I have this friend.

She’s quick with a joke or a light of your smoke, but there’s someplace that she’d rather be.

Where the Billy Joel quote comes in is that she’ll joke and laugh with me, but if I poke into the real, she ghosts…. then, after a while, she’ll try me again and see if anything has changed… do I want a relationship that’s only as deep as an orange juice glass?

It troubles me because I am all about the real. It’s not that I don’t have time for pleasantries, it’s that after a few minutes of small talk, I get bored. I’m not interested in the weather unless there’s three feet of snow on the ground or taking pictures of a thunderstorm’s destruction. I’m interested in what she thinks about love, politics, the chessboard that is the world stage, how the NSA can get my good side while popping popcorn, how my head is in the clouds because I see things the way they could be instead of the way they are. Talking about idealism and how I wish I could do more to change the world in which we live.

Telling her when it’s time for me to take a chance on romance.

Telling her when grief overwhelms me.

And, because relationships are a two-way street, being supportive of everything she says and does, because even when I don’t agree, they’re her feelings and all feelings are valid. Even when the logic regarding them is upside down and backwards, they’re still right and good, because logic is often inversely proportionate to emotion. With logic, there’s always a black and white answer. With emotion, there are shades of grey all over the place. To put emotion in logic’s box is not bothering to listen. It’s treating every issue as if there’s an immediate solution instead of a process.

For me, the process is how to deal with lopsided affection, because I want to delve into conversations she can’t or won’t have. I suppose we all have friends like that, the ones that are only supposed to be good for a glass of wine now and then, where everything emotional is put away for a few laughs and that’s both the beginning and the end of it.

This may sound weird, but I’ve never had any friends like that. They all know me as the one to come to when they need to vent, or that I’m excited about big picture ideas and leave small things on the side of the road we’re walking.

It’s a conundrum, because I don’t want to put emotion where it’s not wanted… in some ways, it’s too late for that. She’s just yet another friend that I screwed over when I was too emotionally ill to see what I was doing, thus wanting to have a relationship with me, but not one that really explores either of our thought processes.

I called her on it, and she said I just think it would be cool to talk about regular things, like regular people do. Herein lies the rub. When has anyone in the history of my life known me as a regular person?

To be a regular person, or not to be a regular person. That is the question.

I’m not the hard-ass that says it has to be all or nothing, because it doesn’t. I just don’t know how to navigate it, and I don’t see it as a fault or a flaw. I am not opposed to just being regular people, but what is it that you people do? Of course, if you’re one of my readers, I’m betting you’re not a regular person, either, so maybe I’m asking the wrong audience. 😛

What is too much? When is too much? When have I stuck my foot in my mouth because I have delved too deep? How do I know when I’m bringing something up that would have been fine years ago but is not fine now? How do I erase history for the greater good? Moving on is essential, right, and good… but when I think of how to proceed, Gotye’s Somebody That I Used to Know goes through my head… not because any of the lyrics in the song ring true for this friendship, but because I want both of us to let go of anything that has happened before to let those people be somebodies that we used to know and our present relationship to just be.

Therefore, I feel foolish that I don’t know how to just be. My mind is always going to be cycling at a thousand miles a minute, I’m never going to be one of those people that can talk about surface platitudes very long, and most of all, I don’t think I’ll ever change… and it’s not for lack of want. It’s that my personality is already set. I’ll be 40 in September, and especially as I age, I learn more and more that people can modify behavior, but their core, malleable in youth, has solidified from cartilage to bone.

But seeing someone flip out due to a host of external factors is not the same thing as seeing into their core. The thinker/overthinker was set when I was a baby, because even though I have no memory of actually being a baby, I can’t imagine that being nearly immobile until I was almost two didn’t lead me into living in my head…. a natural part of digging into the personality type (INFJ) already there.

It means the world to me that she thinks it’s cool to have any relationship with me. I think she’s cool right back. But is that relationship really accepting me for who I am? Who I’ve always been? Can I turn back the running faucet that is always my mind into the drip she wants? I’m not tryin’ to drown her when she only wants a sip.

I’m also not trying to make her into anything she’s not, either. People were born to be different and to connect on their similarities, although there are some relationships that are just too different to work. It has been shown over and over that opposites attract in the short term, similar attracts over the long haul…. mostly because you’re not trying to hammer a round peg in a square hole EVERY. DAMN. DAY. hoping that eventually it will fit effortlessly.

I’m sure there has to be a compromise somewhere, the medium that will make us both happy. Friendship is not marriage, where you have to compromise all day, every day. You just don’t see each other that often, therefore, no need to work that hard.

So why is this hard for me?

In the end, I have no idea. Well, I do, but it has so much more to do with me than it will ever have to do with her. I suppose the answer lies in just being me, and if she ghosts because of it, than it means I need to lean on the friends that see me for exactly who I am, and have no need or want to change it.

Maybe that’s what I don’t have time for. It’s not small talk. It’s the lack of real talk. I will talk about world issues with people I just met in order to avoid surface-y questions that don’t go anywhere.

I want to know the times in your life when you’ve thought of yourself as a badass, or when you feel like you’ve failed miserably. I want to know the travel on your bucket list. I want to know the interesting conversations that you’ve had with the people around you… from the big picture to the smallest detail.

I could give a shit where you bought your shoes… unless it’s a precursor, the first floor on the elevator down.

Then, I’ll want to know if they were on sale.

I’m reading a novel series by Thomas Perry revolving around a woman named Jane Whitefield. She’s not a member of any established intelligence agency, but it’s a good romp through the world of private contract security. She is so incredibly real to me that sometimes I have trouble remembering she’s a fictional character.

I am particularly interested in the relationship she has with her next door neighbor, who sees people (mostly men) coming to her house at all hours of the night, and jumps to the conclusion that she must be a whore. I laughed out loud at that one.

She thinks of herself as a guide, someone who gets people off the grid when they need it the most…. a guide, in the author’s words, not mine. But her methods are sometimes nefarious… but that may be too strong a word because “he needed killin'” is a valid defense.

She’ll do anything to keep Precious Cargo safe.

In addition to her professional life, delving into the personal is fascinating. Like, how much should she tell, and to whom? How do you deal with coming home after having to kill three people and not be able to talk about it? How do you deal with manipulating people with lies for their own protection?

If there’s anything I don’t like about the series, it’s that it’s incredibly serious. She’s not a “merc with a mouth,” so there’s very precious comedic relief/dark humor in order to deal with overwhelming emotions, mostly fear.

I’m also reading a series by John Gilstrap about a guy named Jonathan Grave (nicknamed “Digger”), a voyage through the world of ex-fil ops. I can tell that Gilstrap is local because when one of the characters gets hurt, they’re taken to the same hospital I went to when I got sick at work and the initial Dx was appendicitis (it wasn’t). Gilstrap says it’s one of the best in the world. It must be, because when I got there, there weren’t any beds available, so they put me in the hallway and shoved enough morphine in me that I didn’t care. Everyone who walked past saw me at 24 curled up with my SpongeBob doll, a gift from my then-brother in law, Ryan, and his husband, Tom.

[Incidentally, eventually I thought I was too old for it and gave it to Goodwill. It was, in fact, a horrible decision, because it was “life-size” and made a wonderful pillow, albeit one with feet.]

Reading about intel in DC feels so much more real than in other cities… not that it doesn’t happen, but when you picture The Agency, you picture Langley…. or in my case, driving from Silver Spring to Alexandria on the GW Parkway and seeing the entrance sign for George H.W. Bush. I devoured the TV show Covert Affairs, and one of the most consistent shots in the entire series is Annie Walker driving her little red Volkswagen down the same road and taking that exit.

It’s all research for my own novel, learning how and when “things” happen and the dialogue that surrounds it. Even though Jane Whitefield isn’t CIA, she’s definitely an archetype in the same vein. Actually, Jonathan Grave isn’t, either, but again, an archetype that fits. It wouldn’t surprise me if Gilstrap had, at one time or another, been at the Head Shed himself. There are too many details that scream “former life experiences” rather than “I looked it up on the Interwebs.”

He’s very thorough, in my best Maude Lebowski impression.

For the first time in months, I’ve been so wrapped up in something that my grief fades into the background, and I am overwhelmed with gratitude. It helps to be “somewhere else.”

I got an e-mail from a friend that made my day, offering concrete suggestions for how she’d support me through all of this, and a line made me laugh, that she’d bring me anything I was craving (well, not ANYTHING). I wrote her back and said, “so I guess crack is out?” Crack is definitely out. I’m not sharing, she replied. The line would be A LOT funnier if I could tell you what she does for a living (and no, she’s not intel, just Maryland important enough to maintain confidentiality).

I’m smart enough to know that I’m not at the writing stage, yet…. I am at the “staring off into space and hoping an idea sticks” stage. The only thing that bothers me is that when I read fiction, I tend to pick up the style of the last writer I just read, and the reason it’s a concern is that I don’t want to be John Gilstrap or Thomas Perry. I want to be Leslie Lanagan. I don’t need to fill their shoes. I brought my own.

Though this novel is about escapism into a different world, it’s also about legacy. I could give a shit about money. When a parent dies, your own mortality starts to weigh on you like a ton of bricks. In my case, that legacy is taking shape one entry at a time for now and hopefully a published book later on.

My grandchildren’s grandchildren, should I be so lucky, won’t just have the basic birth and death certificates. They’ll know me. Really know me. That’s why this blog and this novel and all the other writing ideas aren’t about money or fame, or anything even close to it. It’s that I don’t want my life to be lost to history when I’m gone.

In my own way, I am also making myself into a guide, leading people into wholeness by laying out all my cautionary tales.

If that’s all my writing ever does, it’s enough. My goals are humble, because I cannot imagine past them, and don’t really want to. Fame has its drawbacks. For instance, I don’t picture what it would be like to be Anthony Bourdain or Elizabeth Gilbert in a grocery store. It’s too scary for an introvert to contemplate. I know myself, that I would lapse back into the show mode of my childhood, not wanting to show my authentic self to complete strangers, because often, it’s not at your own hand. It’s people assuming that because they’ve read your work, they know you better than they really do and ask obnoxious and intrusive questions that you’d have trouble answering in a laid back coffee shop, much less while put on the spot.

As this blog has become modestly popular, it has started already. But luckily, it comes through e-mails and Facebook messages where I have a chance to think about my reply before I send it…. and at this point, I don’t have so many people writing to me that I can’t answer them all.

Authors walk a fine line between wanting to talk about intimate details of their lives in order to exorcise pain, and at the same time, hoping that the writing stands on its own. Cheryl Strayed has said that she doesn’t answer questions directly most of the time, because she feels that there’s nothing she has to add that hasn’t already been put in print.

I understand that feeling implicitly, and in my case, it manifests as my writing is okay and sometimes good, therefore, meeting me would just be anticlimactic because there’s no backspace in conversation.

As the old saying goes, there are some things that just shouldn’t be said, which I usually realize right after I’ve said them. The flip side is that because I enjoy so much alone time and people know it, I have few conversations at all. People tend to read me instead of reaching out, because they truly believe that they know how I’m doing based on snapshots of how I’m feeling at any given moment.

It feels kind of like being stalked in the mildest form of the word, like looking up old girlfriends on Facebook just to see what they’re doing now with no intention of actually asking them. Say I’ve written something about someone that they didn’t like. They’ll stop speaking to me, but that doesn’t mean they’re not spending ridiculous amounts of time reading hoping their names will show up again….

It’s a direct line of one-way communication, which for most people is enough; they don’t actually have time to reach out, anyway. I respect this. People lead busy lives with their own families, often sacrificing time with friends not because they don’t want it, but because being a member of a family is all-consuming- a cocoon of their own making.

Most of the time, this makes me ridiculously happy, because I am also cocooning, just not with anyone else. At the same time, there’s a lot between and behind the lines………………….. and the spaces.

#prayingonthespaces

Yesterday, I missed Easter services for the first time in years. I grew up as a preacher’s kid, so therefore even when I became an adult living away from my parents, church was still important to me. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve missed Easter… and the last time was when Dana and I both had respiratory infections (perhaps the flu, I forget) and it made our whole house sound like a TB ward.

This year, I was just as sick, emotion-wise. Nothing could have stirred me from my bed. Nothing. I was so shaken that I just spent the morning staring at the ceiling. I knew for sure that there wasn’t going to be any music I could make it through, and Matt streams live on FB, so I have the chance to go back and listen to him if I feel like it later on.

If that wasn’t enough, the year I had to miss Easter because of being sick, a friend left a Facebook comment I found in the “memories” section that said, “Diane sang ‘Holy City’ this morning and mentioned your old church and your mom accompanying her.”

Je-ruuuuuuusalem, Je-RUUUUUsalem…. lift up your gates and sing! Hoooooosaaaannnaaaaah iiin the HIIIIIIIIIIGHEST, Hosannah to your King……….

I have so many thoughts about that, ranging from being thankful for the memory to wanting to set something on fire (I didn’t). My mom & Diane always enjoyed working together, but my memories of both of them are so different. It was a blessing to hear them together, voice and grand piano ringing in the Austin stone cathedral. On the other hand, Diane said lots of gorgeous things about me publicly while treating me like crap privately… just a needy nuisance because I couldn’t tell fiction from reality. I couldn’t tell show mode from what she really wanted from me and how she was never going to give me what I needed in return.

Our last conversation went something like I don’t want to spend any time with you, and after 20 years I’m willing to stop avoiding that truth… a truth that would have been nice to know a long, long, LONG time ago. I was 36 at the time, embarrassed about almost 23 years’ worth of lies. I beat myself up for not realizing that show mode wasn’t reality, and never would be. Had I been an adult when we met, I think I would have taken it in stride. But I wasn’t. I was a child absolutely enthralled by her voice at first, and that faded into the background as we became actual friends, because there was so much more to her than that. Hearing her sing was always nice, but I was never a fan in the true sense of the word. I wanted to talk about our lives, which had nothing to do with music…. and that worked fairly well until she moved to Portland and Susan came into the picture.

It’s not Susan’s fault, by any means. It’s that Diane was a very unhappy person at the time and I was her go-to gal when she needed someone to listen. I know now that adults should never use children to work out their issues, but that meant both jack and shit to me then. I became this repository for all these things I didn’t know how to handle, but I tried…. and then when Susan came along and Diane was happy, I was no longer needed and therefore discarded.

It didn’t matter that I’d known Diane twice as long. It didn’t matter that I was the only person in her life (nearby, not ever) that could remember her in every iteration from “just graduated from college” to “phenomenal arts success that could turn anything to gold.” It didn’t matter that when she first moved to Portland, I got letters before she met Susan when I didn’t write that said, hello? Is your hand broken? It didn’t matter that the day I graduated from high school, she was pulling for me to move to Portland to get out of the Bible belt and start my life in a post-gay world. It didn’t matter that when I didn’t move and she met Susan, she was telling her that she thought when I was 18, I’d just go away. It didn’t matter that she issued invitation after invitation to come visit, and after I got there, the reality never matched up to the pictures she presented to me…. that she missed me, she loved me, etc. etc. etc. It didn’t matter that at the same time she was struggling with how to tell me that she didn’t want to spend any time with me, we went to a concert together and she introduced me as “her best friend.”

Show mode.

In short, I wasn’t a real friend, just handy as a prop. She could tell people that I was this young woman she’d mentored from the time I was 12, and people thought it was so sweet and loving of her to do it.

So, yesterday morning I felt both used and abandoned, after crying my eyes out that this was my first Easter without my mother.

Because if there’s anything I can truly say I hate about my former relationship with Diane, it’s the rift it caused between me and my own mother. I spent so many years defending Diane that my mother and I drifted apart, because my mother could see that I was troubled and wouldn’t talk under any circumstances…. not even to a therapist. The one time I opened up to a therapist, he invited my parents in and told them that there was no equal relationship, that I was just obsessed, as if it were all my fault…. that I was never taken advantage of, I was just crazy…. but therapists would never use the word crazy. He saw it as Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, instead of rightly thinking that 14-year-olds should not have to deal with adult problems on a regular basis… That there was no bait-and-switch aspect, but of course one would think that if you never saw her letters (and probably couldn’t read them anyway if you know her handwriting 😛 ). I didn’t open up to a therapist again until I was 37.

To be a little more fair to my therapist, I didn’t tell him that I was constantly on high alert that Diane was living in an untenable situation… with an alcoholic weed dealer who once brought a pound of weed into the house, and she was constantly afraid of losing her job, both for being arrested in connection with her wife and the possibility of being “outed.”

I got to hear from Diane’s friends that she felt loss over the relationship, and I thought, show mode. If there was any loss on her part, I can only believe that it was because she couldn’t use me to prop up her own ego anymore. She did tell me that she was sorry because she knew that some of those conversations must’ve confused and upset me. I could have been nicer about it, because my only reply was if your idea of making amends is writing one e-mail, reading it is thanks, I’m all better now. I think I’d just hit my limit on being nice.

Clearly, there were genuine moments, but just enough to keep me hooked in so that I couldn’t walk away…. because she loved me.

Just enough to let my pure, white mother love transfer away because I thought my mom was being homophobic and defensive; she wasn’t trying to protect me, a thought that makes my stomach turn because it is so much a part of why I didn’t walk in the light while I had it.

But the thing about mothers is that they’ll forgive anything, and when I started writing about all the gaslighting and crazymaking, the first thing my mother said to me was, is there anything I can do? I started to cry because I felt like I’d completely fucked her over for years and years and she wants to know what she can do for me?

It led to a series of conversations in which I actually did open up, so that by the time she died, she’d had at least three years of hearing all the time that she was right, that the relationship should never have happened, that Diane should have listened to my mother and left me alone rather than taking our relationship underground so that we could hide our letters and phone calls.

I’d do my homework in front of the mailbox so that if a letter came, I’d be the first to see it, knowing that if my parents found it first, it would be trashed. I used to keep them in a backpack in my closet until an air conditioner started leaking right where I kept it (of course) and every damn letter was ruined…. including my favorite, the one where she said she’d left her wife and gotten away from the life that could have ruined her, as well.

I remember opening it at school, no one knowing why I was sobbing onto my marching band uniform…. but they weren’t tears of sadness. If anything, they were joy and relief that I was off the hook from worrying about her all the damn time.

Why that wasn’t a selling point in terms of being close to my mother again, I’ll never know. She tried so hard to connect with me. I remember that one year, my birthday fell on a Friday, and we invited the entire band to come to the house afterward for cake and ice cream. Only one person showed up, but believe me when I say that one person was enough. Had the entire band actually showed, I would have enjoyed the party for about fifteen minutes, my limit in huge crowds. But again, dear God she tried.

Our closest moments were always her accompanying me, whether I was playing my horn or singing. We could work together far easier than being comfortable talking deeply into the night…. and, of course, not only did she accompany me, she accompanied all my band and orchestra friends, as well.

Because I was her daughter, she liked accompanying me the best, but I wasn’t as technically proficient as others. She always said that of her professional accomplishments, it was accompanying Sylvia Danburg, who went on to become the concertmaster at the Met from HSPVA/Julliard that she considered a highlight. Diane was also Met material, which is why my mom always talked lovingly about working with her, too. Diane got the audition in Dallas, and advanced to New York, but the weekend in which it was scheduled, a freak snowstorm hit Dallas and she couldn’t get out in time.

My mother and I just had fun, but she was so much more than just the “having fun” type. All grand piano accompaniments for concertos are orchestra reductions, and she would practice for hours upon hours. I am positive that whenever I got a I at Solo & Ensemble, it was never due to me. I just “hired” the right accompanist.

I am desperately sad that she’ll never accompany me again, because I spent an enormous amount of time and work on becoming a real singer instead of a trumpet player who just fakes it. We never got to do any of the great rep of which I’m now capable. The best I’ve gotten to do so far is that when I sang the Pie Jesu movement of Requiem by John Rutter, my friend Karen held up my cell phone during dress and my mom listened from Houston. Later, Dana showed her the tape, which made her cry, but it wasn’t the same as being there (of course). When I did The Lord is My Shepherd movement from same work, my mom had a church job of her own and the best I could do was send her a link to my Soundcloud account. She had just retired from teaching the May before she died, and we’d planned to work together at CCC when she could come up for a weekend.

Yesterday, I was just so angry that I did not get a dream deferred. I got a dream that died.

No preparation, no saying goodbye, no anything but alive and then dead in the time it takes a clock to tick.

I am sure that, as Susan said once in her Easter sermon, that resurrection happens in the middle of the mess.

Just not this one, literally. It will be my own. Just not this Easter. This Easter was so painful that shaken and stirred doesn’t even begin to cover it. I went to bed as early as possible just so that it would be over more quickly.

Technically, Monday is still Easter…………………….

The Son Also Rises.

Amen.
#prayingonthespaces

I can’t.

I am sitting here sobbing at my computer listening to the Easter anthem that was my mom’s favorite, but with SATB choir and grand piano, a faster tempo and the left hand bass running eighth notes ringing throughout the church.

I can’t do it. I can’t talk about resurrection today. I can’t listen to a sermon about things coming back to life, within you or without you.

I can’t.

There is always metaphorical resurrection in all things, bridges that can be burnt to a crisp and then someone comes along and offers you a brand new two by four and says, “let’s get to work.”

When Jesus died, the disciples were not only horrified, they had no idea what to do. It’s not like they had a succession plan in place. He died, and they were scrambling. They kept thinking back to all his parables and how they were too dumb to really hear what Jesus was saying…. that you have to walk in the light while you have it. Darkness descended over Israel and you could practically see the light bulb turn on. Ohhhhhhh……

And now I sit here, the dumbest disciple of all, not having walked in the light while I had it, and now it’s gone. This morning my dad made sure I had Peeps and a hollow bunny to fill with Dr Pepper, but there was no trail of Cadbury eggs to my presents. No fluffy and obnoxious Easter grass with candy stuck to it and a few toys. No plastic soccer ball for me, no princess dolls for my sister.

I think it was third grade that it was a goldfish…. the start of a lifelong obsession because now I’ll buy one for eight cents and put it into a tank big enough that it has room to grow and two years later, one of two things happens. The first is that the feeder fish was too small for the people who caught it to realize it would become a Koi. The second is that it was too small for them to realize it would become a Black Moor, or something equally beautiful and exotic. The “ugly duckling” becomes a swan under my eyes.

I am feeling about eight cents tall, and hoping that time will release the beautiful Koi inside me.

Because for better or worse, I am the succession plan. Just, please God. Not today.

I can’t.

 

Things are looking up after a really long slog lately. I got some excellent feedback on the fiction I wrote- not just “hey, this is interesting,” but ideas for moving the story forward when I really wasn’t sure what I wanted out of it. I also want to work on character development, making them amalgams of people I’ve known in my past, but no one character enveloping one person. For instance, Pri-Diddy is Indian and Auna is African-American and James’ family is originally from England, so how to take one person and embody all of that rather than having single characters based on each one. Now, James, Pri-Diddy, and Auna are not characters in my novel as of yet, but like I said, a good example of my thought process. And, of course, I have to fit in there somewhere.

No matter what any novelist tells you, fiction is real life disguised, no matter how outrageous the plot. Perhaps the author is trying to reconcile his/her childhood. Perhaps the author is trying to make peace with haunted dreams. Perhaps fiction is the dream, a way to subsconsciously enter a sacred space so that the absurd works out the tangible. There are things about my own past in which I am just not willing to let go in first person… writing around them so that hopefully only I can read between the lines… or perhaps to put “myself” in situations that I’d like to experience, but haven’t.

I am generally envious of authors who get book advances, but not because I need the money for basic sustenance. For now, I’m writing about the intelligence community, and all the letters are right down the road. But say I was writing about India. A book advance is a plane ticket, rather than having to Google everything instead of live it.

But even writing about the intelligence community is a world of looking at declassified ops and other novels in the same genre, because it is unlikely that someone is going to walk up to me and say, “hey, I work for the NSA and I hear you’re working on a book. Why don’t I help you out?” It’s also unlikely that I’d run into Valerie Plame at a party, but it would be awesome if I did, because she’s helped out a lot of fiction writers, including acting as a television consultant.

I do have friends at State, and people who work at State are often put on task forces with The Agency, but I only know that because of, again, declassified ops and novels in that genre. If my friends were on those task forces, they obviously couldn’t tell me about it.

I feel like I’m writing blind, and that’s ok. Writing a novel, for the most part, is less about facts and more about releasing the demons you don’t want to ascribe to yourself, anyway. Your own flaws and failures come out in character backstory. The trick is to write it in such a way that no one knows which characters have the aspects of you or your alter ego.

It’s such a process, learning to write fiction. With blogging, I don’t have to know plot points and character development, because I’m living them. Fiction is a chessboard, and I’ve never been even a good chess player, much less a great one. But chess, like fiction, is something I enjoy, even if I have to keep the computer setting on stupid.

I don’t think I am very good at writing fiction, but that doesn’t mean I can’t try. Here is a rough draft of something I’m working on… I apologize in advance. You probably won’t get more than this, as it’s something I need to keep woodshedding as opposed to publishing on the fly, but it’s something I’m excited to present as a snippet, anyway.

For those who aren’t in the know, Susan Plummer is a nod to the character in The Equalizer, played by Melissa Leo.

—————

Susan Plummer was having her nails done when the message alert dinged on her work phone. It was her day off, which meant taking care of herself. However, even after ten years at the agency with a modicum of seniority, it still meant that personal days were always in quotation marks, tethered by electronic devices designed to render dead zones obsolete. No hour of her day was off the grid, and she heaved a deep sigh. A message when she’d clearly told her underlings only to contact her if the building was on fire, she knew that whatever had been sent was, in the words of Dorothy Parker, a fresh hell.

Well, at least it wasn’t a stale hell. If it was, they could have handled it on their own. She was caught between two ideas. The first was that she hadn’t had a day off in six weeks. The second was piqued curiosity. What in the crippling fuck could be that important?

It was an e-mail forward with only two words… she knows. Under it was an e-mail sent to the DoD webmaster that said a White Hat had found some vulnerabilities and wanted to talk.

No, they didn’t. They wanted to negotiate, she thought. Those fuckers always want something in return. It was time to get a team together and check it out. No face-to-face, just gathering intel. If they found anything, things could escalate quickly.

There was something about the e-mail that struck her as odd. If this person had truly meant malice, why would they give their own name and contact information? They’d, in effect, saved DoD tons of taxpayer dollars and legwork. Well, that was at least something. She would choose her team carefully, because intel ops had gone wrong before. She couldn’t take a chance that this one would, because things would end up going in one of two directions. Either she’d give her a job, or burn her so hard that when she even thought about touching a computer her gag reflex would engage.

Actually, there were two things that had struck her as odd, not just the one. In her entire career with the agency, the number of female hackers she’d investigated was a grand total of one… this one. Who was she, and what could she possibly want out of this? It would have to wait until she got to the office. She’d pissed off her nail technician long enough, who’d started to chat about Susan’s self importance, not knowing that Susan started out as a linguist and Vietnamese was in her wheelhouse.

She apologized for her rudeness, saying that it was an annoying work thing as the blood drained from her nail technician’s face.

When the appointment was over, Susan drove home and called for her agency driver. Mike served two purposes, carrying her around in a vehicle capable of withstanding bullets, and for better or for worse, freeing her up to work in the backseat.

Time to make the donuts, she thought, and smudged her red paint on the door handle.

Fuck.

———————-

Susan was sitting at her desk, staring at pictures of a woman with kind eyes, a great smile, and hair that flopped in every direction. Though she’d checked out every page in this woman’s terrifying browser history, she smiled back at the screen in spite of herself. This was the tiny sprite supposedly fucking up her program? Although there was one unsettling aspect in the last image.

She was staring directly at the camera.

Susan thought back to the first e-mail that alerted her to this woman’s presence, and thought about its relevance. It was right.

She. Knows.

But the what remained to be seen. She picked up the phone.

Steve, let’s go ahead and bring her in.

I used to tease Dana all the time when I was right, because the joke was always that it didn’t happen all that often. Encoded in her DNA is a fanatical need to be right, but she comes by it quite honestly. I remember getting into an argument with her dad once, where he said that you couldn’t check into an airline with an iPhone. I told him that I thought you could, and he still didn’t believe me, so I printed out an article detailing the process and brought it to him. He said that I was still wrong because you couldn’t check in multiple people on one phone. It was at that point I figured out that I’d never be right about anything, and to learn to nod and smile while boiling inside. I’m just not competitive enough to try more than once.

Eventually, I hit my limit, but it took seven years. I remember talking to a friend about it that knew all of us, and I told her that I thought I’d have to win a Pullitzer Prize before they improved their opinion of me, and she said trust me, they’ll find something wrong with that, too. I didn’t realize how much it got to me until another friend came to me and said, I think you and Dana are fantastic, but I don’t think you’re fantastic together. She dismisses your ideas all the time, and the flowers that Dana brought you when you came home from your first day at Alert Logic were my idea. He thought it was ridiculous that I was willing to do everything I could to support Dana, both as a wife and a breadwinner, and not exactly getting a return on my investment. I didn’t think that was exactly true, because there were so many things that happened behind closed doors that were authentic and beautiful….. but still….

I’d been laughing off a serious problem for years, and I didn’t even realize it. Wait. That’s not true at all. I noticed that at home, I was wrong a lot, whether I actually was or not… and in public Dana would shower affection on me to the point that it looked like she was putting on a show. It didn’t seem authentic, because it was just too over the top. I’d sit there and blush to my feet without saying anything, because I preferred the Dana that was quieter, more real, less acTING, thank YOU! It was especially embarrassing after she’d had a couple of drinks, because the show included PDA that crossed the line, maybe not for some people, but definitely for someone as shy as me in that arena. For future reference, don’t grab my ass in a room full of people. It will not end well for you, because I refuse to ignore my discomfort anymore.

There are so many things I miss desperately about that relationship, but the Dana Lanagan Show™ is not one of them. Completely changing my surroundings, even though it might have seemed crazy to move, was the absolute right choice for me. I got the chance to truly start over in a city where I already felt comfortable, as opposed to taking off for Minneapolis and hoping for the best.

But the idea wasn’t crazy to my family, and they’ve supported me wholeheartedly throughout this transition. I’ve started to pay more attention to the people that support me vs. the people who try to find everything wrong with what I’m doing. I’m quite tired of the my judgment rocks, and yours sucks attitude. Because what I’ve learned is that I have to make the decisions that are best for me, because no one else is or can be responsible for the choices I make, no matter how angry someone is that I don’t follow their advice when it isn’t right for me. I genuinely ask for help when I need it, and unsolicited opinions drive me up the wall… something I had to deal with up close and personally because in the past I’ve often been guilty of it. I had to learn to release my inner judgmental dickhead (which I’m still laughing about, because the J in INFJ didn’t get past Argo… and I loved that she would genuinely call me on my bullshit). I had to learn that if I didn’t like it, no one else did, either. I decided to stop dishing it when I couldn’t take it.

Mistakes are something people have to learn on their own, and no one can predict their future for them.

Argo genuinely thought I was making a bad mistake because she thought that this move was some sort of grand gesture for her, and asked Dana if she needed a restraining order. I understand her thought process, because she couldn’t see me emote, couldn’t see my own thought process, couldn’t or wouldn’t see my own history with DC and how much I regretted ever leaving. There was a tiny thought in the back of my head that if we could see each other emote, it would change our relationship drastically, because there would be no more of either of us hiding behind a black and white screen. But that meeting had to come either as a mutual agreement or at her invitation. To think that I would seek her out when she clearly didn’t want it was over the line, Smokey. Because she chose to change the focus off all my reasons for moving and make herself the sole purpose, I was in a world of pain. By the time I actually moved, we weren’t even speaking, because we’d had a huge blowout of a fight, my fucked up thought process that if I could make it where she didn’t want to speak to me, it might reassure Dana that I was hers and hers alone. Obviously, it did not work.

Argo’s opinion meant way too much to me, and I internalized what she thought to the point that when I first moved here, I didn’t leave my house for days, even though we were separated by a fair number of miles. I had to keep reminding myself that I pushed her away so that she wouldn’t even have a chance to reject me…. that it was my choice, not hers. I had to keep reminding myself that even if we weren’t, it wouldn’t matter, because we were not in a good place emotionally and wanting to meet her on the ground just wouldn’t happen at my own hand. I had no intention of running face first into a barbed wire fence.

I’d made it impossible for her to trust me, to believe that I loved her enough to try and let go. That I had other friends in DC besides her and fully intent on making more, setting down the deep roots that I didn’t before, because my entire life revolved around Kathleen and I had no other support system besides my coworkers (who are still my friends, but have moved on to other cities).

I walked around in a complete daze, not knowing what to do with myself at first, because it was a body blow to lose a friend and a wife in such a short period of time, even though I take full responsibility for it. Just because you created the problem doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt. In a lot of ways, it hurts more, because there’s so much if I’d only….. For a long time, I thought there was something I could say, something I could do, something I could achieve that would heal everything.

It was a gargantuan task to learn to stop caring so much. I wished desperately that I could go back in time, but there’s no crossing your own timeline. Not only that, I have come to feel that it was a fixed point, something that had to happen to motivate me into true change… to approach life differently all the way around. Especially because our entire relationship is chronicled in my inbox, it invites me to revisit all of the ways I participated in a relationship that started out as amazing and descended into toxicity and pain. All I wanted was my sweet, small a Argo to come back to me, but the ship had sailed. She left port with no return trip.

At times, I tried to forget. At others, I wailed like a wounded animal, sobs so deep that I shook uncontrollably- knowing that it took finding that level of pain to be able to release it. It is always a life changing moment when you fall into a deep hole you dug yourself. I had to claw my way back up, and over the years, it has been successful…. or at the very least, sufficient.

Back in the day, I thought it was a possibility that eventually Dana, Lindsay, and Matt would all move here and, along with Argo, I’d have the urban family I’d created in Portland and still miss…. not to replace them, but to create something new that was just as fulfilling. But then, Argo and I were running towards each other and not away. She thought that living in Portland, especially so close to Diane, was toxic in and of itself, and said that Dana and I should move to DC and that our brains made us imminently hireable. I told her then that it was on the three to five year plan, and three years later, almost to the day, the plan was set in motion.

So moving to DC was never impulsive, and had been on my life plan for far longer than anyone knew. Originally, it was in the plan because Dana’s parents are at least ten years older than mine. Released from family obligations, I’m still glad I made the right choice for me.

My sister and Matt haven’t moved here, but I am extraordinarily blessed that her job allows her to travel here quite frequently.

I have to hope that now Argo sees the whole chessboard, and not just single pieces. I’d be here even if I didn’t meet her at all…. but I’m glad I did. She continues to bring joy and laughter into my life even if it is only in retrospect, because as we say in Texas, she’s funny as grits.

I chose to remember all of our laughter and released all our pain, and I’m finally right about something.

Last night one of my friends asked me if I’d ever thought of publishing an anthology of my blog entries, because he thought I’d really grown as a writer. The short answer is “yes.” However, I don’t want to be self-aggrandizing. I’d like for someone who’s capable of publishing to ask for one… mostly because I don’t know which of my entries really resonate with people, and which don’t.

The marriage article I wrote years ago (published on Facebook as a Note in 2012 and on this web site in 2013) got a lot of traction all over the world due to an amazing amount of social media shares, ending up on both Margaret Cho’s and Martina Navratilova’s Twitter feeds. But that one article does not a book make, and though Dana was my world at the time, I’m so embarrassed by all the mistakes I made that reading it on my own is extraordinarily painful. If I really knew what I was talking about, why didn’t my own marriage succeed?

I suppose the short answer is that it did for a very long time, and not to mistake the part for the whole.

But still.

Dear God… make me a bird, so I can fly far…. far, far away.

It’s haunting, really. A few nights ago, for the first time in years, I rolled over in bed half asleep and said, Dana, can I have a drink of your water? She always liked to have a Mason Jar on her nightstand, and didn’t mind sharing. The dream startled me, and I woke up in a sweat, because obviously my subconscious mind had forgotten she wasn’t there. I am trying to figure out what the dream represented, because I have a history of “body memory,” things coming to me in the night over events that happened on the same day in years past. I feel the same tension over again, long held in scar tissue so that it surfaces when I least expect it, because I don’t remember what the original event might have been.

I am not good with times, places, and orders of events. I am good at remembering the tiniest details of how I felt. I won’t remember the date, but I’ll remember what it felt like to be near you, whether that interaction was positive or negative. I’ll remember what you were wearing down to the accessories and the look on your face. I’ll remember what the air smelled like if we were outside. I’ll remember paragraphs of things you said, but when you said them is lost to history.

In that way, my blog (or as The Divine Mrs. B named it, The Pensieve) is invaluable because when I sit down and write about my experiences, the date and timestamp comes with it. Left to my own devices, sometimes it feels like light years since I was married to Dana and at others, we just broke up yesterday. It is the dance of intimacy in my own head, and very few people are able to cut in.

One of the universal things that happens to me is that in my waking hours, I lose truamatic events and focus on the good things that happen in all my relationships. It is only when I have hours upon hours to dream that the trauma rises up from its grave. In some instances, those dreams torture me. In others, I am just replaying the scene for discernment and clarity.

When I am awake, I just want to walk in the joy that people bring into my life, because I am trying so hard to let peace win. I am not the same person I was before I realized the toll emotional abuse as a child had taken on me… how my actions and reactions had been rewired by all of it until it bubbled up into a world of crazy, or so I thought.

When you’ve been through the cyclone of crazymaking and gaslighting, the things that have been modeled for you show up in your own moods and behaviors. When I truly thought I was descending into madness, it was actually the process of transitioning away from unhealthy patterns, because what was normal for me wasn’t normal for everyone else.

It is an isolated place to feel as if no one understands, and no one ever will. I stuffed down that feeling for far too long- over two decades, in fact. The “insanity” was finally vomiting up all my trauma as I could see down into my core. It was a nightmare I thought would never end, because my life got a lot worse until I emotionally broke in half. Finally, finally, I got some light back in my eyes. The thing I never thought would end is now just a whisper of my past… motivation to keep reaching for my ideal self instead of wandering through my mental graveyard wondering how I came up short.

Emotional illness and a chemical imbalance has always complicated things. Was I a more vulnerable target because I was so depressed, or did the depression begin when I was told things I was too young to handle?

The answer I’ve come up with is twofold. The first is that you can’t talk away a chemical imbalance, just like you can’t go to talk therapy to heal a heart attack. Because I didn’t know I had a chemical imbalance, I wasn’t medicated until I was 19… and even then, it wasn’t the right diagnosis. I was taking unipolar depression medication when I was actually bipolar, and didn’t discover what it was like to live without depression until I got the mood stabilizer I needed and no doctor caught until five years later.

I’m always a little gunshy about saying I’m bipolar, because the images you see in media are not the symptoms I experience. Bipolar disorder is a spectrum, just like autism, and I am at the weakest end. My “ups” are not true mania, but what is called hypomania. This means that I experience horrendous downs with very view ups, and the ups aren’t very high. I get insomnia and flurries of activity, such as actually wanting to go outside… I feel more at ease interacting with people, because I cease to feel as if the pod people have come to get me.

But these symptoms are when I am off meds. Taking medication every day manages them so that I have a normal range of emotions and I don’t cycle unpredictably. However, I do get situational depression that medication just can’t help, and that’s where the chicken and egg conundrum roll over and over in my head.

It is the second aspect of my depression that answers my own question of “which came first?” Again, you can’t talk about a chemical imbalance and hope it heals itself… but you can use talk therapy for the life experiences that have made you who and what you are. I see them as disparate, one medical, one psychological. This is because my trauma reflexes can be eased into wholness, but I’ll still have to take medication for the rest of my life. This is because I’ve gone off-meds a couple of times; once, I thought my depression was situational and after talk therapy, I could wean myself off of it. The second time, I didn’t have insurance or enough cash to pay out of pocket.

Both times, I’ve crashed and burned like a 747 slamming into the mountains.

The thing is, though, some of my depression is situational, events that used to run across my mind as hurricanes which, in recent years, have tone themselves down to mere pouring rain.

Though this web site has really only been for me, I have been flabbergasted at the way I’ve become a Nouwen “wounded healer.” By opening up and showing others all my flaws and failures, I’ve found so many people that identify with them.

If there’s any merit to an anthology, it would only be an invitation to a wider audience that might get something out of it, because most of my entries over the past three years have been a manual on What Not to Do.™

There’s a flip side to bringing in a wider audience. I already get freaked at the number of people that quote me to me… and while it is nice to know that there are lines people remember, it is also stomach-clenching to feel caught like a deer in headlights, held accountable by others to my own words when I feel I am doing my dead-level best to slash through sin… a loaded word, but I can’t think of a better one.

Just because you had a rough childhood doesn’t mean that you’re not responsible for your actions and reactions once you “age out.” Children cannot be held responsible for not knowing they need help, but adults certainly can.

When I back to the things I’ve written, I also think about my friends, and what it would do to our lives to open them up in a distributed book. Some people I disguise. Some, I don’t. It depends on whether we’re close or not. If people are a part of my daily life, I want them to be as real to you as they are to me.

If they aren’t, or if they’ve specifically asked for confidentiality, they get nicknames that hopefully disguise them well enough for my entire audience to be kept in the dark. Over time, I have realized that I am not nearly as good at this as I think I am.

There are accidental breadcrumbs all over the place, plot holes that would have to be patched because living in DC requires it.

But in a lot of ways, I don’t feel that I need to write a book, because I write the equivalent of a chapter a week.

My “book” is already being written, one post at a time… and I would much rather be respected by a small audience than launched onto an international stage… I mean, I’m already on one. I’ve been read in every single country in the world, and I can prove it. But to go on a press junket promoting my own pain for profit isn’t necessarily my idea of a good time.

I’m not exactly a private person, especially one-on-one. It’s getting paid for it that’s problematic. Having a “pay what you want” button to cover server cost isn’t the same thing. It’s not that I don’t think my work isn’t worth something. It’s that my writing is about my life, and facing the possibility of my friends and my former loves feeling exploited is unacceptable.

An anthology would be a long conversation, particularly with the friends I have who are very private people. It’s one thing to show up on a modestly popular blog. It’s quite another to show up on Amazon. Of course, that’s assuming that it sells, and for me, that’s assuming a lot. But I don’t think so much of myself that I know it would. I am just thinking aloud about the possibility that it would, and how that would affect not only my own life, but others’ lives as well.

As I am learning more and more, it’s not all about me.

It never has been, and it never will be.

Of course when I got to the doctor, the UA didn’t show anything. They decided to treat me just based on symptoms alone, and want to see me back on Monday. I am guessing that it didn’t show anything because I drank entirely too much knowing that they’d want a UA, and then when it was almost an hour wait to see the doctor, was just about to let my teeth float when I finally gave up the ghost. Then, I refilled my water glass and drank some more, thus diluting the sample into nothing.

I am feeling somewhat better today, although with the Cipro on board, I am having nausea and dirhe diahre the shits…. grateful that I don’t have to spend my day reading the shampoo bottle.

I’d like to see my sister while she’s here this week, but I’m going to have to judge that carefully because it’s about a 35 min. drive to Annapolis, and she’s going to be in DC soon, anyway. Her company is going to have her start working on federal legislation, which means that she’ll be infinitely closer, at least in DC terms.

In Houston, almost everything takes 35 minutes. For my Houston “Fanagans,” it’s about the same distance from Annapolis to Silver Spring as it is from Sugar Land to downtown, and not much longer even in rush hour, because fewer people are traveling that way.

In Portland, it’s akin to driving out the Gorge…. somewhere between Edgefield and Multnomah Falls.

Now, I realize that I get hits from every country in the world, but I’ve actually lived in Houston and Portland. The rest of you are on your own. 😛

Once I get well, I’d like to get some DC hiking books, because I was really into it in PDX and I haven’t hiked once since I’ve been here. Though there are amazing hikes in the outskirts of Northern Virginia/Richmond, I’d like to start in The District, because Rock Creek Park is a great place to warm up. I’m not in any shape to do more than beginner right now, especially since my allergy medication can only do so much. Once Spring passes into Summer, it will be a lot easier for me to get out and about. Even though I’ll have to carry more water, the pollen count won’t be quite so high.

It’s at least nice to think about while I’m stuck inside with my stomach “to’ up from the flo’ up.”

Thank GOD I only have four more days of antibiotics left. I don’t think I could take much more (see what I did there?). Although I’m sure if I actually got off my butt and went to the doctor for some Zofran, by the time I got there my stomach would be fine.

Like going to the mechanic.

 

I have to go to the doctor today because I have a raging infection and even though I have taken raw cranberry supplements and arthritis-strength Tylenol, I still feel like death warmed over. I think it’s time for antibiotics, of which I am not a fan unless I am really, really sick. I don’t want to overuse to the point that they don’t work anymore, but this is a special case… although it can be argued that I’m always a case. 😛

Plus, I get to go to the pharmacy for AZO tabs, and who doesn’t like florescent orange pee? The first time I took AZO, I didn’t read the PI (prescribing information) and I thought to myself, wow…. I think I’m going to die soon. Once I figured out that it was just a side effect and my bladder had stopped turning back flips, I was on board.

If any of you find this gross, remember that I come from a medical family. I can calmly discuss diarrhea and vomiting while eating shrimp scampi.

So, it’s off to the doctor for me, although I may stop at Starbucks for some tea along the way. Right now my favorite is a venti iced green with four or five Splenda. People are raving about adding lemonade to it- I like it okay, but the green all by itself is more my speed, as is zero calories because I’d rather save them for cheese and chocolate.

I may also need a trip to the grocery store for some Crisco, because I bought both black and pinto beans the other day and I’m feelin’ some refried coming on for burritos.

Comfort food is where it’s at when I’m sick…. and today is that day. You know, the day where you wish you had someone to do all this shit for you because you don’t really want to get out of bed and yet, bootstraps, no crying in baseball, etc.

Green tea will at least give me enough energy to get out of the house. Anything but the doctor and the pharmacy is up for debate. There are so many things I’d like to do today, but how I feel will dictate all of it. Even though, like I said, I took some Tylenol, I feel febrile, as if my entire body is blushing with embarrassment.

You know, like when a cute girl walks by…. except this time, it feels like she’s walked by at least 10 times.

Now it’s really time for some tea to cool off.

 

I bought keyhole bridge glasses from Zenni that I thought were going to be small, cute, and timeless. When I got them, I realized that they looked more like the glasses my dad wore in the 1980’s and I loved them so I got a pair just like them, even though they took up my whole face. As a result, they’ve sat on my dresser for months, and I intended to return them until my sister came to visit and I knew that she would get a big kick out of them. I was not wrong. She said at least nine times that she loved my glasses, and at one point, said, “I would die for those.” Therefore, she decided that she must have a picture of them, and that’s how I ended up admitting to my fans that I am a big nerd…. although these glasses are probably the book jacket look I am going for, along with a blazer that has patches on the sleeves.

The frames, to my mind,  are hideously throwback and preppy, but I’ve been preppy most of my life, because I went to HSPVA.

At ‘PVA, the only way to be counterculture was to dress in preppy clothes, because it’s a sea of dyed hair and piercings in alternative places. I wore penny loafers every day, and would still if I could find them. I went to Goodwill and picked out every possible combination of khakis and button downs that fit, along with Birkenstocks, which were actually in style back then, even with socks. Fortunately or unfortunately, they were also a great blinking with with 70 pt font advertisement that I’m a lesbian.

I wore glasses throughout my childhood, but I stopped because they didn’t work. My problem was neurological and there was nothing wrong with my vision. I don’t remember what the prescription was back then, but getting glasses didn’t actually work until a few years ago, when my optometrist was “insightful” enough (see what I did there?) to add prisms to the prescription. They don’t always keep my eye from drifting, but when I was little, I had an alternating isotropia/strabismus, meaning that my brain would choose which eye was the best at any given time and switch off because I don’t have monocular vision. Now that I’m almost 40, the vision in my left eye has gotten bad enough that it doesn’t alternate anymore…. which is actually a blessing because the alternation changed my field of vision all the time, resulting in totaling two cars. I am a much better driver than I used to be because I have the same field of vision all the time. My doctor wants me to put a Post-It note over my right eye for at least 30 minutes a day to try and strengthen my left eye, because then we might be able to start training for 3D. However, it hurts my head so bad that I am struggling with it, for two reasons, actually. The first is the aforementioned headache. The second is that the vision in my left eye is so bad that I can’t read or write, because fonts become too fuzzy. I need to bolster my will in the worst way, because if I don’t, I will never finish Staring at Myself, the case study and autobiography I’m working on… a book based on the work of Susan Barry in Fixing My Gaze.

It’s hard to read that book now, even though I’ve read it four times already, because it is a reminder that Oliver Sacks is dead, the one person I wanted to meet before my book was complete. I was completely engrossed by The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat: And Other Clinical Tales. I took his death very personally, because I always do when my writing heroes die.

As I’ve mentioned before, the title of my book was given to me by my ex-wife, Dana, when I told her that the only 3D I could see was very, very close up. I can see both sides of my nose at once, and that’s about it…. and I couldn’t even do that until Susan Barry said I could, because my eyes tracking together was a process of starting with something close and slowly dragging objects further away and trying to keep focus. Barry used a string of beads…. but like I said, it’s going to be a process to get my left eye strong enough to even begin working on said project.

I went to Disney World with the HSPVA orchestra in 9th grade, and they had a Muppet Movie designed in 4D, prism glasses as opposed to the classic red and white. For the first time, things jumped out at me the way they were supposed to, and made me laugh with one of Kermit’s big lines… we invited the world’s foremost scientists to appear in this movie, but they refused to come. Bunsen and Beaker’s “experiments” exploded toward my face and it was life-changing, because I realized all the things I couldn’t see under normal circumstances.

As a result, most of the reason I wear tiny blue frames as opposed to the ones pictured is that the prisms are too low on my face to actually work. I can see better with my left eye, but that is the extent of their usefulness…. well, except for the fact that they make me look like my dad as opposed to my mom’s “mini-me.” Of course, there’s nothing wrong with that, but I like every once in a while to prove that both sides of my family are represented in the way I look… although I think I look far more like my grandparents than I do my parents.

However, I am the only one in my family who has monocular vision, because it happens after birth. I had such trouble when I was born a preemie. My lung collapsed, I got a palsy in my brain from far too much pure oxygen, and it took me almost two years to learn to walk. Through all of that, my eyes never learned to track together.

For a long time, this was thought to be a permanent condition, and if it never happens for me, I’ll write about that, too. But too much research has come out relatively recently that proves otherwise.

I just need to buy some Post-Its.

Lindsay and I went for sushi once she finally got a break, and while we were eating, her lobbyist told her to get to a bar called Red, Red Wine (the song is stuck in my head, too). We paid out and walked the few doors down. When we walked in, I realized that anyone who was anyone in Maryland was within 50 square feet. Because Lindsay walks in these circles all the time, she is always officially Not. Impressed….. while I debate over whether it’s tacky to ask for a photo. I always decide not to ask, because as much as I wanted a selfie with the Senate Majority and Minority Leaders, the day was over and it was drinkin’ time. I know what it’s like to feel like I have to be “on,” and I didn’t want that for them.

So there we were, Republicans, Democrats, and lobbyists all stuffed together with not enough seats. Even though I don’t work in politics, there was never a time in which I felt ill-at-ease. At different times in my life, I’ve been a lead trumpet player, and hanging out with this crowd was literally no different than hanging out with a bunch of other trumpet players. When you’re the lead, you get your balls busted by your underlings telling you how much better they could have played it. As the lead, it is your right- no- your responsibility to respond with something devastatingly clever. And that’s how it went all night long. The Minority leader is female, and because you can look up who she is, I will not tell you how she impressed me, because I’m betting she’d say it was unprintable.

As an aside, I was so impressed with the diversity at the table. Though there weren’t many females, there were males of all colors. Maryland is a lot of things, but whitewashed government is not one of them. Yet another thing that makes me proud to live here.

I caught titles, but not names. Actually, that’s not true at all. Everyone introduced themselves to me and I forgot their names almost immediately. I can tell you what everyone was wearing and what they smelled like, though.

The guy sitting next to me was black and was wearing a light grey shirt and a pink tie. I leaned over to him and said “I’ve been admiring your tie.” He said, “and I like your frames.” We continued talking and he told me that he lived in Baltimore. I said, “I want to ask you a question, and you can tell me if I’m going too deep… but what was it like living in Baltimore when Freddie Gray was murdered?” He said that luckily, where his office was located was out of the range of looters and protesters, but that he was glued to the TV for days, because it was a bit scary.

He also said that he understood the violence, but didn’t agree with it, because it really wasn’t accomplishing anything to burn small businesses, etc. I told him that I struggle with violent vs. non-violent protest, because I personally am one of the quiet, mild-mannered protesters that walks silently or chats with friends. I’ll join in if people are chanting, but that’s as rowdy as I get. The problem I have is that sometimes violent protests work. Its not a pretty idea, but it is also true. Then we talked about the Revolutionary War and the Boston Tea Party and Shays’ Rebellion.

It was a long and involved “wondering as we wandered” through history, because I think we both had the same point of view in terms of understanding why people get that angry, but not wanting to be one of those people, either.

It was the classic Leslie Lanagan outing…. the life of the party for a few minutes, find someone I like, and talk with them until the rest of the party isn’t there anymore… just background noise to my own main event.

I’m sitting in an office on State St. in Annapolis with my sister and her lobbyist. Paintings of rowboats are all around me, so of course I can’t help but think of Regina Spektor. All the Rowboats is the first song I listen to with new headphones, because it’s how I know if they’re any good. If I can actually feel the bass in my chest, they are worthy of purchase.

I brought said headphones, but I’m enjoying the sound of typing all around me as we all work on our different things… all idea driven. We all write, but theirs is legislation and mine passes for creativity. My brain is a bit scrambled and I don’t have any pain meds on me. I generally carry Advil and Tylenol on my keychain, but I forgot to refill from the last time I had a headache…. so this entry may be nothing more than a whole bunch of complaining…. although I have no right. In my family, you’re not allowed to complain until you’ve taken something. The other old joke in my family goes like this:

Leslie: My head hurts.
Anyone in my family because they’ve heard it a billion times: What did you take for it?
Leslie: Nothing.
AIMF: Has it kicked in yet?

The Lanagan sense of humor tends to run thusly: If it’s funny once, it’s funny a thousand times -or- take a dumb joke and run it into the ground.

I finally gave up the ghost and asked Lindsay if she had any pain meds. She told me to dig through her purse, and all I found was what I affectionately call Lady Tylenol. So, my headache will go away, and the “bonus” is that I’ll be peeing out water weight for the next four hours…. so I got that goin’ for me. I can’t wait to get to the gallery of the Senate and have to find a bathroom every five minutes. If anyone says anything, I’ll just tell them I’m pregnant…. like when I fall down a lot, I tell people I’m drunk. It saves time.

I was born a preemie and got cerebral palsy as a result. It’s not that bad, but bad enough. If I am totally honest with myself, it’s the main reason I switched to male clothes and shoes. The clothes allow me a bit more freedom of movement and the shoes keep me steadier on my feet. For someone like me, heels are of the devil… even though I look hot in them…. just not while lying on the ground after busting my knee open and staring at the road rash on my hands.

It’s a look.

Since it’s after 5:00, I asked Lindsay’s lobbyist if I could have some of his whiskey. It’s called Sagamore Spirit Rye. I poured about an ounce and added some cold water, just a nip because I’m curious and I still want to be able to walk later. Eventually, we’ll be able to get some dinner and I don’t want Lindsay to have to carry me. I don’t keep alcohol in the house because I’d rather have diet soda and those sugar free mix-ins for the small water bottles. This means that my tolerance is about as low as one can get, a definite mark against me when hanging out with politicians and reporters…. Come on, just have one more with us….. ummmm, no. I can’t think or walk straight under the best of conditions. And there is no way in hell I’m letting any of Lindsay’s coworkers fireman carry me, because first of all, I might get dropped. Second of all, I would be mocked for all eternity for having to be carried after two drinks.

Most of the time, I want to be the stone-cold sober one in the group so I remember all the crazy shit you do and write about it later. If you’re sweet to me, I won’t use your name. 😛

As I’ve become more and more serious about writing most days (if not every day), I hate that feeling of losing control. I don’t like it when I can’t think deeply and seriously. I’ve had enough of that “lost control” fun to last a lifetime, and as the old joke goes, I might as well run for office because it would help me piece together most of my 20s (30s?). As I’ve gotten older, I’ve lost the need for social lubricant because a) my anxiety medication works better 2) I don’t want to go out with you people, anyway.

That was mostly a joke.

This weekend Dan is hosting a Tarot card reading party at her place. I told her I’d come, but if I got the “death card,” it was totally her fault.

That was mostly a joke.

Also because it’s after 5:00 and I haven’t eaten today, I have managed to open nearly every snack box in this office. Animal crackers, Tastykakes, granola bars, a bite-size Reese’s peanut butter cup and Dove chocolate. Lindsay and her lobbyist had to run over to the Senate building, so I am passing the time by stuffing my face, even though I’d rather be at tsunami eating a pork bowl #yurionice

In the living room (the office is a converted house), there is a giant bowl of M&Ms, which is why I’m sitting in the back. I may be little, but I have a hollow leg where peanuts and chocolate are concerned. Though Mr. Goodbar is my favorite (not the King size- the ratio of chocolate to peanuts is off), peanut M&Ms really wouldn’t last much longer…. especially since there are giant pretzel sticks in the alcove next to me. Because at some point, I know there will be dinner involved, even if it’s at 11:00 PM, it’s taking all of my willpower not to stuff every damn piece of candy in this office right into my face.

I should have eaten some oatmeal for breakfast, because it keeps me so full I can’t move until dinner. However, the plan was originally to eat about an hour ago. No biggie. Plans change…. and if I was home, I’d be eating my weight in animal crackers, anyway.

But I wouldn’t be staring at pictures of rowboats while I ate them.

I finally found my anger, and it is red hot. I’m not angry that my mother died, I’m not angry that her life was cut short… I’m not even angry that it was a freak accident with no one to blame. I’m angry that with very few exceptions, my mother would not allow herself to be photographed. She would go out of her way to avoid someone capturing her, and as a result, my memories of her during my childhood are quite limited. Actually, my memories of her are limited all the way around. Take this one, for instance. My mom and Forbes had come to visit Dana & me in Portland, and we took them to the winery, Anne Amie, where we had a membership. Every picture I took is just like this one, all landscape and no mother. As Dana and I sat outside with them, introducing Forbes to our favorite outdoor pours (my mom wasn’t a drinker, but she at least took a sip of Forbes’ without spitting it out), we tried asking for a photo, surreptitiously trying to take a selfie, awkwardly positioning ourselves so that they wouldn’t know they were being photographed, etc. Nothing worked. My mother was a hawk and caught us every time. What I wouldn’t give for the chance to go back to that day and say, “damn it, Mom. You’re going to die someday and if you don’t stop saying ‘I don’t look good’ for every single one my head is going to explode.” What person ever plans that far in advance? Why wouldn’t she always be around in 3D? What mother or father consciously thinks about the fact that even if they look like crap in the moment, every picture taken is going to be treasured by their children….. Every. Single. One. Because the thing is, the only person that really thinks they look like crap is them, because they look at it with their own critical eyes, picking out flaws no one else would notice.

I don’t remember what year the picture at Anne Amie was taken, but my mother did not change her stance on photographs one bit from that day. A few months after I moved to Silver Spring, she came to visit, and I don’t have any pictures of her then, either. No selfies on the Metro, no cringe-and-laugh photos of us stuffing our faces at McDonald’s, no standing in front of The White House together. All of the pictures I got on that trip were the same content as the winery… just touristy scenery without her beautiful face. Now, the Smithsonian castle is great and all, but I just have to look in my mind’s eye to remember what she looked like when we were there, and over time, that memory will fade or get smothered into another one so that the pure essence of what it was like to have my mother visit will be lost to history. I am trying my best to record everything I can possibly remember in terms of words, but I won’t ever be able to take a fully-functioning memory, still or moving, and upload it here. Perhaps someone is working on the technology, but it won’t exist in my lifetime. Plus, as I get older, it’s harder and harder to remember what she looked like when I was a child, because there are a few that still exist, but not many. She always thought she was too fat, even when she was tiny…. or perhaps it wasn’t that she felt fat at all, it was just a good excuse to get people to leave her alone about taking pictures at all.

My mother didn’t even want to be in this photo, a beautiful mommy and me portrait taken when I was three or four (hard to tell because I was small for my age, born a preemie). The reason she agreed to be in it was that I was terrified of men with mustaches, and the photographer wore one. I wouldn’t stop crying and agree to have the photo made unless my mother was in the picture with me. So, this total accident of a portrait is my absolute favorite, because I don’t have many others, for two reasons. The first is that even if it was my birthday or Christmas, my mother still hated having her photo taken. The second is that my house burned down when I was 11, so even if she’d posed for a ton of them, I wouldn’t have them, anyway. My grandparents tried to fill in the gaps, but of course, they didn’t have copies of everything, and the one box that actually “survived” the fire smelled like smoke and had weird color runs across them, some stuck together because of the heat. As an aside, one of the things they don’t tell you about a house fire is that even if something doesn’t burn, it will smell like a burning house for all eternity. We didn’t have a scanner when I was in sixth grade, then hideously expensive, so we basically chucked out most of our pictures because only digitizing them would have taken away the smell.

This is basically the last photo to which I remember my mother agreeing. I don’t know how my dad talked her into it, but it’s priceless. I am excited beyond belief because “I’m” about to have a baby. Because Lindsay was born in June and I turned six the next September, I was old enough to take care of her from day one. I changed diapers, I fed her bottles, I read her stories, I watched her while she was sleeping….. basically everything you’d want a big sister to do until Lindsay was old enough to be annoying. I know she won’t mind me saying so. I’m sure I was a royal pain in her ass, too. In that moment, all you can see is my utter joy, but I also remember feeling bittersweet… so excited about this new chapter in my life, and lamenting the fact that my minutes as an only child were numbered and falling fast. It wasn’t until we brought Lindsay home that I realized being an only child wasn’t really my cup of tea (which reminds me of a “Lindsayism…” that coffee is not my cup of tea… which is only funny because now her Starbucks budget is practically a car payment). There were lots of things I attended with my parents in which there were no other children… probably why I have a large vocabulary, but it was still boring. What child likes to sit in a nursery by themselves during a meeting? I could read by the time I was three and a half or four, so I always had the company of books. But having a sister to torture play with was so much better. She was, and still is, funnier than I am. Well, technically, we’re both funny, but I have a short fuse for silly. Lindsay has no such mechanism. While I am dry-witted and cynical, Lindsay has a rubber face. While my jokes might be clever and/or tar black, Lindsay will make tears run down your face as you struggle to breathe. So, pitying myself that I wasn’t my parents’ one and only lasted about as long as a Verizon commercial.

As much as you might think this entry is for me in terms of remembrance, it’s also for you…. a cautionary tale to never tell your children that you’re feeling fat, or too tired, or you haven’t brushed your teeth today, or whatever it is that is keeping you from taking a damn picture. It’s something I have taken in for myself, as well. I used to be very self-conscious about photos, too, and after my mother died, it didn’t matter what state I was in. Having the memory was more important to me than anything else. There are pictures of me with my eyebrows as bushy as a cartoon character, all my wrinkles showing, my hair a mess, and everything else in between (or all of the above, as the case may be). It was easy. I stopped asking to look at the pictures after they were taken and demanding another one, treating a digital camera like an analog with no do-overs, because I didn’t want to become obsessed with getting exactly the right shot before it was shown to others.

No one cares. They’re just glad to have a picture of you at all, especially when you are taken from them unexpectedly and those supposedly imperfect pictures are all they have left.