There’s been a bit of bending the spoon lately, because I’ve realized that I’m part of the problem in not seeming approachable in terms of talking to me about problems, but I’m not responsible for trying to predict/avoid other people’s avoidance. Just let them go. Stop calling them on it. They know and they don’t care how it affects you. If they did, they’d tell you so. I am not responsible for keeping both halves of a relationship going. It’s going to be healthy or it’s going to die. I cannot predict what someone else is going to do next, and I’ve stopped trying.
People have noticed the change, because I’ve ridden down a lot of rivers in ramshackle boats trying to keep a relationship’s current from dragging me under. I am not, day to day, a strong personality. I seem like it in my writing, but I do not have the strength to just lay it down in front of everyone, especially after I’ve already spent my “emotional energy” spoons here. After I finish writing, it’s the dance of intimacy.
I have the same relationship with myself that I do with everyone else. After a fight that gets emotionally crispy, I retreat to recharge. Writing about difficult things leaves me just as fried as a conversation about something complex. So, it is very true that before I put myself around other people, I have to recover from myself, first.
It’s a lot.
When Supergrover said those exact words the other day, “it’s a lot,” I thought about it for a very long time. She sees that we’re both a lot. Again, what is she reacting to that I’m not? The only thing I can come up with is that she thinks I think there’s a problem with her, when there isn’t. There is a problem we need to work on. It is a group project, and me working on it alone has produced results she didn’t like because she wasn’t in on the story and couldn’t be. I had to have it whether she was here or not……
Because it’s not her story.
There are so many things built up here that are nothing. They got big by continually ignoring them.
I do not want to be a judgmental dickhead, nor do I want to be a dictator ever again. What I do want is to be a decent friend. That’s just not going to come at the cost of inauthentic relationships so I can keep other people from getting mad at me. I don’t care if people are mad at me, because I didn’t cause their anger. They chose to react with anger. In all cases, and a universal “they.”
I am responsible for helping put the relationship back together after a conflict, but I am not the reason you got angry. You are. Just like it’s my responsibility to control/regulate my emotions.
Supergrover could see that I needed that kind of help because I’m on medication for it. It’s easy to tell the bipolar kid they’re being unreasonable. Not so easy to tell an adult who’s got it together that they’re not any better at regulating than you are, for different reasons.
She wasn’t regulating her emotions, she was storing them up until she said she lost the ability to be a decent friend.
She was just going to keep me going like this for the rest of my life if I’d never called her on her bullshit. She was never going to regulate her emotions enough to be able to tell me what she wanted without stuttering and without becoming the princess of mixed signals at every turn.
I didn’t do any better. I just got caught up in her wake and drowned trying to learn to surf.
It became pricks on my skin I couldn’t close anymore, a phrase I could not have crafted and yet love so dearly.
My beautiful girl.
I never wanted that for either of us. I hope we both give ourselves the grace and peace we need.
But the thing that will stick with me in this argument is that she picked up her toys and went home because she thought I was telling her that our problems were all HER fault….. when all this time I have been saying that if I wasn’t a problem, we wouldn’t have any others. I’m the root. I take responsibility for that.
But in my own mind what happened is that she became disconnected from what happened long ago, maybe doesn’t even remember everything, and I am treating it as one entire narrative. She is doing something that’s hurting me right now, but it is in the tumble and roll of our relationship, not “I am right about this and about everything else.”
I do not need the whole world. I am happy with a tiny, tiny piece.
I’m the president of Overthinker’s Anonymous, who needs her VP and is telling the world she is unhappy about that.
It would be funny if it wasn’t so serious.
But learning all of this so recently has prepared me for other relationships. There’s just a sweet side of me that hopes she’ll again come back to me and say “I was licking my wounds,” because when she doesn’t tell me what they are, I can’t really help with the Neosporin, either. I don’t have a right to her thoughts, but I do have the right to insist on the truth when she does talk to me. I cannot survive on carbs alone. I’m going to need protein at some point.
But I didn’t realize she’s been carrying granola bars the whole time. I couldn’t hang because I was working blind.
It takes a lot to be a blogger, because essentially what you’re doing is trying to show the world in minute detail, and you have to do it in a hurry because the new prompt comes at midnight. I have one day to complete the assignment. When the prompt only asked for the first line of my autobiography, I thought, “OK. I’ll bite. That way, I’ll get a day off without breaking my streak.” It was more time to devote to the characters I love…. not that I was trying to be mean to you or anything. Sometimes, I just have to live more before I react.
However, criticism very much feels like the criticism of the other arts. Your muses are offended because they don’t see themselves the way you see them. Your family is embarrassed at least some of the time. I have to deal with the fact that my life is on display, and so do my friends. But they can be grateful I will never film them. This is not Instagram, where I surprise people by taking photos of them in unflattering positions. Painting a picture with words is a lot harder than taking a picture, I think, because we don’t start from a picture that is necessarily accurate to us, certainly not objective.
I wish I had pictures of me and SG! when it was good, because it would have been a nice keepsake. I mean, it’s one thing to have pictures of her, it’s another to banter together long enough to want to take it. Getting to take pictures with her would never have been the point. It would have been her wanting a picture of us together and saying “I’ll text it to you.” Even my sister makes me feel important when she does it, because a powerful person trusts me with their intimate images and I get the bonus of looking at their faces when they’re out of pocket.
I look at both of them lovingly. I’m sandwiched between them age-wise and shit rolls downhill. I sound a lot like her in person, and I want her to laugh her ass off about that given our conversation the other day.
I just had a thought that cracked me the fuck up, so I want to make her laugh even harder. If there is one, only one thing that makes her feel like a mother to me it’s that I hear her words and phrases coming out of my mouth. I do not have her accent down, so I cannot do an impression. But what I can do is say it how I think she’d say it, and she takes no prisoners.
So, what I would like to say is that if you know me in real life, I would give you exactly where to go to lodge complaints about “my tone.” But, it would not go well for you. She takes no prisoners, suffers no fools gladly, terms, conditions, provisos, the what-have-yous, etc. As I have said before, I have several friends that if we were mutual, they’d regret it. She knows what you did….. 😉 But don’t worry. She also knows a shit ton more about what I did. I can’t control your behavior, but I can learn to control my reaction.
It made me think of a line she wrote me years ago…. “my mother does not suffer fools gladly…..” That’s what I love about SG!. She can figure out the bullshit games running in any room, which is why I use poker metaphors here all the time. I know she understands the rules and the stakes. It’s a weird feeling, bankrolling me and running the juice.
The juice didn’t stop running until I was ready to make Teddy KGB choke down his Oreos all fuckin’ night.
But it’s not the last hand that matters, is it? It’s being able to read the man and not the hand. I don’t know how professional poker players can read the hand blind based on what’s left in the deck, but I do know the microaggressions of someone who has a good hand vs. a bad one.
Note to self:
At next book talk, ask Jonna if she is good at poker. I think her next title, should she write a sequel to “In True Face,” should be “This Would Be Funny If It Wasn’t So Serious…” which is something she said during the talk. I’m sure someone has thought of that title before. Not sure the subject has ever been more serious as a career at CIA while female. They thought she couldn’t handle a lot of things because apparently being able to support your husband at home and at work (if you were a “contract wife,” you could get a job anywhere in the world your spouse was posted in the typing pool. That doesn’t mean that Jonna married John or Tony for a job. It means that was the CIA term for how most of the people got their jobs in the typing pool. Keep it in the family, always. Easier to manage.
Why the trope about spies marrying each other is true to life. The Agency is a bubble, and allows you to forget your real life quickly, just like the military. I’m not sure that being able to get a job anywhere in the world is true of spouses now in the military/intelligence services, but I do know that if you want to work, there’s lots of opportunity if you’re on a military base or have been to the Chief of Station’s house for dinner once if they’re desperate.
Military spouses know the feeling of their partners coming home and struggling with life not surrounding all the stuff going on “out there.” It’s a helpless feeling, I’m sure, if you’re at all interested in geopolitics.
Jonna got to take a turn from the typing pool into a career because of luck, with both her and Tony being cut off from a fire hose worth of information about the chess board every single day. So, they met with their old friends at art shows just to reminisce- respecting boundaries and just loving the people involved.
As usual, I got lost in my own head and went in a million directions, because my autism can connect intelligence to anything because that’s how I understand the world. My view on systems is bird’s eye because I can handle those patterns easier than I can handle waking up in the morning.
With autism, the little things are the big things. It takes you energy to do your job and come up with great ideas. It takes us energy to make it to said job, but amazing once we get there (a good bit of the time) if we’re low needs and if other people are willing to hear us out.
Most people say “that was out there, even for me.” That’s because most of the people who say it are “great with autistic people working for/with them.” But it’s still the same dichotomy as in high school….. “Jesus Christ, do I have to explain everything to you?” You get it or you don’t in most workplaces, and if you’re neurodivergent, the chances are always 20% that someone will think you get it.
Autistic people get jobs all the time.
It’s really hard to keep them based on social cues you don’t know at times you desperately need them. For instance, it’s really hard for me to be around people who don’t also swear as much as line cooks because it’s really hard for me not to use swear words as filler….. because I’ve been on the line for so many years….. and yet also a grammar Nazi so insults often come as not to end a sentence on a preposition. It’s like trying to control Anthony Bourdain, not because I’m something special but because he’s like all of us.
I become “Little Fires Everywhere,” the Celeste Ng title that describes be because I haven’t found many people who understand me. I leave confusion in my wake, always.
The first time I did meet a someone, I knew it. The second time I sort of did? I struggled with it for 10 years. That’s because we both vastly underrated each other. She thought I was too needy, I thought she was too avoidant. We finally met in the middle and I hope discovered that neither of the stories we’d been telling ourselves are true. I can wait my whole life, because I’m only here to receive her energy, not show up regardless. It’s starting to feel pushy even if it isn’t true, because I don’t know if she’s going to respond to my response or not. She always leaves a door open. Always.
The funniest part is feeling at times like, “you fired me yesterday.” That I was indeed just as dedicated as any fashion assistant anywhere…………….. and so was she. It just became a problem when it felt like she was always the Mary and I was always the Rhoda. It was the push pull of wanting to be my own Mary, but being the president of everything because being the Vice President of Overthinker’s Anonymous is not her vibe. President is a public facing office. 😉
I cast a wider net for friends in college.
Or, I started blogging in 2003 because I could cast a wider net for friends. Our closeness was not based on proximity, but emotional intimacy. That feeling of being able to say anything and it won’t be able to get back to your family and friends, etc. Whether I’ve ever been catfished, I don’t know. Clearly once as a child, but I’m emotionally intelligent enough to close the chat windows that feel weird. The text, even the subtext just feels off and you know it if you’ve been chatting a long time. You learn to weed people out. That’s how I’ve found lasting friendships and not flings. Getting to know people from the inside out is a great answer for millions. It doesn’t make you put energy out there so much as attract energy to you.
It is how I’ve learned to control being “little fires everywhere” and concentrate on being the best person I can be. I cannot control my havoc in a neurotypical world, but I can apologize for my responses to it without taking away from the seriousness of what happened. That I will retreat, but I will return with a clear invitation. I don’t want to be with or be friends with anyone who doesn’t want to be here. It just feels insulting to me, and something that I don’t want in my life. For instance, a little bit of the everyday type of assurance we’re good so that I don’t have to walk around thinking about a problem that does not exist,
Only sometimes do I need more support than that; mostly, I just feel insecure after a fight. Who doesn’t? I just feel it on my skin.
Whether it’s joy or rage, I feel my emotions physically. It’s, I hope, why I can describe them. They aren’t insignificant.
But I only understand others’ reactions when I figure out how I participated in other people’s inner conflicts as well. I do not want to be the cause of them.
My medical diagnosis is “alternating lateral isotropia.”
What it means is that my eyes do not track together. I do not have 3D vision, which means that I cannot place an object in its environment. I have no depth perception or angle of convergence. The way it is different from a strabismus is that neurologically, by brain switches “cameras,” thus fields of vision, depending on which eye it thinks can see the best…. leaving me with no peripheral vision and also no ability to predict what’s going to be outside my field of vision.
It also makes finding things I’ve just set down extraordinarily difficult, something I’ve struggled with forever…. again, rewarding neurotypical kids for things that are very hard for the neurodivergent. When a teacher notices you lose everything, you lose all respect with them. It affects grades where the letter is an abstract concept, like essays. I wish I excelled at math, because there would have been no fear of rejection with every paper and I could have felt better about myself without a teacher’s approval.
It doesn’t help that the real non-medical definition of my medical condition is “lazy eye.” That irritates me, too. I’m a writer. Why wouldn’t lazy be a trigger for me? Trust me, I may not “work” faster than you (universal) because I don’t know how neurotypicals do it, but I think faster. It’s not because I’m neurotypical. It’s that my entire job here is reacting to life, so I feel practiced at it and more comfortable in my skin. Lucky enough to be as old as I am because the good experiences only start happening after you’ve figured out how to avoid all the land mines first.
It’s good I’m still workin’ on that.
But back to this whole “lazy eye” thing. It makes me feel lesser than, and though I know that doctors use it, they should know that for some people it doesn’t feel particularly favorable…. like “MDT” in Appalachia.
If you’re not a doctor there, you’d never figure it out. It’s not really something you can google, only something they’ve seen a thousand times and you probably haven’t. My cousin got his DO in West Virginia. Because it’s local slang for something I feel is pejorative, I won’t say it here. I’ll let them keep it to themselves because it would seem really mean outside of an emergency setting. Mostly because I don’t want people to shoot the messenger, not that I’m not brave enough. I don’t have to live there, but they do.
That was all bullshit. Of course I won’t hold back on you. If they’re willing to use it in a public setting, I don’t care about their feelings.
MDT stands for “Mountain Dew Teeth.” It absolutely will rot everything in your head if you are completely addicted, and that kind of exposure to sugar can absolutely kill you when you wait until it’s an emergency and septic.
People have had this addiction since Mountain Dew was a home brew. Long, long before it developed into a nationwide phenomenon.
There are also lots of other things that doctors don’t want patients to know, but they have to have a black sense of humor to deal with the pressure. It’s not trying to be mean, it’s learning to breathe. Think line cook.
So, I don’t know what doctors say about me behind my back, but I know lots of things they would say when lives are on the line.
Doctors’ hardest jobs are the cleanup from not having universal health insurance. They are bound by the Hippocratic Oath, yet it’s not an easy job when you are starting with fucked up. The ER is full of complicated cases where people have gone to the Emergency Room at the height of their disease. The part where it gets harder and harder to tell people they’ll recover from this.
Death happens at random, but it’s more likely when the odds are stacked against you. You think something is wrong, and wait to go to the doctor until you’re in renal failure. Other countries don’t have this problem.
Having universal heath care would help a lot of doctors’ mental health…. because there’d be so many less emergencies. It helps when you have time to prepare a plan.
I know all of this through talking to doctors when they’re off work, not by being a patient. So, I’m not as bothered when medical professionals call it “lazy eye” because if I’m at the doctor I’m already thinking in clinical mode, anyway. The emotion is not going to affect me, at least not until it accumulates.
People ask me all the time if I’m looking at them, and I don’t fuckin’ know. Your guess is as good as mine, and I am not in the mood for your bullshit ever. It’s always said with this curiosity tinged with “that’s so weird.” That’s why Zac can get away with making fun of me and no one else can. His jabs don’t feel like he’s punching down when he is also disabled, something I’ve never had in a friend or partner.
Disability is a relative term in the military. I don’t mean to imply that he is also unemployed. He’s classified as disabled, but he’s physically strong enough to work. It”s going to make a good pension for him, and I think he’s going to be really happy no matter what he chooses to do after this. It’s cool to be able to stand next to an adult when I feel like I don’t have it together.
Plus, there’s lots of soda in his basement, which adds to his charm.
Today, I’m going home because even though Zac is of and about, I wanted to wake up with Oliver. I wished Zac could have come with me, but the stars didn’t align for that one. I’ll just have to wait for Jason Moran at The Kennedy Center.
Oh, but here’s the best thing I’ve heard in a million years:
Leslie (texting a link): I know you’re not a huge fan, but I thought you might want to read my impressions of last night.
What is one question you hate to be asked? Explain.
I wrote this last night and hit the wrong button. You’ll get today’s writing prompt later. 😉
This evening I find myself caught between reading and writing, because I just got home from hearing Jonna Mendez talk about her new autobiography, “In True Face.” I think this is my new favorite story in life, thus why I wanted to write it down right away.
As I’ve said before, Jonna and I know each other a little bit, and she was bummed she didn’t get to invite me herself- glad I got the message because “you usually come to these things.” But we didn’t speak beforehand, I just gave her a nod; she smiled as I sat down.
She talked about living in Kansas, growing up in her sister’s shadow. Marrying two case officers and living in their shadows, somewhat. I don’t think she would think of herself as living in Tony’s shadow if he wasn’t known the world over as Ben Affleck on screen. a
It’s one thing to see your life, well, in real life. Quite another to see it reflected back to you in media. I have no idea who Tony really was, but here is what I do know.
In all the time that I’ve known her, she’s never called him “Tony” when we were in the same room. I noticed it right away. The telltale sign that she’s hiding something. There has to be something left for her, that only she gets. She has to talk about him publicly. Tony Mendez is as much as she can handle during speaking engagements. That’s because she’s not talking about her husband. She’s talking about his trademark and his tradecraft.
I can’t imagine how hard that is, but I can empathize with the idea of it. I haven’t lost a partner, but I have lost a mother. Talking about what my mother did professionally is indeed the easy part. I see and understand it deeply because I have been there so many times. It gets easier, and it looked to me that she was doing okay. You’re never the same, but it’s only been since 2019. Therefore, we could both feel his presence in the room…. because I moved to DC after Tony stopped doing public appearances (he got Parkinson’s Disease), but have been one of the Mendez’ biggest fans for years. The writer/reader connection is unbreakable, especially for writers like Jonna, Tony, and me. I write every day about my life and they saved theirs up for publication, but at the end of the day it’s all us spilling our guts and trying to make sense of a lot of shit that will never reconcile.
I wonder what was going on in her head when, during the Q&A, a man asked how she responded to (and I’m paraphrasing, here) all the horrible shit that CIA has done worldwide since 1947…. like MK Ultra (my first thought? “Look here, you little shit…”). She disposed of him as quickly as I’ve been taught by my dad. How to de-escalate? Tell the absolute truth.
She said, “you know, MK Ultra came out of my office and it went horribly, horribly wrong. We didn’t want to get caught with our pants down and we didn’t use anyone who didn’t sign up. But we didn’t know all the things about x, y, and z that we do now (I am only giving the gist, I don’t want to speak for her), and that she felt CIA had already owned up to it.
Then we moved on.
Another guy asked her how long there was between John and Tony or some other dumbfuckery. It was like there was a test with some sort of “gotcha” that wasn’t there. I’m guessing those people were from magazines or something, because if you were there tonight, you were a fan. Amanda (Education and Outreach) told us that we were the fan club, and I believe it. Want to know how I know that? I talked the guy’s ear off in front of me and by the time he got to the checkout he also bought “The Moscow Rules.”
Everywhere I go, Jonna Mendez sells books. I don’t know what it is about me. I have never been able to sell anyone on anything else, but my excitement about watching real spies vs. the hyped up bullshit normally on TV seems to resonate with people. The truth is that people believe CIA is associated with all that Bond hero shit, and that’s fine. I’m not here to take away their fantasy.
But I am here to tell you that through Jonna Mendez telling her own story, I know what it feels like to be eye to eye with Bin Laden… or at least, that high value a target. She wasn’t specific. Probably won’t be, because I don’t think those ops will be completely declassified for a long time.
I wondered what it had been like to carry that burden. What it had been like not to be able to talk about what she’d been through, because I’ve been interested in psychology since university. What does it do to the brain to carry information like that long term?
If we are not doing a very good job at taking care of the military when they come home, I doubt the government is pulling out all the stops for CIA. I am not saying that there aren’t as many resources for case officers as there are for the military. I just don’t know any people in the military that aren’t allowed to tell people they joined. Your husbands and wives absolutely are doing the dangerous shit you think they are if you have even the slightest hint that they’re C/DIA.
What if you had to be next to Putin in disguise so you could take a picture of the document he was about to sign? You have three seconds and it has to be perfect because this won’t ever happen again. Would your hands shake?
Jonna Mendez has never existed at CIA. Ever. I know that while she worked there, her first name was “Faith,” but she did not reveal her middle and last names. But even if she had, it wouldn’t have mattered. I’m sure “Faith” is just one of the many lives she led.
One of her fears was that she would die overseas under her CIA name and no one would ever hear from her again. I would think that someone has found a way to fix this fundamental issue electronically, but I do not know for sure. In the era of printed tickets?
There are many unnamed stars on the wall at Langley, and I wonder how many more there are you can’t count. Again, because I don’t want to worry the mothers or whatever, there’s no way this problem cannot be solved already. I felt it, though, because she talked me through it on the train home as she wrestled it out. How she got to “this is it. I’m going to die alone.” It was not an unreasonable assumption. The terrorist across from her had armed guards. They didn’t make her. The terrorist did. To be clear, he also made three or four others. This was not a mistake in tradecraft on her part. Everyone came prepared for that meeting, except their guys had AKs.
I’ve heard that story from her before, but in the books it is not made as clear as it was to me tonight that who she met was absolutely no joke. It was her reaction. The way she said pure evil. There was a bit of trying to demonstrate how powerful this person was while also trying to keep out a deeper response from surfacing. I know that her purpose is educating the audience, not scaring them so bad they won’t come back. She just described the look in his eyes so perfectly that I knew she was standing in that memory for a nanosecond and stepping out of the pool.
The nanosecond is scarier than anything she could say out loud. No contest. Her real face is the one you’ve wanted to see all along.
What I haven’t said is about my participation in the whole thing. At “The Moscow Rules,” the line for questions was really long. So, I stand up, and not only is there no line, I can’t even find the microphone at first. So, I pretend like this is absolutely nothing at all and not the most embarrassing thing I have done all day and just go stand by the mic and wait. I did not think that this would happen, however.
Someone said, “the first question…” and she finished “is from Leslie.” I get to the mic and she says, “hi Leslie.” I said, “hi, Jonna.” She said, “how ya been?” It was like this unplanned “bit.” So, I thought… a spy wants to bust my identity on YouTube? She’ll do it. I said, “to the extent that you are able, will you play ball with me for YouTube? She looked at me questioningly, yet cautiously optimistic. I said, “I have seen you in another video describing yourself as ‘a real hardass’ at CIA. You talk about things that were done to you (she says she doesn’t want it to seem like a feminist rant)…. but what’s the funniest thing you’ve ever done to your staff? She said, “the only thing I can think of is that I married Tony Mendez. They thought I was insane.” It was the perfect end to a perfect talk for me, and I got exactly what I wanted.
At the book signing, she told me she saw my dad’s stuff, but she didn’t see mine. I told her that I’d gotten a professional author’s page, so you might see her lurking around the Facebook version of Stories, you might not. She asked for it, but when you write it down on a Post-It note, you never know if the person is going to remember or not. The funniest thing about Jonna’s Facebook profile is that it lists her profession as “photographer,” which is, I think, drastically burying the lead.
Oh, and I have never felt a more sick burn. Like, Supergrover sick burn it was so good. I laughed so hard I died for a second, then almost made her spit out her water because she didn’t know I spoke “microaggression.” I told her that some day I’d write something as good as hers, and she said “it’s good you’re still workin’ on that.” I said, “I’m going to laugh about that for three years.” It was to lighten the moment.
I saw her. In true face, I saw her. I said, “congratulations on owning yourself.” I’ll remember that smile forever. When you own yourself, you see others doing the same. Themes repeat themselves in my life and it was the only thing I thought would be in any way eloquent enough for the occasion.
She knew what I meant. Her bottom lip twitched in recognition of what I’d said while the rest of her face didn’t say anything at all.
Except I know she’ll show up at the end. I’m at The International Spy Museum. I made sure to get here an hour early because my dad needed me to buy the books, and I thought there would be a line. Not only was there not a line, the bookstore doesn’t have them. You get them at the event. All I have to say about that is that it is a very good hour I could have spent reading the book. I’m trying hard not to be mad about it, but it’s like getting the new Outlander for me. This is Autism Christmas, okkkkkkkkk………..
Intelligence is my special interest, and has been since 2008. I have said this many times before that the obsession started not with wanting to do intelligence myself (although it would have been nice in my 20s), but with wanting to write a script like “Argo.” The humor about The Agency was funnier than anything I’ve heard in a long time…. except, perhaps, Burn After Reading. It’s tied for my favorite because I didn’t even know I needed to see CIA written as a Coen Brothers movie until I did. The last line of the movie made me fall off my couch, I was laughing so hard. Everything is building to it. EVERYTHING. You don’t see it coming, and J.K. Simmons knocks it out of the park…. as always.
Jonna says that “people will be shocked.” If I had half a brain I would have brought two copies of that “People” magazine (!!!!!!!). I would have needed one for my dad, because now he’s into it. I am sure that he’s got his own magazine, but he’s not three floors from her and I am. 😉
After this my sister and I are going to Zaytinya. She’s getting her hair cut and doing her thing until this is over. Our timing should be perfect. Doors open at 6:30, and our reservations are for 9:00pm. I was going to stop for something on the way home, anyway. Preferably a coffee shop so I could finish the book. But it would have to be one of those 90s coffee shops, like Tryst or Afterwords if they were open 24 hours.
Let’s not kid ourselves. I’d be done by 11:00.
It’s not only because I read fast. It’s that Jonna’s a blogger. Her style is just as easy and clear as mine, painting her feelings as fact as I am. Probably why I sound like a professor all the time, but if you read both of us you’ll see that I read her as fast as I read me, because she writes just like she talks. When you see her in a YouTube video, THAT’S HER. You can take that check to the bank and cash it. When I think of how much Argo, Master of Disguise, Spy Dust, et al have changed my writing style, it’s mind boggling. But not hard to comprehend, because when I wanted to write something like Argo, I went to the source.
If there’s anything I’ve learned in all this time from intelligence operatives, real and otherwise, it’s that you can prevent wars with more information, no matter how many people are involved in the conflict.
How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success?
When Supergrover emoted, she gave me two things. The first is closure. The second is the ability to work toward our goals now that all the cards are on the table. It has been a hard row to hoe when she’s only given me the flop, keeping the turn and the river in front of me, out of my reach. This is because all five cards had been revealed before, and they weren’t cards we could put back in the deck.
It reminds me of Plants vs. Zombies, if you’ve ever played that video game. The second time you go through the levels, Crazy Dave picks out three seed packets that are at random, but they’re locked and you can’t remove them- you have to hope that you win based on what you bring to the game.
We have nine seed packets, and three of them are locked. It’s an even better analogy, because Michaels is holding the flop, the turn, and the river because I fucked up. If there’s anything that made me fail, it was me. For Supergrover to say that this is all her fault is ridiculous. If I hadn’t been an asshole, none of this would have happened.
Full stop.
I have been saying that ad nauseam on my blog, not going after her. The constant feedback that I get from my readers is that I am way too goddamn hard on myself. I have never once heard “you’re too hard on her.”
Not once, ever in my life.
But, if people had said that, I wouldn’t have deflected, either. I would have said that they didn’t know the whole story, and that they couldn’t know what went on behind closed doors, and they never would. So, they have to put a lot of faith in me that I am not being too hard on myself, that I own 50% of the problem. Don’t treat me as innocent here, because I’m not.
Meeting Supergrover changed the course of my life for all the right reasons, and we both feel guilty about rushing into this relationship because it wasn’t a problem we thought through together. If we had, we could have avoided a lot of turmoil later on.
I said, “do you think I write about you just for shits and giggles? No, this is my very real inner monologue.” What I didn’t remind her of yet again is how much it takes to be this vulnerable. That I shake and cry through some of these entries, that it’s hard to get my feelings out and yet absolutely essential.
And then I told her what I was really writing and why I was writing it that way. I hope she’s shocked out of her mind, because I think I won this hand.
I just hope she, like me, doesn’t move the goalposts and say my response should have been happier. Because we’ve both been doing it to each other for a very long time.
When we don’t open up to each other, we are no better than we were before. It’s just going to keep being a toxic mess. When we put up walls, we don’t fulfill our purpose in each other’s lives, why it’s always been just her and me. That sometimes it’s nice to have that “stranger on a train” feeling where you can just dump anything and let the other respond to it.
That feeling is exactly why it’s not incumbent upon her to give of herself and her time. I am not asking for more than she wants to give. I think we’d be great comic foils, and have a ton of fun no matter what our relationship looks like in the future.
For instance, I don’t like the lines in this blog where I flip her shit. I’m not as funny as she is, so basically it’s “I set ’em up, you knock ’em down.” I like the response better than I’ve ever liked anything I’ve said. I have gotten a touche once in the history of our relationship, and I cannot tell you what that line was, but I came in Kings full over Aces.
We set each other up to fail. Badly.
But now I can either start moving away from her comfortably, or moving toward her with peace and grace. No matter how she feels about me, I’ll always be hers.
It’s just up to her to see which way we’ll go, because I don’t know whether she’ll understand why I’m doing what I’m doing or not. But like it or not, the important part is that she heard my thu’um instead of my whisper.
And whispered back that I wasn’t on the wrong track.
She’s just hurt and tired….. with me waiting to kiss her boo-boos exactly the way she kissed all mine 10 years ago. I have Bactine, Band-Aids, lollipops, the whole works.
I wear my CIA baseball cap most days. Zac knows this. First of all, it was a present from him. Second of all, it’s my comfort item in his absence. It’s a great baseball cap, too, but also it reminds me of him. We don’t get together that often, but I think of him all the time and vice versa. I love that he sends me pictures of himself every morning, pictures of Oliver (who is a dog), and random memes (mostly regarding making fun of religion or linux or both). All of those things are important, and yet not a sensory thing like a piece of clothing.
I wrap up in my Outlander plaid at night. Bryn knows this. It’s not branded, it’s just what I call it because Bryn sent me a Scottish plaid when we were both in the middle of inhaling the book series (I like reading, she likes audiobooks). It’s green and meant to remind me I’m loved- it does, and it has for many years because it was in the box of the first things Bryn sent me when I got here.
I like iced coffee better than hot, so I brew the coffee at night and pour it into a cup with ice in the morning. I got the cup when Supergrover sent me a large gift certificate and told me to have some fun on her. That was long ago, and it’s an every day carry.
Supergrover does not know this.
I was thinking about “choosing to air all this” afterward, and all that really made sense to me is that she was okay with step one, but forgot about steps two through ten. As in, if she started being aggressive in step one, then why would I think she would want to know steps two through 10?
It’s a weird dichotomy, because I think she really did want/need to hear the things I said after we parted, but because every conversation between us made me think she wasn’t interested, I picked up my toys and went home. I tried to take up as little room as I possibly could, because if I tried to emote, I was met with either “I’m too busy” or “you’re too needy.”
She thinks that all of this is her fault, that I have said all of this is her fault. Then, she copped to everything I said she did and apologized for it, then reamed me out for telling the world I was unhappy about her doing exactly what she was doing.
wtf kind of bullshit is that? 😉
So, when her response to me was as angry as I’d ever seen her, I met her with joy. When you get the gift that you’ve been asking for for SEVEN YEARS, you don’t complain about the wrapping. She emoted. She broke down and told me what was really going on. That’s what I wanted. If I had responded with more anger, it would have been moving the goalposts and saying her response wasn’t happy enough. She doesn’t need to be happy with me. She needs to tell me the truth.
But I want her to be happy with me. I just don’t want to be the only arbiter of our relationship. I need her to take up space by telling me how she’s feeling and not covering it up, running away from her emotions, making me do a lot of emotional guesswork that makes me set off land mines I never knew were there.
She’s never opened up about the tender places in her that I couldn’t see, that I really wanted to….. for instance, she said that she has had the chance, countless times, to stop what she was doing and respond. She didn’t, and takes responsibility for that. I could have been an asshole and said “how dare she?,” but the take home message was “I think about you all the time.”
If she’s willing to show up like she did the other day, she’s welcome every day. I don’t want to hide anymore. I don’t want to feel like a secret anymore. It doesn’t feel like a secret anymore, because when she gave me a clear picture, I could see for miles.
I told her it felt like she owned herself, and I loved her. None of this is all her fault. There was no preconceived plan, just fools rushing in. I’m just not the only fool, for very different reasons.
So, she may not have known that “her” Starbucks cup is the one I every day carry…….. because it’s just one of the things I would have told her if I thought she’d wanted to hear it.
That’s what this has all been about. When did we both just stop taking up space and trying not to offend each other?
What experiences in life helped you grow the most?
Last night, I was rereading the long letter from Supergrover (having so much to read helps when she’s out of pocket because of course the second time I read something, a different aspect will jump out), and she was talking about one of her kids’ partners. She told me that the kid’s partner had told the kid that the turning point for them in their journey with alcohol was losing her kid. A tear came to my eye and I thought, “alcohol and bipolar present the same. I am this kid.” Apparently the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Her kid is her, and I have no doubt they have the same type affect on people. It wasn’t the point of the letter, but the things that affect me that she’s written are mostly the things that connect to something deep inside me.
I felt more relaxed than I’d felt in years. Supergrover didn’t understand our pattern, didn’t understand why I didn’t accept certain things about our relationship, me surprised at how conscientious and dedicated she really is at being a friend, and how because I didn’t believe her, I missed out on a lot of things. But the reason I didn’t believe her is that she wasn’t showing up. She wasn’t laying her true feelings on the table. When she got so angry she couldn’t see straight, finally she had the strength to say what she’d been hiding for a very long time. That’s what I mean by “breaking her open.” I don’t care that she was angry. Her tone wasn’t the point. Her offering was…. and that offering was “I’m hurt and tired.”
Now, it’s her job to decide whether she wants to ask me about what I’ve written, or if she’d like her pre-conceived notions as to why I’d write what I’d write stand. She thinks that I continually paint her as a villain and the times I paint her as my friend are somehow invalid. It does not make sense to her that I can love her and be angry at the same time, but yes it does. When she got into full swing, she sounded exactly like me, picking up style and structure, painting her feelings as fact (about other people, but same style)….. and I wondered what the difference was in her tone and mine. What is she reacting to that I’m not reacting to in her?
We often hate the things in others that we hate about ourselves. She learned that I’m sometimes just as private as she is because I don’t want to rock the boat, either…. and didn’t like that I chose to talk about it here because she thought I was attacking her. No, I was reflecting on a long and hard road, which looks different if you think it is at an end. In effect, she was offended by the grieving process, because I think I’ve done my fair share of denial, anger, and bargaining- to name a few. I have said a lot of things that weren’t favorable to her when she wasn’t being any more favorable to me. She called my blog a “Get Out of Jail Free” card to be shitty to her, and I didn’t know how to explain that if she really wanted me to let her go, it was going to be ugly inside myself. That I had a million different feelings to process and none of them had to do with the last 15 minutes.
I had to process 10 years, all without ever really having the input I needed. However, I’ve always gotten what I needed when we were tracking together, and I can’t hope for much, but I can hope that we’re at least back at the same starting gate. Or perhaps we’re on different sides of the concourse, but still both seeing the Nats…. and that’s something.
She said she was furious beyond belief at some entries, and moved by others. I would cut off any one of my limbs to know which entries moved her, because I have heard all about the ones that make her furious.
I had to process the time I wanted to be the partner, to when I knew she had a partner, and going from the friend who would have come to the wedding to the person that would have officiated if I’d been asked. But she didn’t give me the strength for that.
By the time Bryn got married, she was done with our church, so she asked me to marry her instead of her pastor. The wedding went off with a hitch. 😉
In fact, the thing that meant the most to me is that the groom, whom I had maybe all of two days with before the wedding, congratulated me on a job well done, and he said, “I had a lot of trepidation when Bryn said that she had this friend who wanted to do the wedding, because I wanted it to be perfect. And it was.” I don’t think he knew my back story- that I had prepared for this moment unintentionally by learning how to do weddings from the age of five. As I have said, the joke is that no one in my group of friends wanted to wait until I was done with grad school to perform a ceremony I had memorized by nine.
Although the wedding was taken directly out of the Book of Common Prayer; we just took all the religious references out because Bryn absolutely believes in the power of the universe, but I don’t know whether she would translate that to “relationship with God,” as many people do.
The thing my dad taught me that stuck with me is to go through the wedding at the rehearsal without saying the vows. Unless it was just the three of us, if they’d said the vows at the wedding rehearsal, they would have been married AT THE REHEARSAL because there were witnesses. This presented as funny only once. I got confused for a second as the vows started because I didn’t look down at my portfolio and said the groom’s name where the bride’s should have been. Bryn corrected me because she caught it and I didn’t- brain fart- and we laughed and moved on.
The thing that my dad also taught me is that brides and grooms get very nervous at their weddings, and you can coach them to the extent that you can with something like that. If someone gets tongue-tied, I say, “if so, your answer is ‘I do.'” I have never met a couple where if they hesitated during their vows, it meant they had cold feet. Most people are anxious at being in front of public.
In terms of the wedding itself, I missed Dana terribly for two reasons. The first is that I cannot imagine how much fun we would have had visiting our old haunts, and I know she would have loved being a preacher’s wife for a day. It was so fucking weird going to Burgerville without her. Yet, I did not call her and tell her to meet me there because I couldn’t. I never want to get back together with her, but I also really miss being her best friend, the part where we never, ever got angry enough to be physically violent. There was not that kind of emotion tension to create that kind of fight.
I know that this is still, in part, true for her as well because of what she said when my mother died. I hadn’t talked to her in months, maybe a year or a year and a half. The first thing I said was “thank you for picking up. I wouldn’t have called unless it was important.” She said that she would never not pick up because she figured that if I was calling her, it must be important. That is a long way of healing from standing me up at the bank, literally. So, even if she didn’t want to be a preacher’s wife in person, she definitely was the strength I chose to lean on that day. It was like she was my phantom limb the whole time, and I never felt alone, because we were every bit as much of a team as our then-pastor, as Dana, Bryn, and I all met at the same church, and we both folded into Bryn’s family…… even though because I had dated Matt, I could tell he was in a pissing match with Dana and she didn’t notice….. whether she was blind or not is debatable, because someone can present a game to you and you can say, “I’m better off pretending this doesn’t exist because it’s not worth my time to care.”
All of this is to say that Dana, Bryn, and I have a very long history, and it’s why I jumped on a plane to Portland and felt sick when I landed. I could feel my anxiety melting the further we went down 99W, because Bryn lives in Newberg, the 100% insurance I wouldn’t run into anyone I didn’t like. I don’t think we went into the city except karaoke night. I did my usual, “I Feel Lucky,” by Mary-Chapin Carpenter. It fits my voice and after I’ve had a beer my accent gets stronger. If that is true of another Southerner I know up here, it wouldn’t be a bad thing to hear that out of her, either. It’s a more rolling lilt than mine, because for some reason which I will certainly look up on YouTube (linguistics lectures are fire), the Southern accent gets softer during the drive from Texas to Mississippi.
And yes, when I spelled Mississippi, I did say in my head “M. I. SSI. SSI. Crooked letter Crooked letter i.” And I’m a music nerd, so my slowed so I could do the rhythm with my fingers as well. I love that language is music whether or not it comes with notes. It’s why I’m a hard core gangster rap fan, as well as lighter stuff like hip-hop. I am learning to write dialogue, just like I’m learning plot and character from Issa Rae on Netflix.
The reason that I want to learn dialogue like this is think about Amy Sherman-Palladino and Aaron Sorkin. They’ve both made their careers by speeding up dialogue to 33o bpm, and because the rhythm is faster, your brain contains it because you have to strain to keep up not to miss anything….. and the rhythm reinforces it.
For instance, who doesn’t remember the way Alan Arkin said, “How’d you cut your hand, Josh?” They may not remember the rhythm, but it will certainly bring up feelings…… because Yo-Yo Ma was also there.
I asked you to roll with me, and got off on a tangent as per my normal.
I have no doubt that said pastor was mad as FUCK, but I hope that she understood it wasn’t about trying to keep them out, but to keep us in. We are not saying fuck you to that world. We are making our peace with it so we can leave it behind. We are processing feelings that go back to 1997…. about our friendship, about who we are and always have been to each other, and how “for all our mutual experiences, our separate conclusions are the same.”
I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that Supergrover would love to meet Bryn, perhaps even more than she wanted to meet me, because Bryn has a story she needs to hear…………. because Bryn has been my friend since 1997, when she was a teenager (and so was I, but I was 19 and Bryn was maybe 14). I am not saying it would ever happen, but I know that Supergrover would roll her eyes at some of what Bryn had to say because it will just seem so very familiar to her, as if Bryn and I are speaking with one voice.
I can’t get them together, because Supergrover and I aren’t there yet. But what I can do is say on my blog that Bryn is coming to visit me in May, do with that information what you will.
One of the sweetest things about Supergrover’s letter was that she said my words felt like “pricks on her skin that grew into big holes she couldn’t close anymore.” What I thought was happening was happening. Instead of asking me why I’d write what I’d write, she saved it all up until she was so mad she couldn’t see straight, and tell me she was busy. I could tell, and I wasn’t angry that she wasn’t responding to me fast enough. She couldn’t see that what I wanted was for her to open up to me and tell me all the times I’d hurt her rather than kicking the can down the road. I’ve said so many heavy, scary things that I cannot count them. It is why I said that I’ve been naked in front of her so many more times than I have with a lover. It is a different voice for me, that my internal monologue was also, in fact, her external monologue. It is a weird feeling to know someone so intimately through reading their work and not giving that person a hug. It begins to feel like a rock concert, and I mean this on a deep and spiritual level.
Yesterday, I told you that she’s my tuba, or vocally the basso profundo in my life. Not the lead trumpet player, the top note. The base of the chord upon which everything is built. Who hasn’t gotten close to the woofers at Third Eye Blind. Who hasn’t felt the way your chest expands and your skin buzzes? That’s how it feels to have another person (especially one like her, the rock part) inside me, because she’s never been separate from me and we’ve never learned to pick up the other’s social cues. Incidentally, as an autistic person, if we did have a day to day relationship she’d be the perfect person to social mask when my sister wasn’t with me. She doesn’t have time for that, I’m just telling you that the way she has her shit together is what I want.
The worst part is that she thinks she doesn’t.
It’s understandable. She lives on no sleep. I’m not sure she’s had myelin on her nerves since the Reagan administration….. and I can’t tell you the line that told me that, but it was funny.
Again, reading her words, her true feelings, relaxes me and I read to the rhythm of Dave Grusin, because I like the theme to “Three Days of the Condor……. among many, many others. St. Elsewhere is probably at the top, followed by Doogie Howser, M.D. The reason I like the theme is that I’ve never seen the end of the movie. It got weird (like the misogyny in old Bond movies). I think this is fair play because the novel is called “Six Days of the Condor,” so it seems they only filmed half of it and gave up. The difference between our relationship now and our relationship at first was that in the first few weeks, the rhythm was “Your Love is My Drug,” because she’d said some very exciting things. New relationship energy ate my lunch. I have no compunction about confronting people on problems before they happen to establish boundaries, and neither does she. I warned her that this could turn into an emotional affair because of two things. Internet chat creates a sense of intimacy that may or may not be there in real life. That you become disconnected from your body, so sexuality and gender become irrelevant. This is what I meant about saying that I hoped she was going to be Cynthia Nixon, and self-deprecating that it’s because I’m not that good a writer. I was not saying that my writing is my way into her heart and therefore I thought I could change her like when we used to quote Ellen Degeneres about “winning a toaster.” I thought that reading me would change her, because women don’t fall in love with other people’s private parts all the time. This is because sexual relationships with women are built on emotional connection, just like they are with straight women. You can break up a marriage faster than you can break up two women who’ve flipped each other shit since high school.
But I can tell you the exact moment her feelings stayed the same and mine went haywire. I was telling her that her story felt like a drug, and she said, “I’m sure I’ll drink your liquor, too.” Not meant to be a pass or a flirt, but so smooth af that my knees knocked. If you’re lesbian or bi, did I make you do the thing…….. Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ. Her gender and sexuality didn’t fly out the window, mine did. It didn’t matter what she looked like, I wanted more and I was in.
If I could describe our relationship in one sentence that would resonate with my generation, it would be that our relationship on the surface seems like it’s “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.” It’s really “Bel-Air.” I feel that way all the time, every day. If you are not familiar with both shows, because “Bel-Air” is so new, let me catch you up.
“The Fresh Prince” is cute, and everyone knows the intro….. which is the scariest event that happens in the whole show (so far) portrayed as comedy. In “Bel-Air,” you find out what happened that day, how he really met Jazz, etc. It’s violent, and even in California you see the real problems in their family. Carlton is an addict because he’s a perfectionist and has anxiety. I identify with him on two levels, because I am both versions of Carlton on the shows, and the actor is from my neighborhood (I don’t know him, he was born after I left).
What I have noticed is that if you want to learn anything from powerful people, you don’t try to be a gladiator trying to impress them. You become the Olivia to their Cyrus, but not when they’re working. When they’re sitting on the couch drinking wine and eating popcorn after having fought gloves off all day. Because the fighting isn’t personal and those moments don’t matter as much as a conversation with a good friend about What Kind of Day Has It Been?
When that involved snuggling in my dreams, I knew I was fuccccccccccked, because I knew my dreams would go deeper than that while I found homeostasis. It was hell on earth, because she wasn’t going through those physical changes and I was. When you know your heart has barked up the wrong tree, you can’t tell your heart just to “snap out of it.”If I could write what really happened between us, you’d read it to the tune of a billion dollars, especially if she was my co-author. It would become a franchise series on Netflix, because our story has never been told before. It is an original idea, one that hasn’t been represented on screen much, if ever. It’s why I hope that those 10 seasons are all here. I don’t want to turn my blog into a Netflix series, I just hope that much story has been told.
That I am at least a good enough writer for that. I want our story to be quiet, yet enormous. There are so many differences between us that make us interesting, yet nothing can tear us apart for a moment of any day.
Let me tell you the day I knew what kind of situation my situation was in. How I fell in love with her the second time. First of all, Ifigured out how that woman who’s loved her friend for 10 years and nothing could tear them apart actually worked, so I was more capable than I was in the beginning. Secondly, it was something she said. She said that once marriage was marriage, it was for life. That it existed great sex, no sex, whatever. That’s how lesbian marriages work every single day. I finally had some words and context I really understood because it was written in my language. Everyone knows that couple that’s been together a hundred years, but they lost interest in each other during about year 12.
So, I know why she was angry I blocked her on Facebook, but I wasn’t. I needed to stop seeing her picture in my feed all day. She blocked me on instagram, and I was so grateful because I can’t see her profile unless I’m logged out. The only time I saw them is when they were referer stats on my blog, because I wasn’t logged in on all web broswers. It gave me some room to breathe, and our entire relationship was based on e-mail, not getting to know each other in person or in a group, which created different outcomes. Our relationship existed in text only between us, and it broke my personality in half. That’s why I couldn’t stay with Dana. I had grown past her and we were on separate paths no matter where in the world Supergrover and I were because Internet. She’s handfasted as my yellow string, and it runs between us. I used to call it a chord, because it worked in both our first languages.
The pleasure of my life was when we returned to them. It’s the life experience that helped me grow the most, by far…….
But what I need you to remember is that though it’s Three Days of the Condor visually, the other three days are in the book.
I just haven’t noticed all the ways not speaking each other’s love language has harmed us, because I could see what she was doing to show me love, but I couldn’t see that she was receiving what I was saying with love. She’s hurt beyond belief at some of the things I’ve written and painted it as fact that I’m out to get her when she doesn’t know the first thing about what I have to say, because I’m not talking about our real issues here. She thinks she’s the villain in the story when I’m saying that we tumble and roll. I am often the villain in this story, and have said as much. She sees how much I try to explain how her choices affect me and chooses to believe I’m being nefarious. I’m being INFJ autistic Doctor Who Malcolm Tucker.
What does deep and abiding joy feel like to you? I want you to feel mine, because yesterday a broken heart was sewn.
I sent Supergrover a message because I literally couldn’t think of anyone else because I was going through a thing she’d also gone through. I needed strength to go through this thing with another friend, and I’m sorry I can’t be specific. It’s just complicated and not my story to tell or own, which is why I’m not writing about it. Just my reaction to it.
For whatever reason, I broke her open like a coconut, and not only did she help me with my problems, she opened up about our relationship and told me what was really going on………….. which broke me open like a coconut.
She was exactly the velvet hammer I needed when I needed her the most. She’s the biggest badass I’ve ever known, and the most pragmatic. And then she gave me the sweet side of her, the one that’s open and vulnerable and has the same little girl reactions that I do. She was running because she was hurt. I couldn’t help her because I didn’t know she was hurt.
Because I never knew how much I meant to her. I only knew how much she meant to me. Our relationship will hopefully be strong and comfortable in 20 years, just as she said hopefully we’d be 10 years ago.
I am falling over with laughter…….
We’re halfway therrrrrrrrreeeee. WWWWWoooooooaaaah! Livin’ on a prayer………..
Even though she was fucking furious, she was honest to a fault, and as I told her, all I’ve ever really wanted from anyone- the truth, why and how.
She said that she predicted that my response would be angry, and my response was “this is the healthiest e-mail I’ve gotten from you in 10 years. You couldn’t make my day any better, because this morning was a shitshow and now I’m grinning like an idiot.” The reason I was so goddamn happy is that she opened up to me. She told me her side of the story, and hopefully she’ll realize she’s been as wrong as I have and we’ll move on from it.
I was so overwhelmed I shut down completely, because it’s not every day that you get everything you want handed to you on a silver platter….. and I’m bad at transitions. The reason I was in shutdown mode is that it was too much joy to take in all at once, and this is the first time in 10 years that I’ve felt this safe and secure with her. I hope that I can assure her of my feeling of safety and security so that she receives it as well.
Because we both knew it was our fate. Months ago, she said “no matter what happens, we’ll always have a past, present, and future.” We got to a place where it wasn’t good for either of us, but yesterday instead of attacking she joined me in cleaning up our toxic mess. It was glorious. Her letter made me cry so hard I couldn’t move, because I was so moved. It was the longest, most beautiful, most insightful thing she’s written in a very long time.
Even in her anger at me, the way she phrased it was so well-crafted that it made me feel like I can’t keep up with her. Sometimes I stare at her in wonder (her e-mail or her pic, occasionally), thinking “Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ. Is there anything in the world I’m better at than you?” I know it’s true, and that’s what makes me crave her e-mails. Talking to her feels exactly like I felt the first day of 8th grade band…….. which I got into in 7th grade. When you meet better musicians than you, you tend to stick with them because they up your game.
Supergrover is the brain that ups my game instead of the low brass under me……. and yet, she’s my tuba, and I don’t mean that as a joke. Vocally, she’s the basso profundo of my life. Not the top of the chord, the note on which everything else is built.
I hope she at least knows that, both because of the love and work we share. Being able to say “we share” is the most amazing phrase I’ve ever been able to write on this blog. It’s a more important occasion in my life than the time Margaret Cho and Martina Navratilova retweeted me (they liked the marriage article, btw). Supergrover doesn’t say “I love you” in words. She does it by despite everything, still showing up. It may even be begrudgingly at times, but she’s fucking THERE.
She heard the distress in my voice, and she came right to me, just like I knew she would. What I did not expect is for her to explain her radio silence, essentially writing me a blog entry back.
It’s not that hard to imagine why I’d want to marry that, is it? Someone that opened up to me the way I open up here? Getting all the feelings back into our relationship is what turned the tide, because I told her that “my way is to work through things, and your way is to avoid or lightly move past things. The reason we’re joined at the spine is because our trauma is similar, but we have different reactions to it. We’ll deal with it the rest of our lives, and I’ll do it happily because I accepted her warts and all 15 minutes into our relationship. Or it seemed that way, anyway. That she could have however much of me she wanted, because I trusted her more than I’ve ever trusted anyone. She called me on some bullshit lies I was telling myself back in the day, that I was blaming myself for something that wasn’t my fault and I needed to stop seeing it that way.
It was all transference. I fell in love with my therapist because I’m queer and Will Hunting isn’t. The reason I trust her with my very life is that I’ve never had Robin Williams as a doctor.
Describe a phase in life that was difficult to say goodbye to.
First of all, :::checks notes::: WordPress, it’s “describe a phase in life in which it was difficult to say goodbye.” Just like it’s not “where’s the library at?” It’s “where’s the library at, asshole?” Never end a sentence with a preposition.
I do it a little bit.
Humor before I start diving deep this morning, because there have been many, many times in which it was Boyz II Men hard to say goodbye.
The first time it was a really hard transition was moving from Galveston to Naples the summer after first grade. I loved the beach (my sister did not- she used to run away from the waves saying “don’t. Don’t! Don’t!). I mean, she got over it…… she did get married in Galveston. The cultural difference between living on the island and living in small town Texas wasn’t hard because I didn’t like it. It was just a transition. I was especially close to my friends Asbury and Beulah Lennox, who kind of took over being my grandparents when my own grandparents were so far away. The bonus was moving about 12-15 miles from my biological grandparents, a complete change as well.
I do not do well with change, and I’m glad we moved in the summer so I could ease into it. Incidentally, since The War Daniel was not a member of our church, I didn’t meet him until September. I can’t remember when it was second or third grade when we made it official. 😉 I will say that it wasn’t until I met The War Daniel that I felt truly comfortable, the INFJ/INTJ people we have always been. We were the book nerds, the music nerds, and the ones who didn’t give a fuck if people thought we were weird. We both have this historical Jesus personality, we just come at it from different directions. He’s a thinker. I’m a feeler.
Editor’s Note:
Two things. The first is that “The War Daniel” is a play on words, because of John Hurt in Doctor Who- “The War Doctor.” Daniel was a Doc in the Navy, embedded with a team of Marines.
The second is that if I say that I or anyone else has a “Jesus” personality, or that “it’s as hard to be me as it was to be Jesus,” I’m talking about his day to day life, not that I or anyone else has a Savior complex. Jesus cannot be much different than any current pastor (especially those in clerical collars willing to be arrested at protests), because he was a rabbi, though they didn’t have that term back then.
Incidentally, there is also no evidence one way or the other that Jesus wasn’t married, and it’s been a debate for centuries; think Catholic vs. Protestant- Catholic priests are told they have to bear the burden of ministry alone, because they can’t love everyone if they love only one person that deeply…. takes away objectivity or something. The Protestants, like The Avatar, discovered that pastors could not do it without a support system. His partner could have been anyone from John, the Disciple marked as “whom Jesus loved,” and I have not looked at the original Greek or Hebrew to see if there’s more context, like philia or agape. But right now, I’m willing to say that there is no evidence Jesus was gay one way or the other, either, because there is also a debate on Mary Magdalene.
Supergrover actually sent me several novels about this, and it’s basically that Jesus and Mary were married and were writing their own Gospel, the Book of Love. It does make sense. After Jesus died, the story is that Joseph of Arimathia (rich merchant) helped Mary and the children escape to France. It is, of course, fiction….. but based on the little evidence we do know. It’s just been too long, there’s too many questions that will always be unanswered. So, Jesus is who you need him to be, not the other way around…… as long as you realize that Jesus did not come here only to comfort the distressed. He came here to also distress you out of your comfort. No power over. Power with. It’s why he was peaceful about it, but probably hated the Sanhedrin because they were the most vociferous Jews regarding law and very little around compassion, which has no bearing on the church today.………….
I think what The War Daniel misread as anger was actually fear. We should have video called more before he went to rehab, but we’re *both* writers, and lapsed into that personality way too easily…. which took away too much of our compassion. I also know that being in a relationship your first year out of rehab is absolutely not advisable, so when we got engaged, I kept dating Zac because it really didn’t bother him. Because Zac is poly, Daniel knew he was no threat. That if Zac and I are building a life together, it consists of exactly what is happening now. I have so much love for him because he’s a solid dude as a friend and as a boyfriend. How our relationship is supposed to go is unknown. I just know that we probably won’t get closer than we are now. Neither of us has the time.
It wasn’t that we were rushing into anything, we were just each other’s end game. Daniel didn’t offer to marry me because of anything but I needed it for the health care and benefits as a military dependent. And it was his idea not because I wanted it, but because he saw I needed it.
So, the hardest transitions I have to talk about today are the summer before I met Daniel, and the months after he left.
The reason I chose to write about this instead of the transition after my mother died is that I just can’t go there today. So, I will tell you what I was feeling in the moment, instead. It is so raw and real that if you are also in grief, it might help you as well.
The ones who have helped me through all these transitions just being kind enough to sit with me and listen.
My first thought was “Jesus *Christ*…” but not in a good way. I have no idea who I’d like to be, because I see pros and cons to everything.
I’m not even sure I’m that good at being myself….. but I’m laughing about it. The thing is, though, I could totally be Jesus. It’s like, the only thing I know how to do. I tell stories, people listen to me, and I can flat *assure* you that “nothing good comes out of Nazareth.” No stranger has ever come after me over my writing, because it’s *mine*. Why would they have an interest if they didn’t know me personally?
Here’s why it’s not any easier to be me than it was to be Jesus. The only difference is that I had a blog and he literally sat around and told stories and people wrote them down years later…. taking away all the facts, but none of the truth. Some of the things I write about are long in the past. Some of it is what’s painful “write this moment.”
Here’s why I talk about my blog the same way- facts are missing, but the types of truth I’m laying down *are only from my perspective.* In order for my blog to be factual, I would have to know what someone else was thinking. I am only telling you what I took away from my interactions with my friends and/or family. What you took away from my writing is none of my business.
I feel like that’s Christ on a cracker right there. He was absolutelyfuckingnot trying to impress anyone. In fact, he actually made quite a few people angry, wouldn’t you agree?
And yet, some ideas are worth dying for, because I don’t think that the story would have been remembered if he’d lived out all his days…. although he would have had the chance to fact check the Gospels a little more closely…. or at least, I would like to believe that Jesus would have been a different person at 60 or 70 than he was at 33.
I know his personality like the back of my hand because I’m an INFJ and he and Martin Luther King, Jr. are INFJ as well.
INFJs are guided by a deeply considered set of personal values. They are intensely idealistic, and can clearly imagine a happier and more perfect future. They can become discouraged by the harsh realities of the present, but they are typically motivated and persistent in taking positive action nonetheless. The INFJ feels an intrinsic drive to do what they can to make the world a better place.
INFJs want a meaningful life and deep connections with other people. They do not tend to share themselves freely but appreciate emotional intimacy with a select, committed few. Although their rich inner life can sometimes make them seem mysterious or private to others, they profoundly value authentic connections with people they trust.
As quintessential idealists, INFJs have many ideas about how to improve society and make the world a better place. INFJs believe a better world can only be attained if we concentrate on doing what is right, regardless of short-term consequences. However, harmonious relationships are also extremely important to the INFJ. They are skilled mediators who look for the root sources of conflict to find common ground with others. Because of this, they tend to prefer a diplomatic communication style and are careful to not unnecessarily ruffle feathers.
INFJs have a profound respect for human potential and a deep interest in understanding the mind. Because of this, they are motivated to pursue authentic self-development and strive to live up to their true potential, while encouraging and guiding others to do the same. According to idealistic INFJs, if we believe in our ability to accomplish the extraordinary, the extraordinary will instantly become a possibility — “dream it and you can achieve it,” as the saying goes. However, because of their integrity and empathy for others, it is uncommon for INFJs to cut corners or hurt others to achieve their desired future state.
Because of my processing disorders and mental illness, I have hurt people. But I’m also human. The old saying goes that “hurt people hurt people,” and I’m trying to clean myself up. But the way I do it is to lay out everything I’m thinking so that my ups and downs might be a survival manual for someone else. I am relentlessly driven to leading from the back, that people have shown me they won’t be vulnerable with me if I’m not vulnerable with them, first.
And, of course there were 14 disciples (I include Mary Magdalene and Mary of Bethany). But were all 14 of them best friends all the time? Have you met any group of 14 people that gets along all the time? I can just picture it now…. Jesus, could you stop being intense for like four minutes? Just four minutes, bro. We all need a beer after that one (and that one could be anything, like Jack Palance’s finger).
I don’t do shallow.
So, if people are, I back away slowly. Because to me, shallow means that you are not looking for a deeper, more meaningful connection with me. Our connection depends on communication and honesty, and if either of us doesn’t get it, how long are we going to stay in the time loop? I can count one that lasted 23 years, one that lasted 10. I didn’t have an exit strategy for either, just one day I was exhausted and I couldn’t take up any less room than I was already taking, because what tends to happen is that people think I’m a wonderful writer until we’re close enough that they say they don’t care what I say here….. I’m entitled to my stories.
In somewhere between six months to two years, they learn that somehow I can write beautifully about everyone except them. They’ve been caught up in the bubble of my personality, and then I do something stupid and I fall from a pedestal every single time, whether it’s singing or writing. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it recently, but I’m a classically trained solo-quality voice, and I have learned never to believe my own press. In both cases, I’m in a bubble of my own, and people are not so awed when they see the man behind the curtain.
I’m going to guess Jesus was like that. Most ministers are. In show mode in front of a crowd, solitary the rest of the week except for meetings. The people he led didn’t really know him, they knew his message….. and somehow, it’s been twisted to make him look like some kind of professional Christian superhero, when to me the historical Jesus is so much more interesting.
The link is to a book by Marcus Borg, one of the preeminent scholars on the historical Jesus, joined by Dominic Crossan.
It’s called “Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time: The Historical Jesus and the Heart of Contemporary Faith,” and it’s a book that’s been on my Kindle since I first met Marcus and Dom, and I’m allowed to call them that because Marcus’s wife was one of the rectors at Trinity Cathedral in Portland, Oregon…. so even though he’s not Episcopalian (he’s Lutheran), I’ve heard him preach a lot. Bill, the dean of the Cathedral (blanking on a last name, sorry), used to joke that whenever you had a theological problem, you should always go drink beer with a Lutheran.
I would have gone for a beer with Marcus, but I really want to go for a beer with Nadia Bolz-Weber.
I’d like to be her, but in so many ways, I already am.
Describe the most ambitious DIY project you’ve ever taken on.
Several times in my life I’ve helped friends and family members flip a house. I got to do the second one because apparently I did okay on the first.
Here’s the most important thing I learned the whole time.
….and my words are paper tigers, no match for the predator of pain inside her….
Love Will Come to You, The Indigo Girls
Before I flipped a house, I had no idea what a paper tiger was. They are of the devil, and I got the allusion immediately. A paper tiger is a device you put on top of wallpaper to rip it to shreds so you can scrape it off. It leaves everything in ribbons. Except there’s still the glue to deal with, so everything is ripped to shreds, yet still stuck to the wall. The paper tiger quickly becomes ineffective because you think you’re making progress and you’re actually filling the teeth with glue.
So, you can fight with the wallpaper all day long and make no progress whatsoever.
I can think of so many people that the Indigo Girls represent with this line, because there are so many people married to their glue, unwilling to open up- even when another person needs to hear what they have to say.
I also learned how to tackle raspberry brambles, also of the devil and paper tigers without glue. More than one has ripped me to shreds.
But wait- that wasn’t the first time I’d built a house, and I’d forgotten about it.
In the United Methodist Church, there’s a group called UMCOR (United Methodist Committee on Relief). They give lots of money for youth groups to go on mission trips, which mostly consisted of going out into poor towns and building houses or building accommodations for houses, like wheelchair ramps.
So, I also know how to lay shingles, put the flashing on a roof, and watch my dad absolutely freak out at seeing me doing it. Nobody likes to watch their baby putting flashing on the edge of a roof, because he knew I had balance issues. I didn’t. It was fine, but I can see his concern this many years later when I couldn’t in the moment.
I have also helped build the aforementioned wheelchair ramps. I let other people do the measuring and cutting, because I really wasn’t the best person to ask. My cuts would have come out diagonal just like with food…. or maybe not, because there are better tools to keep boards in place than there are for food….
I’m better at finish carpentry, like sanding, painting, shellac, etc. I also love to paint sheetrock with Killz and new colors. I generally do several coats of Killz on new sheetrock as well, just because I’m a perfectionist.
I am really great at helping do things. I am not so great at doing things on my own. I think it’s because I have enough limitations that I need an extra set of eyes. For instance, it would be fun to work on Zac’s car or motorcycle, but I wouldn’t unless he asked me to help, which in my mind means “stand there and hold stuff.” This is a more important job to mechanics than you might think, especially lights. Holding lights is like hazing in the operating room. Stand there, holding this in a very awkward way, for at least half an hour. At least if I drop the light a few inches, no one dies.
DIY is soothing to me, but as Zac says, “I *could* work on my car, but I make enough money to get someone else to do that.” So, I doubt that we’ll ever go out in the front yard for “guy stuff.” Mostly because I’ve never ridden a donorcycle, because my dad and stepmom wouldn’t be nearly as angry if I got hurt as having to deal with Dr. Anthony, because if I lived from the accident, she would beat my ass with a hairbrush. Tiffany is a liver and kidney transplant specialist. She knows from donorcycles.
If you believe nothing else I say, believe that. Transplant surgeons get *a lot* of their organs to transplant from motorcycle riders, thus the name….. which is universal across all hospitals in the US, don’t know about worldwide.
So, while it doesn’t bother me that Zac has a motorcycle, or that Lindsay and Matt have both ridden them as well, I’m not sure that I would ever be tempted because all I see is Dr. Anthony’s “mad face.” Besides, I have a solid reason for keeping my organs *intact,* mostly living.
I have a feeling I would not be very good at holding lights for her, but that’s okay because she’d never ask me. I would argue that I’m “smarter than a gas man,” but that has more to do with the way anesthesiologists get made fun of in the hospital, not that I am actually as smart as a person who can get into medical school (and by that, I mean smart in STEM. I’m plenty smart in other ways.).
I find that I am as smart in medicine as I am in computers. I do not program, and I do not weld things to the motherboard when a capacitor is out or anything like that, but I know my way around most software and what to do when it breaks. I can run commands in a terminal with my eyes closed, literally because I made myself try it.
Here’s the funniest command. To list what’s in the working directory, the command is ls. If you install sl, when you make that typo, an ASCII choo choo will roll across the screen.
I think linux is why I don’t use DOS anymore. The commands are so different that I type a linux command first, every time, and then have to think about what it is in DOS.
For instance, listing a directory in DOS is “dir,” and there is no ASCII choo choo if you make a mistake, a flaw in its character.
But it’s worse than that. I have been WAY further into linux commands than necessary before I realized I was in PowerShell (DOS terminal):
sudo apt update && sudo apt dist-upgrade -y
In linux, that stands for “update my software catalog, install the updates, and don’t ask me whether I want to install the packages after I’ve downloaded them. Just do it.
In DOS, this means *absolutely nothing.*
Windows does not make for good DIY, because they want to control every part of the user experience the way Apple does. Windows is not really for business anymore, because even Windows Pro comes with a thousand “lane bumpers” to stop you from doing what you want to do. You have to turn on developer mode to be able to install any piece of software you want, otherwise it will ask “are you sure?” every single time. This is especially prevalent with software from GitHub, and I think that’s because Windows does not like open source.
It’s easier to turn on developer mode than it is to go through and change all the settings, like “show hidden folders” and “show file extensions.” It’s a lot of DIY just to set up a Windows box, and linux is so much easier. Plus, no one has ever tried to sell me anything unless I’ve downloaded a program that’s not open source. If I do that, the developers should be paid.
For some reason, my computer won’t dual boot, and it makes me sad….. but it’s better now that you can install a linux virtual machine inside Windows so that I still have access to linux command line programs. I usually keep btop running in the background because in linux I use a program called conky to list my processes, memory usage, CPU and GPU usage, etc. btop will do all of it, and is light on CPU usage. If you’ve used htop before, it’s the same, just a better user interface.
But here’s the worst trick the devil ever pulled. In Windows, you can divide the terminal into as many blocks as you want, but if you don’t change the settings yourself, when it divides it brings up PowerShell instead of another linux terminal. Just more Windows trying to push itself on you. I do not know anyone who uses DOS command line anymore, except for system administrators, and they’re more likely to have Macs these days, because the government gets a good deal on them and they come complete with unix out of the box. There are linux laptops and desktops out there, but none that have the reach of Apple to be able to get those government and education deals.
So, where their need begins, so does my DIY. I can fix one computer or 50 at once.
If you could permanently ban a word from general usage, which one would it be? Why?
I did not mean to miss yet another day of writing, but what had happened was…. No, seriously. I put a draft on one of my computers. I could not find it again, because WordPress *supposedly* uploads drafts to the server. But it didn’t, so everything I was working on yesterday is gone. If I find it, you’ll get that entry, too. I feel bad, but not too bad after 140 days of posting in a row before Bloguary even started. I’m hard on myself because blogging is the training it takes for me to be able to write novels. I’ve said this before, but until I know my own voice, I do not know when my characters are speaking. Even in blogging, I know that Zac, Supergrover, Bryn, Lindsay, et al have their own voices, because they are definitely not me, either. Although Bryn and I have spent the most time together in person and Supergrover and I have spent the most time writing to each other. Zac could be the person I spend the most time with in the future, but Bryn has like a hundred years on him, so good luck, my beautiful boy. 🙂
In my novel(s), I have characters that range from a middle school girl to a professional chef to several spies, politicians, diplomats, etc. and they all have to have unique voices, too. I have a feeling that I am writing Rebecca and Carol the best so far, but that’s because they’ve been with me for 10 years, and I’ve had time to gather information on them for that amount of time.
Therefore, there aren’t many words I wish I could take out of their vocabulary as well as mine, because I do it all the time. I use “like” as a filler word (mostly in conversation to stall for time). I think that most of my conversations in person start to sound like a valley girl because I am literally trying not to stutter. That’s because I can think as fast as I can type, but much faster than I can speak. Therefore, words that come out eloquently in a blog entry/letter would come out as a garbled mess in person unless I’m speaking more slowly, which I now take the time to do. I spend so much time alone typing that I tend to forget that when I’m not typing, those several streams of thought upon which I’m gathering are still going, and they become confused while trying to converse.
And, of course, most of my friends would disagree with this statement because they only see my output, not what’s going on in my head. I social mask very well, and have for a long time. That doesn’t make living in my head easier, just easier for other people to relate to me.
Like, for real.
Yesterday’s prompt was about things that I’m going to have to overcome in the next few months, and I solved my problem yesterday with ease. The first time I went to The Spy Museum’s web site, Jonna’s event was not listed. The second time, they were sold out. So, I e-mailed and instant messaged the museum and told them that they were sold out and Jonna had invited me so now I was panicking. Amanda, the head of education and outreach (who I also know from many events) got back to me yesterday and said she’d put me on the guest list and it was nice of me to offer to stand if they only had standing room tickets left (they’re free, you just have to register). She put me on the guest list, and if she’s free, Lindsay is going to be my plus one.
It’s been since “The Moscow Rules” book talk since I’ve seen her in person, so I know it’ll be special because not only is she one of my favorite writers (tied with her late husband, Tony, and their research assistant, Matt Baglio…. although I did ask if Jonna needed another one and she said that she knew I’d do a bang-up job, but she didn’t have room for anyone else on her team.
So, even though I’m not her research assistant, she’s seen enough of my writing that I got the compliment of a lifetime. It’s probably good I’m not one of her research assistants, because if I was on it and the book tanked, I would certainly think it was my fault entirely. I’m better at promoting her…… like, a spy called *me* perceptive. I think that’s my favorite part, because who would know “perceptive” better than a spy?
Some woman was looking for a book written by a woman about intelligence because her dad said that he wouldn’t read a book written by a woman in intelligence. My reply on reddit got 488 upvotes as of today. Here’s what I said, without a “like” in sight:
And on that note, it’s time for me to go look for yesterday’s entry.
My life didn’t get interesting until I was 30, and just got more interesting from there. I wouldn’t want to give my teenage self any advice that would alter the events that led me to DC, to Zac, and to Oliver, who is a dog.
That’s because in order to get here, I had to go through some really rough stuff- and yet none of it is anything I would give away or trade. I found my place, even at 23, but I had to go and come back. I don’t know why. I really liked it here. I just didn’t think I could make it on my own. I do not have that capability, to take on the 1,001 things it takes to move in 30 days and also find a roommate. To be fair, though, I didn’t know about Craig’s List back then. Perhaps if I had, I wouldn’t have met the people I needed to meet, and that’s the one thing I wouldn’t want to change for the kid inside me.
So, in order not to change anything:
I’m sorry mom doesn’t understand. Don’t spend your life worrying about it because there’s nothing you can do to make her change. There will be small steps, but no giant leaps. Stay as close to her as you can, but admit to yourself when spending time with her makes you feel unloved.
Lindsay is going to be big one day. I just won’t tell you how. You could learn a thing or two from her if you’d let yourself.
You’re ADHD, Autistic, and Bipolar. That’s something I will tell you right now, because when you get older it’s going to be harder to get tested for autism, and you need to get on meds stat. You’re struggling in school and you don’t know why. Your doctors might not, either, because there’s not a lot of research in the year you live on women and autism. But give yourself at least that head start on life. I know hearing those things is intimidating. Go to a psychiatrist, anyway.
You need to practice gratitude and mindfulness because when I was your age I took some kind of Scantron quiz that inventoried my personality. My psychiatrist said that I had the lowest self-esteem of anyone who’d ever taken the test. Write every day. Go back and look to see if what you wrote is still true. Give yourself a chance to see yourself as you are, not how you feel in the moment.
In every relationship, you need to ask yourself what the other person is bringing to the table, and when you feel ignored or sad or hurt or whatever your emotions might be, listen to how people respond. If it feels like they can’t hear you, they probably can’t…… and there’s a lot of don’t want to in “can’t.” Find people who can hear you.
There is no such thing as a 50/50 relationship. It will often look like 60/40 or even 70/30 because of confirmation bias. But notice when you feel like you can’t get a break, can’t do anything right. You’re not stupid. I won’t tell you what they are, either, but stupid isn’t on the list.
Because of the autism, you’re going to meltdown a lot. Find appropriate outlets for your rage. There are going to be many inappropriate outlets, and I will tell you that you find most of them. But not all. Because you have all of these disorders, you are going to have to learn to be more patient, thinking longer before you speak, because there are so many words that can’t be taken back which you realize just after you’ve already said them. Even when you’re on fire, you can’t take that out on someone else. And yes, I know that your nerves are on fire, that you go into a red mist rage with every physical symptom imaginable. It’s going to hurt you if you don’t take care of it.
The nerve endings on your thumb that you sliced into while trying to cut a lime will never grow back. I’m 46, so I will update you if the situation changes (not a chance, we’re stuck).
You will love soda your whole life because that’s one of the things you and mom will talk about on the phone. There’s not a lot you can do to keep her talking if you talk about your own life, but she’ll tell you all about her job, her friends, her husband, etc. It’s annoying that she never has any questions for you about your life, because she really doesn’t want to know. Do it, anyway. Find things you can talk about. Find a lot of them.
Mothers don’t generally last as long as you want them to; Lindsay and I will never be the same. I figured it might give you some perspective to know how few years you have left with her. Find different ways to bridge the gap. But don’t miss a chance to leave Houston, ever. You’ll get along better with her when you don’t live in the same city and a visit is special.
You’ll want a passport very soon. Might want to start on that. She’s cute.
Stories That Are All True 