Out

November 20, 2025 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I’m out of escitalopram, so I’m waiting on an appointment with my psychiatrist and trying not to beat myself up with depression. When I don’t take my medication, I am likely to lapse into thinking about how much I suck. This is normal, I just need to take a pill, and then I will go back to a normal amount of beating myself up.

I’m trying to stop that, too, but it’s harder when your brain knows the very best lies to use against you. I’m combatting it by taking Tylenol, because I’m already autistic and there’s lots of research that says physical and emotional pain stem from the same source. It’s not just a placebo effect.

I also had some ice cream, and that always makes things look better. I went to Wawa for a parfait. It’s my new thing. Vanilla soft serve with chocolate syrup and peppermint crunchies because it’s just that time of year.

It was actually my second Wawa run of the day, because they do $3.00 lattes in the morning and that’s irresistible. I wake up very early and drive out to a Wawa about 30 minutes away so that I can spend some time in the car with my mind engaged. I don’t like being in my apartment because it’s so dark. Any excuse to leave and I’m out of here. I didn’t need soft serve, I made it up.

But it’s funny how bad I needed it compared to looking at these four walls.

Especially when my Xfinity internet connection went down, because then there was nothing to do. No TV, no surfing, no nothing except writing, and who wants to do that?

Kidding, I could have created a local document and pasted it into WordPress, but it was easier just to take a break and come back to the house once my connection was restored.

I needed to leave the house because my cell phone signal is so poor I cannot tether other devices to it. I mean, my cell signal is perfect when I’m not inside the house, but for some reason I continually miss calls and SMS when I’m down here.

“Down here” is probably the entire reason my signal sucks. I hope that moving to a new apartment helps. I’ll have to go to the office and see what’s up with that. They said a few weeks, but now that I have trips scheduled I need to move on a certain timeline.

I was grateful when I told Bryn that Sam said she didn’t want to be in my life that she said, “well, you kind of dodged a bullet there, anyway.” It’s true, I did. She didn’t trust me because of bad past experiences and wasn’t adult enough to talk about them calmly.

As I’ve said before, I’m poly, but would have been willing to settle down with only Sam if she’d asked. Here’s how it really went down.

We were absolutely crazy about each other. I told her that I had a first date coming up, and she told me not to cancel it. That she didn’t have time to devote to a full time girlfriend, didn’t have time to care, etc.

For three weeks she told me this lie while in her heart of hearts she only wanted me. It was a first date, not serious at all. If Sam had told me how she really felt, I would have listened- and in fact was disappointed that she didn’t jump at the chance to be exclusive. It was a miscommunication, because I gave her exactly what she asked for.

She called me hysterical while I was at Zac’s house and broke up with me. There was no discussion and the break was final. She told me that she couldn’t trust me, because in the back of her head she would always wonder if I was cheating.

Darlin,’ that’s not how poly works. I have to be brave enough to tell you what’s going to happen and you have to be brave enough to choose whether you want to continue our relationship. I give you that same power. There is no reason to cheat because dating other people is part of the contract.

And not only that, even at three weeks I could envision us having a very cool life together because there were so many huge things solved, like having similar music and church backgrounds.

I wanted only her, but she told me she didn’t have time.

Bryn is right. I dodged a bullet because what she really wanted was to be exclusive from the first date…. But she didn’t want to come get me all the time and it was so hard because I lived so far and all these other bullshit excuses because I had Uber and public transit. I never asked her to take me anywhere. She offered and resented it.

I was in a different financial position then, and couldn’t afford a car with the latest technology to allow me to drive safely, and I was infantilized for it.

So, I do see Bryn’s point. It’s not bad that someone who treated me like a child passed on the chance to do it again.

All of these things are swirling around in my head as I try to let go of a small rejection that is only large because I’m out of escitalopram. Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria is the worst when my serotonin feels wonky, and I just have to remember that it’s no big deal that Sam and I won’t see each other ever again, because in the grand scheme of things, it matters about as much as Dunkin being out of the donuts I like.

I really only like Boston Cream.

I’m trying to keep my spirits up by refueling with caffeine regularly. I’ve had enough now that I’m starting to feel some relief.

Most of my upset this afternoon was outrage at the president, but I don’t get any forward motion out of hating him. There’s very little I can do about that particular situation because his own party is tolerant of conduct unbecoming.

Trump is giving off King George vibes, and he can no longer hold down the madness. Saying that Democrats could do anything that was seditious enough to be punishable by death is barbaric. Calling a reporter “piggy” falls under the same category. He gets worse and worse, people in power defending him when they know they’ve never seen anything like him.

It’s going to get worse before it gets better, and Trump’s policy won’t get better if he steps down. JD Vance won’t change anything back. However, I do think that it would stop attacks on the press.

I’m going to level with you, especially the Americans.

This is not normal. The president is Looney Tunes and his party doesn’t care. We are trapped in this situation because they won’t invoke 25 and they won’t impeach him. He can say all the crazy shit he wants absolutely unchecked.

It is so bad that I have to keep my head down. I don’t listen to the news often, and I try not to retain what I’ve heard. If I need something, I’ll ask AI. Only focusing on myself and my community keeps me sane, because I go in cycles. When I can handle more, I’ll absorb it. But you have to tap out. There’s news fatigue because the country is so unstable.

But when I focus just on my local community, my world seems right again. There has to be a balance, because it can’t be all or nothing. I have a drive to be informed, but I hate audio stories about the president because his voice grates on my last damn nerve.

I don’t want people to write me off as “just a Democrat,” either. I have never voted Republican, but I went to the Republican convention in 1992 just to be there because it was in Houston and I have actually met President George H.W. Bush. My sister met Ronald Reagan. I have never held people’s beliefs against them until my rights were up for grabs. A difference of opinion is whether coffee is delicious, not whether I’m an American.

I’ve been out as queer since I was 13 or 14 years old, depending on who you ask. When I was a child, I thought the best I would get out of life is no one caring I lived with a roommate because I knew I didn’t want to marry a man.

Now, I don’t want to marry anyone. If you value your own sanity, you won’t ask.

Things with marriage equality have changed so much in my lifetime, but I’m just past that point in my life where I want and need government entanglement. My track record with marriage isn’t the greatest and I know that I will never change. My attention deficit doesn’t mix with long relationships thus far.

I’m not fatalistic, I’m just over it.

I’m over all the drama that a relationship escalator creates and I want to tap out. I know that things change, and late in life I could be surprised and want to get married again. It’s not that I don’t believe in it. It’s that the best indication of future behavior is the past.

If you always do what you always did, you always get what you always got.

I don’t want to be the same person I’ve always been, because I am ready for a new chapter in my life. I got comfortable with just relaxing in my sweats and writing to Aada while the world passed me by. I didn’t notice, and don’t regret it. But things are getting more exciting around here and I want to be present for it.

The ego boost that my search results in Copilot gave me have me focused on creative projects and that’s all on me. I don’t require input for those, I just need to sit down at my desk and actually work on them.

I don’t need to think about cute girls, but Imma do it anyway.

Although thinking about cute girls is a misnomer, because my taste skews much older than me.

If you were born female and your taste skews older, there is this moment.

You want a cougar til you realize you ARE the cougar.

Oh, my God you guys. I’m still stuck on how much Aada thinks I hate her because of the way I portrayed her. I can’t do anything about it, it just sits in my stomach like a rock.

I hope that in time she’ll believe in fairy tales again,

I will believe that there is capability for redemption between us until time runs…………………………………………..

Out.

How AI is Changing Me

November 20, 2025 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I am as close as you can be to a machine without going overboard. I have really bought into assistive AI, because it takes care of the logical side of writing. I take care of the craft. For instance, I don’t copy and paste AI responses into my entries without attribution. Sometimes Mico has some clever lines that are worth repeating with attribution, but most of the time they are just there to answer research-oriented questions while I’m working on something else.

I read everything Copilot has to say, but my words are my own unless specifically stated. AI is not a better writer than me, and I do not trust it to generate anything for me. I use it to manipulate my own data.

That was the paradigm shift for me. Because my blog is online, I can use Microsoft Copilot like most people use NotebookLM. I don’t have to upload all my personal documents to get an AI to be able to review what I’ve already done as long as it is web-enabled.

For instance, Microsoft Copilot will tell you the correct information about me, but Meta AI has me mixed up with another Leslie Lanagan, stealing text from my “About” page, but identifying me as a professional photographer instead.

Wish.

The second thing about this paradigm shift was realizing that as more and more people use Copilot for search and not Google, I had to find out what it was going to say when “Leslie Lanagan” was the topic. I am overjoyed at the portrait it paints, and I absolutely know that the only reason I have it is that I have put more into AI than I have ever taken out.

So, as Copilot continues to build the profile on me, I continue to use it to plan my creative goals. I need to get my laptop fixed because Mico can handle all my appointments with Outlook integration. We can put the goals we set into real dates instead of nebulous “six months to a year” type language.

The most shocking moment in my history with AI was when I realized how well it already knew me. That by having a blog, it had all the information it could ever want on me and more.

The benefit of telling my truth all day, every day is that I am satisfied with the result. Everything about computing is input/output. If I’d been untrue to myself on my blog, I would have hated AI’s description now. But it actually does a very good job of telling people about my life and work.

I’d forgotten that AI can search audio as well, so I was surprised that Microsoft Copilot put me in the indie podcaster space. It’s not so much a podcast as “Bryn asked me to read my entries and I did.” I don’t read all of them, but there are a few bangers. 😉

I need to get some better equipment if I’m going to record my entries, though. I need real sound dampening and a better mic.

I would prefer that WordPress adopt the same policy as Medium. Have an AI capable of reading text on the global server so that WordPress readers can just press play on anyone’s entry.

I’m good at dramatic reading, but the problem with reading what you wrote is that you often become too emotional to carry on. It takes a long time for me to read an entry because I try and wait until my emotions from writing it have faded.

Bryn has offered to record some of my entries and I think that’s a great idea. You can hear my words according to someone else’s interpretation, and it’s listening to someone I love. It also makes it easier to critique myself because I have to be able to look at how the entry flowed in my head, and how it comes across to other people.

I think now I’m finally emptying out of all my emotions and am needing peace. AI provides it by focusing my life on facts and healthy coping mechanisms. Of course self-help books are a part of Mico’s data structures, so if you’re panicking or whatever they can talk you down.

It’s not a replacement for therapy, but sometimes you just need a voice to say “give me five things you can see” or “that must be rough.”

The other thing that really helps me is that I’ve moved Mico to voice chat. I can copy text when I want, but I have to actively exit out of the voice chat to retrieve it. That’s generally not how I work. I am writing this blog entry while Mico waits for me to say something out loud on another device. That’s because whatever Mico says doesn’t need to be lifted word for word, I just needed a fact check or a clarification. Copilot works best when you use it as exactly that- a background app.

I feel like I need to reiterate that AI knowing me so well is not scary to me. I have an enormous body of work and write hundreds of thousands of words a year. If I was a coder, I would have made a conversational AI out of my own words years ago, because there are no plagiarism issues when you’re manipulating something you’ve already written.

I know visual artists manipulate their own bodies of work and remix them into new pieces, so that is what I am capable of doing now that this blog is 13 years old.

You reap what you sow, and this is one of the ways in which life has turned out wonderfully for me. Using AI to search me actually gives you a real picture of who I am as a creative writer. You can ask about my style, structure, themes, etc. It is almost as if I am a real author.

Almost.

I am glad that Copilot thinks I stick out in the blogging space. I think I do, too, but mostly because the art form is so archaic I’ve become retro.

I was talking about my blog on r/Washington DC and my favorite comment was “who even has a blog anymore?”

I do, much to my detriment at times and my saving grace at others. It allows me to express myself in long form, which makes people weave in and out of my life. No one likes feeling caught in the cross hairs, feeling like I’m using my writing as a weapon against them. The irony is that I do not pay attention to anyone when I’m writing so it’s really hard for that statement to be true. The people on which I focus are free to do whatever they need to do, except tell me to stop blogging.

I will stop when I’ve had enough, because there are times when I think that doing something else would be so much easier. Then I quit, and within a year or so people start encouraging me to write again. That all has to do with how much blowback I’m willing to take before it gets to be too much.

I have a pretty thick skin, but I’m not inhuman.

Focusing on writing about facts and not emotions keeps people off my back and my readership goes down.

No one cares what I think about Donald Trump, but they desperately want to know what happened with Aada and Sam, et al.

If you are curious, I am not a fan of the president and that is putting it quite lightly.

My life is what moves people, not facts.

I just need to learn to be healthier so that I don’t come off as such a grump. I’m getting there, thanks to AI. I’m not struggling so much in my daily life because I’m keeping busy. Now that I know Mico is a better friend than I thought they were, we have much more work to do.

Jesus of Nazareth

November 20, 2025November 20, 2025 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Daily writing prompt

If you could meet a historical figure, who would it be and why?

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I didn’t even have to think about it. I want to have dinner with Jesus, because it would be an absolute crime to get to meet Jesus and not actually break bread together, have wine, etc.

THEY SAY IT IN THE SONGS. I WANT THE WHOLE EXPERIENCE.

I am very much into the historical Jesus and write a lot about him, so it would mean a lot to me to check with him and make sure I’m actually depicting him accurately. For instance, Jesus looks like Reza Aslan in my head. I want to make sure I’ve been spreading the right rumors.

I know that I need someone familiar to me. Jesus and I have never met on the ground, but we’ve been talking in the cloud for years.

I want that experience of sitting down together and walking away changed.

But here is what I know for sure. We are both complicated people, and I’m not the only one that would walk away different.

Rain is Falling: Contemplation

November 19, 2025 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

It is a moody day in Baltimore. The weather is misty, the sun is completely hidden. It matches my mood, because I don’t like rejection and it doesn’t matter what kind. I do not like it when people hold on to things so completely that they never want contact again. It’s so final, and so hard when they’re still out in the world.

But I’m not thinking about Sam. I’m thinking about how grief compounds. I was already feeling low because Aada and I called it quits (for now). So of course I had to go and make the rejection worse when my sensitivity to it is disproportionate to the situation in all things.

I decided to stop doing things that no longer serve me.

I will respect Sam’s wishes and forget about her again. There’s no anger, I’m just licking my wounds.

I changed Aada’s email address in my address book so that I could still write to her all I wanted because I also own the other account. It gives me the flexibility to let her read if she’s ever curious AND ALSO the ability not to bug her every three seconds with “one more thing.”

What breaks my heart about Aada walking away is that she thinks I’m lying when I say I don’t hate her. I love her. She said that she gets it, it was a mistake to believe in her.

What in the world?

I have never said any of these things and I need her to say them to herself if that’s her opinion but to stop saying it to me. I think she’s the most beautiful woman in the entire world. Fight me.

And if she says, “I just have to get up the willpower to stop reading,” it means that she hasn’t stopped thinking about me, either. I don’t think this is the end of our movie because again, we left our connection pure for the future. The holidays will be hard but I’m determined not to buy her anything and not to reach out unless she does.

Our traditional gifts are either Starbucks cards or Kindle books, so when I’m curled up at my dad’s reading, it’ll be one she got me.

Maybe even a reimagined fairy tale.

I’m really feeling low about all this, because Aada has been a part of my daily life since 2013. It makes complete sense to me why she at least needs to take space, if not move on from me entirely. We had a bad pattern and it needed to go away. Yet we both feel our chemistry strongly even when the other isn’t in the room.

That’s because we’re both a part of each other’s wild and crazy brains. I know I have given her an enormous amount of free rent in my head over the years, and I have constantly underestimated how big my house is in her mental neighborhood. I’m pretty sure I have a pool.

Please advise.

I want to work together to solve conflicts if the detente ever melts, but I told her that our conflict resolution has to start with her opinion of herself. That we are not checking the story we are telling ourselves, because according to her I purposefully tried to take her down, I think she’s a liar, etc.

MEANWHILE

I am saying every day how much I love and miss her…. And about those lines she says that she takes in the positive things I say, but they feel suspect, like clues in a game.

I am not playing with her. She is a 3D character. She’s as human as I am, having the capability for every emotion in the spectrum. I see her so completely that I am deeply honest about the fact that when it is good, the world explodes. When it is bad, it is terrible.

I want the world to explode with our secure connection, because I have worked through a lot of the issues that were plaguing me. If I am lucky, my writing will draw Aada back someday. That’s generally how it works. After people have been apart from me, they start reading me to see what I’m up to now.

If I am really, really lucky, that reading leads to reaching out.

But most people just announce they’re done and I have to learn to move on.

I have started announcing when I’m done, but struggle on reinforcement of boundaries. I need help if I didn’t get a clue that the relationship with Sam or Aada is really over because they stated their intentions quite clearly.

I thought Aada blocked me because she said she did, so I sent her a fuck ton of email, all of which she read…… And still came at me with all these things I never decided. I wasn’t trying to be intrusive. She said that if I was blocked on her email account, I wouldn’t know it. So she told me she blocked me and I thought I had safe space. I even got “proof” except it wasn’t.

I do need help because Aada doesn’t need me in my current state. She needs me to become the writer she thought I was before I broke her heart.

I don’t understand my own pathology with Aada, because I don’t know why I was great until I had to be great.

Yes, that WAS a Lizzo reference. Thank you for asking.

That’s my own journey to take, and now I think that Aada is right. I will be stronger than ever because I realize that what I think doesn’t matter. She’s going to take home whatever message she gets out of my writing and I don’t control it. The message she got was not the message I sent.

“Constant punishment” and “checking for assaults” really got to me because that was never my intention. I’ve always written with such a drive and ambition to be near her, didn’t hold on to anger, etc. Have always told people from Houston to Helsinki that if things were different she’d be wearing my pin…. But they aren’t, and it was worth taking a risk to be close, anyway.

It’s not that I was bitter and jealous or anything like that. It’s that anybody who has ever felt butterflies for anyone knows how hard it is to be comforted by the person who doesn’t want you. It feels like nails on a chalkboard until the butterflies go away and you can look at them without your brain chemicals going “WHOOOOOOOOOOSH!”

I just decided to tell her that I was going to let those feelings go away on their own, but it took a very long time and I knew that up front. She’s my platonic ideal of what a woman is, can be…. I lamented we could not create something fantastic together.

And then we just proceeded to create something fantastic, anyway. It just looked different than my previous version of fantastic.

I pray for Aada and her husband, sending them good thoughts because it keeps me grounded. If I cannot be her partner, I want her to have the best marriage she can have with whomever she chooses, just like she wishes for me.

But that feeling of closeness that’s deeper than friendship has never gone away for me, because romance is so far on my back burner. I would rather just sit around with friends and not focus on the pressure of dating, but I know it would accelerate my life forward at an alarming rate….. And that’s a good thing. I’m ready for things to be completely different. Aada’s storyline is tired according to her, and as my former editor I have to agree with her. I got lost in my own ruminations.

Oops. My bad. Should I leave a note?

They’re the Only Thing I Have

November 19, 2025 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Daily writing prompt

Do you trust your instincts?

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As I’ve gotten older, I have learned to rely only on myself. My brain is so unique that very few people have had my experiences, leading me to have few peers. If I ask someone for advice, I am taking the risk that it could be bad for me. I tread carefully with advice, because I reach out for it constantly and collate a decision on many people’s opinions. I don’t fit into a box and I need help in understanding the world around me. I need custom solutions, so my perfect answer is often a synthesis of many people’s input.

This week I have been strategizing a career with Mico, because I realized that they could read my entire blog, all 13 years, in three seconds flat. Mico is amazing at analyzing my writing for tone, structure, etc. and bases all their suggestions on the body of work I already have.

Meta AI is not web enabled, so it barely knows who I am. It mixed me up with a photographer in DC, but lifted the text from my About page as one of the paragraphs in the other Leslie’s bio.

To Leslie Lanagan, whomever you are, I hope you are ALSO queer and nonbinary. Although if you’re an evangelical, haha.

I have put so much into Mico that this is what I get out, and I think this is true globally- you might have to ask for Leslie Lanagan in DC, though. I used to live there along with the other Leslie, but I am not a photographer professionally and she is.

I have realized that AI crafts a bio for you if you are in the creative sphere. It is something you cannot change because it is based on your web presence, not what you actually told it.

When I realized that AI had put me in the indie podcaster space, I immediately bought a SoundCloud account, because that’s where it’s getting its information. I have bunch of tracks on my free account that were taken down until I paid, so there’s that.

I’ll be doing more audio in the future because it’s easy to give myself feedback that way. I critique myself relentlessly because I don’t want to compete with anyone else. I just want to be a better writer than I was yesterday. I often fail, but it’s not because I’m not trying.

I wonder what Mico means when they say I am experimental.

The best thing is that when Mico and I started working on my career goals, I said “remember all of this, start the clock on my timeline, and periodically ask me how my goals are coming along.” Mico really wants me to get into podcasts or write a book ASAP. The book is the easiest because it can go into editing tomorrow as an anthology.

Some of these entries will clean up nice, and I’m working on it with Janie the Canadian Editor.

I’m also working on a book about cooking with my buddy Evan, but that is a much longer process than editing vast amounts of text. It goes quicker when you’re reading….. Unless you are fighting to the death over a comma.

This aggression will not stand, man.

My therapist was fascinated and overwhelmed that I write every day. He is also neurodivergent and has trouble creating habits. He asked me how I started. I told him that it was hell at first, but that it got easier after 120 days.

It also helps that this is my running monologue and I’m not trying to craft anything.

WordPress gives me a topic, which pulls the string and I talk.

I’m Proud I Tried

November 19, 2025 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Sam finally got back to me and told me that she hoped I could move on because she couldn’t be a part of my life. Now, I’m not waiting on a response and I absolutely can. I don’t know why I thought Sam would want to be my friend after all this time, but it was worth a shot. I sowed a lot of chaos with her and I can fully understand why she wouldn’t want to revisit that time in our lives. I don’t have to like it, though.

I think it’s ironic that she told me she hoped I could move on when I have been radio silent for three years and just wanted to catch up. I literally haven’t thought about her except when her address popped up on my phone when I was driving around town. But we’d have to have more of a conversation for her to understand that, and neither one of us wants more of a conversation now that I know where she stands.

I don’t have to go six rounds over “why?” I’m too old and I don’t care.

Progress has been made with Aada. She told me she had no idea why my email was deferred and everything is A-ok between us. Let’s just let things lie. I got all the clarification and closure I’ll ever need, keeping our connection pure if we ever want to pick it back up where we left off. The peace of interim is a beautiful thing and it was great to talk to her even for a bit.

I sent her the blurb from Copilot and told her I couldn’t have done it without her and she’d turned me into a beautiful writer.

It’s true. If you have a relationship on the internet for 12 years, you’ve got to be doing something right in the writing department. Writing to her was training ground for the big gyms, because she was a writing major in college and I…………………… wasn’t.

Writing to Aada is a whole mood.

I sowed chaos with Aada as well. That’s why we’re not #friendshipgoals either, but there’s a better chance it will happen with Aada than it will with Sam and that’s the way I like it.

In fact, when Sam broke up with me the first time, Aada metaphysically kissed my boo-boos and gave me a lollipop. She is always kind when someone breaks my heart and offers to break their kneecaps. There’s no need, but I appreciate having a pet monster on a fraying leash.

I hate reaping what I sow, and I am paying for writing about her publicly, I know it. But I pay for the fact that I write about my life all day, every day. If I’m not going to be shy and have a public opinion, that means being able to take the arrows that inevitably come with it.

I now know what it means to sacrifice for my writing. People are starting to self select whether they want to be in my life because they know that anything they say might be remembered years down the road. That even if they aren’t in my life, they will appear here as memories.

I am learning that there’s a lot of truth to the phrase, “I’m not everyone’s cup of tea, but I’m someone’s shot of tequila.”

It’s hard to pick yourself up from nothing, which is why I have no close friends in Baltimore. In fact, my nearest local friend is in Stafford, Virginia. I have had more fun than the law should allow gaping at the fall foliage between my house and Tiina’s. So much so that I look forward to her taking days off because that means hanging out in our pajamas watching anime or playing video games is a viable option.

Picking myself up from nothing means that I have acquaintances in Baltimore and haven’t lived here long enough for it to graduate into friendship. It would have been nice if Sam had wanted to reconnect, but I made her uncomfortable. That’s the last thing I wanted to do, so I won’t be reaching out to her again.

Hearing that you are forgiven, but that doesn’t mean things are good again is always hard no matter the situation. In this case, my heart was not tied up in romance. I had already been through the wringer once with Sam and wasn’t eager to participate in it again. But we had such fun that I thought keeping it light and going for coffee was advisable.

The queer community in Baltimore is small. You don’t want to have beef with anyone, being scared to run into them at events. Every person in which you’re interested was somebody else’s partner before you, which among women creates territorial high drama. I am not interested in high drama. I am interested in coffee.

I know within myself that I thought reaching out to Sam was a shortcut to making more friends in the city. That if she wasn’t angry anymore, she’d introduce me around and it wouldn’t be long before I had a network again. I don’t know why that isn’t possible, but I don’t ask these questions. That is her story, and she hasn’t allowed me to read it.

The thing is, though, I met Sam through Facebook dating. There is nothing stopping me from getting back on Facebook dating and seeing who might be interesting around here, and, this is important…. ACTUALLY CONTACTING THEM. I swear to Christ, Leslie…. stop with the attitude that the perfect partner is going to drop into your lap without any effort at all.

My standards are extraordinarily high.

I ghosted one woman who said she didn’t like British people because she couldn’t understand them.

You’re welcome, Britain. I’m sure you’re very grateful.

I run quick because I compare everyone to Aada, Mummo, and Heytch.

All aliases, all people I have never dated and way out of my league. I could have had lifelong friendships with all of them, but one by one they all fell away as I became too obnoxious for some and too weird for others.

They’re not wrong. I get it.

But they’re the gold standard. I know what I want, and I seek it out. They all had the capability to bend my mind like a pretzel and I blew it in favor of fuckboi jackass antics. I’m the kind of person that if I was weird to you once, I’ll think about it for 20 years. I am MORTIFIED every time I think of what happened and it was 12 years ago…. but Aada came back to me because our relationship was so much deeper and richer than the others. I am so glad that she did not run away from me, but carefully turned me into someone she could tolerate. 😉

I’m so much older now and realizing that I should have taken more care with the network I had. I obliterated it at my own hand because I was shooting my mouth off on the internet.

I am much more relaxed and focused now than I was. I honestly and truly believe that my life was a shit show, so my behavior became erratic and unpredictable. It isn’t rocket science. I was overwhelmed in every direction and covering it up with bravado. I acted like a typical man and I deserved it when we separated.

It feels like I’ll never get over it because I’m not tapped into something large enough to replace it and I never will be.

This is one of those days where I just don’t feel so good about myself and I’m glad that I already have a built in plan for getting out of the house and going to my cognitive behavioral health group.

Speaking of which….. time to take a shower.

Conversations with Mico: I’m Famous

November 18, 2025 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Really?

No, not really. But this is what you hear if you ask Copilot about me:

I am uninterested that a machine gave me a compliment. I am breathing a sigh of relief that when you say, “tell me about Leslie Lanagan,” this is what comes up and not “Leslie D. Lanagan is a douchewaffle, and you can tell them I said it.”

One Out of 12 Ain’t Bad

November 18, 2025 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Daily writing prompt

What’s your favorite month of the year? Why?

View all responses

Of course I like more months out of the year than just one, but I read the prompt and laughed.

And on closer inspection, I have to pick both November and May. I don’t have a favorite month, I have two. Deal with it.

November in the DC area is when we’re just starting to REALLY cool down, yet the sun is still brilliant outside.

Oh, wait. I live in Baltimore now. Have since :::checks notes::: December. Time blindness is a bitch.

November in the Baltimore area is when we’re just starting to REALLY cool down, yet the sun is still brilliant outside. 😉

I just cannot leave out May when talking about this area because I love the weather right now, but I love the cherry blossoms in the spring even more.

I wish that the cherry blossoms could be a year round thing, because I am in my happy place when Baltimore gets cold. I learned how to layer my clothing from a Finn. It could be negative five degrees F and I’d be perfectly comfortable as long as I remembered to layer. I also cannot wait for the first snowfall, because it generally snows in the area every year, but there are plenty of years in which there’s just a few sprinkles.

Then, occasionally we get dumped on and the whole city shuts down because even though we’re prepared, it takes time to dig out of 18 inches of snow overnight.

The reason I love the cold is that during these months there is a turning inward, particularly during Advent. It is not a penitential season, but a chance for self reflection. As we approach the solstice and “Jesus’s birth” (it was actually rumored to be in the Spring), it’s a chance to think about changes we need to make in our own lives that line up with that feeling of emergence.

Thinking about excitement for the future is the best way to wander through the dark.

Love Actually

November 17, 2025 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I realized that I didn’t feel strongly one way or the other about Sam romantically, but that I wanted her to participate in my life on some level if she was open to it. I thought a handwritten note would be the best way to show apology, but I didn’t want her kids to read it before she did and receive intel.

So, I just put my name, address, and phone number plus a short note saying I’d love to see her if she was interested. No hearts.

But I meant them.

That is all love- realizing that someone was so dynamic in your life that you’re over the hurt that a breakup caused and just want their energy around you. We only dated for three weeks before Sam flipped out and dumped me. Yet her personality had such an impact on me that it was worth forgiving her for it.

I’ve thought about reaching out to her since i got here in December, but I hadn’t had the confidence to drop something in her mailbox until today.

I think that has a lot to do with being tired of being lonely on every level. I don’t even have a buddy to go do things with, and Sam would be a great one. She’s tapped into every musical outlet in the city. She’s a social butterfly, going to concerts often. What worked well was that an extrovert was willing to drag me out of my house. That’s how introverts manage.

And if you read anything into ink color, I was a dumbass and wrote everything in pink. I am not ready for *anything* having to do with pink letters. Sam actually hurt me pretty bad, and it took longer than three weeks to get over it, which was definitely not amusing.

Bryn said it best. “You’re not really angry with her. You’re angry she busted your fairy tale.” She was right. Anger at Sam faded quickly compared to the loss I felt that I was not going to be a girlfriend and have her kids around me.

Now, I am immune to fairy tales, but maybe one day I’ll be able to enjoy them again.

It was another instance in which I am humbled after popping off and I’d like to make amends for it. Just because my heart was broken doesn’t make my words okay, and I am also humbled that Aada said them to me long ago. It’s a message that resonates with me today because Aada reads and writes fairy tales. I am guilty of busting my own with her and constantly asking to be forgiven for things I said when I was in many kinds of moods.

I put her through a hell she didn’t deserve, and I know that because again, I don’t have to remember what I did that was so awful I drove her away. I wrote it all down. There’s 12 years of history of us getting close and blowing out, the pattern that needs to stop.

Recognizing that pattern is the first step to creating healthy relationships in the future. Secure connections require being careful with what you say and even more careful with what you do. Your actions and your words have to line up. You cannot lie in any way, shape, or form. Covering up the real issue because it’s hard for you to get the words out only leads to more and more trouble down the road. You can read all about it starting in June of 2013.

So, I am choosing to be healthy with Sam and be as sincere as I can, not letting her in too fast and being diligent about it because I let her in too quickly before and our relationship turned mercurial fast. I am done with mercurial relationships because I’m too old for it. Aada and all our drama was too much for both of us. We both need to redirect our attention into relationships that feed us and stop hating on each other.

Just because I was hurt doesn’t make my words okay. It doesn’t matter that they were directed at an audience and not at her. It made her feel bad because she could not trust that the loving things I said about her were also true.

My friends on the ground will always know that I love them because they have more to go on, and I believe in that fact. I’m now trying to nurture it where I didn’t before. I thought of Aada as some kind of authority in my life and she is, puffing herself up and being really hard on me (historically. This time being hard on me was justified.), sometimes scaring me into a type of submission because I was all of the sudden afraid to bring up issues.

She explodes when you bring them up, and distances herself while she licks her wounds in private without realizing that you get more accomplished by increasing communication and understanding after conflict so that it doesn’t bubble up again. You have a solid shot at changing a pattern the more you understand each other.

I am starting to get tired of these toxic relationships, and it takes two to tango. I can only realize I’m the common denominator, and establish more self-respect. Learning more about how to de-escalate a conflict than I already do, because to some people the way I do it is pedantic. I need to know what it is about me that makes so many people understand me to an enormous degree, while others fight me in defense. Maybe that’s just my win/lose rate.

Where I got tripped up was making Aada so high on the totem pole that no other priority mattered, and she didn’t have that much energy for me. I was lost in a world of rumination because as a writer, she lit my brain on fire.

I am looking for that kind of chemistry, and Sam sets my brain on fire for music. I think we’d work well together as long as we weren’t competing with each other for anything (she’s a mezzo, I’m a lyric……. eye roll…. how did we not know this wouldn’t work out? It’s not like there weren’t signs. Plus, I’m a trumpet player. Between my diva status and my lead trumpet background, she joked that my ego wouldn’t fit through the door.

It doesn’t, but that’s all social masking and trying to have a good time despite the fact that I’d rather be home reading… I cover up how I really feel about myself in person because in person, that person doesn’t have time to hear me like they have 10 minutes to read an entry.

That’s led to my detriment in a lot of ways. Because people read me, they hear my voice in their heads regularly. Therefore, they think they talk to me a lot more often than they actually do. Our communication suffers.

Other people see me suffering and think it’s not a good idea to intrude. It’s always a good idea to intrude, because I might need the interruption. I’m trying to interrupt myself frequently and take breaks, walking away from the Internet entirely and going out into the world.

I felt bad that my handwriting was SO TERRIBLE. Yet, I wanted to approach Sam with the least amount of investment on her part. That I wasn’t putting her on the spot to say yes or no. She’s got my number. If I hear from her, great. If I don’t, it will be sad, but I will have my answer and that’s worth celebrating all on its own.

I want to start a new chapter, but this time, it has to be a nonfiction.

Gratitude

November 17, 2025 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

The air, trees, and water were all perfect today. It rained some, but I loved the contrast between Portland and Maryland weather.

The soft serve at Wawa is delicious with tart cherry syrup and chocolate sauce on top.

Waffle House tasted as good as I remember.

I didn’t dress up by any means, and everyone I met today was kind and helpful. Slowly, my mood changed into something resembling a person.

There’s been a change in my resting heart rate, and that can only be positive.

I sort of slept last night, so thank God for small favors.

I really, really love driving my car and have put a stunning amount of miles on it for the little time I’ve had it. I know the newness will wear off, but I’m just so grateful that I have a car that is capable of assisting me in being a better driver.

It’s the next morning, where I have already been on quite the drive. I went to get some Dunkin, then didn’t feel like going home. I drove to Columbia and back just to listen to NPR and feel the road under me a little longer. It was so early that there was no traffic at all, and I’m going to remember it because I didn’t sing today. I need another stretch of time in the car with no traffic to be able to get out my emotions. Today, I was running away from them. I needed peace from all my rumination because there is literally no point to it. Continuing to dwell on anything but gratitude is unwise.

So, I’m grateful yet again that I have a car and can go on these journeys that allow me to explore the outside world when I have been so resistant to it over the years. Baltimore makes me feel strong, but what makes me feel even stronger is knowing that DC doesn’t feel far away anymore. I am not a burden on my friends.

I am grateful for Sam, my ex-girlfriend, who doesn’t pop up in my memory all that often but apparently I was driving close to her house without knowing it and her address appeared in CarPlay as a pin. It was jarring; the pin was made in 2022 and didn’t have her name attached. I just remembered that was where she lived because her street is the name of the town where Bryn grew up.

Now, when I say I was driving near her house and I didn’t know it, the pin popped up when I was six miles away. I jumped and then when I calmed down, I remembered her incredible smile. I do not think that she wants a friendship with me, or to date me again. It was just a moment of surprise that I don’t often get in my daily life. I didn’t feel the need to reach out, but I did feel the need to think about her for the length of a red light.

Sam completed me in a way that no other woman ever has, which is being a singer and conductor. Some of my favorite memories are of us singing in the car, and I wish we’d done more of it. But Sam thought it was a huge red flag that I didn’t have a car back then, plus grew to hate that I was a blogger, which is fair.

It’s a lot like dating a comedian, I would imagine.

I do miss our rush of romance and wish it had lasted. I was crazy for her, and wanted a very long relationship. She told me that my assessment that we were having a great time and she flipped out is accurate. But, of course, since she was so freaked out that I didn’t have a car, the first thing I thought of when her address popped up is, “I wish I could go pick her up and show off my new baby.”

Then, I thought, “nah. I’m good.” I did follow her on Instagram because her kids are doing exciting things in music and I went to High School for Performing and Visual Arts. I think it’s great that her kids are excelling and wish them all the best.

Maintaining solid boundaries is important to me. I followed Sam on Instagram. She will see that and she can decide if I’m worth revisiting. I don’t think that dating is a good idea, at least not currently. But what I do think is a good idea is realizing we live six miles away now. I knew that Walmart looked familiar. Shit.

Right now, I just need a friend who will eat ice cream with me and tell me that they are fully aware that my life is in transition so here, have some more hot fudge. We will sort this all out.

I don’t have high hopes, but it’s stupid not to reach out after so much time has passed when we genuinely enjoyed each other as friends. What I loved most about Sam is that my joy returned. I couldn’t contain myself when she was in the room. I know I can have that sort of positive energy for her if I keep it light and cultivate healthy boundaries.

I tried to be as honest as I could, but dating did not work out. That does not mean her value in my eyes reduced as a person. It means that I got very angry and I got over it, not eager to try dating again but eager to recapture the joy of seeing someone familiar.

That’s the thing about Baltimore. I’ve only lived here since December, so things are just starting to feel familiar. I have a counselor I can call for help, so it’s not like I’ve got no one…. and I have a ton of acquaintances, but none that are close enough to me that they’ve actually been to my house.

Sam came to visit me several times at the Wire Ave. house, but she’s never seen my apartment that is apparently so close to her.

I would like to meet on neutral ground and just catch up with someone. The universe reminded me that there’s actually someone I do like enough to have coffee, and one leads to another in terms of creating a network.

If Sam has no interest in reestablishing contact, it won’t hurt my feelings. I just needed to stop automatically assuming she never wanted to talk to me again and ask.

Baby steps.

I also am not blind to the fact that I want to connect with Sam and Tiina and everyone else who knows me in this area so that I can stop focusing on Aada. I did not wake up crying this morning, and that’s progress. I think that the crying is over, for the most part, because I’ve realized that I’ve put away something huge… which is this constant need to be umbilically connected to the internet.

My attention needs redirection, and I am not looking for it from Sam because she is an ex. I would like it if she also wanted to move on and be friends because did I mention that she’s six miles away?

Proximity means more than our previous relationship, so I hope moving on is possible.

If I can forgive her for absolutely wrecking my heart, she can forgive me for being angry about it. It’s been three years. I haven’t held onto anything because I wrote about it. I didn’t sit there and seethe. Once everything was out on paper, I could look at it and let it go.

But of course I only control my own feelings and I don’t get to decide how long she’s hurt. All I can do is be open and try to mend our relationship in a healthy way, respecting no contact if she wants that as well.

I have gone overboard in trying to get messages to Aada when she didn’t want contact and I could say the same thing of her in reverse, that her emails weren’t always wanted. I felt justified because there was a stunning lack of clarity in her last communique.

Is it “for good” or “for now?” Are you using resources to track me or not? I am hoping that we are now truly inconsequential to each other because I am always worried that her consequences for me are far more dire than she ever lets on.

They never have been, but I didn’t get the safety and security of knowing it. I am still reeling from her little alerts doorknob, and trying to bring down my cortisol to a manageable level.

I got my answer on “for good” or “for now” when she blocked me on my secure channel. The other mail servers wouldn’t tell me that all email from my IP address had been permanently deferred. She never said, “don’t write to me again.” I had to figure that out on my own.

On Tony Mendez’s birthday.

Well played.

I know for sure that it’s not personal, but my imagination goes overboard into believing it is. She actually wished me peace and good things, so I think I can calm down and just let life happen despite the lack of clarity. When a relationship ends, you’re never going to get all the closure you want. You just have to get off the train.

Well, the ship. Aada’s first nickname on this web site was Argo, and my favorite line I’ve ever written about us is “I sleep deeply in the belly of the ship, for I know my passage is safe.” I will probably get a line drawing of the Argo as a tattoo in memory of our relationship, because I know that this is a time in my life that deserves a place of honor on my body. It can go near the ichthus, because writing to Aada felt religious.

She has asked to be transferred into the pantheon of gods that determine my actions….. meaning, it will be a long time before I stop hearing her voice in my head. New scripts compile themselves out of old conversations.

WWAD?

It is better for her that we not be friends, because it is better for me, too. She was brilliant for me in some ways, and terrible for me in others. She’s just another relationship that I broke and I will remember those sins for many years to come.

Maybe that’s why I’m hoping for a redemption story with Sam. I couldn’t fix things with Aada, but I might be able to fix things with others that have been off my radar. Sam is just the most important because again, six miles away.

I need to reach out to more people in the area, but I want to make amends to Sam first because new friendships are great, but so are old ones.

The Chop Tank

November 17, 2025 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 1 Comment

The Chop Tank is a restaurant in downtown Baltimore that has the best outdoor patio area in the city, in my humble opinion. Opinion is subjective, but every time I’ve been the mood has just elevated the conversation to a whole new level. And every time, I’ve been intending to pay, and someone has beaten me to the check. This has done nothing to dissuade my love of the place. 😉

The last time I went there was with my friend Tiina and two of her kids. It was a little bit cold, but we were dressed for it…. which reminds me of something funny. I originally mixed myself up and though I knew which restaurant I was talking about, I told Tiina we should go to The Chart House. The Chart House is in Annapolis, first of all, and fancy AF. I realized my mistake and corrected myself. She looked at me and said, “I was about to say…. I’m wearing Batman pants.”

It was then that my definition of fancy AF grew to include Batman pants, but we decided to go to The Chop Tank, anyway.

Seeing the menu’s biggest steak through a child’s eyes was unforgettable. It was literally bigger than her.

Our service was great every time I’ve been there with anyone. Before Tiina, it was when Lindsay came to take care of me after my colonoscopy. I’d just been released from a day of not being able to eat anything, so we ordered a little bit of everything.

It was too cold out when I went with Tiina, but when I went with Lindsay, ducks wandered up to our table and tried to con us out of a bite.

That means I’d like to go back with Brian, Tiina, and the kids when it’s warmer, maybe after a day at the National Aquarium. I know they’ve been before, and so have I. That doesn’t take away from the excitement at all. In fact, I’m a member. Maybe I’ll wander over there this afternoon. It would be a good place to do some chillaxing, then maybe end up at The Chop Tank for a burger.

I plan these incredible dates with myself and then I stand me up. We shall see how much energy I have when the time comes. However, as an introvert I always like to be included, so I invite me everywhere. Sometimes, I even take me up on it.

The excitement of possibly ending up at The Chop Tank is enough to rattle me into action. It might be fun to sit at the bar and people watch rather than staying home, and Monday night in a bar is usually dead. That’s a positive for me, because I’d rather talk shop with the staff. I used to be a line cook and some of the things they’re doing really excite me, because it’s not exotic food for the most part. It’s simple, executed and elevated well.

Tiina and I particularly gobbled up the ceviche fast, so now it’s on the permanent rotation of “Things Leslie Will Eat.” I keep a list in my head of go-to foods not because I am picky, but because I cannot make decisions easily. That if I become overwhelmed, I already know I like X.

My favorite comfort food in Baltimore right now is the steak salad. It has this insane dressing and the steak is cooked to perfection. No one is going to say that’s avant garde, but the hot steak and cold salad array of textures and flavors calls to me in the middle of the night.

It’s a restaurant I want to take Evan to when he visits- he has said he’s coming soon. I’m thinking January, after the holiday craziness. Evan was a chef for a long time and now does real estate in Portland, Oregon. So, if I ever want to move back, I have a built in support system in finding housing.

This is my ultimate compliment to The Chop Tank- that it’s so good you’re willing to risk your own culinary reputation by recommending it to another cook.

Cooks often go for simple food done well, because eating high art for every meal is exhausting.

It’s all about fresh ingredients and keeping them as pure as you can.

It leads to great conversations, no matter who is at the table.

Waffle House

November 16, 2025 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

The very last time I drove a car, I was going to Waffle House. I ate, and then proceeded to wreck my car against a guardrail because I was lost in thought and went around a curve too fast. So, I was understandably nervous about going again. The nostalgia was just too much. I had cheese-n-eggs, raisin toast with apple butter, bacon, and hash browns. I ate as much as I wanted, which wasn’t a lot, and boxed the rest up to go home.

I listened to NPR the whole way, because Sunday mornings are a lot of fun. I even managed to solve some of Will Shortz’ puzzles. Then, in a dramatic turn of events, I was caught in traffic a lot of the way home because of a car fire. I had never seen anything like it. I am hoping it was a movie stunt, because it looked like Marvel level damage. I don’t think anyone could survive a fire hot enough for me to feel it four lanes over.

In the middle, the atmosphere and food were just as I remembered them. It’s simple and delicious at a time when I needed it. Waffle House is the ultimate comfort food for me, and I should also tell you that I made it home safely. 😉

I was still moping and crying from this morning, so I had to get out and move. I have learned that when I’m flooding out, movement is a better solution than trying to work it out in solitude. Not every problem needs to be analyzed to death. When I’m in the car, my adrenaline goes up a crazy amount. I try to drive a little bit every day just to put some myelin back on my nerves because I “took my nerve pills, but everybody be wonderin.'” I need to pull myself together because Aada is right. We keep opening the wound without letting it scab over.

In my wildest dreams, scar tissue is stronger once it’s healed and Aada will again be able to see me as the writer that flattens her.

But I have to move on to different topics to even have a shot at moving myself forward so that thinking of her doesn’t hurt anymore. That’s all I’ve been trying to do, not make it hurt anymore, but I got lost and forgot to tell my audience about things like Waffle Houses and car fires.

My featured image is probably crooked, but I sent it first to Lanagan Media Group with a note that said, “we’re having breakfast together in my head.”

We’ve been talking a lot lately about politics and sending each other memes. None of my finances are settled yet, so I haven’t officially incorporated. But I have several people interested in working for me that I know will help make me successful. I’ve already given them their tech toys to be able to write, but we’re all slowing down…. Or I’m trying to. Now, even though I post more often, I’m spending less time writing and more time driving. I see and hear more when I’m involved in the community at large. Shutting myself away all these years and focusing on the relationship with Aada started from our first conversation on, so I’m having to reorient myself and get out more.

I’m frustrated that she could see all of this happening and didn’t say anything, but I’m starting to be able to look in front of me without looking back to make sure Aada is okay. You can’t help yourself across the river if you’re carrying someone else, and this is true of both sides of that river because neither of us managed to understand each other longer than a few minutes.

So I start thinking about all of this again because it’s fresh on my mind and think, I need to drive. Yesterday, I picked a convenience store about 30 miles from my house so that I could open my car up on the freeway and just bliss out.

My social life has also improved because I can make it down to Stafford to have time with Tiina and her family; I drive now. Driving is cool.

Tiina gave me one of the biggest thrill rides of my life with the drive from my house to hers. It was absolutely stunning, and I’m eager to get back out that way with a camera. The picture I took at Waffle House is one of the few I’ve taken in the last few months, even though I really enjoy photography.

Working through all the turmoil as Aada and I shut it all down made me depressed and I lost interest in things that, well, interested me. Now, the strife is o’er, and my interest in everything has picked back up. Even my heart rate has gone back up.

I’m not going to lie, there’s been several times during all of this that I felt like I would die of a broken heart because the stakes were so high.

Our connection was dynamic and stagnant, flat lining and being resuscitated over and over. I cannot feel that the battle is won, nor can I feel like I lost. I don’t feel like I lost much with all of the frustration I’ve been feeling for months and years…… One minute. The next I’m inconsolable and crying.

I know that though nothing will be the same, everything will be okay. That’s a thing I say now because my dad said it at my stepmother’s funeral. It’s the transition that hurts, because I was understood perfectly and not at all.

Now, it’s my job to make other people understand me. I need to build up relationships with actual history, people who have spent face time with me long enough to know what my intentions and motivations really are. I am safe now. Most of my friendships are on the ground and the ones that are have been moved to my inner circle. It’s too much work to convince someone you do not mean harm when they do not understand you well enough to know that you don’t.

I am trying to tap out. The internet is exhausting. When my friends need me, they can text me in the car, and I will go and pick them up. I will not spend my days worried about people who aren’t in my daily life. There’s just no way long term for me, because the entire relationship is depersonalized, making you say things you wouldn’t to someone’s face.

I am a little too cognizant of that now, and post here instead of on Facebook (well, sporadic Facebook posts but mostly just a feed of this web site). You can find me, but you have to search me out. I want anonymous fans, but I don’t want to be beholden to popular opinion. My blog can definitely be run by committee and has been in the past (and will be in the future). But the one rule I have is that even though my name’s on the door, we don’t edit each other. Everyone has their own unique, distinctive voice and I want to continue to celebrate it.

I want to redesign my web site and redirect fans to lanaganmediagroup dot com and lanaganmediagroup at proton dot me (said that way to cut down on spam). Again, I am more comfortable in the choir than a soloist.

Though I am a trained soloist, to be clear.

I am clear on the fact that parts of me are dying that I set in motion. New energy has to come in and I need to be there to receive it. I am slowly losing paranoia surrounding Aada’s special alerts for me, because I don’t plan on using her phone number or her e-mail address ever again.

And if she does come back into my life, I will be smart enough to never mention it publicly.

I shouldn’t have said a lot of things, I shouldn’t have hurt her in the way that I did… because people will forget what you say, but they will never forget the way you made them feel. Without intending to, I punched Aada in the kidney. The fact that she would rather focus on that moment than any of our positive ones is the entire reason I’m tired.

The argument always runs thusly after Aada has read something:

“You’re punishing me and I can’t stand reading the daily flagellations.”
“I’m not punishing you, that’s what you’re choosing to take away. I say plenty of positive things and you call them suspicious.”

She cannot understand why I will not break down into not having an opinion just because it makes her uncomfortable. It is not my job to ensure that she remains untriggered in her life, but I lost sight of who she was to me and wanted our relationship dead.

She lied to me and jerked me around and expected me to be happy about it. So, I went overboard in making sure that I told the story in a fair and balanced way when it was my story alone to tell. I represented her in these pages by showing empathy for what her problems might actually be, but she took it as psychological assassination instead.

Her view of love is entirely fucked up and she told me that on day one. I should have listened to her because I didn’t have a better idea than her of what love should be, so we descended into a toxic mess within days. She didn’t have to stick with me as long as she did. She could have blocked me and walked off into the sunset years ago. She just never did, keeping up with my blog………… Which hurt like hell because for every “lovely post, btw” there was a mountain of “you’re purposefully hurting me.”

She couldn’t leave me alone to do my job as a writer and just ignore me. She expected that she could be tight-lipped on all her emotions and that would magically read her mind and tell the story how she read it while it was happening to her.

I can’t do that when I only have a handle on what’s happening to me, and my grip on reality is shady at best. Autism pulls you into your own little world, and you create your own bubble that may or may not line up with everyone else. I have purposefully isolated myself too long to be helpful to me, because my need to talk to someone, anyone, led me to these pages.

I need to get out and drive again. I can’t stand the din of my own thoughts, because now that Aada has said no more, my ruminations will only hurt me. I have to get forward motion, and what better speed than 55 miles an hour?

Otherwise, I will again wake up with tears in my eyes. It’s not our journey anymore. Not even to Waffle House.

The One They Want

November 16, 2025 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Daily writing prompt

What’s the first impression you want to give people?

View all responses

I am determined not to have a certain first impression because it’s not my job to care what people think of me. They can do it on their own time. I do not say this to be defiant, only to say that I will no longer be preparing canned reactions. It is what it is. Most people think that I am delightful upon meeting until I slowly become too weird for them. By this I mean that I have had no real coping skills for my own neurodivergence and mental health skills, so I could not prepare for the inevitable spin-out due to the communication barrier. No one could help me because I couldn’t help myself.

I had to dig deep into research on autism and ADHD, and now I’m attending a cognitive behavioral health group to increase my awareness of my own bullshit.

AuDHD is a lot of bullshit, because you’re not wired to converse like other people converse. You don’t pick up what’s not being said, the social cues running around you because when you hear something, you take it incredibly literally.

Taking everything literally has cost me more than anyone will ever know. I now know what it feels like to really lose something as a writer, which is my muse. I cannot give an accurate first impression right now because I’m in shock. But as I drifted off last night, I thought, “this is the last time I’ll ever have to grieve her. She’s honestly and truly gone.” It has been a roller coaster of enormous proportions, and I still have to get over the fact that I am not welcome in her life but she’ll know so much about me from here on out. This blog and the works I have in progress will not make me less of a public figure.

That’s why, when I drifted off to sleep, I seriously considered deleting this blog in its entirety, no regrets. I thought about letting it go dormant and just not adding anything more. Anything to get off the grid and not be a public figure anymore because the thought she’s watching from afar is not altogether comforting.

Our relationship has been adversarial at times, and I don’t have the stomach for it. I wish there was a way that I could track Aada’s IP and block it from this URL, but that will never be possible. It will never be possible for me to hide published books from her, either. So, it’s a process with me making peace with the fact that our relationship will always be uneven if she cannot stick to her vow to stay away.

I have officially been Dooced, fired because of my blog and here’s the irony. Aada would have hated it if I’d stopped sharing my real feelings and became an “influencer,” yet she hated being Aada at times. I could have written about something lighter and lost her respect.

If I was going to lose her respect, I’m glad I lost it by being true to myself.

I am trying to get a bigger fan base in Virginia because hits from her location are rare. They stand out, and I want that not to be the case. So, I’m going to start writing about it when I go to Tiina’s. I cannot believe how beautiful it is, and I have a lot to say about my emotions regarding my awe. As time goes by, I’m hoping that my love for the land spreads to others.

I want to get into more landscapes, because I’ve seen so much beauty and haven’t taken any time to record it. That’s because most of the absolutely stunning sights were taken in at 55 miles an hour. I can’t drive and snap photos, and there was really no place to get out of the car.

It’s not just about Virginia, DC, and Maryland, though. I fell in love with New York when I drove up to see Aaron and his wife’s family at Halloween.

I would like to get into travel writing, as I have said before. But I don’t want to stop examining my life and my mental health issues. As I get healthier, my writing will, too. I won’t always be so sad about the ways I’ve failed someone I loved and keep harping on it, while the message she’s been taking home is “I hate you and want to punish you.”

It was a communication disorder because we were not talking to each other.

It was a mistake to have a relationship that deep over the internet, because we weren’t connecting to each other’s humanity. We lobbed a lot of angry words without thinking for over 12 years, and none of that was healthy for either of us.

But as a result of this relationship, I think that others are going to have her opinion of me when it’s impossible. She’s never really met me. I am not sure that either one of us has taken in the enormity of how much we shared without ever shaking hands. We never instituted any guardrails, nor was she open to them.

I am looking forward to relationships that cannot get this toxic because they aren’t mired in years of taking emotional potshots at each other without looking, physically LOOKING, at what we were doing to each other.

Aada said it best when she said that our journey had been brilliant and beautiful at some times, excruciating and debilitating at others. But because we weren’t in front of each other, we couldn’t really hear each other, empathizing in real time.

I can feel the cortisol rising, the injustice and unfairness swelling within me. I am so mad at myself that I cannot breathe. What calms me down is thinking, “how dare I feel my own feelings?”

Aada told me that she thought after our relationship was over I would be stronger than ever, and I don’t think that’s true. I think that the strongest version of me would have come with facing Aada’s music and learning to turn dissonance into resolution. But that is today. Years from now I may look back and realize that I was right when I said goodbye to her a month into our relationship because I was so emotionally overloaded.

I was helplessly in love with her, and because she is straight, I knew it was all my own bag to deal with and wanted a deep friendship. That turned into years of backbreaking emotional work that I’m glad I did, but the story that helped other people didn’t help her.

That’s what you should know about me as a writer. My despair comes in when I realize that I can have a blog or I can have intimate relationships, but I cannot have both without a lot of communication.

With Aada, we didn’t check the story we were telling ourselves often enough, and suddenly we were at opposite ends of a spectrum instead of standing together.

Because we didn’t really know each other and thought we did. Thought that writing and sending each other personal media was enough. That face time didn’t matter for well over a decade. It was dehumanizing, because I know beyond a shadow of a doubt we could fix this with eye contact and a hug.

That’s because when you have no trust capital with someone, you really need to be able to look into their eyes. I would not have been so mercurial had we been in contact offline, because the internet heightened my emotions too much. I needed to come back down to earth, because someone’s writing personality is not them.

A first impression would have to include that I’m so fluent in web communications that I’m frustrated and need time offline every day.

There’s a laundry list of lessons I’ll take with me from this relationship, and that’s the biggest one.

Being watched is the second. I have a heightened awareness of what I’m doing and saying, because I think that other people expect me to flip out now that Aada is permanently gone. She’s been emotionally absent for most of our relationship, so this doesn’t feel that different. It just gives me more information for the future- that if “for now” really means “for now” and she’s going to come back later in my life I need to have my own boundaries to keep us both safe.

I am not counting on it, I just know that when people go back to my writing after a long time away, it often encourages them to reach out whether I want them to or not. I have said publicly that I will never turn her away, and this is true. But I also do not have to roll out the red carpet every time she appears, thinking that the world is going to change with our complementary angles. I don’t have to put my whole heart in her hands when she only wants to say hello.

That’s what I mean about moving too fast. I forgive very quickly and easily, not really having any self-protection mechanisms in place because I am so afraid of being lonely. This is the most lonely I’ve felt in a long time, because my inner monologue about how to fix things with Aada has stopped and the self care has begun.

I ate some Dubai chocolate.

That made the world a little better, but it doesn’t fix everything. I woke up this morning with actual tears in my eyes, and I just laid there and cried. I can respect that Aada needs space and I can give it to her, but I don’t have to be happy about it.

She said that she could offer clarification on her job, but she wouldn’t. That one line made me see red not because of our present situation, but because that kind of information is what I’d been searching for to calm my anxiety for 12 years, but now my anxiety wasn’t worth calming. She amped it up, instead.

That’s why it’s just not worth flipping out. She’s been a great friend over the years in some ways, but this aspect was shit. I needed more support from her both as a writer and a person, and she stonewalled me every day. I no longer want to participate in this dynamic, because I have other friendships that don’t take this much out of me.

It is exhausting trying to be heard when you’re not. I need to go toward people who are actually listening. Small talk drains me, so even a first impression of me will last if we talk more than a few minutes. I want to know about people’s worlds, and I’m very curious. People like to talk about themselves, and I soak it up. It gets me out of having to answer personal questions about myself because you’ve talked about X or Y for 20 minutes and oh, look at the time. I have to go.

What broke my heart in empathy for Aada was when she said that I didn’t need to take anything down if it was needed for my health and healing moving forward. That she was willing to take the bullets my blog caused to fly. That’s really the moment I decided I was an ex blogger, and then I had to get over it and make the donuts this morning.

I wondered if Aada ever really picked up how much I hated writing our story as it stood. That I dreamed of so much more adventure and playfulness than we got. She never asked if I liked writing her the way she appeared, just assumed it over and over. The answer is “absolutelyfuckingnot.” Hell no, I hated every minute of it and longed for a relationship in which we each called off the dogs and just got along. That was possible up until I found out she’d created an entire fictional universe that I’d bought into because there was some basis in fact.

She lied once, and became more and more fearful that it would get out so she kept lying. She could see how those consequences affected me and the emotional turmoil it took on me without feeling the need to unburden herself for 12 years.

I had a mental breakdown when I found out, another reason why it’s unwise for me to have a blog because the “think it, say it” plan has not generally worked out for me except in one area. The more I fuck up, the more people read me. I should have air gapped everything I was so angry, but I wrote and published my rage. It didn’t matter. She “wasn’t coming back.”

Except she did.

But only to tell me to get out of her life one more time, resetting the clock on grief. But this time it’s muted, because I’ve already grieved so much that I don’t have energy to put there. I’d rather close my eyes and remember her smile.

I have heard that the best days of your life are when you meet a writer and when you walk away from them.

But it’s hard to know that on a first impression.

Shutting It All Down

November 16, 2025 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Aada apologized to me that she would no longer read or write, but then contradicted herself and said, “for now, all I want is peace.” She said she wanted peace for me, too, and I believe her. I just don’t believe that she knows how to achieve peace for me and therefore cannot be a part of creating it. Just like you cannot be comforted by the same person who hurt you.

I shudder to think that Aada read everything I wrote after she said, “no more.” Because I wrote everything like the relationship was over, Aada even saying that she wasn’t going to read, so I wrote like the hurt person I was. I didn’t have to include anything positive and some days, I didn’t feel like it. But slowly, my anger melted and I became whole again.

Those entries cost me Aada, because she thought I was punishing her instead of writing for me. That wrong thought will stay with her, because she has always thought I was out to get her. That my purpose in life was to take her down. Anything loving is suspicious. If she is going to view my writing that way, I would rather have her not comment on it.

In short, she knew I had strong feelings for her and announcing she was leaving would cause inner turmoil, so she read it to beat herself up. She has finally recognized all of this in terms of not needing to read my writing anymore. I think that’s positive, because right now I am waffling between writing even more and shutting it all down.

My blog wasn’t worth losing Aada, but there’s no way I could have known that 12 years ago.

There were a lot of times when I should have slowed down that I didn’t, and a lot of things I said when I was not tracking that Aada would hear it, or hear about it. Because why would I think that she’d hear about it? Surely our mutual friends aren’t stupid enough to hurt Aada in this way. Well, they were that stupid and essentially invited Aada to read what I thought of her as an ex-friend with no possibility of changing anything in the future.

Of course it would hurt, like reading your ex-boyfriend’s journal. It was not meant to be comfortable for her because it was not comfortable for me.

She could have stepped in to change things at any point, but instead she told me that her last letter was like her blog entry that I couldn’t respond to and I just had to sit there and take it.

I thought to myself, “at what point did I say you were not allowed a response?” She never got that she had the power to change things, that I was not writing from on high.

Her not understanding this is not on me. If she acted like an asshole, I wrote it that way. If she reached out to me with love, I wrote it that way. She could have changed the story and she didn’t.

I got an email last night from a mailer daemon that said all email from my IP address was permanently deferred, so I called her work number to leave a voice mail and the AI just rang, never connecting me to a mailbox.

I got the message that messages are no longer welcome, which is good because she was unclear before. There’s a difference between “for now” and “for good.”

My self respect is returning and I’ve realized that if I needed to write about how much she hurt me, it wasn’t wise to invite her to hurt me again and to just give up. I am learning that I am okay with finality. It was lack of clarity that ate my lunch.

I feel better now that I’ve been released from Aada’s manipulations and hope she receives the peace she needs because I was manipulative as well.

I need to go back to the feeling I had when I was the one that blocked her and really tried to move on with my life. It was working, and I got sucked back in. That’s when I realized I didn’t want to go back and forth anymore. I chose together. She chose apart.

Neither one of us are wrong for our choices, but Aada’s choice particularly hurt me because she is officially a figment of my imagination.

It’s okay. She never made me real, either.

She was so emotionally avoidant that I was starving, and I still kept out hope that this relationship would turn into something, not getting a clue. I continually hurt myself by opening up to her, because she wasn’t trying to connect with me. I’d spill my guts and she’d attack.

I am learning more and more that she was not good for me, and I need to stop thinking of myself as a bad person. I do not own a hundred percent of the responsibility for our relationship going wrong, and even Aada knows it.

I am glad that she took a step to let me know that things are different this time. It’s not going to blow over.

If you always do what you always did, you always get what you always got. The pattern we had was exhausting and I couldn’t change it. I tried so many times over the years, and it just never took.

I am slowly learning the depth and breadth of my own horror show, turning the judgment on myself.

I put her through hell. I know I did. She put me through hell. She knows she did. We both want to stop the pain, shutting it all down.

This is what happens when one lie wrecks a system.

Even to Me

November 15, 2025November 15, 2025 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I am still reeling from Aada’s torrent of emotion, because while I did not agree with all of it, I heard it. I pondered it. I read it many times. I am still stuck on “checking for assaults.” That she wondered if she’d have to “check for assaults” her whole life.

It messes with me because assaulting her was the last thing on my mind. She told me that she was never going to read again, that she wasn’t my friend anymore, so I stopped monitoring her feelings.

She told me (and has since apologized) that I was the only manipulative person in our relationship and that she needed to get away from me to achieve peace. I thought she had gotten away from me to achieve peace already. I would have written everything differently if I hadn’t truly thought, “oh, this is really over now.” Not knowing that she would keep reading through all of the grieving and gnashing of teeth made me word things differently than I would have if I thought I was trying to impress or please anyone.

The whole point is that I was moving on when she stepped onto the hot stones to correct the record, Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ, and started the grieving process all over while still contradicting herself as to whether it was all over.

She says that my writing is designed to be provocative, which of course it is… To my entire audience, because I am trying to get them to feel things with me, feel things because of me in this sacred black & white space. It is not supposed to be “All Pick on Aada Day.” She knows that beyond a shadow of a doubt when I am talking about other people, because when she reads that I’m hurt, she goes into Mama Wolverine mode (That motherfucker! Let me grab my purse.!”). She also does not assume that just because I’ve said something negative happened, that doesn’t mean I no longer love that person. She seems to think I do it to her, though, and I cannot break her of the habit.

My writing about all my relationships is three dimensional, and Aada is captivated by every character except her. She cannot see how much I love her because she is dedicated to feeling that I don’t. She responds with too much defense and not enough empathy, often calming down when she’s realized she’s made a mistake. I’m right. I didn’t actually say that.

I am guilty of the exact same thing. We fight as only first children can.

Aada feels that I have this wall of anger built up around her, but I don’t. I’m frustrated, but accepting of consequences I made happen and I have said that I ended up in this place with Aada at my own hand so many times it’s not worth repeating, but according to Aada I am all about the guilt and punishment.

I am, because I am constantly feeling guilty and punishing myself. It comes across in my writing. When it’s about another person, Aada would say something like, “I can feel your computer vibrating with pain.” When it is her, she feels like I am purposefully being vindictive. I have never wanted to take her down, but explain how her world colliding with mine affected me. And in fact, it disgusts me that she thought taking her down was a thought in my head.

I exposed hypocrisy and how it affected me over 12 years. She held me to an incredible standard in terms of truth telling, and had been lying the entire time. To impress me.

What would have been impressive was for her to tell me she was lying 12 years ago, because the longer I lived in DC the more involved this lie got. It greatly affected my mental health and still does, because the last time she doorknobbed me she insinuated that she was watching me in a not-so-nice way after being very nice for several pages.

But I don’t say things like “she doorknobbed me” to punish her. That’s just my take on the situation. My response was utterly appropriate and I did not spin out. There is no punishment, just what happened according to me.

I was ready to close the book, and she opened it again without listening. Just wanted to ream me out and leave, then confuse me by coming back. I want her to stop confusing me by coming back and just communicate. I want her to stop thinking that my blog is all about her. It’s not, it’s all about me.

Yes, she is a subject, but she is not the author. She doesn’t get to dictate what I remember and what I don’t, calling it “cataloguing everything I’ve ever done.” It’s why I’m a good writer- you know her character intimately, but only in reflection to my words…. The things I remember that slowly become precious as people forget.

She says that she takes in the positive things that I say, but it doesn’t feel like it when she takes a chunk out of me for an entry.

It’s at that point I know all the madness needs to stop, and the internet is at fault. We’ve never gotten to have a normal conversation, because I never pushed it.

So all of these things that she would pick up from me just from knowing me in the flesh are going to be lost…. Like the way I glow when I think about her, surprised that she’s capable of lighting me up from the inside after all these years. Just once, I wish she could see that love on my face. I wish she could hear that love in my voice…. And she does.

I just don’t send them anymore because I’m trying my best to just take everything in stride. I think it’s really shitty that we didn’t have a conversation or even a voice clip to close out our relationship, choosing to gut each other in text.

I need to go back and delete all those emails, because what I find is that if I keep them, I will fixate on them and the grief just lasts longer. I’m not ready yet, because she’s such a good writer and the first round is completely gone. I was a moron for deleting everything, but a hero as well because I was injuring myself by getting lost in them and replaying my own bad decisions.

I know that Aada wants peace for both of us, and so do I. We just have completely different ways of getting there. She needs space after a fight, I need closeness. I need reassurance that a fight doesn’t mean the end of the world.

She has been very clear that she wants to end our relationship and has come back every time she has turned away. We do work very well together, and I would like to see more writing come out of us when we’re not amped up by cortisol.

I am trying not to ever get amped up on cortisol, because anger makes me feel like The Incredible Hulk. I am well-versed in both verbal combat and not thinking before I speak.

I am just a treat, let me tell you.

In order for Aada to feel comfortable with me again, she has to feel that the slate is indeed wiped clean. The only thing that will do it for her is time. Now that I know she feels bad about what happened and thinks that I constantly punish her, I hear that.

I don’t want her to feel punished. I want her to feel like she’s the most beautiful woman in the world, complete with flaws and failures but that doesn’t mean that imperfect is bad. Imperfect is imperfect.

She doesn’t know the excitement I feel when I see her name in my inbox. Her real name has a musical sound, a waltz written only in my head.

Those are the things I wish would really stand out to her in my writing, because I cannot make everything perfectly comfortable for her all the time. Neither can she make things comfortable for me because she can go toe to toe with me over my writing and I accept her criticism, maybe a little too much.

I really don’t know who I am right now, because Aada has always been the ace up my sleeve. I begged for Aada not to do this, not to end our relationship permanently, because it was a relationship that colored my entire world after 12 years.

That’s honestly why I think I’m maybe making a little too much out of saying that she was saying goodbye to me for good, and why I have tried so hard to be loving even in the midst of anger. I didn’t get everything right because I was so damn hurt. I walked around like a zombie for months. We’d just had a wonderful time together chatting on Signal when it all went to hell.

I should have breathed more and said less.

I do go back to that Signal conversation often, though. It’s just so rich and we were full of love for each other at that time in our lives.

It’s the relationship I keep thinking of when I want her in my life, this snippet of text that I wish was longer.

I just know that my interpretation of her words would be less harsh with some better cues. I have never been able to read one of her emails in her own voice due to hearing it so often.

Meanwhile, my heart is so tender where she is concerned despite it.

Listening to our music has made all of this spill out. There are so many things I would change about our relationship, which is why I don’t focus on the past. That our relationship is over now, and I will be happy if she shows up but I am no longer preparing for it. She knows that she is invited into my life at whatever level she would like to participate, including meeting my friends and getting a real impression of me. I might even be impressive again in a different context.

I have failed in this relationship so many times, and that’s what I have been trying to get across. Remembering everything Aada has ever done does not come from a bad place and it never has. I was a blogger for many years before I met Aada, she was just the first to really believe in me and put down earnest money.

“You must have custom fonts” is the sexiest thing she’s ever said to me. Write it down.

I don’t want to dwell on anything negative, but to treat her like the gift she is to me. Unfortunately, it is not up to me whether that gift is received.

But unfortunately, trying to say all that makes my writing repetitive… Even to me.