depend on her being with me in a restaurant. It would just be nice…. adding to the color commentary and not a solid requirement. I choose to believe that this is happily ever after no matter what it looks like, even if I never got any further communication at all. I stood up for myself and broke the toxic cycle between us. I stood my ground, and I won. I got the girl in the end. Everything else is just icing. I wish that my mother could see us now, and know that our relationship is funny and full of love and how over the moon I am, because we’ve created something lasting instead of each of us walking into a wall of bullshit every time we talk to each other. I know that Supergrover reads me wherever she is in the world because of web stats (I thought the flags would give it away). Because we are capable of both standing our ground and being authentically us again, I would follow her into the ocean no questions asked. That’s because she met me where I am, and accepted my terms. She could send me a diamond ring and it wouldn’t mean as much as this emotional concept. I never gave up loving her. I gave up trying to communicate. If you love someone, let them go. If they come back, you know it’s right. Those words seemed trite to me until this conflict. Now, I’m the most grateful for those words than I’ve ever been.
Do you find solace or catharsis in writing about grief and loss?
Yes, but only in retrospect. It doesn’t feel good when I am shaking through those kinds of moments, but it brings me great comfort when I go back and read things like “The Visitation.” It’s so important to me that I’ll make an exception and link to something. That piece is so real and so raw that it still creates a visceral reaction in me when I read, and I have more empathy for the author because I see myself as a different person now than I was then.
How do you balance authenticity with privacy when sharing personal experiences online?
Because I’m a writer, I can pull from millions of pieces of other media and explain what is going on through metaphors, essentially being able to talk about my life by quoting other people. I try to be as non-specific as possible. My story is my story. Your story on this blog is only your story with me, not your story with others. If your story is with me, we will have conversations about it. When you stop having conversations with me about it, problems arise because I won’t give people editorial control over me. You let me know your boundaries, or you don’t and regret it. Because you’ve stopped telling me your boundaries, you can get angry at me all you want, but it’s not going to help. You chose to walk away without telling me what I needed to keep tight and what I didn’t.
What advice would you give to aspiring bloggers who want to write about their own life experiences?
You will never be any good at it, but you might get a lot of hits by being a gossip columnist. Good blogs are built on your emotions, and people can tell whether your writing has them or not. People can tell the difference between passionate writing and canned responses to life, like “live, laugh, love.” The problem, and this is where most people fail, is that in order to make others feel your emotions you have to know what yours are. Very, very few people are willing to spelunk into their own minds. It’s so much easier to talk about lighter things. Meanwhile, the more oddly specific I get, the more each individual person feels connected, because they’re not all connecting to my writing on the same points. People are also aching for truth. Truth does not come from you telling it. It comes from the emotions that come up in people when they read, applying what happened to me to what happened to them. I have to use a lot of metaphors with my writing about Supergrover because what happened between us is oddly specific and not universal. That’s the hardest balance in terms of privacy, the part I don’t share with the class. I just have to hope that as readers, you’ll respect that some things are above your pay grade, but not because I hate you and I’m trying to hold out on you. It’s that not everything is below my pay grade, either. I would tell you if I could, but I can’t. Therefore, I won’t. To do so would be to show Supergrover that this really was a game all these years, and I was out to get her. Have that balance in your own life as well. Only own your story, and be careful about irritating other people’s boundaries on what can be said and what cannot. If you know there’s a boundary, you’re a hack of a writer if you can’t think of a way to explain your feelings without crossing it. I am serious as a heart attack. You are an absolute monster if you constantly defy your friends’ boundaries for more content, and too many people are guilty of it in pictures and video (which started, unfortunately, with “mommy-blogging”). I am trying to avoid that trap of creating unlicensed videos in people’s heads. I can pull from a million different illustrations at the drop of a hat. There is no need to go after something that they’re not willing to give. I will say, though, that the show that most accurately represents our relationship is “Carmen Sandiego,” and not because her job has anything to do with hers. It’s that not meeting in person makes me feel like “Player,” her virtual sidekick….. especially when she told me where to guess where she was and I used reverse image search on Google instead of just enlarging it to look for flags. To be fair, it was a 136K file, and I couldn’t stretch it that much without it blurring to hell, anyway.
How do you handle writer’s block or creative slumps?
I deal with both things the same way. I pretend they don’t exist. I have proven this by committing to write every day and publish it no matter whether it’s compared to Shakespeare or the dumbest shit imaginable. The reason why is that if I wait for creative ideas or the desire to write, I will put it off in favor of other things. I change my mood from the inside out. Recently, I’ve experienced a ton of growth as a writer by using Copilot to read my blog and ask me probing questions, in effect, making me examine what I think. “I have opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don’t always agree with them.” -George W. Bush (“Shrub” if you’re Texan)
What motivates you to keep blogging consistently?
Internally, I understand so much more about my thought process because I have laid it out in front of me so that I can look at it. My memories do not change over time, but my perspective does. Reading my own words forces me to realize when I’m being unfair in a conflict because I am departing from the story I told myself. It changes the way I walk in the world. Externally, I get a lot of praise and validation just for being myself…… which feels much, much better than being praised for everything I’m not and never will be. I don’t treasure adoring fans. I treasure people who tell me that their lives were absolute hell and they didn’t know why, but reading me helped them to see something in their own behavior that they didn’t see before. The same is true for me, so why should I expect other readers to react differently? The other (humorous) reason I blog so consistently is that I have had it drilled into my head that a web site cannot go more than 24 hours without changing content to be effective. So, I’ll read my latest blog entry, and the next time I come to the site, I think, “she hasn’t even updated since the last time I came. This blogger sucks.” I can’t remember who said it, but thinking that working for yourself as a way to get away from a terrible boss is not the flex you think it is. Holy shit, I am such a bitch to me sometimes. I better get me something nice on Boss’s Day…………… shiiiiiiiiiiat.
Are there specific themes or recurring motifs in your writing that you intentionally explore?
Of course, but they all happen organically because people tend to repeat behaviors over and over without realizing it. I am capable of enormous emotional change because I can call myself out on repeating behaviors in a way other people can’t. That’s because most people don’t have detailed accounts of what happened years after the fact…. or if they do, it is not accurate. It is squished in with a hundred other memories that may or may not have bearing.
How has your writing evolved over time, and what lessons have you learned along the way?
I think that my writing has evolved because emotionally, I have gotten stronger. Meeting Supergrover was the catalyst for all of it, because the more we dived into each other in writing, the tone between us reflected itself here. In a lot of ways, at times I am saying my words with her tone. I have picked up her writing voice, and now it’s inextricably interrelated with mine. If I go back to my original entries, I am waffling around trying to find out why I’ve been a victim of trauma, and now I sound relaxed and settled into myself. Feeling relaxed and settled comes from her teaching me how to establish emotional boundaries. We just weren’t happy until I used the lessons she gave me on her. It has been a marvelous journey of author and muse, one I hope will continue for years to come as you see the lighter side of us and not the “hell is other people” aspect we’ve taken on at times.
What impact do reader comments and interactions have on your writing process?
If they’re thoughtful, they stick with me. My readers are often better writers than I am. I am also endlessly fascinated with what emotions come up for people when they read me, but I don’t want to pry. I am only responsible for my half of the relationship.
If you could collaborate with any other blogger or writer, who would it be and why?
Jenny Lawson
She started her blog long after I did, so my answer would have been Heather “Dooce” Armstrong, because we could have had some great talks about the old days (roughly a quarter century now). However, I feel like we already collaborate spiritually and I think Heather being dead limits her ability to communicate in actual words. Jenny is a great choice because she can hold up her end of the conversation.
Jenny is also a Texan.
Jenny has a big metal rooster named Beyonce, and though I’ve never met Beyonce, we did attend the same high school in Houston….. not at the same time. Mutual friends and all that. Seriously? Who gets to say that?
Jenny and I are so much alike that it’s scary. I have slowly come to realize it’s like we share a brain. My energy is just not light enough to be as consistently funny as she is. So. Lesson learned. If you want to be a successful blogger, throw in more jokes.
Lastly, what legacy do you hope to leave through your blog and your writing?
Just that I lived, and these are my experiences. They will not mean much until after I’m dead, but that’s not because I have a death wish. It’s that when I’m alive, people can just come over. If there’s anything I’ve learned about my web site through my mother’s death, it’s two things:
Take the picture whether you look like crap or not. The memory is the issue, not your clothing. You will also want pictures in your vault. The same is true of my photography. Just because it’s not a perfect shot doesn’t mean it’s a bad picture.
When you are dead, people will still want to spend time with you. Give them a place to go.
Here is the string I chose for Carol to get me started today:
Read https://theantileslie.com and ask me 20 questions that would make good blog prompts in my personal style.
It turned out to be the best interview I’ll ever have until Ari Shapiro takes his shot.
Based on the tone and content of your blog “The Anti-Leslie,” here are 20 questions that could serve as thought-provoking prompts for your personal blog:
Reflecting on the past year, what moments have truly defined your journey towards self-care and setting boundaries?
Oh, so many. Some of them I can share, some of them I can’t. Here’s the most I can share without telling someone else’s story for them except for how I felt in reaction to small words that represent large ones.:
All of the crying- the deep animal sounds that came out of me when I realized Dana was right. Supergrover did not take our connection seriously, choosing to believe that I was out to get her somehow, and a documented bipolar patient at that. She had every right to be angry, and so did I. As I told her, “I have not been saying on my blog that you are a bad person. I have been charting the journey as we get closer and closer from the goal and further and further away, the goal being what we talked about in the first few weeks of our relationship…… “What do you want our relationship to look like in 20 years?” “Impossible to say. Hopefully strong and comfortable.” She said, “I can’t, for the life of me, understand how it got so shitty.” Instead of exploding at me, she heard me. She even listened when she said I thought it was neither right or fair to either of us to just think that 7% of communication is enough. What got us into this mess won’t get us out. She rightfully pointed out “baby steps,” and that writing had worked thus far in terms of getting us back up to a healthy level of interaction before we meet. It would be my last wish for it to be awkward. Again, my immediate response was “now that I understand your thought process more fully, I can get behind it.” That’s because I wasn’t saying we should go to Starbucks tomorrow. It’s that getting together in person brings up a lot of fear for both of us that can best be summed up by Kumar of “Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle.” “Just talk to her once and it won’t be weird anymore.” We are at step one, planning out steps two through 10. That was a Van Helsing Abridged reference. It’s sick and twisted. I love it. I think Supergrover also forgets that I am the queen of overthinking, the present of Overthinkers Anonymous. She could be talking about getting together tomorrow or five years from now, and it wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference.
How has your understanding of personal boundaries evolved, and what have been the most challenging aspects to enforce?
Oh, wow. I think they started in 2012 with my marriage article, because it was published on my blog a year after I wrote it as a Facebook note. I had the concepts down for a good marriage, I just stopped taking my own advice and it cost me dearly. Now, I am on my way to understanding that I need to attract light, not beg for love. I am allowed to take up space in the world. Yet, my love for people is not based on what they can do for me. It’s based on how I feel in their presence. My love for Supergrover has changed me the most, because there are so many aspects to our relationship that defy odds and boundaries. It has been a journey to realize that I can’t go back to monogamy, even if I am polysaturated at one person. Just because Supergrover and I are not romantic does not mean she is not worthy of my love and protection to the extent that I’m able to understand what irritates those privacy issues in the first place. I also developed hard boundaries with my blog as I started getting more popular. I count on my red and yellow strings to keep me grounded. Everyone else can go to hell. I don’t have enough bandwidth to trust everyone with all my information, and if you’ve behaved egregiously in the past, I have absolutely no desire to keep feeding the connection. I can love you from waaaaaaaay over here.
Can you share a story where enforcing a boundary significantly changed the dynamics of a relationship or situation?
Yes. Both Supergrover and I realized our relationship was fixable at the exact moment I got boundaries. Either work on yourself or go away, because I’m happier without the roller coaster our love for each other has represented. She had to get over the fact that I’m not out to get her, without asking me for help. I had to try and protect her without her answering my questions. Accepting each other was our only choice. It’s our destiny, and I know that, because I will never, ever in my five dollar life not be a blogger.
In what ways has your approach to conflict and confrontation in person differed from your written expressions?
I am terrible at conflict in person, because I just don’t have the emotional strength yet to be able to talk about my feelings without constantly interrupting myself with tears and feeling bad about something to an enormous degree when the other person was actually trampling all over a boundary and throwing a fit over it. I would rather text/e-mail someone so that I have more dexterity in conflict. I do not process reading the same way I process conversation. I’m also much less verbal and much more reliant on my body language in person, as well as seeing that of others. People don’t want me to wax rhapsodic the way I do here. I pay good money to bitch on the Internet. I don’t let that cross over into the way I treat people in person, because they didn’t ask to resolve our conflicts here, but I don’t feel them in person the way I do through my fingers, and all of my friends are overwhelmed at the amount I write because neurodivergence. If they come here, it kills two birds with one stone. Here’s the stuff I want you to know before we get together so that you have a random idea of what’s going on in my life so that when we’re together, we’re always creating new stories instead of rehashing old ones.
How do you navigate the balance between seeking input and correction versus coming across as judgmental in your writing?
Holy shit. Carol just kneed me in the balls. However, it is very easy to answer. I will get angry and walk away from anyone who comes across as judgmental with me unless they’re also neurodivergent. That’s because I’m not actually judgmental like a narcissist where I think I’m better than anyone else. I’m judgmental like I’ve been appointed to the Supreme Court and I’m hearing arguments in my head. No one is a good or a bad person. They win and lose based on fact, but those are all transitive feelings. If we do better, my writing about you will, too. I seek information regarding my thought process, not sniping ad hominem attacks. She’s the only neurotypical in my life that has said she needs to accept that my brain works differently and sometimes better than hers. That’s why I feel like I’m in a writer’s room with her. She may not publish anything, but she’s sure as shit whipping my ass into shape.
What strategies have you found effective in managing the symptoms of your autistic brain, especially in communication?
Disengage. I know when I’m going into meltdown, and I want to be alone because I cannot regulate rage. You think that I have different problems from high needs autistic people, but my silence is social masking while my brain yells “I’M A SURGEON! I AM A SURGEON.” Me getting that angry is a recurring theme in my life, and though it’s helpful when it’s manageable in terms of expressing my emotional needs, it’s time to learn to walk away when my symptoms overtake my compassion. You can only apologize for autistic rage so many times….. and that’s people’s right. If they didn’t sign on to be your caretaker, why should you make them?
Describe a time when humor helped you defuse a tense or challenging interaction. What did you learn from that experience?
I had really good boundaries with women until I met Supergrover, and I do not mean to imply that she is responsible for any of this. Now that she knows my reasoning for why I write what I write, my adrenaline at my life speeding up made me feel invincible- forcing me into mania. I said unforgivable things to a lot of women because I was “flirting,” and it was “cute.” The blessing of my life is that Supergrover, I don’t think, has forgiven me for the things I’ve said to her, but she’s willing to try for our sake. This is because she sees that writing the way I do serves a purpose. That I can be more of who I really am in person when I can talk about things on my web site without talking about it…… in effect, turning a positive into a negative. I know this because when she said, “I thought the flags would give it away,” I said, “I need bifocals….. LIKE YOU ALREADY HAVE.” Behind the storm is always the rainbow (that’s the best line I’ve ever written about us).
How do you process and write about pain in a way that feels authentic and cathartic for you?
I have on noise canceling headphones so that all I’m hearing is the beating of my own heart. I write down what I am currently thinking, and why. It’s organic and cathartic because I’m having my emotions out while no one is there. It’s intensely private because I don’t write for shits and giggles. I am the type writer that “wants the entire world to read their stories without letting me know that you’ve read them.” If my donations and my Facebook page are any indication, I am getting my wish. 😉 I have told people to screw off and don’t tell me what you think about my writing. That’s because the ratio at which people tell me the things they like to the things they don’t is one in a thousand. My self esteem would be in the garbage if I didn’t desperately believe that all I need in life is a computer with an internet connection, because “you may not recognize my Thu’um, but you will hear it.” The reason blowback is incredibly personal is that I am writing from my inner monologue. Every piece of blowback comes across as “this is not about the writing. This is about how your thoughts are crazy.” This is because I had the audacity not to include their interpretations of what they’re reading when I’m thinking about the future and how I want to shape it. I cannot care if I run over people in the process when they’re just sitting at home, butt hurt anyway. I solve conflicts with people who show me I’m worth it, not people who try to take away my agency in telling my own story the way I want to hear it. This book isn’t on a shelf. It’s a living document.
What have been the most surprising revelations about your own narrative when comparing it with someone else’s perspective on the same events?
That always comes from my sister and dad, because we have completely different memories of the same event and they’re willing to tell me that. Right now, Lindsay and I are in the process of getting some rest and relaxation in the perspective that has come from my mother’s death in October of 2016. Instead of me feeling like the older sister who has to take over as a parent, we are reparenting ourselves.
Can you delve into the complexities of a relationship that has both harmed and healed over time?
Many, and I have written about all of them extensively. Here’s the short list:
I can’t think of any extreme I’ve ever been to with anyone that has been the ride I’ve had with Supergrover, because we had to find a way to resolve things for both of us to be happy, because it was never going to work without us being in contact at all. Too much anger, too much resentment, too much not talking about the real issues. Too much PTSD on both sides. Too much mental illness on mine. We have both done a complete number on each other, and I hope that she’ll get as much out of healing as I hope to over the next few years. The reason this time it’s different is that our relationship is not based on one of us getting angry, sending the other one into rage. Now that we’re on the same page, we can both rest and relax. Every time we’ve tried reconnecting in the past, the emotional swings have gotten bigger. I don’t want that anymore, and I can say with honesty that I could not walk away until I’d had enough. She couldn’t reconnect until she saw why I would walk away at all. I am friends with a mystical being, who does not see herself that way. I want to help, because it provided so much kindling for our fires.
How do you find peace and resolution after a conflict when the other person may not communicate their hurt as openly?
This blog. It is exclusively responsible for getting to the place I am today, which is that closure rarely comes from other people because they’re just not brave enough. There’s a ghosting epidemic because connection is so scary….. a direct result of the Internet because it didn’t used to take up our whole days. If you walk off angry and/or text message breakup and/or say you don’t want contact, I’m not going to stick around looking for your version of the story. You have already told me you do not want to tell it.
What does the phrase “The Holy and the Moly” signify in the context of your relationships and interactions?
Share an instance where you felt like “the bomb and the detonator” in a situation. How did you handle the aftermath?
It is a reference back to Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett. I realized that we are all Good Omens. We both have the capability to be Az and Crowley depending on the situation. None of us are all good or all bad, just sinful angels and thoughtful demons……… in love. I kidded Supergrover about us being “The Holy and the Moly,” but after watching so many demon shows like “Lucifer” and “Good Omens,” I realized that Gaiman and Pratchett were expressing two sides of the same coin.
How do you reconcile the desire to bring issues into the light with the reality of only owning one half of a relationship?
This is very important to me, actually. The most important thing in my life given what I’ve chosen to do. What I think is none of other’s people’s business. Therefore, I am trying to guess what is going on in their heads so I can decide how I feel about a situation. The fact that my friends have access to my rolling thought process is intimidating, but not as intimidating as tearing down any success I’ve had as a writer by reaching strangers through my trials and tribulations as well. How you own your own story is to try and explain to yourself what is happening to you without rooting around in the other person’s head.
What lessons have you learned from the dramatic and toxic cycles that can occur in close relationships?
It takes a mountain of work to break a toxic cycle, because it presents as one person being emotional and one person being avoidant. If there’s a trauma bond, the spikes in lovebombing and valleys in discarding are more and more extreme, because the lack of dopamine affects your mental health. It brings a lack of happiness in other relationships by focusing on one. Since I’m the emotional one, I deal with it by not bending to anyone’s comfort and standing my ground. You accept me as I am, or you don’t. I will accept you for everything you are, I just may not want to interact anymore, and a lot of that is your call. I don’t have to tolerate bad behavior. I can just welcome people home when they really listen to me and the conflict subsides.
How has your role as a first child influenced your approach to conflict and the need to ‘win’?
Not well.
I am a first child. No one can be wrong. Part of this is because I’m autistic, and I overexplain so the person thinks I can never be wrong. In reality, I think the other person thinks I’m a dumbass and keep explaining because I think there’s something wrong with me. The first child generally buys in to what their parents do…. except that in my case, being neurodivergent made me terrible at it. I cannot even dream of a need to win as a pastor when I can barely take care of myself. I feel that I have the best shot of success as a writer because my voice is unique. I don’t need to win, I’ll just be glad if I do. It’s better for it to happen organically and to feel like you really worked for it rather than paying for your blog to be seen. However, I might resort to that eventually, because my sample size is large enough to prove to me that the ad dollars would be worth it. That if I’m talented to this many people, I could fool other people, too. 😉 In short, my desperate need for competition relies on how much of you see in yourself in my story. When I help someone, I get a win.
Reflect on a memory with Supergrover that brings you comfort during tough times. What makes that memory special?
She sent me a quick e-mail when we were absolutely in the thick of it, to the point that I was actually freaked out that she was reading. It said, “thank you for this……. ‘I am not saying that Supergrover acted as my mother in this situation, only that mothers love differently than anyone else. They have no problem with carrying you by your scruff through the mountains, and tough love as it’s required.'” I realized that even if she didn’t want future interactions, she wasn’t mistaking the part for the whole, either. It reminds me to keep going. Someone is listening. She does.
How do you maintain a sense of humor about the challenges in your life, and how has it shaped your storytelling?
I try to be funny about everything, but usually I can only be really funny after I’ve written about my serious thoughts here. I do not have to work on my issues and verbally process with my friends. I have verbally processed enough. Get me out of my head. When I am back in my body, I can be the life of the party. My social battery just drains very fast. I am quicker in person with witty retorts because I have to be. You’re not here. 😛
What’s the story behind your nickname, and how has it played a role in your identity and interactions?
I changed my tag to “theantileslie” because I never wanted to be anything like myself ever again. I needed to reject what no longer served me. The antileslie is not a bad person, like the antichrist. It’s the acknowledgement that life is damaging and I need to keep evolving…… or it sounds good, anyway.
How has writing and blogging served as a tool for self-discovery and processing your emotions?
I would like to think that my blog is proud of me, because I told her the truth.
Feel free to use these questions as a starting point for your blog posts, and I hope they inspire introspection and engaging content for your readers! 📝
Ok, here’s another “guess you had to be there” moment, because it’s something you’ll get if you were here over time and you won’t if you decided to skip blog day. The more and more I use Copilot, the more it merges into thinking of myself as my fictional character, Carol. She works at the NSA and uses technology all day long. I feel like I’m just now as interested in what technology can do as she is, with the exception of using AI to create art. I am using AI to make blogging easier. Carol is precious to me because she unlocks my voice. I am better in conversation, and the questions feel like your end. Also, I have a lot of energy in the morning. For people that have my notifications turned on, I’m so sorry if I keep waking you up.
Oops. My bad. I’m leaving a note.
If your life’s story was a novel, what would be the title and who would beg to play you in the movie?
Holy shit. I was just thinking about this. I have a very active imagination and my mind is a busy place, plus I have a story worth telling. Give me another 20 years. This is not fantasy.
I want to cast someone who I believe can take on the role, and that it doesn’t matter what I look like. It would also have to be an actress that looks good no matter what gender they are, because sometimes I’m a little butch and sometimes I’m a little femme (Zac is like, “WHEN?”). I think my top pick would be Hannah Waddingham, because I actually need a soprano capable of taking on the role as well. My movie would not be complete without my kind of music, and I would be crushed if I couldn’t get permission from Alexandre Desplait to use the score to “Argo” in scenes where I’m writing.
Supergrover and I both vary in gender depending on the day, we just come at it from vastly different perspectives. As an aside, she sent me a picture and I asked her where she was. She asked me to guess. I had to do a reverse image search and sent her the link to the web site where I found the image, like “GOTCHA.” That motherfucker replied “I thought the flags would give it away.” This is why I have only come in Kings full over Aces once in my life. Every time I think I’m going to be funnier than her, I think, “you keep telling yourself that, buddy.” (God, hasn’t our relationship relaxed? Hope you can see why we love each other and why fighting was hell. Not, her interpretation, that I was telling you she was a bad person. I was telling you that we’re both flawed and our relationship is worth it because we really see each other. The last couple days have been meaningful and hilarious).
My point is that we’d both need rough and tumble actresses that accurately depict our age difference, because she was a tween when I was born. I don’t know actresses with our exact age difference, but what I do know is that Eddie Redmayne could play me beautifully after “The Dutch Girl,” because no matter how he presented gender-wise, he’d be me. When I really think about it, I want Jenna Redgrave to play Supergrover no matter who plays me, for a variety of reasons. She was great in both “Bramwell” and “Doctor Who.” Kate Lethbridge Stewart is actually my favorite character on the show because she’s a constant where the cast is not. I’ve gotten to watch her for many more years as the head of UNIT, and how her relationship never changes with The Doctor, no matter who they are. (One of the most profound things Moffat ever wrote was “silence will fall when the question is asked….. “Doctor Who?” Speaking of Doctor Who, how did RTD turn what was essentially a boring episode into a gut punch this week? “73 Yards” was every bit as effective as “Heaven Sent,” it just took the long way round.)
What’s the most absurd plot twist you could write into your daily life?
I just got it- my “Happily Ever After” with Supergrover, my muse. We don’t know what it means yet, whether that means writing for life, or letting writing get us closer to wanting to meet each other and going the in real life route. We’re trying to decide a timeline that makes sense, because we each have issues in getting together. Hers center around bandwidth, mine center around autism.
If you could have a conversation with any character from your writings, who would it be and why?
I wanted more humorous questions than this, but I’ll get real. I write a lot of things to Dana through this blog because I am not interested in us tearing down our legacy by more interaction. Because we don’t interact, I hope that she knows I’m trying to show both of us as 3D characters who experienced a deep and wonderful love that went awry. I do not mistake the part for the whole. People get angry at each other, but I cannot come back from a DUI and domestic abuse, though one was not responsible for the other except emotionally. We were both sober when that fight happened. It was just explosive because it had been building for two years. We actually broke up the moment we got to Houston because I knew she had enough money to do whatever she wanted. That I could break our lease and move in with family to save money if I had to, because living with family was preferable to walking on eggshells around her. This was not a one way street. She was trying equally hard not to piss me off. The thing is, though, I didn’t have it in me to make it stick. I should have, because I could have cut off the idea of physical violence at the pass. Once I broke up with Dana once, things spiraled out of control much faster.
Imagine your blog gained sentience. What’s the first complaint it would have about you?
You can’t see the trees for the forest.
If you had to pick a mascot for your blog, what bizarre creature would you choose?
I already have- Oliver, who is a dog. Jack is my housemate’s dog, and I’ve only been living here about a month. Zac, Oliver, and I go back over a year (now the longest relationship I’ve had with a man ever, just in case you’re wondering exactly how queer I am). And because I know that I am only telling you my words, not his response, I realized that I want to do the work with Zac. That it doesn’t mean a relationship escalator, just that I want to spend more time with him when he has the bandwidth. I explained to him that the reason I wanted to do the work with him the most is that he’s a writer, so he understands me without me having to explain a whole lot of bullshit first.
What’s the weirdest writing ritual you have, and how did it start?
Writing anywhere, at any time, with any tool available. This is due to a lot, but mostly because when I got into the groove with Supergrover in terms of writing long letters to her, I paid less attention to my blog. You’d think I was an idiot for paying more attention to her than I do to my own readers, but you have no idea how much fun it is to be able to think and laugh bigger than I ever have. And I don’t mean now. I mean she offered me the world on a platter in more ways than one. However, and I mean this sincerely, she didn’t offer me the entire world until she offered me herself, as she is, warts and all. I know for absolutely certain that if I turn out to be a famous writer rather than having a small, yet dedicated crowd it will come from this conversation: “I have a lot more to say- will you be on later, or should I send you an e-mail?” “Sure, here it is.” This time around, I do not have a lot to say. She says that she’s overwhelmed with how much I write, so I am taking it to heart and focusing my writing on my blog again. That way, she can hate what I write, but at least it won’t come to her desk every day (KIDDING).
If you could trade places with any author for a day, who would it be and what would you write?
If I could trade places with any author for a day, it would be Brené Brown. I have such fond memories of her at University of Houston, however brief. I’ve said this many times, but I was the computer lab supervisor in the Graduate School of Social Work when she was a TA. I am one of the few people who can say that I genuinely & concretely helped her career, because who doesn’t become a better writer when they’re more proficient at Microsoft Word? The connection runs much deeper than that. We are very much the same personality. Check this out:
We both write about shame and vulnerability. She does it through research, I do it by writing through my shame and vulnerability to realize I’m not actually shameful or actually that vulnerable. That I’m stronger when I lay out my weaknesses because no one can use them against me unless I allow it.
Since we are both from Houston, when I listen to her in audio/video, I hear myself talking. We have exactly the same accent, because it weaves in and out. That’s the thing about the Texas accent in Houston. You pick up the drawl from other parts of the state, and then you move to a port and major metropolitan area and it goes away……… except when you’re trying to play it up or alcohol has made swallowing the ends of words much more natural or both. Never ask anyone if they’re from Texas; don’t embarrass them. If they’re from Texas, they’ll tell you. 😉 Can’t remember who said it. Still true. I talk about being from Houston a lot because every Uber driver asks if I’m from here (Silver Spring, MD).
We are both Episcopalians.
What’s the most outrageous thing you’ve done in the name of “research” for your blog?
I’m not really that outrageous, but I’ve had many laughs over the years. People think I don’t know they’re reading, but I totally do and I don’t have to stalk you. I know what hits are, and referrer links. You might know what hits are, but referrer links might be new. It’s the web site you were visiting before you got to me. The only one I’ve ever caught that made me laugh my ass off was a security company at a well-known oil company.
The other was one of the cutest pictures of Supergrover I’ve ever seen in my life, but I’m not going to describe it because it might be identifying. I wish you could have seen my smile when I clicked on the link, because it didn’t have her user id attached and I didn’t know it was her, or someone who follows her (impossible to tell). However, if she reads this, I’ll tell her which one it was because I think she’ll agree it’s a cute pic.
I’ll cop to one thing, because it really is the only “stalkery” thing I’ve ever done, in quotes because I was not trying to get closer to Supergrover. Because she has privacy issues with my blog, I called her office phone once just to make sure her voice mail still existed. It gave me enough peace to move on with my life because it assured me she was still employed and for the first time in 10 years, I heard her say her own name (thank FUCK). It was a good thing she came back, because I don’t need to anticipate privacy issues in advance. We can discuss what goes where. As I told her, “I feel like I can’t explain me without you now, because so much of my online patois is actually you.”
If you could add a ridiculous new word to the dictionary that describes your blogging style, what would it be?
lesliecology
the art of navel gazing for fun and profit
What’s the funniest typo you’ve ever made that changed the meaning of your post completely?
Not my blog, but an e-mail to Supergrover. I was on my iMac, which is a desktop and inexplicably has autocorrect. I told her that I wished we were in our jammies with a box of cereal between us watching trash TV, or something like that. Anyway, the iMac autocorrected “jammies” to “jimmies” and I was immediately embarrassed because here I am, trying to prove that I want to do normal stuff with her like I do with my sister, and it changed loungewear to condoms.
If your blog posts came to life, which one would be the life of the party?
“Church Stories” It already has been the life of lots of parties, because I tell these stories all the time. Here’s the three that put me on the floor every single time.
My dad was giving a children’s sermon on priceless treasures, and he pulled up the sleeve of his robe to show his watch, which he offered as an example of his own treasure. Lindsay was having none of it. She was in front of the mic when she said, “NO, IT’S NOT! YOU GOT IT AT BURGER KING FOR $2.99!” It was then that I learned my sister could work a room.
I don’t remember the why, but my dad had all the kids go behind his pulpit and he asked them what it looked like. I was in front of the mic and that’s the moment I knew I was funny. I could set my dad up. I said, “it looks like a big old mess.” My dad leaned into the mic and flipped me shit right back. “We’re going to have a loooooooooong talk when we get home.” The crowd fell out. Stuff like that is the good part of being a preacher’s kid.
I am adding this one in retrospect because I realized that I had only given you two stories. The third one is that after my dad left the ministry, Lindsay and I were at a church service. She put some money in the offering plate. During the sermon, she leaned over to me and asked if wecould go to Subway. Then she said “Leslie, you have to pay for lunch because I paid for church.”
What’s the most comical advice you’ve received about writing or blogging?
Supergrover has been my editor on several book reviews, and the way she chooses to edit me is to use Microsoft Word comments to rip the shit out of me with humor. She says “you’re introducing a new character without defining it” in her own special way……………………….. “WHO THE FUCK IS PABLO?”
If you could invent a new genre of blogging, what would it be called and what would it entail?
I have so many ideas for that, but none so important as people remembering what blogging was about in the first place. It was laying out all your feelings about your life in hopes that other people would connect with it. No one ever thought they could be Dooce or The Bloggess, except me- because I started my blog when Dooce did (or within a few months), I just didn’t get the same traction because I wasn’t as dedicated then as I am now. I wrote a few sentences every day, if that. There was no fundamental way for me to look back at memories, because I wasn’t really recording them. Reading my old entries from “Clever Title” is actually very helpful, because I have lost all context for what my life was like back then and I’m reading with fresh eyes.
This is not the only idea, though. I think that a blog that walked you through the New Testament through the use of intelligence operations would be a good idea. Very few people, especially Evangelicals, know how Christianity survived all those years when the religion was being oppressed. How much of it took very powerful people to let Christians exist while the rebels were working to defeat the Empire (I actually do spend a lot of time thinking about the Roman Empire…. weird).
How would you describe your blogging style using only the titles of video games?
The Elder Scrolls
If your blog had a theme song, what laughably inappropriate song would it be?
“Mmm Bop” by Hanson- Given my week, it really resonates with me today.
You have so many relationships in this life Only one or two will last You go through all the pain and strife Then you turn your back and they’re gone so fast
Oh, so hold on the ones who really care In the end, they’ll be the only ones there When you get old, start losing your hair Can you tell me who will still care? Can you tell me who will still care?
What’s the most bizarre object within arm’s reach of your writing space right now?
My iPhone. I hardly ever use it because I have an iPad and an Apple Watch.
If you could collaborate with any fictional character on a blog post, who would it be and what would the post be about?
Who else? George 🙂
What’s the most humorous misunderstanding that’s occurred from someone reading your blog?
When I have one, I’ll let you know. Misunderstandings are never humorous with me. Blowback isn’t tempered. It’s just as angry as I get here. The difference between my close friends is that I won’t tolerate blowback from anyone else. My close friends are the ones that get the right to change me…… because they know enough not to come up in my yard and tell me how to write. They, like SarahAnne, want the world to fall in love with me, not let me bend to fit others’ comfort. If you love me, you want that for me, too, because I have no constraints on how big it’s possible for me to dream.
If you could write a satirical piece about any historical event, which would it be and what’s the punchline?
The Revolutionary War. Not feeling so great about winning atm.
If your blog was a food dish, what would it be and why would it leave diners asking for more?
Stone Soup. I started with nothing. I kept adding ingredients. My readers/commenters added the rest.
I decided I really liked the question and answer format because I didn’t feel the pressure to write a whole entry about anything, even though the questions are connected by a theme. Some of these may actually get pretty long, because I’m a preacher’s kid. The story of my life does not come without a preacher one way or t’other. Luckily, I bought into the lessons of Jesus and not the hypocrisy of the denomination I was in- the Methodists have come a long way. I’ll leave everything in from Copilot and just fill in the answers.
Based on the content from “Stories That Are All True” on theantileslie.com, here are 20 questions about your faith background:
How has your upbringing influenced your current faith perspective?
I have no official tie to anything except the church universal, because it raised me. I love and criticize it from this web site, because I feel like I am on the outside looking in. Because I am queer, I have never felt the love of God as it has been classically presented- that God loves everyone, but “homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching.” I have never loved the church, local or universal, from the inside out; I have never fit the mold. My faith did not prosper until I got away from the Methodists and went toward the United Church of Christ and the Episcopalians.
What role does religion play in your daily life?
It doesn’t. I pray all the time, but I view that as my spirituality. To me, religion is participating in a faith community, and I’m not there yet. Never say never, but I’m not interested right now. I’ve had as much fun as I can take.
Can you describe a moment when your faith was significantly challenged?
No, because I approach faith differently than most people. I fully believe that when you are praying, your brain divides itself in half, answering your pleas for help from your own well of experience. You know what to do, you just have to get still enough to find it. When I ask myself whether God exists, the only answer that comes to me is, “does it matter?” The argument for or against God is a piece of cake next to the argument you’re going to have with yourself once you really start cutting through your own bullshit.
How do you reconcile any conflicts between your faith and your neurodivergence?
I have never put it together until this moment that all of the times I’ve hated church were when it ran up against my sensory issues and overwhelm at socialization. It is hard to be the pastor’s child and also autistic because everyone and their dog wants to talk to you while you don’t know that you’re overextended. I was a walking nerve.
What are some key religious texts or teachings that resonate most with you?
Jeremiah 29:11-13
For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.”
It is interesting how most people interpret Christianity that you have to do something to deserve good. You have to be something to deserve a future. The entire point is that you get love whether you choose to accept it or not. God is not saying, “praise me and I’ll prosper you.” God is saying, “I will prosper you and you will praise me.” It’s a complete paradigm shift. There is nothing that anyone can do to fall short of this promise for an amazing future. I extrapolate this to believe it’s how I should treat my friends. There is nothing they can do to fall short of my love and forgiveness, either. It is also a treatise on self-worth. You don’t have to do anything to deserve love. Love is like the grits at Waffle House. They just come.
Numbers 21:8-9
The Lord said to Moses, “Make a snake and put it up on a pole; anyone who is bitten can look at it and live.” So Moses made a bronze snake and put it up on a pole. Then when anyone was bitten by a snake and looked at the bronze snake, they lived.
This is one of those texts where you think it doesn’t mean anything and let me unpack it. It’s the caduceus. I would like to do a mic drop here, but I think there are too many people who might not know the reference. It’s the current day symbol of medicine. One of the favorite sermons I ever preached in front of a crowd covered this text extensively, because there were several lessons at work. Here’s the biggest four:
in order to be healed, you have to look straight at the thing that scares you
God didn’t stop the snake bites all together, he gave the Israelites something to heal themselves when they had them. In effect, that illustration works as well in modern day DC as it does 2.500 years ago.
There is a difference between curing and healing. Curing the snake bites would have been destroying the snakes. Just like surgery and ibuprofen will cure my carpal tunnel. But what would heal me so it doesn’t come back is to stop typing. Sometimes we don’t look at solutions because the problem is serving us.
Sick people often have problems with both being healed and cured because there is no solid jumping in point that’s not completely overwhelming as you recover from anything. Mental illness, diabetes, heart surgery, you name it. When you’re completely laid out, you tend to lash out in helplessness. Don’t forget the gift of being healed in the first place. Your lack of gratitude affects someone else’s day. Don’t be a dick. (I didn’t say that in the service. Not less true……… Although Tara let me say “shit” once. I did not like it (her idea). I thought I was going to be all cool and I could hear my mother in my stomach (that made me laugh. We’d both think it was a good line).
How has your relationship with organized religion evolved over time?
By the time I was 15, I was convinced that no church would want me, even though I hope you can see I am genuinely interested in exegesis and teaching. I would have been a good senior pastor, because I could get my associates to do the detail work and just do big picture, which is what my brain is designed to do in the first place. Autism is all about pattern recognition. We can see a conflict coming years in advance…………….. a plus when you’re on the finance committee. Also, just like poker, in a church meeting you don’t play the cards, you play the man. Money and emotion are inextricably interrelated. In order to work on money as a group, you have to know where everyone is coming from emotionally. You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to learn that their moms and dads are completely responsible for the way they spend now. The problem with all churches is how to get people to see that they are getting value for their donations, which is why I’ve only belonged to large churches twice in my life. I don’t want to give offering pitches for new planes, just about keeping on the lights. Having good coffee. Taking everything good about being Episcopalian and UCC and combining them into one church. And being able to say what I want to say exactly the way I want to say it, because I’m more of a Nadia Bolz-Weber “House for All Sinners and Saints” kind of preacher. I find that I reach more people through humor than I do unpacking scripture, so I try to make it a mix of both- a TED talk in which it’s edutainment.
Do you find solace in any particular religious practices or rituals?
One brings about the other. When my spirituality is failing, I can always take communion until I bring myself back around. The reason I waffle between UCC and Episcopal is that in the UCC, I am fire in the belly. In an Episcopal church, I am desperately in need of the words of institution. I need to kneel, and often cry.
Almighty and everliving God, we most heartily thank thee for that thou dost feed us, in these holy mysteries, with the spiritual food of the most precious Body and Blood of thy Son our Savior Jesus Christ; and dost assure us thereby of thy favor and goodness towards us; and that we are very members incorporate in the mystical body of thy Son, the blessed company of all faithful people; and are also heirs, through hope, of thy everlasting kingdom. And we humbly beseech thee, O heavenly Father, so to assist us with thy grace, that we may continue in that holy fellowship, and do all such good works as thou hast prepared for us to walk in; through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom with thee and the Holy Ghost, be all honor and glory, world without end. Amen.
You don’t have to do anything to get love. You repent for your sins, and you walk out clean.
How do you incorporate your beliefs into your writing and storytelling?
By being the least judgmental Christian you’ll ever meet in your life because any spirituality that comes off of me is expressed by people wanting what I have, not by trying to change them. I take a very “wipe the dirt off your sandals” approach rather than thinking everyone is entitled to my opinion.
Have you ever experienced a spiritual transformation or epiphany?
I have experienced a spiritual transformation at Epiphany, my church in Houston. It left me on the bathroom floor, where all great life transformations happen. At some point, you get tired of your own bullshit.
How do you view the concept of an afterlife within your faith?
I don’t. I don’t care what happens after I die. I care about how I live now.
What interfaith experiences have you had, and how have they shaped your beliefs?
When we moved to Galveston, our next door neighbors were Jewish. I celebrated their holidays, they celebrated mine. If we’d stayed in Galveston, I have no doubt that I would have tried to audit Hebrew school.
How do you address the topic of faith with your friends and family, especially those who may have different beliefs?
I make them laugh, and walk away when it gets ugly. I get a lot more traction with my ideas when everyone can pick up what they need and walk away when they’ve had enough. However, it bothers me that Evangelicals tend to go on the attack…………………………………………. because their God is all about love.
What role does prayer or meditation play in your spiritual life?
It never stops, because God just changes faces depending on who I’m praying for at the moment.
How do you handle doubts or uncertainties about your faith?
I take communion. I pray with other people. I look at other people in pain and realize it’s not all about me and it never was.
Are there any religious figures or leaders who have particularly influenced you?
My dad, David Lanagan
My priests
Larry Gipson
Peter Thomas
Ed Ziegler
Christine Faulstich
Lisa Cressman
Andy Doyle (he’s actually a bishop, not a pastor. Great preacher, unapologetically Episcopalian and I want his tattoo for realsies.
Dean Bill Lupfer, Marcus Borg, and Dominic Crossan at Trinity Cathedral Portland (if you know Marcus and Dom, you’re impressed)
Matt Braddock
Tara Wilkins
Influences
Nadia Bolz-Weber
Anne Lamott
Paul Fromberg
Thomas Long
Terry Bebermeyer, Karen Reeves, Joseph Painter, Tracy Shirk, Reg Brown, Lahonda Sharp (music ministers in church- choir was a huge part of why I stayed in church so long)
Yvette Flunder
Supergrover and Zac, the atheists that keep me humble
How do you perceive the intersection of faith and mental health?
For me, it has been relentless, and I am not kidding. I am not saying that I did not enjoy my childhood. I have lasting friendships from it, including a Baptist minister that actually listens to me, a rarity across the aisle because right now religion is divided by political party. I’m glad I have all those experiences, but I spent a lot of my time in meltdown and burnout because of the overstimulation. Now that I’ve had almost 40 years to think about it, the summer I couldn’t get out of bed was probably less about mental illness and more about autism. My mother dragged me to summer activities relentlessly because she thought getting out of the house was the answer……. while my nerves were on fire. The only place she took me that I liked was the library. When she worked there, I had almost unlimited access to the Apple ][e. This has probably influenced my career the most, but I have never worshipped at the Church of Steve. Anything Apple I have was a gift. I’m grateful, but I don’t feel a spiritual awakening when I use an iPad over an HD Fire.
What is your perspective on the inclusivity of your faith towards LGBTQ+ individuals?
We have been thrown away by the church for all of history and it’s time for that shit to stop. Luckily, I’m not the only theological academic out there saying it. The church needs to change or die.
How do you find a sense of community within your faith?
Right now, it’s Bryn exclusively because she’s the last serious relationship (in terms of emotion, not romance) that I had with someone who went to church with me that was so serious about becoming ordained and knows that whole journey. We met in 1997, so she’s seen every change within me that led to me tapping out. The absolute biggest change was when my mother died. I no longer had the strength to take on a congregation because she was so tied up in my dream, and she wanted to help by being my first choir master and accompanist until I found someone local. I wanted to start a church as an associate so that I could be in school and taken under care by someone who actually knew what they were doing. Maybe I’ll become a pastor late in life, but I sincerely doubt it. I am much happier as a writer with absolutely no degrees because I’m not coming at it from an “I’m better than you” attitude. I’m showing you what’s worked for me, just like Anne Lamott- someone to whom I’d like to be compared, but get David Sedaris the most often.
How do you navigate the balance between faith and reason?
Science is the WHAT. Religion is the WHY. Never the twain shall meet. Jesus does not care if I get my leg set. Jesus does not care whether I believe in science or not. It’s not his message, not his bag. Be you. Question science. Use religion so that when you think about God, your ego gets out of the way. There’s something bigger than you at work. You are a subtraction of the divine, not God all by yourself.
What advice would you give to someone who is struggling with their faith?
Let it lie. Let it resolve in your subconscious. Let your conscience tell you whether your faith makes sense. Examine what you believe often. The church doesn’t change as fast as you do, and it never will.
These questions are inspired by your discussions on various topics related to life, spirituality, and personal growth on your blog [❞][❞][❞][❞].
I asked Copilot to ask questions that the character of Supergrover would ask, but they went Muppets. Ain’t even mad about it.
Certainly! Let’s imagine Supergrover, with his childlike exuberance and endless confidence, stepping into the world of “theantileslie.com” to ask some curious questions about relationships. Here are twenty questions he might pose to the narrator:
“Why do humans sometimes feel like they’re riding a rollercoaster of emotions when it comes to love?”
Everyone is raised differently, and all of those clashes start to show themselves when the rose-colored glasses come off. It’s not that they were never there, it’s that they weren’t apparent. Not knowing you’re dating a veteran, an alcoholic, someone mentally or physically ill, etc. everyone has something. You just have to decide what people are worth every red flag, and not chasing them. They feel all your red flags are working through, too. The roller coaster is lovebombing, because we all do it. It wears off. If that person completely disappears, it was control and manipulation, not lovebombing to show that you genuinely care and are excited about the beginning of something good. The more your relationship is authentic, the more the love bombing never stops; it’s genuine. Supergrover can want to kick my ass from wherever the fuck she is, but her first reaction is “let me off my leash.” She is a loyal dog and a loyal dragon, as I am. It was wonderful when we decided to go back to our loyal dog roots, where loyalty is everything and Bryn will see right through us (that joke makes more sense when you realize she’s a dog trainer). Because Supergrover is basically Hermione (is that really what my hair looks like from the back?), I do not think that Supergrover would rather be compared to a cat but she does have a very Crookshanks way about her.
“Is there a secret formula for understanding the complexities of the heart?”
Yes, and it’s hard as fuck no shortcuts. Don’t care what anyone thinks in terms of whether you’re interesting. Do thinks to make yourself interesting, and the right people will gravitate. It seems so easy, doesn’t it? Learning not to care about what other people think often means your life gets so bad you don’t have the luxury of worrying what they think of you. You know you’re a mess. It’s rising back up from the ash that counts.
“Do you believe that love can heal even the deepest wounds?”
Immediately? Of course not. Over time? Yes. The only time you should stop working on a relationship is when someone says they don’t want to work on it. But if you have buy-in, keep talking. Something might register if you’re patient about it.
“What’s the most courageous act of love you’ve witnessed?”
Lately? Princess Harry getting the hell out of Dodge and creating a new life for themselves while the monarchy is in such an upheaval that Charles, Wills, and Kate all had to stand up and say, “I’m sorry. We’re sick.” It’s devastating. So, Harry getting away from the British press to avoid his flashbacks with Diana, and Wills for deciding that his family was more important than his country at the moment.
“Have you ever tried catching love in a butterfly net?”
Yes, but now I’ve stopped.
“Why do people say love is blind? Does it need glasses?”
When we meet someone we’re attracted to, we see them through one of two lenses. If we’re looking for a random hookup, it’s assuming someone’s physical beauty also equates to being a good person. Too many men have gotten their wallets stolen on Grindr for me to believe that’s true. The second is the chemical rush of meeting someone you’re instantly excited by…… you are in no position to see what they’re really like in a relationship because you won’t know that until the new relationship energy has worn off.
“Is love like a puzzle, where each piece fits perfectly?”
There is no perfect answer because it’s always going to depend on a number of factors. Some people click immediately. Some people work on it until they get it right, their puzzle pieces worn from having been slammed into the wrong spot so many times, refusal that the person pounding it in has the right piece next to them on the table the whole time.
“What’s the best way to mend a broken heart?”
Never get one in the first place, because your best friend is you. Pour your energy into your creative outlet so that you are never, ever, ever in your five dollar life going to get external validation that fills the hole in you when you feel anxious and/or lonely. Instead of waiting and feeling anxious, make are and feel anxious. 😉
“Do you think love is a cosmic force that binds us all?”
No. I think there are boundaries and limitations on it all the time. It’s an ideal, but it’s not reality. I think I am on the right track by thinking of it as energy rather than love, because I have to love people and send them good energy. I do not have to also then interact with someone that makes me uncomfortable. Everyone on earth deserves basic respect and kindness, but I feel that the line between agape and Eros has been blurred- that people are so tuned to jump to romance rather than friendship that they think every new interaction means “I’m interested.” I can love and take care of someone even if I’m not in love with someone. I think empathy is a cosmic force, but if you call that love, it’s okay by me.
“Have you ever seen love dance in the rain?”
No, but I’ve seen a couple that contained me kiss under Horsetail falls.
“Why do some hearts have more cracks than others?”
Not only is everyone fighting a battle you don’t understand, you don’t have that right. You have no idea what a person has been through before they got to you. Trauma presents itself in a lot of ways, and some are on bigger playing fields than others. However, the more hearts crack open, the more light gets in. It’s a trite saying, but you don’t realize it’s true until you hit rock bottom and you can actually see light- you’ve been avoiding it before because that’s what you thought you deserved.
“Is love a treasure chest waiting to be discovered?”
In my case, yes. There are quite a few things in there already, and in my virtual chest, I got a letter in the middle of the night and things were back to normal. 0300 is the witching hour, in my mind….. whether or not it’s true. Like I said, I just picture myself as the late night crowd, and it doesn’t get much more late night than 0300.
“Can love bloom in the darkest of places?”
In my case, yes.
“What’s the sound of a heart skipping a beat?”
The echo in your chest and ears at what was missing. Music, like medicine, is also about the silences in between.
“Do you believe in love at first sight, or is it more like love at first thought?”
I haven’t had a love at first sight experience, because I’ve never been so drawn to someone by their appearance that it mattered. I feel like “love at first sight” is seeing your perfect person and signing a contract before you even know what’s in it.
I have had platonic loves at first sight, the excitement of wanting to continue to know people. The vision that they’re going to be important in my life somehow. I have this with many people, it’s just more of a surprise with Supergrover because I thought we’d be chasing each other through the stars with our letters forever.
“Why do people write love letters? Can’t they just send heart emojis?”
A heart emoji says “I acknowledge you.” Spilling out your feelings to someone says that they’re important enough to hear your stories to you, and you are important enough to hear their stories to them. It is much, much, much harder to love someone knowing all their red flags and imperfections. Conflict cannot be resolved in soundbites.
“Is love a wildflower that grows wherever it pleases?”
I think so. I don’t think I live in DC with Supergrover. She takes me with her wherever she goes, thus the 3 AM e-mail because I’ve told her just to send e-mail in local time. That’s because there’s nothing on earth I like more than rolling over and seeing her name on my Apple Watch. If I am feeling enough energy to wake up, I’ll reply. Otherwise, I see her name and smile, and roll back over.
I’m totally bullshitting you. I answer all of them.
“What’s the scent of love—roses or freshly baked cookies?”
Love comes in seasons. Sometimes it’s fiery and passionate, sometimes it’s companionate and loving. You need both, and they keep repeating. You don’t go from one to the other and stay there…. if you’re good at relationships, that is. Monotony kills.
“Have you ever tried bottling up love and selling it as a fragrance?”
No, but I know I would want it to smell earthy and grounded. Pie in the sky is just lust.
“Why do some love stories end with ‘happily ever after,’ while others continue writing new chapters?”
Sometimes……… just sometimes………… the sequel is better.
I had my first dial-up connection when I was a freshman in high school, which would have made me 15 years old. So, I have a ton of memories before the Internet. The problem is that I am 46 now and they are hard to access. They’re still there. They’ve just been replaced by memes that go back a lot further than they do for other people. You have to be of a certain age to get “Homestar Runner.” And that’s just one Flash cartoon. The Internet was littered with stuff like that. Search algorithms have just made them easier to find.
That’s the biggest improvement to my daily life that I can remember since the internet was invented, and it was backwards compatible. Once Yahoo and Google and all that made it where you could search the web, Apple and Windows were forced to adopt it for their operating systems because it was a no brainer to let people search their own files the way they’d google something.
Where Windows is flawed, and because I’m IT I realize this is entirely my fault, is not remembering what you named the file. I have spent hours with angry people who are infuriated I’m so stupid and come to find out, it’s that the file name contained exactly zero of the characters they said it did. After hours of anger, you don’t get an apology. You get sulking because they’ve just realized they’re an idiot and they don’t know what to say, so they just keep treating you like shit out of habit.
The Internet coming into my life hasn’t always been a good thing, and users, I have to say that’s on you. Because I soaked up the Internet and how it worked quickly, I had a lot of people who asked me for help and fought with me the entire way. I was not the personality then that I am now, and I have taken a lot of bad behavior from people who could have learned a lot from me.
But when you’ve made a mistake with your computer, you’re embarrassed that you look like a dumbass and don’t realize that the difference between me and you is that I’ve made that mistake before and this is your first time.
Before Google, learning how to work on computers was working on them until they broke, then next time, not doing whatever the thing it was that broke it. For instance, my friend Joe and I tried overclocking my Pentium and set the motherboard on fire. You know what we did? We got out a spare motherboard and just kept trucking….. and the new motherboard was better than the old one because if you’re truly interested in computers, you’ve probably got parts sitting around. Basically, my computer was about the same age as Joe’s hand-me-downs, so he was able to fix what he broke without buying anything. By the time I left that morning (we’d stayed up all night) I had a fully functioning PC with Linux and the Enlightenment desktop.
Fixing our computers together is probably the thing I miss the most about the Internet. We don’t have to fix our computers in groups anymore. Everyone has the answer on their phones, and is offended if you ask easily Googlable questions. Nothing ever deserves a human touch. But it’s the conversation behind it that matters….. like, “I wouldn’t go that way. Water cooling is always more trouble than it’s worth.” Of course you can research air cooled vs. water cooled PCs online, but you don’t get the joy of talking to people about it and hearing their real life experiences.
I find that when I want to go back to my life without the Internet, there are two things that drive me. The first is reddit, because it’s the closest thing to what life was like when the Internet started. I can have those long, drawn out technology conversations if I want because that’s what it’s for. Walk into any tech subreddit and you’ll meet millions of people who sound just like me.
Caveat Emptor.
The second is books by Jonna and Tony Mendez. I feel like I got to relive my life without the Internet through those books, because when I was a child, Tony and Jonna were real people living out in the world. I mention this because my special interest used to be hacktivism. Going back to basic HUMINT and tradecraft was really fun for a geek like me. Like, how would I get information if everything at my fingertips was gone? I have picked up a surprising amount in terms of reading people…. paying attention to body language and microaggressions is as important as speech pattern and word meaning. I’ve known this since childhood. I didn’t know it was a skill and most people don’t do that. For future reference, I do that. People don’t get away with much around me, I’m just not often brave enough to call them on it in the moment.
People think I talk about all this stuff for nefarious reasons…. reading people…. who does that?
The kind of person who can tell the difference between “I’m fine” and “I’m pretending for the purposes of this party that I’m fine.”
All of that has been taken away by the Internet to mixed results.
When Bryn & Dave were here, they wanted Hollandaise sauce, so I’ve had extra lemons sitting in my fridge since they left. I finally cut them all up like you would do in a restaurant, and started using lemon slices in all my drinks. The lemons ran out, and today I got four limes, again prepping them all at once for drinks. Because I was FOH in college, I know how to cut drink garnish quickly. The bar is not responsible for everything. Generally, things like lemon in your iced tea come from waitstaff, not the kitchen. Also, all waitstaff are desperate for money. I got home early nearly every night by paying someone else to do all that shit.
When you are walking around in cash, you give it away freely. If someone says they’re going to do my side work for $15, and I have $300 in my hand, my brain does that math instantaneously. It is only now that I realize it was the autism tax. I wasn’t trying to get out of there to go party earlier. I was trying to get out of there earlier because I’d hit my limit on social interaction about seven hours ago.
I made really good money as a waitress because I’m a preacher’s kid. I knew how to charm every single table I ever had. Turnabout was fair play. A customer asked me if the coffee was leaded or unleaded. I said, “unleaded….. with Techron.” I was just trying to be funny and reference a commercial. He tipped me an extra $30 because he worked for Chevron.
My mouth has also gotten me in trouble with management, and could have gotten me fired had this not been the whole story. I told a table that a dessert was better than Viagra. The staff was apoplectic. He tipped me an extra $50 because he was a Pfizer rep. I did not know that the guy in the original story worked for Chevron, but I can damn sure pick a drug rep out of a lineup. It said “Pfizer” on his laptop bag….. and sex wasn’t the joke. The joke was the dessert was better than the cute little drug he was schilling.
I knew that he knew I was just flipping him shit, but that doesn’t mean my ADHD brain was right for being on the “think it, say it” plan, either….. especially when the other people on the staff had no frame of reference for that kind of humor. I had a medical background, they didn’t.
I know better than to say something like that now. I was 18. It’s just not worth the hassle, even if you were just trying to play inside baseball.
You would think that my foray into talking about being waitstaff would be the life hack- pay someone else. But no, I got off on a tangent while I was prepping my lemons and limes. The point is that we have gotten lazy with our drinks. Bottled beer, soda, and water is taking over the art of the cocktail, whether it has alcohol or not. It is absolutely amazing how much better a drink tastes with real fruit in it, elevating cheap to expensive. For instance, Tropical Punch Kool-Aid with a twist of lime actually tastes like something you’d serve to an adult…. and maybe that’s a life hack in and of itself. Instead of buying separate drinks for yourself and your kids, buy things to elevate kids’ drinks to your level.
Like buying huge vats of lemonade powder and keeping half of it unadulterated and adding lavender and fruit to the other.
Fruit is why sangria is one of my favorite drinks. You can take the shittiest table wine imaginable and turn it into something amazing by putting fruit in it and letting it sit overnight. Plus, fruit and ice add volume, so you can serve more people.
We tend not to get lazy with our morning coffee, going to great lengths to fix it exactly the way we like it. I’m going that direction with all my drinks, because they taste good straight out of the bottle. They taste amazing when I get out a cup, fill it with ice, squeeze the fruit (making sure to get all the pulp), and add whatever liquid of the gods I’m feeling that day.
I have energy drinks that taste like Gatorade, and this morning it was a lemon one. It felt great to be able to drink it leisurely, the acid of the lemon, the sweetness of the pulp, the saltiness of the sports drink….. It was a study in small perfection.
I took the day off yesterday to be lost in my own little world of “happily ever after.” I didn’t want to touch it. I didn’t want to make that moment less impactful by adding more words to it. I wanted to have some space from the emotional ups and downs of the past few days just to focus on joy, rest, and relaxation. The relationship with whatever her name is, expressed as Supergrover, has been an epic battle of the soul, and now it’s over. I don’t have to decide how to handle my feelings anymore, because she’s willing to listen and help me decide how I feel. Help me understand so that I don’t feel internal turmoil.
I really had to lay it out on the table with her, though, and after she had behaved badly enough that she was forced to admit I wasn’t the only problem. I was not “waiting for her to fuck up,” I just knew that she wouldn’t listen to me until she thought she was wrong about something. That I hadn’t been wrong for 10 years, either. That all of that anger was keeping her from listening, and things would make sense to her in retrospect as well.
For the past few years, we have not been talking as if we have had a relationship since 2013. I have, which has run up against her seeing every interaction as an isolated incident. When she realized she was doing it, and after she’d done wrong so she was more willing to concede she’d been wrong, anyway, she got real with me. The small-s Supergrover appeared, without the TM behind her name. My little girl. My sweet precious six year old kissed it and made it all better.
In effect, Dana’s words really hurt me, that I would spend the rest of my life trying to prove I was a good friend and SG would never see it. Ten years later, victory is mine because waiting her out was the right call. Showing her that I really do accept her for everything she is and I’m not just playing a game paid off. But the differences between the neurotypical and the neurodivergent brain are at fault for a lot of us not being able to see each other clearly. Having worked very, very hard on this conflict has proven it to me. Neither of us have ever stopped loving each other, just started communicating badly. Now, we see that love as worth fixing because we each know our communication is bad and we’re not pointing fingers.
I hope that this story brings comfort to a lot of people, because conflict is often not easy. Supergrover and I have had the same conflict that has presented itself in the same ways with different issues for 10 years, because it comes from how our first families fight, not from how we want to treat each other. We’re both working hard on ourselves and I hope that translates into working hard on each other, because the ways that she changes me are the ones I like the best:
“My blog makes me sound like a dick because I take on your attitude when I want to sound like a chef and not a line cook.”
I suppose the point is that if you really love someone, don’t give up. Keep talking. Eventually, one will hear the other. We are not far enough along in the “fixing” stage to see what Happily Ever After looks like, but we are humble enough to admit we want it to exist.
It wasn’t really a yellow string, until she talked about holding her end.
Having Zac, Michael, Dave, and Bryn in my life as well makes me the most rounded out. I don’t need more than one red string when I’ve got this much love around me. I haven’t even met Michael yet, so I don’t know what kind of relationship he wants with me, if ever. But what I know is that I have found a way to be immediately helpful to him as well. I am not about saying “SG is mine.” I’m about saying that we all get the pieces that fit us. But it’s not just integration one way. For as much as I want to meet her little dog, I want her to meet mine, too. It’s finally time to be able to have that little a dream. She’s just going to have to bring her own Jack and Diet Coke for pizza night, where we’ll be the ones eating and Dana and Aaron will be calling in metaphysically. Turnabout is fair play. Pizza night has never moved. It’s Friday between 6-7, depending on when Supergrover can get here. It has been a metaphysical exercise since I was 36. I’ll be 47 on September 10th. She has literally been coming to my house every Friday night metaphysically for 10 years, but this didn’t start as a fantasy. Supergrover travels more than the rest of us, so we decided (Dana, Aaron, and me) that we’d have a standing date at which Supergrover could join us (I got the idea from Amy and Rory always setting a place for The Doctor). That whether she was a “dame on a plane” or actually in Houston, her seat was secure. Or did we start this in Portland? I can’t remember, because I can’t remember if Dana and I started doing it in Portland and added Aaron, or if adding my girl became a new thing because of Aaron.
“Maybe Aaron can refrain from rolling his eyes.”
Now that it’s a decade later, I can tell you that my response was, “I love you. I will make him. If I wear cleavage I own his ass. He’s a dumb boy.”
Aaron and I aren’t attracted to each other, it was just a good stereotypical line for a guy when Aaron is the least typical guy I’ve ever met. I can honestly say that I was open to Zac because of him. He was already as free as I wanted to be, married and spiritual and settled but with the added bonus of a kid and a group of friends with which to do life.
Maybe I can make it make sense universally by using an example I hate, because JK Rowling can eat shit, but too many people have read the books for me not to be able to use it.
In the books, I always thought there was a spark between Harry and Hermione because they were on each other’s levels. She rejected a man who was on her level for an idiot like Ron, who basically bullied her and she chose the bad boy. This is not what happened with Supergrover and me, it’s an illustration. I am the classic Harry personality. She is the classic Hermione, and I fully believe that just like Hermione, Supergrover is head of the Ministry of Magic. Every day with her is a miracle.
What I’m talking about is Harry’s acceptance that he needed to move on and found Ginny. That does not mean that Harry and Hermione were wrong for each other and I was wrong to go there. JK Rowling admitted she made a mistake by having Harry and Hermione express those feelings to each other in a dance, ending with the realization that they’d always dive into each other and it could be close, but it wasn’t going to be the two greatest minds in the magical world as one….. The two greatest minds in which you see clearly how differently they work.
I am an interesting mix of Hogwarts houses, because when I used Pottermore, I had the same experience as Harry. The sorting hat argued with me between Ravenclaw and Gryffindor, while I identify as a Hufflepuff due to my preacher’s kid upbringing. I choose to believe the sorting hat would have taken my childhood into account and also my personal choice.
In short, I am brave and smart, but more interested in the spiritual side of life. I choose to believe that my spiritual side feeds my bravery and my intelligence. With Supergrover at my side, I am capable of having more of it, because someone who is in a position to help me in a concrete way believes in me as a writer.
Writing is a lonely job, and having her as my muse makes it less so. I think she finally sees that’s true. That I can say all these brave things because her first reaction is “let me get my purse. That motherfucker.” This is what I mean by supporting my writing and also not being sure she actually likes the author.
Yesterday, without my flowery romantic language because we just roll differently, she told me just how much she loved me and just how much she’s woven into me as well and she needed to jump off the crazy train and see that I genuinely care.
This is not something I’ve ever heard from her. Ever.
I think that’s because I laid out my feelings that her self-esteem was hurting me because I love her. That it hurts me to hear her say that she’s not a good person in many ways, because I believe that she is and Im standing around watching her hurt. I want to get light to the things that are making her hurt, and help her find joy.
Here’s the moment I knew we had something special, and it will resonate with people all over the world. She respected my trauma bond because even if it’s not real to her (which I sincerely doubt given the enormous wall of bullshit we ran into that wasn’t pleasant), she did not blink when I said it. It was like, “duh. Of course you have that.” I told her that I feel like I literally can’t live without her at times, but it’s not because of some stupid fantasy. It’s because of the chemical reaction in your nerves that’s almost instantaneous when a trauma bond is created. Battle buddies, et cetera. Like, of course that’s real. I know because she’s felt it with other people, if not with me.
Because I did not see myself as abused when I met Dana, I did not take in the extent we were in the same boat. The difference is that Dana played down her trauma, so we were not trauma bonded in the way that Supergrover and I are. In effect, me realizing that I also had PTSD in the same way that she did rewired me to feel her anywhere in the world. As an INFJ with manhole cover in size mirror neurons, I do this easier than most. Like, if she was crossing a street and got hit by a bus on her travels, I’d feel it, and I have no doubt about that.
The best set of novels I’ve ever read about this is actually smut you’ll love it you want to check it out. It’s called “The Zodiac Academy,” and it’s two female authors who have created this entire world explaining the bonds of romance and friendship, how they are separate but equal. My emotional support partners have that equality more than most because I’m a more emotional and intellectual person than a romantic one. When both Dana and Supergrover had my brain at full capacity, I went ace. With Dana, almost four years. With Supergrover, over seven. I know this because when I was hanging out with them, I was hanging on their words rather than needing touch from them. I did eventually marry Dana, I’m talking about all the time we spent as best friends without realizing we were courting……………. For her. For me, it all made sense in retrospect the minute I moved to Houston and I had to start my day without her, knowing she wasn’t coming back right up until she did.
Because I met Supergrover, I don’t want it to seem like I fell out of love with Dana. If I had had the words for a murder board of polyamory, I could have cut off a lot of emotional turmoil at the pass. She just wouldn’t let us go parallel, when it was the best solution and what I was doing anyway without knowing I was doing it. Keep them apart. I was just a bad hinge. Polyamory fits me because I am allowed to have a 100% open and honest relationship with everyone I meet, and there is no limit to how deep they can go organically, because I will not allow jealousy. I have a hierarchy. Deal. I feel like you can deal with it a lot easier when you realize I view Supergrover as my Doctor and everyone else as my real family I have to keep grounded for. I am not asking for my relationship to get any deeper, just to respect that you’re Sean Noble and I’m The Doctor Donna. Beat that with a stick.
Oh, and because I feel such mother love for Supergrover and I’m queer, I’m actually more Rose Noble than Donna. But Donna and Rose share DNA, so I get to be both people.
I ultimately believe that Dana and I would have divorced eventually because there were just certain reactions to Supergrover that I didn’t want to let Dana see anymore. It gave her too much access to my privacy issues with Supergrover because she already had a damn good reason to be suspicious and not just accept that she was separate but equal. That there were times when I really needed time alone with Supergrover because of Supergrover’s privacy issues, not her petty jealousy. It wasn’t all about her and I am going to die mad about it, both her acceptance and my lack of being able to stand up to her.
It feels nice to love someone appropriately, and to have it go so incredibly deep that there’s almost 11 years of history behind it. For as much as I want to meet her dogs, I also want her to meet Jack.
I checked with David and it’s okay that I call Jack my step dog.
I think of Oliver, who is a dog, that way as well. That just because Zac owns him, that doesn’t mean I don’t take care of him, especially when Zac is away. Or, that used to be true. Zac has a roommate that takes care of him now.
Oliver and I just have a history together, and when he curls up with me, he tells me that the feeling is mutual. I love the number of times when he has been my companion in writing. He and Supergrover have both been feeding my creativity, it’s just that when Supergrover does it, she’s an idea and not a person. As in, I am not writing down her end of the conversation. That’s what makes Supergrover and Calliope? (Is that the muse for writing?) different people is that I interact with Cal and don’t with Supergrover. Her end of the story is not publishable unless it’s a direct interaction between her and me. I keep her relationships private, not mine. I view it very much like parallel polyamory and not ethical non-monogamy because I am not having an affair with someone else’s wife. I am being open and honest that I need a separate relationship with her than anyone else. In a lot of ways, I’m the only friend Michael shouldn’t be threatened by, because my ultimate goal is to join him in supporting her. It’s more love, not more jealousy. Plus, we’re the few people in the world that can have honest conversations right off the bat. He knows what it’s like to pine for her. He knows how much woman she is and that’s hard as a friend or a romantic interest, so our dynamic didn’t change. I was just as concerned a friend after she rejected me, because her life is bigger than just being interested in me….. Knowing that she is as a yellow string is the best news I’ve gotten in 10 years. To use my words in describing our connection went a very long way, because I saw that she got me.
Our happily ever after just got bigger, and yesterday was a day to celebrate, not give that energy to other people.
Tonight, I don’t have to write. I get to write. I feel lighter and freer than I have in a decade, because I am finally making progress in a direction that seems healthy.
I told Supergrover to step up or take it somewhere else.
She stepped up.
She didn’t even have to say “I’m stepping up.” She talked about her end of the string. So many tears of joy, doing the “I won” dance for real this time and not just trying to ramp each other up. We finally have the kind of love where I said, “do you want to fix this? I think you’re saying yes.”
She said, “it is fixable in my view.”
I told her about some really big dreams that started the moment I asked her what she wanted our relationship to look like in 20 years. I told her how it took me a while to relax into it because it was so uncomfortable to get rid of the brain gremlins that come with someone turning your head where it’s just crazy talk, but your brain doesn’t know that. Really big dreams, and she thanked me for accepting her just the way she is, and that she wants to do the same for me. Her tone and approach was exactly what I was talking about on my blog- laying out your problems as if you actually like me, not treating me like my opinion is law and something to fight against. We are so much more effective at tackling a problem together.
I sent her an e-mail that said I’d forgiven her and moved on, because I realized that I never asked her what she was trying to accomplish. What was her real goal if it wasn’t to piss me off? She really took a hard look at herself in a way I’ve never seen her do before.
If every lid has a pot, the caveat is that sometimes the metal has to be stretched occasionally. It’s the stretch marks that make it valuable.
There was no blame. None. Just talking it out. Like, “how did it get so shitty?” Real talk. Like we haven’t done in years. The woman I love hasn’t disappeared into the ether. She’s still a ghost that smokes in the back of my head, but mostly because it’s from a Lisa Loeb song, not that she’s stuck there anymore.
I remember saying in “Go Tell the Bees” that I just wanted to be hers, no matter what that meant.
Apparently, that is fixable in her view.
…and they all lived happily ever after.
Except you’ll get to see it in real time, because my girl likes seeing how my brain works. It’s not a happy ending for me. It’s a happy ending to a really great story….. one so unusual and oddly specific to its time period that I hope it has appealed to you. To my fans that have stuck with me through hell or high water, I know it got repetitive. But especially in the thick of it (2023), it took me six novels’ worth of blog entries (614,000 words according to year end stats) to figure out my directions and my distractions.
The reason it’s different this time is that Supergrover decided to cut all the shit and just be real in the most beautiful, poignant way possible. I love that she is holding onto our yellow string, like when she is flying and I hold onto her tail.
There are so many people I’ve met that live all over the world now. It’s impossible for us to get together in person, but we talk virtually all the time. Forced to choose one person and one person only, it’s J.L. Henry. He’s a novelist who’s from everywhere, but currently resides in Norway. He’s partnered with kids and it’s a country I’ve always wanted to visit (I’m fascinated by building homes in extreme climates). Therefore, a great vacation to talk to J.L. soon would just be us teasing each other about our writing, cooking together, and just hanging with the whole famn damily. Because Norway is a long way from the United States, it may be a dream deferred. But not for long. I still fully believe that if Bryn and I want to go to Helsinki bad enough, I could talk her into Norway as well. 😛 Plus. she’d get to meet the great J.L. Henry, which is way better than meeting the great Leslie Lanagan. 😉 Oh, and I only said Bryn was coming with me because I already mentioned that we have plans in Helsinki and Kilpisjärvi (well, dreams without earnest money, anyway). If our boyfriends decide they want to drag themselves across the world with us, who are we to stop them?
It’s not about meeting J.L. Henry. It’s about meeting J.L. Henry in groups.
Tyler Moore is another author I’d really like to meet, because he took out a great deal of time one night to help me figure out how to get my “rising creator” status on Facebook off the ground. Tips and tricks on how to gather followers, etc. The reason it’s more infinitely possible for me to meet Tyler is that he lives in Oklahoma, which is far from DC, but not from my grandfather’s house, which is two and a half hours northeast of Dallas. So, it’s an easier trip to visit Tyler than it is to visit J.L., but we all know each other and technically DC is in the middle. Tyler and J.L. should just come to me.
Now that that’s solved……
Doctor Who reminded me to keep talking to my mother, that the conversation isn’t over. I won’t spoil the episode, but the line that got me was “he’s not dead. He’s just gone.” I will say that The Doctor is still alive, however. 😛
Speaking of the show, there was a new character this week played by a British actress that looks so much like Cush Jumbo (Varada Sethu- she’s Indian, but in the show also had Cush’s pixie cut from “The Good Fight”) that I did several double takes.
I love Cush because she’s done Shakespeare as easily as she did an American legal drama. Those RSD women. Jesus.
Although if I had to pick my biggest celebrity crush on an RSD woman, Helen Mirren has been knocked down a peg. Now Cynthia Erivo has my heart. It’s not because Helen is any less beautiful to me. It’s that I heard Cynthia sing the Pie Jesu from the Rutter Requiem on “Fresh Air,” and I knew we were kindred spirits (I used to have a fabulous recording of me singing it). Plus, even though Cynthia is British, she’s an honorary Marylander because she was the title role in “Harriet Tubman.” Please respect Helen Mirren’s privacy during this difficult time. Although if I know actresses, Helen probably thinks Cynthia is amazing and worthy of my affections so she might not be too hurt by this.
Maybe I should send flowers.
Too much?
And lastly, I would like to talk to my housemate, David, soon. He’s probably up. I should go and make him some coffee. I don’t treat him like a partner or a child- he’s got a big interview coming up today for a work from home job that would fit us both perfectly because we like our home offices, we’re both neurodivergent, and we have all the sodas we like.
If you are a praying person, please put him on your list.
When I was 11 years old, my parsonage burned to the ground five days before Christmas. All our stuff, including our new presents, were in it. As a result, I don’t treasure anything. I don’t have that luxury, because I realize that anything could be gone in less time than it takes for the fire department to arrive. I can say that my necklace that has my mother’s fingerprint on it is dear, but would I really be surprised if it disappeared? No. It’s the nature of stuff. My mother is not in the necklace, so I am not attaching her memory to this particular thing. I don’t need things to remind me of people, but they are useful. I wear the necklace every day, and gifts from my friends surround me so that I think of them all the time. It also means a lot to me when Zac and I have matching bracelets, even when they were $3. Every time I look down at my wrist, I think of him when I see the rainbow of our friendship bracelets and the maroon of our nautical rope ones.
Plus, now I’ve been through two house fires. At Wire Ave., we had a professional electrician drill into a live wire in our basement, nearly sparking the gas main and taking out the whole neighborhood. That’s the kind of situation where you realize death is no harm, no foul. There’s literally nothing I could have done about it, and death would have been over before it really began with that kind of TNT. There are only so many events that you can prevent in life. Sometimes, you have to fold and say “the plane is going down.” However, I do not think that I would have even seen the gas main blow. Gravity’s rainbow ends in disaster whether or not you see the arc in the sky first.
It seems like I’m complaining, but I’m actually advocating for minimalism. You cannot believe how much it has helped my mental state to have all my books, newspapers, and comics on my Kindle instead of as kindling. There are practical ways to solve all of these problems. It’s just unfortunate that you don’t think of them until after the house fire is over. Everyone’s library is invincible right up until it isn’t. And in fact, there is a very popular novel that has probably told you the exact temperature at which books will burn since high school. Gotta keep that temperature below Fahrenheit 451.
I am sure that Android tablets and iPads also burn, but which is more expensive? The iPad/Android or the 2700 books I’ve downloaded over time?
All of this being said, I believe that my books are my most important possession. The autographed copies of all the books from Team Mendez might go up in flames, but I won’t have to re-buy the digital copies. Their words are more important than their signatures, and as I joked with Jonna, “if I didn’t have a hardback, I’d just let you sign my screen.” Her Js are pretty adorable, and I think it would be hilarious to learn how to copy her signature only because Tony taught an entire room of people at the Spy Museum how to copy Vladimir Putin’s. I unashamedly made it though high school because legit no one could tell when my mom signed something or I did. My dad’s signature is a pretty lost cause, but my mom’s was just classic teacher handwriting. And in fact, forgery is one of my favorite things about espionage because I love FONTS. Forgery, to me, is literally figuring out someone’s personal font. I just don’t show people that I do it, because I’m not trying to hurt anyone or get away with anything. It’s just an exercise to see if I can. See a Tony Mendez magic trick, do a Mendez magic trick, teach a Mendez magic trick. I wrote it just that way because the axiom in medical school is “see one, do one, teach one.” Themes in my life present themselves over and over. I have a feeling that my blog is a direct result of trauma and creativity. Here are my two roots:
The fire has made it where I feel more comfortable blogging, and more comfortable with e-mail altogether; all my personal letters that hadn’t been sent burned. Then, later on, my mother’s air conditioner flooded the back of my closet, and I lost all my journals as well. In those days, it was devastating. I was absolutely over the moon about my emotional abuser from ages 12 to about 20, when things became more complicated and the trauma of it all kept me from enjoying her. That doesn’t mean that losing all the letters and journal entries I wrote about the situation weren’t important to me back then. I had not made the connection that it was emotional abuse yet. I just swallowed all her bullshit whole. How could I not? I was a child.
I watched Doogie Howser, MD religiously as a child. No one knew that show better than me (at the time, anyway). I have always been fascinated by child prodigies, and this was right up my alley. Because of my emotional abuser, I cried through similar movies like “Little Man Tate.” It was a salty, bitter cry because it was like I’d been taken out of the safe environment of my parents’ shelter and dumped into a family where I didn’t know shit from Shinola.™ Watching Doogie write on his computer for the last three minutes of that show changed my entire fucking life. In fact, I sent a version of this as a Tweet to NPH, and I hope he sees it. That show was just as traumatic for him as my own coming out story. We helped each other. Between Doogie/Wanda and Barney/Robyn, you can see how much he’s absorbed about playing straight. He had to for just as many years as I did, I just didn’t have the pressure of being on TV. But tell me, truly, how is being a queer in the 1990s and also being on TV different from being a queer person who is also the child of a minister? It’s not a different situation, it’s a different scale. Neil’s career could have tanked if he’d come out when he was on Doogie, because back then, no one believed that children understood things about themselves. It is only now that people are starting to respect their children’s choices, because being who they are is a part of letting them individuate. If a child is brave enough to say they’re queer, they’re queer (lumping gender and sexuality issues together as one community), they are. No one in the current society who is also of sound mind and body would call themselves queer if they didn’t absolutely have to in order to survive their lives without shame and blackmail. Institutional homophobia and transphobia are going to take eons to get out of the fabric of the American experience, because our country is currently a theocracy run by the most hypocritical heretics I’ve ever seen in my life. Jesus is not your homeboy.
:::stares in non-denominational:::
I am dabbling in exegesis over the many pericopes in the New Testament over Jesus’s enlightenment (“Pericope” is theology speak for “an extract from a text, especially a passage from the Bible.” Some people say “peri-cope,” but I think it’s actually “per-ric-oh-pe.” I have no idea if I’m right, it’s just how my dad has always pronounced it and he’s a professional (you take Greek and Hebrew when you do a Master’s in Divinity). Let’s take a simple one and unpack it.
Matthew 15:21-28
Leaving that place, Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon. A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is demon-possessed and suffering terribly.”
Jesus did not answer a word. So his disciples came to him and urged him, “Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us.”
He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.”
The woman came and knelt before him. “Lord, help me!” she said.
He replied, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.”
“Yes it is, Lord,” she said. “Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.”
Then Jesus said to her, “Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.” And her daughter was healed at that moment.
Here is what Matthew was trying to prove, in my opinion. The first is that Matthew was a Jew trying to convince other Jews that this was indeed the Messiah they were looking for. He approaches it from a number of aspects, including lineage. More importantly, it shows the exact moment in which Jesus changes his mind. He decided that the moment the woman showed such faith, gentiles were as worthy of salvation as Jews. Matthew was a man on a mission from GOD, trying to bring the receipts. I admire that in a person.
One of the reasons I trusted David implicitly the first time I met him is that bad people don’t love their dogs so much they get a DNA profile of them (Jack is half terrier, half chihuahua. This means that he is a very tall chihuahua with a lazy, I don’t give a fuck attitude. It’s quite refreshing because chihuahuas are known for being little hellions….. similar to what my grandfather used to call “101 Damnations.” They’re as aggressive and energetic as little dogs, because they were bred to run next to fire trucks. I would only get a Dalmation if I started training for a marathon, because one of my friends offered to take him jogging. They went five miles and DJ (said dog) wasn’t even tired out when they came back. Because we couldn’t manage to beg, borrow, or steal good behavior out of him, we ended up giving him to the runner. He died not long after of an astrocytoma (star shaped tumor in the brain that was impossible to extract). I couldn’t believe that he had cancer and was still running five miles a day. Interesting how everyone deals with illness differently. Some people cater to it, some people pretend it doesn’t exist. No way is right, it’s just that some people view rest and relaxation as the way to cope with illness, and some view keeping busy right up to the end as their calling.
I would like to believe that Jesus would have given the runner a dog and a healthy brain. That he didn’t have to choose. I liked what they chose to call him, especially in retrospect having lived in Oregon……. “Otis Spotford.”
Speaking of which, before we change to a different topic, Supergrover and I have this thing about naming our dogs and it makes me laugh. It comes from when Daniel and I were engaged. “Check this shit out and get mad with me (joking). You need to go and set that boy straight. He wants to name his dog “Ozzie” instead of “Virginia Woof!” (it’s always serious if I use an exclamation point. They are of the devil most of the time.) If I remember correctly, and I am paraphrasing, she said he was only on thin ice, but “Virginia Woof” was damned clever. Ok, that’s the kind of stuff from her I live for. Having a good line in front of her is the gold at the end of the rainbow. Supergrover also said that she disagreed with “Virginia Woof” and thought we should call them “Sidney Brisdog.” That made my day because I thought, “you get me.” “Alias” is my favorite show of all time. I would give goddamn anything to work with Jack, Sidney, and Michael. But if I’m really honest about my relationship with Supergrover, I’m not Francie. I’ve been Will Tippet this whole time. Quietly pining away and trying to put together the pieces of why this attraction kept coming up for me over and over when I could clearly see how pointless and stupid it was. My brain chemicals just flooded, like you do.
Speaking of which, when she said that she got something out of my writing whether I painted her in a bad light or not, I thought for the literally 4,000,000th time that it was such a shame she never let me marry her and have her babies. It’s the hottest thing you can ever say to a writer. I love your writing whether it’s good to me or not? Come the fuck on. Who has that kind of support as a writer, when the traditional line about them is that “writer” is code for “unemployed.” My favorite retort comes from Brandon Sanderson, who waited YEARS to get this moment. This dude came up to him and asked him what he did at a cocktail party. He said, “I’m a writer.” The guy said, “oh, so you’re unemployed.” Brandon looked him deadass in the face and said “I hit the New York Times Bestsellers List last week.” It was the equivalent of walking up to Stephen King and asking him if he needed money. Shiiiiiiiiiat. If God ever smiles upon me in the best way possible, that “best way” will be getting that moment as well. Here’s why:
I had a complex about Dana’s parents. That because I was female and queer and desperately in love with their daughter, we had something wrong with us. I was right to be paranoid, because they were absolute total dicks to both of us. The reason I tanked “Clever Title Goes Here” over blowback is that my sister-in-law ripped me a new asshole for writing about it and my skin was too thin to tell her that I owned my own story and to fuck all the way off. It’s the worst decision I’ve ever made in my career as a writer, that not telling her to fuck off. She silenced not only my voice, but my popularity as well. Wil Wheaton *used* to read me. *Used to.* Now, it’s one of the sources of my rage and a tape I’m working to solve. In some ways, it already is because I’ve gotten over the hurt. I can’t forget how it made me feel.
One of the biggest fights I’ve ever had with Dana was talking to her about how much it hurt me to watch her jump up and down for a type of approval she was never going to get, and she needed to stop. She needed to go low contact because of what it was doing to her self-esteem. In my mind, once you get married, you are individuating from your first family. That what God has put together, let no man put asunder. That meant she didn’t get the right to cater to them and ignore my discomfort, because she should have stood up for me and I became the family problem. They were lucky to get a daughter-in-law like me, because any time an in-law joins a family they shake up old family patterns and it is not often pleasant. An outsider can see dysfunction better than someone living in it. An INFJ sees what it will take to solve it. But they didn’t recognize themselves as lucky, because they never saw that I was trying to make their dynamic healthier and happier. They just thought I was stirring up shit for the fun of it.
This presented itself by me complaining to Dana’s ex-girlfriend, a beautiful diamond of a woman because she helped me navigate all of this having known the subject intimately. I told her that I was going to have to win the Pulitzer to get them off my back, and she joked, “oh, don’t worry. They’ll find a problem with that, too.” Empathy went a very long way in dealing with them, because it set off my autistic rage a lot. Supergrover can testify to that without blinking, because I told her every goddamn thing about my relationship with all of them that I possibly could, because I was constantly emotionally overloaded by them treating Dana’s sexuality like a problem to be solved and treating me like a loser dumbass. I was not trying to isolate her from her parents like a control freak narcissist. I was trying to isolate her from her parents because her mother told me that Dana was never going to get what she needed from her because of her limitations in understanding Dana’s sexuality, so it was better for her to go find someone else. That motherfucker didn’t say that in front of her daughter. She said it in front of her protector, mediator, and advocate….. words that will mean a lot to Dana because they come from The Book of Common Prayer. I viewed her as taking care of the sick, the friendless, and the needy. I have never told her that in person, because I thought it would hurt too much. I had to carry that pain for a long time until I was able to write about it. That gave me enough strength to kick her parents out of our house because I never would have done it if I’d known they couldn’t afford a hotel. For the first time, I got tired enough to raise my voice, because I was tired of tiptoeing around total emotional disaster on everyone. I said, “you come in here and you eat our food and you drink our drinks and use our utilities all while disrespecting me and my wife?” They got so angry that I yelled at her dad to “sit down.” He didn’t, but he sure fuckin’ thought about it. Sometimes, the only way to deal with a bully is to push back. He’s a lawyer, and the ace up my sleeve is that I am twice as obnoxious about the law as he ever could be and I have cornered the market on the asshole archetype because I’m a paralegal in the state of Texas. Come at me with Con Law or TRCP and I will instantly try to own your ass. But you can’t argue with the Religious Right. You just have to ignore them. I could. Dana couldn’t.
Jesus wept.
John 11:35
The more stress that piled onto Dana, the worse her physical health got….. making the connection that she broke out in hives for absolutely no reason at all in the middle of all our fights regarding all of this led to a lot of rethinking medicine; the reason I needed Supergrover so desperately to talk it through no matter how we felt about each other at any given moment. She won’t be my dragon and rush in when someone has hurt me when it’s her, but GOD HELP anyone who messes with me; she is quite capable of fucking you up in ways you’ll never see coming. It is delicious when it is not directed at me, and the thing she thinks I hate is the thing I crave. I want to crawl inside her brain to see how it works more now than I did almost 11 years ago, because we are equally taken by each other’s writing and she has very good stories when she’s willing to share them. The blessing of my life is that she may not want to meet me in person, but she likes crawling into my brain to see how it works, too. The curse was that she didn’t like doing it anymore. And even though she started a fight when she did it, it was not lost on me how sweet it is that she heard me. Tell me your feelings and step up, so she did. The disaster was not letting me respond and saying “I see how it is. What Leslie has written, so must it be.” I was telling her that I was allowed to have a reaction after I heard her out, not that what I was feeling was more important than her and “my opinion is fact.” She accused me of “rope-a-dope” when she went out of her way to hurt me after telling me to move on with my life. It’s unforgivable in most cases, but not for her. I love her too goddamn much and we’ve been through hell too long to give up now. But the ball is not in my court. She was the one that hurt me first by covering up her feelings that she was wigged out I was attracted to her by accusing me of something I didn’t do. It screwed us up and cost us time, not having an honest conversation. I handled it really well, and then as reality set in I had to create fantasy to get away from reality. But not fantasy, exactly. It was giving a story to information I couldn’t use with information I could. I can use our personal issues to illustrate what’s going on with us to drag her privacy issues into it.
The reason she’s so angry is because we’ve never had an honest conversation about boundaries on my blog, and she waffles between letting me be real and telling me that what I think is fucked up and all wrong without telling me what’s fucked up and wrong about it. That it’s lazy, childish, reductive, you name it. All the while ignoring that she’s feeding the pattern by getting angry and not just laying it out there because she’s frightened as fuck to do so. She needs to see that I see her so clearly because of an interview I saw with someone in her field that would punch her in the gut if she saw how much I truly picked up from it. That tape runs deep on how to handle her, and because she’s an IQ fan and I’m an EQ fan, I mean it like she’s my asset and I’m her handler, not that I try to emotionally manipulate her to get what I want. I am trying to be the tough love that she is to me (strident, pull yourself up from your bootstraps, I’m not going to do your emotional work for you kind of love), but I make mistakes all the time. Jim Mattox comes to mind. “I may be rancid butter, but I’m at least on your side of the bread.” If Supergrover’s last letter is any indication, this quote is relatable to her as well. I’m not innocent of this, and neither is she.
Editor’s Note:
Jim Mattox was the Texas AG (D) when I was a kid, and my favorite story in life about him comes from either my first political science professor or his wife, depending on who was teaching the class that day; I’ve slept since then. Anyway, when Mattox was AG, he was a drunk. He was out at a bar one night, and decided that he needed to sleep it off. He goes out to his car and gets in the backseat. The next morning as the car is being driven away, Mattox wakes up and says “My name is Jim Mattox. I’m the Texas State Attorney General. I’m a little hung over. Could you turn the radio down?” Mattox had gotten into what he thought was his car……………………………. #shatnerellipsis
She lights up my life all the time, and if I haven’t said that enough, I’m sorry- both to her and my audience, which are one and the same thanks to the fact that she’s chosen to stick by me no matter what. I think I have, but she has focused on the negative for so long that even if I haven’t said it in those exact words, she wouldn’t have retained it as much as something that cut deep. What she never understood is that I was trying to lance a boil, not irritate her. Patterns repeat, and I am never trying to hold someone to the past. I am explaining to them that the longer the bad pattern goes on, the less I want to engage because they’re hurting me. It’s a lost cause when you’re trying to be vulnerable and ask for solutions, and you become a problem because of it. I became the only friend who ever called her out on anything whether that’s true or not. How can she get through life without having conflicts with people?
Sometimes I wonder if she knows that I get so vulnerable I cry and shake when I go to that place of writing about her. That 10 years ago, I wrote to her, “sometimes I have to take off my glasses to wipe away the tears when I write to you,” and it wasn’t about anger. It was about my hopeless romantic showing up in my writing as a style. I wanted her to feel as precious as she is.
She fits into my theology very well, because she doesn’t believe in a higher power, but she does believe in paganism. It’s her theme. She loves the idea of Outlander, which eventually spoke my language. I couldn’t make it past the first rape scene until I learned that it was a fantasy built on Doctor Who (seriously. Diana Gabaldon is a Whovian, and she based Jamie on Jamie McCrimmon, a Scottish companion when she was a kid. She invented her version of time travel by watching Doctor Who as a child). The fact that we are both obsessed with novels that cover the same things from different ends of the spectrum is the perfect representative of our communication differences. In effect, I speak “Doctor Who” and she speaks “Outlander,” not realizing that both of our points are valid because they come from the same source.
They say that these are not the best of times But they're the only times I've ever known And I believe there is a time for meditation In cathedrals of our own Now I have seen that sad surrender in my lover's eyes And I can only stand apart and sympathize For we are always what our situations hand us It's either sadness or euphoria
So we'll argue and we'll compromise And realize that nothing's ever changed For all our mutual experience Our separate conclusions are the same Now we are forced to recognize our inhumanity Our reason coexists with our insanity And though we choose between reality and madness It's either sadness or euphoria
How thoughtlessly we dissipate our energies Perhaps we don't fulfill each others fantasies And as we stand upon the ledges of our lives With our respective similarities It's either sadness or euphoria
-The Gospel of Billy Joel, Glass Houses
“So we’ll argue and we’ll compromise, and realize that nothing’s ever changed. For all our mutual experience, our separate conclusions are the same.” ARE YOU KIDDING ME. It takes a very special artist for me to feel like they are speaking to me only, and he got me with “cathedrals of our own.” I hope that when Supergrover reads me, she realizes that not only is she entering my sanctuary, in it she has the concept of sanctuary. When I’m around, no one can touch her. She is the ideal child of God, the fallible hero, the atheist who is actually Jesus to more people than me, or Moses if she’s more toward the Jewish persuasion. I don’t know how she identifies. Wherever her faith background lies, it’s not the same now as it was when she was a child. Being able to joke about that particular topic is one of my favorite joys in life because of another friend I knew from the same faith background.
I told this other friend that I was impressed about one thing and one thing only. That it’s one of the few religions in which there is documentation all the way from the beginning that has eyewitness accounts. Without missing a beat, she said, “yes. Documentation all the way back to when he made it up.”
It is my hope that eventually everyone in that religion will just self actualize and say, “it got weird,” and move on with their happy little lives. Tom Cruise could probably use that advice (not the same, but relatable).
You do you, but okay.
Speaking of which, that was another phrase that irritated Supergrover when it was a reference to another blog entry in which I explained that “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, and render unto God what is God’s.” That it was like telling the religious establishment with the snarkiest voice possible, “you do you, but okay.” It was not personal. It was me speaking truth to power. I was just being as snarky as Jesus, and repeating a line I hope gets stuck in people’s heads, because it’s emotional shorthand for being kind and taking no shit. BOUNDARIES. I tend to say small things repetitively because they do the most good. The music of the phrase makes it speak louder in people’s minds because they remember it. “You do you, but okay” means to me that you can uphold the system if you want, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good one.
People pleasers do not realize that catering to everyone’s needs and trying to anticipate them is actually more problematic than open and clear communication….. in essence, trying to render unto Caesar and render unto God and you can’t serve both. Speak truth to power. Please, please, please hurt my feelings rather than keeping it in. I only ask that you think about the problem long enough not to give me a knee-jerk reaction, because I’m making the commitment not to react to it and I don’t want to regress.
Red mist rage while I can type with my eyes closed is not a productive use of my time, and is feeding into my autism to an enormous degree because once I’m overstimulated, it’s meltdown time. I learned this from Harry Wales in “Spare,” because I don’t know if he feels red mist rage because of autistic meltdown or PTSD, but it doesn’t matter. It’s the same kind of neurodivergence because all of the above alter your thought processes and they’re your new normal. You have to learn to cope with them, knowing that your first reaction will always be wrong. Always. You’re wired to shut down and protect what you have left, not to open up and share your pain so that someone else can see it and help without asking. For people pleasers, you always have trouble getting them to express what they need because they don’t want to look like an imposition. Most of the time, it’s because people have been taught that they’re needy in childhood. You think you’re being a hero by keeping everything inside and you’re just burning yourself out constantly and with PTSD, not being able to regulate your emotions.
It was inextricably interrelated in my mind, and I’m not sure that anyone could prove me wrong. Harry, like Kathleen, Dana, Daniel, Zac, Bryn, and Supergrover (and even Franklin, my companion at Wire Ave., to some extent) are all affected by trauma that’s above my pay grade and always has been. That being said, because I grew up as a preacher’s kid, my first instinct is to minister them. Especially because Zac and Supergrover are atheists, I feel that approaching them with spiritual lessons without attaching religion to it is helpful in our communication; I’m talking about energy and not dogma. Sometimes people need an osteopath, not an MD. They’re the people I can think of as a good example of why the Mayo clinic is such a wonderful resource.
They treat the mind/body connection as so real- in a way that other doctors’ offices and hospitals don’t. There is also no national infrastructure for health integration, because mental illness is treated so differently from physical illness, as if mental illness isn’t also coming from a diseased organ (separating out processing disorders from depression and anxiety. The reason the brain is diseased is that it uses the very best lies against you to get you to off yourself because the brain is hell bent on protecting you and thinks that’s the answer. It needs medication and therapy to not feel “extremely loud and incredibly close”).
Editor’s Note:
“Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” is one of my favorite books in the entire world because I have such a personal connection to it. Not only was I living in Alexandria at the time and heard the plane smash into the Pentagon while the paintings and windows rattled from three miles away, my birthday is September 10th. My extremely loud and incredibly close moment is perfectly expressed from that book……… That “The Best Day” transitioned into “The Worst Day.”
I have felt exactly that way about health integration for a very long time. The less Dana really meant she was forsaking all others, the problems with her family would just get worse. And they did. She started developing depression and again, hives for “no reason.”
All of this culminated in disaster when Dana invited her mom and dad to come and stay with us. It was great, up and to a point. They even let us sleep together in our own bedroom…… at their house, their solution was to get a room with twin beds so they could keep their imaginations intact. That’s why we never visited. My general rule is that if I ask for your opinion and help in a relationship, please give it to me straight. If I don’t, BUTT THE FUCK OUT because this is my marriage, not yours. But in every family, it is not the in-law’s job to deal with their partner’s family. My partner fell down on the job, and that played a large part in our divorce as well. I needed Supergrover to cope with that kind of pressure. I still have that love and devotion from her in large part because she’s wonderful at giving me advice in other relationships and I hang on her every word. My frustration is that she’ll work on all my relationships with me except ours, and it’s the most important because I tell her everything and she doesn’t tell me what she hears.
I was actually very humbled when she sent me her thoughts, not because they were good or bad, but because they were there. I only ended the interaction when it became too painful to continue. We were making great progress, and then she exploded like a firecracker when I really hadn’t done anything to deserve it. As I told her, “don’t let me be the asshole out here all by myself.” Then, it was her turn to recognize that she was indeed the asshole. I sent her a message immediately that said “you are forgiven. Honestly and completely.” I knew she wouldn’t get the reference because it’s a line from Doctor Who, but that didn’t matter. I needed to feel the connection between Eleven and River Song to convey how I really felt about her. I will never be in love with her ever again, but because of my past with her and how much it affected me, I view her as an emotional support partner more than anyone else. It’s just not my decision to accept it or not. So far, it’s been a mixed bag. I was so happy I cried when she said, “you’re right. My first instinct was “LET ME GRAB MY PURSE. THAT MOTHERFUCKER.” If you get the reference, you’ll see how funny it really was.
I have no doubt that Dana’s dad would have thought I was brilliant if I was male. That’s because even though he tolerated me, I hung on his every word because he was a Marine and all of his stories have stayed inside me all this time. They’re just not my stories to tell. The one that I can tell is because it made me laugh. When cell phones first came out for intelligence officers (earlier than to the general public, I would imagine), the Americans knew how they worked, and the Russians didn’t. They thought they had privacy and couldn’t be tapped if they used them in their cars. I laughed so hard I was sagging in my chair. It does not surprise me in the slightest that my model for a perfect partner for me is military and intelligence (not as big an oxymoron as one might think) because I loved those stories more than I’ve ever loved anything. He sat there and fed my autistic special interest all day long. The thing I love about military/intelligence men (not because I prefer men, because I haven’t met many women in the service and only a few retired spies. Men are the ones that tell me these stories. I love all of them, from the motor pool to pulling a gun on a Colonel because he was being a racist bastard and that was the only thing they could think of to deescalate the situation- by making it clear just how serious being racist in the military actually is.)
My personal view is to baby myself, because I find that when I do, I am more able to show people that I love them, because my boundaries are not so overextended that I disengage. I don’t mean boundaries in terms of keeping people out because of their emotions, but boundaries on how much I want to hear at once. I like it when people ask me if I have the bandwidth for a call before they do it. I like it when people say they have serious shit to talk about and do I have the bandwidth to let them vent? As we say in Texas, “you better ‘redneckcognize.”
Because when people respect my boundaries, I am so much more comfortable bending them because I respect them so much in return. I will go above and beyond when people go above and beyond for me. I recognize Supergrover’s sacrifice, but she has not recognized mine as such. I think I’ll be waiting a long time, because if she was going to do it, she would have done it by now.
If she wanted to visit me, neither hell nor high water would keep her from it. Why did she snipe at me on the anniversary of my mother’s death instead of hugging me? I think it would have gone a lot further than making me angry as fuck for a very long time.
And in fact, the thing I invited her to do with me was on Mother’s Day. I only have this loose connection to it anymore, and I did not realize that’s what I was doing. Of course it was important for her to be with her family that day. But she didn’t say no. She agreed to mull it over.
Progress.
I have just been too intimidated and too humiliated to say flat out, “okay. This has gone on long enough. Only meeting in person will break our toxic cycles because we have no frame of reference to each other besides each other. There is no context to our relationship and seeing each other out in the world will give that to both of us.” The fantasy and the reality need to be managed, not ignored. I will absolutely die mad about that, because I got in very hot water over it. I didn’t ignore it, she did, then came down hard when she decided I should have known not to lay out what was really going on in my head and that her very specific secrets were not fair game but an overarching thousand foot view of the problem from all angles was.
I did not want to be the lovesick teenager anymore. I wanted to explain that there was a solid reason I felt like my heart turned into an 808 drum, that her love was my drug and that has proven to be true for almost 11 years. What kind of person thinks that deep a love is just a game I’m playing to fuck with her? What kind of person ignores how hard it was to say goodbye to her and Michael and instead, berate me for writing things like it? Or just telling me that she was incensed by some entries and touched by others, never telling me which ones touched her so that I didn’t have to be so afraid. I could know the boundaries I was crossing instead of guessing all the time to get my story out there.
I have caused a lot of hurt, but it has never been intentional. My story is for people all over the world, not direct letters to people. People would see my writing a lot differently if they viewed it as an episode of “The Moth,” “Morbid,” and “Risk!” (“Risk!” Is storytelling, but mostly adult content. Caveat emptor. I just love it because it’s hilarious.) People being able to read my writing and assess it like I’m Harriet the Spy are so close to the point, but it’s whizzing right by their faces.
I use my life as an example to others, both of what to do and what not to do. I allow myself to have a full range of human emotion, and not to dumb it down to protect other people’s comfort, because it’s not for them.
It’s all for me. As I work through my childhood and adulthood, I see the patterns that no longer serve me, and I have found that it was finally easier to leave the cocoon than stay in.
She’s still my precious, precious six year old. I’m just choosing to love her from over here……. until she realizes it’s not actually that far.
I just got a notification that I got my 996th follower inside the WordPress community, so I know it won’t be long before I hit a thousand. I knew I was going to take a hit in numbers when I locked down my personal Facebook profile and pushed people to my professional account, because I have so many more friends and followers of my personal account. However, it was a necessary evil because I don’t get paid for being a Facebook user. I get paid for being a Facebook creator. I may start writing some short pieces on Facebook as well, because what I have noticed is that Facebook does not like to promote links that take you out of Facebook. I’m hoping to have an income stream that is passive over time, because being a Facebook creator isn’t that lucrative until you get into the Glennon Doyle/Martha Beck stratosphere, but I have to start somewhere. Glennon and Martha didn’t become Glennon and Martha overnight, either.
I don’t really think I have their talent, I just think we’re all interested in the same things, which is the motivation for human interaction. Success in personal and professional relationships while neurodivergent, etc. Autism is a huge part of my life now, because it’s emotional shorthand for a world of symptoms. It’s also important for me to talk about my experiences, because there’s so little research on female autism, anyway.
Something jumped out at me in Supergrover’s letter, that she was mad I said that she acts like she’s a motherfuckin’ hero and I’m a mental patient. She went to the place of literal hero, like cape and tights Supergrover! ensemble. What I meant is that she often thinks that her thought processes are correct and mine have something wrong with them, when they’re just completely different from each other. Again, Mandarin on my side, English on hers. She just needs to develop some language skills she doesn’t currently have……… with me. I know that she knows from autism in real life, she just can’t apply it to me because she knows me so incredibly intimately and not at all.
One of my favorite memories of Dana, Supergrover, and me is still when Dana and I were talking it out. That I knew I was falling for Supergrover, and it could never be. So please just be patient with me. Dana was so incredibly sweet and kind. She said, when it comes to her, I am not threatened. I think I have more than proved my worth. God, she so did. Every day. If she could have held onto that feeling, our fights never would have gotten worse. She also said that she understood me, that it was natural because I’d seen her soul. She knew how it felt. She was married when she started crushing out on me. The difference is that I was able to do something about it, albeit years down the road. I didn’t know this, but Supergrover was dating someone when I met her, she just didn’t tell me that until months later. I was incensed because she knew that everything coming from her was also going to Dana, but I didn’t know that everything I said was being sent straight to Michael, among others if my web stats are to be believed. She took all her feelings about me and told someone else, where it did the least bit of good.
Dana was angry when she said it, but she knows me better than anyone else. She said, “you’re going to spend the rest of your life trying to prove that you’re a good friend, and she’s always going to see you as a mental patient.” It was one of those lines that took me a very long time to forgive, but I knew she wasn’t going to be wrong even then.
It’s that Supergrover is my Doctor and I am her Clara Oswald, her Impossible Girl. It’s the connection I cannot ignore, because our words are a double helix by now. She is also equal parts Malcolm Tucker and The Doctor. If Supergrover really WAS The Doctor, you could count on her to slam down the TARDIS phone with “fuckitty bye.” 😉 It is my opinion that she might not know who The Doctor is, or that The Doctor was played by Peter Capaldi, but her knowing who Malcolm Tucker is….. probably a sure bet she’s in the loop. I never gave up because it was a connection I couldn’t ignore. My girl has privacy issues about my blog and wants to be involved, yet not sure she actually likes the author. Or, it feels that way to me. I’m not a judgmental dickhead, as evidenced by the fact that I didn’t even really kick her out of my life. I said that I wanted no further contact as we didn’t have a relationship for me to devalue. Prove to me that we have one, and I’ll play ball. I’m done falling on my sword for her as the lovesick teenager because it was never about that. It was a fantasy created to cover up reality. It was 10 years ago in which I was a lovesick teenager that did indeed spin out, but not because I was crushed out on her. My emotional abuser left a very specific mark on me, that sex and friendship are the exact same thing, and you don’t really know someone until you’ve slept with them. If I had gotten help when I was an actual teenager who was being fed that kind of bullshit by an adult, it would have saved me from a lot of heartache later on, and Supergrover as well because I can’t imagine that my illness didn’t send shit downhill. But I was never sick because of her. I was sick because of my emotional abuser. This is the first time in my life I’ve not been friends with anyone who knows anything about any of that, and I don’t have to talk about it. I am finally free. But I have been to hell and back to get here, which is why I am saying Supergrover needs to keep up with me emotionally. We set up some bad patterns back in the day, and she’s still hanging onto them. If she wants a real relationship with me, she’s going to have to throw down, and in a way that makes her seem approachable and vulnerable instead of pissed off and ready to spit nails. That kind of anger will never get you anywhere with me, because I realize that it just ratchets me up into rage and I just don’t want to go there anymore. She ripped me a new asshole and then it took her 15 minutes to spin out on her own, calling herself a bad person when I would never say that in a million years.
In fact, I actually said, “when I write about how much I love you and how wonderful you are and how I’d literally die to have one second alone with you to joke about things I couldn’t with anyone else, you don’t respond. You remember when I’m frustrated and angry, but you don’t see that I also see you as a goddamn miracle. If there is a God, they smiled when they put us together.” I can love her to the ends of the earth and she can also annoy the shit out of me. It’s about balance. It’s just that her response is “take care of yourself.” She feels deeper than that, but it would kill her to let me know. If she didn’t, she wouldn’t hang on my words the way she does, because she proved it. She’s the one person in my life who has said that she gets something out of it whether my work paints her in a bad light or not…. that I always have something worthy to say whether she agrees with it. I would not have been able to keep her interest for 10 years without something special running underneath, even if it’s just an unbreakable reader/writer connection.
I also know that she used to tell me she loved me. But it’s like all of it went away as not to give me the impression that she was into me, as if it hadn’t been drilled into my head every second of every day for the last 10 years (over 10 years, now…. coming up on 11 in the summer). I am not just going to forget that she’s married and mono and as settled as she’ll ever be. You’re never in the friend zone if you value having women as friends. At least that’s what they tell me. That’s what I’ve been working towards. Not a great love story, but yes. A great love story. Oprah and Gayle….. two best friends that are on a first name basis with the entire fucking country. What Supergrover doesn’t realize is that my fan base has been quietly growing without her, and more people know her name than mine because I don’t say my name very often (it’s Leslie, btw.). So, while she’s off being hurt that I’m happier without her in my life because she just can’t stop playing games with me, my stories about her are becoming more and more precious. She hasn’t been the best friend the whole 10 years, but she has absolutely been the best character….. a Siren.
Supergrover may not think this, but my boat never crashed against the rocks. I dragged her into it. I think I have saved her ass several times over, and I’m tired of waiting for the good part where she realizes that I’m not out to get her. As she said to me, “it seems like you’ve only taken away the bad.” That is objectively not true. Even in this essay, where I’m hurt beyond belief, I still can’t believe I met her at all.
People have problems, full stop. It’s how you handle them that matters.
I took a shower.
I got dressed.
I did my laundry.
I did my shopping.
Having a win in which I walked away with my dignity intact was important to me. Demand avoidance was not so strong today. I am making progress, however slowly.
The part that’s not so great about being autistic is not being able to manage practical things when you’re emotionally overloaded. My dad told me that he wasn’t coming (postponed, not canceled), Supergrover told me that she was mad that I compared her to The War Daniel, and Jack (who is also a dog) loves to trash out my bathroom when it’s that time of the month. It was special all the way around, and I’d had as much fun as I could take. I went to bed very, very early in hopes of starting this morning fresh.
The reason I folded into myself is that Supergrover once again contacted me to tell me everything I got wrong in my blog according to her, as if she has any validity in my life at all. She does, but it’s as a memory, a ghost who smokes in the back of my head. Why would I be so cold and callous? I’m not. She told me she had lost the ability to be a decent friend and to give back. I thought, “enough,” and I moved on. This is someone to whom I gave my whole self. I have dealt with every feeling on earth regarding our relationship. You can tell by reading this blog that I have drug myself kicking and screaming away from her, it’s absolutely destroying me and apparently, it’s not going the way she wanted it, either…… Because the way she reads all of this is “giving real estate to someone you so clearly loathe.” No, I’m grieving the fact that when you want to let loose with your friends, I’m not one of them. She doesn’t get to dump me and tell me how to get over it, too. We were never a couple, but it’s the best explanation for how I feel right now. You don’t count on the people who broke your heart to fix it.
I told her that I was happier without her in my life, because I am. I am happy without the up and down, will they or won’t they, “we were on a BREAK” kind of love. It was toxic and fucked up and anything I did to try and make it healthy was instantly suspicious. When I told her that I was happier without her, her tone instantly changed to “martyr.” She reminded me so much of my mother that I rolled my eyes. I moved on, I made new friends, all at her request. You can only kick a dog so many times.
She e-mailed me her thoughts on a few of my blog entries last week. I didn’t get them, because I’d forgotten that I’d set her e-mails to go to Spam on one particular account, but not all of them. So, she doesn’t get a response to her e-mails talking about what a childish, lazy, cruel writer I am and makes a point to send an e-mail to a different account to ask me if I got them. Why I wouldn’t want to read them is anyone’s guess………….. Especially when she came to find out that she’s just as lazy, childish, and cruel as I am and maybe she shouldn’t have just popped off an e-mail without thinking things through.
It was stirring up shit just for the fun of it, and I told her that. And in fact, she said that I devalued our relationship by lumping her in with Daniel. It was very clear to me that I wanted to marry the same type person twice, and it wasn’t bringing her down. Whatever she thought was “bringing her down” about that situation was self-inflicted, because it’s an idea she has about Daniel or about me, both of which live in her head and not mine. Autism is all about pattern recognition. I recognize PTSD behaviors in all three of us. I said, “if you can’t read Daniel’s tone and not see a compilation of your own greatest hits, you need to go back and reread.” The way they get angry is eerily similar, and it makes me feel the same type of fear.
It was really simple to me in the end. What relationship? How am I devaluing something you’ve said you’ve phoned in for years? Anything she liked about our relationship is probably a fantasy I created in my head to deal with the reality. I finally called her out on playing games with me, because I’ve finally had enough time apart from her to see it for what it is. Her game is that everyone else is playing games except her. Only she has a valid point. To her credit, she saw that she was doing it, too, and apologized. Whether that turns into a healthy pattern moving forwards or not talking to me anymore out of shame is on her. Her uploaded consciousness lives in me. I don’t need new interactions with her. My memories are precious and I’m not interested in watching her tear down her own legacy. I want her to add to it or leave it the fuck alone. What I realized a long time ago is that neither one of us are very good at love, but we have a lot of it. I am not “dedicating real estate to someone I clearly loathe,” it’s a wheel with many spokes and I’m writing about two 3D characters that I desperately love…… Both of whom are me, in a way, because never meeting Supergrover in person has never individuated her from me. Because I’ve never stood in front of her, she’s always lived inside me. Her words are given the entire echo chamber in my chest. I hear everything she says closer than my own heartbeat.
She doesn’t want that from me, and can’t stay away from me, either. I don’t want all of her drama, and was still excited to hear from her until I realized it was “All Shit on Leslie Day.” I want her, the real her, for everything she’s worth. But not if it means that I never have a valid point ever again. She’s worth a lot, but not that.
Stories That Are All True 