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Writing a Letter, Part II

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Dear Mel,

I thought you might enjoy a food post since you’re in “learning a new kitchen” hell right now. I hope you’ll think of me when it’s time for your shiftie. If you don’t get this, I completely understand. See you in three years.

Love,

Leslie

When I think of food, I think of Mel, because she has jumped on the bandwagon of telling me to write more about it.

Because I am not up on current trends, I pick her brain looking for inspiration. I ask her food questions, she sends me pictures of Bletchley Park. It’s an even exchange. This is because asking her questions about food gives her energy. Getting the pictures is just a bonus. I don’t remember what food we were talking about at last interaction, I just think of her in general, the chef who can tell me about food culture in England and yet we’re tracking together like white on rice due to Escoffier’s meticulous detail.

If you have worked in a professional kitchen, you are beholden to him. The entire system was made by him. That’s why Julia Child was a tough motherfucker, and my language skills aren’t good enough to tell you how much of an understatement it is when you go through a program like that while female now. She was the first.

Working for OSS in Technical Services carrying around highly classified information is way less dangerous, but she did that, too. The reality is that there’s probably more sexual harassment and rape in kitchens/culinary schools than there is at OSS. I could be wrong. Those things are everywhere. Men do not like competition, and when their words fail, their fists come out- with other men. There’s a special hell for smart women, because few men truly recognize female brilliance when they see it. They’re programmed to be annoyed.

This is not any less true in the kitchen. It’s harder for women to speak up in all fields, but the kitchen is its own kind of hell because when you’re working that closely, you can’t help but touch each other. Assault happens every day of your life if some guy decides you deserve it, and some guy will. It hasn’t happened to me in every job consistently, but it has happened to me in every job. Every male line cook who has ever stood next to me saw me as his assistant. Every goddamn one.

We were paid the same, we had the same rights and responsibilities, and every day Daddy Knows Best. Nothing changes, whether they’re shit or fantastic. Male line cooks won’t ask women for advice unless they’re so young we have a matronly vibe to us- because they know they’re both screwed and scared and they can’t talk to anyone else. Men will not ask women anything until they’re afraid they’re going to lose their jobs and they have no choice but to be vulnerable. To be vulnerable to another male line cook is deadly for all kinds of personal and professional reasons….. one of them being that they’ll start treating the vulnerable kid like they treat women. Sexual harassment is real for men at work, because the amount of towel snapping and ass grabbing is highly regulated….. amongst each other.

Food isn’t worth it if you’re female. It’s just not. Those misogynistic French bastards took the thing women had been doing for millions of years unsung and decided it was valid when they learned. Just one of the many things women regret teaching men because thinking that women are the way they are (intellectually more stumped yet emotionally intelligent to the prehistoric) has so often come from theft. I can’t even imagine the numbers on an intellectual property lawsuit covering all women everywhere.

I am not saying women should quit (go on strike, really). I am saying that if you are female, you pursue this job because you can’t fucking do anything else. This is your passion, your drive, your coffee, your cocaine….. when you are high as hell on adrenaline after a rush, it becomes as primal a thrill as can be had legally. You dream pars and food cost. You have no idea what to do with yourself before 5:00PM. Days off are a story they tell little kids. Your family is a distant memory.

You didn’t come here to win. You came here to own the whole fucking thing.

And that’s what I’m thinking about when I think about Mel taking on a new kitchen. She can handle herself just fine. But I hope she has a me on the line, because there comes a time in every young man’s life where he will not accept female authority and needs to be disabused of the notion. This is probably best done by a chef barking down. But when they don’t, there’s safety in numbers and laughter in revenge.

I hope it’s going well for her. At least well enough to get a “heard.”

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier (Spy)

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

List three jobs you’d consider pursuing if money didn’t matter.

There’s four. I’m giving you a bonus.

Or it would have been a bonus answer if it wasn’t a joke. I couldn’t think of three jobs at first so I just went with a movie title. I would be good at none of these things except spy, and even then I would be good at the people part, not the paying attention part. Prevailing wisdom says that’s a bad idea. You can’t have a disorganized priority list when people’s lives are counting on it. I am the god of chaos wherever I go.

Editor’s Note: At this point I got lost in a tangent when my mind flipped to “chaotic god.” Just roll with it. I’ll circle back eventually.

Supergrover is neurotypical, which makes me fall over with laughter that our bff name has always been “The Holy and The Moly.” The funniest part is that I didn’t come up with it. Dana knows us. We’ve met. Whether I am chaotic good, neutral, or bad depends on perspective. I will accept either. I would imagine Dana thinks of me as both depending on the hour. Supergrover would look at me with amusement and say, “hard same.” I wouldn’t notice anything except the playful nature of her eyes. I think of her as Aziraphale in the bathtub at the end of Good Omens Season one. I think of me as Crowley in the other bathtub. Those of you who know what I’m talking about will see what I mean immediately………………

Aziraphale and Crowley could have been the couple that best represented us right up until they kissed. At the time, I was hurt. Friendship is underrepresented and I felt a relationship where they were deep, open, and vulnerable without romance was something vastly underrepresented on TV. I wasn’t disappointed, necessarily. Just that what was a good analogy became a bad one for me, but that has nothing to do with Neil Gaiman’s talent as a writer.

I get enough of that type friendship on Doctor Who to last me a lifetime. You just have no idea how much I am Martha Jones, or would want to be. Remember how Martha went through shit with The Doctor and it made her attracted to him? Remember when she got over it and saved his ass on multiple occasions because she realized that there was something bigger than her at work? Hard same, said with the same amusement in my eyes. I liken it to Jodie Whitaker being cast during Martha’s storyline instead of David Tennant. (Random aside… who says “Martha” better than Matthew Rhys on “The Americans?”)

Back to me.

I probably could win at being the CIA trainee to recruit an asset first at The Farm (they put on scenarios like cocktail parties). If you were going to bet on me, bet on me for that. I am smooth enough that the plant would just tell me. I can get one of the best spies in the world to tell me what she knows with a wink and a smile. I had Jonna Mendez dead to rights, where she couldn’t say anything and absolutely did. If you’re wondering, it was whether she worked on a Cold War movie. Her redirect was “maybe we should hire you.” What I should have said was, “dear God, you can’t imagine what a bad idea that is.” What I actually sad was………… nothing.

After that, I developed an affinity for satchels.

Now that we’ve fully explored my dream life, because I couldn’t get away from the bipolar thing even if money were no object, let’s talk about real stuff.

If money were no object, I would do two things. I would become a TA and get a master’s in whatever I felt like, in perpetuity. Read law at Oxford if I wanted, what the hell? When I wasn’t working on school, I’d be writing. It would just be a lot harder to make time for it. I think I’d be a great TA in divinity, history, psychology, political science, sociology, and education, particularly music education. I couldn’t be a choir director now, but I could learn. I have also worked with kids long enough not to get rattled, which is harder than learning to conduct.

Although, the thing that grates on my ear most is sopranos who are out of tune, even me, and at that age, all kids have high voices. I would learn to be good at my job for the sake of saving my hearing. If I was a band director, beginning oboe will clear your sinuses.

I would be a wonderful musician if I wanted that life. I know that I’m good enough for an opera chorus, and could be trained for mainstage roles because I was offered one when I worked at Marylhurst and I turned it down (I don’t remember the role, but it was Penzance). At the time, I was terrified. I didn’t even show up for the audition even though I was wanted for the role already. It was more of a coaching session.

That’s because the role was for a lyric soprano, not a mezzo, and at the time, it was pre-voice lessons. I now know I’m a true lyric, but it would still take years not to Florence Foster Jenkins my way through “Queen of the Night.” I knew I had one aria in me. I didn’t think I had all of them in one night. The workout to do that is tremendous. You just don’t see that from the audience because it happens internally. It feels like circuit training trying to get your body do respond quickly. You can’t have air when you need it the most. You just have to deal and move on. Sometimes, that’s another soprano in your section bailing you out. As a soloist, you’re completely screwed if you haven’t inhaled down to your feet. The heavy lifting is being able to control that much air after you have it so that it doesn’t all come out all at once. I cry with laughter when I think of the flops I’ve had. Wrong notes are horrifying in the moment and hilarious later.

I just don’t want to live that life, because it’s piecemeal. I wouldn’t have a permanent place in a choir unless I was in the military. I’d have to get contracts all over the world and move frequently. The gig economy is not easy, so I just don’t want to do it. I will probably end up auditioning for Washington National Opera Chorus or National Cathedral’s choir eventually. The thought of hiking to Georgetown twice a week doesn’t thrill me, though.

The life I’d like to live is quiet. Even if something of mine goes viral, I will still want to take it in from a distance. I only trust those closest around me because they’ll keep my head on straight. I would rather keep being an introvert and able to produce because I’m not lost in noise vs. signal. The signal comes in purer the less there is to compete with it.

So, I suppose my ultimate job is ogre. Just get off my lawn, but know I’m okay because Fiona and Donkey are around somewhere.

Letting me control my chaos in peace.

This Kid Named Leslie

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What aspects of your cultural heritage are you most proud of or interested in?

I don’t want to write about my white cultural heritage. It’s not interesting, but I will give you the highlights. There are Irish and English immigrants in my family. The most direct was an indentured servant who ended up in Louisiana, where later descendents settled in northeast Texas. My mother, father, stepmother and me were all raised there (sort of, we moved a lot with my dad being a pastor). Lindsay was not born until we moved to Houston, but we returned to northeast Texas for five years shortly after that. It was a quiet life interrupted by bursts of show mode…………….. although I did have a great, great uncle somewhere tied to organized crime in, I think, Rhode Island. That seems to track. I don’t know what I’m going to do with my next career, but mafia seems to be a viable option given my personality on some days. Anxiety and depression feel like the mafia. You get irritated and want to whack an employee, but you’re self-employed.

Yes, Where were we?

I come from Irish and English people, but not with landed titles and Downton Abbey and all that crap. My family was basically owned by the English, not even close to American slavery though very close to Reconstruction. When the Civil War ended, enslaved people were sometimes hired back to their plantations, but weren’t paid enough to really leave. That was my family’s situation. The English would do shit like give us land to rent, but they could take it any time they wanted and you’d never be able to pay off the debt you owed on tools, etc. Many, many people escaped Ireland through work contracts, which is what my ancestor did. The contract paid for his passage, and was a seven-year logging thing in which he cut off a leg two years in. Answers to the name “Lucky.”

Even with that fun fact, there are billions of people who’ve come through the US since its inception by rich white people offloading their indentured servants, enslaved people, and criminals here. America was Australia before it was cool. Still white people history. So, again, not interesting.

It’s queer history that makes me interesting.

Being queer is to take on institutional pain, passed down from one generation to the next. We don’t grow up biologically together (most of the time), so it’s a process to seek out a family that understands….. for most of history, the family that took you in when your first family just couldn’t get over their vengeful God long enough to stop themselves from being terrible parents (and worse in-laws). Children are not capable of supporting themselves at 15 and 16. You’d be surprised at how many just have to figure it out….. and not because it’s surprising to queer people. It’s surprising to the people who generally don’t want to look it up. It’s so hard to be them.

Because I did have someone queer in my life at an early age, I was braver than most because I didn’t see being queer as abnormal anymore…. but this was after two years of torturing myself first. Bad things happen when people come out. It’s more rare today than it was in the ’80s, but it’s alive and kicking. Look up the rates for homeless queer youth. It’s not acceptable. Stop pretending it is.

If you think I’m being harsh, fuck your feelings. This has got to stop, and I know because I’m from the belly of the beast. If you think legislation about trans kids’ medication in Texas is bad, you’re just seeing the surface. Imagine what these kids go through at home when they’re born to people like this rather than to people fighting against them.  Trans people are taking the fire right now, but gay people were (and still are in some circles) called mentally ill pedophiles for centuries.

Gay people are not predators. Predators are predators. And straight people are like, 85-90% of the population. It’s not gay people that are the problem, because even though there are gay predators, too many kids are abused for those numbers to check out. Not many people are gay. Many people are power hungry and some are ill enough to take it from a child.

So, to straight people, the call is coming from inside the house.

I was never molested by a queer person, but certainly had my life interrupted by that kind of absolute power imbalance. But having my life interrupted wasn’t all bad because I came out earlier. I don’t think I would have had an easy time in school if I’d stayed in the closet all the way through. There were too many people that used it as leverage. I know this because it was very popular to tease me for being gay even though I never said I was. They just knew it got the desired painful reaction and liked it.

Once I started wearing rainbow shit to school, all that stopped. It wasn’t blackmail, so it wasn’t fun……… which is how I have a legacy at Clements and my girlfriend at the time doesn’t. She was with me, but she wasn’t out, Therefore, I know I did something that makes me happy because I had the courage to do what many people couldn’t. It’s not a slam on her, it’s saying that I didn’t realize how important the story would become to me now that it’s been so many years. That I’m happy I had the courage to stand up then, because it makes me feel strong now.

I don’t have to wonder if my life would have been better had I come out later, because it was hell on earth then. I was just surviving, doing what I had to do. In retrospect, it feels like a badge of honor.

My sister is almost six years younger than me, with our birthdays being June and September, respectively. So, she didn’t get to elementary school until I was in junior high and didn’t get to high school until I was in college (and I would have been gone if I’d taken four years). So, I was a junior at University of Houston before I heard what happened:

When my dad left the church, I really stopped giving a shit about who knew what. I wore Pride rings (fruit loops) and had a rainbow ring and a couple other things that I bought under the radar (we all think that. Give it to us. Let us believe we are oh-so-clever.). It got me two things. The first is that I stopped getting teased. The second is that I could advertise.

She was an athlete. I felt like a god.

So, in addition to getting the girl, it was the rainbow accessories that made me a legacy.

I was off doing my own thing, oblivious.

My sister told me that she saw a group of kids with rainbows on their backpacks. She thought it was really brave, so she asked them about it. They said, “oh, we all do it. That way no one knows who’s gay.” Lindsay said, “who started it?”

They said, “I think it was this kid named Leslie.”

I will never do anything in my life more important than this.

Evensong

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Today I found a quote that made me feel better about moving on from Supergrover (if that’s what she ultimately wants, I don’t know). That’s because it made me know that we won’t move on. We’ll absorb:

The two worst days in falling in love with a writer are realizing they’re writing about you………….. and realizing when they’ve stopped.

Supergrover didn’t fall in love with me as a woman, but she did with me as an author. She absorbed me like she absorbs every writer she’s ever read…. completely. I know she’ll never forget words I’ve said in anger, but she’ll also never forget how much I love her, either. That’s because I have learned through writing to you that she lives in my ink. As long as I write, a thread of her will be somewhere. There will be other women, other stories, none of them her. None of them even close. She cannot be convicted of a crime by a jury of her peers. She doesn’t have any peers, like Meryl Streep….. except comparatively Streep is a swamp witch. Nothing makes my face light up more than hers. Nothing. I doubt anything ever will. I do not say this in a sad way. it is the truth. I will never meet anyone like her ever again. Our connection means she cannot go away, so I’m not going to make her. She can sit here until she’s ready to go on her own. I’m at peace, and when she comes to me in dreams we have the conversations I would have liked to have had in person. I bring her a new book every time. New books make her smile at me. I would do anything to have her keep doing that. Even when she’s smiling at me in a photo, I feel light and warmth.

If she thinks I’m painting her as a villain, it’s not because I have any need. She is made of industrial light and magic in a film George Lucas could never dream up. I have had negative thoughts about this relationship as I’ve worked through whether our patterns work for me, things she’s unwilling to discuss. At no time has that made my love for her smaller in any way. I can choose to limit interaction to protect myself and have this space to get angry on my own….. but as the anger leaves me, you’ll see joy as well.

A lot of it has been stopping being an apologist. Trying to make my emotions look smaller so that they’d be more acceptable. For instance, I played off what hearing her voice did to me because it would not have been a proportionate response. I’m flowery and romantic with language, anyway, so she starts talking and there are bells ringing in my head… not church bells, just that her voice was musical and I wanted more. I could have listened to her talk for hours about nothing or everything, and I minimized it. I’ll never get that moment back.

I should have told her a lot of things, and i didn’t. But more than what I wish I’d said, I wish I’d heard. I wish I’d heard how my words affected her and in more than just broad strokes, because I know it wasn’t all bad or good. I have e-mails where she’s just copied and pasted what she’s liked, and I wish I had more of those. I have taken so much hell for the things she hasn’t liked, and there are a lot of them.

Alternatively, I love her anger. I never want to see it because it’s scary, but it walks the pain/pleasure line quite effectively. We rile each other up and seeing her fire is impressive. You just can’t put it out. She has to sneeze angry fire until it reduces to sparks on its own. You stand there with a blanket, because making fire takes a lot out of a dragon. You give her a shoulder to sleep on because when she gets that angry, she’s about to pass out. When she does, I’ll be still til she wakes. Never wake a sleeping dragon. This has been written many times.

I don’t need to be her husband/wife/partner because I am none of those things and also permanently etched into her mind. Affixed on her heart. She cannot forget me even if she tries very, very hard………

So I know she does indeed know how it feels to be me.

I am a writer, lost in a book.

She is a reader who doesn’t know whether she’s reading a story that’s finished, because the author isn’t sure, either. We will chase each other through time. If love is as certain an energy in the universe as novelists think, she and I will keep finding each other. Love never gets destroyed, it just changes. In our next lives, we may not even be female. But because we’re writers, we would recognize each other anywhere. There’s slim chance I wouldn’t recognize her, even in a different face. She can put on all the Halloween makeup she wants, but I’ll remove it in three punctuation marks.

Opening up to each other the way we did was just as vulnerable as rushing into an affair. We will never see each other without our clothes, but we have been naked emotionally more than once. I absolutely think that’s harder to find in a relationship.

I did indeed get my romcom with someone who absolutely knows it, whether she accepts that she’s my shite in nining armor or not. I will always be the Keeley to her Rebecca, because I didn’t settle for fine. I got hit by fucking lightning. She’s the gift you get from the universe for being an extraordinarily good person and somehow the universe still sent her to me. My heart is big enough to accept the package that comes with her. She is too big a gift to be mine alone.

On this evensong, I am reflecting upon the fact that I never want the second day to come for either one of us………

I can fall asleep easy knowing it never will. Neither of us will ever forget this time in our lives, when the story was us. It has already been written.

What’s On Brand for Me

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 2 Comments

What brands do you associate with?

Sometimes I think about “if I were an influencer, what would I want to promote?” It’s just a fun thought exercise, but if I had enough power to get things done in the advertising industry, here’s the people I’d like to give me stuff for free because I’ve been singing their praises for years without them cutting me a check.

Bombas Socks

I got the recommendation from Pete Holmes and have never looked back. Just order 10 pairs and throw your other ones out. They’re just the best ever and I will buy them until I’m dead unless they do something lame like change them in any way at all ever. They are ADHD/Autism relief in a box.

American Giant Hoodies

The Original Hoodie is the only jacket you will ever need. It’s double weight, double stitched, and all the hardware is strong and comfortable. No rough edges and extraordinarily well made. If you have teenagers, you need to buy one for yourself and one for them or you’ll never see yours again. Can’t find it? Check your daughter’s closet.

Starbucks Coffee

I don’t like Starbucks because it’s the best. Far from it. I like Starbucks because I’m ADHD and it tastes the same all over the world. It tastes the same on Connecticut Ave. in downtown DC as it does at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris. I checked. (CDG does have chocolate cereal milk lattes and I will die mad they don’t make them here.)

Nescafe

Talking about Paris reminded me that Starbucks was the best coffee I had while I was there. I think “French Roast” is a lie they tell little kids. My dad and I didn’t find a decent independent coffee shop or a Starbucks anywhere. The Starbucks was at the airport. So, I became absolutely reliant on the little packets of Nescafe the maids left for us at our hotel, which does not taste like American instant coffee at all. It was good. Therefore, I would pitch Nescafe all over the world because you can stuff packets in your suitcase in advance just in case you get somewhere and nothing is above Folgers with extra water. I know I will have a personal friend living in France or a French reader that will tell me I just went to the wrong coffee shop. Please, prove me wrong. That would be great. I need a place to go the next time I’m in Paris, and I want to live there for a few months so we can stretch out. I can already tell you that you can just show up at the Musee D’Orsay the first couple of days after I arrive. No worries I won’t be there. Vincent and I need some alone time. Maybe I can sneak some Nescafe into “our room.”

Chuy’s

No clothing brand represents me better when they’re on point. I think they have the best graphic designers in the business. I have several t-shirts and a hoodie that I wear constantly, except the one that says “Expecto Burrito.” I gave that one to Goodwill. Yes, I know Chuy’s is a restaurant, but their merchandise is very affordable and well made. I think my favorite Chuy’s shirt has the outline of the Chuy’s fish with Walter White hat and sunglasses. It says “Heisenchuy.” I also have a very cute kids’ t-shirt that’s a throwback to 80s Nintendo and says “Super Tex-Mex Brothers.” It’s perfect because I’ve worn it enough that now it actually looks retro instead of a current kids’ shirt. I also have one that’s still in production. It’s a Tattooine-type desert with a lone man and says something about “Juan Solo.”

Bourbon Moth

I love Jason Hibbs’ designs, and I would fill my whole house with his furniture if I could afford to commission Jason or buy the equipment to make it all. Having no idea how to construct anything, I think everything would turn out better if I just paid him. Jason is the kind of furniture maker that you want to entrust with your daughter’s first rocking chair when you find out she’s pregnant, or the crib she’s eventually going to need. You don’t just trust anyone with those projects, and he’s at the top of my list. Here’s how much I would trust Jason:

I would trust Jason’s vision if I lost a child, as well.

CIA/FBI/DNI/DIA/Pentagon/Branches of the Military,etc.

I’m putting the names of the agencies in here because I can’t find the name of the company that makes their swag. So, I know you can’t just walk into any of these gift shops, but you have options in terms of seeing if you know anyone. I say this because Zac has brought me several things from those shops and they’ve all been as well-made as my American Giant hoodie. None of the t-shirts have had tags, all the hardware is smooth, the workout clothes are double weight so you can run in he winter. I am sure that if I could find the name of the company, they make clothes without logos and I’d be there for those, too. It’s the difference between getting a jersey at Eastern Market (knockoff) and ordering it directly from the NFL. With my CIA baseball cap, I loved the logo, but I don’t wear it all the time to look like I’m pitching for USG. It’s so comfortable on my skin that I can’t take it off. ADHD Life, the struggle is real, etc I also walk a lot and “it’s beginning to look a lot like fuck this” becomes a refrain in my head when I don’t want to take the time to get fixed up; it won’t last. My baseball cap feels even more comfortable on those days. I don’t know how they would actually want me to support them, but I know I can’t not. My country is depending on me to want soft clothing, and who am I to stop them from providing it? Before CIA, I had a GAP hat that was just as comfortable and I wore it for 15 years straight. By the end it looked like I had old underwear on my head. I did not care. This hat has the same vibe and I’m looking forward.

Celestial Seasonings

When I say I switch to something innocuous like fruit punch when I’m not drinking caffeine, I really mean cold brew Red Zinger at obnoxious amounts. Obnoxious. I should buy stock.

Wendy’s

I don’t really care about their food. I want to work for them. I would have a riot in that writing room if I was on the social media team. Also, I have been repping their French fries and Frosties since I was a shorty (for the rest of the world, that’s American slang for a child. I am still short.). To me, theirs are the ones that taste best because they actually taste like they have real potato in them somewhere. They’re not as crispy, but they’re authentic. They’ll actually put a little more color on them for you if you ask nicely and wait patiently, just like at In-n-Out. I just think Wendy’s are better than In-n-Out because I prefer a thicker cut (more like they’d serve at a steakhouse).

McDonald’s

I want free smoothies and soft serve for life. I don’t know what I would do for such a favor, but I am willing to negotiate heavily. I know it won’t cost you much because the ice cream machine is always cleaning itself. Maybe not. I can drink the hell out of those smoothies. If you start making orange vanilla with the soft serve, you can just build me a house in the ball pit.

Chicago Cutlery

They’re some of my favorite knives because they fit my hand, whether it’s chef or santoku. They’re also cheap and hardly ever need sharpening. I choose to get mine sharpened over getting another one because even though it’s the same price or more expensive, your knife grows into your hand and vice versa. It’s like getting a fountain pen. Once you bend the nib to your handwriting, you cannot lend it out. That’s because the nib will bend to someone else, and it won’t go back to you. It’s the same in the kitchen, even for pastry chefs because their cuts need to be even more precise than the cooks who just throw things into a pan. Your knife becomes as close to you as a lover, why we often name our knives after women. It’s an extension of our bodies, where we cut to the beats of our hearts.

Staying Up

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What could you do more of?

I am slowly starting to stay up later and sleep in. Not by much. Just one or two hours. I’m starting this entry at 7:48, after I’ve done the things I need to do to get going. I have taken my medication, and gotten myself something to drink, and settled in. Therefore, I woke up at 0700 instead of 0500 for love.

That’s because the person that most represents safety to me and vice versa is in Portland, Oregon. That’s three hours into the past from here. I’ve done it with other friends, had this asynchronous life because I’ve had friends in Portland since 1996 or something like that and moved to DC in May of 2001. The events of September 11th did not drive me away. Kathleen did. It was the best mistake I’ve ever made. When I went to Portland, I found everything I have ever needed to know myself. It affects me every day, and I’m grateful to my time there for it, no matter how low my Vitamin D was when I got home (six).

I don’t stay up for me. I stay up for Bryn. I want her as a real part of my life rather than a fake one, and video calling is easier for both of us in the evening. It’s just that her evening is generally my bedtime when I’m getting up at 0500. When I get up at 0500, sometimes it’s so early for her that she hasn’t gone to bed yet. We make it work, and yet we don’t. It’s not a matter of how much we love and adore each other, just that our relationship isn’t as full of practical love as it would be if we lived in the same neighborhood. Maybe we will eventually, but I don’t want either of us to do the hard sell on each other. Our lives will unfold as they should. The difference between this relationship and most of my other virtual ones is that I don’t video call with them, ever. I barely even do audio. I can do that with Bryn because we’ve had so much face time over the years that we call each other no matter what we’re doing or how we look because the video call is more important than fixing up for it. Video calls are so much easier when you don’t give a shit how you look on camera. It’s not that we look bad, it’s that we’re going to love each other no matter how we look, so why waste time on something so frivolous?

I like our back and forth, the way we’re both on the “think it, say it” plan because we can be. It’s a trust that’s implicit and makes it easy to breathe. She’s made the commitment to learn my attachment style and love language, but she doesn’t really have to do research because they’re the same as mine. She understands something in me because she wears it on her skin, not because she’s lost in a book…. or if she is, it’s the one I’m writing for us.

You’ll just have to put up with romantic and flowery language from me about her because I am Anne Shirley crazy for her. She knows that she is my Diana Barry…. so much lighter than I am in some ways, darker in others. We complete, not compete. I am the friend that would get her drunk on purpose, though, and she wouldn’t complain because I’m an excellent bartender and it doesn’t take much for either of us. 😉

I am sort of in a relationship in terms of having a companion but not a possible husband, and she definitely is in a relationship with promise. It fits us to a T to have other partners, while also making space for each other; our history is too long for us not to put each other first in some ways. I might have to be around for the next boyfriend, and Dave will be excused for cause. I have no reason to believe this will be the case, it’s just a sitrep. We’re a package deal, get used to it. 😉

Being with our respective guys gives us more to talk about, not less. I don’t feel jealous and neither does she. It’s nice to have a place to unload about everything, because neither of us blink when the other has a problem. We’re on it like a team. Later I have to call Multnomah County on some business of my own, so I’m going to do hers as well. It’s no thing because if I have to do something over the phone, I know she’d be my proxy if something needed to be done in person. It’s a give and take now that I have someone on the ground that I can trust to have my back in a city where I used to live and still need to bat cleanup.

I’m not divorced yet, or at least, I have been unwilling to check. Dana told me she would take care of it, but I haven’t been sent anything to sign and I don’t think people have the capability to divorce someone without their knowledge. I could be wrong, but I can’t assume Dana is more likely than me to fill out paperwork, either, even though she said she would. I am not being catty. Paperwork causes anxiety for both of us sometimes because of the emotional attachment it represents. We’re both ADHD. If it fell off her radar, it won’t come back.

I can have empathy because in some ways, we’re the same person and that will never change.

Now my mother lion has kicked in, because I should have done it long ago for Dana and followed up on the paperwork myself, because I know it was difficult for two reasons. The first is that the way our relationship ended is shameful to both of us given the connection we threw away. We should have been able to deal with the Supergrover issue because I shouldn’t have gotten so high on her. Dana would know exactly how being married and being lost in new relationship energy would feel, because she was married during most of the time she was dealing with her feelings for me……………. yet another reason I didn’t want to get involved in the first place.

I struggled with the idea of having an affair because she was using her wife as a safety net if I said no and I knew it. That’s because her wife knew what Dana was doing, too, and was never blind to it. She saw how Dana reacted to me and thought her days were numbered, then stuck around watching Dana be lovesick over me for years and putting up with that shit. By the time she broke up with her wife, even our girlfriends were convinced we should be together instead of with them because we couldn’t stop talking about each other. Being friends was easy. Taking the leap was hard……………. right up until it wasn’t. By the time we were ready to leap, we had years of emotional closeness feeding our fire. We loved each other because of what we’d been to each other as friends, not because we each thought the other was perfect. We knew what contract we were signing, and we were better for it.

For a while.

She could not accept that the same thing was not happening to her. That my feelings were supposed to have been light and flirty wordplay to give me some dopamine after Dana and me going through a really rough time. Supergrover wasn’t threatened, and she was so cute about flirting with me one time that I knew I’d opened the door to something I could dish, but I could not take. I thought I was a silver-penned devil.

I was, in fact, mistaken.

I laid the golden fiddle at her feet because I had gone down to Georgia and knew that I’d been beat. It was a mistake. It called my bluff. I felt things I never had because it was attention from someone who really deserved mine.

It was all a mistake. It was not a happy compromise, It jumped me further into something she was rightfully afraid would happen. It jumped me into something the relationship couldn’t sustain, but it wasn’t her fault because I pretended to be so cool. it was the beginning of the end with both of them. It just will never be a new beginning with Dana because I can forgive her punching me, but it’s not worth a chance it would happen again and the statistics are against us.

I fucked up asking for more patience from both of them and then not actually doing anything to move myself forward. It was my own choice to feel heat for someone that would never feel that way about me, but that’s based on all the other relationships I’ve had, the mark my emotional abuser left on me. That I couldn’t really know someone until I’d slept with them. I know that because if someone opens me up emotionally, I tend to want all of them. I don’t tie people’s worth to it, though.

If they just want to be friends and I love them that much, I’ll sit in that pain until it goes away. I certainly have done enough of that to feel secure. It’ll never happen again, like women who do fall in love and realize later that it was never the sex that mattered and they’re better off as roommates and friends. But it’s because I’ve felt those feelings that I’m a real and genuine friend and also never less protective and possessive of her than her husband- and not because I want to “keep her safe from him” by acting like a jealous fool. It’s not him that matters. It’s the the rest of the world.

I’m not here to fight her battles for her, just with her. But I won’t if she acts like I don’t matter, gets angry when I tell her that, and treats me like an annoyance a good bit of the time. I’m not here for that, but I am for the relationship in which we do the work to be strong and comfortable at 20 years, like we predicted we would be in the beginning. I can live with boundaries, but not when I don’t know what they are. I will fuck up, and I have. I was out of control, then lost and finding my way back.

I can’t be lost anymore, because I’m tired of feeling insecure. I can’t make up fantasies to ignore the reality of the situation because they feed me. She avoids me in a way she shouldn’t, and that’s not my call. But because she says that she’s enormously impressed with me as a person, everything I’ve said tracks. There is room for all our feelings by now because nothing happens quickly anymore. There’s not an exhilarated rush of trying to know each other as fast as we can.

Our feelings are extreme on both ends. The lovebombing is absolutely genuine, and so is our conflict. The reality is that I would have left Dana no matter what because of two hard outs, not just one……… and now need Supergrover in my life despite her not needing me because of the first hard out’s upper limits, not because I am “trying to get her back.” I was damned if I did, damned if I didn’t at that time. Life was full of hard choices, and I did the best I could with the information I had. It didn’t matter what Supergrover thought. It matters what I thought would happen to me in the future. Supergrover didn’t think about that and I know she didn’t because I didn’t, either. We both got lost in new relationship energy and told each other things that would have consequences long into the future without knowing how stable we were or weren’t. Without knowing how stable I was with Dana, because even I didn’t recognize the toll her DUI would take on me and how that was more of a threat to me than anything Supergrover said that enticed me. I never want to have to bail anyone else out of jail, because it was traumatic. My friend Volfe drove me downtown to pick her up, and she had already left on the bus. I was racing to get to her only to have my hopes dashed. I did get to see her later, but she knew we were coming to get her and she left, anyway. It made me crazy to the point I couldn’t think, and then Dana lost her license. The entire legal process wore me down, and Supergrover was the gift I needed at a time when I was really open to receiving it.

I fucked up by loving her so completely I couldn’t see anything else, and not because it was wrong. Some of my actions were crazy, but I’m not. It was all painful and could have been avoided. But I’d already run from her several times, saying that I couldn’t be friends with a woman who excited me this much, and because we couldn’t separate, we didn’t. The swings just became bigger as my emotions grew. It was embarrassing to tell her I had to back off and why so she didn’t feel like I was dumping her because I wanted to. I had to. Dana could compete with romantic love, but platonic trumped it because it had to, not because I wanted it to, for two reasons. I felt like I couldn’t have reactions in front of Dana anymore, because it drove her crazy for me to have a woman in my life that was just as important as she was for very different reasons. She could not accept that Supergrover and I needed a relationship that was separate from her out of necessity, not malice. I knew that every one of my actions would be up for discussion with someone. As Sam Seaborn would say, “oh, this is bad on so many levels.”

Having a relationship with someone who runs hot and cold is not my jam when they’re as close to me as Supergrover is. If we hadn’t already been so close, running hot and cold wouldn’t be a thing because I wouldn’t notice or care.

I reached out for Bryn because our attachment is secure. I don’t have to worry because there are no swings too big. We know that the other’s style is anxious, so we take care of it up front rather than letting the other believe we’re pulling back, or let the other know when we need some space, but we’ll talk about what was said later; we need time to reflect. It is not time to choose what kind of life we want together, we just know it’s there if we want it. I cannot be on thin ice. I cannot run from her love because it’s just too big. I can’t jump into something the relationship can’t sustain. We are there for every regeneration, making it a good story in the end.

I could do, need to do more of staying up…………… to read the chapters she has written on her own.

Speak More to That -or- That’s So Interesting

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 1 Comment

In my last entry I was talking about hearing people’s voices in my head when I type, literally transcribing a movie onto the page. Two of the voices I hear all the time are ex-girlfriends, and one of them means just as much as the other even though one relationship was seven years and change, the other was three months. That’s because they’re the two that caused me the most growth and development the fastest.

The first title comes from Dana doing an impression of her therapist. When Dana would put out a statement, she’d always say, “speak more to that.” Every time we got into an argument, pulling that one out made us both dissolve into laughter and we could proceed arguing again because it was never a case of right and wrong, but a case of figuring out how to move on. I didn’t want to pack up and live in our problems. I moved to Washington so I could say, “what’s next, Mrs. Landingham?” DC gave me the backdrop to believe I could be more than I was used to being in the world, and I am.

I mean something to someone who really means something. Her Wikipedia page would be better than mine. That my history is woven into hers in such a unique and beautiful way will never leave me.

Beautiful girl, whether you believe it or not, meeting you is the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Just because there are complications doesn’t mean it’s not worth it. Our Apple Watches also have complications, and we use them every day. I hope the day comes where our complications are in the right place. We both need to be on each other’s six, and I’m on it if you are. I just need you to want it more, and you can’t. Life is long. I’ll wait because you’re worth it, and you always will be. When we can say “one more mountain…. hey, so what” we’ll be able to say “trust me baby, this is love.” (That’s an Amanda Marshall song, but mountains just about cover it in terms of metaphor.)

Sometimes I hope I can resolve things with Supergrover, sometimes I don’t. I feel the same sort of push/pull I feel with Dana. That because Supergrover won’t talk to me the way she used to and it hangs shame over my head. I don’t want to live that way anymore when I’ve agreed to do big things for her the rest of my life, and I did that without really thinking it through in terms of being a blogger. Neither did she. Now it’s the tie that binds because I need you guys emotionally to support me and I can’t slip up. It’s walking on a wire every day, because she made it where she couldn’t not be my first thought. Clearly, she doesn’t want that, but it’s work product, not emotions that are my concern now.

I don’t know what to forget, and what to remember.

I can talk about absolutely getting wasted off her energy, but I can’t describe her too closely. I can only tell you she’s up there with Helen Mirren on my list of gorgeous women (no one can beat out Helen, stop trying…….. but Supergrover does think I have amazing taste in women). I can say she has power, but not where because it’s a niche and would make her immediately identifiable. I have to think like a journalist protecting a source, not a blogger with friends who have everyday issues not tied to working here. The power imbalance is absolute and correct.

So that means I think a lot about someone who doesn’t want to think about me, and not for malice. Just through the nature of how we work, which is vastly different from each other. The problem comes in when she will never have a problem smaller than me so that I can move up on the priority list while I am also struggling, genuinely. I can either move on and try to forget, or we can be close. In the middle is too scary because I don’t know what I’m doing….. and I’m a perfectionist, so it’s really hard to admit that.

I am sure that Supergrover thinks that me digging deep to let go is what should have happened long ago, but I didn’t realize then what I do now. We both regret making fuckups that affected our careers, but by not acknowledging it, we are keeping to our separate corners, unable to trust each other when we should lean on each other the most.

In my own life, it feels like I’ve given up a lot for her that she hasn’t recognized, and it hurts, but it’s not my responsibility to change her. It’s not even her responsibility to want to change. It’s deciding how much chaos I’m willing to breathe without putting a safety net under the trapeze. However, it was never in the interest of getting closer tot her, it was an added bonus in escaping from Dana and getting a clean slate. That’s because I cannot tell her story. Only she can do that. She cannot even tell it to me, much less others. Whether that part is ironclad or subjective is up for grabs, because I cannot know that, either.

I’ve made a lot of assumptions and missed a lot of messages. She stopped standing up to me and started telling me that I wanted too much, so she isolated me from everyone else including her. I have a legitimate issue where I need her more than anything and she’s the one person who doesn’t have any bandwidth left over for herself, much less me. I have a ton of empathy, and know that’s not the whole story. She gets offended, shuts down, and wants to rage at me, but doesn’t. She saves up my e-mails to reply later, because she feels guilty and now doesn’t have any context to make connections.

I wanted to stop that part.

There was an ironclad space for me before, and there isn’t now. I have always understood why, yet marveled at the time that’s gone by without us ever really getting to the bottom of anything…. or if I did, it was completely on my own, like having a therapist who disengages and you feel like they’re bored….. they’re not. They’re covering up how bad they want to scream “LEAVE HIM!” When I perceive disinterest, what they’re feeling is trying not to take on my problems as their own. Those messages are drastically different, and lost in a chasm if you don’t address it.

I don’t have that kind of relationship with Supergrover, but I do have that kind of push/pull. I need things and get frustrated. I express that, she tells me I’m the only one who ever ruins anything. Then, she won’t tell me why she thinks that. Why am I so impressive that I’m worth keeping around when your responses come off as defensive and angry? To me, when you love someone and think they’re extraordinary, it means you’re willing to invest. I caused the original rift, butt she said she forgave me. Our ways of moving on were completely different. She thought the best answer was never to trust me again, but keep up the surface level stuff. I can’t do that. I won’t do that. I won’t feel insecure in an attachment and keep feeding it. I don’t care if she’s mine in a way no one else is (and frankly, I’m hers in a way no one else is). When she doesn’t look at my letters with love, she feels guilty and runs away. She shits on herself every time, saying that something isn’t good enough for me when it’s just that we have more to work out, and it’ll keep. Life is long.

She doesn’t feel as excited and impressed by her as I am, therefore why should I be interested in her? Meanwhile, she is 3D chess built on a Rubik’s cube. As I told her, “if you think about your story hard enough, you should want to hit that, too.” That was a time in which jokes like that actually made her laugh, because honestly. It’s just true.

We are connected because “what God has put together, let no man put asunder.” She is not God in this case, but she’s the face I use when I need to visit that place inside me to work out my shit on my own.

Through it, I can maintain a connection to the God I serve and how it is both Old and New Testament, vengeance and promise, everlasting life, and even still I’m making it up as I go along with fake as Christianese.

I just think of it as “the church has left the building.” If I translate that into line cook, it’s “we don’t have to talk about it. Just eat it.”

Going into your closet to pray has always been an excellent turn of phrase for me, and now it’s even more important. I don’t have to speak out loud to be heard. You guys listen enough as is. But you are the God that can take it, the face made up of many names, wants, and desires. I use God as the punching bag, not my beautiful girl. I can’t be sure that God is listening, but sure as shit, you are.

The second title come from an old girlfriend who knocked me on my ass with clever. she was a Rhodes Scholar who had the facade of a kooky teacher, but that was for show. She was brilliant, and a fantasy. We were at different places in our lives, but that didn’t stop us from having a ton of fun and leaving each other better than we found us….. eventually. It was hell when we first broke up because we had to live with each other, anyway (that has no bearing on my current situation……… Jesus. She’s straight. I’m gay. And we still would have had an easier time of it if we’d had triplets. I can laugh about that because we’re both past the age where we’d want to have kids, anyway.

But I know her. If I said “let’s foster” even ONE TIME we’d have five kids by EOB. But to be fair, that was her 10 years ago. She probably just adopted half her neighborhood instead. It’s one of the things that makes her Supergrover to me. It’s fun to have a hero that is also approachable. I think it’s because I am, too. I just talk about my life and invite other people to talk about theirs. I don’t choose friends based on what they can do for me, as much as they think I do when I don’t feel my needs are being met despite fulfilling theirs. Deciding how much energy they get of mine when I’m not getting theirs. It’s not dependent on how each other feels, but how well we can communicate to a happy medium where both people feel like they’re being heard. it is much more lonely to feel alone when someone else is in the room.

My ex-girlfriend used to touch my hand and say “that’s so interesting” to show that she really was intellectually turned on by something. It showed joy and passion on her face for every subject on earth. The whole time I’ve been writing, she’s been touching my shoulder and saying “interesting” the way she’d say it just so. I hear her in my head all the time, as a lot of my life is so interesting.

I cannot speak more to that.

I just know it’s there, and I’m grateful. I am settled within myself in a number of ways. I hope for a resolution in the end, it’s just going to take more than she thinks, but less than I do. If she thinks love is best served by avoiding conflict, that’s fine. I just need her to not do it to me, because she’s reinforcing the idea that I am no longer a value add and hasn’t stopped…….. when to me, I am Jay and she is Silent Bob. She is Harold. I am Kumar. We would look so cute together in a picture because if she’d just posted a photo of us in real life with a caption that said “I’m dating Pete Davidson” people would have believed it. They would have thought she was just as out of her damn mind as his other loves, while also being quietly pissed that they’re not dating Pete Davison, too (or her, for that matter. Christ on a cracker.).

But one relationship taught me how to feed the others. My relationship with my ex-girlfriend settled into her feeling at home with both Dana and me. There was a much larger age gap between us than Supergrover and me, so I was used to the yin and yang of having different cultural references and having to look them up. They’re west coast, I’m Houston. They’re Tupac, I’m Bun B. Different issues, different playing fields.

I am not explaining the rules of the game. I am giving color commentary on what it’s like to play it when there is no discussion or alteration of rules. You have to improvise and work with what you’ve been given.

Yet the more I speak to things, the less information you have. It’s just so interesting.

It All Mixes Together

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?

I remember things by the way people say them, because if it’s a good line, I will hear it in their voices for the rest of my life. Good lines often have a cadence to them. For instance, my pastor came up with “resurrection happens in the middle of the mess.” I came up with “messages I’ve missed in the middle of the mess.” I gravitated toward it because it had the same musicality. One line leads to the next, a call and answer. Resurrection happens by examining the emotional places you’ve never been.

I have memories playing in my head like movies a good bit of the time. My writing is what happens when I stick my head into a pensieve, and I’m giving you access to it. The messages I’ve missed are often in plain sight when I’m seeing me as a different person, rather than perpetually reliving things. I am not reliving anything, I am searching for what I can do better in the future, and that only happens when you can look at yourself and see both your inner Aziraphale and Crowley.

How do I know what will work in the future if I don’t know how I broke the past? I know how I’ve broken my past because I wrote it down, essentially giving myself a past because few people write about their lives to this degree. When they go back to reassess, their memories are faulty. You cannot say that yours is infallible, but if there’s a blog entry on what happened written that day, that memory is secure by the nature of the timestamp. I’m not just making shit up. I am also very musical with words by nature of crafting rhythmic phrases on my horn, music only I can hear because only I know the voices on who said what.

I retain information with rhythm, essentially becoming a mimic in my writing and in my thoughts; I don’t just go back to that one line. It feels like I’m standing in the same room again, even just for a few seconds.

I give myself a lot of good advice by going back and reading what I thought years ago and seeing if I’m doing okay comparatively. Except that I don’t think of it as listening to myself, but the people who inspired my writing that day. It’s like an actor watching their old films. They aren’t living in the story on screen, but the one about how the art was created.

I like having written intimate things about the people in my life, hoping that the musicality of my words will stick with them, because being my friend isn’t easy. They all have their favorites, I’m sure, and their favorites never match up to my favorite things I’ve written about them.

Bryn loves the mirror I hold up on our relationship because she says it teaches her new things about herself. She gets what I’m trying to be, which is so real that people identify. I don’t want to be famous, I want to be heard. That’s why I don’t have to be on Oprah to know I’m making a difference. My platform is smaller, sure, but a platform nonetheless. And on the Internet, where everything is protected by a wall of anonymity, I never know when I’m speaking to people like her or people like me.

In fact, now that I think about it, Oprah did give me the best advice ever. On the last episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show, she talked about how everyone has a platform. Your family. Your church unit. Your work colleagues. All of those people add up, so no matter how small you think that platform is, it’s enormous. Use it.

Oprah’s not on at 4:00 PM anymore, so someone has to pick up the slack.

It’s the message I’ve missed in the middle of the mess.

A Dog in the Fight

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I was just reading my last entry when something jumped out at me that I didn’t see before. My sister-in-law was saving me by protecting Dana. That’s because even when I didn’t understand it, it was better to go no contact with Dana…. and if Dana felt the need to reach out, she was right there to remind her it was a bad idea because she’d worked in a women’s domestic violence practice. She was and still is a lawyer for women like me. She knew something I didn’t because she’d seen it a thousand times. If it happens once, it will happen again.

I was only confused for about six months as to whether we’d ever get back together or not, but Counselor wasn’t. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that she heard our problems from my perspective, which is trying to find the objective truth of the matter. There were so many good and bad points, but one was ironclad.

If it happens once, it will happen again.

It only gets worse from there, spiraling out until she has to explain to you while you’re getting a restraining order that “baby daddy” is not a legal relationship.

I just heard that in her voice and now I’m falling over with laughter, even though this is serious stuff.

Counselor was aware how bad it could have gotten, even with us living in different states. I don’t know whether they’re still in Virginia or not, but when I moved here they were. There was a chance we’d decide to get together because we were feeling nice and then see each other again and revert.

It only gets worse from there.

I know she got that because I invited her to come with me, Pri Diddy, and her then-girlfriend to Capital Pride because we also had to go to the bank together to separate our accounts. She stood me up. I was so angry because I missed her, but I don’t think she got there on her own. I think Counselor was looking out for me even when I didn’t know it. She knew I couldn’t take a chance even if it was offered. I didn’t.

I could be wrong. Dana could have gotten there on her own because she wanted to be nice and not kind, but I doubt it. She was really excited at first. I have people in my life that really look out for me and I notice, even when it’s long after the fact. I have to remember that not only does Counselor know why I left, she also knows why I had to on many levels.

She’s the only one who’d put it all together, could see my position from every angle, with a clarity I didn’t have- both because being hit had never happened to me before and she lives and breathes this stuff.

It’s all conjecture, but I think the theory has legs. It’s another good memory to bank when I get down on myself for failing at being married. I wasn’t failing, she was winning because she is very good at her job. I’m sure she felt trapped knowing her sister deserved empathy and a second mugshot.

She knows I ran to DC for an empathy I’d never get from Dana again, because I wouldn’t be able to hear it even if Dana did get it together permanently. I’d be trapped in a relationship that was secretive by nature, not because Supergrover and I were trying to spite her. She felt threatened and betrayed by my closeness with Supergrover, but she’d broken my trust already with her DUI, because I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. Supergrover became my emotional support honey badger almost immediately because Supergrover didn’t have a history of driving Dana to work in the middle of the night for three months while also maintaining a full-time job because her license was suspended, then not recognizing that as love and thinking I was running from her six months later. She could not accept that I was running for good reason. She didn’t stop drinking after that. Even if she wasn’t an alcoholic, she could get caught up in the legal system because she’d already been caught once. I don’t know if she’s an alcoholic, because that’s not my story to tell. I can only tell you what happened and she was at the very least cavalier with her ability to drive while hammered.

I ran towards Supergrover in a way that would break our relationship because I couldn’t get through to Dana that I didn’t want to go down with her and I didn’t want to be the source of her happiness. She was lumping a lot on me that didn’t need to be there. I was wrong for having a lopsided emotional affair where my affections weren’t returned, but our conversations were relief from everything that had been going on with Dana for the last few years. The pull to be near Supergrover wasn’t nearly as strong as the need to escape from Dana, because the situation had become untenable and I didn’t notice until I met and was emotionally vulnerable with someone who actually had their shit together, even when they don’t feel like it.

I am here for all of it. Her quirks, her flaws, her ability to be both the most intelligent and the funniest person in every room, and the quiet space that’s just for me.

Sometimes people direct you where you need to go. This was help where I least thought I deserved it. Everyone loved me kindly without being polite. It was the same thing as hearing the doctors and nurses talk about you when they think you’re out of it. The way Counselor loved me was objective, certain, and kept something worse from happening whether it was from my end or Dana’s.

Because it only gets worse from there.

A List, Physically and Mentally

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What things give you energy?

I am addicted to caffeine because I’m not on Adderrall currently. When I’m on Adderrall, I switch to something innocuous like fruit punch, or stick with diet soda rather than coffee/energy drinks. I still have to have a little to avoid withdrawal headaches. The problem becomes upper limits on dosage with caffeine, because in order for it to keep me awake, I need twice or three times as much as everyone else. The first few doses are just to keep my brain functioning normally. To stay awake, I need something like cold brew at regular intervals. Cold brew is high in caffeine on its own just due to how long it steeps, but also frequent re-upping to keep the bus from going under 50.

Caffeine will manage my symptoms up and to a point, but I’ll need the Adderrall back eventually. I can’t do a drug holiday forever. Sometimes I just have to suck it up and choose sick over crazy. The struggle is real.

Right now the thing that’s giving me energy is Pepsi Max, or Pepsi Zero Sugar, whatever they’re calling it this week. If my mother wasn’t dead, knowing I drink Pepsi now would have killed her. The fact that Pepsi gets any of my money at all is exclusively due to her untimely demise. You only think telling her I’m queer was hard. I didn’t even bother on this one. Too emotionally fraught.

I now know sugar gives me energy, or at least it does in other people’s eyes. My second day at Alert Logic, I asked one of my coworkers for a Sour Patch Kid and she said no. I asked her why and one of my other coworkers said, “you haven’t blinked since you got here.” I always thought it was them that gave me energy and not the candy. I remember Dana asking my supervisor why she didn’t keep me in line and she said, “I don’t hit children.” It was really funny because I must have been at least 10 years older than she was. Said supervisor also said I was “prehistoric” and I said, “why do you think I have so many dinosaurs on my t-shirts?”

Alert Logic fed all my addictions- coworkers where it actually felt good to be together after hours, the ambience of a room full of hackers when we weren’t on the phones (the sound of everyone typing at odd intervals is addicting to a writer), and a Starbucks machine that would fuck you up six ways to Sunday. You don’t leave Alert Logic when you separate from the company. You leave the Starbucks machine. Especially working overnight, those multiple free Americanos saved my ass. I got a Starbucks habit too expensive to maintain on my own.

In terms of my personal life, emotional intimacy turns me on. I want to know everything about a person down to the nth degree. This is because I don’t see people in 2D. I want to know all the things that make someone tick. It is not for malice, it is for curiosity. I am exploring the things that make up your character, what has affected you and what hasn’t. It gives me so much energy that I have to feed my inner sociopath once in a while. I do not mean giving in to any kind of dark side, I mean cutting off my emotions to protect myself from taking on everyone else’s. Clinical separation, not Dexter. 😉

I know quite a few people like that. People who cut off their emotions so they can even handle their shit at all. It’s the one thing that generally comes out of a reality break in childhood that’s useful. You’re not always cutting off your emotions to hide the secrets you protect when you’re being abused. You’re protecting your own energy so that you can put yourself first.

If you have been abused, you will never be first until you find out why that should be. Your abuser will be God in your life, the one on that you protect at all costs even though it would help you. After you get away from them, they’ll still be God, it’s just that now they’re the monkey on your back and the ghost out to get you.

My emotional abuser gave up her relationship with me when I put it together that she was God in my mind for all the wrong reasons instead of the right ones. The choir members who knew us both finally got through to me, but there was still doubt in my mind that it was abuse. We were just quiet, sweet music nerds and kindred spirits. You just couldn’t tell that we were quiet nerds because we both had huge show modes…… which honestly in retrospect I see why I was so attracted to Dana. I found someone who expressed love the same way my emotional abuser and I showed love, not good or bad but fact. We loved each other’s show modes and quiet moments equally. In fact, Dana had a crush on me six weeks after she met me. It took me three years to get on board because I needed her to let me in to the point where I could see if she had a mode besides show. I could not be with a show at home. Sometimes I was, but for the most part we were both introverted, preferring to spend time with each other more than anyone else.

The clash came in when I starting growing rapidly and she didn’t. She didn’t know me anymore, and vice versa. Supergrover was the first person I told my story to who didn’t have a dog in the fight. She could see what I refused to acknowledge, but couldn’t anymore when someone was reading the facts blind. Dana and I could have made it with more support, but I was sick and so was she. I have to believe that she was sick when she hit me because all people who abuse physically have some kind of screw loose. It makes it easier to move on than thinking of her in terms of good or bad. Thinking about our funny memories is vastly preferable to feeling phantom pain when I tap into those memories.

It stops me from dating other people, and I just happen to have another very good reason to avoid it. Someone else already has a piece of me that I can’t share and don’t want to because it’s just too painful. So I don’t. I don’t want to take the chance that I’ll have another relationship where I feel like I need to sneak around and hope it doesn’t get noticed. I’m not very good at it, so I don’t engage. I have to have Woodward and Bernstein ironclad boundaries with no capability with a girlfriend. They go through phones and are extremely entitled about it.

I’m not angry that I have to keep secrets. I signed up for this. I’m angry that I need things emotionally from someone who drains my energy because she can’t love me in a way I can hear it, and I drain her energy by being the least accessible person in her life due to the nature of where we live. From where she sits, Maryland is a different country. It is to all Virginians. Zac thanks me profusely for absolutely not going out of my way. It’s hilarious to me. I think that’s because I still have Houston geography in my mind. Everything takes a long time. On the train, I zone out. When we get there is when we get there. Going to Zac’s gives me energy, it doesn’t take it.

It’s not just Zac, it’s his house and starting to feel more at home there. It didn’t occur to me that Zac felt bad when I said coming to his house felt like a vacation to me, because it lifts me out of my real life for a while. I meant having the house to myself for a bit after he leaves for work without having to worry about my housemates making noise, especially when I’ve been recording. I also don’t have any other friends in intelligence, so those conversations always give me energy, too. Sometimes the vacation is just getting out of my head and into Oliver’s (Oliver is a dog).

Zac’s point I didn’t think of but value is that he is my real life. Thank God for that. I didn’t want to go any longer without a companion, because I learned from The Doctor that I can’t travel alone.

It zaps my energy.

I Don’t Have Favorite Children

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 2 Comments

What’s your all-time favorite album?

The Eminem Show, Eminem

In order to know why it means so much to me, you’d have to know the circumstances in my life when it came out. Maybe six months before, my wife had slept with two of her coworkers in one weekend while I was out of town, and I know that because she called me while I was still away to tell me that and break up with me. I was not feeling particularly kind toward women at the time. I couldn’t get angry, but my music could. Eminem literally became the paramedic healing my emotional wounds, because his pain stood out to me. I am Stan yet I have wonderful boundaries and I don’t care he didn’t write me back. 😉 I hate to do this to all my other favorites, but this one takes the cake.

That anger went away quicker than it would have on its own because through someone else’s eyes I could see that my pain was valid in his artistic expression……. when to put out my own was worse because I protected her when I shouldn’t have on my blog and only told my closest friends how bad it got. I can look at either one of them and they know which person I mean when I say “Sgt. Fucktard” and both of them will fall out with laughter, because now I can laugh about it, too (such a pity that neither live in DC now).

I barely even remember her name is Kat anymore, and that’s for the better. Karma was good to me. If she knew what I knew about what happened to me, she’d be too jealous to be happy, and that would be true if I’d never published anything at all, especially blog entries. It’s a beautiful thing when you meet someone that is worth your career. It puts everything into perspective really, really fast. The love of my life isn’t out of romance, it’s that she has a space in my heart no one else can have or will ever duplicate because I have to lose the master.

Also, this part of “Cleaning Out My Closet” made me stronger: “have you ever been hated or discriminated against? I have. I’ve been protested and demonstrated against… picket signs for my wicked rhymes…” It felt a lot like blowback from my web site because I have never been protested against by more than one or two people at a time, but it felt like hell because my first reaction was always to pull the plug; I wanted to please them and my career said “people think you’re a good writer. If you want to be able to do this for money, you have to keep going. Dooce didn’t become Dooce overnight and you won’t become Leslie Lanagan that fast, either.” Eminem slowly gave me the confidence to push away people who don’t like being on this blog and gather the people who tolerate it, even if they don’t outright love it.

I felt like Supergrover felt like she was in some sort of hostage situation, that I was writing about her to provoke her so she’d have to be stuck with me, yet didn’t get that my feelings would naturally go away if I wasn’t focusing constantly on her. This is, in fact, not our situation at all. She’s acting blind when she shouldn’t or can’t.

She’s my first thought every day, nearly every moment because I accidentally went from a blogger to a journalist in 15 seconds flat. It’s not as cool as it sounds, but yes it is. Both extremes are enormous, and I cannot cope with the downside alone. I shouldn’t have to ever and it’s a gift she can’t or won’t give. I feel that by letting me into the little things, I have more material to protect her because I have a bigger library of analogies to protect her identity publicly, because she might not freak in my personal life (although she very well might, too), but there would be hell to pay if it leaked here, and she would be well within her rights and responsibilities to hate my guts. I don’t protect her like a lover. It’s so much deeper than that.

I’m neurodivergent. Rambling like this at parties just doesn’t happen. I am literally using my quirks for me rather than against thanks to having the strength to stand up for myself. It’s just that now, one of the friends I ramble about is the least likely to need or want it. So, I cut her loose off and on to see if these feelings will go away and they never do, because either I’ll apologize again or she’ll drop in and yet won’t. Three word e-mails most of the time aren’t going to cut it and she’s avoiding it and blaming it on time. It’s a conversation we desperately need to have in a situation where we can’t have it. Given the option, I’d choose her over writing every time, mostly because she’d never ask me to pull the plug unless this was a real problem and not a possible one. She thinks I’m entitled to my stories even when they’re all bullshit, but doesn’t realize they’re all bullshit because I’m doing the very thing I need to do. Even when I’m angry.

Especially when I’m angry. Right now I’m angry that she doesn’t see that she opened up herself to having a right hand ring out of necessity and by blowing up each other’s lives and not talking about it, the right hand ring burns us instead of tempers. She thinks I should get over it. I think I should think through it with her brain and my heart, because that’s how we show love. She does the thinking, I do the feeling. She would rather have a root canal than acknowledge what she’s done and move on from it, because it seems to me that I’m activating guilt where it doesn’t belong by needing something she doesn’t deal with in herself and also needs desperately. We could support each other, but we don’t. That ship, in some respects, has crashed against the rocks because of a Siren, and now she’s having a heart attack. Because she doesn’t have time to heal me and feels guilty, because she thinks I’m asking for so much more than I really am.

I don’t need to have chocolate and coffee with her every week, I need her to acknowledge that she’s the Earl Grey in the box, the one most people sleep on and I adore because she didn’t sleep on me. I am not the person that when she comes to work all this out, I heap guilt on her. I express needs and that’s what she reads, so she doesn’t respond like a mama wolverine when she’s the issue, but God help everyone else. There are a couple people in my life that if they became mutual friends, they’d regret it. I would have looked forward to seeing that in person. Something equivalent to “surely you do not believe that this person who is a mental bag of rocks is worthy of you?” Probably everything I would have felt about her husband until I realized that he was perfect for her and I was wrong. I have never been convinced that we would be even close to happy as partners, we’re just connected by chance. The enlightening that she found her person would have been a good day, too.

Lesbians totally have a straight guy side to them in terms of possession and jealousy because we’ve been taught to act that way by men. Not that they’ve straight up told us that, they’ve just modeled it for centuries. In my head I’m Anne Lister without the hairstyle. It’s unfortunate that Supergrover married a man on purpose and a gentleman jack by accident with loyalty, because now she has two guard dogs that probably wouldn’t always agree with each other (but I’m certainly willing to have that fight as it is so worth having).

The Eminem Show had the same effect on me that my mother’s cemetery has on me now. It gave me perspective on the fact that more people than me were in pain much worse than mine. It helps me now to release pain in the situation with Supergrover, because I will never be jealous, but always possessive where she’s concerned. She hasn’t made the connection that she needs me to be possessive. I see something she doesn’t. It sucks.

History repeats with music, because it also contains some of the tracks she likes. I’m naturally gravitating towards it. One of the things I remember from our first few years is listening to that album again because some of her favorites are ones I usually skipped, but became beautiful to me because she loved them. I am listening to this album because I have the right to that much anger and I feel same type pull that makes me crave her words, while she thinks I am telling her that I regret meeting her when I need her to open up. I am doing my best to curb my enthusiasm, but it cannot go away so it won’t. I am the Impossible Girl because I have to be wound into her whether I want to be or not, because it’s for life, even by accident.

It’s an album, a presentation. I haven’t bought any songs separately.

I bought the album, so I go to all the concerts, waiting for a Piccardy Third that might never come. We’re in the middle of the rap battle, not the delight of singing to Hailie. I look forward with hope because to not is not being me. When we resolve, so does the chord.

If and when it does, get ready for “the most feared duet since me and Elton played career Russian Roulette.”

The Smell of Failure

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 2 Comments

Write about your most epic baking or cooking fail.

Anthony Bourdain hit rock bottom, and afterward he got a gig as a brunch cook. Therefore, in “Kitchen Confidential,” one of my favorite lines was that “hollandaise was the smell of failure.”

I believe that for entirely different reasons.

I had to clean the egg pans with lemon dish soap for a while at my own brunch gig. It ruined the taste of Hollandaise for me permanently. Not enough Old Bay in the world. Jesus could come back, bless it himself and I’d still be all like, “nahhhhh, fam….. you go ahead.” But I would have made him the best Hollandaise he’d ever had even if it was just the first. I can cook the things I don’t like, too. I’ve never done liver and onions in my own house, though my dad and stepmom have served me fois gras at theirs. It’s not that I can’t put up with the taste so much as the smell of it while it’s cooking. Smell is primal with me. Bad ones make me throw up at their memory. I know that I would have eventually learn to cope if I’d been a doctor, but I would have thrown up at a lot of things first and second year.

I will try something even if I don’t like it, so the fois gras had its excellent points, especially the raspberry jam against the perfect crispness of the liver. I just can’t get over the taste and smell of iron no matter whether it’s Luby’s or Le Pigeon.

It would be great if my greatest epic fail was throwing up into a stock pot and having to start something over because of the smell. It’d really tie the room together. But no. I was talking about how cooking informs the rest of your life before I get down to the nitty gritty. Plus, I’m ADHD, and every thought comes with bonus content.

I want you to know that I know what I’m talking about even when I’ve come across as a dumbass to chefs. I can describe it better than I can do it, just like Bourdain. He was a journeyman in the kitchen, a chef in the New York Times. His logical mind was in the kitchen while his heart poured onto the page, just like me….. unique on the page and mundane in my technique. But my creativity in writing comes across in new ideas rather than how many covers I cook for that night. I read recipe books like novels because I am not going to follow them. I’m going to look at spice combinations and see if it works in some dishes, or reference how to braise something because I can look at what part of a recipe matters and what doesn’t. What concepts will translate and what has to be specific. For instance, the instructions in how to get a medium rare on a steak with a cast iron skillet is useful in braising, period. You cannot take a Japanese palate and mix it with a Russian’s without studying its components and adjusting. For instance, I think Russians/Finns/Ukrainians et al would love salted licorice mixed with fruit, but at what ratio? I would imagine it would be a lot of fruit and a tiny bit of Aquavit and a whole lot of fruit.

In cooking, you have to know which flavor is going to be dominant ahead of time to save it when you’re cooking. I already know that peach works with licorice because I had a frozen drink called a Greekarita that fulfilled my life’s dream, the apex of mixology. And for the Russians, it was vodka. I do it because I love you despite your dickhead of a ruler. I am sure that during the Trump years, you thought the same about us. That’s how cooks dressed as spies can change the world. People telling others to stories who can actually do something if they’ll open up vs. the fear of getting caught and tortured. Very few people in Russia are that courageous, and those Russians absolutely saved our lives. I think about that a lot. I have the same relationship with the Russian people that I do with my chef. I’m friends with the other people on the brigade because even my worst enemies wouldn’t let me fail on purpose. We are not united in brotherhood all the time, but we’re united in trying to be the best at our jobs. It’s good we compete. You get better food.

The thing about “even your worst enemy won’t let you fail” is bullshit when someone actively wants to get rid of you. The bond comes from how you treat each other outside work. If someone fucks up and you can’t get over it to the point we can all have a beer later, it takes a lot to get that trust back. Getting on another cook’s shit list isn’t good because it spirals. They take a negative inventory and it affects how  they talk to the people who actually can hire and fire you. They prove your incompetence out of revenge, because the kitchen is a meritocracy and you let someoone fail. It’s not out of malice. It’s that you let them down. In some cases, you’ll never be able to save their ass in a way they can see it. That shit happens, and it’s not personal. It’s how people survive chefs like Ramsey. Even when he’s as angry as he pretends to be on TV, I have no doubt that he’s beloved because he’s not angry when he’s not  under pressure.

This is what leads to my most epic fail. We were busy and I had to work with the person that sexually harassed me and the owner of the restaurant, who had no cooking experience at all. She didn’t pick up that I was nervous because of the sexual harassment, and criticized me at every chance she got because she didn’t know shit about timing and would blame me for being slow on a ticket that came in 30 seconds ago and needed 10 minutes to cook. The sexual harassment guy and I got into a rhythm where he’d drop things into the fryer and I’d pick them up. Because the owner thought I was lazy anyway, the one time he didn’t was the last straw for her, even though she was the least experienced at being a cook and the most at being a horrible boss. She couldn’t keep a chef more than 15 minutes, contracted out the food, and still managed to tank that before closing the food side altogether. She didn’t know me, didn’t see me when I was on my game. She judged me on the one night she had to pitch in after not firing the person who sexually harassed me because we didn’t communicate something we’d been doing like clockwork and dropped the ball once.

No one made allowances for me on dish, either. I was called slow because I couldn’t lug 80 pounds of water up three flights of stairs without it taking longer because all of my muscles aren’t as strong as everyone else’s.

But that wasn’t my most epic cooking fail, and it’s a miracle no one got hurt. The person who sexually harassed me left a hotel pan of raw chicken on top of the freezer, and when asked, told management it was me. This is after telling me I’d be running my own kitchen within six months and how I could always be counted on and I’d do great things.

I didn’t realize the lovebomb/discard pattern because I didn’t realize that he was slowly moving all our shits together so that when we were both closing, he’d leave early and I’d be stuck cleaning for both of us. He thought he had that right even though he wasn’t my boss. The only way you get respect in the kitchen is to earn it, and he had no authority. I just took it because the lovebombing was complete. By the time he sexually harassed me, the betrayal hurt me the most.

I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life, but never once have I put people’s safety in danger……. even when people say I did.

While it is true that I do not have the physical strength to be in a kitchen, it is also true that I have come into my own and wouldn’t think twice about ripping another cook a new asshole for focusing on me and not the mission. It’s not that women can’t be the best chefs in the world. We’ve been the chefs for all of history, yet unrecognized until men did it. Escoffier didn’t make anything at The Plaza that his mother didn’t teach him first. Le Guide Culinaire is based on personal experience. Your mother generally teachers you how to cook because your father’s not interested. This is slowly changing as society has made it cool to cook. We all love dad favorites like steak and French fries, we just do it in a cast iron skillet rather than grilling because steak tastes better from the crust that develops from confit, which means cooked in its own fat. When you grill, the fat drops into the coals. Steak tastes even better when you put a little bit of butter on that crust right before you serve it. Make sure the butter is melted because once the steak has had time to rest, it probably won’t make the butter melt naturally. I also like to add fresh herbs to the butter, like rosemary. If I only have dry, I don’t make it fancy. Salt, pepper, and garlic is all a steak really needs. Just make sure the salt and pepper are of good quality. I prefer Kosher salt and fresh ground pepper to the table version of either, though ground pepper is okay if it’s fresh.

If you accidentally oversalt the meat, you can fix it one of three ways. If it’s steak intended for fajitas, throw a margarita on it using fresh lime juice. The acid will neutralize the salt. With American, increase the herbs without more salt and add lemon juice. If lemon juice is not part of the palate, make a balsamic reduction by putting vinegar in a pan and letting it sit on low heat for like a year. No, seriously. Until it gets to “coat a spoon” stage. I put dried cherries and (also dried) mushrooms in mine and let them plump up. It takes about 45 minutes to an hour depending on volume. This is a sauce you can double and triple to save the syrup for later. Leaving out the mushrooms and making it really thick would be good on vanilla ice cream.

The day I reached for a spoon out of an egg pan and didn’t realize it was boiling hot wasn’t all that great, either. It fused to my hand and I had to just put some burn cream on it and keep going. My worst enemy wouldn’t have let me fail, and I didn’t have them in the kitchen. I had my wife. She could have empathy without coddling me and I knew we were both doing what we needed to cope. It led to some of my successes, including the biggest. I got my name on the menu for my chili.

Despite all my fails, if you like food you’re missing out on being my friend. It is your epic fail, not mine. 😉

This is the Thursday of Our Discontent

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I don’t know how I did it.

But I have a guess.

Somehow I did not post yesterday’s entry before the clock flipped over on the server. So, I did today’s writing prompt yesterday and now I have no idea what to do. I still have food prompt pieces to finish, but it’s not a “finishing” mood. It requires an editorial brain I do not have today. This is the winter of our discontent, the long, dark Bloguary of the soul, the long day’s journey into white (live, laugh, love).

I am being so dramatic for someone who just has to come up with a damn writing prompt on her own. Leslie, you do this every day. Every. Day. Buck up, buttercup.

Pack a lunch, son.

When I’m sitting in my room writing, I remember that scene from the 50th Anniversary Special for “Doctor Who.” Ten, Eleven, and The War Doctor are arguing, and for those who don’t watch the show, that’s three actors playing the same person at different points in their lives. Matt Smith (Eleven) starts laughing when they’re arguing and says, “I just realized this is what it must be like when I’m alone.” “What it’s like when I’m alone” is very much John Hurt, Matt Smith, and David Tennant arguing in my head, because that’s how it’s the easiest to tell what issues are working on which processor.

For instance, the heartbreak of losing Supergrover at my own hand eight years ago is nothing compared to the pain of trying to make it work and repelling each other so that neither of us were happy. But the threads processing on that core are alongside the other core, which is joy that goes all the way back to “you like to rap to Eminem? Explain to me exactly how I’m not going to fall in love with you. USE BIG WORDS..” She said “you’ll fall in love with truth an honesty, as adorable as I might be.”

She’s right. I confused them and then got my head on straight. Trying to prove that my head is on straight has been enormous, because I was jumping up and down for attention in my own way, just not the ways in which she thought I was. She was getting mad at me by focusing on the wrong things. For instance, I wrote her something that meant “there’s nothing that you could tell me that would scare me away and I love you.” She took it as “who you are as a person is bad.” Those messages are drastically different.

Thus, trying to write it all out and it seems repetitive because I’m aware of the fact that not everyone reads every day. I have become the Ann M. Martin of bloggers. There’s a story here, but you have to make it through explaining club rules and characters for the people that would be confused if they read a book as a standalone. It also gives me room to stretch out because I’m not working on all cores every day. I see thoughts from the day before and something jumps out at me.

Blogging seems self-aggrandizing when you’re processing because it’s necessarily all about you. You can’t think about anyone else’s behavior as good or bad, you have to say what happened and how you reacted. You are not an authority on how the other person acted and reacted, because you’re not their combination of experiences or family history. Where it gets problematic is other people thinking I’m being a dick when I’m trying to say “I don’t live in your head, but you certainly live in mine.” Everything I wish I could tell them, but can’t because neither of us have time. I reflect on my problems in the third person when I do.

They’re free to read it, but when they do, they often think that I’m writing the way something went down to hurt them, when I’m trying to understand me. This is not limited to Supergrover, because I talked about her yesterday. This is every single person in my life who is threatened by the fact that I write. She told me at last interaction that I was entitled to all my stories, and I hope to God that’s true. I would never say anything to negatively affect her on purpose, and I’ll leave it at that.

Not just Supergrover, everyone in my life so far has thought about the negative things I’ve said more than the positive. If they can’t give me hell, they take it out on Lindsay because she’s local. I’m not Walter Winchell. I’m Brene Brown in real life. How her stories of “the story you’re telling yourself” play out in an anxious/avoidant trauma bond and how most people have them with their parents even when they haven’t been emotionally or sexually abused. Just as often the child has one style before and one style after. The style after is a mask, a myth we made in the middle of the mess to cope. The relationship with an abuser is always an anxious/avoidant attachment because the kid is so keyed up about accidentally giving someone away, and the adult is a monster, shearing a sheep many times because you can only skin it once.

Just so Supergrover doesn’t get wires crossed and think I’m saying my abuse repeated and she’s the monster, let me take a second and reassure her that’s not what happened at all. We’re just two different attachment styles because of who we are as people, and it’s the two adult attachment styles that have the most compatible wounds because our emotional blind spots are completely different. People who have an avoidant/attachment style have it because someone withheld love from them when they didn’t act as planned, especially their abuser, the one they’ve been programmed to think of as God. Your personality goes back to the moment your reality broke, the moment you became responsible for secrets too big for you to carry…. because the way you’re covering it up is counter to how you used to act, it’s taken as a behavioral issue and few people are smart enough to outsmart a child who’s been programmed not to trust their parents or therapist.

I ran toward Supergrover not because of anything illicit like an affair. It’s that her inner circle feels like being part of Lindsay’s, where I can’t tell people everything she’s working on, even when it affects me directly- like Lindsay’s hand in queer legislation but on different issues. I have been programmed to be a confidant from childhood, and it’s a whole other thing to choose to hear stories that are large rather than to have them put on your shoulders during years 12-14; you don’t even know enough to know that adults don’t do that to kids when they’re healthy. It’s the same dynamic as when a parent’s a drunk- the inversion of parent/child roles. With Supergrover, I get to bring my whole self to the table. I don’t forget about the past, I use it to inform my future. Supergrover and I just did that thing where fools rush in. Now she thinks I want her to tell her my stories so that I have more material, and I think that the reason I have to process so much on my own is that she’s ok with letting me twist in the wind and it is not okay. There are three sides to every story…. yours, mine, and the objective truth. Peace is found in knowing that I am finding my truth and reaching for the objective. But I don’t know the whole story, I know as much as I’m allowed to hear.

While that’s happening, Lindsaay told me I can write the story of us and our ugly stepsisters and to say whatever the fuck I want. My mother and her husband are both dead, and we no longer speak to their family. We just want to move on. The gist of it is that Lindsay found out about the funeral from Facebook. Our stepsisters didn’t even tell us when the graveside service was so we could be there when he was buried next to our mother. I’m going to do a saga, I’m not just mentioning it. I want to find the objective truth, the third eye looking down on both sides. I can’t know the story they told themselves, but I know the story of how it made me feell.

I will find it by writing it out, and so might they. But they’d never let me open the book.

Bold of You to Assume

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 3 Comments

What would your life be like without music?

Bold of you to assume that I would have the life I have without music at all. I accidentally got an arranged marriage out of it because we told each other we loved, admired, and trusted each other to a level that it’s been a disaster every time we’ve tried to separate. I got this “job,” not unwanted, just problematic and have had it for 10 years. Being together and separate creates a different set of consequences, so the music I listen to varies by what I have to say and how I know it’s going to affect me. For this entry, it will be “Nobody Knows,” by The Tony Rich Project. It expresses our problems greatly, and also explains why she’s the woman I think of when I hear “Short Skirt, Long Jacket” and “Love You Madly,” and that last one is to reclaim it from another face due to pain. She’s a 3D character. 😉

Additionally, I’m sure Mel is upset that I haven’t finished my food entries, because they cut deep (due to tapping into my work history) and I want her to think they’re good. It would help if she heard Beethoven’s ninth symphony instead of the blues (not that there’s anything wrong with the blues, but if you hear it after you cook, you’ve probably fucked up).

If I can impress both of us, then I’ve impressed the rest of our clan because I’m American and she’s Indonesian (living in the UK).

However, I need to process and I’ll tell you the music I listened to at the end and how it inspired this. I’ll say it first and then I’ll say it again. Sometimes you accidentally create a right-hand ring and resent it. I want to be her Lord John Grey and I’m totally her Frank. I want to describe what that’s like in detail for myself in another 10 years. I don’t write about what I do know, I write about what it’s like for me not to get it.

My food entries get more attention than everything else because it’s more universal, but everything else explains a relationship between adults where both are traumatized in different ways and how they act toward each other as adults- when the abuse happened in childhood. My friend Donna wrote a book called “Never the Same,” about kids who lose parents and siblings. It could be a title for abused kids as well. These pages are more important than anyone will ever know, because if I could be more specific, I could reach even more people in the shit with this kind of bond in a more specialized way. It’s a different thing to love someone with a power imbalance this big, because priorities are ironclad out of necessity. You will never be number one on the call sheet, and if you have different romantic partners, you won’t be number two, either.

Even more when the person who is more powerful pretends the imbalance isn’t there until she just can’t anymore because she can’t plan a future, either. Isn’t mindful that though she has a partner, kids, parents, and siblings, our situation is unique to theirs by a wide margin except her partner. Dana and I weren’t a team on this, and neither were they when I actually needed Michael more than her, because only he would know what was up. She has entrusted me and hung me out to dry. I deserved it, and we still can’t get around the facts. The only one that can help me is the one who least wants to do it, and not even because I was an asshole. She doesn’t make me a priority because she can’t.

She’s not a fixer/pleaser in her work life, but she is at home because she feels guilty and no one can lift it. Her power imbalance with herself is the same one she has with me, so when she digs deep, there’s no one to tell her to release them and find more small joys. I need her to have solid memories of everything good about her life so that when she gets hard on herself, she can see how much people love her.

Even me, the one that gets passed over. In part I think that’s because she can’t, because I’m not part of her inner circle and she’d have to figure out a reason she’d need to be in Washington at hours she doesn’t need to be there, because she’s not very good at it…. and now she can’t joke with her husband that she has to go see her sidepiece because she wouldn’t think that was funny, because it’s been long enough for me to resolve those issues and apparently not enough for her. I used to joke that we were having an affair under everyone’s noses, because you can’t imagine how much truth there is to that.

To Michael:

I was only using a euphemism for the adrenaline and dopamine rush and I have been the whole time.

She never did anything inappropriate in case you haven’t been reading over her shoulder. If you had been, I still would have been an absolute jackass because my brain chemicals still would have been turned up to 11, but when I came down you would have realized immediately that I was no threat. I was just high, like other people in your lives except the drugs were street legal. If it didn’t happen to you, too, I can’t imagine why. Seriously. We could write a book together that we couldn’t publish. I asked her if she needed a book like it, but didn’t take in that my part’s done. If you divorce her, no you didn’t and make that clear.

Don’t ever make anything blow up in her face and let her believe that you mean it, the lecture you would have given me that I should have thought of on day one. I said it in the heat of the moment. I never want either of you to think that because I’m a blogger, that means I’m a threat. And even then, I threatened to call for help. I am not trying to be threatened or threatening, I am trying to handle/fix it in myself without hurting her, and I don’t know when I’m leaving breadcrumbs, because I only need 15 minutes to establish what’s okay and what’s not; I’ve realized that my promises to her are bigger than yours by nature of what we do, not who we are to each other. I will promise to keep her even if she doesn’t promise to keep me.

God help your soul no matter how she and I play out, because if we stay apart and I find out you guys divorce, there will be dragon fire because mine is getting stronger every day. If we reconcile and you guys support me the way I support you, then you’re really fucked because then you have to deal with both of us simultaneously. I already know we’re a handful jointly and severally. But, according to the prevailing wisdom, she’s a handful on her own and you’re capable. Good luck and God bless. But know that I’ll love you in a very concrete way until I die, because she’ll let you know what her emotional needs are when she can’t let me for reasons.

The “honeymoon phase” doesn’t last long in most relationships, and we accidentally created a habit where we needed to lean on each other like we were using each other as furniture and both felt threatened enough to run at every chance it was available. I threatened to blow up her life because she blew mine to hell and wouldn’t deal with the fact that she affected my life’s course without accepting that it had played out with an anxious attachment style trauma bonded to an avoidant attachment style. It’s how most people who are abused cope. They don’t know their own attachment styles and love languages because to dive into that means you realize that you’ve been protecting yourself by dealing with everyone else’s bullshit while ignoring your own. It’s too hard and it hurts too much.

When you completely lose who you are, your reality break will dictate how you sway. When your reality breaks as a child because you’ve been sexually or emotionally abused, the abuser and the child form an anxious/avoidant attachment style because the power imbalance is absolute. You’ll search for it all the time, wanting the push pull of being abused and not learning to accept more. I had higher emotional standards for friendship, but not time together. Quality over quantity. When Supergrover got my letters, she read them as “you’re a bad person and that’s why I don’t like you.” I wasn’t judging her, I was making a case. I felt like I had to keep making it over and over because I saw our pattern for what it was and knew it would never break on its own. If you doo what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve allready got.

She couldn’t answer without anger because forgiveness was the story she was telling me while also holding in a lot of anger because she thought she couldn’t trust me anymore & I proved to her beyond a shadow of a doubt that she was the most important person in my life because of what I do, and it didn’t help because her presence doesn’t help her, because she doesn’t think I think she’s wonderful despite all her flaws and failures. The failures are just where we need to resolve conflict, not where we need to beat up on each other.

I opened up about her so we could resolve everything and move on. She thought I was lecturing her on what a bad person she was. Who would want to get close to someone like that? Love has to be built when you’ve both been thoughtless.

She doesn’t take in that my anxious attachment is causing me pain, I get angry at being ignored for years on end.

Because she can’t take in that I’m a Christian and she’s not, she doesn’t take in that I’m trying to be the peace that calms her by praying for her and she thinks I’m trying to make her life hell.

She ignores the fact that I use her face when I’m praying just to put a personal spin on what God is, the place in me where I can talk about my most epic fails and rise from the ash. Therefore, I am trying to find the place where the peace inside her is also her. I dig into myself to teach her how to love me, trying to lead from the back by laying out all my worst flaws first. One of my valleys of vulnerability is where she’s the choice woven into me like the Impossible Girl on Doctor Who, while also feeding The Master.

I sent her a whole ass essay on why this was, and she thought I was saying she was a bad person. That was the day I listened to Bolero on repeat to slow my heartbeat to a manageable level. I know without a shadow of a a doubt I am more important than her family in some ways, and I’m not knocking any of them. I’m playing on a unique field, and I feel like a goalie who doesn’t know which team she’s playing this week.

I saw a meme that made me laugh for this very reason….. a little kid who was jealous of the other team getting to change colors every week and his mom had to explain to him that they were, in fact, different teams.

(If you can’t handle me at my Supergrover, you don’t deserve me at my  Bourdain. I am laughing uproariously. I don’t care what stuff of mine you read, it’s just funny because I hold myself to the same standard. Unfortunately, I’m not that great a writer and I still have to read it.)

It happens more often than any other pattern. The person who holds everything back is attracted to the one who can emote, and the dance of intimacy is fighting with someone you’re completely addicted to in a literal sense. You can’t separate because the brain chemicals when you’re together. It’s not a sweet waltz. It’s the Habanera with emotional guns blazing because the swings are extreme. Those extremes don’t settle any if the relationship is platonic. You can fight with your siblings this way, too, because generally you shut down after abuse and your reactions are that way with everyone no matter how close you are.

I have broken my streak of 60-odd days just to listen to music, sleep, and relax. My body can’t lean towards insomnia forever, so I caught up. My body has a binge/purge relationship with sleeping, so I use music to help me stay awake AND asleep. They’re just different moods.

The alarms on my phone are NI**as in Paris (Kanye and Jay-Z) and Rap God (Eminem). I love both those songs, but the rhythm gets into my head and I can’t go back to sleep, especially when Em gets into 32nd and 64th note patterns while still being able to make out what he’s saying. It’s incredible. I couldn’t do it at gunpoint. I can’t do 64th note melismas while I’m singing without oxygen in the middle, and he did so well he published it and that song is famous across the world. Eminem is the modern-day Bach in that one album, because you cannot tell me that word-based melismas are easier than the ones in Mass in B Minor. Not possible.

If you have gotten to this point, thank you for reading. Each paragraph flowed into another as I was processing out loud the enormous difference between my ideal future and the one I’ve created. INFJs always search for the ideal and generally want relationships where the other person is also interested in it………….. yet will settle for being unhappy because so few people are like us and we don’t know enough to find them. I’m an INFJ. Daniel is an INTJ. Both our realities are broken for different reasons, neither more important than the other.

Daniel said that he had been in love with me for 36 years. I know why, but this is conjecture. He knew to want love from someone who’d give it to him in the way he could hear it, even when Supergrover has needs that trump his, because he knows what it’s like to desperately need help with stories you have to hold inside you while also popping smoke. He would understand when I joked that I was having an affair with Michael’s wife. That she and I share a more important bond so it is what it is whether he likes it or not.

We’re a handful, and he’s capable.

Editor’s Note:

This entry was inspired by Jason Moran’s complicated rhythms on “Ten,” because it helps me make connections faster than Tony Rich. I also listened to Wynton Marsalis’ “From the Plantation to the Penetentiary” and “Let the Bright Seraphim” with Kathleen Battle. It was like listening to a symphony in terms of odd numbers in movements vs. even. I enjoy making the playlist, and she enjoys running to Eminem and blasting Cake. Waking up to Rap God isn’t an accident, and I’ve set it for every morning.

Michael and I are toast (in a very funny way). We know it like the backs of our hands, because one of us forgot our real books because of ADHD and his is coded because he’s a normal person….. and even if I could read from it, I’d have to transpose.

Keeping on the Lights

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

For Dana and Supergrover, because they deserve to know what happened and why, and also why they’re the loves of my life and would have been for all time if we had been a team.

I’ve learned to keep the backlight on when I type, because if I keep the RGB going, there’s less of a chance that the Bluetooth connection will drop.

It’s a metaphor for my life.

Being with Supergrover is different in every way possible depending on how she’s connected to you. I’m one of the ones inside the wire. Just like Lindsay doesn’t tell me everything, but there’s more a chance that I’ll be bored by it than anything else.Yet, I broke up with Dana because there are two examples in my past where she betrayed my confidence, so I knew that when Supergrover could trust me, I couldn’t trust Dana and I was out.

I hinted that to both. I didn’t want to lay it all on the table back then because I couldn’t tell her that I had a solid reason for moving to DC that included Supergrover, and I didn’t tell Supergrover that because she would have thought I was guilting her when I wanted to be her hero. She was already mine. Moving was only an attempt to put physical distance between Dana and me, and to give physical proximity to someone who might want it, might not. Obviously, I’m not bothered with sharing physical space because I’ve been friends for 10 years with Supergrover despite buying coffee for each other and not drinking it together… We’re still friends in my mind because we’ll always be on each other’s radar whether we talk or not and I don’t want to live in enmity.

We all would have had a much more traumatic relationship if it had gotten worse. Both would feel guilt if I expressed something I thought of as a problem to work through, not an indictment on our relationship. I sent both of them away when they wouldn’t open up anymore because I was lost in my own world without it.

I, in a very real sense, had fallen in love with the one person I couldn’t marry or divorce. When we try to stay apart long term, something will happen here that gets noticed. I’m hampered as a writer. I had to remain devoted to her for both our sakes and vice versa, impossible when you don’t talk to an empath. I had to learn not to want that, though. I am attracted to emotionally unavailable people, now more than ever because I can maintain my own boundaries and don’t truly need anyone, but I’d like them.

I left them behind because they couldn’t talk about their boundaries.

I forgave Supergrover for the things she’d done that made me angry in a concrete way. She talked around everything. Empaths don’t do that. I can detect by energy when you’re holding something back. Supergrover would wait until she was absolutely overwhelmed and pop off at me; she put me on the back burner until she was stressed out. Then, she’d blame me for being insistent when I told her that I’d do anything to stop notifications on her phone if she did want to read and didn’t have time. I wasn’t telling her to be johnny on the spot, so she thought I was a dictator when I was responding in real time. Kindness went unnoticed emotionally, but showed itself in our thoughtful gifts.

I just didn’t see we couldn’t divorce before and I went all out in being an idiot fuckboi. She was straight, but that was only one issue. She was taken and she didn’t tell me, so I was playing with fire.

I hoped she was sapiosexual because I’m a silver-penned devil. She wasn’t, but I didn’t care. She still made a great character in my life. Dana encouraged my romantic feelings by telling me Supergrover was hiding them and she’d never make the first move. I can’t think of when I’ve ever believed anything so stupid. I can’t think of a reason Dana would do that if not to just add kindling to the fire and break up faster without telling me she wanted it. She was nice and not kind.

It would have tracked to me that she wanted to see me fail. I became addicted to the drinks Supergrover was serving. Just straight up Narcotics Anonymous. Dana would understand absolutely all the way around because she knows Supergrover thanks to me and I wished she didn’t, because that was a large part of our divorce. Not trusting Dana was more of import than she realized when she betrayed my trust with multiple other friends, and anyone would’ve in this situation but not when they refuse to see it.

Because we can fly now, Supergrover told me what she drives so I figure that if coming to visit me was a priority, she’d survive the cattle call at Southwest. Virtually, she’s grown into my guard dog here, but it’s taken so much time for us both to stretch out………….. which is the perfect description of what our relationship should do rather than both of us trying desperately to move on because we’re addicted to being strangers on a train and repelling each other because of our careers.

Our notifications are every bit as addicting as crack, and that is true on both sides even when we don’t respond right away. I’m just wrapped too tight because I think she still feels threatened and she is because she doesn’t know when the other shoe is going to drop, so she doesn’t tell me anything that calms me. I ratchet up her anxiety by being me, in whom she has trusted and gotten burned. I need her in my life for very concrete, objective reasons and yet I am passed over for the subjective because the objective is not important to either of us right up until it is. The objective is something that she would only tell a partner, and she doesn’t see it that way because she’s not me and doesn’t have to filter every day. Her story is based on seeing everything about my reality while she’s thinking I’m aiming at destruction. It is not true. I am not kidding when I say she’s the love of my life and will be whether I want it that way or not because we both made the ultimate fuck up and can’t get over it.

Words matter.

She changed my life with them, and didn’t accept that the way she did it would affect my future. She’d send me everything except her heart, which makes me take my fair share of bullshit, not that I don’t create it on my own.

I’m begging for growth. We are dealing with a situation I can’t write about publicly so I write to her. If she denies that fact and doesn’t have a connection to me, I could make a mistake that hurts her and I just don’t want to do it.

I proved that I was just as paranoid as she was and not just with Dana. I gave her relief when she realized that if I got close to someone mutual, they could be dangerous to her. Neither of us wanted it to happen. She just wanted it more than I did, so I gave her that gift…………………….. but I told her why it hurt and it was a mistake. She saw me as bitter when I just wanted her to recognize that I was willing to do whatever it took to keep her. I was in it for the long haul.

I began seeing another woman that didn’t need to become a mutual friend. I didn’t know that was a possibility and got rid of her quickly. That second one was huge in a way that she took in and thanked me, but she didn’t give me any more trust capital than she did before. Instead of realizing that I was protecting her like she was protecting me, she focused on her guilt. She would lash out at me when I needed anything, so I felt like she took up much more room in the relationship by necessity, but didn’t recognize that she also became my confidant out of necessity and expected me to put up with it without saying anything. I didn’t feel bad about anything she said. I felt like I wasn’t allowed to need anything, ever, but instead of taking care of each other, we turned our fire.

It broke our triangle because Dana didn’t write to her as often as I did, so they never maintained a relationship. It caused a divide and conquer move, because I told Dana something she didn’t get to hear and I didn’t know that. Then, I did something that couldn’t be forgiven and it wasn’t, because she treated me completely differently and things never went back to normal- even after years of apologies.

I’m stepping out on a ledge, because my behavior didn’t make sense to anyone back then, and I want to lift the curtain because it was so much more reasonable than I could tell people it was. I came across as a lovesick teenager at that time in my life, when the situation was actually dire. Hopefully, this will explain a little about why I was so flipped out in other people’s heads, and so logical when no one was looking for it.

Dear Supergrover,

If you can say that I’m still goading and provoking instead of asking for information after I wrote you something that I thought you’d actually take in, then I know this relationship is completely dead. There is no two-way communication, and there never will be. We cannot do any better than this, and it’s a train wreck, all because you say you can do nothing about telling me how you feel.

How I feel is that once trust was broken, you just wanted to be a fan, and I thought you were reaching out to get closer. When I accidentally texted you, that was it for me. I was shamed beyond belief because you didn’t believe for one second that it was an accident until I wrote out what happened on my blog and you dropped in two days later. I wasn’t telling you to come back. I was explaining to my readers that I’d done something wrong.

Editor’s Note:

She thought I was trying to harass her when I absolutely wasn’t and felt threatened. Therefore I was surprised that a woman who thought I was threatening her still wanted to be friends. It didn’t seem logical, and I wanted to know why she wanted me back, in a sense. If I had to guess, it’s because it felt to me like I’d feel when someone was hate fucking me.

You’re charged up with adrenaline when you fight, and it’s the equivalent of us taking Adderrall when one of you is not ADHD. I become an addict very, very quickly because dopamine is more like Adderrall than any other drug.. You feel it immediately and it’s just as powerful as three energy drinks at once. Neurotypical people buy Adderrall and spin out, because they crave it- it’s so great in the short-term. The side affects will slowly ruin your life, which is in a very real sense exactly what happened between us. Supergrover has different needs from most people and I’m one of them. I was getting high on dopamine and she wasn’t handling a crash she caused. But we have a solid reason to keep getting high off each other. She said “I’m sure I’ll drink your liquor as well.” We’re both drunk as fuck and don’t know how to talk about it. Doesn’t stop the addiction. We wouldn’t have lasted this long if we could kick it. The thing, though, is that when we’re working on all cores and threads, we are unstoppable. We make each other’s minds better, but we blew the idea of divorce out of the water like we were shooting skeet. That’s because now we’re both unhappy and connected irrevocably.

You got stuck when my mother died, because you didn’t tell me you only wanted to be a fan, but now it’s eight years later and you still act like I have no trust capital at all, berating me for all my opinions and putting words into my mouth. I do the same thing to you because you don’t say anything and I have to fill in all the gaps on my own. You seem amused until I actually want to talk about an issue and you don’t.

There’s not an issue you actually want to talk about anymore, it’s just avoidance no matter what I do or say. I didn’t have to move to DC to break up with Dana because it would have been the right move whether I’d stayed in Houston or not. because what you fail to realize and have for a long time is that telling me the secrets we share was a divide and conquer move, because when you were displeased, I didn’t want to tell Dana anything ever again. I know you had no idea what you were setting in motion, therefore there is nothing to blame except the situation, not you.

I had never kept any secrets from Dana before, therefore I had no idea how it would play out. But would I trade this relationship for that one with almost nine years of reflection? Fuck no.

I would have traded *anything* for the first two years alone. Anything.

I wish I’d managed myself better, because it wouldn’t have turned you into the wire monkey I cling to despite the lack of cloth. It’s not a slam, it’s reality.

You know how I feel about you and you’ve been okay with it unless I actually needed to tell you something and have you respond. How you can ignore the good while focusing on the bad is easy to take in, because you’re a Timeless Child just like me. The trauma bond bears little resemblance to you personally. It’s that we both trauma dumped and handfasted, then I spiraled out and you didn’t. I can respect you not having empathy for bipolar or ADHD, but I cannot respect you protecting yourself forever based on that mistake when I have gone so far and above to prove to you that you’re safe.

I’m a cook/writer. Do you think that sharing my resources with you was easy?

Of course it wasn’t, but it was the only way I knew how to put my thoughts into something you might accept as an apology because words weren’t doing it and gifts did. You could see changed behavior that you didn’t with letters in a concrete way. I didn’t do it to spend money, I did it to turn my love language into action the way I would have if you’d ever let me buy you that beer Aaron still owes you.

Now you won’t step up at all, and I know my place. So far, it is not with you. If I have to ask you to carry the bricks, you’re not the one I should be building with. And if that fills you with rage, so be it, because you haven’t changed your behavior in a way I could see it. Where are the words that mean as much to me as actions mean to you? I have told you that my love is real through both, but you only seem to count one.

I love this city and I’m glad you’re here, but DC is home. I can keep tallying up the reasons that it is good for me, and your fear of me moving here put me into a chokehold. You asked Dana if you needed a restraining order when I’d only told you 50 times that I missed DC and I needed to get out of Houston. That didn’t change just because I was spiraled out, and I did get better. We just kept fighting because I was so bitter about it.

So, when I tell you that you’re harping on me by telling me I’m a judgmental dickhead all the time, it will not stand that you just keep doing it.

So, before you entirely write me off, know that I think you probably do take care of your friends. I just think that I am no longer one of those people and you’ve just been lying to me all these years because you were lying to you and you haven’t done anything to prove me wrong. I don’t put much stock into SBUX. It’s not that it’s not great, it’s that it can’t be the thing that helps both of us move on.

You’ll listen when I’m all about the gifts and adoration, but not when there’s a problem. You think that a problem means I think less of you, when I’m just trying to say there’s a problem. It doesn’t mean anything in terms of the way I think about you, but I’m done having to listen to it.

When you start treating me like you actually forgive me instead of shutting down, you’ll be allowed back into my circle. If you don’t, I will know that I just chose the pattern I love the most…. that it was always about finding someone emotionally unavailable and trying to please them because I didn’t have the skills to do anything else.

I have acknowledged my humanity and have told you my thought process. You keep yours hidden. That’s why I think you need to get yourself together. It’s that if you’re emotionally available with your husband and your other friends, then I’m the only one you have this pattern with and therefore you think it’s completely invalid. I think that’s because you’re hiding the fact that we’re not really friends.

I stepped up and you didn’t. It’s been eight years. I do not deserve this. You can disagree with me and change your mind, but you can’t be the friend that rips me a new asshole every time you can’t talk about something due to your own protective reflexes.

I talk about every reaction as if you’ve done something because of me because I don’t know when our relationship is affected by outside influences and you won’t correct any of my assumptions.

When you give me no information, you can’t be angry I don’t have it. I wanted to correct that problem, and you bailed.

Nothing about this is my problem anymore. I just wanted to tell you yet again that my feelings/issues are valid. I deserved more than this. I deserve more than this.

Editor’s Note:

I should have told her I loved her at the end, but I didn’t. Everything in our relationship boils down to how I say things. If she focuses on my anger, it’s easier to push me away. So, to her, I do love you. More than you’ll ever know. See past e-mail for details.<3